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Document sheds light on Machias history
Saturday, November 13, 2004 - Bangor Daily News
Susan Wright of East Machias has been working to preserve papers through the Washington County Courthouse Archives Preservation Committee
MACHIAS - A handwritten document has been discovered tucked away in the attic of the Washington County Courthouse, providing new details about the 1775 Battle of the Margaretta in which patriots captured a British ship on Machias Bay. The skirmish is considered America's first naval conflict during the Revolution.
It took place two months after the Minutemen's Lexington-Concord firefight in Massachusetts and days before the Battle of Bunker Hill.
The faded, folded document is written in ink in cursive handwriting on two sides.
It's a deposition from Hannah Weston, the Jonesboro woman who became a local heroine on June 12, 1775, as she attempted to bring gunpowder to the defenders of Machias.
"There was no one but the women with families to go - and so we had to go," Hannah Weston's account reads. "I was so tired that I [fainted] several times - eat nothing till next morning ..."
Susan Wright of Washington County's Courthouse Archives Preservation Committee found the document Oct. 22 in a box of papers. It apparently had not been handled in decades.
Wright has been working through the attic material for much of the past two years to index the county's papers.
As soon as Wright found the document, three of Machias' keenest local historians went to work on transcribing the hard-to-read material.
They were Wright, Valdine Atwood and Lyman Holmes. Wright owns an antiques shop in Machias. Atwood is the dedicated caretaker of the Burnham Tavern, the local museum whose own history is tied to the Battle of the Margaretta. Holmes is the county's probate judge for whom Machias history is second nature.
"I knew I had found something significant," Wright said Friday of the paper, which remains under lock and key at the county's probate office. "I called Val immediately."
The writing is nearly indecipherable.
The paper surfaced just months in advance of the 230th anniversary of the Battle of the Margaretta. The Machias Bay Area Chamber of Commerce is planning a three-day festival next June 10-12 in Machias in honor of what historians have come to call "Lexington of the Sea."
Generations of Machias schoolchildren have been steeped in Burnham Tavern and Margaretta lore. They can recite how, in 1775, the 150 residents of Machias confronted a British demand to furnish supplies. A long, local debate took place before Benjamin Foster led the settlement to action.
Hannah Weston was a 17-year-old newlywed living in Jonesboro. When word came that Machias needed defending, about 20 men worked their way through dense forest to reach the Machias River. They blazed a trail through trees for those who might follow after them.
Weston realized that the men had failed to take enough powder with them. So she set out with her older sister-in-law, Rebecca Weston, with sacks of powder weighing 30 to 40 pounds.
When Rebecca said she could no longer carry her load over the 16 miles, Hannah took on all the weight as they walked.
The two arrived in Machias too late for the powder to help the defenders, but they were praised for their determination. The battle had lasted two days before Jeremiah O'Brien's men on the Unity boarded the Margaretta and captured the British.
Weston apparently recalled the testimony of the men who had fought:
"In the night the only way the enemy knew where our men [were] was by the flash of muskets at which the men would fire their guns ... so that when our men fired they would dodge and fire from another place," reads her account.
Today, Fort O'Brien in what is now Machiasport looks out over the Machias Bay site near Round Island where the battle took place.
The paper is marked by a date: March 4, 1809. That turned out to be something of a mystery, too.
At first the three decipherers believed that Weston's words as told to someone else were written on that day - which turns out to be the very day that Machias was incorporated as a town. It had been settled in 1763.
However, Atwood on Thursday shared with the others how she now believes the document was written in 1839, when Weston was 80 years old.
Toward the account's bottom, words show: "Shall be 81, 22 Nov."
Hannah Weston was born Nov. 22, 1758, in Haverhill, Mass. She died in Jonesboro in 1855 at 96.
"The more I got thinking about this paper," Atwood said, "I realized that 1809 can't be right. It just didn't add up. I do genealogy and I'm very attuned to dates and ages. It just didn't make sense."
Wright had thought all of the boxes in the attic had been exhausted for new discoveries well before she uncovered the Weston document.
But in the weeks since, she has found one more box of papers that she still has to go through. It's a good bet, however, that whatever that box holds can't top the Hannah Weston find for local excitement.
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