The Resourceful Russells

 

In the early 1790s, two Russells were born within two years of each other in Carrick-on-Suir, Ireland: Michael and Ellen. They may have been closely related—or not. As adults, Michael ended up settling in northern Maine. Ellen eventually settled in south Florida. Despite their differences, they shared one trait: the gift of resourcefulness.

Orphaned at 13, Ellen traveled from Ireland to the Island of Trinidad where she was brought up by her mothers’ two plantation-owning brothers. At age 16 she married Charles Mallory, an American construction engineer from Connecticut. They raised two sons, John and Stephen.

In 1816 Michael joined a British military regiment in Ireland destined for India. But later in Europe, in December or early 1817, he joined the Royal West India Rangers’ regiment stationed at St. Lucia—about 223 miles from Trinidad. His regiment remained in the Caribbean until 1819 when he and about 600 other men were disbanded in St. John, New Brunswick, and awarded land grants or funds for their service. 

Did Ellen and Michael know each other? Was that why Michael deserted the regiment bound for India? Did the Trinidad relations continue communications with those in Ireland? Did Michael visit Trinidad?

In 1820, Ellen’s husband grew ill and they left the island in search of a better climate. They enrolled Stephen in an Alabama school while Ellen, Charles, and John lived in Havana and then moved to Key West, Florida, inhabited at that time by pirates and fishermen.

In 1821, Michael married Phoebe Youmans in St. John. Born in New Brunswick, she was the daughter of English Loyalists from New York. Michael and Phoebe’s son John was baptized in Fredericton, N.B., and daughter Mary soon followed.

Then in 1825 tragedy struck the Mallory family. Both Charles and John died of tuberculosis and were buried in Key West. Ellen used what resources she had and converted her home into a boarding house for sailors. She also nursed Yellow Fever victims back to health and financed Stephen’s enrollment at a Pennsylvania academy.

For many years the Coconut Grove was the only place for visitors to stay in Key West. Ellen became renowned throughout the state for her hospitality, cheerfulness, Irish wit, and musical voice.

As an adult, Stephen married and had children, practiced law, and was elected US senator from Florida. Ellen lived to see her son prosper, and died in 1855. In her honor, Key West erected a stone image of Ellen that you can still see today.

One summer after his marriage, Michael guarded lumber equipment for a New Brunswick company. The equipment was located in northeastern Maine along the Aroostook River where part of the international boundary was disputed. The firm may have been the reputable Peters, Wilmot & Company from St. John. After his duties were done, Michael went back to Fredericton and moved his young family to a choice location he had found next to the river, near the falls. Most historians believed they were the first white settlers of what later became the town of Fort Fairfield. 

Eventually a road was built along the south side of the winding, sparkling river where Michael and his growing family lived—the Aroostook Falls Road—which ended at the Canadian border. When the border was finalized in the 1840s, part of Michael’s property was said to be on the Canadian side, with some on the American.

Besides raising livestock and growing crops, Michael supplied his family with several other means of revenue. Historian Wilmot T. Ashby wrote that Michael netted numerous Atlantic salmon traveling through a narrow portion of rock hollowed out by the river. Like most farmers, he probably continued harvesting trees to sell, and his family operated a sawmill. Michael also navigated travelers around the falls. 

On August 16, 1831, state agents John Deane and Edward Kavanagh hired Michael to haul their boat over the portage near the falls. They had been commissioned to document settlements in the northern part of the state and were traveling south.

In their report, Deane and Kavanagh recorded a number of settlers near Michael’s property. Next door, the James Fitzherbert farm, begun seven years earlier by Benjamin Weeks, included a house, farm, and 15 acres cleared (page 474). Next to Fitzherbert was land claimed by Peters, Wilmot & Co. Other settlers on the south river bank: Dean, Loveless, Rogers, Wright, Parker, McDougal, Dorsey, Campbell, Heywood, and McLaughlin. On the north bank: Fowler, McLaughlin, Davenport, Bobear (Bubar), McDougal, Powers, and Mowry.

Deane and Kavanagh also recorded crops: wheat, barley, rye, oats, Indian corn, peas, potatoes, and hay “in great qualities” (476). Pine trees were not that plentiful but were more so near the head of the river and sold for the highest price in St. John. Other trees in the Aroostook area: maple, birch, beech, ash, elm, fir, spruce, cedar, butternut, and hackmatack.

Many of Michael and Phoebe’s children married and settled on the opposite side of the river along what is now called the Russell Road. Their children included John, Mary, Thomas, Sarah, William, Nicholas, Martha, Nancy, and Margaret. For years, a good portion of the town’s residents could claim their ancestry back to the Russells.

Finally in 1866, at the age of 85, Michael died. A stone was erected in the Old Catholic Cemetery on the South Caribou Road, commemorating his life.

Michael and Ellen used what available resources they had to their advantage. Michael and his family had an abundance of lush, natural resources in the location he chose. Ellen, owner of her own home at the death of her husband, chose to convert that into a boarding house as she saw the need among seamen and other travelers.

Both possessed robust health and “street smarts.” Many men died from diseases on poorly equipped ships. That Michael survived is a testament to his strong health. Some men in northern Maine succumbed to serious accidents in the lumber and farming trades, and in the sometimes cold, rushing river. Michael survived those dangers. Ellen’s husband and son John died from TB, but she did not. She aptly cared for numerous men who had come down with Yellow Fever and, as a woman, maintained a business for many years in what would be considered a rough area.

Both Russells were hard workers, Catholic, dark-haired. The first white male settler of Fort Fairfield and the first white female settler of Key West. First settlers had to be resourceful. And Michael and Ellen of Carrick-on-Suir—related or not—definitely were.