McFarland Genealogy of Blue Hill, Maine

The next place north and easterly is what the boys called, sixty or seventy years ago, “Mackville”. There lived Peter McFarland, a shoemaker of Scotch descent, who is said to have come from the city of New York, where he left a wife and several children, here to build a log cabin and make his abode prior to 1800. He married Elizabeth Carter by whom he had eight children, viz:

1. Jonathan Fisher McFarland, born Oct. 12, 1803; married Prudence.
2. Lydia McFarland, born Oct, 23, 1805.
3. Peter McFarland, born July 14, 1807; married Lucy Day.
4. Oliver Mann McFarland, born Nov. 20, 1810; married Lucretia Carter.
5. Irene McFarland, born August 2, 1613; married William Staples, of Sedgwick.
6. Alpheus McFarland, born Feb. 22, 1817; married Rebekah Carter.
7. Amos Allen McFarland, born Sept. 13, 1820; died in army at Ship Island, 1863.
8. Rodney McFarland, born Jan. 6,;; 1824; married Margaret Cain. Rodney is the only one living at this date; he resides at Bar Harbor.

Peter McFarland, Sr., had a struggle to earn sufficient from his farm and shoemaker’s bench to bring up his large family. He was a man fond of grog, and a fiddler; his sons were fond of music and of song, indulging in both so far as their limited knowledge permitted. Rodney, the youngest son, beat the snare drum for the boy’s military company of the neighborhood, of which the writer was captain. With military hats made of paper adorned with tail-feathers of cock or hen, and with wooden guns and swords marching to the music of the “White Cockade” made by fife and drum, the boys were ready to parade whenever opportunity offered, and were proud of their warlike mimicry.

Mr. McFarland, Sr., played his fiddle for dances, having a series of old Scotch tunes, including the “Scolding Wife”, “The Girl I Left Behind Me”, “High Betty Martin” and the like, which he played and charmed the boys of those days.

He and all his family, save one, “have joined the great silent majority”. Two of his sons, Alpheus and Amos, and a grandson, Ebenezer, son of Peter, Jr., were soldiers in the army for the preservation of the Union in the war of the Rebellion.

After the death of the heads of the family, the marriage of the children, and the removal of them from the haunts of their childhood, the place was owned for a number of years by Giles Johnson Grindle, and occupied by him and his family. The land stretched from William W. Gray’s to Mother Bush Brook with a shore line upon the Salt Pond. The buildings are gone at this writing, and the land is owned and cultivated by a son of the late Daniel B. Allen.