Stephen Grover in New Brunswick

Stephen Grover and his family spent more than 10 years in New Brunswick after the Revolutionary War. He arrived, not with the wave of Loyalist refugees, but with the smaller stream of later settlers, many from Maine. Some of the Loyalists settlers of Charlotte County had come from Balltown, Stephen's former residence, and many more from the surrounding mid-coast Maine region. So the Grovers were sure to encounter familiar faces in New Brunswick. The landscape would have been similar too, the wilderness of New Brunswick being little different from Maine. The important difference though was that one could get land with clear title there, a process that was expensive and difficult to do in the Maine back country.

The Grovers had arrived in Balltown in the mid-1770s. Stephen's father Ebenezer may have acquired a lot from a speculator, or may have staked a claim himself. In either case, no deed was filed with the county. The family lived on present Jones Hill, south of Pleasant Pond (now Clary Pond), just east of the intersection of Heath and Hilton roads in present day Whitefield. Another son Thomas was living on an adjacent lot until about 1786, when he moved to the Pinhook settlement. Ebenezer Jr apparently acquired this homestead lot as an heir to Sr, who died before the 1790 census.

Brothers Ebenezer Jr and Stephen bought a 200 acre farm lot on the west bank of the Sheepscot River in 1782, each eventually selling off their share. Ebenezer Jr went on to claim and sell thousands of acres of land in the settlement to the north of Balltown, known alternately as Pinhook, New Waterford and Malta, but today called Windsor. It is unclear why Stephen decided to leave the area to settle in New Brunswick (and later in Calais) instead of continuing to speculate on land like Ebenezer. But there were a couple of factors that probably contributed.

Ebenezer Jr never had clear title on any of the lots he sold in Balltown or Pinhook. Although this was not unusual for settlers in that area who had for the previous couple of decades bought and sold land without legal title, and at no great risk, it became riskier to do so toward the 1790s. The Kennebec Proprietors, who held the legal claim to nearly all the land in the region, began surveying and dividing the land in earnest after the Revolutionary War. Any settlers who refused to pay the Kennebec Company for the land they were squatting on faced legal action, and perhaps eviction. It would have been a great loss to put time and money into land, only to lose it for lack of a warranty deed.

The Kennebec Company's new actions in the Sheepscot valley angered the settlers there, those with or without title. Many were Revolutionary War veterans who had believed their enemies included those large land owners whose mere existence threatened a state of tenancy. To these men, the war was fought to free them from such bonds as a charter from the King indicating ownership to land. According to the settlers, possession and improvement of land was what constituted ownership. 

So when the Kennebec Company sent surveyors into the back country, they were often met with bands of local settlers who broke their equipment and sent them away. Such incidents became more frequent, and spilled over to barn and house burning, crop destruction, animal killings, assault and eventually a murder. This land was was coming to a head by the first decade of the 1800s, and would soon be resolved, although not to the satisfaction of the residents.

Stephen left Balltown by the late 1780s, and missed being on the front lines of this land war. But he may have known the value of land with clear title. And in New Brunswick, such title could be gotten. He lived in St David and St Stephen where he owned land, until some time after 1800, and was found settled in Calais by 1810. Why he gave up his land in New Brunswick, and moved to Calais (where he never owned land) is not known.

A few of the Balltown men who preceded Stephen and his family were surely well known to them, if not only for their brazen Loyalty to the King. William Cookson, James Turner, Martin Carlow and John Carlow enlisted with the Rebels in May of 1778. Their plan was to escape to Nova Scotia, a British stronghold. The Rev Jacob Bailey of Pownalborough recounted their harrowing crossing in his journal. The men (except for Thomas) signed on with the local militia to avoid detection. On May 20th they deserted and fled. They eventually made it across the bay to Nova Scotia, where they remained for a time. Eventually they returned to Maine, and took refuge at Fort George at Penobscot for the remainder of the war.

That might have been the end of the story, with the men and their families abandoning Fort George at the end of the war and moving to St Andrews, as most of the Penobscot Loyalists did. But it was not that simple. The connections between Balltown and St Andrews were not cut completely. The men were bound by family ties: William's and Martin's wives were sisters of the Turner brothers. And the Turners' aged parents remained in Balltown, several many years after the war. Cookson, the Carlows and the Turners all owned land in Balltown which they had improved, and they were not apt to give up their work.

William Cookson, whose first wife Elizabeth Turner had died near the beginning of the war, remarried and settled on his new wife's farm grant right outside St Andrews. His children from his first wife, however, returned to Balltown, while he lived out his life in New Brunswick. Cookson had been smart enough to give a deed for his Balltown farm to his brother in law Thomas Turner before his flight. His son Robert regained possession of the lot after the war. Thomas Turner was said to have gone to Nova Scotia too, also went to Fort George for protection during the war, and even was granted 2 lots in New Brunswick. But it appears that he didn't reside at the fort for long, never settled his grant, and returned to Balltown. James Turner, brother of Thomas, left Maine for good. He was granted lots in St Andrews Town, and Bocabec, Saint Patrick, settling on the Bocabec lot.

The Carlow brothers' stories were similar, but they eventually returned to Balltown. The brother went to New Brunswick in 1783, and drew farm and town lots. Both brothers' farm lot grants were in the parish of St Stephen. Although they may have taken up their grants for a short period, both returned to Balltown, Martin by 1790 and John soon thereafter. The brothers remained there until around 1803 before moving back east again. John went as far as Saint John where he died in 1821. Martin went to St Andrews, settled on another farm close to Cookson, but went back to Maine, living at Lubec, where he probably died.

The unsettled Carlow brothers and the ties of the Cooksons and the Turners to Balltown show clearly that a hard border did not arise between Maine and New Brunswick, nor between the Loyalists and the Patriots. After the war, there was a steady stream of settlers in the new colony from all over Maine, but especially from the mid-coast. There were several from Balltown before the War of 1812: Stephen Grover came in the 1780s; John Bamford, Samuel Johnson, Leavitt Vining, Leonard Bartlett, Caleb Bartlett, Daniel Peaslee, and Samuel McCurdy arrived in the first decade of the 1800s. The Grovers were in familiar company.

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Apart from his prior residence, Stephen Grover had another thing in common with many of the Loyalists of Charlotte County: he served in the Rebel military. Granted, the Balltown men described above enlisted with a militia group as part of their plan to escape to Nova Scotia, but not every Loyalist in the Rebel ranks had such designs. There were 74 men named on the Balltown militia list of 1777; 5 of them were considered Loyalists, despite their being mustered for the local militia. The line between Patriotism and Loyalism was often blurred by service to both sides. In mid-coast Maine this was especially so the closer you got to Penbscot Bay, where many residents worked for the British after they took over the Majabagaduce Peninsula in the summer of 1779. Of a little more thatn 200 Loyalists identified from mid-coast Maine, at least 35 served in the Rebel ranks, with some even receiving an American pension for their service. So, since we cannot draw a conclusion about one's political views just by service alone-military or otherwise-can we do so for wavering faith in the cause? 

The 1777 militia list identified the men and boys aged 16 to 60 living in Balltown. Of those men, only 41 (a little more than half) can be identified in other military service records. Only 9 served in the Continental Army. So if half of the eligible men in town were called up for some service locally, only 1 in 9 left Maine to fight with the Army. Among those were Stephen Grover.

When the list counting the strength of Balltown was made, Stephen was already away with the Army. He may have enlisted as early as January 1777. Several countrymen belonged to the same company as Stephen, including Joseph Bartlett (r Balltown), Nathaniel Cheney (r Georgetown), Benjamin Turner (r Newcastle), Ezekiel Stearns (r Balltown) and John Glidden (r Balltown). John Glidden was killed in April at the Battle of Ridgefield, where the company was engaged. Stephen remained in the company until January the next year when he deserted, and headed back to Maine.

We don't know the consequence of Stephen's desertion from the Army, but we know his father was charged with harboring him. A Court of General Sessions was held in Pownalborough in September 1778, and the case of Ebenezer Grover, his son Thomas, and Andrew Glidden was on the docket. According to the charge they "with Force and Arms did conceal & harbour" from February through August, Stephen Grover, and two other deserters, Arnold Glidden and Benjamin Turner. Arnold and Andrew Glidden were brothers of John who had been killed the April before at the Battle of Ridgefield. Arnold Glidden and Benjamin Turner were reported deserted the same day as Stephen, 23 January 1778. They had made it home by February 12th. Thomas Grover and Andrew Glidden were acquitted of the charge, while Ebenezer was found guilty and ordered to pay 12 pounds and costs.

[This was not Stephen's first stint in the army, and not his first desertion. He had enlisted in 1775 for New Hampshire, belonging to Colonel Enoch Poor's Regiment, which at the time was in New York. He deserted in February 1776. In March, several other men in the Regiment who were from Pownalborough and Newcastle also deserted. We can imagine that they somehow travelled back to Maine together.]

There seems to have had been wavering, declining or little interest in the Revolution, as far as those like Stephen who went east to New Brunswick, like Stephen. In his family, there was little activity in the military. His brother Thomas may have been called up to defend the Lincoln County frontier for a few weeks in late 1779. Ebenezer Jr, although just old enough to have joined the military by the end of the war, leaves no record of service. Their father Ebenezer Sr was in his 50s during the war, so it's not so odd to find no trace of him in the records either. Back from the army after desertion, with his family closing ranks around him, Stephen may have found a back country fed up with the war, and the economic toll it was taking on the area.

John Bamford was a newcomer to Lincoln County, arriving some time in the early 1790s from Barrington, New Hampshire. He served a few months in the 1781 in the Continental Army before being discharged in December. His father appears to have served in the militia in New Hampshire, while there is no record of his older brother James having enlisted. When John arrived in Balltown he quickly recognized the failure of the Revolution in those parts. The Massachusetts General Court had upheld the claim the Kennebec Proprietors had on vast stretches of Maine land. The Proprietors were largely Loyalists during the Revolution, and the residents of the Maine back country had expected that the Proprietors' holdings would be confiscated and redistributed to the soldiers, their families and other "improving" settlers. After all, the Court had proscribed, banished, and confiscated the land and property of countless residents of Massachusetts and the District of Maine. 

So John Bamford found a resentful populace in Balltown and the whole mid-coast region. The land they had thought they had fought for was given to the Loyalists, most of whom were absent from the area. This stoked fears of widespread tenancy, like in Ireland, and lifetimes of fruitless work. Nor could the residents find relief in their newly formed Republic, for even if they were eligible to vote (which the greatest number of the population was not), there was no representation from most of the remote coastal towns due to the fact that the towns couldn't afford to send a representative; back country places, like Balltown, were not incorparated towns anyway, so could not have representation anyway. 

By 1800, the land war was heating up, and John Bamford was in the thick of it. He was brought to court in 1802 for vandalism and harrassing John Parker, a supporter of the Proprietors. In 1800 and 1801, Bamford stole and killed some of Parker's livestock, destroyed Parker's crops, and eventualy set Parker's barn on fire. While in jail in Pownalborough awaiting his trial, Bamford was broken out by the local residents. He escaped to New Brunswick and his family soon followed.

Samuel Johnson was a son of a Revolutionary veteran, also named Samuel. Samuel Sr had been one of the few from Balltown to enlist in the Continental Army. He too was a deserter, leaving the army in the summer of 1779, a low point in the war for the Americans, having just been routed at Penobscot. He purchased a claim for 300 acres on the Sheepscot River in 1792 from Charles Glidden, another brother of the Gliddens mentioned above. It was a choice piece of land, with a half-mile frontage on the river, and bounding on the Travel Pond on the opposite. He built a house on a rise above the river and settled his family. Within a few years, he had a few acres cleared. At the time, he had three sons of prime age to help him work the land. For whatever reason, Samuel Sr's improvements stalled he begam selling portions of his claim in 1801. By the time he died in 1812, two sons had died, a daughter had moved away, and Samuel Jr had left for New Brunswick. His widow may have remained on a small portion of the claim for a period of time, but was soon found on the poor rolls of the town of Whitefield. Samuel Jr quickly bought land and remarried upon his arrival in New Brunswick. The Revolution had failed for Samuel Sr, but Samuel Jr was able to recover with a farm in his own right that he could pass to his children.

Leavitt Vining, Leonard Bartlett, Caleb Bartlett, Daniel Peaslee,

The Vinings, Bartletts and Peaslees don't appear to have had much interest in the Revolution, as far as military service. Jonah Vining, the father of Leavitt, didn't appear on any military rolls. Neither did Daniel Peaslee's father or uncles. There is record of Caleb Bartlett doing duty for one day, but that is it.

Did minimal military participation during the Revolutionary War predict later flight from mid-coast Maine? Certainly not. Especially if you consider that from the Balltown list of inhabitants of military age, only half of them show up on muster rolls, and even fewer left town later. There may have been fervent revolutionaries in Maine, but that was not most people. Even after the promises of the Revolution failed, most of the Balltown residents remained there for mamy years after the end of the war. However, moving east was a rememdy for some of the unresolved problems that Balltown residents and others from mid-coast Maine faced.

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Stephen Grover and his family moved to Calais, Maine, before 1810. He died there before the 1840 census, making Calais his longest residence. He owned no land, left no estate, but apparently didn't have any debt, seeing no probate was filed for him. Despite his fight in the Revolution, his speculation in land in Balltown, his relocating to ensure title, and his acquisition of hundreds of acres in New Brunswick, he had nothing to show for it at the end of his life. All his children eventually left Calais too.