JOSEPH WINGATE AND MARY BRIGGS HAINES
This overview of the lives of “Wingate” and Mary Briggs Haines relies heavily on the writings of third parties with some support from a few official records such as census reports and town clerk filings. Unfortunately, no original writings of Wingate or Mary have been found to give readers a better insight into what motivated them or how they made decisions for their large family. This leads to a fair amount of speculation based on the facts that are known.
Early Haines Settlers in North America
The Haines family originally came to North America from the southwestern part of England in 1635. Samuel Haines (1611-1686) was born in Westbury, Leigh, Wiltshire, England. He joined the flow of settlers to the Americas, sailing on the 240-ton armed merchant ship, Angel Gabriel, from Bristol, England, on June 4, 1635, destined for a recently established trading settlement called Pemaquid (present day Bristol, Maine). (See the full story of this crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in Angel Gabriel, The Elusive English Galleon by Warren C. Riess and in Deacon Samuel Haines of Westbury, Wiltshire, England, and his descendants in America, 1635-1901, pages 331-2.) At the time, Pemaquid was the northeastern-most English settlement in America with a French settlement only one day’s sail up the coast. The Angel Gabriel arrived near Pemaquid on August 14, 1635, anchoring in the outer harbor on a moonlit night, 71 days after leaving Bristol. Shortly before dawn the next day, the forces of the “Great Hurricane” arrived, tore Angel Gabriel from its anchorage and dashed it into pieces on the shore. Most of the seamen and passengers somehow made it safely to shore, including Samuel Haines.
A few days later, Samuel traveled with the John Cogswell family on a coastal bark to Ipswich (now Essex, Massachusetts). Samuel had been an apprentice to the Cogswells in England for nine years. He would finish his ten-year apprenticeship in 1636 and live with the Cogswells in Ipswich for three years before returning to England. While in England, he married Eleanor Neate in 1638. He returned to America with his new bride and settled in the southeast coastal area of New Hampshire. The boundaries and names of the communities changed over the decades but included present day Dover, Portsmouth, and Greenland. He served Portsmouth as a selectman and had several other official roles and built up a sizeable estate. He was also a religious man and was one of the organizers of North Church in Portsmouth and was ordained Deacon of the church in 1671.
Samuel Haines’ early religion is not identified in the history books. If he were a Quaker in England, he probably would have not publicly practiced that religion in Massachusetts as Puritans were in the majority and persecuted Quakers. For instance, in 1660 the punishment for a Quaker to set foot in Massachusetts was death by hanging. By then, Samuel and Eleanor were living in New Hampshire which was less hostile to Quakers. They chose a different religious practice altogether, Congregationalism. The church Samuel helped organize in Portsmouth was a Congregational church, a branch of Puritanism.
Deacon Samuel Haines was the fourth great grandfather of Joseph Wingate Haines. He and Eleanor had three children, their youngest being Matthias Haines. The five generations between Deacon Samuel and J. Wingate Haines is chronicled in the Deacon Samuel Haines book mentioned above. The line of descent from Samuel Haines to Wingate:
Matthias Haines (1650- winter of 1688-1689) lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with his wife Jane Brackett. He ran his father’s sawmill along with his brother Samuel. The brothers died within days of each other.
Samuel Haines (1674- circa1729) was a farmer in Greenland, New Hampshire, with his wife Alice Whidden.
John Haines (1707- circa 1777) lived in Greenland and Dover, New Hampshire, and was a blacksmith. His wife was Anna Thyng.
John Haines (1738- 1809) lived most of his life in New Hampshire, born in Exeter/Greenland and moving to Raymond and then Gilmanton in 1773. There, on August 8, 1776, a month after the Continental Congress had declared independence from Great Britain, he signed the “Test Act” in which he stated his “assent to oppose the British invasion of the United American Colonies.” All of his descendants can use his name to obtain certification as a Daughter/Son of the American Revolution. Sometime between 1782 and 1788, he and his wife Mary Dudley moved with their family to Hallowell, Maine, where she had the last two of their nine children. His farm in Maine included the famous granite quarry “long known as Haines Ledge.” Maine Governor Joseph Bodwell later owned this property.
Daniel Haines (1779-1838) was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, but moved with his family to Hallowell, Maine, before he was ten years old. Daniel and his wife, Elizabeth “Betsey” Wingate had ten children, the oldest of which was Joseph Wingate Haines, born on July 21, 1805.
Later Haines Settlers
Joseph Wingate Haines was most likely born in Hallowell, Maine, or possibly in the general area of the abutting town of Manchester. The area was fairly well populated and there were numerous commercial establishments, especially along the shoreline of the Kennebec River which was a busy transportation artery. Several other branches of his family were also living in the area including first cousin George Evans (1797-1867) who was a prominent politician, serving in the US Congress and US Senate. Nothing certain is known about the activities of the Haines family but it is likely that Wingate, as he was most commonly called, attended local schools and in his teen years acquired skills enabling him to make a living. Wingate likely did a little bit of everything, farming, retailing, and providing various services. Whatever the industrious Wingate did, he was able to accumulate sufficient wealth to make some costly moves and investments in the future.
An unanswered question about Wingate is how he came to his Quaker faith. It is possible that his grandparents were Quakers and that they moved from New Hampshire to the District of Maine (Maine was a “district” of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts until 1820) because at the time the territory was more tolerant towards Quakers. Hallowell and the area nearby had a fair number of Quaker families living there at the time John Haines moved his family to Hallowell. Or John’s son Daniel could have been a “convinced” Friend, one who has come to the decision to join the Religious Society of Friends out of a commitment to its principles. In either case, Wingate, following his grandparents or parents as a practicing Quaker would have been a “birthright” Friend. Another possibility is that Wingate was a “convinced Friend.” Wingate’s wife probably was a birthright Quaker as her parents’ remains are buried in the Quaker cemetery in Manchester, Maine.
Wingate married Mary Briggs in Litchfield, Maine on March 4, 1828. She was born in nearby Winthrop, Maine, on June 20, 1805, the youngest of seven children. Her parents, Ezra Briggs, Sr., (1771-1844) and Mary Wadsworth (1768-1848) were born in Stoughton, Massachusetts, and belonged to the fifth generation of colonists in Massachusetts. They moved to Winthrop no later than 1793 as their oldest daughter, Irene, was born there.
At the time of Mary’s birth, only four of her six siblings were still living. They ranged in age from 2-11. Her oldest siblings likely were helping their mother with domestic duties, including caring for the younger children. As Mary grew older, she also would assume domestic duties and help her mother with laundry, cooking, cleaning the home, tending to livestock, bringing in firewood and maintaining a fire in the cookstove. Later, her mother likely would teach her how to knit, sew, darn clothes and preserve food. Winthrop’s population in 1810 was 1,444 and was growing at a rapid rate. In such a community, most likely Mary had access to a public school education. When she married Wingate, she was nearly 23 years of age and should have been well-prepared to manage a household and raise a family.
Mary also had to be strong and resourceful because within the next nearly 20 years she would give birth to 17 children. In fact, during 234 months of her life, from mid-1828 to January 1848, she was pregnant at least 58% of the time. Wingate and Mary had their first child, Lydia, on April 19, 1829. Mary gave birth to 14 more children by 1846 in Hallowell, although three of them had died by then.
Details of what Wingate was doing to support his fast growing family in Hallowell are scarce but it is most likely that he was a farmer and raised livestock. He probably had his hand in other commercial pursuits, too. Furthermore, it is highly likely that he was becoming somewhat wealthy by local standards as in a few years he would have the assets and finances that would enable him to move his family, farm equipment, and livestock to northern Maine and buy substantial land there.
Their descendants have wondered what motivated Wingate and Mary to move their already prospering family from an established community to a near wilderness area 240 miles northeast of them. Most likely the overwhelming motivation was economics. They would want to create more opportunities for their children and to further improve their financial situation. In the late 1830s, much of coastal Maine had been already settled and large families needed room for their children to have their own property and means of earning a living. Settlers moved further inland with lumbering often an early economic activity followed in many cases with agriculture. After 1839, though, attention was drawn much further north as controversy arose over the northern Maine border with British Canada. In the process of settling that dispute, the commercial attractiveness of newly created Aroostook County (established May 1, 1839) became known everywhere. The soil in Aroostook was extremely fertile and the land was heavily forested. Profitable lumber operations could be started, followed by productive farm operations. Making it more attractive for potential settlers, the land could be purchased at very reasonable prices from the state government on easy financing terms. Although there were very few roads, the state granted credits to purchasers of land for their help in building new roads. In most cases, a new settler could pay off their indebtedness for their land within a few years. After the border dispute was resolved (1840-42), “hardy energetic Yankees from all parts of New England flocked to Aroostook.” (George Ashby)
One researcher has also located a Canadian record that mentions a “Joseph Haines” receiving a Canadian land patent in the local area in 1836 or 1837. Further research of this issue will be needed to determine whether this record pertains to Joseph Wingate Haines or not.
In the early 1840s, Wingate travelled from Hallowell to Letter D Range 1 WELS and scouted out the territory. In September, 1843, he purchased land from Freeman Ellis, Jr., and from the state totaling 480 acres. He and others started clearing this land and making improvements. Wingate put his brother Charles in charge of the property and returned to Hallowell to be with his family. This property would long-after be referred to as the Haines Farm in Maple Grove.
The following year, 1844, Wingate obtained a grant of 1,000 acres of land from the state (or possibly from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts which had control of this area at one time) for which he was to build a sawmill on the brook that is now called Libby Brook. Wingate chose to site his sawmill upstream about four miles from the fort which still overlooked the Aroostook River. He hauled the machinery for his mill by many ox teams from southern Maine to the site. By this time, the state had built “military” roads north to Houlton and beyond. At present day Mars Hill, the military road angled slightly northwest towards present day Presque Isle rather than continue straight north to the fort. From Presque Isle, the military road again changed direction, this time to the northeast, directly towards the fort. The journey over the crude dirt roads was arduous. Once he was settled in the area, Wingate would shorten the route from his property in the Maple Grove settlement to Houlton by building a road south to the existing military road in Mars Hill. Today, that road is designated US Route 1A.
In 1847, he moved his entire family to Letter D, Range 1. As many as sixteen team of oxen may have been used to transport the family’s belongings. In the process, he introduced to the area “the first blooded [thoroughbred Durham] cattle and hogs.” (Ashby) Other settlers came with him or soon followed. (George Ashby) “He was of great benefit to the early settlers, having the means to employ considerable help.” (Ellis)
There are some old reports that assert that Wingate and Mary first set up their home in Aroostook County in Hodgdon, Maine, just south of Houlton which had been settled in 1806, before moving to Letter D. Also, there are a few publications that state that their daughter Marcella was born in Hodgdon. Recent examination of Hodgdon town records and other relevant historical records that can be found do not support these statements. Furthermore, it seems illogical that the family would pause for any length of time in Hodgdon. It was a more settled town at the time and lacking the potential for high economic return that Letter D offered. Furthermore, Wingate already owned substantial land in Letter D and his brother had been managing his property there for a few years. It seems highly unlikely that Wingate and Mary would suspend the movement of their family 50 miles short of their ultimate destination after already moving 190 miles from Hallowell unless it were for a very brief period.
In the summer of 1848, the first schoolhouse was built in the town in the Haines Settlement at Maple Grove. (Ashby) Such country schoolhouses were built by private subscriptions from the settlers in their respective settlements. At that time, Wingate and Mary had seven elementary school age children in their household, plus oldest daughter Lydia who would be old enough to teach them. Around 1849, a post office was established in the kitchen of a log house at the “Haines settlement” and named Maple Grove. (Ashby)
Wingate had acquired and sold off several pieces of land in the township by 1850. According to the US Agricultural Census of 1850, he still owned 90 acres of “improved land” (cropland and area for structures) and 300 acres of “unimproved land” (mostly forest land), 5 horses, 4 milk cows, other cattle, sheep, swine, and had grown substantial produce. That year, he harvested 417 bushel of potatoes from one acre without fertilizer, planting them for the first time among stumps in the newly cleared land. (Ronald R. Banks) He became a founding member of the Northern Aroostook Agricultural Society which was organized in 1851. He served as its president (Ellis). Settlers held a fair locally for a few years and then moved it to Presque Isle. The fair association was incorporated on July 16, 1850, and its first exhibition was held on October 9, 1851. https://thecounty.me/2021/07/28/opinion/a-history-of-the-fair/
Connection with the Underground Railroad.
American Quakers were leading activists in helping fugitive slaves reach Canada or other places where they would live in personal freedom. As early as 1786, George Washington complained about how one of his runaway slaves was helped by a “society of Quakers, formed for such purposes.” An organized system to aid fugitive slaves grew and by 1831 was dubbed “The Underground Railroad.” https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2944.html
From family oral history and a few other clues, it is clear that Wingate and Mary and their children were passionate abolitionists and that they did help fugitive slaves cross into Canada. There is speculation of whether one of their major purposes in moving from Hallowell to Letter D was to establish one or more stations on the Underground Railroad. Perhaps it was, but certainly there was an extremely strong economic motivation for their relocation. Once in place in Letter D, though, they and their fellow Friends had opportunities to help runaways. Given the remoteness and ruggedness of their community, though, it is difficult to imagine that there would have been a large number of fugitive slaves to deal with. There were many other routes of shorter distance and easier conveyance than the one through Letter D. One story written by Ruth Reed Mraz that corroborates Haines family involvement involves a grateful man from the South. In the early 20th century, an African American from the South named David Hooper arrived at the Maple Grove passenger stop. He became the gardener for Cora Haines Houghton for almost 40 years and helped her develop the area’s most impressive flower garden. David divulged that he was attracted to the area because the Haines family had helped “my people” during the Civil War.
Mary and Wingate helped several other Quaker families move to Fort Fairfield in about 1858. They were also abolitionists and ready to assist fugitive slaves. In 1859, Friends began to build a church at Maple Grove. (Ashby) It was finished in 1863. How much impact did this church have on the Underground Railroad activities in this still remote area? Prior to the completion of the church, President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. This freed all slaves in the states rebelling against the United States and provided that the U.S. government would recognize and maintain their freedom. Seemingly, that would greatly reduce the need for former fugitive slaves to take the arduous journey to far northeastern Maine to cross into Canada. Freedom for slaves in the non-rebellious would not become effective, though, until the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which became effective on December 6, 1865. To further reduce risk for former slaves travelling in Maine, the state of Maine enacted a law in 1855 which banned law enforcement officials in Maine from helping slave catchers unless they were federal officers. In short, there probably was very little need for the Underground Railroad by the time that the church was finished. While the physical church may not have played much role, though, the church’s individual members probably did play a noteworthy role in the years up to about1863.
Friends Church
The church structure that exists today is a fitting monument that reminds visitors of the families who built it. These Friends advocated for the emancipation of the slaves and they individually endeavored to support the Underground Railroad when needed.
The church structure also is a fitting monument for all of the Quaker core values: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship. The core value of equality related not only to Quakers being abolitionists, but also to the relationship between women and men. To assure that women had the same chance to voice their views as men did, some Quaker meeting houses and Friends churches separated the meeting spaces with a curtain in the middle with women on one side and men on the other. Women then were able to act and opine without worrying about what men might say or think about them. At some point in the meetings, paper notes would be passed from side to side to transmit the points of their respective groups.
Friends Church during its use by Quakers in the 1860s and 1870s may or may not have had such a split meeting space, but it is a pleasant thought that women such as Mary Briggs Haines could have spoken and acted free of intimidation or restraint, just as Wingate would have been able to do. Given all of the experience she had in life, it would not be surprising if Mary was an influential member of the Maple Grove neighborhood and beyond.
The Next Generation
A brief glimpse of the 17 children born to Mary and Wingate:
Lydia Haines married Caleb Holt Ellis and she raised a family in South Dakota and Michigan
Abigail Miller Haines moved at a young age to Massachusetts and raised a small family there.
Henry Haines died within 3 months of birth.
Henry A. Haines managed a mill in Fort Fairfield.
George Haines first bought a small farm from Wingate and farmed in Fort Fairfield for a few years and then moved to Arizona where he farmed.
Joseph W. Haines died three months after birth.
Mary Elizabeth Haines married a farmer from Easton and they had three children but, sadly, Mary and her three children all died within a few weeks of each other in 1863.
John Wingate Haines bought a farm on the North Caribou Road.
Daniel W. Haines served in the 1st Maine Cavalry for the duration of the Civil War and afterwards lived with severe disabilities and died at age 32.
Nancy C. Haines married Warren Crosby Plummer and died at age 38 in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Lucia B. Haines died less than two weeks after birth.
Albert L. Haines served in the 1st Maine Cavalry with his brother Daniel. The Wingate and Mary Haines farm passed to him.
Frank Haines purchased farmland on Forest Avenue and built a successful farming operation.
Fred Haines, Frank’s twin brother, served in the 15th Maine Infantry during the Civil War. He purchased farmland on Forest Avenue, too, and built a very successful farming operation with a magnificent home that still exists today.
Marcella Haines lived a short life of 11 years. Controversy over her place of birth exists with the dominant view that she was born in Hallowell rather than in Hodgdon.
Theodore D. Haines left home as a young adult and worked in the oil fields of Pennsylvania, passing away there at age 22.
Isadore D. Haines, Theodore’s twin, was an adventuresome as well as spiritual person, working for years as a teacher, then a missionary in the West Indies and South America, as well as a preacher in Maine, residing for 20 years at Shiloh in Durham Maine.
By 1870, after they had transferred the Haines Farm and other properties to Albert and others, Wingate and Mary lived with their son Frank. Mary passed away there on May 5, 1874. She had lived an incredibly impactful life, supporting Wingate and her many children for many years. Several thousands of descendants have enjoyed life thanks to her ability and willingness to raise a large family. Wingate passed away on January 30, 1876, in Andover, New Brunswick, Canada, while attending a cattle show, an activity that had given him fame, financial success, and personal satisfaction. Together, Wingate and Mary built a large family that has today members of 7 generations of their descendants. Let us acknowledge their contributions to humanity and give them thanks.
