Penobscot-Piscataquis-Hancock Counties
18
Brewer’s Joshua Chamberlain He grew up a fun-loving boy by Brian Swartz
R
emembered for almost 160 years as a brave army officer, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain spent his growing years as a rambunctious and fun-loving “Brewer boy.” Born on September 8, 1828 to Joshua and Sarah Dupee (Brastow) Chamberlain at their house on North Main Street, Lawrence Joshua Chamberlain grew up in a Brewer focused on shipbuilding and brickmaking, the local clay providing a solid substance and a particular red color to so-called “Brewer bricks.” He later switched his first and middle names while at Bowdoin College. Joshua Chamberlain was the oldest
of five siblings. After him came Horace, Sarah (“Sae”), John, and Thomas. By the mid-1830s the family had moved to a new house that the father built at 80 Chamberlain Street. From there the family operated a 100-acre farm, and everybody was expected to contribute to the farm labor. The second house took shape after the elder Chamberlain returned “from a visit to the South” and mentioned he was “much impressed with the plantation style of living.” He soon “built a mansion … remote from other houses” and erected “humble cottages” for his hired farmhands and their families, son Joshua later wrote.
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A brook still extant in the 1970s crossed the farm not far from the farmhouse. The young Chamberlains liked to construct “bridges, dams, water-wheels and probationary mills beside the stream” and then watch the flowing brook play among the structures. “Great was the fun in freshet times,” when fast-flowing runoff swelled the brook and washed all the children-engineered items downstream. Joshua recalled “the rallying and rescue.” He and his brothers often fell into the water as they retrieved what they could. Water and debris swirled “around the trunks of the mighty elms,” he said, but even
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