Nathaniel Pierce was born in Welfleet, Mass., in 175 1, and with
many others was compelled to seek other employment than sea«
men during the Revolutionary war; he being a whalen^an he served
a while in the army near Baltimore, so he used to tell his grand-
children. He first came on the Penobscot river when it was
a perfect wilderness and bought of the Tarratine Sachem one
hundred acres for twenty dollars and a cow; constructed a rude
log house under a high bank close to the river. Cleared and
planted ground with com and potatoes^ the soil returning very ex-
traordinary crops. After burning the mammoth growth of rock
maple and other trees. The river at that time swarmed with the
finest fish, salmon and shad, which he often caught by the cart-
load, and fed not only his hogs, but land with them. He soon
built a frame house, low posted and broad, a single huge chimney
in the center with immense fire*places; here he and his wife lived
frugally year after year. Their wants were few in those days, a
very little money they had» in fact, they needed scarcely any, but
had plenty always to eat and to wear. When the British came up
' the river in 1814, their vessels were moored nearly opposite his
house, his family and all retreated back into the deep woods, but
he came every day to feed his swine, whose yard ran down to the
water. Men from the tops of the ships fired at him at this time,
and he used to come back telling how the balls whirled. A party
of them intoxicated came to the house one day, and in their ab-
sence run their cutlasses through every light of glass in one end
of the house. Mr. Pierce reported them to the officer, who strung
the offenders up and applied the cat-of-nine-tails to their backs,
taking from their wages the price of the act. This window always
after was boarded up, and his wife used to show it to her grand-
children.
