By William J. Tasker
Special to the Aroostook Republican
On Saturday, Sept. 27, the city of Caribou and the Caribou Area Chamber of Commerce will celebrate Alexander Cochran as part of Caribou Heritage Day. And by proclamation, the Caribou City Council has declared that day as Alexander Cochran Day in the city. You can either credit me or fault me for a lot of that happening as I advocated hard for the city to honor this somewhat forgotten and obscure gentleman and his family. But who was he?
The question that ended the opening paragraph has plagued me for over 20 years now. I have come across his name regularly as I have dug deeper and deeper into Caribou history. And even after all that time, there are questions that may never be answered.
What we do know is that he build a gristmill in the late 1820s at the request of the early settlers, most of whom were Irish and had begun arriving around 1823. These “squatters” if you like (though some had titles from either Canada or Maine) had a distrust of British subjects (such as still in Canada from whence most of them came) and the lots they settled were in disputed land that was claimed by both Canada (England) and the United States.
These early settlers had difficulty not only in the distance of the nearest gristmill but also going to Canadian cities was problematic. Since ground flour (buckwheat) was a staple of their diets, they needed Cochran. And so he came.
He built his mill on the Caribou Stream which legend has told us was named because his son (Mark is the most often mentioned) shot a caribou on the stream soon after the family’s arrival. Cochran’s mill and his house would be located on the first road (now called Water St.) into what would become Caribou. That mill would not only serve those early settlers, but proved a bridge of support when later settlers came after the boundary was settled.
We also know that Alexander Cochran died in November of 1864 and soon after, his wife removed his millstones, machinery and family to Arthurette, New Brunswick, and built a mill there which she and her family ran for many years.
Those are all known facts that everyone can agree about. But that is just about it. Often in dispute, especially among descendants and historians, are: when he was born, where he was born, when he came to this side of the Atlantic, who his wives were and what year he actually built his mill. There is even confusion of who his children were. That is a lot of open-ended questions!
Though I do not think I have the final word on these matters, I have some highly educated guesses that can at least be used as a starting point for further research. Let’s deal with each of them in kind.
Who were his wives?
This is probably the hottest potato and one can understand why. We do know that Olive Virginia “Jane” Parks Gardner was his last wife and bore him many children. Her life is much documented. She was the daughter of Jonathan Parks and the widow of Bela Gardner, both very early settlers in the area. She had one daughter with Gardner (raised by Cochran) named Lucy Ann. She was a great help to her miller husband and was said to often tend to the milling for him when he was away. Alexander and Jane were most likely married after 1831.
Now here is where it gets interesting. The esteemed Olaf Nylander researched Cochran long before me. And he stated that Cochran’s first wife was Polly Armstrong. One very knowledgeable descendant I spoke to recently firmly believes that Nylander was correct because, after all, he was a scientist of the first order. Nylander’s research was used in Stella King White’s “Early History of Caribou, Maine.” But this conclusion causes problems.
In February 2013, the website for the Aroostook County Genealogical Society published an article in their “This Old Tree” blog calling the Polly Armstrong story a myth. The article presented some very strong facts to indicate that Cochran married Jane Wark, the daughter of David Wark, in 1819 and they had five children: John, Alexander, Jane, David and Mark. The article listed birth records for four of these listing Jane as the mother (and this was of course before Jane Parks).
This is supported by Bailey Mitchell who — in his articles now published as a booklet by the Caribou Historical Society — related that when Cochran was looking for a mill site in the area, he was accompanied by Mr. Wark, his father-in-law. The man accompanying Cochran was Sam Wark, however, and that would have been his brother-in-law.
When Alexander Cochran Jr. died, his parents were listed as Alexander and Jane Wark. That is pretty strong evidence.
The final point made by “This Old Tree” is that since Alexander Cochran is listed as being born in 1801 or 1803, there would have been no time for him to have been married to Polly Armstrong. Ah, but that is a problem statement too. I believe that Alexander Cochran was born much earlier than that (as we shall see).
In Nylander’s notes that were not published, he lists correspondence from a Paul Cochran of Oregon who was a grandson of Alexander Cochran Jr. His grandfather told the story of how Cochran came to this side of the Atlantic and that Alexander was able to bring his wife over three months later. While as we shall see, we know who brought Cochran to Canada, Nylander did not furnish a date. I found a possible record that I need to tie in decisively that Cochran arrived in 1812.
If that is the case, perhaps Bailey Mitchell is correct when he states boldly that Alexander Cochran had three wives and not just two. Maybe this first one brought over from Ireland was the elusive Polly Armstrong and maybe she died soon after arriving in Canada.
When and where
was Alexander Cochran born?
The “where” is somewhat easier to answer so we will start there. Genealogies in the family list Cork, Ireland as Cochran’s birth place. I can’t pin that down for sure, but Ireland seems pretty safe. Although Cochran’s nickname was, “Sandy,” and despite the red hair and an old poem that called him a Scotsman, Cochran himself listed Ireland as his birthplace in two censuses. And the story of how and why he came, according to family legend, repeat the same.
As to when Cochran was born, that is a bit harder to establish. I have learned over the years never to trust early census records when establishing a birth year. The dates given to the census-takers are almost never correct. So it matters little that Cochran’s two census records list 1801 and 1803 as his birth year. I believe he was born at least 10 years earlier. Both of the foundations of my belief are anecdotal.
First, there was an account of someone who had been alive before Cochran died and said that Cochran was in his 70s when he knew him. That is about as anecdotal as it gets.
Secondly, in that possible arrival record I found, the date of the document is in 1812 and says that Cochran was born around 1790. And that leads to …
The reason Cochran left Ireland and the when and how
We are straying further and further from a fact-based study here and I admit that. There is an old legend that Cochran left Ireland because he was a horse thief. I do not believe that at all. You don’t start out as a horse thief and turn into a respectable man, which by all accounts he was. But it might be true that Cochran had a good reason for leaving his homeland.
A story passed down from Alexander Jr. to his children relates that his father’s family had a peat farm over in Ireland. Eventually, the family exhausted the supply of peat on the property. Faced with his family’s starvation, Alexander and his brother, Herman, started smuggling peat and were found out. Needing to leave Ireland in a hurry, the two brothers (and a sister) found sympathy with a Capt. Hamilton who was heading to the United States.
As the story goes, the destination was Virginia but bad weather forced the voyage further north and the ship landed in Maine instead. That record I told you I found is from Maine, so there is a possibility of a match.
The story seems very plausible because the same Capt. Hamilton ended up marrying Alexander’s sister, Bethiah Cochran, in November of 1817! While that marriage record pinpoints one relative, I have not been able to find any trace of Herman Cochran. Alexander did name one of his children, “Herman,” so there is a case for him having a brother by that name.
The second and final part of the Cochran story will run next week.
