went to work with a will, and an academy was established and incorporated in 1795.  This was the second result.  The academy did not flourish to an extent to suit their views, and they beset the Legislature to grant them a township of land in the woods of Maine to enable them to endow it.  They carried their point, and in 1797 obtained the grant.  The effort had been great, and great was the rejoicing at its successful issue.  But, as bad luck would have it, just at that time land could not be sold at any price.  The grant became worthless; and deep and bitter was the disappointment of the people of New Salem.  The doom of the academy seemed to be settled, and its days numbered and finished.  But there were men in New Salem who were determined that the academy should be saved.  They met in consultation, and, under the lead of still another Joseph Houlton, of the same descent, fixed their purpose.  They sold or mortgaged their farms, which more than half a century of labor had rendered productive, and which every association and every sentiment rendered dear to them.  With the money thus raised they bought the granted tract, paying a good price for it.  The preservation and endowment of the academy were thus secured; but all benefit from it to themselves or their descendants was wholly relinquished.  It was the only way in which the academy could be saved.  Some must make the sacrifice, and they made it.  They packed up bag and baggage; sold off all they could not carry; gathered their families together; bid farewell to the scenes of their birth and childhood, the homes of their life, and the fruits of their labor; and started in wagons and carts on the journey to Boston.  Their location was hundreds of miles distant, far down in the eastern wilderness, and inaccessible from the extremes of settlement at that time on the Penobscot.  As the only alternative, they embarked in a coasting-vessel; went down the Bay of Fundy to St. John, N.B.; took a river-sloop up to Fredericton,—­a hundred miles; got up the river as they could, in barges or canoes, eighty miles further to Woodstock; and there, turning to the left, struck into the forest, until they reached their location.  The third result of this emigration, in successive generations and stages, from Salem Farms, is to be seen to-day in a handsome and flourishing village, interspersed and surrounded with well-cultivated fields,—­the shire town of the county of Aroostook, in the State of Maine; which bears the name of the leader of this disinterested, self-sacrificing, and noble company.  Three times was it the lot of this one family to encounter and conquer the difficulties, endure and triumph over the privations, and carry through the herculean labors, of subduing a rugged wilderness, and bringing it into the domain of civilization,—­at Salem Village, New Salem, and Houlton.  It would be difficult to find, in all our history, a story that more strikingly than this illustrates the elements of the glory and strength of New England,—­zeal for education,—­enterprise invigorated by difficulties,—­and prowess equal to all emergencies.