Maine at that time was a part of the state of Massachusetts. My impression is that the governor appointed November 28th as Thanksgiving Day, but I am not sure. It is likely that not much unction attended the announcement. The notices of it did not reach many localities in Maine. In the neighbourhood where my grandparents lived, in Oxford County, nothing was heard of it; but at a schoolhouse meeting, on November 21st, our nearest neighbour, Jonas Edwards, made a motion "that the people of the place keep the 28th of the month as Thanksgiving Day—the best they could."
The motion prevailed; and then the poor housewives began to ask the question, "What shall we have for Thanksgiving dinner?" At our house it is still remembered that one of my young great-uncles cried in reply, "Oh, if we could only have a good big johnnycake!"
And it was either that very night, or the night after, that the exciting news came of the arrival of a shipload of corn at Bath and Brunswick.
At Brunswick, seat of the then infant Bowdoin College, Freeport, Topsham, and other towns near the coast of Maine, where the people were interested in maritime ventures, it had become known that a surplus of corn was raised in Cuba, and could be purchased at a fair price. An old schooner, commanded by one Capt. John Simmons, was fitted out to sail for a cargo of the precious cereal. For three months not a word was heard from schooner or skipper.
Captain Simmons had purchased corn, however, and loaded his crazy old craft full to the deck with it. Heavy weather and head winds held him back on his voyage home. Water got to the corn, and some of it swelled to such an extent that the old schooner was like to burst. But it got in at last, early in November, with three thousand bushels of this West India corn.
How the news of this argosy flew even to towns a day's journey up from the coast!
A great hunger for corncake swept through that part of the state; and in our own little neighbourhood a searching canvass of the resources of the five log farmhouses followed. As a result of it, young Jonathan Edwards and my then equally youthful Great-uncle Nathaniel set off the next day to drive to Brunswick with a span of old white horses hitched in a farm wagon without springs, carrying four rather poor sheep, four bushels of barley, and fifteen pounds of wool, which they hoped to exchange for five bushels of that precious corn. On top of it all there were three large bagfuls of hay for the horses. The boys also took an axe and an old flintlock gun, for much of the way was then through forest.
It was a long day's drive for horses in poor condition, but they reached Brunswick that night. There, however, they found the cargo of corn so nearly sold out, or bartered away, that they were able to get but three bushels to bring home.
The corn was reckoned at nine dollars, the four sheep at only six dollars, and it had been difficult "dickering" the fifteen pounds of wool and the two bushels of barley as worth three dollars more. The extra two bushels of barley went for their keep overnight. Such was produce exchange in 1816.
The next morning they started for home, lightly loaded with their dearly bought corn. Their route lay along the Androscoggin River, and they had got as far on their way as the present factory town of Auburn, where the Little Androscoggin flows into the larger river of the same name, when they had an adventure which resulted in very materially increasing the weight of their load.