♂Daniel Savage

Daniel Savage (about 1729 – 1 January 1795) was a settler, militia captain and town officer of Hallowell, on the Kennebec River in the District of Maine^W, then part of Massachusetts. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Elizabeth Savage (born 1761). The Hallowell town register of births lists his children, and an 1804 deed calls him “late of Hallowell … gentleman, deceased” and names his homestead farm and a share in “Savages mill”; most of the rest of his life comes from a history of Augusta published in 1870, which records that in September 1775 soldiers of Benedict Arnold’s march to Quebec were quartered at his house, and one of them, turned out after a quarrel, fired into it and killed a man.

Early life

A history of Augusta published in 1870 names him as the son of James Savage of Georgetown and his wife Christian. A deed copied into the Lincoln County land records bears on the family: the husbands of the daughters of “James Savage of Georgetown aforesaid, lately deceased” sold their shares in his estate to “Isaac Savage, Daniel Savage and Edward Savage all of Georgetown aforesaid Labourers”, and reserved the rights of “Cristian Savage the widow of the said Deceased”. The deed was made in 1748, not in the years it was recorded: its signers acknowledged it before a justice of the peace from 13 September 1748, and it was entered in the Lincoln County book only on 26 April 1762. James Savage was therefore dead by September 1748, when his son, if this was he, was about nineteen.

The deed names the four daughters of James Savage as Catharine, wife of James Grant; Jane, wife of Bryant Robinson; Mary, wife of James Savage; and Sarah, wife of George Bolton. The history gives James Savage the same four daughters, and they were most likely Daniel’s sisters. The deed does not call the three buyers his sons; the history’s statement and the deed together make it likely that the Daniel Savage named in it is this man.

Hallowell

A history of Augusta published in 1870 records that he came early to Cushnoc, the settlement on the Kennebec that became part of Hallowell, and that he was chosen tithingman when the town of Hallowell was organized. In 1768 he was given written leave to set a fishing seine on the riverbank. In 1772 the town chose him as its clerk and as one of its five selectmen, and the history credits him with eleven years as town clerk and as many on the board of selectmen. The same year he “new-rimmed the water wheel” of the town’s first sawmill, and in 1773 he and his partners built a third mill on the same stream, known as the “Savage Mill”. About that time, the history says, he built a two-story house on lot number thirty-one, beside the old “cut road”. A Kennebec deed of 1804 confirms the mill and the lot: among the real estate Daniel Savage “died seized of” it lists his homestead farm, “lot No thirtyone & part of lot No thirty” in Augusta, and “a part of a double saw mill called Savages mill”.

The Revolution

The history names him as one of the town’s three militia captains in 1775. That September, when Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec^W passed up the Kennebec, some of Arnold’s soldiers were quartered at his house. The shooting there came on the night of the 23rd, and the man killed was from North Yarmouth. A court martial condemned the soldier to hang, but Arnold sent him on to General Washington.

The state’s own rolls confirm the rank. On 23 August 1776 the Massachusetts council ordered his commission as captain of the eighth company of the second Lincoln County regiment of militia, as the printed Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, a compilation from the state archives, records.

In June 1777 he was ordered to exercise his company and list its arms; the return for its twenty-six members on the west side of the river showed fifteen guns among them. On 26 June 1779 he was ordered to detach thirteen men from his company, himself included, and march them to St. George’s, and at Camden on 5 July he was given command of a company of fifty drawn from four companies. They served in the Penobscot Expedition^W, the Massachusetts attempt to drive the British from Bagaduce, on Penobscot Bay, which ended in disaster. The history’s sketch of him prints the year as 1797, a misprint for 1779.

Family

His first wife was named Elizabeth. The original Hallowell town register of births opens with seven children of Daniel and Elizabeth Savage. The three eldest, Mary, Jennet and Daniel, were born in 1755, 1757 and 1759, and Georgetown’s own register of births has the same three, so they were born there. Elizabeth, the daughter through whom the line runs, followed on 21 January 1761, Sarah in December 1762, and the twins Hannah and Martha on 8 November 1764. The register then records that “Elizabeth Savage the wife of Daniel Savage Departed this life December”, on the 16th, five weeks after the twins were born.

The town register gives Elizabeth no surname. The “Pierce” on the state copy card of her birth is the copyist’s addition, not the town record’s. A history of Augusta published in 1870 gives the same daughter’s birth as 2 January 1761 and names Daniel Savage’s first wife as Elizabeth Robinson; the same book gives Elizabeth Pierce as the wife of their son Daniel, who married in December 1785. Her surname is therefore unresolved, and the name Robinson rests only on that history. The history dates her death to 16 December 1764 in its register (its narrative says 1767).

The register goes on with “the three following are the Daughters of Daniel and anne Savage”: Releaf, born in 1769, Rachel in 1770 and Levina in 1772. A son, James, was entered afterward in fainter ink as born on 13 June 1774, and the history says he died in infancy. The history says Daniel Savage married again on 7 August 1766 and calls his second wife Anna Johnson; the register writes only “Anne”, and an index of the state copy cards gives the surname as Jonston, so the surname rests on later copyists and the history, not on the town book.

The history counts ten children for him, where the town register names eleven: it leaves out Jennet, and dates Mary’s birth to 16 January 1757, the day the register gives for Jennet. It says Mary married Jabez Clough of Readfield in 1774, and that Elizabeth married John Clough.

He died on 1 January 1795, aged 66, and the history says he was buried in the old fort burying ground. By the 1804 deed, John Clough and Elizabeth his wife, of Readfield, sold Jonathan Ballard for five hundred dollars “all our right, title, interest & claim” in his estate, including “the reversion of dower of said Daniel Savage’s widow”, so a widow survived him.

Notes

His death on 1 January 1795 is given by the 1870 history of Augusta and by a Maine veterans’ cemetery record, which agree; his birth year of about 1729 rests on the history alone. The Lincoln County deed of his father’s estate was earlier read as a deed of 1761-62; 1762 is only the year it was recorded, and its acknowledgments show it was made in 1748.