| Historical Notes |
The brick house known as the old Richard Tucker house, now owned by Mrs. Richmond White, stands between the Abiel Wood home and the house built by Joseph Tinkham Wood and sold to Maj. Moses Carlton, Jr. The Carlton house built in 1805 was subjected to alterations in 1858, but its most interesting features were fortunately retained and it is still notable for its stately entrance, the symmetry of its front hall with its beautiful winding staircase and delicate interior finish. Soon after it was completed Mr. Wood traded the house and the land on which it stands to Maj. Moses Carlton, Jr., for a hundred puncheons of rum, which cargo then recently landed on the latter's wharf in Wiscasset, was sold for $12,000. Major Carlton and his family lived there for fifty years, and during that half century many little orphans called it home. His own children were Susan, Miles, William, Eliza, Nancy, Henry, Moses and Abby. Little Abby died when she was eight years old. Rachel Quin ran away from home and bareheaded attended the funeral of her playmate, and, braving the grim proprieties of a country funeral in those days, joined the procession as it wound its way afoot to the Central burying ground on Federal Street on that Fourth of July so many years ago (1815).
Major Carlton was a gentleman of the old school. He wore a queue and small clothes to the day of his death, and he lived to the ripe old age of ninety. He and his wife were the happiest couple in the world, and in their home the poor and defenseless ones never failed to find refuge. Among their proteges were James and Mary Ann Babbage (grandchildren of Rev. Thomas Moore, Wiscasset's first settled minister), who found a home with the Carltons when their father, Captain Babbage, died. Peggy Waters was another child who lived there; and Patty Bolton who, with her brother John, had lived in a little log house on Sweet Auburn found shelter under this hospitable roof. Two colored women did the work; Pendy, whom they took from the Boston alms-house, and "Aunt'' Kezia Shiney, the nurse, who brought up the whole brood, a full baker's dozen of babies. When this faithful soul died in 1859, in her seventy-seventh year, she was placed beside the children in the Carlton family lot.
The architect of this house is said to have been Nicholas Codd, who designed the James Kavanagh house at Damariscotta Mills, immortalized by Longfellow; the Matthew Cottrill house in Damariscotta; the Charles Nickels house with the monitor roof, on the road from Sheepscot to Newcastle (the old cart path of Walter Phillips) nearly opposite the land where stood the old town house of Newcastle beside the Indian trail. All three of the Nickels houses are still standing and in good preservation. Tradition says that in a state of inebriation Codd was shanghaied and brought across the water from Ireland in one of the Kavanagh-Cottrill vessels and that when his work was completed he returned to his home in the British Isles. He is also said to have come here from Boston, but exhaustive search both by Mr. Patterson and the noted Boston architect, Charles Kimball Cummings, has failed to reveal anything whatever concerning him, negative evidence at least being in favor of the kidnap tradition. His hallmark, a satinwood star inlaid on the newel, is found in the Moses Carlton house, and the same mark appears in the inlay of the hall of the Cottrill (Stetson) house in Damaracutta.
After the death of Moses Carlton the house passed into the hands of Alexander Johnston, Jr., who after occupancy of about twenty-four years sold it to Mr. Charles Weeks. Later it became the property of William Davis Patterson. |
Old Dead Relatives
1766 - 1857 (90 years)
