Historic Hallowell

Not everyone came out of desperation. Some, like Charles and Benjamin Vaughan, came to advance property interests inherited from Benjamin Hallowell, the Kennebec Proprietor for whom the town was named. The Proprietors were a group of wealthy Boston merchants whose members included James Bowdoin, John Hancock, Dr. Silvester Gardiner and William Brattle.

Charles Vaughan, John Merrick and others were hired as land agents by the Proprietors to protect and develop the one and one-half million acres of land claimed by the Proprietors as successors to the Plymouth Patent of 1629. The Vaughans were long-time supporters of American independence. According to Alan Taylor, in Liberty Men and Great Proprietors (p.68), their initiatives on behalf of their newly adopted country sometimes exasperated their neighbors like Judge Daniel Cony, who noted:

There is not probably a family on the globe more fond of experimenting and of novel revolutionary ideas, of dabbling in almost every kind of business, say Plymouth Company matters, tontine buildings, canals, land speculations, navigation, agricultural societies, India trade, turnpikes, physics, brick machines etc., bridges, bank stock, Society To Direct Foreigners, aquaducts etc., etc., etc.

At the opposite end of the settler spectrum from the Vaughans were the young people who came to Hallowell with limited means, good educations and a determination to succeed.

Squire Morgan -- A Maine Franklin. Jonathan Morgan, a young lawyer, came from Portland around 1800 “to grow with the town.”

A man of great talent and wide-ranging interests, he seemed never to be idle. As a writer and inventor he was Franklin-like in his abilities, but without Franklin’s wit. When not practicing law he found time to make improvements upon Franklin’s stove and to produce Morgan’s Grammar of the English Language, a highly regarded work which was published by the Hallowell firm of Goodale and Cheever in 1814.

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody -- Hallowell Blue Stocking. Benjamin Vaughan wanted the females in his family to be well informed and exposed to liberal thinking. When they traveled to England to visit relatives they were introduced to members of the original Blue Stocking Club, a distinguished literary circle of mainly female writers famous for their dissenting views.

In 1823, Vaughan retained Miss Peabody as governess for his family’s children. She joined the local Blue Stocking Club but found it to be more social than literary. Vaughan quickly realized that Peabody was a woman of exceptional ability with strong intellectual aspirations. He invited her (the only female so honored) to join his nightly “metaphysical class” where clergy, Bowdoin scholars and town professionals discussed works such as Thomas Brown’s Philosophy Of The Human Mind and Inquiry in the Relation of Cause and Effect.

Ezekiel Goodale -- Book Seller, Printer and Publisher. In 1771, public schools were established and in 1795 the Hallowell Academy opened, one of the first classical academies in the District of Maine (a distinction shared with Berwick Academy, which was chartered the same day). With them came a demand for books and printed material. In 1802 twenty-two-year-old Ezekiel Goodale arrived in town and opened the first bookstore established east of Portland, “The Hallowell Bookstore -- Sign of the Bible.” He imported the best books available from England and stock from the Boston book trade. For those who couldn’t afford books he provided the services of his innovative “Circulating Library,” a subscription library offered to patrons for a small fee. An 1863 anonymous correspondent to the Hallowell Gazette recalled the excitement generated by the book trade:

We were decidedly a reading people. just in time for Ezekiel Goodale, Walter Scott and his contemporary writers of prose and poetry burst upon the world...from about 1810 to 1820 the bookstore hung out a pasteboard every week or so with …a long list of wonderful novels of the great unknown...all this duly and daily advertised, not only brought fish to the net of Ezekiel Goodale’s “Sign of the Bible,” but brought thoughts that breathe and words that burn, and ideas that live and fructify, to the great circle of readers of that village and the vicinity.

Today the book lover can not only sense the history of the early Water Street book trade but can experience it by entering the antiquarian bookstore located in the same building that housed Ezekiel Goodale’s bookstore and publishing house in the early 1800s.

The next step in our journey.