As the Piscataquis River begins its journey through downtown Dover-Foxcroft, it makes a 90-degree turn to go over the dam and under the bridge on Main Street. I grew up on the corner of High and South streets, ice skating in the cove all winter long. The view across the river to Foxcroft always brings back nostalgic memories. This day however, called up someone else’s memories, and I fell to wondering about Fred’s colorful ancestor, Peter Brawn.
Peter brought his wife Catherine and their children to Dover around 1806, and built a home at the cove (it would become known as the Spaulding Farm). He was a hunter and trapper and I could not help but wonder what view of the infant settlement greeted him each day. In my mind’s eye, the Moosehead Manufacturing plant morphed back into the Hathaway Shirt Factory of my childhood, and then disappeared altogether, to be replaced by trees and fields and small pioneer cabins. Was it the richness of untamed wilderness that drew this “tall and erect” trapper? He would have been in his prime when he chose this corner of land above the Piscataquis. Though I am drawn to the water’s edge, the wily Peter knew enough to build his home above where the spring floods would have disturbed his homestead.
In a disputed area between Madison and Norridgewock known as the “Mile and a Half Strip”, in 1799 Peter married his wife Catherine Beckey. Catherine was the daughter of Magnus Beckey (Baikie). Magnus emigrated from Scotland to Massachusetts and served in the Revolutionary War in Maine and New Hampshire. After the war, he was one of a group of former soldiers who settled in Madison.
By the time Peter and Catherine arrived in Dover they had at least three young boys, Reuben, Arthur and Ethan. (Arthur would grow up to become Fred’s great-great-grandfather). One fall, poor Catherine Brawn and two of her sons witnessed a man drowning in the river. He would become Foxcroft’s first recorded death in 1807. Within months, poor, young, Catherine, herself died, but her death was never recorded, and so the date and her grave remain unknown to this day.
Peter soon sold his home to one of the Spaulding brothers and moved to Moorstown (what is now known as Abbot). A story is told of a day when Peter was planning to homestead a plot of land in Blanchard and made the mistake of mentioning it to another man. Knowing that whoever drove the first stake laid claim, this man rushed to beat Peter to prime land. It would be interesting to drop back a couple hundred years to eavesdrop on the ensuing discussion when Peter arrived to the sound of trees being felled. Peter did not move to Blanchard. He finally settled in what became known as the “Brawn Neighborhood”, that corner of Sebec Shores where Foxcroft and Guilford blend.
The stories of “Peter and the Bear” and “Peter and the Mill Wheel” and other tales of this giant of a man have been passed down to his posterity. They haunt the sunny shores of the Piscataquis, and the mind of a future “daughter-in-law” happy to hold all the memories dear.
Editor’s note: Columnist Nina Brawn of Dover-Foxcroft, who has been doing genealogy for over 30 years, is a freelance genealogy researcher, speaker and teacher. The Aroostook County Genealogical Society meets the fourth Monday of the month except in July and December at the Cary Medical Center’s Chan Education Center, 163 Van Buren Road, Caribou, at 6:30 p.m. Guests and prospective members are always welcome. FMI contact Edwin “J” Bullard at 492-5501.
