The Story of Captain Matthew Patten of Surry, Maine

By Patrick McDonald

Captain Matthew Patten occupies an important and lasting place in the history of Surry, and in the settlement of the entire area of Downeast Maine once called ‘The Union River Settlement’ — which was comprised of present-day Ellsworth, Trenton, Surry and Blue Hill. Arriving on the shores of thickly-wooded Union River Bay in his schooner in the late 1760s, Captain Patten soon became a leading citizen, to the extent that Surry was originally called ‘Pattensborough’ by the locals. His name survives to this day in Patten’s Pond and other place names.

Patten was best known throughout his life as a sea-going ‘coaster’ and merchant, a trader who frequently sailed back and forth from his home area in Surry to points south – southern Maine, Boston and probably Providence – and possibly also east to the Canadian Maritimes, delivering the timber for which the Union River watershed was well known, and bringing back much-needed goods for the small number of local settlers. In those days there were no roads in this part of Maine — only a few local, unpaved streets and Indian pathways though the forests — and so the Atlantic Ocean and the rivers were the highways and freeways.

Matthew Patten’s weather-beaten gravestone still stands on a hill in Surry, overlooking the sea, the only physical memorial to this highly significant Hancock County individual. But some documentary evidence exists in various old records, giving us a few personal details and allowing some educated guesses as to what Patten experienced in his daily life, and shedding some light on the lifestyle of our Union River ancestors more than 200 years ago.

There is no record of Patten’s birth, but researcher Walter Goodwin Davis, in his classic Maine and Massachusetts Families, notes that he was first taxed in 1753 in Biddeford, Maine, along with his father. This would ordinarily lead us to believe that he turned 21 in that year, in the days when the age of 21 was considered legal adulthood, suggesting that he was born in 1732. However, his time-worn gravestone in Surry lists his death date as June 26^th, 1790 and additionally gives his age at death as 63 years. This latter information therefore points to a birth in 1727. So we are left with a best guess that Captain Patten (or ‘Cap Matthew Patten’ as is engraved on his tombstone) was born in or near Biddeford about 1727. But unless further records are uncovered, his exact date and place of birth will remain conjecture.

Patten’s parents and earlier ancestors are better known, however, thanks again to Walter Goodwin Davis’s exhaustive research into his forebears. Around 1727 Patten’s father, Hector Patten, migrated from Londonderry in Northern Ireland to Boston with his first wife, Matthew’s mother, Pauline (Suter) Patten, as part of the large ‘Scotch-Irish’ migration to North America in that decade. The Pattens weren’t Irish at all, of course, but migratory Scots who had travelled to Ireland seeking economic opportunities, and who had then made the momentous decision to take the further risk to sail the wide Atlantic to North America. The exact dates of the ocean travel by the Patten family remain unknown, and were unclear even to Davis, after all his research. Therefore, we’re left with the possibility that our Captain Matthew Patten could actually have been born in Northern Ireland, or perhaps in Boston, maybe somewhere in southern Maine — or even on board a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!

The scope of this short article doesn’t allow inclusion of more details about Patten’s parents and three siblings (two older brothers and a sister). However, the Davis Maine and Massachusetts Families compendium contains a great deal of very interesting information and is easily available at the Ellsworth Public Library or online. We can note that father Hector (or, as his name is sometimes spelled, ‘Actor’) and his young family subsequently moved from Boston to Falmouth, Maine, to rural ‘Purpoodock’ as it was then known. Wife Pauline had died by that time, as had a second wife, Margaret Shear, so Hector was already married a third time, to one Mary Armstrong. He appeared on the tax lists at Biddeford between 1738 and 1753, described as a ‘yeoman’ and ‘mason,’ and so we can assume that he was a skilled tradesman, supporting a family of at least four children, including son Matthew. There is no record that he had any children by his second and third wives. Ancient land records show that he purchased 40 acres near Biddeford in 1739 at a cost of ‘135 pounds.’

It’s worth remembering that in these years, Hector and son Matthew and the Patten family were British subjects living in the British colony then known as the ‘Commonwealth of Massachusetts,’ and that Massachusetts then included all of what we now know as Maine, formerly titled the ‘District of Maine.’ And at this time, the so-called ‘French and Indian Wars’ were still raging in Maine, with the French and their Native American allies bitterly opposed to the British settlers.

Few records of the life of the Patten family survive from more than 250 years ago, but it’s extremely interesting to read that Hector Patten was charged with ‘not frequenting public worship’ on July 15^th, 1751 – and was acquitted! My wild guess, based only on the known religious practices at that time, was that the Pattens were at least nominally Scottish Presbyterians, and would not attend the local Congregational services on religious grounds. Davis, in his history of the Patten family, writes that Hector Patten was a ‘Calvinist’ while still living in Northern Ireland, and served as an Elder in his church there.

By 1755 both Hector and son Matthew, now grown up, were living in North Yarmouth, Maine, and we assume that, since Hector was born about 1691, Matthew and his siblings were looking after their somewhat elderly father, who was by then 64 years old, perhaps an advanced age at that time. (We know that Hector finally died in Surry in 1780, having no doubt followed his son there in his later years.) In fact, Hector may well have moved his residence once more before sailing to Surry, because he’s sometimes referred to as being ‘of Saco.’

Now we leave the Patten family of southern Maine and follow Captain Matthew Patten on his life’s path. Records show that he married Susanna Dunning of Merrymeeting Bay (the present Brunswick) on October 30^th, 1754 in Biddeford. Eventually, the couple were to produce nine children, six girls and three boys, the final three children born in Surry. Patten bought 100 acres of land near ‘Flying Point’ in North Yarmouth in 1757, but not much is known about his life between the date of his marriage and his arrival in Surry about 1768 or 1769, apart from the births of his children.

History tells us that after the end of the French and Indian Wars (known as the ‘Seven Years’ War’ outside North America) the ‘Treaty of Paris’ signed by Great Britain and France on February 10^th, 1763 brought more or less lasting peace to the largely uninhabited wilderness we now call the Pine Tree State. It’s far beyond the scope of this short article to explore the history of Maine from this time onwards, but we need to understand that the ‘General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ – the colonial government at that time – wanted to encourage the settlement of English-speaking people in mid-coast and eastern Maine, in order to practically secure that land awarded to Britain by the peace treaty and to discourage any informal French settlement. This aim was achieved by offering free land to anyone who would settle ‘in the wild east’ and ‘improve’ the land it by building a house and clearing the forests for farming. Again, it would take us too far afield to explain the government-sponsored surveys that opened up the Union River area to settlement; however, suffice it to say that after 1763 a great many brave and enterprising families took up the opportunity and sailed along the Maine coast ‘down east’ to the Union River area (and beyond) hoping to improve their fortunes, knowing well that they would be entering a genuine wilderness, previously inhabited only by the Passamaquoddy tribe, a few French missionaries, and an extremely small number of English-speaking settlers or fishermen who have been mostly overlooked by recorded history. The only ‘civilization’ at that time was the former French colony of Castine.

The Matthew Patten family were among those hardy folk who accepted the challenge. Ellsworth and Trenton had already been discovered and claimed by Benjamin Milliken, Benjamin Joy and a few other pioneers, and new arrivals were already spreading out at the mouth of the Union River around what is now Surry and Blue Hill. Sadly, we possess relatively little information from those times, and mostly rely on the scattered recollections so ably collected by Albert Davis in his 1927 History of Ellsworth, plus the surviving Surry Town Records.

Between 1768 and 1770, Captain Patten began acquiring land, hundreds of acres on Oak Point, Hutchinson’s Island, and especially near ‘The Carrying Place’ in Surry and Newbury Neck. Old records show that he also sold land to Andrew Flood in 1774, so we can guess that Patten was one of the numerous ‘land speculators’ of the day, enterprising people trying to buy land that would eventually become valuable, so that they could later re-sell it for a profit. Again, this side of Maine’s history, which eventually leads directly to the famous Colonel John Black of Ellsworth, former land agent for the very wealthy William Bingham, is far beyond the scope of this article. However, it all indicates that Captain Patten was a true entrepreneur, always striving to improve his family’s lot in life by various business ventures. And at some point, he must have focussed on trading, using a schooner – either wholly or partly belonging to himself – to transport the area’s only resource, timber, down to southern Maine or to Boston. Returning with much-needed supplies for the first settlers, Patten began to assume an important role in Surry, and emerged as a major landholder, a successful businessman, and a leading citizen. We can easily imagine from what we know of subsistence-farming (and fishing) of those distant days, that Patten and his family, like everyone else in the ‘Union River Settlement’ area, were tending a farm as soon as the snow melted, catching fish and lobsters from their boats, and harvesting clams. And of course everyone in 18^th century Maine would be hunting deer and trapping year round. We can picture the Patten boys collecting seaweed regularly from the Union River shore to fertilize their father’s ‘saltwater farm’ and at some point the Captain built, or had built, a substantial house in Surry, near where he found fresh water and could anchor his schooner conveniently. And that house still stands today.

Ellsworth and Surry were very far removed from the military action of the Revolutionary War, that ran from 1775 to 1783. Most of the settlers along the Union River were probably preoccupied with sheer survival during those revolutionary years, especially during the long winters, and had relatively little interest in politics except when forced to pay taxes. It’s recorded by Walter Goodwin Davis that on January 30th, 1776 Matthew Patten became ‘Lieutenant Colonel Patten’ for the 5^th Lincolnshire Regiment of the Massachusetts Militia, but it seems improbable that he saw any action. Most likely, he kept watch along the coast while sailing in one of his schooners, prepared for any interference by the Royal Navy, which was then blockading the Maine coast. However, this is just speculation. No records exist of any British landings along the Union River at this time, such as occurred later during the War of 1812. The Blue Hill Bay coastal area was probably too unimportant and sparsely settled to be worth the effort. Instead, the British maintained their strongpoint at Castine and left the struggling Surry settlers alone. Surreptitious trade probably continued with the British colonies in what is now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (as it did during the War of 1812) and it’s fascinating to imagine that Captain Patten and others sometimes ran the Royal Navy’s blockade in order to bring crucial supplies home to his family and friends.

One other event in Patten’s life has significance worth noting. He invited his nephew, the son of his sister, Mary (Patten) Ray, to travel up from southern Maine to live and work with him. That nephew, Captain Matthew Ray, eventually married Patten’s daughter Susanna in Blue Hill on September 7^th, 1790, only a few months after the old Captain’s death, thus beginning the genealogical line of the Ray family in the Union River area.

A final significant event in Captain Patten’s life, and one which attests to his ‘solid citizen’ status, was the request by his church that he travel (by schooner, of course) all the way down the coast to Topsham to secure the services of Reverend Urquhart as the new Presbyterian Church minister. No doubt by this time, at age 58, his ‘coaster days’ were largely behind him, and he was living in active semi-retirement running his businesses from Surry with the help of his three sons, James, John and Robert.

The gravestone at Surry marks the end of a significant life, ending on June 26^th, 1790, just before the enumerator for the first-ever US Census made his rounds in Surry. In a day when most people were put to their final rest at little or no cost, with a wooden or, at most, very simple stone memorial, the grave site of Captain Matthew Patten was marked with stones that, according to Walter Goodwin David, cost 42 shillings, a very significant amount indeed in the rural Maine of 1790.

Matthew Patten’s sons James and Robert eventually moved to Stetson, Maine, where they cared for their elderly mother, and it was son John who inherited the Patten homestead in Surry. Later John’s son Ambrose took ownership of the house and he eventually passed it on to his daughter Nancy (Patten) Phillips. The house then remained for years in the Phillips family until it was eventually sold to the Blacks.

My brother Ray McDonald and I are Captain Matthew Patten’s 5^th great-grandsons, descending from his daughter Susanna and her husband Captain Matthew Ray. Brother Ray and his wife Susan still live not at all far from the Patten homestead, still own some of the original Patten land, and during the summer they motor their boat around the very same waters that would have been familiar roadways in the late 18^th century. Standing on the hill at the now-famous grave site, and looking out over the beautiful landscape and oceans that our ancestors made their own, we like to think that our great-grandfather would appreciate being remembered after all these years, and knowing that his many descendants are now living all over the earth.