our restoration

the history

SETTLEMENT

Boyden Lake, the eastern most lake in the United States, is situated within two bordering towns, Robbinston and Perry. Nestled in the St. Croix Valley, near the Passamaquoddy Bay, the medium-sized body of fresh water was called by the indigenous people, Nesseyik [where water is muddy]. According to tradition, this condition was the result of a battle between two chiefs, one in the form of a serpent, the other a giant slug.

In 1763, a fur trader, John Frost and his family became the first settlers of European descent. He established his trading post on Pleasant Point to facilitate exchange with the native population. In 1781, Jacob Boyden, of Foxboro, Massachusetts, came to stake his claim in the woods. He built a log cabin between two streams, on a ridge, overlooking the north side of Nesseyik. His descendents would settle along it's shore, giving the lake its present name.

In March of 1786, while Maine was still an enclave of Massachusetts, Revolutionary War General, Benjamin Lincoln, of Hingham, Mass., with two associates, purchased from the Commonwealth, a large tract of land, designated Township # 1 (Perry). Seven months later, in October, Edward Hutchinson Robbins, a prominent resident of Milton, Mass. and his brother Nathaniel, acquired an adjoining 17,860 acres, designated Township # 4 (Robbinston).

These properties were two of many land grants created by the Massachusetts Committee for the Sale of Eastern Lands. By encouraging the settlement of the frontier wilderness of Maine, the Massachusetts General Court hoped to generate revenues to counter the financial chaos left by the Revolutionary War.

THE BUGBEES

On November 1,1766, William Bugbee married Hannah Maxfield, in the First Church of Roxbury. They had six children: Ann, William II, Hannah and Elizabeth, Edward and Daniel. On July 8,1785, the year following Daniel's birth, Hannah passed away leaving William a widower with several young children still in his care. Whether the loss of his wife was a catalyst - they were difficult post war economic times. William may have been lured by the cheap land and a chance for a fresh start in the new townships being developed Downeast. About 1788, the Bugbees sailed from Boston Harbor to the Passamaquody Bay and the forests of Maine, to carve a new town out of the wilderness. His son, William Jr., would settled in Township #1, buying property on the bay.

In 1818, Township #1 was incorporated as the Town of Perry. Two years later, Maine became a state. Four years later, twenty-two year old Edward Bugbee, William Jr's. son, purchased from Theodore Lincoln (Benjamin's son), a wooded parcel on the east side of Boyden's; Lot # 5 in the third range. Two brothers, William and John Brewer, built to his north and south - three brothers in a row. Edward cleared land, built a traditional New England style cape and established a farm. About 1835, he married Anna Wass McCaslin of Columbia, Maine. They had six children: Amaziah Nash, John Gilman, Stephen Nash, Henrietta Brewer, Lorene Patten and Edward Jr.

In the mid-winter of 1853, tragedy struck all three families. Edward Sr. was the first to die, probably of pneumonia, then called typhoid or lung fever.Two weeks later his older brother, William, also passed away within days of writing his last will and testament. Eleven days later, John Brewer's wife, Hannah, succumbed as well. John had barely a chance to realize his grief when his 18 year old son, Elijah Kellogg, also died, six days after his mother. The calamity would not be complete until the following spring when Anna, passed away, three days shy of her 44th birthday, leaving all of their children orphaned.

William's youngest son, James McKeller Bugbee, found a home with relatives in Boston. Considered a prodigy in his Perry school days, he became prominent in Boston as a journalist, police commisioner, publisher and author.

John Brewer remarried within the year. One of his sons by Hannah, Thomas Sherman Bugbee, would establish the second cattle ranch (the Quarter Circle T) in the Panhandle of an emerging Texas. Another son, George Edward Bugbee, fought at Gettysburg and Antietam. He went “West” with his brother, Thomas, and settled in California after the war. In later years he ran a successful ranch and farm in Bonner Springs, Kansas. He was elected mayor of Bonner Springs in 1905.

Edward and Anna's children were placed in foster care with local families. Two of their boys, John Gilman and Stephen Nash, would eventually make their way to Iowa and Minnesota - participating  in the American Civil War. John was wounded in the leg when he saw action in the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania County, Virginia, in May of 1864. Two months later, on the 13th,14th and 15th of July, Stephen's regiment engaged the Confederate Army in the Battle of Tupelo, Mississippi - losing 9 men killed, 54 wounded and 1 missing out of 200 engaged. Stephen was wounded in the shoulder. The battle was a Union victory.

The two brothers would settle and raise families in the "sawdust" town, Minneapolis after the war. John became a millwright and was eventually promoted to the position of forman at the Bassett Lumber Mill near the falls of Saint Anthony. Stephen found employment as a teamster - for a time wth Myer and Davis and later for Miller Brothers & Fletcher, a large hardware store. Hennrietta wed Captain George William Copp, a fisherman from Harvy, Canada and settled in nearby Eastport. Their only son, William, following in his father's footsteps, was lost at sea when he was twenty years old.

THE GOLDINGS

Within seven months of William Bugbee's passing, Robert and Martha Ann Golding of Robbinston, purchased his farm. Robert Golding was a grandchild of Loyalists from Long Island, New York, who, as part of a larger movement, migrated to Saint John, Canada after the Revolutionary War. Robert's father, Long Island native, Daniel "Trapper" Goulding relocated his family to Robbinston from Canada in 1827. He built a log cabin on the edge of a small lake that today bears his name. A lumberman and surveyor by trade, Robert would lay out the Golding Road.

Edward and Anna's estate, 32 acres and a house, fell into arrears and was sold by the town, in 1858, to businessman, Benjamin L Chadbourne. Chadbourne (a great-grandson of Benjamin Lincoln) appeared to have been acting in the interest of the Bugbee children. He sold the property back to the youngest, Edward Jr., for five dollars, when the boy came of age in 1864. Edward in turn sold the property to Civil War veteran, Salathiel D. Seeley, the town butcher. During their tenure, Salathiel and his wife, Margaret, lost an infant, whom they laid to rest in the north field. Several rocks still mark the grave.

Falling on hard times (the state was heavily affected by a postwar recession), Salathiel had trouble paying his debt. He sold the parcel back to Edward the following year creating instead a contract for deed. Two years later Edward's sister and two brothers, Hennrietta, John and Stephen, formally relinquished their claim on the property to their brother. In 1869 the property is sold at public auction (Salathiel had not paid the taxes) to the citizens of Perry. It is redeemed a few months later by Salathiel and Edward. In June of 1870, Edward finally sold the property to Robert and Martha Ann Golding. Edward had borrowed money from Robert Golding, starting in May of 1870 "at sundry times" and came to owe a considerable debt. A portion he worked off as a farm hand (at $3.50 per week). The price of his family farm, $175.00, was included as part of the settlement.

Around 1872, one of the Golding's ten children, Nathaniel, and his new wife, Mary Frye, moved into the aging cape. Nathaniel was a farmer, stone mason, woodsman, hunter, trapper, fisherman, guide and  broom-maker (a skill he learned from the Boydens; who acquired it from the "Indians"). He also played the fiddle. Mary, a former schoolteacher, was a  skilled weaver as well as a talented quilt and rug-maker. All nine of their children - Mame, Rob, Francis, Daisy, Vi, Will, Amy, Kate and Jim - were born in the Bugbee homestead.

About 1893, Nathaniel and Mary built a new home; a simple, hipped roof, two-story farmhouse with a central front door. They moved the Bugbee cape down to the lake and turned it into a camp; renting, at the turn of the century, to J.W. Raye, who served with their son, 'Rob,' in the Spanish American War. Raye's stone ground mustard mill supplied Maine's burgeoning, sardine industry.

The Goldings had their share of tragedy. They lost a baby, Francis Edward, just shy of two months old. Their daughter, Kate, passed away at a tender age,16, of "aortie insufficiency" probably brought on by Rheumatic fever. According to her brother, Rob, she lay down on the couch in the kitchen for a nap and never opened her eyes. Her school report card (found in the attic) reveals a straight A student with consistently excellent deportment. Their fifth child, Will (a member of the Maine Militia), succumbed to frigid springtime Boyden waters, when his sail-rigged canoe capsized some 60 rods from shore. He was attempting to cross a blustery lake, to see his sweetheart, Flossie Taylor. So esteemed was he held by the community, that at his funeral, some 300 people filled the house and yard - his regiment fired a volley.

After the deaths of Nathaniel and Mary, early in the 20th century, the property passed to their son, Robert Nathaniel Golding, a well loved local figure, and a gifted story teller.  Many of his yarns are archived on audio tapes in the University of Maine Folklife Center. Recorded in the 1960s by his friend, Thomas Archibald  'Archie' Stewart, they contain wisdom, wit and recollections of life and family in the late 19th and early 20th century Maine. Rob would pass the property to his daughter, Virginia, a school teacher, in the early 1950s. In the 1970s Virginia rented to the Leavitt family.

RECENT

Robert Leavitt, a linguist, was working with the local Passamaquoddy and Maliseet tribes to represent their words phonetically and produce a definitive dictionary - insuring the preservation of their language. Over thirty years in the making, the dictionary was published in 2008 by the University of Maine Press, with 1,214 pages and over 18,000 Passamaquoddy - Maliseet entries. Leavitt co-authored the tome with tribal elder, David Francis. A heroic birch-bark etching by one of the Passamaquoddy's most revered artists, Tomah Joseph (1837-1914), is reproduced on the dust cover. Culling their words in a unique way, from the conversations and stories of native speaking tribe members, the dictionary's definitions provide an extraordinary glimpse into the culture and traditions of the area's first residents.

Ninety-one year old, George Edward Bugbee, the last known surviving descendent of Edward and Anna Bugbee, lives today in a retirement village in Texas. His grandfather, Stephen Nash Bugbee, passed away in Minneapolis in 1924, when George was four years old. His sister, Lucille, passed away December 1, 2001 - the day we arrived in Maine, to take possession of her great-grandparents former farm.

2011

Read more about our restoration of the Golding House.