Beginning of a neighborhood

Watercolor of Wildwood

Wildwood Park was named in 1909 when Concord Realty first purchased the property from Sumner Sturdivant.  The early history of Wildwood Park and Cumberland Foreside is interesting.  At one time, Abnaki Indians roamed these woods and beaches.  They probably ate clams and caught fish here and stopped, as we do today, to gaze out over the bay and admire the beautiful view. 

What could it have been like for the few hardy souls who attempted to live here during the 1600s?   George Felt was the first settler in Cumberland whom we know by name.  In 1640 he purchased 300 acres and a house in the Schooner Rocks area built by an earlier settler.  During the years from 1640 to 1678, this area was frequently raided by Abnaki Indians, and often the people living there had to take refuge in what is now Portland or the outer Bay Islands until it was safe for them to return home.  George Felt himself was killed by Indians on Peaks Island.

In 1678 Captain Walter Gendall, who had lived in Cape Elizabeth, purchased 100 acres from George Felt’s heirs.  The area extended southwesterly to beyond Wildwood Park, and Mr. Gendall built his house near the sea side of Sea Cove Road.  The area was quiet for a while, but in 1688 trouble again erupted with the Indians.  Walter Gendall was killed in a battle near the Royal River and for twenty-five years the area was deserted by the white settlers.

Around 1715 settlers began to return to the area and built three garrison houses for defense.  One of the garrison houses was believed to be on the present Payson property.  The earlier settlers to this area had been repeatedly driven away from their homes, and many had been  killed.  The question of who owned much of the land was being disputed by the people who had returned.  Therefore, in 1723 a committee of five men from Massachusetts was chosen to regulate and manage the township of Cumberland.  The committee of five reestablished the boundary lines between Falmouth and North Yarmouth (Cumberland).

They resurveyed the land and divided it into 100 home lots.  By an agreement in May 1727, thirty-six of the lots were portioned out to the original settlers or their heirs; sixty-four were drawn by lot by new settlers.  Winners were expected to inhabit their lots, to clear and fence at least five acres of land on the front side of the lot, to contribute to the support of a minister, to help construct a community meeting house, and if their lots bordered on salt water, either “the Bay or Royall’s River,” to keep a strip three rods (42 feet) wide from the high water line open for the use and accommodation of the public.  (Regarding this last provision, of potential interest to all shoreline owners in present-day Cumberland and Yarmouth, keep reading.  In the last section, there is discussion of its rediscovery in the 1990 and an aborted attempt to explore its potential validity through court action.)

The area settled again into normalcy; but then in 1774 the French and English were at war, and the area prepared itself for Indian and French attacks.  Two garrison houses were in use at the time on the Foreside.  In 1745 there were Indian raids in the area.  Several people were killed and women and children taken into captivity by the Indians.  In 1757 the last Indian attack in the area occurred in what is now Harpswell and Freeport.

During the Revolutionary War, the town generally sided with the patriots; however, as in most every colonial town, there were divided opinions.  A company of minuteman was formed, and a Council of Safety organized to patrol the shore. 

An interesting tale is told about the conflict of the time in Phyllis S. Sweetser’s book, Cumberland, Maine:

The sloop Rhoda, commanded by Captain Gray, had made a coastal trip in the fall of 1779 to one of the harbors to the westward for supplies and returned to Cumberland Foreside, anchoring near Anderson’s Rock.  The crew left the vessel for the night with two boys on board to keep ship.  When the crew returned the next morning, the Rhoda had disappeared.  The crew and some of the inhabitants armed themselves as best they could, and taking an old sloop that was anchored near the present Cumberland Town Landing, they started out of the harbor to see what had become of their vessel.  When they had passed outside of Chebeague Island, they saw the two boys in the small boat of the Rhoda.  The boys told that they had been seized about eleven o’clock the night before by a boat from an English cruiser; the cable had been slipped and the sloop taken.  They had been set adrift outside the harbor, and knew nothing of where the Rhoda was being taken.  However, they had overheard someone speak of Monhegan, and the party felt it might be well to go there.  They came into the harbor at night and found the Rhoda anchored.  Feigning ignorance of the anchorage area, the old sloop, with the people from North Yarmouth, ran into the Rhoda, which was boarded and captured by its owners.  Both sloops got under way at once and started home.  The next morning they came up with a large English schooner, loaded with lumber, and they captured her.  The three vessels passed through Broad Cove on the way to Falmouth (now Portland).  The supplies and prize money enabled the people to have a more comfortable winter than they would have otherwise.

Betty Baxter has done research on colonial times in Cumberland and has found a pottery wig curler from the 1700s among old timbers and stones at 16 Birch Lane.  She speculates that the line of boulders and stones extending off shore from the end of Birch Lane may have been part of the first pier on the beach and asks if it might even have been a place in 1788 for unloading a ship from Britain with goods for the William Martin family on Schooner Rocks.

During the War of 1812 a resident of the Foreside and the owner of the present Wildwood Park tract was Captain Ephraim Sturdivant.  He lived in the Janet Low Parker house on Route 88.  Captain Sturdivant went to sea at the age of twelve.  During the War of 1812, he was granted a letter of marque as a privateer from President James Madison.  Captain Sturdivant was responsible for naming the town of Cumberland.  He became the first treasurer of the town, serving until 1832.  He represented the town as a state senator and was a member of the first convention which framed the constitution of Maine in 1820.

Watercolor of Wildwood