Kennebec Valley 2012 by Discover Maine Magazine

DISCOVER

MAINE Volume 9, Issue 2

Maine’s History Magazine Greater Kennebec Valley Edition

Free 2012

www.discovermainemagazine.com The Two-Cent Bridge Waterville and Winslow’s overlooked treasure

When Calomel Was The Samson Of Medicine “Wonder drug” of the late 1800s

The Dead River Body Guard Census worker discovers family secret in Flagstaff Plantation

2 4 6 8 11 13 16 18 20 22 24 26 29 32 34 38 41 43 45 48 52 55

Discover Maine

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

~ Inside This Edition ~

Hallowell: The Granite City Once one of the most modern quarrying operations in the country Charles Francis The Brecks Of The Screw Steamer Niphon China brothers served together on famous blockade ship Charles Francis Monmouth’s John Chandler Revolutionary War developed Americans Charles Francis The Oaklands’ Governess As well-educated as the best-prepared Harvard graduate Charles Francis When Calomel Was The Samson Of Medicine “Wonder drug” of the late 1800s Charles Francis Jackie Nichols: Maine’s Greatest Wrestler Richmond High School graduate became famous at his sport Charles Francis Once In A Blue Moon Origin explained Charles Francis Father Dennis Ryan And The Early Irish Of North Whitefield Irish priest made his way to Maine in 1818 Matthew Jude Barker The Augusta Theatre Company And Old Time Maine Movie Making Thirty movie shorts were made promoting the State of Maine Charles Francis The Politician And The Prohibitionist Governor Hubbard signs the Maine Law Charles Francis The “China Watcher” Waterville journalist shared caves with China’s Mao and his communist compatriots Charles Francis New Vineyard Inventor O.S. Turner Creator of Turner’s Patent Chairs Sherwood W. Anderson The Dead River Body Guard Census worker discovers family secret in Flagstaff Plantation Steve Pinkham The Magnificant Gulf Stream Trestle The second wonder of the north woods Charles Francis The Two-Cent Bridge Waterville and Winslow’s overlooked treasure James Nalley Campmeeting John Maine’s famous evangelist Charles Francis The Genealogy Corner Distinguished given names Charles Francis Edward J. Lawrence Fairfield’s self-made man James Nalley Maine Governor Abner Coburn Skowhegan’s generous gentleman Charlotte Mayo The Old Canada Road Enigma What’s really in a name? Charles Francis Directory Of Advertisers See who helps us bring Maine’s history to you!

Discover Maine Magazine Greater Kennebec Valley Edition Published Annually by CreMark, Inc. 10 Exchange Street, Suite 208 Portland, Maine 04101 (207) 874-7720 info@discovermainemagazine.com

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Advertising & Sales Kelly Collins Chris Girouard Tim Maxfield Craig Palmacci

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Contributing Writers

Sherwood W. Anderson Matthew Jude Barker Charles Francis fundy67@yahoo.ca Charlotte Mayo James Nalley Steve Pinkham

Discover Maine Magazine is distributed to fraternal organizations, shopping centers, libraries, newsstands, grocery and convenience stores, hardware stores, lumber companies, motels, restaurants and other locations throughout this part of Maine. NO PART of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from CreMark, Inc. Copyright © 2012, CreMark, Inc.

SubSCRIPTION FORM ON PAgE 24 Front cover photo:

Tibbett’s Shoe Store, benton Station from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org All photos in Discover Maine’s Greater Kennebec Valley Edition show Maine as it used to be, and many are from local citizens who love this part of Maine. Photos are also provided from our collaboration with the Maine Historical Society and the Penobscot Marine Museum.

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

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Notes From The Fayette Ridge by Michele Farrar

t’s been a sad story for snow up here on the ridge this year. There’s an I.T.S. snowmobile trail across the street from my house, and normally the hum of the machines can be heard throughout the day. Not so this winter. That silence points to a slew of businesses that surely are having a tough time of it. My old friend Bob says it’s a fool who relies on the weather to make a living. His only exception is a weather man. Since it doesn’t matter what the weather really does, the weather man still has a job. Bob is quick to point out, however, that the weather man is commonly disliked and frequently blamed for bad weather, along with bad weather reporting, so clearly it must be one of the most hated jobs in America. Last week Bob went to Auburn to get a few supplies that aren’t readily available in our general area. (There’s no WalMart or Home Depot down the street in Fayette.) He was walking into a store and saw three piles of

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children’s plastic sleds in the entryway. There were “flying saucers” and two sizes of regular “sleds.” (Bob says they’re not sleds, because sleds are made of wood and have metal run-

ners with a steering arm and brakes. He has an old rusty one hanging in his garage, but kids today have no idea how to operate them and Bob says his sledding days are long over.) Bob’s youngest grandson is almost two years old, and Bob decided he should have a sled to use when he comes to visit. So he picked up a bright yellow, medium-sized sled and was checking the price tag when a man walked by and said, “They should put those

on sale, there’s no snow!” Bob looked around, and sure enough, there was no snow in Auburn — just a few ugly, dirty piles left over from the snowplow after the last storm. We have snow on the ridge. Not a lot, but enough for a plastic sled. There’s ice, too. When Bob got home from Auburn, he took the sled out of the car and set it on the driveway so he could get the rest of the bags out of the car. The sled immediately started sliding, as there’s a slope on the driveway. It slid under the car, and Bob lunged after it on a particularly icy spot. He missed by inches, fell over in the process, and saw the sled careen off the driveway and on down the hill that’s beside it. Bob watched that bright yellow sled slide 300 yards and then disappear into the trees at the bottom of the hill. “No snow, my arse,” he mumbled as he pulled himself up off the ice. Eventually Bob trekked down the hill and retrieved the sled, and his grandson came to visit the next day. They had a blast on that hill. I haven’t seen Bob’s cheeks so rosy in years. ■

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

or much of its history Hallowell had an influence well out of proportion to its size. This influence came along with the fact that residents could claim that Hallowell was the smallest city in Maine by population, as well as the second smallest in the entire country. At one time Hallowell included all of Augusta and Chelsea, as well as portions of Manchester, Farmingdale and Gardiner. Benjamin Vaughan, the most influential of the Kennebec Proprietors, made his home here. Hallowell was once considered for the state’s capitol. It can claim to be the birthplace of the Maine press. Hallowell presses turned out the first schoolbooks printed in Maine. The Eastern Star was published here in 1794. It was followed by the Maine Farmer’s Almanac.

Hallowell: The Granite City Once one of the most modern quarrying operations in the country by Charles Francis

Hallowell Granite Works, ca. 1900. Detail of item #5445 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

StevenS

Today “Hallowell imprints” are collectors’ items. Then there was the granite industry. In the decades before and after 1900, Hallowell granite from the quarries operated by James Bodwell and others was the preferred choice for statuary and monuments. Hallowell granite had a lighter color than most and was considered easier to work. It was used for the forty-foot Liberty statue on the Pilgrim’s memorial at Plymouth. At the time the granite for the memorial was cut, the Hallowell quarries were among the largest in the world. Hallowell granite was also used in the construction of the capitol at Albany, New York, the Marshall Field Building in Chicago, Memorial Bridge in the nation’s capitol, and even as far away as the post office in Dallas, Texas.

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

The first Hallowell granite to see a functional use probably took the form of easily obtainable boulders from fields, and was used for foundations. The first Hallowell granite to be marketed probably came from Haines Ledge on the Manchester line. Among other places, it was used in the cornice work of the Quincy Market in Boston. Granite for the Bulfinch-designed Maine State House was blasted out from Hallowell quarries in 1829. The greatest demand for Hallowell granite began shortly after the Civil War when James Bodwell and Charles and William Wilson formed the partnership that operated the Hallowell Granite Company. Bodwell was the driving force behind the company. He was also a major figure on the Maine scene for much of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Besides deserving the title of “The Granite King of Maine,” he was also a Maine Governor. Joseph Robinson Bodwell was born in Methuen, Massachusetts in 1818. As a youngster, he was — for all practical purposes — an indentured farm laborer on a Methuen farm. His first work in the stone industry came when, at the age of twenty, he found employment hauling stone for the construction of a dam in Lawrence. He continued in this and other aspects of the quarry industry until he became an expert in every aspect of cutting and handling stone. In 1852 Bodwell came to Maine where he formed a partnership with Moses Webster. The two began operations on Fox Island off Vinalhaven. Granite from this quarry was used in the construction of a number of Washington landmarks, including the buildings housing the departments of State, War and the Navy. After developing the Fox Island quarries, Bodwell devoted his energies to quarrying in Hallowell. Under James Bodwell’s direction the Hallowell Granite Company became one of the

most modern quarrying operations in the country. Cutting sheds were expanded, derricks were used for the first time in quarrying, and the company opened offices in Boston, New York and Chicago. In addition, Hallowell Granite Company workers earned the highest wage of any quarrymen in Maine. James Bodwell made Hallowell his home from 1866 on. While Bodwell did not consider himself a politician, he found himself pressed in public service on a regular basis. While he never actively sought out office, he served as Hallowell’s mayor on two occasions and represented the town in the Maine Legislature. He was also a delegate to the Republican National Convention a number of times. When queried if he had other political aspirations, he always replied that he was too busy running his quarries. In the mid-1880s Bodwell’s name began to appear more and more frequently in the press as a potential gubernatorial candidate. In 1885 two-term governor Frederick Robie chose not to seek reelection. Without any effort on his own some newspapers actually reported that it happened against his wishes — Bodwell was chosen Republican candidate for governor. He handily defeated his opponent Clark Edwards 68,850 to 55,289. Governor Bodwell ran the executive office in Augusta much the same way he ran the office of his Hallowell quarries, in a businesslike manner. He did not live to complete his term as governor, however. James Bodwell died while he was still serving as Governor on December 15, 1887. The business of the State of Maine, of course, did not falter. Sebastian Marble, who had been President of the Maine Senate, became Acting Governor. In Hallowell, the quarries kept on turning out granite. Joseph F. Bodwell, the Granite King’s son, took over as president of the Hallowell Granite Company. World War I saw a drastic decline in the

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granite industry, and Hallowell — like all other granite producing areas — suffered accordingly. After the war there was a resurgence of activity at Hallowell Granite. Then the Depression had the disastrous effect here as it did in most other industries. Today Maine’s granite industry is largely a thing of the past. There was a time, however, when Hallowell granite was famed across the United States. ■

Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

serving in the military during owell Mason Breck lies the War Between the States, in China Village Cemeas Lowell and Joseph Breck tery. Joseph Berry did. Breck’s last resting place is ArLowell and Joseph Breck lington National Cemetery. were officers in the Union Lowell Breck’s last words Navy. They served on the of record are “O! I cannot screw steamer Niphon. The die, for I have done nothing Niphon was a blockade ship yet.” Lowell was just twenty— a famous one. Among four when he succumbed of other accomplishments, the tuberculosis in 1864. His last Niphon captured the Confedthoughts speak to a sense of erate vessel Comubia. The Cofrustration — frustration of a mubia carried papers life all too early interrupted. exposing Britain’s role in proThere is no record as to by Charles Francis viding ships for the ConfedJoseph Breck’s last words. He erate cause. passed on far from China, in Lowell and Joseph Breck San Francisco in 1865. He was stepped on the deck of the thirty-five. Joseph Breck travNiphon both holding the rank elled west for health reasons. California was thought to be more conducive for the health of con- of Acting Ensign. It was February of 1863 when they assumed their sumptives than Maine. Perhaps Joseph did not feel the same frustration duties. Joseph was the senior of the two. He was commander of the as Lowell as he felt his life ebb — he was older, had married and fa- Niphon. Both Lowell and Joseph Breck had experience at sea before joining thered children, and therefore possessed more experiences and memthe Navy. Both learned seamanship and navigation sailing out of ories. The coincidence of Lowell and Joseph Breck dying of the same mal- Thomaston. Joseph, being older, had the greater degree of expertise. ady barely a year apart is not at all unusual given the times. Consump- He had over ten years as ship master. The Niphon’s first station was off Wilmington, North Carolina. She tion or tuberculosis — as it is better known today — was all too common in the nineteenth century. It was especially so among those captured her first blockade runner, the Banshee, the end of July. In mid-

the Brecks Of the Screw Steamer niphon

China brothers served together on famous blockade ship

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Originally situated on 18 acres of land in Winslow, Pine View had 19 park sites. Through the years, their park has grown to a mobile home community of 45 sites, with providing single and double-wide lots. The park has ample sized spaces with picnic/park area and playground for the children. All road and driveways are paved with garbage and snow removal services provided. In 2004, Pine View purchased 17 acres of land on the east side of Route #201 and created another display lot to include both double-wide and modular home displays. Originally Pine View was a furniture and gift store. This soon developed into a mobile home park and travel trailer business. Mr. Hustus was the first person in Maine to both sell and rent mobile homes and travel trailers. Pine View still maintains the rental business but no longer handles travel trailers. Pine View Homes is a company that not only provides fine quality, affordable homes for Maine families, but also one that stands behind its products with a full-time service department. We can deliver your new home, free of charge, to any lot in the State of Maine. Our reputation is such that customers who have purchased their first home from Pine View return again and again to re-purchase other homes and often times bring their children to Pine View to buy their homes, too!

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Today the company has 19 employees, half of those with 10+ years of service. Pine View has diversified over the years and is involved in both the manufacturing and finance end of the business. We are members of the Chamber of Commerce, the Manufactured Housing Association of Maine, Volume buyers LLC. and are in good standing with the better business bureau. under the ownership of Mike & Tracy, the offices have been remodeled, but the business remains in the original homestead of his grandparents. They have maintained the family values and integrity – to provide quality, attractive housing for the lowest price possible!!

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

August the Niphon went after the Hebe, an exceptionally heavily-laden Confederate supply vessel. Realizing the untenable nature of their vessel’s situation, the Hebe’s crew abandoned her to the mercies of a building storm. Lowell Breck was one of the officers in charge of the Niphon boats that went out in hopes of securing the Hebe’s valuable cargo. The ever-increasing severity of the storm swamped all the Niphon boats, however. The disaster probably hurried Lowell Breck being invalided back to Maine. November 8, 1863 marked the Niphon’s capture of the Comubia. The next day the Niphon took another blockade runner, the Ella and Annie. This was off Masonboro Inlet, North Carolina. Joseph Breck led the boarding party which captured the Ella and Annie. The Confederate would be refitted for the Union Navy. Masonboro would later be the site of Joseph Breck’s last action as a Union naval officer. In February of 1864 Joseph Breck was one of the officers in charge of landing parties that destroyed the Masonboro salt works. Six months later, in August, Breck piloted the Niphon up Masonboro Inlet to knock out a Confederate battery. Then on September 19, the last day of Joseph Breck’s command of the Niphon, the ship landed a clandestine party

at the inlet to gather information on the defenses of Wilmington. Later the same day Breck was relieved of duty by a medical survey team. When Joseph Breck was invalided out of the Navy on September 19, 1864, he had advanced to the rank of lieutenant commander. Due to his worsening consumption, the Navy sent him home. He did not arrive for Lowell Breck’s funeral, however. Lowell had died five days before Joseph left the Niphon. The fact that Lowell died in Maine undoubtedly had something to do with Joseph deciding to head west. If anything though, the damp sea voyage worsened the condition of Joseph’s already congested lungs. He died on July 26, 1865. His remains were moved to Arlington National Cemetery some years later. Lowell Mason Breck’s grave site is identified as being that of a figure of no historical significance. In May of 1919 a vessel bearing Joseph Berry Breck’s name was launched at the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation’s yard in Squantum, Massachusetts. The USS Breck, a Clemson class destroyer, was christened by Joseph Breck’s granddaughter Ellen Breck MacNee. There is an addendum to Joseph Breck’s

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naval career. His name might even be of greater note in the history of the Navy and in Civil War history but for a lack of seniority. While commander of the Niphon, Breck volunteered to go after the infamous ironclad ram Albemarle. The officer who was awarded the task and who accomplished the feat was William Cushing. Cushing was given the task of chasing down the Albemarle after he volunteered because he was senior to Breck. The naval careers and lives of Lowell Mason Breck and Joseph Berry Breck offer stark contrast. Lowell’s shorter life span did not offer him the opportunities that Joseph’s longer one provided him. Lowell’s last words suggest something more than the passing of a thwarted spirit — they suggest a loss of dignity. Joseph was master of ships sailing from Thomaston. He rose to the rank of lieutenant commander. He married not once, but twice. When his first wife died he married again and had children. Lowell Breck’s last words speak to a sense of life unfulfilled. Joseph Breck could look to memories of a life of experiences as he passed away. ■ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Monmouth’s John Chandler

was. Change was in the air, boy sits on the edge though. There were rumors. of the world. He John Chandler’s father had stares at a scene only just gone off to fight. It wasn’t God could have created. It is the first time he had done this. spring and the hills so verdant John knew some of the stothat one envies the cows their ries. Joseph Chandler had been grass. In hollows, patches of a militia captain during the snow melt and drip. In the disFrench and Indian War. He tance the even greener mounwas a militia captain now. Captains are sheep-dotted. A town tain Joseph Chandler had gone bell strikes. There are other off because there was fighting sounds — a whisper of warm in neighboring Massachusetts. wind, the cow’s lowing, bird Though John didn’t know it, cries, a creak of harness, a gighe would never see his father gle of rushing water. again. The boy — his name is by Charles Francis Joseph Chandler died in John Chandler — is fourteen. The year is 1776. The place is a small town — a hamlet, really. There 1776. With that, a lot changed for fourteen-year-old John. John Chandler was born in Epping, New Hampshire in 1762. In are a lot of small towns like this in New England of 1776. John is like many New England boys on the verge of adolescence. John hasn’t been 1776 he joined the Continental Army. After the war he settled in Monto school. A lot of boys didn’t go to school then. It was nothing un- mouth. He went on to a remarkable career as a militia officer and as a usual that John couldn’t read, write, or cipher. His older brothers could- political. John Chandler was one of a new breed of men. He was an American. In a sense he created himself, just as a lot of others did back n’t, either. At fourteen, John Chandler was something of a blank slate. He was- in the Revolution and the years immediately following. In a sense, John n’t much of anything. He didn’t think of himself as anything in par- Chandler reconceived himself. Someone wrote a biography of John Chandler’s Revolutionary War ticular. He did what his older brothers did, which was what Joseph Chandler, the father, said to do. That was about all John knew. Joseph career. It is a remarkable piece. It is anonymous, unsigned. The little biChandler was a farmer. Farming provided the bounds of John’s life. ography tells of how Chandler joined the Continental Army at age 14 He did as he was supposed to do. That was what he was and who he with his two older brothers. It tells how he fought in the last battle

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

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against Burgoyne and went on to serve on the Arnold, an 18-gun privateer. It tells how Chandler was captured by the British at sea and taken to Savannah. Chandler and seventeen others escaped. In Savannah they joined up with General Benjamin Lincoln. Through General Lincoln, Chandler met General Henry Dearborn. Dearborn took a liking to the teenage soldier, becoming something akin to the youngster’s mentor. It was because of Dearborn that Chandler came to settle in Monmouth in Kennebec County. This is getting a bit ahead of things, though. First, Chandler served the rest of the war. The Revolution created America. The Revolution created Americans. The Revolution made John Chandler an American. Character before the Revolution is generally regarded as relatively unchanging; men and women are represented as ageing and dying, but not as changing because their relationship to themselves, rather than to the country, has changed. From the time of the Revolution on, character develops rather than unfolds. Character develops because individuals reconceive themselves. This is what being an American is all about. This is what John Chandler is about. It is what happened when Chandler came to Monmouth in the early 1780s.

Monmouth was a part of the old Plymouth Patent. At the close of the Revolution, General Dearborn acquired some 5,225 acres of the township. For a number of years he made the township his home, developing it. John Chandler followed in Dearborn’s wake, arriving in the community with a much-needed skill. Chandler was a blacksmith. It is said Chandler came “the poorest man in the settlement in respect to money.” General Dearborn, however, lent Chandler money, $400. The $400 was used to purchase 200 acres. Monmouth was incorporated as a town in 1792. General Dearborn suggested the name. The General fought at the Battle of Monmouth. By and large the battle had been an American success. In 1792 Monmouth was prospering as a town. John Chandler was prospering, too. John Chandler was a self-educated man. The fourteen-year-old Chandler was illiterate. The man learned to read, write, do sums, and more. It would be tempting to call Chandler self-made. He, of course, had a friend in Henry Dearborn. Would either have done what they did had they not been American? It is doubtful. The times and the land were irrevocably changed with the birth of America. At one time or another John Chandler held

most of the important positions in Kennebec County. He was Massachusetts Senator from 1803 to 1805. He served as a Democratic Republican to the United States House of Representatives from 1805 to 1809. In 1808 he was appointed sheriff of Kennebec County. He served in the Massachusetts Militia and the regular Army during the War of 1812, from 1812-1815, attaining the rank of brigadier general. In the latter position, he saw some fighting in Canada, and was captured by the British when he mistakenly stumbled into enemy lines thinking them his own. Following the war, Chandler actively worked for the separation of Maine from Massachusetts. A picture of John Chandler shows him as kindly, yet knowing. He was a go-getter, that seems certain. In 1819 he was in the Massachusetts General Court. It was a good position from which to work for Maine statehood. It led to Chandler serving on the committee drafting the Maine Constitution. Here he had a role in reporting the provision that guaranteed “absolute freedom of religion.” This was at a time when Massachusetts still played lip service to an established church. From this, one would be tempted to describe Chandler as a liberal. There are similar considerations

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Discover Maine 10

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

(Continued from page 9)

too, such as no property qualifications for voting and the election of state senators based on population, not town size. Chandler was serving as a member of the United States House of Representatives at the time of the Missouri Compromise. If the bill was not passed, Maine would revert to Massachusetts. Missouri was to come in as slave, Maine as free. Maine had seven Congressmen. Five opposed slavery. Only Chandler and one other, Mark Hill, voted for compromise. President Jefferson later thanked Chandler. John Chandler was the first President of the Maine Senate. He held office for only a few months before resigning to become United States Senator from Maine. He held that position from 1820 to 1829. During that time period he is credited with the establishing of the armory at Augusta and the beginnings of the Military Road from Bangor to Houlton. He ended his career in public life as Collector of Customs of Portland. John Chandler died in 1842. That John Chandler had a remarkable career seems evident. The question is would he have done so but for the Revolution? Would he have done so had he been as he had begun life? I think not. But that is opinion. Or is it?■

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Discover Maine

The Oaklands’ Governess As well-educated as the best-prepared Harvard graduate by Charles Francis

n 1823 Emma Jane, Mrs. Robert Hallowell Gardiner, mistress of Oaklands, hired a governess for her children. Robert Hallowell Gardiner was scion of the Kennebec Valley’s illustrious Gardiner family. He was the grandson of Dr. Sylvester Gardiner. The Gardiner family gave their name to Gardiner on the Kennebec. The governess hired for the Gardiner children was an eighteen-year-old woman named Elizabeth Peabody. The young lady had had been brought to the Kennebec Valley by the venerable Benjamin Vaughan to start a school for Vaughan’s grandchildren and other young people of Hallowell. In short, Elizabeth Peabody is part of the historical record of two of Maine’s most respected families, the Gardiners and the Vaughans. This is not the only claim to fame for this particular young lady, however. She is also a principal figure of the recently published biography The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, by Megan Marshall.

The section of Megan Marshall’s work on Elizabeth Peabody’s sojourn at Oaklands, the Gardiner estate on the banks of the Kennebec, is a fascinating look into the history of Gardiner, the entire Kennebec Valley and the socially prominent Gardiner and Vaughan families of the years between the War of 1812 and the War Between the States. Marshall’s book, however, does suggest an historic inaccuracy regarding Oaklands. It also glosses over at least one cause of the controversy between Mrs. Robert Hallowell Gardiner — known as Mrs. G. — and her employee. It was a controversy that played a part in Peabody’s leaving Oaklands. It was also a controversy that had greater implications within the entire Kennebec Valley. Elizabeth Peabody was the eldest and possibly the most remarkable of three remarkable sisters. Among other accomplishments, Elizabeth Peabody was the first important woman publisher in America. This, of course, occurred after she left Oaklands. Peabody also

made a mark as a writer and as an educator. Mary, the next oldest sister and the one who replaced Elizabeth teaching Benjamin Vaughan’s grandchildren, is considered the most important influence on that great educator Horace Mann. In fact, she married Mann. Sophia Peabody, the youngest of the sisters, was the first important woman painter and sculptor in America. She was also Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Elizabeth Peabody was hired by Benjamin Vaughan because of her impeccable credentials. These included the teenager’s friendship with John Kirkland, the president of Harvard. Kirkland considered Peabody at least as welleducated as the best-prepared Harvard graduate. Peabody was also a confidant of William Ellery Channing, whom she viewed as her mentor and inspiration. Channing, the Unitarian minister who brought that liberal religious sect to prominence in New England, was the most influential divine of the time.

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

(Continued from page 11)

come to endorse. This, then, was the young woman that Mrs. Robert Hallowell Gardiner hired as a governess for her children. Megan Marshall presents the Gardiner family of Oaklands as being “female dominated.” Whatever truth lies in this is most likely to be found in Marshall’s perspective. She does not go into Mrs. G.’s character to back up the statement. Marshall does assume one thing regarding Oaklands that does not bear with the record. That is that the Oaklands of 1823 is the Oaklands of today. Not so. The Oaklands of Elizabeth Peabody’s time there burned in 1836. There is no question that Mrs. G. was a force to be recognized with. She was born into the prominent and wealthy Tudor (of Kennebec ice fame) family. She was also a backbone of the Episcopal church of Gardiner (the Gardiners would be important financial contributors of the town’s new Episcopal church). There is no question either that Mrs. G. was in any way the intellectual equal of the teenage girl she hired to oversee her children. Nor would she approve of the young governess’s Unitarian inclinations. During her two years in the Kennebec Valley, Elizabeth Peabody made it known that she was Unitarian. Among other things, she

Benjamin Vaughan was a Unitarian. When eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Peabody came to the Kennebec Valley she was well on her way to becoming the best educated woman in America. This was at a time when college and university doors were closed to women. The following indicates just how well educated Peabody was: Her father helped her master Latin. On her own she studied Hebrew so as to read the Old Testament in the original. While she was in the Kennebec Valley she studied German so as to be able to read Emmanuel Kant in the language in which he wrote. Just prior to her being hired by Benjamin Vaughan, Peabody had been studying Greek with a promising Harvard nineteenyear-old named Waldo. While the two may have been attracted to each other, neither would look at the other during the tutorials out of shyness. Possibly if they had been older the attraction might have resolved itself into something more. Waldo was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson would later define Unitarianism by resigning from the ministry over the controversy involving the administering of communion. Emerson refused to administer it on the grounds that Christ was human and not divine, a position that Peabody would

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brought a young Boston Unitarian named Edward Everett to serve as Greek tutor in the school she ran for Benjamin Vaughan. Edward Everett went on to be a Unitarian minister. He also went on to become president of Harvard. Peabody was also more than noticeable whenever a Unitarian minister visited the Kennebec Valley. This was at a time when Unitarianism was making inroads among the older established churches of the valley by siphoning off congregates. Those churches, of course, included the Episcopal church of Gardiner. Given Elizabeth Peabody’s intellectual accomplishments and her Unitarianism, one can see how Mrs. Robert Hallowell Gardiner and she would be at odds. The situation lasted but a year, though. Elizabeth Peabody went to Boston in 1824. There she established a new school. Ironically, Mrs. G. sent two of her children to Boston to attend the school. Megan Marshall’s The Peabody Sisters is highly recommended for those interested in learning more about Elizabeth Peabody and her sisters, as well as what the Kennebec Valley was like in the early 1820s. ■

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When Calomel Was The samson Of Medicine “Wonder drug” of the late 1800s by Charles Francis

n the first decades of nineteenth century and before that in the waning ones of the eighteenth, doctors routinely carried calomel in their black bags as they made their house calls. Doctors in towns along the Kennebec, like Hallowell and Gardiner, are known to have used calomel liberally. Established physicians like Boston-trained Benjamin Page as well as Daniel Cony and Benjamin Vaughan, who began his medical career as a physician in England, all relied upon calomel for treating a variety of symptoms. The chief reason for the widespread application and use of calomel by members of the medical profession in the decades before and after 1800 had to do with the fact that the medical establishment of the day recommended its use. The Medical Society of Maine, the state’s first chartered medical society, recommended using calomel, so did the Massachusetts Medical Society. Harvard Medical School taught its uses. The practice of dosing with calomel was routine in England, and most doctors in America looked across the Atlantic for their medical model. The greatest American physician of the eighteenth century, Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, extolled the virtues of calomel. It was Rush who dubbed calomel “the Samson of Medicine.”

Calomel had any number of applications. It was given as an aid to induce labor. It was used to combat scarlet fever, yellow fever and syphilis. It was used to make patients vomit. Induced vomiting or purging of stomach fluids was another of the great early medical curealls. Purging with calomel was right up there with bloodletting. In short, calomel was the “wonder” drug of the period. It was so often administered and in such extreme doses that a patient’s hair and teeth often fell out. What is calomel? Calomel is mercurous chloride. It is mercury. That explains why the hair and teeth of patients subjected to heavy doses of calomel fell out. A good deal is known about early medical practices in the towns along the Kennebec because of a diary kept by Martha Ballard. Ballard was a midwife who lived in Hallowell. She practiced up and down the Kennebec and often interacted with area physicians. Her diary is in the Maine State Library in Augusta. It served as the basis for the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, by Laurel Ulrich. (Continued on page 14)

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Discover Maine 14

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

(Continued from page 13)

It is thanks to Martha Ballard’s diary and the work of Laurel Ulrich that we know how some Kennebec Valley physicians relied on calomel. Dr. Samuel Coleman prescribed treatments of calomel to rid his patients of worms. Dr. Cony used a calomel-based salve for burn treatment. Dr. Page used it to induce the “pukes.” So far all examples and discussion of the uses of calomel have involved adult patients. “What of children?” you may ask. Every parent is familiar with how teething can disrupt the equanimity of an otherwise mild-mannered and happy child. Back in the time period we are considering here, calomel was a standard treatment for teething and the irritability associated with it as well as a wide a variety of complications thought to be brought on because of this particular rite of childhood passage. The particular time period we are talking about, the late 1700s and early 1800s, is generally referred to as the age of the “heroic system of medicine.” The heroic system takes its name from its use of extreme measures. Such measures included bloodletting, blistering and high dosages of medicines like calomel. The doctors of the Kennebec Valley were all ex-

ponents of this heroic system and they applied it to teething. One of the most popular child-rearing manuals of the second and third decades of the nineteenth century went by the name of The Maternal Physician: A Treatise on the Nurture and Management of Infants, From Birth Until Two years old. It was written by Mary Palmer Tyler, a popular writer whose claim to medical authority would seem to be she numbered doctors among her immediate family. One section of Tyler’s book is titled “On Teething and the Management of Infants during the often painful and critical Period of Dentition.” Mary Palmer Tyler’s recommended treatment for the condition of sore gums is “lancing.” The procedure was to be carried on at home by parents. Unfortunately, most mothers or fathers used unsterilized kitchen knives. While thought to be a cure for fevers, the lancing undoubtedly led to more inflammation of the gums and accompanying infection. Tyler also recommended that parents dose their irritable infants with heroic doses of mercury made from calomel powder. It should be noted that the Massachusetts Medical Society in no way disagreed with the basic concepts presented by Mary Palmer Tyler in her book. In fact, many doctors suggested parents get

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the book. This helps explain why it became an overnight success when it came out in 1811. Indeed, the work was a testament to medical practices of the time, and written in a manner the common reader of the day could easily understand. The Maternal Physician advocated a twopronged attack of lancing and purging in instances where an infant suffered extreme irritability, high fever or other symptoms calling for immediate intervention. The idea was to relieve the body of all fluids possible in order to give the fever and associated diseases less to feed on. Purging meant inducing the “pukes,” and calomel was the strongest purgative available. The standard procedure for administering calomel was to continue dosing until the child began to salivate. (Today, salivation of this nature is recognized as a sign of acute mercury poisoning.) The increased salivation made the child’s tongue swell to several times its normal size. It was dehydration. Some infants died from dehydration as a consequence of calomel treatment. Of course, neither doctors nor parents linked medication to cause of death. Then there was the effect of the calomel treatments on those who recovered. Mercury attacks the central nervous system.

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

This meant children who recovered from their teething regimen were often subjected to longterm and sometimes life-long episodes of trembling, anxiety, chills, weakness and even delirium. Medical science now knows mercury lodges permanently in internal organs with neurotoxic effects ranging from seizures to personality changes to psychosis to motor tremors. The above discussion should be of interest to genealogists and family historians who run across records describing the poor health of ancestors. Among other things, it provides an explanation for the high rates of infant mortality of that time period. It also offers insight into the advantages of utilizing the services of a midwife as opposed to those of a physician back then. Incomplete records from the time period in which Martha Ballard practiced midwifery along the Kennebec indicate that fewer children under her care died than those under the care of doctors. Ballard’s diary shows little evidence that she herself approved the use of calomel. In 1824 Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, published a pamphlet on dentistry, “The Art of Preserving Teeth.” In it Dr. Peabody observed

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early view of Water Street, augusta. Item #106389 from the eastern Illustrating & publishing co. collection and www.penobscotMarineMuseum.org that teeth “may be weakened by early dosing with mercury.” Dr. Peabody’s tentative statement on the efficacy of heroic doses of

calomel marked the beginning of the end for the “Samson of Medicine.”■

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Discover Maine 16

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Jackie nichols: Maine’s Greatest Wrestler Richmond High School graduate became famous at his sport

by Charles Francis

weighed him by some twenty to sixty pounds. Everyone naturally roots for the little guy, the underdog. Jackie Nichols was from Richmond on the Kennebec. His real name was Samuel Nichols. “Jackie” was his ring Whether or not Jackie was “scheduled” to beat Joe is name. It went with his good-guy persona. Jackie is a beside the point. Nobody really cares if professional diminutive and Jackie was a little guy as professional wrestling outcomes are choreographed or not. Jackie was a popular wrestler and the audience cheered wrestlers went. when he got his famous hold on Joe. It was the Pro wrestling is a hard life. A lot of wrestlers die highlight of the night. And that is saying something, before they make it to old age. Jackie was born in 1910. He lived to be an old man. He died in 2003. because the card that night included Verne Gagne Jackie seemed to thrive on the wrestling life style. His and Ivan “the Mad Russian” Rasputin. most serious injury, a broken back, didn’t come while Jackie Nichols wrestled about every place there was wrestling. a card in North America. He wrestled in small Canadian One of the reasons professional wrestlers don’t live to a towns, in the Far West and in the South. If he made real healthy, rewarding old age is that they suffer a lot of semoney it was in the South, most notably in Georgia, rious injuries to the head. A recent study indicated that where professional wrestling drew the biggest crowds. Jackie Nichols professional wrestlers and football players suffer more Back when Jackie began wrestling — in the 1930s — crowds were small. They usually ran well under 1000. Fans were en- head — and therefore brain — injuries that the general run of the popthusiastic, though. And they were loyal to their favorites, whether they ulation. The shocks to the head lead to premature dementia, a condiwere good guys — “faces” or bad guys — “heels.” Jackie Nichols was tion most often associated with old age. Autopsies of recently deceased wrestlers and football players in their forties show brain damage and a face. What made Jackie one of the good guys was that he was smaller than deterioration similar to that of someone in their eighties or nineties. your run-of-the-mill professional wrestler. Most of his opponents out- Chris Benoit of the WWE is an example. Maybe one of the reasons Jackie Nichols didn’t suffer a fate similar to his fellow athletes inOveR 600 CAnOeS & kAyAkS volved in contact sports has to do with the fact tO CHOOSe FROm! that he was an excellent gymnast. This gymnaswe are a full service Canoe tic ability was another of the attributes that & Kayak business located on route 27 in Belgrade. made Jackie popular with the fans. you can demo one of our Jackie came by his gymnastic ability through kayaks and canoes for free! Call us for weekly specials training. After graduating from Richmond High on kayaks. School Jackie went to Boston, where he studied offering old town Kayaks & Canoes physical education at a teacher’s college — a necky Kayaks, perception and wilderness systems normal school. The school specialized in gympaddle Boats and Boards also available! nastics. Whether or not Jackie intended on folSALeS & RentALS • 207-242-6331 lowing a career as a physical education teacher is Love Maine? Love History? BeLgRAde CAnOe & kAyAk an unknown. He didn’t anyway. He started 1005 Augusta Rd. • Belgrade, ME • canoe11@aol.com wrestling in the first years of the Depression. Visit the Museum store at the ack in January of 1954 Jackie Nichols beat Joe Maich in Buffalo. Jackie won with his patented stopper “the grapevine.”

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Then he went to war. Jackie was an outstanding athlete at Richmond High School. He was a natural when it came to competition, whether on the field or the court. Maybe that’s why, when he went to the Winslow Fair which featured a professional wrestling card, he decided to become a wrestler. The Winslow Fair wrestling promotion had allowed amateurs to face-off against the pros, and Jackie took up the challenge. A bit after this Jackie became a stalwart on the New England wrestling circuit. Pro wrestling has been called brutish. Spectators are said to like the sport or entertainment because it presents a mix of predatory and dominance instincts. Pro wrestling isn’t supposed to be like true competitive sports or other similar pastimes like chess that express the intellectual and the instinctual in one acceptable activity. Professional wrestling isn’t supposed to be civilized. Instead of teaching one to restrain or channel instincts into acceptable expressions the way sports like basketball with its rules and regulations or board games, theater and art do, it is said to encourage aggression. In this respect professional wrestling is like football, hockey, boxing and mixed martial arts. And at pro wrestling matches you have fans who, often as not, ex-

Jackie Nichols’ second stint as a wrestler came at the time pro wrestling made the transition to television. This is when Jackie left New England to become a favorite with fans who frequented venues like those of the Deep South or the Palestra in Philadelphia. Philadelphia’s Palestra telecast some of the first professional wrestling matches in the United States. It was here that Jackie came up against some of the greatest names of the circuit — names like Verne Gagne and Gorgeous George and Chief Don Eagle. Sometimes Jackie wrestled with a partner in tag-team matches. Argentine Rocca was one such partner. The two were favorites. Both were highly athletic and accomplished gymnasts. Invariably, the two were matched against much bigger opponents. Fans liked nothing better than to see Jackie or Rocca tie up a bigger, slower opponent after making a fool of them by bouncing around the ring just out of the behemoth’s reach. Following a wrestling career that numbered over 6000 matches, Jackie returned to Maine to settle first in Richmond and then in Wiscasset. He operated a successful restaurant here until finally retiring to live with a daughter after Angelena, his wife of some fifty-six years, passed away.■

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press brute desires with shouts of “Eat him alive, Kill him” and chants of “You suck.” Nevertheless, pro wrestling is one of those sports entertainments where fans can leave satisfied if their favorite has demolished or at least defeated his opponent. Pro wrestling was the world that Jackie Nichols made his own, that he devoted his life to. And he was good in it or at it. Jackie graduated Richmond High in 1929. Two years later he earned a diploma in physical education. That same year, 1931, he won the New England professional wrestling welterweight championship. Jackie was just twenty-one. Just like today, welterweights weren’t big draws in pro wrestling of the 1930s. They never had the feature matches. Jackie had all the tools to become a headliner, which must have been what he wanted, because he put on some weight and without any loss of gymnastic ability moved on to middleweight. In 1933 Jackie snagged that New England championship title. Then he went up to light heavyweight. From ‘36 to ‘41 he held the New England title in that division. And from ‘38 to ‘41 he also held the heavyweight title. Then came the war. Jackie didn’t wrestle again until 1946.

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

cial as a blue moon. ack in June Then there is “once of 1996 in a blue moon.” The most every once in a blue moon moon that was visievent is so rare that ble to the naked eyes only an even rarer of people living here event, the blue in the state of Maine moon, can justifiably and nearby regions reference it. was blue. In the sumBlue moons have a mer of 1947 Mainers special connection to saw a lot of blue Maine. There is a moons. In the nineMaine Rule describteenth century Maining the blue moon’s ers saw a lot of blue occurrence. moons during years Back in the 1940s that have gone down a folklorist named in history as the year by Charles Francis Philip Hiscock traced there was no sumthe genesis of the mer. And there have popular conception been a lot of other of blue moon to times when the moon appeared blue to us here in Maine, plus to a lot of people else- Maine. Hiscock said the first reference he could find for blue moon where. In short there is nothing all that unique about a blue moon. But was in a 1937 Maine edition of Farmer’s Almanac. Subsequent writers on if that’s the case, why do so many of us think of a blue moon as being the subject of blue moons picked up on Hiscock’s findings. There was a story referencing blue moons in Sky and Telescope magazine in 1946. the rarest of events? Blue moons are something special aren’t they? There are songs that Sky and Telescope credited H. Porter Trefethen as the source for the blue tell us they are, songs like “Blue Moon.” The song “Blue Moon” speaks moon conceptualization. Trefethen was said to have called the second of love found. That’s a subject that seems a call for something as spe- full moon of a particular month a blue moon.

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Henry Porter Trefethen was a Winthrop, Maine man. He was editor of the Farmer’s Almanac in the ‘30s and ‘40s. As such, he did the almanac’s famous weather forecasts. The forecasts were not based on calendar months, but on a tropical year starting with the winter solstice. In other words, Trefethen didn’t use the calendar month beginning with the first day of a particular month in describing the phases of the moon. Regardless, this fact doesn’t in any way relate to why there were a lot of blue moons visible in June of 1996 or during the summer of 1947, or back in those nineteenth century years when there was no summer. In June of 1996 much of Canada caught on fire. Forest fires raged in Quebec and Ontario and further west. Winds carried the smoke from those fires over Maine. The smoky atmosphere generated the appearance of blue moons. The same was true for the summer of 1947. 1947 was the year Maine burned. There were fires downeast in Washington County. In Hancock County, much of Bar Harbor was consumed by fire. Many of the town’s residents were evacuated by boat. Probably the worst fires were in York County. There they were put down only to spring up in another location.

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As for the nineteenth century when the years there was no summer occurred, that had to do with volcanic eruptions far away in the Pacific. In 1815 Tambora in Indonesia erupted. Volcanic ash from Tambora circled the globe, blotting out the sun. There were blue moons aplenty following that eruption, and with little sun, summers were almost nonexistent in Maine and other high latitude temperate zone areas. The same thing happened when Krakatoa erupted in 1883. The above catastrophic events explain why we are all familiar with blue moons and how common they are, but not how the term “blue moon” came into being nor why it is now so popular. Plus, the blue moon we think of when we hear the song of that title or think of the phrase “once in a blue moon,” is not the image created by atmospheric disturbance. This special moon has more in common with the moon of Henry Trefethen than the smoky one. The term blue moon is a figure of speech, an idiom. Every idiom must have some creator. That creator lived somewhere and sometime. There are references to a “blewe moon” as far back as the late 1400s. For the church of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the blue moon was a betrayer moon, inaccurately forecasting when to begin Lent. The early Gregorian calendar did not take into account that there could be an extra moon before Easter. A blue moon is a conceptualization. It is a mental image. The moon is not literally blue. Blue moon is a name applied to a concept. For a concept to be named, it most often refers to something that appears in an orderly manner or to an event that occurs in a certain way every time. Terms like blue moon are applied to stable concepts. We can’t say there will be blue moons until 2050 but after that there

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will be purple moons. The moon as an object in space has long been associated with the passage of time. Certain moons are associated with particular months. March has a Lenten Moon, September a Fruit Moon and October a Harvest Moon. This correlation is imprecise, though. Einstein taught us just how imprecise. For Einstein, time was relative to the inertial frame in which it is measured. Take, for instance, the following story: A father asks his physicist son to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity. The son responds, “When you’re in the dentist’s chair, a minute seems like an hour. But when you have a pretty girl on your lap, an hour seems like a minute.” The father thinks for a moment, then says, “For saying things like this, Mr. Einstein made a living?” The answer the son should have given was no. The example he gave in attempting to explain Einstein is subjective. It has nothing to do with relativity. Einstein understood that the similarity between space and time is clear enough — free from obscurity — that we can use space to represent time with calendars, hourglasses and other time-keeping devices, including observations of the moon. It is just because space and time are similar that we are able to use spatial terms like blue moon to refer to time. The term blue moon is a reference to a particular measurement of time, measurement based on phases of the moon. Henry Trefethen’s Maine Rule explains just how it works. That rule states “If a season has four full moons, the third full moon of the season is a Blue Moon.”■

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father dennis ryan and The early irish Of north Whitefield Irish priest made his way to Maine in 1818 by Matthew Jude Barker

ne of the earliest Irish Catholic settlements in Maine was North Whitefield, Lincoln County, where Bishop John Cheverus of Boston had administered to as early as 1812, on one of his annual visits to the Catholics of nearby Newcastle, home of the famous Kavanaghs and Cottrils since the 1790s. It was not until the spring of 1818, however, that a permanent pastor was sent to the fledgling Catholic community in the form of Father Dennis Ryan. Dennis Ryan was born in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1786, studied philosophy and divinity at Carlow College in that country, and had received the tonsure. He arrived in Boston as a prisoner of war in October 1814 — he was bound for Quebec in a British vessel which was captured by an American privateer during the War of 1812. Ryan was immediately eyed by Bishop Cheverus as a prospect for the priesthood and as an assistant to Father Francois Matignon, pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross in Boston. The Irishman contin-

ued his studies and was ordained in Boston on May 31, 1817. Ryan was sent to the Maine mission in April 1818, where he first resided at Newcastle. Father Ryan became the pastor of St. Patrick’s Church in Newcastle, where there was a small Catholic community. But in 1819 he relocated to North Whitefield, where there was a much larger Catholic population. Here he founded St. Dennis Church (the name later changed to St. Denis), and also operated a large farm and sawmill. As historian Edward McCarron wrote, “His energy and Irish identity acted as a magnet for new immigrants who sought to try their hand at farming.” A new church was built in 1822 and dedicated on June 30 by Bishop Cheverus, assisted by Father Ryan. It is now the second oldest Catholic church in Maine. By 1830 the parish had 300 communicants. Along with his duties in the Whitefield area, Father Ryan also periodically ministered to the

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needs of the Catholics in Portland between 1822 and 1827, when that town received its own pastor at St. Dominic’s Church. The Catholic population continued to grow throughout Maine at this time due to many factors, including famines in Ireland in 1822, 1832, 1833, and 1834. Father Ryan was kept busy baptizing and marrying wayward Catholics in many towns in Lincoln County. Many of these Catholics settled in North Whitefield, while others were on their way from Canada to Boston and New York. The priest also served the missions at Hallowell, Augusta, Gardiner, Bristol, Warren, Waldoboro, and Thomaston. In May 1836 Ryan, with the permission of Benedict Fenwick, the second bishop of Boston, purchased a Unitarian Society building in Augusta for $2000 and had it converted to a Catholic church. Dennis Ryan continued to serve the Catholics of his massive parish and mission until the mid-1840s. Irish continued to pour

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into the area and take up farming; many became quite successful. They created a succinct Irish environment in an area long settled by Yankees, but, for the most part, the two groups coexisted amicably. Father Ryan left North Whitefield, stayed briefly in Boston, and left New England all together in early 1846. He moved west and became a pastor of a church in Lockport, Illinois, where he had relatives. Ryan passed away there on August 29, 1852, at the age of sixty-six. To this day there are descendants in the North Whitefield area of Ryan’s early Irish parishioners. Every summer they honor Father Ryan and their ancestors by holding an Irish festival near the old St. Denis Church and Cemetery. In 2010 a local division of the Ancient Order of Hibernians was formed in the area. The AOH fosters and preserves Irish heritage and culture everywhere the Irish have settled in the United States — North Whitefield, Maine being no exception. ■

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The augusta Theatre Company and Old Time Maine Movie Making Thirty movie shorts were made promoting the State of Maine by Charles Francis

ack in the second decade of the twentieth century, Augusta saw a serious and successful home-grown movie company make a series of movie shorts to promote the State of Maine. The company that produced the movies was the Augusta Theatre Company. The company was not a fly-by-night attempt at aping Hollywood of the day with little backing and less expertise, but rather a well-financed and organized production company which was made up of some very influential individuals, as well as an extremely talented writer who also had a good deal of experience in the infant industry of producing movies for the silver screen. All in all, the Augusta Theatre Company produced thirty movie shorts promoting Maine. The investors and managers backing the productions were William B. Williamson and Blaine Spooner Viles. The writer and nascent movie producer was none other than Holman Day, the most popular Maine writer of the period. The Augusta Theatre Company produced its Maine films in 1919. The scenarios for the films were written by Day. Day, who has some thirty book titles to his credit, and was a long-time columnist and reporter for the Lewiston Sun and in 1919 had already been operating his own movie company for some ten years, later went to Hollywood,

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where he scripted or collaborated on a number of full-length movies. At least four of the movies were based on Day novels, the best known of which is King Spruce. The Augusta Theatre Company actually began some seven years earlier in 1912 when William Williamson and William Gray joined forces. William Gray, who also appears in the historical record as Charles Gray, was a Kennebec Valley politician of note who served as mayor of Gardiner. It was Williamson who was the more important of the two, however, and the man who eventually brought Blaine Viles and Holman Day to the company. To say that William Williamson was connected would be an understatement. On his father’s side of the family, his grandfather, Joseph Williamson, was the publisher of the Maine Register and State Reference Book, and the author of some sixty historical and biographical sketches. The elder Williamson was also the author of the History of Belfast, and

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he produced the Bibliography of Maine, covering Maine’s history from earliest times to 1890. Joseph Williamson, William Williamson’s father, was a long-time Augusta attorney, Kennebec County Attorney and served in the Maine Legislature. William Williamson’s mother, Vallie (Burleigh) Williamson, was the daughter of Edwin Chick Burleigh, a Maine governor and one-time owner of the Kennebec Journal. William Williamson’s own credentials are almost as imposing as those of his forebears. He was president of the Kennebec Land & Power Company, president of the Northeastern Land Company, president of the Northern Timberland Company and a director of the Augusta Trust Company. It should be noted that Blaine Viles was treasurer and manager of both the Northeastern Land Company and the Northern Timberland Company as well as a director of the Augusta Trust Company. Williamson was also involved with the Capitol Realty Company and a number of other theaters, including the Augusta Opera House Company. Blaine Viles was the son of Edward Viles of New Portland. The senior Viles had among his interests the directorship of the Dead River Logging Company. Blaine Viles himself

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Mary astor was a graduate of the Yale University Graduate School of Forestry. Besides the companies mentioned above, Viles was director of Maine’s most important log driving company, the Kennebec Log Driving Company. In addition, he served on the Governor’s Council and as Maine Fish and Game Commissioner. Holman Day, besides being the writer for the thirty Maine promotional films, brought

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an extensive background in film making to the project. Day had been making films in Maine at least as early as 1909. In fact, some of them are available today and have been featured in film festivals. These latter films include the 1909 “The Sailor’s Sacrifice” and a 1921 film starring a sixteen-year-old ingenue named Mary Astor. The latter film is titled “My Lady O’ The Pines.” Astor came to Maine for the filming. Day’s company, Holman Day Productions, was based in Augusta. By all accounts, the State of Maine promotion films produced by the Augusta Theatre Company had a good deal of footage featuring the state’s north woods. This is understandable, given that Blaine Viles as Fish and Game Commissioner, was interested in attracting sportsmen to the state. Unfortunately, this writer has been unable to discover if any of the thirty films are still in existence. Some of the films mentioned above that Holman Day made in his Hollywood period are available, as are his two Maine productions named above. Northeast Historic Film also has a video covering some of Day’s work in Maine, “All But Forgotten: Holman Francis Day, Filmmaker.” It covers the last two years of operation of Day’s Augusta production company, 1920 and 1921. ■

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The Politician And The Prohibitionist Governor Hubbard signs the Maine Law by Charles Francis

he town of Readfield is divided into four parts: Kents Hill, Readfield Depot, Readfield Corner, and East Readfield. Traveling from Augusta on Route 17, East Readfield is the first section of the town one comes to. Today East Readfield is a quiet byway overlooking Lake Maranacook. However, more than two hundred years ago in 1794, two events occurred there that were to play an exceedingly important role in the history of the state of Maine. One was the construction of the oldest Methodist Meeting House in Maine. The other was the birth of John Hubbard, who, as governor, would sign into effect the bill creating the famous or infamous Maine Law, the first true Prohibition law in the United States. Ironically, John Hubbard, the Governor who signed the Maine Law, was not a prohibitionist and, in fact, did not even support Prohibition, being a “tippler” himself. John Hubbard served as Governor of Maine from 1850 until 1853. At the time there were two major issues affecting Maine politics — the slavery issue and prohibition. In fact, the two were so closely intertwined that it was imgovernor John Hubbard possible to separate them. However, it was the prohibition issue which made or broke a fair number of Maine political careers at the time. It would be safe to say that when Maine became a state in 1820, the great majority of Mainers partook of intoxicating liquor. However, even before statehood there was a movement to either curtail the practice or do away with it altogether. In 1815 Portland had a total abstinence society. In 1829 Bath had a Temperance Society. In 1833 the Maine Temperance Society was formed. With the formation of the latter organization, the forces of temperance had their first falling out. Some wanted the state to adopt legal means to enforce prohibition, while others felt it should be implemented through moral persuasion and example. The forces for legal action won out,

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primarily due to the influence of one man, Neal Dow of Portland. In 1846 Neal Dow succeeded in getting a law passed which forbade the sale of alcohol except for medical or industrial purposes. Unfortunately —from Dow’s perspective —the law was a failure, as a thriving business in the manufacture and sale of illicit alcohol sprang up. Dow’s solution to the problem was the creation of new legislation to curtail the manufacture and sale of alcohol through heavy fines and imprisonment. To this end he began agitating for the passage of the bill John Hubbard would sign into law in 1851. It would be difficult to find two individuals who were more unlike than Neal Dow and John Hubbard. Dow was a fanatic, with a onetrack mind, which was centered on a single political goal — the total prohibition of alcohol. John Hubbard, on the other hand, was a man of liberal outlook, capable of seeing the shades of gray that really made up the political landscape and quite capable of accepting compromise. While Dow was limited by a common school education, Hubbard was a college graduate. Where the former was essentially a tradesman with the perspective of an elected municipal official (he was mayor of Portland), the latter was a professional who served in Augusta.

The Hubbards had originally come to Readfield from Brentwood, New Hampshire. John Hubbard’s father, who was also named John, was a physician. The younger Hubbard was also a doctor, who earned his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania. He had been a Maine State Senator before succeeding John Dana as governor in 1850. The chief sticking point of Neal Dow’s proposed Maine Law had to do with that section which authorized justices of the peace to issue warrants to search buildings and seize alcohol stored for illegal sale. Any three voters who suspected that someone had illegal alcohol, could get a search warrant. Basically the search and seizure stipulation offended temperateminded citizens who felt that individual rights and freedoms were being violated by granting warrants to search parties. Republicans as a whole and some Democrats opposed Dow’s bill on these grounds. In August of 1849 Dow’s bill came before the Maine Legislature. There was enough Democratic support so that the bill was passed on August 15. It then went before the Governor to be signed into law. However, because the bill was passed within three days of the Legislature’s adjournment, Dana was able to withhold his signature until the next legislative

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session. So there the bill sat in limbo. The next spring outgoing Governor Dana vetoed it. Then John Hubbard was sworn in as Governor. The next year on May 29, the Maine House passed Dow’s bill. The next day the bill went to the Senate. Here, Shepard Cary, a lumberman from Aroostook County called Dow Portland’s “popinjay mayor,” who wanted “to overturn the democracy of the state and put himself at the top of the heap. Nevertheless, the bill passed. Dow then personally carried the bill to Governor Hubbard. Hubbard, besides being a supporter of true temperance and an admitted “tippler,” had been advised that he could safely veto the bill. At this point it would seem Hubbard’s political aspirations got in the way of his better judgment. He signed the bill. The best explanation for his action is that he thought he might need Dow’s support further down the road, should he run for office again. The Maine Law did not stay in effect for long. Its most stringent aspects were repealed in 1858. As for John Hubbard, the record, of course, shows that he did indeed run for governor again and that he was reelected. ■

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The “China Watcher” Waterville journalist shared caves with China’s Mao and his communist compatriots by Charles Francis

ack in 1971 the United States Table Tennis Team was in Japan for the World Table Tennis Championship. A Waterville native named John Roderick happened to be there, too. Roderick was a reporter with the Associated Press (AP). In 1971 the U.S. and China were at odds. The countries had no formal relations. The issue was Taiwan. The U.S. recognized the island as the official China. The China with Beijing as its capitol was a non-entity as far as America was concerned. China is a ping pongloving country. Ping pong is China’s baseball and football and basketball all wrapped up in a single package. On April 6 the U.S. Table Tennis Team received an invitation to visit China. The team went. So did John Roderick. Eventually the U.S. and China established formal relations. Today, the history books call the U.S. Table Tennis Team’s China visit Ping Pong Diplomacy. As for John Roderick, the Waterville man went on to open or actually reopen the Associated Press office in Beijing. No American newsman knew China as did John Roderick. Probably no newsman in the world knew China as did Roderick. Roderick’s China credentials were the sort that any newsman worth his salt would almost be willing to sever a limb for. For example, Roderick lived in a cave in China with Communist guerrilla fighters in the first months of the post-World War II era. One of those guerrillas was Mao Zedong. This was before Mao became Chairman Mao. The above-described serendipitous relationship between John Roderick and Mao Zedong should not be taken as suggesting

Roderick was a Mao or Chinese communist supporter. He wasn’t. Roderick had plenty of opportunities to arrive at any number of reasons for not being a Mao supporter, or a supporter of the policies the Chairman and his communist cohorts eventually became known for. Though John Roderick has gone down in the annals of American journalism as the country’s most noteworthy “China-watcher,” it was a sobriquet he never warmed to. In fact, he so disliked the term that, when it was applied to him, he actively discouraged its use. In this, he failed. When John Roderick retired from the Associated Press at the age of seventy in 1984, he was described as a “Chinawatcher.” In 2006 when he was ninety-two and beginning a series on the Beijing Olympics, Roderick was described as a “China-watcher.” And when he died at the age of ninety-three in 2008, he was still called the “China-watcher.” The Chinese city of Yan’an plays a key role in John Roderick’s China odyssey. It does much the same for Mao Zedong. The Chinese consider Yan’an the birthplace of the Chinese communist revolution. Yan’an is where the greatest event in twentieth century Chinese history — the Long March that made Mao a Chinese hero of unprecedented scale — ended. Yan’an, decimated by Japanese bombs in World War II, is a symbol of Chinese resilience in the face of almost insurmountable odds. Yan’an is the location of the caves where John Roderick lived in close proximity to Mao Zedong. Yan’an is situated on the edge of the Gobi Desert. It is hilly country. It is peasant coun-

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try — at least it was when Mao Zedong made it the first real capitol of communist China. As a national capitol, it wasn’t much, though. All that Japanese bombers had left of the city was a single pagoda. This latter fact explains why the leader of the communist revolution lived in a cave. All of the residents of Yan’an did. So did Mao’s followers and soldiers. John Roderick spent seven months on an off-and-on basis in Yan’an. He went there in 1945 and left for the last time in 1947. In 1949 the communists finished driving the nationalist forces of Chaing Kai-shek from the mainland to Taiwan. With that event the American presence in mainland China, as well as John Roderick’s, became history. That is until the U.S. Table Tennis Team garnered an invitation to visit Beijing in 1971. John Roderick was more than a likely choice to cover Mao Zedong and his followers in Yan’an in 1945. At the age of thirty-one, Roderick was already a veteran newsman. He was also a war veteran. He had spent time in China during World War II. And he had a command of the language. John Roderick was born in Waterville in 1914. He was fifteen when the journalism bug bit, and he began writing for the Morning Sentinel. Orphaned when he was sixteen, Roderick managed to put himself through Colby College, even though it was during the Depression. After graduation, Roderick found work in the Associated Press offices in Portland. When the U.S. entered World War II, the AP transferred Roderick to its Washington, D. C. offices. That was in early 1942. Roderick didn’t stay a newsman long, though. The next

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year he was drafted into the Army. Roderick’s education and news-gathering skills led to his being assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA. Roderick’s OSS assignment was in Kumming, China, at the very end of the famous Burma Road. Roderick took his Army discharge in China. He already had a job lined up with his old employer, the Associated Press. The AP recognized Roderick’s talents could best be used in China. The defeat of the Japanese in 1945 did not mean peace for China. Now the struggle was a homegrown one, between nationalists and communists, between Chaing Kai-shek and Mao-Zedong. John Roderick’s AP assignment was to cover the confrontation. This was how he came to share caves with Mao and his communist compatriots. Roderick’s initial reports on Mao and the communists were favorable. Mao had given strict orders that civilians were not to be mistreated or taken advantage of in any way. The few infractions that occurred were dealt with harshly. Unlikely as it may seem, rape was virtually unknown. The care extended by Mao toward the peasants made a favorable impression on Roderick. He would say “I admired the fact they were trying to do something for the poor Chinese.” Roderick’s views changed with the communist ascent to power. He came to deplore the brutality of the communist regime. Following the American exodus from China with the expulsion of Chaing Kai-shek from the mainland, the AP assigned John Roderick to cover conflicts in the world’s hot spots. These assignments included the Middle East turmoil, following the creation of the state of Israel and the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu. He spent time in the AP’s London and Paris offices. Roderick’s real bailiwick remained the Far East, however. That was how it happened he was in Japan in 1971.

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Bear Spring camps, oakland. Item #103665 from the eastern Illustrating & publishing co. collection and www.penobscotMarineMuseum.org From 1980 until his retirement the AP essentially granted Roderick carte blanche to report on anything that interested him. During this time period and later, he made his home in Japan and made reporting on Japanese relations as they pertained to the whole of Asia his speciality. In 1985 the Japanese government presented him with one of its highest

commendations, the Order of the Sacred Treasure. From 1980 on and for the remainder of his life, Roderick continued to file background articles on China. This, in part, explains why, when Roderick passed away in 2008, newspapers around the world carried the headline “Long-term Associated Press China-watcher John Roderick dies at 93.”■

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new vineyard inventor O.s. Turner Creator of Turner’s Patent Chairs by Sherwood W. Anderson

“

Something New! Great Comfort for Small Pay. Patent Self-Adjusting-Back Chair! Almost Everybody buys one. Professionals, Farmers, Merchants and Loafers! Nine Hundred sold last season in Fifty Days! No other Chair gives so great satisfaction for the money paid. Price List: Gentleman’s Easy-Chair, $2.25, Ladies’ $1.75, Misses’ $1.00, Children’s $.75, Children’s $.65, Camp Chairs, $.65. Upholstering Extra. Upholstered Reclining Rocker with set head-rest, $5.00. Delivered on cars at same price. Invented and Manufactured by O.S. Turner, New Vineyard, ME.” Orrin Sykes Turner at seventeen left New Vineyard, his birthplace, to teach in Anson schools, but returned home after several years to start a waterwheel-powered manufactory for shovel handles and wooden boxes. An 1882 article in the Phillips Recorder reported he manufactured 120,000 broom handles, 400,000 dowels, three and a half carloads of salt boxes, 12,000 sweet corn packing boxes and 100,000 trunk cleats. A natural inventor, he patented a belt stud to fasten industrial leather pulley belts end to end without overlapping. He sold the invention for $600 in an era when a man’s wage was a dollar a day. He also patented a rotating “Opal Blank

Globe,” fastened to a handle which when held perpendicular the proper axis of the earth is given. A teacher or student could pencil or ink the continents onto it, with the drawings erase-able. It sold for six dollars a dozen. He built several dwellings in New Vineyard, including his own house at 11 High Street, still in use. It has ten rooms on an acre of land with a year-round brook running the length of the back yard. Included are four bedrooms with walk-in closets, sitting room, country kitchen with wood stove, sewing room, workroom and a large dining room and fireplace. A fullsize barn is attached. The self-adjusting back rocking chair was his most successful invention. Its back tilted horizontally at the center to accommodate the angle of whoever sat in it. Its headrest adjusted up and down, and a rocking footstool moved with the chair. He hinged a rocking chair sideways on the peak of his building and fastened a top-hatted mannikin in it. He connected the chair to machinery below which made it rock when the factory operated. He built up a large sale for his rocker in Franklin (Continued on page 30)

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Discover Maine 30

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

(Continued from page 29)

and adjoining counties, delivering as many as 900 or 1,000 a season. He would be away weeks at a time, his watchdog “Major” sleeping in the wagon to protect the chairs. Orrin had two sons and two daughters by his wife Rebecca Eagle Luce. Two years after she died Orrin married a schoolteacher from Anson, Lucy Elizabeth Bixby, who was willing to take on management of his half-orphans, then 6, 9, 14 and 18. It is said that nine-year-old Annie was difficult. (She became a milliner with a shop on Broad Street in Farmington, and died unmarried at 46.) Lucy Bixby had attended Farmington Academy when Jonas Burnham was Principal. At sixteen years of age she began teaching at School District No.10, North Anson, with forty pupils — several older than she. The term was eight weeks, wages $1.50 per week. She taught over sixty terms of school in towns near her Anson home, in Aroostook County and eastern Maine. Many times she “boarded ‘round” as was the custom, often helping with the family work in case of sickness. “Lute” had a natural ability and love for her chosen work. She was thorough, conscientious, a fine disciplinarian and especially efficient in mathematics, grammar and orthography. She was

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orrin turner and his chairs. (photo courtesy of author) interested in music and taught singing school one winter, being able to carry any part. Orrin and “Lute” were married in 1875 at the Bixby homestead in Anson. It was a double wedding with her sister Electa, who mar-

ried Charles A. Boston at the same time. Rev. George W. Hathaway officiated, pastor for a generation of the Congregational Church in Skowhegan, whose daughter had married a Bixby cousin of the two brides. Mr. Hathaway

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

had been for two years chaplain of the Nineteenth Regiment of Maine Volunteers during the Civil War. He was to follow the Bixby clan to southern California, where he founded the First Congregational Church of Long Beach. In 1877 Lucy was received into the New Vineyard Congregational Church by letter from her home church in Anson, and faithfully fulfilled her duties in all its organizations. She was a member of New Vineyard’s Lemon Stream Grange, and for several years served as Worthy Secretary. She was a true helpmeet, cheerfully facing financial loss when the O. S. Turner manufactory burned in 1882 and 1897, the latter time at a loss of $7,000. Orrin Turner also lost a two-story house in 1885, valued at $300, from a fire caused by lightning. Lucy assisted her husband with his duties as Town Clerk, and did the chair upholstering at home. She was for several years New Vineyard’s correspondent for the Farmington Chronicle. Several of Lucy and Electa’s eight brothers and sisters migrated to California. They prospered greatly, not so much by raising sheep and cattle as by selling some of the tens of thousands of acres of ranch land they acquired. In 1887 they sold 10,000 acres to developers for what would become the City of Long Beach. The Bixbys of Maine became known for church and civic philanthropy. Notably, among other good works, the 200-acre Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden was established and endowed by Susanna Bixby Bryant in 1927. The garden, open to the public, is dedicated to the research, study and appreciation of native California flora. It is the home of Claremont Graduate University’s Botany Program, located 35 miles east of Los Angeles. Lucy Bixby Turner, back in New Vineyard, received one share of the residual $11,600 estate of her brother Thomas Flint Bixby after his 1922 death in Los Angeles. There are no longer any Bixbys in Anson or Somerset County.

An illness which forced Lucy into six unconscious weeks in 1908 impaired her hearing and permanently dimmed her bright mind. She lived eighteen years after, dying at 88, the oldest person in the Village. She and Orrin had lived together until his death in 1917, when their daughter Frankie Turner Voter and family took her into their neighboring home. Lucy still had good eyesight, requiring no glasses, and she enjoyed reading aloud to her three Voter granddaughters. Lucy’s widowed daughter-in-law Cora Turner also helped make her comfortable in her last five weeks’ sickness. O. S. Turner took great interest in his native town. He was Town Clerk for forty-five years, resigning March 7, 1910. As Clerk he signed the birth certificate for his own daughter Frances. He belonged to the Democratic Party and stood unflinchingly for its principles. He was a member of the New Vineyard Congregational Church, which his father, Rev. David Turner, helped organize in 1828 and served the following 29 years. The pastor’s father, also named David Turner, was a private soldier in the American Revolution, and after the war a Captain in the Massachusetts Militia. Orrin was a charter member of New Vineyard’s Lemon Stream Grange, and gave liberally of his time and means. “Turner’s Patent Chairs” are no longer inexpensive. Every existing Turner rocker is at least a century old. Quite a few New Vineyard people own one or more. Several are exhibited in Augusta at the Maine State Museum. The chairs have become antiques of value, but are they all that remains of the Turner heritage? None of Orrin Turner’s first four children have living descendants. His second wife Lucy at forty gave birth to Orrin’s fifth child, Frances Rebecca Turner, her only child and my grandmother. Twenty-two of Frankie’s descendants are living, but only my son David Turner Anderson and his son Nicholas Turner

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Anderson preserve the Turner name. Even the location of Turner’s sawmill was lost until 2007, when members of the New Vineyard Historical Society rediscovered its site a mile north of the Village. They found the natural stones used as a dam piled to the sides of Lemon Stream. Spillage from the backed up water turned the water wheel which powered the up and down frame saw. A largetoothed broken saw blade was found rusting in the brush. Nothing else remains of O. S. Turner’s mill. There in rural Franklin County, ten miles of rutted road from anywhere, the people of New Vineyard Town sawed the trees, plowed the land and bore their babies. They lived through sickness and setback by the skill of their hands and the willingness to keep at it. Few gained wealth. But with the help of God they built a Church and formed their self-governing civil community. Their heritage has never been lost. My great-grandparents, Orrin and Lucy Turner, lived there.■

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Discover Maine 32

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

The dead river Body Guards Census worker discovers family secret in Flagstaff Plantation by Steve Pinkham

he early history of the Dead River region is steeped in mystery. Who would ever expect that two men connected with the Dead River were body guards of two famous generals? As a young boy, Asa Redington, who was born in 1761 in Boxford, Massachusetts, lost his father and went to live with an uncle who provided him with a good basic education. He was residing in Wilton, New Hampshire when he first enlisted into the Revolutionary Army in 1778, serving in Col. Peabody’s Regiment at Rhode Island. Reenlisting the next year, he was in Col. Scammon’s New Hampshire Regiment, and between 1781 and 1783 he was at West Point, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Saratoga. In July of 1883 Asa Redington, while in the First New Hampshire Resident, was appointed a corporal in the elite company known as the

Commander-in-Chief ’s Guard, which protected General George Washington, and served as his personal body guards. In September he was present at the Battle of Yorktown, and was one of the few officers who kept a journal of that final battle. Of that nine-day battle he wrote, “On the 17th at about 10 o’clock the British raised a white flag on their walls, beat a parley on their drums, and the firing ceased on all sides.” He was discharged at the end of the war, having served over four years. After the war Redington removed to Vassalboro, Maine in 1784, where he lumbered and occasionally made surveys. He married a daughter of Nehemiah Getchell and settled in Waterville, where he and his father-in-law built the first dam across the Kennebec in 1792 in order to obtain water rights and construct a

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large saw mill. One year a freshet wiped out his mill, but he soon constructed another. Ever the enterpriser, Redington served as Town Clerk, Fire Warden, Post Master, owned a bank, and was one of the founders of the Waterville College, now Colby College. According to “Sketches of the Early History of Eustis” by C. D. Stevens that was published in the Farmington Chronicle on August 21, 1879 and subsequent issues, in order to supply wood for their sawmill, Gilman and Redington purchased a large tract of land in the Dead River Valley in the town of Eustis. Then in June of 1818, after hiring a crew and contracting with the Caleb Stevens family in Kingfield, the lumbermen headed north with a team of oxen along the Carrabasset Valley on a faint trail made by hunters and trappers, to the banks of Stratton Brook, about threequarters of a mile from the forks of the Dead River. Here they cleared several acres for Stevens, who was to act as caretaker, and a small hovel for the lumbermen. Meanwhile, Stevens procured the necessary gear and provisions, and his large family, with a team of oxen, made the arduous journey to Eustis, where they were the sole residents for three years. Redington’s crew spent the rest of the season cutting pine and piling it along the river, and returned to Waterville. They returned and spent the winter logging, and in the spring of 1819 sent the first logs down the Dead River, which, having no dams or other

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

man-made obstructions, reached Waterville in 48 hours. They made a second successful drive the following year, and then sold out to Nathan Hanson of New Portland, making a handsome profit. In 1811 Redington built a beautiful home on Silver Street for his son William, which now serves as the Redington Museum and is the headquarters for the Waterville Historical Society. After a very fascinating and successful life, he died in Waterville in 1845, at the age of eighty-three. In the 1840s a young man named Jacob Kershner, who was born in France and then living in Peru, Maine, settled in Flagstaff Plantation, next to the town of Eustis, and cleared space for a farm. In 1860 the census taker was working his way through the valley, and when he got to Kershner’s farm he sat down with the family around the kitchen table. Residing with them was Jacob’s parents, Michael and Mary Anne Kershner, and when it came time to add Michael’s name, the family told him of their long-kept secret. Being taken by surprise and so impressed, the census taker listed the father as “Michael Kershner, 84 years old, born in France (one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s body guards).” Michael Kershner was born in Paris in 1785,

and as a young man married and first lived in the northern city of Havre de Grace, where their son Jacob was born in 1814. Michael enlisted in the French Army and served under the Emperor, more likely as a member of the Imperial Guard than a personal body guard to the Emperor. This band of soldiers, numbering about one thousand men, originated as the Consular Guard in 1799 and became Imperial Guard in 1804, serving directly under the command of Napolean. It was made up of three units — The Old Guard, the Middle Guard and the Young Guard — and since Kershner was only 29 years old in 1804, he would have been a member of the Middle or Young Guards. The Guard played a very important part in the final battle at Waterloo in June of 1815, being thrown into the battle at the last minute to salvage a win for Napoleon. However, it was completely out-numbered, facing constant fire from the British infantry, and quickly began to retreat; being the first and only time the Guard ever retreated without orders. At the sight of this humiliating retreat Napoleon’s army lost all hope and the Middle Guard broke completely, but the Old Guard, along with some of the Young Guard, held their formation, allowing the French Army to retreat

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before being almost destroyed by British and Prussian artillery fire and charges from the cavalries. Napoleon was arrested the following month, and what remained of his Elite Guard — mostly Middle and Young Guards — dispersed and melded back into society to avoid prosecution with their former leader. Michael Kershner returned to his family and resided in Paris, where his daughter Mary Anne and son Lewis Napolean Bonapare Kershner were born. The family soon immigrated to America and first showed up in Hallowell, where their daughter Katherine was born in 1830. In their old age Michael and Mary Anne came to the Dead River Valley to live amongst their children, where he died soon after 1860 and was buried in the Flagstaff Cemetery, his gravestone reading “Michael Kershner, born in Paris, Died in Flagstaff.” The Dead River Valley was visited by Col. Montressor, a British engineer in 1765 and by General Benedict Arnold a decade later. But little was it ever supposed that this pastoral valley, with its gentle-moving river, flanked by the majestic Mt. Bigelow Range, would be so immediately and personally connected to two of the world’s most noted generals. ■

Discover Maine 34

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

The Magnificent Gulf stream Trestle The second wonder of the north woods by Charles Francis

hat happens to abandoned railroad trestles? In the case of the Gulf Stream Trestle, they get used by logging companies to haul wood, and by hunters and fishermen wanting the shortest route from one mountainous slope to another. Then, too, there is the occasional thrill seeker wishing to venture out over a narrow span lacking guardrails some 110 feet above a rock-strewn terrain far below. The Gulf Stream Trestle of the old Somerset Railroad should have been one of the icons of Maine’s north woods. It never quite made it, though. When the line was abandoned in 1933, the trestle kind of faded into obscurity. Though locals were aware of its existence, for the most part newcomers somehow never seemed to learn of it. Maybe it had something to do with the fact the trestle was so far into the woods.

The last owner of the Gulf Stream Trestle was the Maine Central Railroad. The Maine Central took over the Somerset in 1907. In 1911 it purchased the Kineo House, run by the Ricker Hotel Company. From that point on, the line of steel rails through the deep woods was known as the Kineo Branch. Construction on what was to become the Kineo Branch began in 1904. The line started in Bingham and ended on the shore of Moosehead at Rockwood. All told, it was a distance of forty-nine and one half miles. The Gulf Stream Trestle was on a side spur serving logging interest around Moxie Pond. The Boston Bridge Company built the trestle over Gulf Stream. Boston Bridge was brought in because it specialized in bridging difficult and challenging wide open spaces. When finished, the trestle was 500 feet long. Actual building

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of the trestle was to prove a less than difficult task. The granite for the Gulf Stream Trestle’s footings and other material used in the construction of the span was brought in over an old tote road. By the time steel tracks reached the gorge, everything was ready for rail to be laid. The rail was swung out over the drop by a huge crane sitting on a flatbed car. Not a single life was lost in the construction of the trestle or in the laying of the rail. One reporter, who later visited the site, called the trestle the second great wonder of the north woods. (The first was Ripogenus Dam.) The origins of the Somerset Railroad can be traced back to 1869. The first president was Joel Gray of Boston. Gray is often overlooked as a Somerset innovator, probably because he died during the line’s earliest period of development. John Ayer of Oakland is often cited as the line’s only president. Ayer took over the presidency in 1873. John Ayer saw to the development of the first section of the line, that from Oakland to Norridgewock — a distance of about ten miles — almost singlehandedly. His son William, a civil engineer, became a major influence after this. William directed construction of the next section, to North Anson. This

extension added some fifteen miles to the line. The sixteen miles from North Anson to Bingham was laid between 1887 and 1890. By this time William Ayer was general superintendent, general freight agent, general passenger agent and general ticket agent. It was William Ayer who spearheaded the drive for a branch line to Moosehead. The reason William Ayer wanted to access the Moosehead Lake region is simple — there was money to be made there. The Somerset could make money by competing for business with the log driving companies on the Kennebec River, and it could make money by carrying tourists to the lake, especially to the Kineo House on Mt. Kineo. Moreover, it could even develop its own resort if it desired. In fact, around 1900 a railroad summer subdivision was proposed for Rockwood by William Ayer, who saw it as a complement to the development of Mt. Kineo and the Rockwood-based steamships that ran to the Kineo House, as well as Northeast and Northwest carries. So what part does the Gulf Stream Trestle play in the overall development of the Kineo Line? Though the Gulf Stream Trestle is largely forgotten today, it was once well-known for its

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appearance on advertising brochures and posters. Somerset advertisements touting the wonders of scenic Moosehead and the Kineo House all featured pictures of the Gulf Stream Trestle. Even the extremely wealthy knew of the trestle. The super-rich came to Moosehead in their own Pullman cars. The cars transferred to the Somerset at Oakland. In addition, the Somerset advertised excursions to Moosehead in the summer, fall foliage sightseeing tours and hunters’ specials. And what of legends of the trestle? There are, of course, tragic tales. One tragedy involves a bear. The unfortunate creature was ambling along out over the Gulf Stream when a train came. The terrified creature jumped to its death below. Then there are tragedies of the human kind. One winter two men were caught out over the chasm when a snow plow started over. One jumped to die on the rocks below. The other hung to a beam. The latter soul came away with a leg crippled for life. And there is the tale of a suicide. It was late one afternoon when an inspector for the Somerset spied a rope dangling from a support timber of a step on the trestle. It was a shiny rope that looked as if it had just been (Continued on page 36)

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

(Continued from page 35)

purchased. It swayed in the wind that almost always blew through the deep gorge. The end of the rope was rough and frayed. The inspector noted a neatly folded coat lying in the shadow of the track. Looking into the depths below the spidery, steel legs of the trestle, the inspector was just able to make out the twisted shape of a figure next to a concrete pier. What we have next is a horrific sequence of realization and the acts of a desperate man. The thought flashed through the inspector’s mind — had the Gulf Stream Trestle claimed a life? Not bothering to attempt a descent into the gorge, the inspector jumped on his handcar and hightailed it as fast as he could go to the nearest doctor. When the doctor and his nurse reached the bottom of the chasm, they found a lumberjack gasping out his last breath. A length of rope circled his neck. ■

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Discover Maine 38

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

by James Nalley

The Two-Cent Bridge Waterville and Winslow’s overlooked treasure

photo by Doug Kerr

t the turn of the 20th century the Hollingsworth & Whitney Paper Company thrived in its location on the Kennebec River in Winslow, Maine. In order to provide convenient access for the paper mill’s employees living across the river in Waterville, a small suspension footbridge was constructed, which only required a toll of one cent. Originally known as “The Ticonic Footbridge,” the wire-cable suspension bridge was built in 1901, complete with a 400-foot main span, a width of only six feet and most importantly, a wooden toll booth on the Waterville side ready to cash in on the foot traffic. But less than a year into its service, the Kennebec River had produced its highest recorded levels since the 1830s, which washed away the structure. Learning from the natural disaster, builders constructed a stronger bridge that could withstand the forces of the higher water levels and re-opened the bridge in 1903. To financially support the replacement, the toll was raised from one cent to two cents, which created its everlasting name of “The Two-Cent Bridge.” Although it was an important connection for the factory workers in the area, it would function with greater importance in 1935. According to the Waterville Main Street Organization, “In 1935, a ‘100-Year Flood’ left the Two-Cent Bridge as the only connection between Winslow residents and all of the public necessities such as food and health services that existed only on the Waterville side of the river.” In the subsequent years, the

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Augusta 623-4591 • 173 State Street

Cash, check, most major credit cards Insurance carriers including Medicare and MaineCare

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207-873-4446

222 College Ave Waterville, Maine 207-872-5602

135 Waldo Ave. belfast, Maine 207-338-5160

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Dr. nicholas r. Bosse, Chiropractor 262 main st. • Waterville, me 04901

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873-1241 • 1-800-564-1241 57 Water Street, Waterville

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

toll had slowly increased to 50 cents, and the bridge remained as an important local treasure. In 1960 the heirs of the original owners of the bridge decided to donate the structure to the City of Waterville and since then, the “toll” to cross the bridge has remained free. It earned its rightful spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. While considerable restoration efforts have been made to maintain the bridge, it has been closed only a few times throughout its existence only when conditions have made foot crossings unsafe for the general public. One example was on July 4, 1989, when the bridge suffered major structural damage after hundreds of concert goers at a nearby event crossed the bridge, straining its weight and tension limits. The bridge was immediately closed and the complete restoration lasted for several years. Today, the bridge sits quietly at its same location on the Kennebec River and it attracts only the occasional bridge enthusiast who knows of its long history. But a revitalization project hopes to change all of that. According to Waterville Main Street’s Executive Director, Shannon Haines: “The Two-Cent Bridge in downtown Waterville is a wonder often unnoticed.” Haines hopes the project

will help change the “Head of Falls” site surrounding the bridge in order to draw more people to the area, and to encourage public

photo by Doug Kerr

1-800-326-6190 872-2771

61 Grove street • Waterville, Me

apartment buildings mostly inhabited by Lebanese immigrants who were employed at the mills. But during the 1970s an Urban Renewal project removed all of the remaining buildings on the 12-acre site, and it has since remained mostly vacant. With more than a million dollars invested in the overall renovation and cleaning of the site, the Two-Cent Bridge remains part of the master plan to attract commercial development along the river. Haines states: “Short-term goals include constructing a gateway plaza with an information desk and adorning the bridge will be a spectacular display of lights.” Although discussions about the area’s development are still ongoing at the time of this article, one thing is for sure: The Two-Cent Bridge remains the area’s most overlooked national treasure. So, the next time you are anywhere near Waterville or Winslow, take a scenic walk along the river and you will see a piece a history that is one of the oldest surviving steel suspension bridges in the country, and the last known toll footbridge in existence.■

use of the overlooked structure. The “Head of Falls” was once the location of the Wyandotte Worsted Woolen Mill and the Waterville Iron Works, as well as a number of small

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Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

Weeks & Sons dRilliNG Family Owned and Operated For Over 50 Years

Specializing in Hammer Drilling

larry Hotham “Life begins with a good foundation”

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873-2679 • Cell 465-5194 Winslow, Maine

Stan’s Excavation & Home Building

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Discover Maine 40

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Mrs. a. W. Varney’s residence, Vienna. Item #112303 from the eastern Illustrating & publishing co. collection and www.penobscotMarineMuseum.org

Jason Stevens Excavation & Earth Work • Septic Systems • Bulldozing • Gravel/Sand/Loam • Free Estimates • Fully Licensed • Insured 314 Horse Point Rd. Belgrade • ME 04917

465-8254 • 649-8070

Inc. Ronald J. Bellavance, Pres.

B’s Home Service

Barbara Russell home, Business Camp, Yard & Garden Fall, spring or weekly Cleaning

wallpapering • Painting Remodeling

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Campmeeting John Maine’s famous evangelist by Charles Francis

ampmeeting John Allen was without doubt one the most charismatic figures to have graced the towns of western Maine’s Sandy River Valley. His commanding presence, stentorian speaking voice and impeccable posture were combined with a prodigious memory that made it possible for him to quote almost any section of the Bible without hesitation. John Allen was born in Farmington in 1795. He came by the name Campmeeting John because a great deal of his service to the Methodist Episcopal church was as a circuit preacher who did his preaching not only in western Maine, but throughout New England and even as far west as Iowa. Today Campmeeting John Allen is an almost legendary figure in the history of the Methodist Episcopal church. The Methodist campground in Strong was named for him. So, too, was one in Iowa. Part of his legend comes from the very fact he has come down through the years as Campmeeting John. The sobriquet comes from the fact that he conducted so many services in the open as a traveling preacher. The nickname also appears in the record as “Campmeeting John” Allen and “Camp-meeting John” Allen, with the quotation marks. John Allen was the ninth of ten children and the fourth boy born to Captain William and Love (Coffin) Allen. When William Allen and Love Coffin were married on Martha’s Vineyard in 1779, they were

The Sunset Grille Family Restaurant

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said to be the most handsome couple on the island. William Allen had been a captain in the Revolution, and Love Coffin had served as a tailoress for the Continental Army. Both were descended from the earliest families to settle Martha’s Vineyard, Love Coffin from Tristan Coffin, the famous forebear of many of the family of that name, including poet Peter Tristan Coffin. William and Love Allen had five children on Martha’s Vineyard before moving to Farmington in the 1790s. By shear bad luck the Allens chose to settle on some of the most unproductive land in the Sandy River Valley. As a result of this, mere survival was a constant struggle for the family. Any kind of luxury, including books, was a rarity in the Allen home. Nevertheless, William and Love Allen saw to it that their children were exposed to literature. Love Coffin read to her offspring from the few books they had such as Milton’s Paradise Lost. She also related to her children the major events of ancient and modern history from memory. The Allens also saw to it that all their children attended school. Almost all of them went on to become teachers. While not Methodists, the Allens were a devout family. Campmeeting John Allen was himself converted to the Methodist sect at a campmeeting. In 1835 he joined the Maine Conference ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Strong. His first formal ministry was at the Methodist church in Phillips in 1836. Later he would help establish a Conference circuit there. He would also serve as minister for a number of other western Maine Methodist Episcopal churches, including the one in Wilton. Most of his time as a preacher was spent on circuit as an evangelist, however. John Allen was a showman who knew exactly how to hold his congregation in the palm of his hand, as well as how to drive home a point. (Continued on page 42)

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Discover Maine 42

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

(Continued from page 41)

Almost every congregation he preached to, or every camp rally he held, had an “Amen Corner” made up of men. His exhortation to the Amen Corner usually went something like “Give it to ‘em, Brother, give it to ‘em.” The Brothers would then burst out with words of approval followed with a ringing chorus of Amen. Campmeeting John was also known for his sense of humor. An example of this humor comes from the time he was serving as chaplain of the Maine Legislature. At the conclusion of one session of the Legislature, he ended his dismissal benediction to the distinguished body with the words “Return ye ransomed sinners home.” The records conflict as to just how many camp meetings John Allen actually held. Some place it in the 300s, some in the 400s. In an interview in his last years, Allen said he had attended 818 camp meetings. In 1881 Allen attended a camp meeting in Mansfield, Massachusetts He was eighty-six at the time. He was described as “straight and active as most men of 30.” Allen was asked to read from the Bible at the Mansfield meeting. According to one report of the occasion, “when called to read the Scripture [Allen]

Schoolhouse at Fayette corner. Item #114611 from the eastern Illustrating & publishing co. collection and www.penobscotMarineMuseum.org would repeat different chapters (without referring to the bible) by memory.” Campmeeting John Allen died in East Livermore in 1887. He was ninety-two. He died as he said he always wanted to — attending a camp meeting. John Allen married Annah Hersey. One of their children was a daughter named Amanda. Amanda Allen married another Farmington

resident with Martha’s Vineyard roots, Edwin Norton. Edwin and Amanda Norton gave Campmeeting John a number of grandchildren. One of them was named Lillian. Lillian Norton went on to fame as Madame Nordica, the great operatic diva.■ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

@ Home Electric Serving you Since 1978

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Mt. Vernon, ME

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farminGton Rt. 2, Farmington Falls, ME

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— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Discover Maine

The Genealogy Corner: distinguished Given names by Charles Francis

or as long as I can remember I have been surrounded by reminders of the commonness of my first name. This commonness has been compounded by the fact my last name can be a first. Plus, there seem to be a good many out there with both my first and last names. This mayhap has led me on numerous occasions to question my parents’ choice of my given name. Of course, I know the reason why I was named Charles. My mother’s father was a Charles. I have a first cousin who also bears the name Charles. In his case it is a middle name. His forename is John. It would seem that my mother and uncle were lacking in originality as far as naming children was concerned. Charles does have an illustrious provenance. Charlemagne was Charles the Great. This probably explains why Charles has been a favored name of various royal houses. Royalty aside — who would want to dwell on the beheading of Charles I of England — it isn’t until the nineteenth century that we have fig-

rdm elecTric Ryan Morgan Master Electrician Fully Licensed & Insured

ures named Charles of note, at least in the league of Charles the Great. Then we have Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens. Most parents want to give their children

names that are distinctive enough that they won’t be shared by every Tom, Dick and Harry they meet. Conversely, they don’t want to saddle a child with a name so distinctive as to indicate oddball origins. Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller named his daughter Moxie Crimefighter. Frank Zappa named his children Moon Unit and Dweezil. When I began teaching school in the 1960s there were a lot of Susans and Steves in my classes. When I was in school there were a lot of Barbaras and Georges. Today it seems there are a lot of Dylans and Chloes. The search to be moderately distinctive appears to result in parents being moderately distinctive in the same way. Parents want their children to make something of themselves. One way to set one’s offspring on a road to distinction is by giving the child a distinctive name. The ten children of Israel and Martha Washburn of Livermore serve as an example. Israel and Martha (Benjamin) Washburn (Continued on page 44)

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west Farmington, Maine

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16 Depot St. • Livermore Falls

897-5367 • 888-834-5367

Discover Maine 44

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

(Continued from page 43)

raised their family in Livermore in the early decades of the nineteenth century. They had seven sons and three daughters. All the sons went on to national prominence. Had it not been for the times, the girls probably would have, too. Regardless, they made successful marriages. The Washburn children went on to meaningful and successful lives from humble origins. A cursory examination of their upbringing reveals a strong mother — one who wanted the best for her offspring. However, we are not talking of family values here, but rather of names of distinction. First the Washburn boys: Israel, Jr. was a Maine governor and congressman. Cadwallader was a governor of Wisconsin and a congressman. He founded the company that became General Mills. William managed it. William was also a Minnesota congressman and United States senator. Elihu was an Illinois attorney. He is one of those credited with influencing Lincoln to run for president. He served as minister to France. Sidney was a successful Boston merchant and banker. Samuel worked his way from able-bodied seaman to master of his own ship, and was a Civil War naval captain of an ironclad. And Charles was a successful forty-niner and newspaper owner. He served as minister to Paraguay and invented the forerunner to the Remington typewriter. The Washburn sisters were Mary, Martha and Caroline. Mary and Martha also had the same middle name, Benjamin. Mary and Martha had five children each. Caroline married a Union surgeon who died in the war. She was the only other of the Washburn children besides Israel, Jr. to live much of her adult life in Maine. It was Caroline who cared for her father during his old age. The names of the Washburn children range from the biblical, to the familial, to the strictly

of Maine “From Our Forest to Final Form”

AutHorIzEd sAlEs CEntEr new Equipment sales & service ross Clair, Manager/sawyer (207) 645-2072 Fax: (207) 645-3786 541 Borough rd., Chesterville, ME 04938

Saw mill at Fayette. Item #100787 from the eastern Illustrating & publishing co. collection and www.penobscotMarineMuseum.org secular. The biblical and familial nature of the name Israel is obvious, as are Samuel (the maternal grandfather of the Washburn siblings was named Samuel), Mary Benjamin and Martha Benjamin. Elihu is also biblical. He was a fiery defender of God in the Book of Job. William comes down through history from William the Conqueror and William III of England, the Protestant king of the Glorious Revolution who defeated Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne. Sidney, a popular name of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, is Old English. Caroline is one of the feminine forms of Charles. Baby names are subject to trends. In a way, they are fashion statements like tail fins on cars or beards. Names are also statements of status. When a parent names a child he or she is giving that child an accoutrement — a cloak of many colors. The elite want to distinguish themselves and their children. But so, too, do the middle classes. And so on. When the elite

take on a new look, those below them do the same. Different social classes and ethnic groups draw from differing name pools in naming offspring. The name pool that the parents of the Washburn siblings drew from is illustrative of nineteenth century New England English speakers of Anglo-Saxon origins. Some names go through cycles. If you hear someone is named Bertha or Jake, you will probably think of someone who is in a nursing home. They are that out of style. Names like Cadwallader and Elihu, even more so. If you are interested in pursuing the trendy nature of baby naming, check out the Social Security Administration’s popular names of the year. Social Security has names listed by popularity going back to 1880.■ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

one great Company ~ two great locations!

kitchen solutions Sales & Design Center ~Over 15 Years of Experience~

granite Countertops

1766 Federal Road (Livermore Plaza, Route 4) Livermore, ME 04253

Phone 207.897.3400 1822 Lisbon Rd. Lewiston, ME

Phone 207.784.3100

www.kitchensolutionsmaine.com

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Discover Maine

edward J. lawrence Fairfield’s self-made man by James Nalley

n Dec. 6, 1918 citizens of Fairfield, Maine, opened the morning edition of the Fairfield Journal to find an article that stated: Hon. E.J. Lawrence passed away at his home on Lawrence Avenue Wednesday morning at about 9:30 a.m. after a short illness. Mr. Lawrence had been in poor health for some time but his death came as a great shock to the community. Although his educational level was only at the sixth grade, Lawrence was a substantial figure who not only made a fortune through hard work and determination, but who eventually shared his wealth with a city that he truly loved. Edward J. Lawrence was born on New Year’s Day in 1833, in Fairfield Center. After leaving public school in the sixth grade to work on a farm, he eventually found a position as a clerk in a general store in the town of Norridgewock. But when many teenagers would have just settled into the position for just the measly pay, Lawrence was noticed by the store’s bookkeeper who taught him everything that he knew about the skill, and recommended him to work for the Wing and Bates Lumber Company in Gardiner. From there he applied his bookkeeping skills and gained knowledge about the thriving lumber industry, and was subsequently appointed in charge of the company’s mill in Shawmut. Partnered with his brother George and other entrepreneurs, Lawrence turned the business into one of the largest lumber industries in the state of Maine.

But as Lawrence slowly gained substantial wealth from his business, he never lost the care and concern for his employees who helped make him what he was. According to the biography of E.J. Lawrence by the Lawrence Public Library: He was noted for his care and concern for the welfare of his employees and for their families. A number of local banks failed in 1877 due to banks printing paper money without having the same value of gold in their vaults. E.J. ran for the state legislature on the Greenback ticket and was elected. He proposed laws that would guarantee workers safe working conditions and pay commensurate with the nature of their work. He also promoted a bill allowing only the federal government to print paper money. He met with some success in the first purpose and with complete success on the paper money issue. In 1868 at the age of 35 Lawrence married Hannah Miller Shaw, who lived in the town of Carmel. This was actually his second marriage — his first being to Sara Garrish of Portland, who unfortunately died after an illness. Lawrence and Shaw eventually had three daughters: Annie (born in 1870), Addie (born in 1873), and finally, Alice (born in 1879). The household was generally filled with happiness and privilege, but that slowly changed after Annie suddenly died in 1886 at the age of 16. The E.J. Lawrence biography states, “Hannah was so emotionally disturbed by the death that it seemed better for the two girls to be out of the home. They were both sent to a boarding school in Quincy, (Continued on page 46)

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Discover Maine 46

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

(Continued from page 45)

cepted E.J.’s offer of a library and then on July 25, 1901, the library was dedicated.” The library was designed by renowned architect William R. Miller. In 1907 Lawrence again hired the services of Miller for another substantial donation to the city of Fairfield — the Lawrence High School. The massive building included the

Massachusetts.” This is when both girls were noticed for their respective talents. Addie eventually attended the ART Students League in New York to train for a career as a portrait artist, while Alice was noticed for her musical talent. She received instruction from John Carver Alden, an acclaimed pianist who allowed her to live in his home. But unfortunately for Addie, she returned home just before the launch of her career to tend to her mother’s failing health. In 1909 Alice met and married Walter Daub and settled into Queens, New York where they had two girls. But in 1919, after 10 years of marriage, Alice and Walter divorced. Alice then promptly returned to Fairfield to once again join her sister Addie. Meanwhile, in the years before Alice’s return to Fairfield, Addie had spent a substantial amount of time creating a small circulating library on the second floor in Holt’s store on Main Street. With her friends Mary Newhall and Frances Kenrick, they slowly acquired enough materials to serve the community. According to the History of the Lawrence Library, “It shortly became obvious that more space was needed, and Addie convinced her father that the town needed a public free library. At the town meeting in March 1900, the town ac-

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Today, the Lawrence Public Library still thrives at its location on Lawrence Avenue with a substantial collection of books as well as a wide array of activities for the community. It is a far cry from the tiny, second-floor space once managed by Addie Lawrence and her friends. best equipment, grounds, and design and had cost approximately $70,000, which was an unheard-of amount at the time. After his wife Hannah died in 1914, Lawrence spent his remaining years as an extremely popular and influential figure in the community. Upon his death, Lawrence was survived by his two lovPropane Exchange • Movie Rentals

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ing daughters, Addie and Alice, and the funeral was held at his home on Lawrence Avenue at 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. Today, the Lawrence Public Library still thrives at its location on Lawrence Avenue with a substantial collection of books as well as a wide array of activities for the community. It is a far cry from the tiny, second-floor space once managed by Addie Lawrence and her friends. But most importantly, the library is the lasting legacy of a man who began his life as a general store clerk and who transformed himself into what the 1903 Genealogy of the State of Maine stated as “a man of the highest integrity… strong in purpose… prudent in business… and stands among the foremost of the business men, not only in his country, but in his state.”■

Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

Phil Carter’s Garage “Serving you since 1960” Air Conditioning Specialist Registered With International Mobile Air Conditioning Certification Association (IMACA)

From Foreign & Domestic to 18-Wheelers When It Comes to Air Conditioning, phil Carter’s garage Is the only name! tune-Ups • exhausts • Brakes Complete Car Care needs

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dAC dIstrIButors, InC. Auto parts & Accessories domestic & Foreign Car & truck

radiators • drums & rotors turned • We Make Hydraulic Hoses Bench test starters & Alternators • Most parts same day service

Open Mon-fri 7am-6pm, sat 7am-2pm 1153 Main street, Clinton 426-8402

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Discover Maine

lewiston, augusta & Waterville St. rail yard at Depot Square, Gardiner. Item #112615 from the eastern Illustrating & publishing co. collection and www.penobscotMarineMuseum.org

Mike’s auto Body Complete Auto Body Repair & Painting

Free Estimates • Loaner Cars used Cars • glass Work Frame Straightening

487-3179

366 Hunnewell Ave., Pittsfield

LINKLETTER & SONS, INC. Athens, Maine 207-654-2301

professional loggers for nearly 50 years.

We selective cut, buy lots and buy stumpage

Mike Braley, Owner/Operator

St. Albans Mini Mart

SNOWMAN’S OIL & SOIL

Pizza, Hot & Cold Sandwiches and More

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938-4150 6 Main Street St. Albans, Maine 04971

Supporting Our Local Community Savings • Checking • CDs Money Market • Clubs • IRAs ATM Cards • Visa Check Cards Car Loans • Personal Loans Share Loans • Home Equity Loans Loans For Recreational Vehicles, Mobile Homes, Land, Real Estate

505 Somerset Avenue Pittsfield, Maine 04967 tel: 207-487-5576

938-4528 160 Hartland Road St. Albans, Maine 04971-7307

87 Moosehead Trail Newport, Maine 04953 tel: 207-368-4940

www.svfcume.com

Discover Maine 48

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Maine Governor abner Coburn Skowhegan’s generous gentleman by Charlotte Mayo

bner Coburn was born on March 22, 1803 in Canaan, Maine — the portion now known as Skowhegan. His father Eleazer came from Massachusetts in 1792 and married Mary Weston. Miss Weston’s grandfather Joseph was a guide for Benedict Arnold during his trip to Quebec. Governor Coburn was not a well-educated man. He had a little schooling among the district schools, and he attended Bloomfield Academy for a few terms. In his later years he became a benefactor for the cause of education, as he augmented funds for the old Bloomfield Academy, the College of Agriculture and Liberal Arts and Colby University at Waterville. There was also the Coburn Classical Institute, for which Abner Coburn fostered prosperity with a directing hand. The Coburn name was well-known all along the Kennebec Valley line. Abner’s father Eleazer was a land surveyor. Abner became his assistant in 1825, then began his own land surveying in 1830. He and his father Eleazer,

Governor abner coburn

along with brother Philander, formed a partnership firm by the name of E. Coburn and Sons. They would survey, buy land, and cut timber on the Kennebec. The Coburns kept busy and prospered until 1845 when Eleazer died. E. Coburn and Sons then became A. & P., continuing the same business and becoming equally as prosperous. The brothers were known as favorable lumber dealers throughout New England, as well as in the West, where they held more than 60,000 acres of valuable timberlands. The Coburns were of great character and integrity, and very shrewd business operators. They were pioneers in the land and lumber business. They began to purchase land very cheaply, and continued to do so until 1870 when they were the largest land owners in the state, owning no less than 450,000 acres, or more than 700 square miles of land. In 1872 the larger part of their land was sold for $1,500,000. However, the buyer couldn’t carry out his contract and the land fell back to the Coburns.

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474-7352

Family Pet Connection

& Grooming Everyday Low Prices! Great Selection of Pets and Pet Supplies

February

2012 event Schedule

SACC Annual dinner & dinner Theater March FAB Fair at SAHS Maple Festival Week April Skow-pendous Family Fun Night May Memorial day Parade Lakewood Theater Opens Horse Shows at Fairgrounds July Kneading Conference Concerts in the Park August RiverFest - Moonlight Madness RiverFest - Golf Tournament RiverFest - Rotary Lobster Bake RiverFest - RiverFest Skowhegan State Fair New Balance Tent Sale October Haunted Hayrides december Holiday Stroll

Please check with the Chamber office (474-3621) for exact dates and times. Also there are other events throughout the year with dates TBd such as Skowhegan Opera House Concerts, and other town activities.

Mon. 9-5 • Tues.-Thurs. 9-6 • Fri. & Sat. 9-7 • Sun. 10-5

474-7700

Skowhegan Village Plaza • Skowhegan,ME www.familypetconnection.com

207-474-3621 www.skowheganchamber.com

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Timber wasn’t the Coburns’ only interest. Abner became involved with the railroad, notably the line from Skowhegan to Augusta and Portland. In 1854 the Kennebec and Portland Railroad was complete. However, the Augusta to Skowhegan line was only half-completed due to lack of funds. Abner stepped in and the line was rapidly finished. One of the brothers was always on the board of directors, and Abner was president of the Kennebec & Portland Railroad, and vice president of the Maine Central Railroad. Abner’s political activities included being a Federalist, becoming a Whig and later a Republican. He was elected to the Maine Legislature in 1830, and again in 1840 and 1844. He was one of the founders of the Republican Party in the state of Maine. In 1855 Abner Coburn was a member of Governor Anson P. Morrill’s Council, and in 1857 he was in Governor Hamlin’s Council. In 1860 he was Presidential Elector, and threw his vote for Abraham Lincoln. In 1862 Governor Washburn wished to retire at the end of his second term in office. Abner Coburn’s great business ability commended him as the man above all others to step into his place, and carry along the great work of raising and equipping troops and for-

Dunn & Pakulski Gerald G Dunn, OD, PA D. Alex Pakulski, OD, PA David Benes, OD

• Family Eye Care • Sports/Safety Glasses • Contact Lenses • Fashion Eye wear It’s time to make that appointment! New Patients Welcome Insurance Welcome

warding them to the front to aid in suppressing the rebellion. He was nominated and elected Governor, serving in 1863 with distinguished ability during one of the most trying years of the war. There was a “Peace Party” gaining in the northern states. Battles were being lost and many men began to get discouraged. However, Governor Coburn stood fast, never losing his courage, and kept his efforts in the work of sustaining the President in prosecuting the war. Abner Coburn’s administration was honest, able, efficient and strong in every respect. He retired at the end of his term in high regard. Governor Abner Coburn was a very wealthy man, but was democratic in his habits and tastes which were plain and unassuming. His energy was untiring while his integrity was unquestioned. He lived in Skowhegan all his days, beloved by the people of his town and admired and respected by the people of the state of Maine. His fame will long outlive his fortune. Many benefactors were named in Abner Coburn’s will. $30,000 was dispensed to Bloomfield Academy, where he had attended school. The funds were used for a Free Public Library upon Abner’s request. The building was completed and opened in May 1890. Today the building is still managed by

Convenience

474-9613

Since 1865

474-3449 www.quinnhardware.com 125 Waterville Road Skowhegan OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEk

the Bloomfield Academy Trustees. He bestowed Somerset County with an elegant courthouse, and Skowhegan with a public hall which is named after him. He was Trustee and Vice President of Colby University in Waterville. One of the most impressive gifts that Governor Abner Coburn bestowed upon the town of Skowhegan was a lot known as the “Russell Lot.” In 1885 Abner, through his will, gave his share of the lot to the town for a community park. Twenty years later the town accepted the rest of the lot from the heirs of Abner’s brother Philander Coburn. Aptly-named Coburn Park is located within walking distance of the town of Skowhegan. It is a peaceful twelve-and-one-half acres of natural and manmade beauty. Land was also donated by the Skowhegan Water Company and Somerset Woods Trustees. Since 1903 citizens have improved the park by planting flowers, shrubs and trees. There are over 200 species of trees growing there today. The park has a gazebo, a bandstand, picnic areas along the riverside, frog pond and many flower gardens. The park can be used for weddings and other functions. Concerts are held there during the year. (Continued on page 50)

2 Great Businesses – One Great Location!

10 High Street Skowhegan, ME 04976

Skowhegan’s Oldest business

Discover Maine

Cold beer gas Snacks Lots of items Open 5am - 10pm 7 Days for your convenience 260 water Street Skowhegan, Maine

260 Water Street Skowhegan 386 Madison Avenue Skowhegan 60 Fairgrounds Marketplace at Wal-Mart 1573 Main Street Palmyra at Wal-Mart 164 Main Street, Route 148 Madison 247 Main Street at Canaan One Stop Canaan

Discover Maine 50

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

View at coburn park, Skowhegan. Item #111857 from the eastern Illustrating & publishing co. collection and www.penobscotMarineMuseum.org (Continued from page 49)

Dignitaries at Abner Coburn’s funeral service included members of the Governor’s Council, Maine legislature, and President and

Directors of the Maine Central Railroad. At the time of his death, former Governor Abner Coburn’s will and testament was worth over one million dollars.■

R.F. Automotive Repair

Blanchet

ROSS FRAzIER, OWNER/OPERATOR

Complete Diagnostic Service Chassis Dyno Testing A/C Servicing (New and Old)

(207) 474 -9656

188 Madison Ave., Skowhegan

Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

Builders, L.L.C. Custom Built Homes • New Home Construction • Light Commercial Construction

474-8459 34 Willys Way Skowhegan, Maine

poulin-turner union Hall usW loCal #9 All Occasions

Weddings • class reunions • all Holidays private parties up to 250 people Bring your own food - ByoB - or select one of our caterers.

gREAT LOW RATES!

Call 474-0400 Route 201 Skowhegan Evening & weekend Appointments Available

Portable Toilets

) ay ARANTEED SPOTLES S (and we keep ‘em that w GU

• wheelchair Units • Hand Sanitizers • Handwash Stations Available • weddings • Family Reunions • Construction Sites

• Septic Tank Service Wedding? Party? See our

Boudoir toilets

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CMS

Central Maine Septic & Portable Toilet Rentals

Toll Free 1-866-WIL-PuMP

474-7216 Skowhegan

DEP Licensed & Insured

For photos, helpful info: www.centralmaineseptic.com

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

Discover Maine

(left) elm Street, Skowhegan. (right) Water Street, Skowhegan. Items #111854 and #102459 from the eastern Illustrating & publishing co. collection and www.penobscotMarineMuseum.org

Central Maine Sandblasting TRuST YouR RuST To uS anything from frying pans to freight trains!

Chris White Office: 474-3066

Cell: 431-2204

to heat or cool, and propane too! call... Maple Syrup • Candy Jams • Honey • gifts Open Mon-Fri 8 to 5 449 lakewood Road, • Madison, Me 04950

1-800-310-3803 www.mainemaple.com Mention Discover Maine Magazine for a 15% discount expires 9/4/12

Madison

Automotive & Recreation Dennis Johnston: Owner

• Foreign & Domestic Auto Repair • Full Marine Service Open • Lawn Equipment Mon.-Fri. • Bedliners 8am - 5pm • Shrink Wrapping • State Inspections: Motorcycle & Commercial

696-5523

sackettandbrake.com

173 White School House Rd. (Rte. 148) Madison, Maine

b’s o B Cash Fuel

• Heating Oil • Kerosene • Propane • Diesel • gasoline • • 24-Hour Repair Service • • Complete Heating Installations • • Central Air Conditioning • Locally owned & operated

696-3040 • 1-800-598-FUEL 424 Main Street • Madison, Maine

taylor’s drug store “Your Hometown Pharmacy” Gifts Cosmetics Office Supplies

Celebrating 100 years of dedication

2 old point Avenue • Madison tel. 696-3935

Discover Maine 52

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

The Old Canada road enigma What’s really in a name? by Charles Francis

n Maine it was called the Canada Road. In Quebec it went by the name Kennebec Road. At least that seems commonly accepted. It has to do with current usage. What we are talking about is an old road that once was something of a thoroughfare connecting the Kennebec Valley region to its counterpart in the St. Lawrence Valley in the general area of Quebec City. Perhaps the best general designation for the thoroughfare would be the Chaudiere/Kennebec corridor. Chaudiere/Kennebec seems the more genuine. It references the dominant geographic features of the old thoroughfare — two rivers. A goodly portion of the old road winds alongside Maine’s Kennebec River. The same may be said for the road in regard to the Chaudiere in Quebec. The names of the rivers predate the road. The names are prehistoric. They are — in altered form — the creation of indigenous peoples. The Indians of Quebec described the Chaudiere in terms that implied boiling. It had to do with rapids. The French adopted that sense with a word for caldron. Of the possible meanings for Kennebec, flowing into the Atlantic seems the most appropriate. The Chaudiere/Kennebec corridor was used by indigenous peoples traveling between the St. Lawrence River and the Atlantic Ocean for thousands of years. It should be noted that in Maine the corridor is known as the Kennebec/Chaudiere. The Old Canada Road is designated as part of the Kennebec-Chaudiere International Heritage Corridor. In Quebec the Kennebec Road is Le Corridor international Chaudière-Kennebec. To be a genuine name a term must possess a certain degree of rigidity. It needs to have

the same reference in every possible world. In Maine one finds a certain opacity to Old Canada Road. At least one tour indicates a wonderful day trip may be taken, approximating much of the original route by starting at Lakewood outside of Skowhegan. You can find references stating the Old Canada Road ended at Bath and at Phippsburg at the mouth of the Kennebec. The same is the case in Quebec. Quebec City is given as a starting point of the Kennebec Road. So, too, is the Beauce region of Quebec. Chaudiere and Kennebec as names of rivers are rigid designators. They keep their reference across worlds. Old Kennebec Road and Old Canada Road are descriptions that in different worlds may refer to different things. Two factors would seem to dominate in the creation of a road linking the Kennebec and St. Lawrence valleys — commerce and migration. Research points to cattlemen of the upper Kennebec Valley, desirous of reaching lucrative Quebec City markets, beginning work on a trail through the woods. This would have been just after 1800, perhaps 1802. Later, perhaps in the 1830s, French Canadian workers with their families began using the road to travel into Maine. These latter had hopes of finding work and building a new life for themselves. The second decade of the nineteenth century finds the first governmental reference to what would become known as the Old Canada Road. On June 12, 1817, the Massachusetts General Court passed a resolve to survey and lay out a road “north of the million acre, in the county of Somerset.” The “million acre” refers to Bingham’s Purchase. It should be

Sun Auto & Salvage

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Saws • Tractors Brush Cutters • Ice Augers

Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park at

Yonder Hill

A Family Camping Resort

“The Gateway to Maine’s Scenic Highway” ~ Full Service Heated Cabins that sleep 4 ~ 40 Minutes from Whitewater Rafting ~ Dancing every Friday and Saturday Night ~ Bar with Food ~ Large Swimming Pool 60’ x 100’!

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(207) 474-7353

474-5176 • 1-800-843-5176

579 Skowhegan Rd. (Rte. 2) Norridgewock www.finestkindsaw.com

www.SunAutoSalvage.com

474-9377

586 Skowhegan Road (Route 2) • norridgewock, Me

noted that the wording of the resolve specifically names the road the “Kennebec Road.” $5000 was the amount designated for the survey of the “Kennebec Road.” From the above it is clear the Old Canada Road was once viewed as a state road. That is how the Commonwealth of Massachusetts saw it. And in 1827 that is how the state of Maine chose to look at it, too. The individual who brought the state road north of the Bingham Purchase to the attention of the Maine Legislature was George Evans. Born in Hallowell in 1797, Evans was an up-and-coming political power in 1827. He was a practicing Gardiner attorney, and in 1829 would serve as Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. He would go on to a career as Congressman and United States Senator. In January of 1827 Evans called attention to the fact that little more had been accomplished in the way of actual road work “than cutting down the trees and smaller growth and

221 Lakewood Road Madison, ME 04950

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

the erection of a substantial bridge at Moose River.” He went on to say the road “is wholly impassable for carriages; and the benefits anticipated from its establishment, have been but in small degree realized.” The only ones who would seem to have profited from the road were drovers selling horses and cattle in Quebec. Subsequently, the Maine Legislature passed a “Resolve relative to the State Road north of the Bingham Purchase.” The “State Road” was to be made “safe and convenient for travellers, with their horses, carts, sleighs and carriages.” A township was to be sold to pay for the process. The first reference by the Maine Legislature to “the Canada road so-called” occurred in 1830. In that year $4100 was appropriated to make a nine-mile stretch “convenient for carriages to pass thereon.” In 1831 a Congressional committee commissioned a report of the history of the road. The report would seem the full extent of the federal government’s interest in the road. The report does not identify the road by specific name. What is now known as the Old Canada Road was clearly functioning when Maine became a state. This does not mean it was used for much more than driving animals, however. The exact date when the entire length of the road was opened for the use of carriages and wagons was probably sometime between 1837 and 1840. The development of the railroad, beginning with the Grand Trunk, led to abandonment of Canada Road sections. Today U.S. Route 201 parallels some of the old thoroughfare. In Quebec its counterpart is found in Route 173. The question we are considering is what is meant by the term Old Canada Road? Clearly, names are arbitrary. We can say the morning star is identical with the evening star. This does not express a one-on-one relationship, but rather an astronomical discovery. It pres-

Discover Maine

residence of Dr. e.r. turner, new Vineyard. Item #101753 from the eastern Illustrating & publishing co. collection and www.penobscotMarineMuseum.org ents us with a distinction between the reference of the expression and the sense of the expression. Venus is both the reference of the evening star and the morning star. The evening star and the morning star differ in sense. Old Canada Road may be paraphrased in many ways. When used as extending to the mouth of the Kennebec it is used to designate something other than a road. The Old Canada Road is a complex designation. Road is ambiguous. Likewise, thoroughfare and corridor. What saves Old Canada Road from being worthless as a designation is the fact that it is a proper name. The same is true for Old Kennebec Road. Neither designation, however, is an appropriate designator of the totality of both together. For that we must use Chaudiere/Kennebec Corridor or Le Corridor international Chaudière-Kennebec.

And even here there is a question as to sense or reference.■ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

362-5652 Cell 314-6402 168 warren Hill road smithfield, Maine

Lemon Stream Gamelands Private, High Fence Trophy Hunting

Red Stag • Fallow Deer Mature elk • Buffalo • Boar

EARTHWORk CONTRACTORS SAND • LOAM • gRAVEL CRuSHED PRODuCTS

Test your hunting skills on our 300 acres of diversely forested land Season starts Sept. 1 ends April 30

Reserve your 3-Day Hunt Today

~ American Plan Available ~ Located 4 hrs. from Boston • 8 hrs. from nY PO Box 22, anson Me 04911 • 207-696-3006

www.lemonstreamgamelands.com

696-3084 45 Main Street • Anson, Maine

Discover Maine 54

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

View of Bingham from old Hill. Item #115985 from the eastern Illustrating & publishing co. collection and www.penobscotMarineMuseum.org

E.W. Moore & Son Pharmacy Established 1894

Big Enough to serve you... small Enough to Care

Serving you since 1990 We Now Do: Four Wheel Alignments General Auto Repair A/C Work State Inspections Towing

Prescriptions • Health & Beauty Boyds Bears • Yankee Candles Maine Souvenirs & Postcards Jewelry • Toys, Games & Models Chet Hibbard, R Ph.

(tel) 672-3312 1-800-814-4495 337 Main street, Bingham

Bingham Village

Video

672-4951 • 612-8779 84 Stream Road • Moscow

DVD Rentals & Sales GAMES! XBox 672-4900 Play Station 10 Murray Street Wii Rent or Buy! Serving the upper Kennebec Valley Region Movies for the entire family!

Open 7 Days 12 noon - 8pm

Long Pond Camps & Guide service New, Full Housekeeping Cabins on Long Pond.

Hunt, fish and snowmobile outside your door! OPEN yEAR ROuND

Guided and unguided hunts for bear, deer and moose.

$35/night pp • Kids ½ Price 12 Loop Road, Route 15 Jackman, Maine 04945

207-668-4872 longpondcamps.com Give someone a special gift that will be enjoyed all year long... A subscription to Discover Maine Magazine! you’ll find our subscription form on page 24 of this issue.

— Greater Kennebec Valley Edition —

directory Of advertisers Business

page Business

ABT Plumbing, Heating & Cooling . . .29 ADA Fence Co. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 Advance 1 Cleaning Service . . . . . . . . .38 Al’s Certified Auto Repair . . . . . . . . . .20 American Awards Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 At Home Electric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Augusta Civic Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 B.N.F. Building Contractor LLC . . . . .35 Babies Love Them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Ballard Meats & Seafood . . . . . . . . . . .23 Barclay’s Skin Divers Paradise . . . . . . .19 BC Hydraulics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Belgrade Canoe & Kayak . . . . . . . . . . .16 Bellavance Construction Company, Inc. . . .40 Bellavance Jacking Co., LLC . . . . . . . . .40 Bingham Village Video . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 Blanchet Builders, LLC . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 Bob’s Cash Fuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Bosse Chiropractic & Wellness . . . . . .38 B’s Home Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Buen Apetito Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 C. Haggan Jr. Excavation LLC . . . . . . .55 Canty Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Capilo Institute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Captain Lewis Residence . . . . . . . . . . .20 Care & Comfort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Carrabassett Real Estate . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Central Maine Sandblasting . . . . . . . . .51 Central Maine Septic/Portable Toilets .50 Central Tire Co. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Coldwell Banker / Thomas Agency . . .10 Comfort Inn Civic Center, Augusta . . .22 Computer Improvements . . . . . . . . . . .48 D.B. Industries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 D.H. Pinnette & Sons Inc. . . . . . . . . . . .4 DAC Distributors, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Damon’s Beverage Mart . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Damon’s Pizza & Italians . . . . . . . . . . .15 Darling’s Audi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 David Stevens Excavation & Septic Systems . .28 Day’s Travel Bureau Waterville . . . . . . .38 Dionne & Son Builders . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Dom’s Barber Shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Dunkin’ Donuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 Dunn & Pakulski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 E.H. Ward & Son . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 E.W. Moore & Son Pharmacy . . . . . . .54 Ed Bouchard Electric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Ed Hodson Masonry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Evergreen Self Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Fairfield Antiques Mall . . . . . . . . . . . . .45

the Gateway to the maine woods Bingham Moscow Solon Caratunk The Forks West Forks

page Business

Family Pet Connection & Grooming . .48 Farmington Farmers Union . . . . . . . . .41 Farmington Save-A-Lot . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Farmington Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Fireside Inn & Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Fleet Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Fox Small Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Franklin Savings Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Franklin-Somerset FCU . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Freddie’s Service Center . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Galeyrie Maps & Custom Frames . . . . .6 Goggins IGA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Goings Electric Supply, Inc. . . . . . . . . .42 Group Adams Propane Services . . . . .43 Hall & Son Window Washing & Property Management . . . .17 Hammond Lumber Co. . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Hanlon Pet Haven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Healthreach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Hillside Homes, LLC . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Hotham Concrete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 Houston-Brooks Auctioneers . . . . . . . .4 Hussey’s General Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Hydraulic Hose & Assembly . . . . . . . . .8 J&M Motors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Jackman Auto Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 Jackman Power Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Jackman-Moose River Chamber . . . . .36 James A. Wrigley Well Drilling . . . . . . . .4 Jason Stevens Excavation & Earth Work . . .40 Jean Castonguay Excavating . . . . . . . . .29 Jewett Builders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 John Castonguay Logging & Trucking 30 JT’s Finest Kind Saw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 K.V. Tax Service, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Katie Q. Convenience . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 Kennebec Valley Chamber . . . . . . . . . .14 Kincer Funeral Home Inc. . . . . . . . . . . .9 Kitchen Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 Klassic Klunkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Kramers, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 KSW Federal Credit Union . . . . . . . . .38 L.N. Violette Co., Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Ladd Logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 Ladd’s Plumbing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Lakeside Property Management Inc. . .10 Lamoureux Floor Sanding . . . . . . . . . . .3 LaVallee’s Garage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 Lemon Stream Gamelands . . . . . . . . . .53 Linkletter & Sons Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Long Pond Camps & Guide Service . .54 Lori’s Café . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12

its 84 & 87

accommodations & restaurants

207-672-4100 www.upperkennebecvalleychamber.com ukvcofc@yahoo.com Upper Kennebec Valley Chamber of Commerce

page Business

Luce’s Maine Grown Meats . . . . . . . . .35 Mac’s True Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Madison Automotive & Recreation . . .51 Maine Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Maine Maple Products, Inc. . . . . . . . . .51 Maine State Credit Union . . . . . . . . . . .23 Maine-ly Elder Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 Maynard’s in Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 McNaughton Bros. Construction Corp. . . . .21 Merle Lloyd & Sons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 Mid-Maine Chamber of Commerce . .25 Mid-Maine Equine & Canine Therapeutics .28 Mike Wainer Plumbing & Heating . . . .28 Mike’s Auto Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Mitchell’s Roofing & Sheet Metal . . . . .37 Mosher’s Seafood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 Motor Supply Co. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 New Dimensions FCU Augusta . . . . . .13 New Dimensions FCU Waterville . . . .39 New Leaf Naturals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 North Country Powersports . . . . . . . .28 Northeast Laboratory Services . . . . . . .4 Patricia A. Flagg, EA . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Patterson’s General Store . . . . . . . . . . .46 Paul Mushero & Sons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Peachey Builders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Penobscot Marine Museum . . . . . . . . .33 Peppers Garden and Grill . . . . . . . . . . .10 Phil Carter’s Garage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Pine Tree Fence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Pine Tree Orthopedic and Foot Care .30 Pine View Homes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Pinkham’s Elm Street Market . . . . . . . .53 Pool Tech Inc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Poulin-Turner Union Hall . . . . . . . . . .50 Proseal Asphalt Repair & Maintenance 26 Quinn Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 R.F. Automotive Repair . . . . . . . . . . . .50 R.J. Energy Services, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . .13 R.S. Pidacks, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Randy’s Full Service Auto Repair . . . . .34 RDM Electric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Redington Fairview General Hospital .32 Remedy Salon and Spa . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Richard Sand & Gravel . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Rick’s Garage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Riverbend Campground . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Riverfront BBQ and Grill . . . . . . . . . . .22 Rodney Ellis Jr. Construction . . . . . . . .28 Rolfe’s Well Drilling Co. . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Roundabout Farm Perennials . . . . . . . .18

Jackman auto Parts Quality Automotive Products Great Customer Service 207-668-5351 414 Main St., Jackman, ME

Discover Maine

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Sackett & Brake Survey, Inc. . . . . . . . . .51 Sandy River Golf Course . . . . . . . . . . .41 Santos Custom Builders . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Scott-N’-Scotties, Inc. Construction . .41 Sebasticook Valley Federal Credit Union . . .47 Shaky Barn Farm Gardens . . . . . . . . . .30 Shamrock Stoneworks & Landscaping, Inc. . . .25 Siragusa Builders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Skowhegan Chamber of Commerce . .48 Snowman’s Oil & Soil . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Solon Corner Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Solon Superette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Sonny’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Sparrow Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Spitfire Catering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Sprague & Curtis Real Estate . . . . . . . .21 St. Alban’s Mini Mart . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Stan’s Excavation & Home Building . .39 Steve Thomas Builders . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Stevens Electric & Pump Service . . . . . .4 Stevens Forest Products . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Sully’s Restaurant & Tavern . . . . . . . . .19 Sun Auto & Salvage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Taylor’s Drug Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Team EJP Racing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 The Cabins at China Lake . . . . . . . . . .21 The Canaan Motel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 The Gin Mill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 The Meadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 The Sunset Grille . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Tri State Staffing Solutions . . . . . . . . . .13 United Insurance/Lehr Agency . . . . . . .3 Upper Kennebec Valley Chamber . . . .55 Village Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Visage Salon & Day Spa . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Visions Flower & Bridal Design . . . . .26 W.D. Bickford Machinery . . . . . . . . . . .31 Warren Brothers Construction . . . . . . .53 Weeks & Sons Drilling . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 White & Bradstreet, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Wilton Hardware Store, Inc. . . . . . . . . .29 Wings Hill Inn & Restaurant . . . . . . . .40 Winslow Aluminum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 Winthrop Lakes Region Chamber . . .18 WISH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Wood Mizer of Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 Wood Pellet Warehouse . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Woodlawn Rehab & Nursing Center . .32 Yonder Hill Campground . . . . . . . . . . .52

c. Haggan Jr. excavation llc sand • Gravel • loam • stone driveways • septics • foundations roads free estimates fully insured

207-668-9273 cell: 207-557-2239 tel:

343 main st. Jackman, me

Greater Kennebec Valley Edition

Campaign

Nothing like your neighbor’s crossover. Distinctively different in its appearance and performance, this crossover is taking on an entire category. With features like the exclusive Audi drive select, you can customize your driving experience by instantly adapting the way the vehicle handles and responds to the road. Add this to its striking, stylized appearance, LED lights and the power of quattro®, and you’ll realize the Audi Q5 is anything but your typical crossover. A test-drive awaits you at an Audi dealer today. audiusa.com/Q5

Darling’s Audi 403 Hogan Road, Bangor, ME US 1-888-409-1036 darlingsaudi.com “Audi,” “Q5,” “quattro,” “Truth in Engineering,” the Audi Singleframe grille design, and the four rings and Audi emblems are registered trademarks of AUDI AG. ©2011 Audi of America, Inc.