Gathering history Legacy of Sam Houston Jr. lives on thanks to Searsport teacher’s efforts

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Grade-schoolers around the state will “meet” all manner of Mainers in their studies this year, from Abnaki Indians to the late U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith to Donn Fendler, who survived several days lost and without food or shelter in the Mount Katahdin area as a 12-year-old back in 1939.

In Searsport, fifth-graders in Charlene Knox Farris’ class always make the acquaintance of Revolutionary War veteran Sam Houston Jr. – not the Sam Houston of Texas fame, but the Searsport native who spent more than three years accompanying Gen. George Washington as a member of Washington’s Life Guard.

One had to be specially chosen for this honor, they will find.

Washington asked his colonels to pick out “good men, such as they can recommend for their sobriety, honesty and good behavior; he wishes them to be from five feet, eight inches high to five feet, ten inches; handsomely and well made; and as there is nothing in his eyes more desirable than cleanliness in a soldier, he desires that particular attention may be made, in the choice of such men as are neat, and spruce.”

Such was Sam Houston, the son of Sam Houston and Isabel Dickey of East Belfast, now Searsport. He enlisted shortly after the Battle of Bunker Hill and was chosen as one of four from his New England regiment to join the commander-in-chief’s guard.

At White Plains, Houston became Washington’s baggage master, in charge of the battle plans and the wagon that carried them. At Brandywine Creek, he was promoted to captain.

In their distinguished positions, Houston and the other Life Guards wore a uniform very similar to Washington’s, yet they knew the same hunger, trials and sacrifice of the enlisted soldiers.

Houston wrote of his time at Valley Forge in his Revolutionary War pension application in 1832:

I lay in a half-finished house on a single board on the beams; had not a dry thread; had neither dinner nor supper and I believe not much breakfast.

Another time he wrote of packing up Washington’s wagon with “the cannon balls flying pretty thick,” and still another, of seeing the Marquis de Lafayette wounded.

Farris’ pupils will find Houston’s life easy to study because she has compiled it in a booklet, “Searsport’s Sam Houston,” first published in 1987.

Even more tangible are items now in the possession of Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport: Sam Houston’s Revolutionary War trunk and sword – a story unto themselves.

The trunk, it turns out, was for many years ensconced in an attic in Bucksport.

“Sam Jr.’s daughter married a Bickmore and took the trunk with her,” Farris explained.

It was 1985 when Farris first heard that Houston’s own trunk and papers had made their way to an antique dealer’s shop on Mount Desert Island.

She visited the shop and admired the old leather trunk, embossed with the letters S-H. The dealer allowed her to pore over the documents, to glean information that would become part of her social studies classes and the programs she gave throughout the area.

Soon Farris began a public campaign to raise funds to purchase the trunk for the few thousand dollars purchase price. When she gave talks, any money that she collected went into the fund.

Finally amassing the money she thought it would take to buy the trunk, Farris showed up at the antique shop and prepared to take possession of the treasure.

“I was naive,” she says now. The dealer informed her that with all the publicity, the trunk was now worth many times the original asking price. The trunk would not come home to Searsport.

But other good things happened. She turned to raising money for scholarships in Houston’s name, using her talks to amass $2,200 to fund scholarships for graduating seniors who had been in her fifth-grade classes.

In addition, Farris found herself corresponding with as many as seven Houston descendants. One of them, Joshua Black Montgomery of Greensboro, N.C., presented Houston’s Revolutionary War saber to the Penobscot Marine Museum.

Farris continued to educate people about Sam Houston, talking to both her fifth-graders and to a variety of other groups. In 1987, the Maine State Organization, Daughters of the American Revolution, named her American History Teacher of the Year for her work.

Now Farris is about to see another dream come true as plans come together for a Sam Houston Room in the Searsport Historical Society building.

The building was the home of the late Mildred Nickerson, donated years ago by Central Maine Power Co. The house has been moved to its new home on a piece of land on Sears Island Road, donated by General Alum and Chemical Co.

But what about the trunk?

Well, even that has a happy ending. A few years ago, the antique dealer who raised the price on the trunk decided to close his business and donate the trunk and documents to the Penobscot Marine Museum. The trunk is now located in the Merithew House on museum property.

But Farris isn’t done fund-raising. The museum has been holding $2,800 she has raised over the years, and has agreed to pass on $2,300 of that to the Searsport Historical Society. The remaining $500 will be used to erect a protective glass buffer around Houston’s trunk and sword at the museum.

The historical society, Farris points out, still has lots of needs for its new home. While it has been painted and reroofed, there are still major projects such as the furnace and plumbing.

As for Farris’ booklet, “Searsport’s Sam Houston,” it is back in print again, thanks to a grant from Wayne and Loraine Hamilton.

Copies sold through the Penobscot Marine Museum will benefit the museum, while copies Farris sells will benefit the historical society.

Eighteen years after Charlene Farris first saw Searsport Sam Houston’s trunk, she says, “I felt that this was supposed to be. It’s just that I didn’t know how long it was going to take” to bring it home to Searsport.

“I feel it’s a blessing. I don’t know a better word for it,” Farris said. “I believe there are some things in life that are meant to be. It really did come true. Someday happened.

“I feel I’m a link now between this very important part of Searsport history and a generation of children.”

Copies of “Searsport’s Sam Houston” may be obtained for $7, postage included, from Charlene Farris, P.O. Box 620, Searsport, ME 04974. Roxanne Moore Saucier can be reached at 990-8139 and familyti@bangordailynews.net.