On sabbatical I was able to write the first draft of a six part history of our family story through the last names of our grandparents. I am going to address each part to a different grandchild. This is a brief excerpt from the first part.
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Mika you are a Swain. Just as you know as an eight year old that you are a Braddy and a Crocker, I knew as an eight year old I was a Crocker and a Swain! My grandmother’s great-grandfather was William Swain and here is part of his story.
William Swain lived in a little Maine village called Bristol in the early 1800’s. In 1614 Captain John Smith (of Jamestown fame) explored and mapped this area. Two hundred years later when William was just ten years old a sea battle took place on the coast where he lived. Did he hear the sounds of the pounding canons, smell the gunpowder, see the ships, and listen eagerly to the stories? On Sept. 5, 1814 as the war of 1812 ended the 14 gun British ship the Boxer and the USS Enterprise engaged between Monhegan Island and Pemaquid. (You have relatives that have lived for generations in these places!) Valiant crews and officers fought on both sides, with both commanders being killed, and both being buried side-by-side in Portland. The battled ended with the capture of the British ship and the Maine coast was now free from the harassment of the Boxer.
Bristol is very near the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse which is on the Maine quarter. The roads around Bristol and the lighthouse have some interesting names of coastal families who probably once lived in the area such as Coombs, Bradley, Tibbits and Crooker (Your Papa knew people with these last names growing up). Two other road names you might be interested in are: Crocker and Cheyennes.
When “Papa Swain" was in his twenties this lighthouse was built and he would have seen its light many times! At least two of his sons were sailors and they would have known the importance of a nice bright light during a storm or when the fog hid the rocky Maine coast. How many times did “Papa Swain” walk to the shore to get away, to sit on the rocks and look at the ships? Maybe he even had a picnic by the ocean with his wife and some of his nine children!
Once me and Nana visited Bristol and went to the library and found out some interesting things. We also stopped at a cemetery and took some pictures of the grave stone where William was buried alongside his wife Diannah. His gravestone also tells us something about him. It reads:
Farewell my wife and children all,
From you a father Christ doth call,
Mourn not for me, it is vain
To call me to your sight again.
People like to put things on grave stones such as their name, when they were born and died as well as something that that they think is very important. This particular “epitaph” can be found all over New England and in many Southern cemeteries. It can even be found over a grave of a pastor who lived at the same time as our ancestor but was buried in Nebraska between Aurora and Grand Island. I wonder if “Papa Swain” thought Christ was important. I think he might have because in my office a have several pieces of paper that are the “fly leafs” of a very old family Bible. Can you guess whose names were at the very top? Yes! At the very top are the two names William and Diannah Swain. It also records that they were married on September 26, 1833 and lists other names of family members!
The library records showed that he was a tailor. Not everybody who lives on the coast is a fisherman! Sailors need cloths and somebody had to make them. So we can guess that he knew lots about cloth, fabric, sewing, measuring and what styles looked good to someone who lived in the 1800’s.
I discovered something else at the library, something that was confirmed by what are called the Federal Census Records. In the 1800’s, about every 10 years the government would send officials around to ask people questions and record their answers. They asked questions about how old they were, who was living with them where they lived, and where their father and mother were born. So for example in the census of 1860 “Papa Swain” was 46 years old, living with his wife, there were six children in the home from the ages of 24 to five. The two oldest sons were listed as sailors and “Papa Swain” was listed as a “day laborer.” Also we find that his father was from, you guessed it, Maine. We also learn from the census of 1870 that the tailor turned to another occupation in “his retirement” because there he is listed as a farmer.
They were also interested in something that we would find strange today, the race of the person. In the race column, the clerk would write a “w” if the person was white and a “b” if they were black, or an “m” for, a very old fashion word that we never say much today, mulatto. In those days a person who was mulatto had a parent or grandparent who was “black” or what we would call today as “biracial.”
What would it have been like to be identified as a black or a mulatto in Maine in the early 1800’s? You might think that every black person before the Civil War was a slave but that is not true. "Papa Swain" was not a slave, though it is very likely one of his grandparents had been one.
Sometimes free "blacks" would help slaves take the Underground Railroad through Maine to escape to Canada. Remember that I told you that two of “Papa Swain’s" sons were sailors. Actually before the Civil War 25% of the mariners in Maine were African American and some of these would help with the Underground Railroad when the railroad involved ships and sailors along the New England coast. Maybe our ancestors help on this railroad?
The Underground Railroad was not an actual railroad but a patchwork of secret routes and houses used by escaping slaves. Many where trying to get to Canada and over 30,000 people made it! Some traveled this railroad through the very area were our William Swain lived. I have even been in home that had a hidden room for these passengers in a place called Freeport, Maine!
The Federal Census records show that from the years 1820-1870, 274 communities in Maine had black citizens living as free citizens. Some towns such as Gardiner, Phippsburg, and Bristol listed 2-3% of their citizens as black. Also we know that there were “African Schools” in 1800’s at Portland, Brunswick, Warren, China and one on Malaga Island, across from Phippsburg.
There is a funny story about a well known and respected black preacher who lived at the very same time as “Papa Swain.” Once he came to speak at the First Parish Church in Brunswick and before Rev Amos Freeman began to speak two white sailors got up and left the church. The next day someone started reporting the incident by saying "A wonderful miracle took place on the hill in the great church, yesterday! God sent a colored messenger from heaven to declare His will unto the people. He sat down in the pulpit, and without opening his mouth he cast out two devils."
