Maple Glen Farm History

This history was written in 1991 by Richard Spaulding for his daughters, Susan and Sharon.

Great Grandfather Alonzo M. Foster bought the Thomas Lyford place in Cabot in 1866, the year after the Civil War ended, and with wife Elsie Wheeler Dudley, moved from North Calais. He had been working the family place in North Calais with his brother Sidney, married to Elsie's twin sister. The place previously was farmed by their parents, George Washington Foster and Polly Kelton (1).

Alonzo's daughter, Linie Dell Foster (my grandmother), married E. Payson Walbridge. Linie and Payson continued working the farm Alonzo called Maple Glen, and later on, the adjacent hill farm known as the Adams Place. This expanded their dairying and sugaring to the boundaries of Hartwell and Florence Stone's place on Cabot Plains (Ed Stone's folks). The divide between the Stone and Foster/Walbridge farms was the natural ravine now crossed by the Foster Covered Bridge. Maple Glen stayed in the family until the late 1970's when it was purchased by Robert and Barbara Davis, who live on the Plains. The Davis's carried on the Jersey and sugaring traditions at Maple Glen.

(1)From Grandma Linie Dell Foster Walbridge's records: "Grandpa and Grandma Foster (G. W. F. and Polly Kelton, who would be my [Spaulding's] great-great grandparents) were married November 17, 1822, and took a carriage drive to his former home in Royalton, Mass. (the homeplace of his father, Sargent Thomas Foster.) Sargent Thomas Foster was of Weymouth and Billerica. He was a blacksmith. He lived and died in Weymouth and Marshfield, Mass., and [is] buried in Marshfield, Mass. His father was Nathaniel. I understand Sargent Thomas Foster was father of my grandpa George W. Foster (father to my great grandfather Alonzo). Another place says he was born in Ablong (Albany?), N.Y. on Jan. 10, 1750; died in Calais in 1832. Great grandfather was then 2 years old, born in 1830. He was a Sgt. in N. Y. Troops, Revolutionary War. Moved from Kent, Conn. to Vt. in Strafford and later to Calais. Twice married, and last wife, Hannah Bliss, 1780. Their children: Artemas, b. 1781; Horace, b. 1784; Alonzo, b. 1785; Lucinda b. 1785; Miranda, b. 1792; and George Washington, b. ?.

NOTE: Ric