The Portland daily press., 1895-06-26
arming implements and machin-

Total, 400, ,S95
Value of farm products for 1894, $173, 730
Grand total 1864, 625
These figures alone are eloquent. They
need no eulogy. They tell the story of
difficulties surmounted of results accom-
plished, of work we'll done. But, my
countrymen, those of you who have never
lived in the backwoods can have no ade-
quate conception of the vast labor and
toll undergone on this spot to create the
results L have enumerated and which
you see all around you. A settlers first
years IN the woods are continual light,
hand to hand with savage nature, for ex-
1stence. 1t is pleasant for us today to
look out upon these broad fields waving
with grain, but do we know, can we cal
culate, how many blows of the axe, how
many drops of sweat have been expended
in turning each one of these 1900 acres
of cleared land, from forest to farm?
The story of New Sweden has no par
allel in New England since the United
States became a nation. This Swedish
settlement is the only successful agricul-
tural colony founded with foreigners
from over the ocean in New England since
the revolutionary war, and surely in all
America there is no agricultural colony,
so young as ours, that surpasses it in
progress and prosperity.
And the good effects of the founding
of New Sweden are not confined to this
colony or this vicinity. AS early as 1871
Swedish artisans and skilled workmen
drawn to Maine by New Sweden began to
find work in the slate quarries of Piscata-
quis county, in the great tanneries and
saw-mills of Pefobscot, and in the stores
and workshops of Portland, Bangor,
Houlton, Presque Isle, Fort Fairfield,
Caribou, and other cities and towns.
Since the founding of the colony the
Swedish girls have ever furnished needed
and valuable help in our families in all
sections of the state. Some Swedish i'm
migrants, who came to us in Independent
circumstances, purchased improved farms
in Presque Isle, Fort Fairfield, Limestone,
Marysville, and other towns; while many
Swedes with less means settled on aban-
doned farms in Cumberland, York and
| our other older counties.
These deserted homesteads have been
| placed by the Swede in a high state of
cultivation; indeed Swedish immigration
| is proving to be the happy solution of
| the abandoned FARMS question in
Maine
The United States census of 1890 re-
| turned a Swedish population in every
county in Maine except Franklin, and
| gave the total number of Swedes in our
state, including children born in this
country of Swedish parents, at 2, 546.
Today there are in Maine not less than
| 3, 900 Swedes, as the direct result of the
| Swedish immigration enterprise.
Furthermore the good accomplished by
New Sweden is not limited by the boun-
daries of our State Skilled workmen
from New Sweden early obtained employ
ment in the mills and factories Of Provi-
dence, Worcester, Brockton, Manchester
and other manufacturing centers all over
| New England. Each little band as it
settled down, formed a fresh nucleus,
| around which gathered new throngs of
Swedish immigrants.
Thus the overflow from New Sweden
has reached and benefited all our sister
states In fact the establishment of this
| little colony of Swedes in the woods of
Maine twenty five years ago turned rill
from the stream of Swedish immigration
which before all flowed west, upon New
England and added fresh element of
good, northern blood to every New Eng
land state
And Swedish immigration has benefited
Maine in other ways besides the direct
addition of several thousand Swedes to
our population.
The best part of this fertile town, where
we are now assembled, was run out into
lots in 1861. For nine years Maine offered
these lots to settlers, virtually as gift
Yet not lot was taken up. Until the
advent of the Swedes no one was found
willing to accept his choice of the lots in
this town as gift, provided he was re-
quired to make his home upon it.
The opinion of many in this vicinity
upon the wisdom of the Swedes in set
tling here was pointedly expressed by a
good citizen of Caribou
Walking out of the woods with him a
few days after the arrival of the first
colony, I expatiated, no doubt with en-
thusiasm, upon the magnificent results
which to my mind must flow from the
enterprise.
The gentleman listened to me patiently
till I had finished; then turning squarely
upon me in the road he said:
"Mr. Thomas, you may say what you
like, but don't suppose there are bottles
enough in that colony to hold the tears
those poor, deluded creatures will shed
before their first year is out. -
And not only was New Sweden
morning mtsnGns Of Juy fs''les ss ls7o Sc bns bnf
ern portion of Woodland plantation
which had years before been taken up by
settlers, and on which clearings had been
made, houses built, and crops raised,
were now deserted by their owners the
houses with windows and doors boarded
up, and the clearings commencing to
grow up again to forest. Such was the
dish colony passed through on it's way
into the woods. These clearings are now
settled by Swedes and smile with album
dant harvests.
The American pioneer, who abandoned
the clearing nearest New Sweden was
happily with us at out decennial celebra-
ton in 1880, and joined in the festivities
with wondering eyes Mr.. George F.
Turner then told me of his attempt to
settle in these woods He came from
Augusta in the spring of 1861, and took
up lot No. in Woodland. Here he lived
for seven years, built house and barn,
and cleared thirty five acres of land. But
there were no roads. If his wife wished
to visit the village, he was forced to haul
her through the woods on sled even in
summer No new settlers came in. His
nearest neighbors, Dominicus Harmon
and Frank Record, left their places and
moved out to Caribou: Still he held on
for two more years, alone in the woods.
L