Omnia succedunt votis; modulamina spero

Haec mea sublimis fuerint praesagia regni.

Dreams do not always come true. There is to-day no sublime and English kingdom located in Plymouth, and the Indian dust has long since blown away. Dis aliter visum. Yet we, the heirs of what the prophet did not see, may brighten our inheritance with his gift. Though the present moment in our country's history may not seem bright, we may cheer us with an omen out of the past. It is something to trace New England's lineage direct from the Golden Age.

Mr. ALFRED JOHNSON read extracts from the manuscript "Annals of Belfast, Maine," by William George Crosby. Mr. Crosby,1 a graduate of Bowdoin College, was born in Belfast in 1805; was the first Secretary of the Board of Education of Maine and laid the foundation of the State's educational system; and was Governor of Maine in 1853-1854. Among the selections read was the following description of a "raising" about a century ago:

It was regarded then just as much out of the question to raise a frame as it was to go through haying-time without rum; both were occasions when the use of that article for "mechanical purposes was considered indispensable. If the building to be raised was a small one, a gallon of "Old Whiteface" answered the purpose, at a pinch. If it was a two-story dwelling-house the quantity was doubled; unless the raising was in a time of drought, when a still larger quantity was required. If the owner was reputed to be wealthy, or the building was of a public character, it was always found necessary to substitute for "Whiteface" a mixture called "rum-punch.' The approved recipe for this was "One sour, Two sweet, Four strong, Eight weak." Half a dozen pailfuls would raise a dwelling-house, ell and barn; nothing less than a barrelful, per diem, would raise a meeting-house; as late as 1818 it required two barrelfuls to raise the Unitarian meeting-house; the compiler had to use two pailfuls to raise his barn; but that was in a very dry season.

1 He was a son of William Crosby (H. C. 1794).

B

After the frame was raised it was the custom to "name it," as the performance was styled. Two of the parties engaged would bestride the ridgepole, one at each end. One of them would say,

Here is a fine frame,

Without any name,

And what shall we call it?

To which the other would reply in equally poetic language, but without answering the main question. After passing numerous questions and answers of the same character the frame would be "named." Three cheers were then given, a parting cup taken, and that was the end of the ceremony. In the raising of a frame all services were rendered gratuitously.

A

MARCH MEETING, 1921

STATED MEETING of the Society was held in the house of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, No. 28 Newbury Street, Boston, on Thursday, 24 March, 1921, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the President, FRED NORRIS ROBINSON, Ph.D., in the chair. The Records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved.

The CORRESPONDING SECRETARY reported that a letter had been received from Mr. JOHN ENDICOTT PEABODY accepting Resident Membership.

Mr. WILLIAM C. LANE read the following paper, written by Mr. William Otis Sawtelle of Haverford, Pennsylvania:

SIR FRANCIS BERNARD AND HIS GRANT

OF MOUNT DESERT1

INTRODUCTION

Marion Crawford once said that whenever he glanced at the map of Mount Desert Island he was reminded of the lamb in the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece; and as Philip, Duke of Burgundy, bestowed that distinction upon the faithful, so George III of England, after many delays, gave the entire territory of the Island of Mount Desert to "our trusty and well beloved Francis Bernard, Esq, our Captain General and Governor in Chief of our Province in the Massachusetts Bay, in America."

In the preparation of this paper, I have derived much assistance from Mr. Lane and Mr. Albert Matthews, the former of whom has supplied several extracts from the Bernard Papers. The papers here cited as the Bernard Papers, filling thirteen volumes, are among the Sparks Manuscripts in the Harvard College Library. Cf. J. Winsor, Calendar of the Sparks Manuscripts in the Harvard College Library (Library of Harvard University, Bibliographical Contributions, No. 22, 1889), pp. 4–6.

Because of his public acts, so harshly has Governor Bernard been treated by historians of the Stamp Act period that sight has almost been lost of the part he played in the settlement and development of Eastern Maine territory on Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Bays and on Mount Desert Island; while of his efforts to prove the title of Massachusetts to land between the Penobscot and St. Croix Rivers, but few accounts are to be found in print. As the representative of his sovereign, he was in duty bound to uphold the royal authority, and had his lot been cast in times less turbulent he would, no doubt, have made a good chief magistrate.

Francis Bernard 1 was the eldest son of Francis Bernard, rector of Brightwell, Berkshire, and Margery, daughter of Richard Winlowe of Lewknor, Oxfordshire. As a boy he attended the Westminster School, and later was a student of Christ Church, Oxford, receiving the degree of Master of Arts in 1736. He chose the law as a profession and was called to the bar at Middle Temple. Steward of Lincoln, recorder of Boston, solicitor at the Court of Chancery were some of the positions which his eminence as a lawyer permitted him to fill. He was also a classical scholar of some note.2 In 1758 he was appointed governor of New Jersey, a position which he held for two years, and so successful was his administration that his appointment to Massachusetts came in the nature of a promotion.

In 1741 Bernard married Amelia, daughter of Stephen Offley of Norton Hall, Derbyshire, and to them were born six sons and four daughters. As it was customary for royal governors to seek colonial appointments with an eye to bettering their financial condition, the emoluments provided by the Massachusetts office no doubt looked attractive to Bernard, who had so large a family for which to provide. Bernard's grant of Mount Desert Island was made by the 1 For Bernard's genealogy and family history, see J. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, ü. 235n-237n; Lipscomb, History of Buckinghamshire, i. 519; Mrs. Napier Higgins, The Bernards of Abington and Nether Winchendon, vols. i and ii. The exact date of Bernard's birth is not known, but he was baptized on July 2, 1712.

3

* Antonii Alsopi Aedis Christi olim Alumni Odarum Libri Duo. Londini, MDCCLII. "This little volume," says Nichols, "was dedicated by Mr. Francis Bernard, the ingenious editor, in an elegant copy of Verses, to Thomas Duke of Newcastle" (Literary Anecdotes, ii. 233-234).

3 A week earlier the Court had granted also twelve townships east of the Penobscot: see p. 204, below.

General Court in 1762, for reasons that will appear later, but his landed interests were not confined to that island. On November 12, 1764, he, in company with Colonel Thomas Goldthwaite of Fort Pownall, purchased of General Jedediah Preble 2,700 acres of land in the vicinity of what is now Fort Point, on the west bank of the Penobscot, originally a part of the Waldo patent.1 Bernard and Goldthwaite2 were instrumental in settling 2400 able men in this part of the country. Soon after he became governor of Massachusetts, Bernard took an active interest in the boundary question between Nova Scotia and Massachusetts. The General Court had in the same month that the grant of Mount Desert was made appointed a committee to consider the matter of the provincial boundary,3 and two years later John Mitchell was sent as a surveyor to the St. Croix region early proceedings in what was afterwards destined to become an international question, which all but resulted in war between the United States and Great Britain and was not finally settled until 1908.

4

When Charles Morris, the surveyor-general of Nova Scotia, ran his boundary lines in 1765, he was supplied with information by Governor Wilmot of Nova Scotia which the latter had received from Bernard, who, realizing the importance of L'Escarbot's account of De Mont's settlement on the St. Croix and Champlain's descriptions of the site of the colony as first-hand evidence in determining the true St. Croix, procured copies of those works, of which he made a careful study. His conclusion, that the St. Croix River of the Indians was not the St. Croix of De Mont's, the ancient boundary of Nova Scotia, communicated to Wilmot was ignored by Morris; possibly, as Dr. Burrage suggests, because he had been instructed to carry the boundary line as far west as possible.5

In 1765 Bernard applied for and received a grant of 100,000 acres

1 Lincoln Deeds, iv. 80; Bangor Historical Magazine, vi. 20.

2 Royal Commission on the Losses and Services of the American Loyalists, 1783 to 1785 (Roxburghe Club, 1915), p. 264.

* Burrage, Maine in the Northeastern Boundary Controversy (1919), pp. 10-18. 4 Gov. Shirley in a letter to Secretary Willard, June 24, 1752, recognized the importance of these works with reference to province bounds. See Massachusetts Archives, liv. 204-207; Documentary History of the State of Maine, xii. 180.

5 Burrage, Maine in the Northeastern Boundary Controversy, p. 16.