Captain John senior and Esther’s son Jacob commanded the steam brig New York, the first steam vessel to enter the harbor of Eastport.

He followed the sea up to 1832, when he and his brother established W.& J. Shackford & Company. Independently, Jacob did build ships, including four brigs in a few years in the 1850s. One of them was noted for riding out the devastating gale of 1854. He also dealt in real estate, as his running advertisements in the Eastport Sentinel of 1865 illustrate: “House lots on Shackford and Water streets. Also two lots. For sale on reasonable terms by Jacob Shackford.”

Jacob’s son, shipmaster George, died August 1, 1863, age 39, during the Civil War. I’m left wondering whether his death resulted from civilian or military seafaring.

Jacob’s son William did serve, from 1863 to 1865, aboard the USS Home, USS Winona, and USS Nahant.  In 1870 his residence was in Eastport; in 1880, Philadelphia; and 1890, New York, reflecting a successful shipmaster’s social mobility. His summer vacations at Cape May, New Jersey made the society pages of newspapers.  The August 2, 1897, New York Tribune reported the arrival of Mrs. William Shackford and Miss Carrie N. Shackford. An August 29, 1897, article in the Philadelphia Inquirer noted that Captain William Shackford joined his wife at the Congress Hotel to recover from “an attack of isthmus fever to regain his health.”

Back in Eastport, as Weston noted that Captain Jacob Shackford’s will, written on September 2, 1868, named his beloved wife Elisa D., his homestead on the corner of Water and Key Streets, a daughter Eliza A. Shackford, a son William Shackford, and another daughter Matilda, the wife of Charles B. Paine. It also left part of the estate to his son Henry Nevis Shackford, if known to be living at the death of his wife [Eliza]. Henry had left on a ship and never returned.

Son-in-law, C.B. Paine, husband of Matilda, had constructed the home on the corner of Water and Third streets, across from us, in 1841.

Jacob died June 19, 1869, age 79.

Over time, Jacob’s house at 4 Key Street grew from a federal style house and narrowly averted the devastating 1886 downtown fire. At some point, at his wife’s urging, the structure was turned 90 degrees, from facing the waterfront, to its present orientation, facing north, and drastically restyled.

When Eliza died on February 17, 1879, age 85, she was no longer residing in the house, as far as I can tell.

Remember, Jacob grew up in the house we now own.

The second son of John senior and Esther was William, who “went to sea as a boy and continued to be a sailor all his life,” as the family said. Or maybe not quite that long. He did retire to land, as you’ll see. “He commanded the Active in 1807 and was subsequently master of the Sally, Orient, Blockade, and Five Brothers, ships largely concerned in the West Indian trade.” Naming the Blockade, by the way, sounds like an act of defiance, don’t you think? And Sally would have been a nickname for his first wife.

As a sea captain, he frequently ventured far from Eastport. As we’ve previously mentioned, at age 29 he was captured by French pirates off the coast of Spain, eventually ransomed, and made it back to Maine just before the British blockaded the American Atlantic coast during the War of 1812.

As related in another account, “He was in command of the brig Dawn when that American ship was captured by a French cruiser during the war with the French in the time of Napoleon I. He was carried to France, and upon being relieved at the instance of the American minister, he went to England and came before the mast as an ordinary seaman. He next commanded the Lady Sherbrooke and then the Sarah. His last vessel was the Splendid, a fine packet engaged in the freight and passenger traffic between Eastport, Portland, and Boston. He retired from sea service in 1833 and engaged in mercantile pursuits with his brother, Jacob.” More specifically, the firm was W. & J. Shackford & Company, merchants, shipbuilders, and fishermen. Lorenzo Sabine was a partner briefly enough to explain the “and company.”

The retirement from sea service came around the same time the Shackford siblings surveyed their shared land holdings and began dividing it. There was much wheeling and dealing among the siblings and their nephews and nieces in the years that followed. Between 1840 and 1849, for instance, William sold or transferred or traded 33 parcels, including six to his brother Jacob.

William’s home at 10 Shackford Street is one block up and a block over from ours. Like others in the neighborhood, it was remodeled as styles changed. Parts of the structure may date to the early 1800s, while the front part of the house has the symmetry and simple lines common in area homes in the 1830s and ’40s. Much later (after his death) the home was updated with Queen Ann period details popular in the late 1800s. A close look at the structure reveals later additions such as the modest tower (which would have had a practical purpose, offering views of the harbor) and a decorative porch, for the summer breezes off the sea, I’ll venture — or even watching the daily parade up and down the street.

So much for the real estate pitch. Today, Joe and Mary Clabby have overseen its marvelous restoration.

Three of William’s four sons went on to become sea captains.

John William Shackford for many years commanded the steam packet ship Illinois and other ocean steamships and was then master of Jay Gould’s famous steam yacht Atalanta. (It has its own Wikipedia entry.) He died in Philadelphia in 1905.

Edward Wallace Shackford graduated from the Eastport high school, learned the trade of block and spar making at Machiasport, and then shipped on a vessel trading with the West Indies as ordinary seaman. His second voyage was on a ship that made the hazardous journey to the Pacific coast of the United States by way of Cape Horn, South America, reaching San Francisco in 1860, and sailed as far north as Puget Sound, where he passed the year 1861-62, and returned to Maine by the same route, reaching home in 1864. His next voyage was before the mast, first mate and captain of the brig Emily Fisher, commanding the brig in 1866. His next sea experience was on a steamer on the American line between Philadelphia and Liverpool, England, in the capacity of second officer, and he made four voyages on the steamships. He commanded a bark after leaving the steamship, and in 1887 resigned the command of the bark Ormus to assume a like position on the steam yacht Atalanta, owned by the aforesaid Jay Gould, on a voyage to the Mediterranean — was William introduced by his brother? He was captain of the schooner Johannah Swan, built by Albert M. Nash at his shipyards in Harrington, Maine, from 1889 up to the time the schooner was wrecked in the terrible gale of November 1898, in which gale the steamer City of Portland was lost with all on board and scarce a vestige of the vessel was ever found. William’s wrecked schooner, however, withstood the gale for seven days, when Shackford and his crew were rescued by the German bark Anna. On his arrival home, which was no longer Eastport, Shackford abandoned the life of a sailor and retired from active participation in business life.

All of this reflects the realities of sea life in a changing era.

Edward Wallace Shackford established a winter home at Harrington, Maine, and a summer home that was a “comfortable cottage by the sea,” at Point Ripley, “which has proved so delightful a summer retreat to seekers for an ideal seaside rest.”

He also found congenial spirits at the periodical meetings of Eastern Lodge, No. 7, Free and Accepted Masons, of Eastport; Dirigo Chapter, Royal Arch Masons of Cherryfield; and Tomah Tribe, No. 67, Improved Order of Red Men, of Harrington, Maine. He was elected a member and chairman of the Harrington Republican town committee. He was chairman of the Harrington school board for three years, represented his district in the house of representatives of the state of Maine in 1903-04, and was a member of the senate of the state of Maine 1905-1906. He was president of the Ripley Land Company of Maine from its organization and attended the Baptist church, where his wife was a member.

And that was essentially the end of the Shackford influence in eastern Maine.

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.