Who Were the Resourceful Russells?

Aroostook River and Falls Road.

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 and Ellen eventually settled in south Florida. Despite their differences, they shared one trait: the gift of resourcefulness.

Bust of Ellen Russell Mallory, Key West, Florida.

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.

Back in Ireland, Michael joined a British military regiment destined for India. But later in Europe, in December or early 1817, he left that unit for reasons unknown and joined the Royal West India Rangers’ regiment which ended up in 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 Michael ever visit Trinidad during his military career? Did he and Ellen know each other from before?

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 Key West, Florida—inhabited at that time by pirates and fishermen.

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

Four years later, 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.

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 in the early 1820s, Michael was guarding lumber equipment along the Aroostook River for the reputable Peters, Wilmot & Company of St. John. At the time, land in that area was claimed by both Maine and New Brunswick. After his duties were done, Michael went back to Fredericton where his family was living and soon moved them about 114 miles northwest to a flat near the river’s falls. Many historians believe Michael was the first white settler of what later became the town of Fort Fairfield, Maine. 

Eventually a road was built along the winding river where Michael and his growing family lived—the Aroostook Falls Road—which now ends at the Canadian border. When the Maine and New Brunswick border was finalized in the 1840s, part of Michael’s property was located on the Canadian side and part on the American.

Besides raising livestock and growing crops, Michael supplied his family with several other means of revenue. Historian Wilmot T. Ashby wrote in A Complete History of Aroostook County that on one side of the falls was a narrow fishway worn through the rock where salmon passed through. In the spring, Michael would hang a net and catch “tons of salmon.” Ashby claimed that opening was named “Rusal’s Hole.”

Like most farmers, Michael continued harvesting trees and his family operated a sawmill. He 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. 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 on the south bank of the river. Next door, the James Fitzherbert farm—begun seven years earlier by Benjamin Weeks—included a house, farm, and 15 acres cleared. Next to Fitzherbert was land claimed by Peters, Wilmot & Co.

Other settlers on the south bank: Dean, Loveless, Rogers, Wright, Parker, McDougal, Dorsey, Campbell, Heywood, and McLaughlin. The agents recorded that five settlers originated from Ireland, four from New Brunswick, two from the United States, and one from Scotland. On the north bank: Fowler, McLaughlin, Davenport, Bobear (Bubar), McDougal, Powers, and Mowry. Four of these were from Ireland, four hailed from New Brunswick, and one from Scotland.

Deane and Kavanagh also recorded crops grown in that area: wheat, barley, rye, oats, Indian corn, peas, potatoes, and hay “in great qualities.” Pine trees were not that plentiful but were more so near the head of the river. Trees in the Fort Fairfield area included 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 were 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 was available, in the areas they had settled, to their advantage. Michael and his family had an abundance of lush, natural resources. 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.