By Isabel Morse Maresh
March 19, 1992
While trying to tie up the ends of one project there is no time to stop and reflect on the work of the past, as there is much more to be done.
The Heal-Heald book was completed in 1988, the Young family book in the fall of 1991, with other works dispersed between, and it's time to move on. In 1989, I wrote of the Lermond family in this column, with their early trials and tribulations. The Lermonds were of Scotch-Irish descent, as is written in ancient history books. The truth was that they were displaced Scotsmen, living in Northern Ireland in 1719 when the family migrated to the New World to make a fresh start.
It must have been hard to leave homeland, family, and friends to travel on a crowded ship with no luxurious accommodations, only to arrive in a harsh frontier lacking in the barest of necessities.
The Lermonds came with the Huston and Jones families. They continued to live as neighbors, in Boston and Milton, Mass., probably spending a brief time in Londonderry, N.H., before their migration to the Maine coast.
It has been written that these hardy settlers of Londonderry, N.H., were the first to bring the potato to the New World. The soil and climate were said to be much like their homeland, which may have lessened their homesickness. This is the same group that first settled Belfast, Maine.
The story of the early Lermonds is pieced together from several books of the last century. The Huston, Jones, and Lermond families came to the Damariscotta area to a small island called Sugar Loaf whose approach was completely bare at low tide.
"As they walked over this to the mainland, they saw such evidence of the teeming life [clams] beneath their feet, some one of the company explained, 'call this an inhospitable shore, when a man has only to dig his meat from the ground over which he walks!'"
Their first meal was cooked by hanging a pot from the limb of a tree and kindling a fire under it. Before a hut could be built, a storm came up. The women and children found protection by getting under the empty barrels called "hogsheads" which had held their scanty supply of cooking utensils and furniture.
Capt. John Lermond was master of a ship that was captured by Algerine pirates in the Mediterranean. A small prize pirate crew was on board the ship to sail her into port. The crew had allowed Lermond and his mate to walk on deck occasionally. And the two conspired to retake their ship. One day each of them seized a pirate and threw them overboard. Then they easily overpowered the others and brought the ship home.
The early settlers had troubles with the Indians. One day while Lermond was at sea, his 27-year-old wife Betsey, with her in-laws, John and Jane Lermond, left the stone house within the fort at Damariscotta to go out and. milk the cows. They were barely outside and shut the bars when a party of Indians rose up from among the cows and captured the old man and his wife. Betsey jumped over the bars like a cat and ran up the road with an Indian behind her with a gun. Not willing to lose his game, the Indian fired and brought her to the ground. Colonel Jones came to her assistance from the garrison. In her dying breath, she said, "Get back the best way you can. I am gone!" He managed to drag her body to the fort. Old Jane Lermond was also killed.
Old Mr. Lermond was taken to Canada as a prisoner of the Indians. The squaws treated him very badly, throwing dust in his eyes, pricking him with sticks, beating and insulting him. His treatment was worse when the braves were gone. One day, after bad treatment, he doubled up his fist and knocked one of the squaws down. Surely, he thought, he would not live to see another day as a sturdy brave ran over to him. Surprisingly, the brave patted him on the shoulder and exclaimed, "Much courage, much courage!"
Mr. Lermond lived to return to "Damariscotty." Captain John married a Miss Giffen and was removed to Waldoboro or Warren. His son Robert was said to have been a strong man, who walked from Waldoboro to where he had settled in South Liberty with a bushel of meal on his shoulders to feed his family of 13 children.
This illustrious Lermond family is the subject of the next book I am working on. My sister, Annie Cilley, is putting the work into a computer. We hope to have the book ready by fall. We are looking for Lermond descendants, pictures, clippings, scrapbooks, etc. The cost of reproducing and screen-printing photos is expensive. I would like to find sponsors to help get the project going.
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