Resolved, That the Society be requested to communicate, with a copy of these resolutions, the respectful sympathy of this Society to the family of the distinguished deceased.

The resolutions were adopted and the meeting adjourned.

ANNUAL MEETING, JULY 14, 1882.

The annual meeting of the Society was held at Adams Hall, Brunswick, and was called to order at 8.30 A.M., by the president, Hon. James W. Bradbury.

The record of the last annual meeting was read by the recording sccretary and approved with a slight modification.

The annual reports of the librarian and cabinet-keeper, the corresponding secretary, the treasurer and the standing committee were read and accepted.

The following officers were elected for the ensuing year: President, James W. Bradbury of Augusta.

Vice-president, William G. Barrows of Brunswick.

Corresponding secretary, William Goold of Windham.

Treasurer, Lewis Pierce of Portland.

Recording secretary, librarian and cabinet keeper,
H. W. Bryant of Portland.

Standing committee,

Israel Washburn, jr., of Portland.

Rufus K. Sewall of Wiscasset.

William B. Lapham of Augusta.

Edward H. Elwell of Deering.
William Goold of Windham.
Stephen J. Young of Brunswick.

Joseph Williamson of Belfast.

The following were elected resident members: Oscar Holway of Augusta, Joseph W. Symonds of Portland, Henry C. Levensaler of Thomaston, Asa Dalton of Portland, Wakefield G. Frye of Belfast, Prentice C. Manning of Portland, Stephen Berry of Portland.

The following were elected corresponding members: Hon. Elihu B. Washburne of Chicago, Hon. Horatio Bridge of Washington, Hon. John Wentworth of Chicago, John N. McClintock

of Concord, N. H., Frederick C. Pierce of Rockford, Ill., Henry Phillips, jr., of Philadelphia, Rev. Anson Titus, jr., of South Weymouth, Mass., John F. Pratt, M.D., of Chelsea, Hon. Dexter A. Hawkins of New York, Rev. Benjamin F. De Costa of New York, Prof. Sidney Colvin of Cambridge, England, Edmund M. Barton of Worcester, Mass., Rev. Samuel Longfellow of Cambridge, Mass., George Warren Hammond of Boston.

The use of a steam yacht was tendered to the Society for their field day excursion by Robert H. Gardiner, Esq., and Messrs. Gardiner, Burrage and Gilman were appointed a committee to make arrangements for the field day.

On motion of Mr. William Goold of Windham, it was voted that the Society hold a meeting in Portland on the twenty-third day of December next, to congratulate our revered associate, the Rev. Alpheus S. Packard, D.D., on the attainment of his eightyfourth birthday.

The following were appointed a committee of arrangements: Israel Washburn, jr., William Goold, Stephen J. Young, Edward H. Elwell.

The proposition to adopt sundry amendments to the by-laws was brought up, and after some discussion the amendments were postponed for consideration at the next annual meeting.

Adjourned.

DECEMBER 23, 1882.

The winter meeting was held at the rooms of the Society December 23, 1882.

At the afternoon session Professor F. W. Putnam of Cambridge delivered an address on the shell heaps of Maine, and displayed specimens of ancient bone and stone implements taken from the heaps, many of which appeared to be identical with specimens found in the shell heaps of Europe. A paper on the noun of the Abnaki grammar was read by the Rev. M. C. O'Brien of Bangor, which was followed by a paper on Thomas Chute, an early settler of Windham, Maine, by Mr. William Goold. Mr.

Edward H. Elwell then read a biographical sketch of our poetgovernor, Enoch Lincoln, with extracts from his poem entitled "The Village."

Mr. John T. Hull presented a memorial on the early records of Maine, which was referred to a committee consisting of James P. Baxter, William Goold and Edward H. Elwell.

HISTORICAL MEMORANDA.

THE Machias Union, of January 14, 1890, has a paper, apparently prepared by its editor, Mr. George W. Drisko, of considerable local and general interest, from which some excerpts are copied below.

MACHIAS IN THE WAR OF 1812.

"In less than forty years after the battle of the 'Margaretta' British uniforms and muskets made a second appearance in Machias. Like most all towns, not excepting Portland, Boston, and even Washington, Machias was obliged to surrender; the flag came down. There was no discredit in this to the citizens; it was a choice, this or a conflagration. The British troops landed at or near Bucks harbor, came ashore in small boats from the two or three war vessels, marched, following the road near as they could, to Machias. The fort at Machiasport, held by a very small garrison of militia, was completely surprised.

"Colonel Jeremiah O'Brien who fought the 'Margaretta,' and with his neighbors won the battle, was decided in his opinion of resistance: Have a force of militia,' he said, 'go out and meet the advancing foe on the Port road and turn them back or kill them!' Fortunately for Machias different counsels prevailed and no battle was fought, very little or no property destroyed. O'Brien, when it was decided to show no resistance, being in his saddle near the custom house, turned his old white horse, struck a gallop toward his house and did not make his appearance while the British officers remained in town.”

The ease with which the British invasion of Eastern Maine, in the war of 1812, overcame all the feeble resistance the two frontier counties made, the fact that British forces occupied Eastport, Machias, and the strong fort at Castine, during the greater part of the war, might have cost Maine a large slice of her territory, had not the fortunes of battle been more favorable to our country elsewhere, and especially upon the ocean. It would have been a fine opportunity to have gotten by the terms of a treaty of peace that portion of Maine, proved afterward so essential to the military defense and commercial development of the British provinces in North America, that England afterward did get by persistent claim, and by the superior finesse of her negotiators.

But the war left our adversary no pretext for claiming any cession of territory; and she would hardly have wished to incorporate among her loyal subjects such sturdy rebels as those who had captured the “Margaretta," and repulsed the attack made in 1777 upon the settlement of Machias; and we owe it more to the memory of the old spirit rather than the exhibition of the later spirit, that our boundary in the negotiations of 1815 did not get established at the Penobscot river.

FRAGMENTS OF HISTORY.

"SOMETIME about 1800 Albert Gallatin, a Scotchman perhaps, a foreigner, landed at St. John, made his way through the woods via Calais to Machias, and spent several weeks in town, his home mainly being in the family of Jeremiah O'Brien, son of Morris of earlier fame. While in O'Brien's house he fell sick, and Mrs. O'Brien, as indeed all the family, cared for him. Gallatin made his way on to New York. Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated the third president in 1801, and in selecting his cabinet, he made Gallatin secretary of the treasury. Shortly afterward Jeremiah O'Brien received a commission as collector of customs for the port of Machias, accompanied by a private letter by the secretary, giving as a reason for the courtesy as well as the 'honor here conferred,' the kind hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien a few years before! Bread cast upon the waters! The custom house was then kept in Captain Smith's long shed before mentioned, already famous in local history."

Albert Gallatin, Mr. Jefferson's able secretary of the treasury, and whose financial reputation in our country is second only to that of Alexander Hamilton, like Hamilton, was of foreign birth. He was born in Geneva in 1761, and his family, though belonging to the nobility for many generations, had been distinguished in Switzerland for their republican sentiments. When the French revolution came they welcomed it with sympathy.

Albert Gallatin himself, having been required after his graduation from college, by his grand parents- he was an orphan to enter the army of the landgrave of Hesse, ran away from Geneva and secretly embarked for America. The statement of Mr. Drisko, that he tarried awhile at Machias, is undoubtedly correct. The course of trade after the revolutionary war brought many English merchant ships, which at that time were also the only packet ships carrying passengers, to St. John. It was in 1780 however and not about 1800.