“Early Settler in This Section Was Joseph Berry. Owned Land from Winnegance Creek to Casco Bay,” Bath Daily Times, August 6, 1948

With the kind permission of the Bath-Brunswick Times-Record and Alliance Press I have transcribed the article below. The Browns, the Winters, and their descendants with whom this blog is concerned are not descendants of the Joseph Berry on whom the article focuses, but the locale in which Joseph Berry was active was central to the lives of the blog’s Browns and Winters. I will, for those not familiar with the area, follow this post with another the aim of which will be to place, with the help of Google Earth, the families geographically.

“Early Settler in This Section Was Joseph Berry. Owned Land from Winnegance Creek to Casco Bay,” Bath Daily Times, August 6, 1948.

By Henry W. Owens, Jr.

The next arrival after Robinson in the little settlement that was to be Bath was Jonathan Philbrook whose career has already been sketched in these articles. Following close on the heels of Philbrook was a most important figure in the local scene, Joseph Berry.

Berry bought his farm, a strip 120 rods wide extending from Winnegance Creek to “Casco Bay,” from Arthur Noble, the deed bearing the date of January 9, 1739-40. But Berry was on the ground somewhat before that date, as Noble in a deed simultaneously conveying a similar strip adjoining Berry’s on the south, specifically excludes any right to “the mill stream or pond where Joseph Berry and James Scales have erected a sawmill or mills.” Berry’s farm at its western end bordered on the mill stream on the north, and the other, whose new owners were John Gatchell and Israel Mitchell of Brunswick and Christopher Mitchell of Georgetown, came to the other side of the cove. Immediately after gaining ownership of his farm, Berry sold to Samuel Brown, Jr., “of Arrowsic,” one-sixth of a double sawmill on the property. James Scales sold out in 1742 his interest in the Berry Mill to Benjamin Ring and moved to a farm bordering Sears Cove just above what we call Sabino.

Berry’s mill constituted the most important addition yet made to the resources of the community and was the magnet drawing other settlers to the Mill Cove neighborhood which became for a long time more populous than the older one along the shore of Long Reach.

Joseph Berry himself was a man of energy and ability and made a decided impress on the community. According to Levi P. Lemont, he was born in England. The date must have been very early in the 18^th century. His son Joseph was born in 1740, and there is reason to believe that Joseph, Jr., was not the first child.

We find the elder Joseph on a town committee to supply the pulpit in 1750, and one of the petitioners for a new parish in 1753. In 1752 he was one of the agents of the court for partitioning the Gutch estate. The Second parish was organized in 1754, and Lieut. Joseph Berry was placed on the important committee to choose a site for the proposed meeting house. In 1757 Lieut. Berry was on the alarm watch and by that time had erected the famous blockhouse on his property as a refuge for himself and his neighbors in the event of an Indian attack. He was continuously a selectman of Georgetown from 1757 to 1764 and served again in 1766. In 1759 and probably before and after—the records are very scant—he was an assessor of the Second Parish. In 1762 he became captain of the militia company composed of male residents of the parish, continuing in the office until 1771. In that time the captaincy in the militia was one of the highest marks of confidence a citizen could achieve. We also have it from an old document that from the organization of the Second parish, Berry was one of the chief men concerned in its affairs.

The original mill was already going at the end of 1739. The site of the dam and mills was close to where the road now crosses Mill Cove. There were five sawmills in all, probably replacing one another in 1749, 1763, 1782, and 1806. The last stood until after the Civil War. Joseph Berry, the settler, was probably responsible for three and perhaps four of them. On the dam he also built a grist mill in 1750 which was succeeded by three others, the last erected about 1812. These were all, of course, tide mills.

Joseph Berry’s house near the mills was the first known tavern in the region, with Joseph the host. The North map from a survey in 1750 shows no blockhouse in the vicinity of the mills, and Berry probably built it shortly after that date as the French and Indian War was drawing on and there was a resurgence of Indian troubles. It is described by Lemont as standing on the hill north of the mills, and built of 12×12 timbers with the second story overhanging the first. After the conquest of Canada, which put an end to the Indian wars, the blockhouse was dismantled and taken down, furnishing materials for three houses for three of Capt. Berry’s sons.

Capt. Berry’s wife was named Lydia, and the Georgetown books record the birth of seven children from 1740 on, namely Joseph, John, Jonathan, George, Josiah and two others whose names are not given. Lemont mentions three others, Nathaniel, Samuel and James. The Nathaniel who figures in the Georgetown records, however, was a contemporary of Capt. Joseph and was elected to a town office in 1743 which would set his birth back at least 21 years further.

John, born in 1742, was the most prominent of the second generation of the family, known as Capt. John, and lived on the homestead until his death in 1805. His wife was Rhoda Mitchell of Georgetown, and his house on the hill above the mills and east of the town road was afterward the home of his son-in-law, Benjamin B. Richardson.

Gen. Joseph Berry of a later period and his father, Samuel, were of another family. This Samuel came from Falmouth.