Historical society receives antique cradle

SEDGWICK – Two hundred and forty-three years ago, John and Abigail Watson Black placed their infant daughter Elizabeth into a small wooden cradle at their cabin on Naskeag Point in what was then Township No. 4.

Elizabeth was the first English child born in the township and some of her descendants still live in the area. Earlier this week, they donated the cradle to the Sedgwick-Brooklin Historical Society.

“We’re thrilled with this gift because of its role in history and because we still have some of the family here as year-rounders,” said Fred Marston, the society’s vice president. “It’s our intention that it will never leave Sedgwick. It just belongs here.”

Descendants of Elizabeth Black made the presentation Monday at the society’s Daniel Merrill House in Sedgwick. The gift was made in memory of Black’s great-granddaughter, A. Maud Willey Hooper, and her great-great granddaughter, the late Cynthia Hooper Keefe. Hooper Keefe was a longtime Sedgwick resident who taught in the Brooklin and Sedgwick schools and was a supporter of the society.

In addition to the cradle, family members also presented a portrait of John and Abigail Watson Black, and a new security system, which, they said, will assure “the safekeeping of the history of our towns.”

The Blacks moved to the area in the early 1760s along with other English settlers who arrived shortly after the end of the French and Indian Wars, Marston said. Elizabeth Black was the first English child born in the township which at that time encompassed all of what is now Brooklin and Sedgwick and portions of present-day Blue Hill, Brooksville and Penobscot.

In honor of her status of “first-borne,” the proprietors of the township awarded her a gift of 100 acres of land in 1787, a few years after the end of the American Revolution and two years before Sedgwick was incorporated as a town.

The cradle will be displayed in the master bedroom at the Daniel Merrill House next to the existing bed there.