I’m presuming that the house Jonathan Delesdernier Weston recollected as town’s second conventionally wood-framed house, built after 1812 but removed shortly before 1888, was John junior’s. The 1855 map shows a J. Shackford house at the southeast corner of Water and Middle streets that doesn’t match current buildings. Weston, incidentally, built the 1810 Federal-style house at the corner of Boynton and Middle streets, a place now noted as housing John Jacob Audubon on his residency in town.

The Eastport Sentinel in September 8, 1880, noted, “The close observer, as he walks about town, notices many changes and improvements within the past year. … It is of the fixing up that we all speak particularly. The John Shackford house on Water Street has been repaired and remodeled by Mr. Warren Brown so that it bears little resemblance to its former self.” Brown was a tailor and fish packer with a growing family, and the John Shackford in question would have been dead 12 years. As a further complication, among the residences destroyed in the 1889 fire was Brown’s.

John junior’s first son, Benjamin Batson Shackford (1811-1884), most likely
spent his early life “aboard his family’s ships training for his shipmaster’s qualifications,” as Joanne Shackford Parkes wrote in the Shackford Family History blog.  “In 1833, when he turned 21, he married Harriet Bibber, daughter of Thomas Bibber and Dorcas Pettengill. They made their home in Eastport and had eight children.

“Seventeen years later, the family was doing well financially as reflected in Benjamin’s 1850 Census report of having property valued at $1,400. By then, Benjamin, the sea captain of the brig Waredale, was traveling to Baltimore, St. Thomas [Virgin Islands], and Trinidad.”

She found that in 1855, newspapers reported the Waredale and Shackford sailing from Norfolk to St . Croix in February; Guayanilla, Puerto Rico, to New York and then St. Thomas in May; Maracaibo, Venezuela, to Eastport in July; and Eastport to Calais and then to Bathurst, Africa, in October.  She adds to that his sailing multiple times between 1856 and 1858 to Trinidad, bringing back molasses. And in mid-1858, he added South Carolina; the Turks; Mobile, Alabama; Surinam; and Matanzas, Cuba, and Remedios, Cuba, to his rounds.

The 1860 Census valued his real estate at $1,200 and his personal assets at $400. That year, as Parkes wrote, he sailed on multiple trips to Puerto Rico, up and down the New England coast, and to the Turk islands. By 1863 he was sailing the Waredale frequently to Jamaica and Cuba.

She then describes how in 1864, on his second trip as captain of the bark Zelinda from Matanzas or New Orleans to Philadelphia (reports vary), he was overtaken and boarded by the Confederate privateer ship Florida while off the coast of South Carolina. The crew was placed aboard another captured ship, the schooner Howard and sent back to port while the captain of the Florida set fire to and destroyed the Zelinda. “It appears that the crew was not allowed to take much with them, and after the Civil War ended, Capt. Benjamin B. Shackford filed a claim in the Alabama courts reporting that he had lost his belongings, and in 1875 he was reimbursed $2,303.85 for his losses. In 1883 he gave a deposition stating that another member of his crew had also suffered a loss of clothes, outfits, and articles.”

She notes that when Benjamin’s father John died in 1866 without a will, he left properties valued at $3,200. “The probate dragged out until 1872 and finally resulted in a division of the land which included some prime real estate in Eastport which was divided between Benjamin and the families of his siblings, Charles William and John L. Shackford.

“This increased Benjamin’s real estate holdings significantly and, in the 1870 census, he reported real estate valued at $3,000. The American Bureau of Shipping lists him as the master of the L.L. Wadsworth around that time and newspaper articles show him sailing to Freeport and Trinidad. While his last trip on the L.L. Wadsworth was around 1872, Benjamin continued to list his occupation as sailor in the 1880 Census.

After a life of sailing and adventure to many places in the world, Benjamin Batson Shackford died in Eastport in 1884 at the age of 72.

His children were Joshua Shackford (1834-?); John Edward Shackford (1836-1862), blacksmith, died in New York; Harriet Elizabeth Shackford (1838-1861); Marietta Shackford (1840-?), married Joseph R. Gilman; Ann Pearce Shackford (1841-1924), married Andrew V. Bradford, moved to Oregon by 1900, died in Oregon in 1924, gravestone is in Eastport, Maine;
Emma Shackford (1842-?); Gertrude Shackford (1844-?); and Stella Woodwell Shackford (1853-1918), married William Pearce Higgins, died in Oregon.

Remember, John junior grew up in the house we now own.

In following the history of our house, we’ve veered off from Captain John and Esther’s children as other families added their names to the dwelling. At this point, I’d like to return to the Shackfords to give you a better sense of the family’s additional impact on the community as well as ways the town itself changed over the years. When the Shackfords first arrived, the place wasn’t even called Eastport but rather Passamaquoddy or Moose Island on Passamaquoddy Bay. Sometimes it even went by all three at once. While the sons’ and sons-in-law’s escapades during the War of 1812 have been noted, their seafaring ventures continued well after.

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John junior, for instance, not only commanded the first vessel owned in the town, but he also ran the first packet in the Boston and Eastport line, “through winter’s storms and summer’s fogs.” A packet was a new concept in shipping, with vessels departing on a regular schedule, rather than waiting for a full load or a set number of passengers. The innovation could be risky for the investors or highly profitable, depending.

In a fuller telling, he “was commander of the first vessel owned in the town and commander on the first freight and passenger traffic boat established between Eastport, Portland, and Boston, and his last packet, the Boundary, the swiftest vessel on the coast after 21 years in this service, had to give place to steamships.”

The May 9, 1828, edition of the Eastern Argus announced that the schooner Boundary, 142 tons with John Shackford, master, the schooner Edward Preble, and the Thomas Rogers would be running between Eastport and Boston, stopping at Portland both directions. That gives us a date and a possible commercial association of the three vessels. After that, newspaper mentions of the Boundary arriving or departing Eastport or Boston with Captain Shackford at the helm were common.

He “knew by sight all the dangerous places along the coast, but never had more than a passing acquaintance with them, and during his long experience as shipmaster never had occasion to call upon his underwriters for a dollar.  The Boundary, his last packet, so well known as the swiftest vessel on the coast, was driven off the route on the introduction of steamships, when she was 21 years old; but for 20 years after she was a staunch craft, engaged in the coasting trade.”

Coasting, should you wonder, refers to traffic that followed the coastline rather than crossing the open ocean. The swift, agile coasting schooners could easily run into trouble further out from the coast.

The December 2011 edition of the Maine Coastal News described the Boundary as having two masts and dimensions 79 by 22 by 9 feet. And, yes, she was built on Shackford Cove in 1825 by Robert Huston.

There was a legal tangle on June 26, 1826, when, as commander of the Boundary, Captain John appeared before the Boston board of alderman to respond to charges of an alleged breach of the law to prevent the introduction of paupers from foreign ports.

Captain John junior’s sons included three shipmasters: Benjamin Batson Shackford, who died in Eastport in 1885, aged 73; Charles William Shackford, master of the brig Esther Elizabeth, who with his vessel was lost at sea in the winter of 1853-1854; and John Lincoln Shackford., who died at St. Thomas, West Indies. More on him later.

John’s wife, Elizabeth Batson, came from another seafaring family. She died in 1830. Did she travel with him, as many captains’ wives and families did? I suspect he married a second time, perhaps to Eliza A. who died in Eastport on February 17, 1899, age 84 years four months five days.

When John junior died on August 12, 1866, he left no will. His obituary in the Eastport Sentinel, in the manner of the time, did not name other family members, something that might have revealed whether he had remarried after his first wife’s decease. Instead, it said, “He was a devotional man always found at prayer meetings and public preaching when he was able to be there.”

Remember, John junior grew up in the house we now own.