Franklin County, Maine |
Franklin County, Maine |
Samuel Linscott
Samuel Linscott moved into the place with Dummer Sewall. He began on the next lot north of Mr. Sewall's. He helped build and carry on the first mills in the place, and owned one half of a sawmill built some eighteen years later. He carried on farming rather more extensively than his neighbors. He made one of the purchases of the town, and served the town as treasurer for the first two years after its incorporation and as constable and collector during three years. Capt. Wyman, his brother and Mr. Linscott, once went on snowshoes to Moose Hill hunting. They found three moose and each selecting his object, fired. Two dropped dead, while one remained almost or entirely unhurt. Their dogs worried this one to madness when it rushed towards Mr. Linscott; Capt. Wyman in the mean time loading for another shot. Mr. L. dropped his gun and seized his axe, waiting the assault. The moose came rushing towards him, and just as he was crouching for his final spring, Mr. L. settled the axe into his head and thus killed him. One of the first years of his residence here, Mr. Linscott needed potatoes to plant. Stephen Titcomb had some to spare. Mr. Linscott with his axe went and labored for Mr. Titcomb two days for two bushels of potatoes. At night of the second day he shouldered his potatoes and started for home. The stream had risen a little where he had crossed on a tree-, so that when he was fairly on it with his load he found that it was afloat. He lost his axe, and had to lay his bag of potatoes across the tree mostly in the water. Watching the most favorable opportunity, as well as he could judge in the darkness, he jumped for 'dear life" towards the shore, Ho then went home. The next morning, with some help, he recovered his axe and potatoes. But the potatoes yielded him but a light return for all his labor and risk, as few of them ever grew. Mr. Linscott's son Daniel, about eighteen years of age. was drowned in May, 1797. He was drowned just above the first sawmill, after it had been removed up stream, and his was the first death by drowning among the settlers of the town. He was tending the mill alone, and as is supposed went to haul up a log, and that in doing it he got into the millpond, perhaps by sliding down between two logs. A man coming down the stream to mill in a canoe, seeing a hat upon the water and the mill running, gave the alarm. The body was not found till the next day. Mr. Linscott's younger son, Joseph, died in August 1789, at the age of about 18 months. This was the first death of a white person within the town. Mr. Linscott died in Nov., 1816; his wife in July, 1843. In the same house a sister of Mrs. Linscott—widow Hannah Foster,—died in May 1846, at the age of 94. Hers was the death of the oldest person to be found on the town records in 1856. - |