A name with colonial origins

by Charles Francis

Scattered throughout the midcoast region are various businesses and memorials bearing the name Samoset. These include restaurants, hotels, and other businesses as well as historical markers ranging from New Harbor and Damariscotta to Thomaston and Rockland. Often the name of Samoset appears along with that of another Native American by the name of Squanto.

Although the name Samoset is a midcoast fixture, few actually know anything about who he really was. Those who are able to place him in any kind of historical context generally associate him with the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. One commonly held misconception involving Samoset has him welcoming the Pilgrims when they landed at Plymouth Rock with the words “Much welcome, Englishmen.” Another gives him credit for helping them survive their first winter and then sitting down to celebrate the first Thanksgiving with them, even though it is extremely doubtful he was there. Still another implies that Samoset and Squanto were members of the same tribe.

While Samoset was one of the first Native Americans to have contact with the Pilgrims, and he will always be associated with them for that reason, it is the explorer George Weymouth with whom Samoset had the most contact. In fact, Samoset, as well as Squanto, who was the first translator for the Pilgrims, both sailed with Weymouth.

Samoset was a member of an Abnaki or Wabanaki subgroup that was probably associated with the Pejepscots, who lived in the midcoast area. While he is often referred to as a member of the Pemaquid tribe, it is doubtful that he thought of himself in those terms. Pemaquid is a Micmac place name, and the Micmac, who lived much further downeast, had an adversarial relationship with the midcoast and southern Abnaki. Squanto was a Wampanoag from Patuxet on Cape Cod, where the Pilgrims established their first settlement. Yet these two are irrevocably linked.

Samoset and Squanto met in — of all places — England. As to how two Native Americans from what would come to be called New England met on an island across the Atlantic, the answer is simple: treachery. Squanto was kidnapped by slavers and escaped to England, and Samoset was kidnapped by George Weymouth and taken there. However, it was Weymouth who returned the two to the New World in time for them to be among the first to greet the Pilgrims.

George Weymouth was the first English explorer to investigate the possibility of establishing a colony on the Maine coast. His expedition was financed by Thomas Arundell, John Popham, and Ferdinando Gorges. In 1605 Weymouth explored much of the midcoast area in his ship the Archangel. He landed on Monhegan, which he called St. George, sailed up the St. George River to the site of present-day Thomaston, where he left a cross, and visited the Camden Hills. While in the Thomaston-Camden region he induced five Indians to come on board, and without telling them what he intended, set sail for England. One of these was probably Samoset, who would become Weymouth’s friend and travel with him back and forth across the Atlantic at least one more time.

Sometime after Weymouth’s 1605 voyage he met and developed a friendship with Squanto. In a way, this was unfortunate, because Squanto came to trust all Englishmen, and this led to his being kidnapped and sold into slavery. He was captured by a British slaver and sold in the Caribbean. Fortunately, a Franciscan priest befriended Squanto and helped him escape to Spain, so that eventually he made his way to England where he made contact with Weymouth. It was at this time that Samoset and Squanto met.

Early in 1621 Weymouth returned Samoset and Squanto to America, landing them close to Squanto’s home on Cape Cod. In March of 1621 Samoset and Squanto walked into the Pilgrim’s Plymouth Plantation settlement, and Samoset greeted them with the words

“Much welcome, Englishmen.”

Squanto would go on to become the Pilgrim’s chief translator. He, along with other Wampanoags like Massasoit, would help the Pilgrims to adapt to life in the New World. Samoset most likely returned to his home in Maine, which is why it is doubtful he was present at the first Thanksgiving.

Samoset does not disappear from the pages of history at this time, however. In 1623 and 1624 Captain Christopher Levett explored much of southern Maine. While in what would be named Portland harbor, Levett encountered Samoset, whom he called Somerset and a great “sakamo,” and several companions fishing. For a time, Samoset must have felt he might develop a relationship with Levett similar to the one he had with Weymouth, but although Levett promised to return to visit his sakamo “cousins,” he never did. That incident is the last in which the name of Samoset appears.

Samoset, however, is still linked to the first Thanksgiving, forever serving as a symbol of what might have been.

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America’s father of watchmaking

by Charles Francis

Eli Whitney had something to do with it. Samuel Colt was the first American to perfect it for use in firearms manufacturing, and it made Henry Ford rich. It was the development and use of interchangeable parts.

The development of interchangeable parts is cited as one of the reasons why American manufacturing came to dominate the industrial world from the mid-nineteenth century and into the twentieth. It was the use of interchangeable parts that made the assembly line possible. Historians refer to the use of interchangeable parts in the U.S. as the American System of Manufacturing.

The names Eli Whitney, Samuel Colt and Henry Ford are known to everyone who has taken U.S. history.

The names of these inventive giants are prominently featured in even the most basic of history texts. There is another name, the name of another giant in the development of American industry, that is the equal of the above mentioned. It is, however, a name that is missing from all but the most inclusive of American history texts. It is the name of Freeport-born Aaron Dennison.

Aaron Dennison was the father of the American system of watch manufacturing. You have to go to specialized treatises on the history of clock and watch manufacturing to find him identified as such. One wonders why this is so. Does it say something about how watches are viewed? Their importance? Oddly, a watchmaking company that

Aaron Dennison was very much associated with, the Waltham Watch Company, sometimes receives mention in U.S. history texts. This may be because the name Waltham, as it relates to watches, was once as well known as Timex.

During its existence from 1860 to 1957, the Waltham Watch Company, also known as the American Waltham Watch Company, produced some forty million watches and related timepieces. Aaron Dennison was one of the founders of this company.

Aaron Dennison successfully demonstrated that the American system of manufacturing, the use of interchangeable parts, could be applied to watchmaking. It was Dennison’s ideas, practices, and developments, more than anyone else’s, that made the name Waltham one of the most honored and respected in the watchmaking world.

Aaron Dennison’s watchmaking innovations are generally credited to visits Dennison paid to the Springfield, Massachusetts Armory in the early

1840s. The Springfield Armory is often identified as a major influence on the development of mass-production and the assembly line. The military wanted interchangeable parts for its weapons. Interchangeable parts require improved gauging, division of labor, and quality control. This method relies on an intensive use of machines. It was the Springfield Armory’s example that Dennison applied to watchmaking. Aaron Dennison’s fascination with machinery and watchmaking didn’t begin, though, with his visits to the Springfield Armory. They began back in Dennison’s birthplace of Freeport and continued on to Brunswick.

Aaron Lufkin Dennison was born in Freeport on March 6, 1812. His parents were Andrew and Lydia (Lufkin) Dennison. Andrew Lufkin was a shoemaker. Sometime during Aaron’s boyhood, Andrew Dennison moved his shoemaking business to Brunswick. While Aaron Dennison first worked in his father’s business, his real interest lay with me-

chanics.

In 1839 Dennison apprenticed to James Carey, a Brunswick watchmaker. While Carey called himself a watchmaker, it is more likely he was little more than a watch repairman. Nevertheless, Dennison learned enough from Carey that he was able to move on to the position of journeyman with the Boston firm of Currier & Trott. He then found employment with a succession of additional Boston firms. As it is today,

(cont. from page 39) the watch and jewelry businesses were often combined in those firms where Dennison found himself working. Jewelry is as much a precision occupation as watchmaking and repair. Out of this combination of pursuits, Dennison devised the Dennison Standard Gauge. It was a step on the road to Dennison earning the title of “Father of the American System of Watch Making.”

In 1844 Dennison took something of a hiatus from watchmaking to go into the business of box manufacturing. His idea was to go into competition with importers of paper boxes. What Dennison did was to take box-making materials back home to Brunswick. Here in Maine, Dennison, with the help of his father, his sisters, and his brother Eliphalet, came up with a design and method of box construction that would be manufactured and marketed successfully. The boxes were produced by the Dennison Manufacturing Company of Framingham, Massachusetts. Aaron turned his interest in the business over to his brother Eliphalet in 1849.

Aaron Dennison designed the first factory-made watches. The factory where they were made was in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The company name went through several changes that include the American Holograph Company and the Boston Watch Company. In 1854 the company moved to Waltham. Here the company went through more name changes, including the American Watch Company and American Waltham Watch Company. This latter company, best known as the Waltham Watch Company, was the first watchmaking concern to mass-produce inexpensive, reliable timepieces with interchangeable parts.

Sadly, Aaron Denrnson’s story is not that of a Horatio Alger. Dennison never became wealthy. In fact, he ended his career making cases for someone else’s watches. Dennison had gotten involved with a scheme that included making watch parts in Switzerland and assembling them in the United States. The American part of the enterprise was the Tremont Watch Company. Tremont went bankrupt with Aaron getting the company’s machinery as his part of the settlement. Lacking the wherewithal to do anything with the machinery, Dennison sold his assets to a British firm. The machinery went to Birmingham, England and Dennison followed it. Here Dennison was relegated to providing cases made for the watches the machinery he had once owned and produced. While Aaron Dennison’s place in American history may not be included in general U.S. history texts it is not unknown in his hometown. The Balzer Family Clock Works of Freeport designed and manufactured a special timepiece in Dennison’s honor. It is the Aaron L. Dennison Memorial Timepiece.

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