Azubah Freeman Ryder
Orrington center
Sitting on her father’s front steps in Orrington on an early September day in 1814, Azubah Freeman Ryder, nine months pregnant, was watching her children play when, according to local legend, a contingent of British soldiers marched up Castine Road headed toward Bangor. With the United States again at war with Great Britain, the British were moving to control more of the area. Ryder raced into action.
Despite her pregnancy, she ran four miles along a rough path through the forest, her children in tow, to arrive at the local militia captain’s home to alert him and her other neighbors that the British were coming. Ryder gave birth to a daughter that evening at the militia captain’s home.
While Ryder’s race through the woods didn’t impact the outcome of the British advance, she became a hometown hero, later referred to as the “Paul Revere of Orrington.” She died in 1888 at the age of 104 and was thought, at that time, to have been the oldest person in New England.
Author: Stephanie Bouchard
