The last article described the sea fight between the British brig Boxer and the American brig Enterprise during the War of 1812, an episode wrapped around British-American collusion turned hostile. This time I cover two local stories of the encounter, reported long after the September 5, 1813 battle.

That morning there was great excitement along the Midcoast at the sound of the cannon since local people, who'd been harassed by the Boxer and knew her proximity, suspected a dramatic event was in the offing. In Boothbay, many found vantages to watch the brigs jockeying for position about seven miles southeast and a few miles east of Damariscove. It is doubtless those with telescopes gave details to those gathered around them.

Kenniston Hill

On March 10, 1888, Francis Greene, temporarily owner-editor of the Boothbay Register, wrote up the battle. Greene said his Boothbay Center father-in-law, William Kenniston, was the only living eyewitness he'd ever met. Services at the sole region meetinghouse were canceled by the cannon shots. Kenniston and other churchgoers walked up 220-foot Kenniston Hill at Boothbay Center to watch the brigs. The hill, then owned by Kenniston, is about 1,000 feet south of the old Kenniston house.

Mercy Grover Fuller

Three weeks after Greene's story, on March 31, 1888, the East Boothbay columnist wrote that, despite Greene's comments on Kenniston, “The writer is well-acquainted with an old lady of this place who was also an eyewitness.” The columnist wrote that Mercy Grover (Mrs. Jacob) Fuller, born 1804, watched from Alley's Hill on Linekin Neck, and she had a cousin on board the Enterprise.

According to Fuller, “The guns fired so rapidly that they sounded like brush burning on the grate and the smoke was so dense there were only occasional glimpses of the ships.” She also said her brother, John Grover, was killed in 1814 while he and others were stationed on Mt. Pisgah, and that a fishing schooner was burnt off Negro Island the same day. She repeated her memories of her brother's death – by a ball from a British barge – in the January 26, 1889 issue.

Greene wrote in his 1906 town history that the killing of a Grover son was confirmed by George Reed who had been there as a 17-year-old militia member. Reed reported the John Grover family was living in the old Allen Lewis house (above Lewis's fishyard, now Barrett Park) and the son was killed in its doorway after he fired a musket at the barge.

Two John Grovers?

While I believe the Grover story, there is a difficulty. John and Elizabeth Grover arrived in Boothbay soon after 1800 from perhaps Durham, Maine as reported by descendant Gwen Rice Gordon in 1970. (The present local Grover line came from Jefferson.) John and Elizabeth had children born in Boothbay as follows: Mary/Mercy in 1804, Mariah in 1807, Charles in 1809, and twins John and Jeremiah in 1816. There must have been an earlier son John who was old enough to shoot a musket and to die in 1814 and for whom the 1816 baby John was named. The 1810 census does support that theory: John Grover then had in his household a male and a female between the ages of 10 and 16. The John Grover family, of Lobster Cove-Mt. Pisgah in 1814, was here until about 1840, then gone, except for daughters who married locally. Father John died in 1837, son Jeremiah died in 1839, son Charles disappeared in 1833, and son John, born 1816, disappeared by the late 1830s.

The Grover males may have disappeared, but numerous East Boothbay descendants remain: Carters; Rices; Hodgdons; Farnhams and Webbers. It may be a tenuous link with the War of 1812, but still a link.

Next time: more local accounts of the sea fight.