2014 Western Maine edition

2014 Volume 11 | Issue 4 |

Maine’s Original History Magazine

FREE

Est. 1991

Western Maine

A Blast From The Past

History of the Narrow Gauge Railroad in Bridgton

Louisville Lip Comes To Lewiston

The memorable world heavyweight championship fight in 1965

The Rangeley Name Squire James Rangeley gave the town its name

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Western Maine

2

Inside This Edition

Maine’s History Magazine 3

I t Makes No Never Mind James Nalley

4

A Maine Game Of Long Ago Do you remember the “ring” game?

Harold Karkos

6

Vermin Among Our Feathered Friends?

What, from a sportsman’s viewpoint, is vermin?

Charles Francis

Western Maine

Publisher Jim Burch

12 Louisville Lip Comes To Lewiston The memorable world heavyweight championship fight in 1965

Kenneth Smith

Designer & Editor

16 Leeds Men Answered When Their Country Called Locals showed patriotism during the Civil War

Brian Swartz

Advertising & Sales Manager

24 Lewiston’s Marsden Hartley The painter of Maine

James Nalley 36 A Blast From The Past History of the Narrow Gauge Railroad in Bridgton

Brian Swartz 42 A Fourth Of July To Remember Harrison celebration drew thousands

Brian Swartz 48 The Genealogy Corner

The wonderful worlds of William Berry Lapham

Charles Francis 52 Remembering “Pete” Sickels A local legend Charles Francis 60 The Rangeley Name Squire James Rangeley gave the town its name

Charles Francis 69 T he Genealogy Corner A passion for the past in Norway

Charles Francis 72 Weary Club Of Norway The mysterious club of the “weary ones”

Leslie Holden 78 Readfield’s Elias Gove The homespun messiah Charles Francis 82 A Giant Remembered Childhood memories of a Carthage school teacher

Nancy Mason 86 Firecrackers-fueled Fires Sparked Outrage In Rumford Inferno on Waldo Street

Brian Swartz 90 The Eustis Cemetery

History of a Dixfield landmark

Charlotte Mayo 92 Country Doctor

Rural medicine of days gone by

Clarence W. Bennett

Liana Merdan Tim Maxfield

Advertising & Sales Dennis Burch Chris Girouard Tim Maxfield Zack Rouda

Office Manager Liana Merdan

Field Representatives George Tatro

Contributing Writers Clarence Bennett Charles Francis | fundy67@yahoo.ca Leslie Holden Harold Karkos Nancy Mason Charlotte Mayo James Nalley Kenneth Smith Brian Swartz

Published Annually by CreMark, Inc. 10 Exchange Street, Suite 208 Portland, Maine 04101 Ph (207) 874-7720 info@discovermainemagazine.com www.discovermainemagazine.com Discover Maine Magazine is distributed to town offices, chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations, barber shops, beauty salons, 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 © 2014, CreMark, Inc.

SUBSCRIPTION FORMS ON PAGE 94

Front Cover Photo: The Cabin and Lodge, Moose Pond, Bridgton #100305 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org All photos in Discover Maine’s Western Maine 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.

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It Makes No Never Mind

by James Nalley

L

ocated inland, away from the picturesque Atlantic coastline of Maine, is a prime example of nature’s ability to include widely diverse landscapes in a single area. For example, this particular region consists of features that range from Sebago Lake (the state’s second largest and deepest) to the 4,000foot peaks of Sugarloaf, Crocker, and the affectionately titled Old Speck. Naturally, generations of outdoor enthusiasts have thrived in this year-round paradise.

But as you delve deeper in the lakes region and travel along Sebago Lake State Park Road, there is a historical marker located approximately two miles east of U.S. 302 that highlights part of an important water route that once ferried passengers from Portland to Harrison. Known as Songo Lock, this was one of 27 locks built in 1830 to compensate for the 267-foot elevation difference along the 38-mile Cumberland and Oxford Canal. At its peak, there were once more than one hundred boats (all towed by horses and oxen) that regularly traveled the

waterway hauling everything from lumber and fruit to tourists on a weekend getaway who paid the half-cent per mile fee. One historical note is that roughly one-quarter of the gunpowder used by the Union Forces during the Civil War once traveled along this waterway from Oriental Powder Mills. But like many other modes of travel, the railroad put this “slower” method out of business. In 1872, the last canal boats traveled through the locks for their final runs. Today, nature has taken over much of the canal, but the Songo Lock remains as the only working lock and it welcomes tourists wishing to “step into the past” for an afternoon. For the more adventurous ones, remains of the former towpath and canal can be found off the Mountain Division Trail in Windham.

Well, my short time with you has come to a close. So, let me end with the following joke (of course inspired by canals and boats): One day, an old sailor was out walking on the towpath when he met a younger shipmate who had just disembarked from a boat. Since they had not seen each oth-

er for many years, they were happy to rekindle old memories. After some time, the younger sailor said, “I’m sorry, but did you have a bout of bad luck?” The older one replied, “Yes. You see this peg leg? Well, one day I was out on deck and my leg got caught in a line and it was so badly mangled that the ship’s doctor had to cut it off at the knee.” The younger one shook his head in acknowledgement. But, in a competitive spirit, the younger one continued, “As you can see, I have a hook for a hand. I was out on deck when a shipmate fell overboard. As I leaned over to rescue him, a shark jumped out and bit my hand off.” The older one, responded, “Wow! That’s too bad. But I can’t help notice that you ALSO have a patch over one eye.” The younger one replied with a smile, “Well, I was out on deck one day and just as I looked up, a seagull flew over and unloaded one right into my eye.”

The older one asked, “THAT took your eye out?” The younger sailor turned to him and said, “No. That was the first day with my new hook.”

In these pages you will see businesses from the Western Maine region which take great pride in serving the public, and business owners and employees who also take pride in being Mainers.

A complete index of these advertisers is located on the inside back cover of this issue. Without their support, we could not produce this publication each year. Please support them!

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Western Maine

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A Maine Game Of Long Ago

by Harold Karkos

Do you remember the “ring” game?

I

t was long before Nintendo, and Trivial Pursuit, and Rubik’s Cube… and such like games. Even before Flinch, Old Maid, Hearts, 63, Mah Jong and Bid Whist. Yesiree, prior to baseball, football and basketball, there was a game that girls played that was different here in Maine.

They would gather around a table on which was a tumbler partly filled with water. A ring was suspended by a hair above the water. Then the fun began. But let’s learn from Fanny L.W. Ingersoll, who wrote in March 1853 about the “Ring” game that she played with some friends in 1813.

“I will now attempt to give you a succinct account of the “Ring,” and

the persons whose destiny it foretold.”

She explains that they had gathered at Grandmamma Haven’s house. Someone told the girls to try their fortune by the ring. Fanny goes on, “The couplet, which they were to repeat over the suspended ring was this: ‘As many years as I am to live single, let the ring strike and jingle.’” Two girls tried, but the ring refused to strike regarding the years before marriage, but it would tell their ages, or give answers about their friends that could be affirmed by those present.

Fanny writes, “Child as I was, I took it in hand and repeated the prescribed words. Ding, ding, ding, immediately went the ring a number of times, then

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it suddenly stopped and whirled and grew perfectly motionless, then started off again rapidly and violently, until it completed the number forty from its first striking. The girls laughed at me and said I was sure to be an old maid.”

The remainder of her long letter gave in detail what happened to each girl over those 40 years.

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Western Maine

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Vermin Among Our Feathered Friends?

What, from a sportsman’s viewpoint, is vermin?

by Charles Francis

T

he above question was on the agenda of a national convention of sportsmen held in New York City a good number of years ago. Delegates from every state in the country attended the convention. There were also guests from Canada and Mexico as well as those simply interested in wildlife. The convention chairman initiated consideration of the question with “Will the delegate from Maine please open the discussion?”

The Maine delegate ― his name does not seem to have been used ― lost no time in stating that “The Great Horned Owl was one of the worst culprits up his way on the Androscoggin, and was well qualified for a place near the top of the list, as vermin.” The Maine man then proceeded to list the

misdeeds of the bird, ending his denunciation of it saying there was nothing that could be said in favor of the “bloodthirsty bandit.”

No sooner had Maine’s delegate finished when a representative from the Midwest jumped to his feet to voice his disagreement. It seems that in the west the Great Horned Owl is everyone’s friend and worth his weight in gold for the good he does in keeping down the gopher population.

The biggest bombshell relating to the vermin question may have been dropped by a man from Delaware.

For this individual the Bobwhite quail headed the list of vermin. It seems that in Delaware mother quail and her maturing young raid vineyards just when fruit are beginning to ripen. They don’t

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just devote themselves to one bunch of grapes at a time but peck at a few grapes and then go on to another bunch.

The discussion continued in the above manner for some time. Eventually it was tabled in favor of having reputable authorities come up with a report on vermin for the next annual meeting.

The word vermin as applied to animals has specific connotations. Vermin is associated with varmint or varmit, and as such it designates pests or nuisances, especially those associated with carrying disease or the destruction of crops. Everyone knows some animals at times carry diseases like rabies and Lyme disease. It is also true that some animals are associated with crop destruction. Are there animals that are by nature vermin? Are there birds that (continued on page 8)

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Great Horned Owl

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Western Maine

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(continued from page 6) should or could be considered vermin?

Are there any birds in Maine, specifically in the Androscoggin Valley, that deserve to be called by the all-inclusive designation vermin?

There have been some noted authorities that have studied the birds of Androscoggin County. Herbert Walker was one. Cleveland Bent was another.

Walker did an in-depth study of perching birds in the county. He extended the study to listing all birds found in the Androscoggin region. Bent produced commentary on Maine birds in general, with special emphasis on the area between Gardiner and Fryeburg. Bent’s work on the Bobwhite is at odds with the view of the gentleman from Delaware. Bent does not have direct ties to the Androscoggin Valley. Walker does.

Herbert Walker loved birds. For him their study was an art. Take what he said about the Bobolink. For Walker the Bobolink is the “merry minstrel of

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our meadows.” That’s for a fair portion of the summer, anyway. Walker also calls the Bobolink “a feathered ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’” Walker first saw the Bobolink of the Androscoggin Valley when he was a student at Bates College. He saw the Bobolink when it returned to the valley in May. Then it was a “light-hearted and rollicking bird” dressed in “motley garb.” However, before summer ends the laugh has “ died out of his song and his theatrical plumage has become replaced by citizen’s clothes.” There’s more to Walker than flowery description, though.

In Pennsylvania the Bobolink is the ‘‘reed-bird,” a “gourmand” so fat and juicy plump that flocks are shot by hunters for market. In North and South Carolina the Bobolink is the “rice-bird,” who gobbles up so much grain that, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers lose $12,500,000 a year.

Herbert Walker was a prominent biologist, author, and professor at Brown University. He graduated from Bates in 1892, earned an M.A. from Brown and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. His works include Studies in Animal Life, Genetics, The Human Skeleton, Biology of the Vertebrates and his monograph on birds of Androscoggin County. With his wife, Alice Hall Lyndon, he wrote Wild Birds in City Parks.

Herbert Walker doesn’t consider any birds vermin, not even crows. For Walker the crow is a “black knight of the air.” The crow is “sarcastic” and “distrustful.” He says, “If there is a single atheist among all the feathered citizens of Androscoggin County, it is he.”

An atheist may be disagreeable to some but they are not verminous.

Walker only cites the Great Horned Owl as being found in Androscoggin County. Is it a “bloody bandit” even though some have described it as the

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com most efficient predator that has ever lived? Or is it simply another predator?

Great Horned Owls prey on muskrats, rabbits, squirrels, weasels, minks, martins, bats and even skunks. They will take house cats. They are a main predator of the crow, and take other birds including hawks and smaller owls. Although it is only the size of a red-tailed hawk, great horned owls are extremely aggressive. They have been known to drive bald eagles from their nests.

Now for the Bobwhite quail, the most universally popular of all North American game birds, the bird Cleveland Bent studied in depth.

Cleveland Bent produced the encyclopedic 21-volume Life Histories of North American Birds. Bent was, among other things, a researcher for the Smithsonian. He says the Bobwhite is one of the farmer’s best friends. The bird is completely beneficial. He does not injure any crops. For food he eats

“mostly waste grain, picked up in... fields after the crops are harvested.”

Bent concludes his comments by saying the Bobwhite “has a fine score to his credit as a destroyer of grasshoppers, locusts, potato beetles, plant lice,

and other injurious insects.”

One can only conclude, given the work of individuals like Herbert Walker, Cleveland Bent and others, that all the birds of Androscoggin County ― including the Great Horned Owl ― as elsewhere, are beneficial.

As to the report on the worst vermin in the United States requested by the convention of sportsmen mentioned above, there was a report. The report was the product of several biologists.

It stated only two wild creatures found in the continental United States may be considered vermin: “they are the Cotton Rat of the south, and the renegade house cat gone wild.”

Note: The material on the sportsmen convention cited above comes from notes I took long ago at a lecture given by noted bird authority Robie Tufts. Any errors or misrepresentations involving the convention are mine.

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Western Maine

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Louisville Lip Comes To Lewiston The memorable world heavyweight championship fight in 1965

by Kenneth Smith

I

t was the equivalent of today’s Monday night football. ‘The Friday Night Fights’ with Don Dumphy, for Gillette Blue Blades (look sharp feel sharp). It was a tradition for my Dad and I to gather close around the 15” black and white Zenith and cheer on our favorite pugilist. In those days the daily Test Pattern was the longest running show on T.V. followed by Roller Derby (teams of men and women racing around a circular track attempting to knock each other down). These were the only two sporting events routinely available.

Currently the sport of Professional Boxing is in disrepute. In the late 1940s till the early 1970s it enjoyed great popularity. It started with the world Heavyweight Champ – ‘The Brown Bomber,’ Joe Louis. He had enlisted in the Army

during WWII, and both his actions in and out of the ring brought respectability to the fight game. Heavyweights like Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles, Jersey Joe Walcott and Brockton, Masses own Rocky Marciano were fan favorites.

But it was the middleweight division that had the most incredible talents and bouts. The classiest boxer I’ve ever seen was Sugar Ray Robinson, who was a one-time, both middleweight and light heavyweight champ. Tony Zale, Rocky Graziano, Jake LaMotta and Frenchman Marcel Cerdan were some of the best.

Maine produced some excellent boxers, Al McCoy, Dave Castilloux, Paul Junior, Hermie Freeman and a host of others. Lewiston was the fight capital of Maine.

Forty years ago, on the evening of May 25, 1965 I was seated in Lewiston’s St. Dom’s Arena, along with 4,300 fight fans, excitedly awaiting the start of the world championship boxing rematch between champ Cassius Clay and challenger Charles ‘Sonny’ Liston.

Cassius had just changed his name to Muhammed Ali, become a muslim and declared himself a Conscientious Objector, proclaiming his opposition to the Vietnam War. Sportswriters continued to refer to him as Cassius Clay (AKA Louisville Lip). Sonny (The Bear) Liston was a surly, arrogant, convicted cop-beater, who in his last Miami bout with Ali had failed to answer the round seven bell. Liston vowed to local scrubs that this time it would be different. How true! Neither fighter had much of a fan base in Maine, but it was,

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com after all, a championship fight, a unique event for our state.

Several pals of mine were going and urged me to come along. Now ticket prices were from $25 peanut gallery to ring side $100 seats presented me with a serious problem. As a school teacher with four youngsters there was never any spare money laying about. It would have been easier to sneak dawn by a rooster than hide that kind of expenditure from my bride and head accountant. Showing uncharacteristic bravado I tackled the issue like a Patriot line-backer.

After washing the supper dishes I approached her in the living room. “I know what you want and the answer is no!” Wives talk to each other. Ann then recalled that when the Lippenzammer Horses came to Bangor and she wanted to take our eldest child to see the famous Austrian equestrian team perform their dressage I complained about the $10 ticket costs. I had decisively lost

round one. However tired of my grumbling, mother eventually recanted and so it was I was able to attend the worst Heavyweight bout in ring history.

St. Dom’s was packed to the rafters with 4,300 rabid fans who had shelled out over $200,000 to witness the event.

The referee was Mr. Jersey Joe Walcott himself.

Round 1 – Just as the bout began I dropped my pen – I had planned to score the fight on my $2 souvenir program. Unable to locate it, I stood, turned around and bent to search.

Suddenly stunned silence, then uproar. I turned in time to see Jersey Joe count Liston out. I had missed the entire one minute long fight. The crowd began hollering “fake, fake, fake.” The champ, escorted by his 30-man entourage, hustled back to his dressing room. After a 20 minute “private party” Ali made an appearance. Most of the fans had remained and began chanting “fake” again.

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Dubious reporters questioned the champ about his right hand mystery knockout punch. He responded, “you can’t see it, but if you’d been hit by it, you’d be out too! I promised the world a surprise and this was it. I want you people to listen to me from now on.”

He continued “you people haven’t had a chance to see me fight yet.” Ali went on to describe his mystery blow as his ‘anchor punch.’ A later film review showed he had landed 10 light left jabs but no evidence of the alleged short right K.O. blow.

Oh yes, I did get to watch the “thriller in Manila” between Ali and Joe Fraser on big screen bed sheets at the Bangor Auditorium. This time I sure got my $10 worth and then some.

Upon retirement, when questioned if there was any heavyweight he could not have wanted to face, Ali answered “Rocky Marciano,” but then he had never met my wife.

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Early view of Farwell Street in Lisbon. Item #101236 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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The Maine Central Railroad station in Lisbon Falls. Item #114659 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Leeds Men Answered When Their Country Called Locals showed patriotism during the Civil War

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and none better,” Stinchfield indicated.

Leeds sent 161 men to war; many soldiers returned home, and some did not.

Throughout Maine, Civil War monuments dot village greens, as in Abbot and Boothbay and Camden and Cape Elizabeth and Lincoln and Searsport, and others stand in ancient cemeteries, as in Bangor and Brewer. Most monuments incorporate the ubiquitous Union soldier, and some monuments list the local men who enlisted; at Locust Grove Cemetery in Hampden, a granite obelisk inscribed with more than 50 names serves as the town’s Civil War monument.

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Leeds residents honored their heroes by erecting a Peace Monument in 1895.

Two brothers, General Charles Howard and General Oliver Otis Howard ― the latter described by Stinchfield as Leeds’ “Christian Soldier”― led the memorial effort, with Charles monitoring the project from Chicago, where he edited the Farm, Field, and Fireside paper.

The Peace Monument’s genesis dated to Sunday, June 15, 1890, when a third Howard brother, the Rev. Rowland B. Howard, delivered “a peace sermon” in Leeds,” as reported by The Weekly Journal in Lewiston. Held in the Otis School and featuring a patri-

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W

hen their country called during the Civil War, Leeds men responded enthusiastically, and their townsfolk honored their patriotism with a Peace Monument that rises more than 200 feet above Androscoggin County.

In his highly detailed History of the town of Leeds, Androscoggin County, Maine, John Clarke Stinchfield wrote that pertaining to patriotic fervor during the Civil War, “Leeds has a war records unsurpassed by any town of the State, of its size.”

“Some towns furnished more men, but no more in proportion to inhabitants

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com otic theme ― the Howards provided “a large flag” that “floated over the [school’s] entrance”― the event drew local notables.

“A brief history of the stars and stripes was given,” The Weekly Journal reported. “It was declared to be a symbol not only of bloody battlefields but of those victories of peace which the United States have won.”

Then someone ― evidence suggests Rowland Howard ― suggested that “a small park be set” atop “the great Otis Hill nearby, on which there should be a monument of native granite rocks with a tablet inserted, inscribed with the names of the Leeds soldiers and the legend ‘In memory of the peace 1865.’” The monument “would look down upon … all the cemeteries where sleep the sailors and many of the soldiers of the old town.”

Although they required five years to complete the task, the Howards ran with the idea. In a letter dated October

23, 1895, Charles wrote Oliver that “I have your other welcome letter, in which you stated you had arranged to put up the monument on the great hill in Leeds. I am greatly pleased that you … could do that.” Charles indicated that “I like your plan about the monument,” which Oliver evidently envisioned as incorporating “a marble slab … on which the inscription can be placed.”

Already watching expenses at his struggling paper, Charles reminded Oliver that “it is much more expensive … to put inscriptions on granite, and … they do not show well and are apt to be obliterated by moss and the effects of the weather.”

Set on a granite base, the monument comprised a multi-tiered granite obelisk to which were fastened four memorial plaques. The monument went up quickly; in a November 16, 1895 letter to “Gen O.O. Howard,” A.J. Foss reported that “The monument is set

[upon] the big Hill. Finished up last Night … I think it looks well.”

The “big Hill” (Otis Hill) to which Foss referred rose 200 feet between Androscoggin Lake and North Road.

The monument stood on a summit lot donated by I.T. Boothby and D.F. Lothrop (Boothby had been a Leeds selectman in the late 1850s). With the monument’s dedication, the “big Hill” became Monument Hill.

Fastened to the Leeds Peace Monument were four metal tablets, one each dedicated to “the sailors of Leeds” and “the soldiers of Leeds.” Each tablet identified Leeds men killed or “died in service” during the Civil War, brave men such as Captain John C. Keene.

Assigned to Company K, 3rd Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, he died while defending Gettysburg’s infamous Peach Orchard on July 2, 1863.

Many Leeds men helped form Company K, organized along with the 3rd

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(continued from page 17) Maine Infantry at Augusta in early June 1861. Colonel (later general) Oliver Otis Howard then commanded the regiment, and he, like his Leeds neighbors, enlisted for three years to protect their beloved United States against Southern aggression.

The Company K boys from Leeds paid a terrible price after answering their nation’s call. Privates Henry Fabian and Barry Woodman “died in service,” according to the Leeds Peace Monument tablet (Stinchfield identifies these men as Henry “Fabyan” and “Benjamin” Woodman).

The Peace Monument tablets categorize fallen soldiers as “killed in action” or “died in service,” a euphemistic phrase that encompasses all manners of death, from accidents to combat to disease to drowning. Only four heroes are listed as KIA, among them Private Walter Boothby, assigned to the 3rd

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Maine’s Company K. The space limited Peace Monument tablets do not list death dates, but Stinchfield listed Boothby as “killed Dec. 13, 1862.”

That’s the day when the 3rd Maine Infantry, fighting about six miles short of Fredericksburg, endured a horrendous six hours’ shelling by Confederate artillery while supporting a Maine artillery battery. The regiment lost three men, including Walter Boothby.

The monument’s tablets list other Leeds heroes, including four who had joined the 7th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment in August 1861. Eerily, that regiment’s Company K also attracted its share of Leeds men, such as Sergeant John Jennings, killed near Salem Church in Virginia as the 7th Maine battled Confederate troops on May 4, 1863, and John Robbins, Albert Rose, and Vensbord Turner (identified by Stinchfield as “Wansbrow” Turner).

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The tablet identified with Rev. Rowland Howard lists five men who “died in service” with the 2nd Maine Cavalry Regiment, a heroic outfit that fought in Arkansas and Louisiana. Those Leeds heroes are Erastus Bishop, Ruggles Keay, Charles Knight, Roscoe Linsey, and David Trask.

A sailor, Levi Sumner, appears on the same Peace Monument tablet with Sergeant James Foss, who served with the 59th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, and Seth Burnham and Elisha Ramsdell, who belonged to the 23rd Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

George Hussey and Orpheus Leonard also appear on this tablet, dedicated “to the sailors of Leeds.”

Another tablet identifies Colonel W.L. Lothrop, an artilleryman, and Sergeant D.L.W. Hinckley, a sharpshooter.

The tablet does not reveal that Colonel Warren Lothrop graduated from

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West Point, fought during the Mexican-American War, joined a Missouri artillery regiment in April 1861, and died in 1866 while serving as an Army chief quartermaster in Florida. The tablet also does not reveal that Hinckley joined the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters because he could shoot accurately; only the best riflemen from each state became a federal sharpshooter.

The Peace Monument tablets do not ― could not ― reveal the human agony associated with each name. In 1860, Elisha Ramsdell married Lucy Mitchell from Greene; by war’s end, she was a widow, as was Mary Bishop Trask, who had married David Trask in 1858.

Eliza Ann Berry had married Roscoe Linsey (spelled “Lindsey” by another source and likely misspelled on the monument) in 1856; he rode away with the 2nd Maine Cavalry and never again saw his beloved wife.

During the Leeds bicentennial festivities in 2001, the Peace Monument received renewed attention. Today, from a parking lot alongside North Road, hikers and Civil War buffs ascend Monument Hill on a well-marked trail. Passing through a lovely forest, the trail soon splits into a loop that encircles the summit. Hikers venturing to the right soon emerge alongside ledges providing excellent views south and west.

The trail soon reaches the Leeds Peace Monument, erected to honor a town’s veterans and a national peace.

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Early view of Buster’s Barber Shop in Gorham, circa 1940.

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DID YOU KNOW? Lewiston contributed 1,150 enlistees to the Civil War cause. 112 of these lost their life during the conflict.

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Western Maine

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Lewiston’s Marsden Hartley

by James Nalley

The painter of Maine

A

lthough Marsden Hartley’s works hang on the walls of some of the world’s most prestigious museums, including The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, this American modernist’s rather dramatic life story is somewhat unfamiliar. Shattered by the premature deaths of several close family members, he never really coped with the feeling of abandonment. In addition, his personal identity as a gay man further isolated him from society. As a result, he expressed his angst through painting and fell in love with remote landscapes such as Maine’s thick forests and mysterious coastline. Amidst his bouts of

Portrait of Marsden Hartley

depression and purposeful isolation, this self-proclaimed “Painter of Maine” created some of the most emotional works in the genre.

Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine on January 4, 1877. The youngest of nine children, his mother died when he was eight years of age and his father remarried a woman named Martha Marsden roughly four years later.

Although his birth name was Edmund, Hartley took Marsden as his first name during his early 20s. After his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio when he was 15, he took his first painting lessons and received a scholarship to study at the renowned Cleveland School of Art. At the age of 22, Hartley moved to New

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com York to study painting at the William Merritt Chase School of Art. But, even then, the cost of living in New York and the tuition proved to be too much for Hartley and he was forced to transfer to the more affordable National Academy of Design. This period in New York did have a significant influence on Hartley, and he spent his spare time conversing with author Albert Pinkham Ryder and reading the works of the American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. This experience influenced Hartley to view his sojourn into art as a spiritual endeavor.

In 1906, Hartley returned to Lewistown and found work as a handyman at the Green Acre religious institution in Eliot, Maine. Through his connections at the facility, he received an opportunity to exhibit his works, which proved so successful that he subsequently exhibited his works in Boston at the Rowlands Gallery. This led to an invitation to return to New York and present a

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Gertrude Stein. It was also during this period when Hartley explored his homosexuality. Within the year, he had become completely absorbed in German society and everything it had to offer. With the outbreak of World War I, artists were highly urged to relocate for their safety. However, Hartley remained in Berlin where he soon received news of Karl von Freyburg’s death in battle.

Overcome with sadness, he expressed this loss through some of his best works including Portrait of a German Officer. This particular work shows Hartley’s combination of Cubism and German Expressionism. In addition, the colorful images (e.g., badges, flags, and medals) reflect Hartley’s fascination of the military’s pageantry as well as his revulsion to war.

Despite his persistence, the worsening war forced Hartley to return to New York in late 1915. Upon his return, a badly timed exhibit of his Ger(continued on page 26)

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small exhibition there, which caught the attention of Alfred Stieglitz, the renowned American modern art promoter and owner of Gallery 291. This particular gallery, although small, became the preeminent center for presenting the works of Rodin, Matisse, Cézanne, and Picasso. Although Hartley’s exhibition at the gallery was successful in introducing him to the elite avant-garde, its failure to actually sell any of his works put him into a bout of depression. He did find some financial relief after a sympathetic art dealer offered him a stipend to continue painting, which he promptly accepted. For the following three years, he remained in Maine where he painted in total isolation.

Upon the encouragement (and financial help) of Stieglitz and painter Arthur Davies, who both realized his talent, Hartley made his first visit to Paris in 1912 where he became friends with sculptor Arnold Ronnebeck, a German officer named Karl von Fryeburg, and

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(continued from page 25) man-inspired works at the Gallery 291 prompted critics to call them “pro-German” and “anti-American.” Following this disastrous exhibit, Hartley went into seclusion for an entire winter.

Beginning in 1917, Hartley focused on writing (in addition to painting) and led a rather nomadic life, all in the name of spiritual learning. For example, after returning to Maine, he moved to Taos, New Mexico, where he studied Native American art. During the next decade, his travels included a return to Berlin followed by stints in Italy, France, and Mexico.

In 1934, after returning to the United States, Hartley suffered another bout of depression when he could not find the funds to store his artwork. In order to resolve the issue, he burned approximately 100 of his canvases.

In 1935, Hartley traveled to Nova Scotia where he befriended a local fisher-

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man, Francis Mason, and his family.

Still scarred from his childhood, Hartley found a sense of family in his relations with them and happily returned the following summer. However, during this second stay, two of the family’s sons died when their boat capsized during a storm. Devastated by this loss, Hartley left after the summer and never returned. Hartley subsequently published a story titled, Cleophas and His Own: A North Atlantic Tragedy, which was based on his time with the Mason family. In the story, Hartley idealized the Masons so much that they were portrayed as mythic folk heroes. According to Hartley, “Cleophas is a natural mystic of the sea, which has taught him to be brave, fearless, trusting, full of faith – all simplicity.” Needless to say, this experience had a deep impact on Hartley.

Afterwards, Hartley’s life had come full circle and he spent his last days doing

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what he liked most: painting the Maine coastline in total seclusion. In the summer of 1943, his health fell into decline and he died of heart failure on September 2. He was 66 years of age. After his death, he requested that his ashes be strewn along the Androscoggin River.

In regard to his work, it is interesting to note the following quote by Hartley: “I am not a ‘book of the month’ artist and do not paint pretty pictures; but when I am no longer here my name will register forever in the history of American Art and so that’s something too.” He certainly said it right. Because in May 2008, one of his paintings sold for $6.31 million at Christie’s in New York, which set an auction record for an American modernist work.

Early view of Lisbon Falls Fibre Co. from Durham side. Item #114665 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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The Snow House on the Old Road in Gray, ca. 1950. Item #115267 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Early view of Congregational Church in Gray. Item #100926 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Library and Hotel in Limington. Item #101489 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.orhg

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Early view of Cornish. Item #105105 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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A Blast From The Past History of the Narrow Gauge Railroad in Bridgton

by Brian Swartz

D

aily during the summer, the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad runs excursion trains along the Portland waterfront. When the engineer sounds the train whistle, most passengers do not realize that they are hearing a blast from the past.

In 1882, Bridgton merchants spent $193,868 to build a 16-mile narrow-gauge railroad from Bridgton south to Bridgton Junction in Hiram.

The merchants called their line the Bridgton & Saco River Railroad, acronymed B&SR in railroad parlance, and ran the first train across the railroad on January 21, 1883.

The 2-foot line skirted Willett Brook, which drains Wood Pond in

Bridgton and flows into Long Lake, before rising onto the high ground at the legendary Deep Cut, the site where the construction crew had blasted ledge to lower the grade near Dearborn Hill.

Past the Deep Cut, the narrow-gauge passed between two hills, Fessenden to the west in Denmark and Fitch to the east in Bridgton, topographical features that the track surveyors had deliberately avoided. Then the B&SR ran south past Perley’s Pond and edged the eastern shoreline of Hancock Pond for some distance, passing into the village known as West Sebago.

Beyond the village, the line climbed another hill, where track layers had also removed ledge to create a railroad

anomaly called the Notch. The B&SR then ran past Middle and Barker ponds on the boundary line between Hiram and Sebago, climbed over a geographical feature called the Summit, and swept south through Rankin’s Mill, a village in East Hiram.

Past this point, the narrow-gauge ran alongside Hancock Brook, which drains into the Saco River, and edged Small’s Mountain outside Bridgton Junction, which local residents argued lay in East Hiram, not in Hiram across the river.

There were several sawmills and other manufacturing concerns in Bridgton, hence the desire to connect the town with the standard-gauge track (continued on page 38)

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Train southbound at Hiram. Item #5914 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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(continued from page 36) at Bridgton Junction. Summer camps abounded on nearby lakes, too, which increased passenger traffic during the summer, and by connecting with the B&SR, Bridgton residents could ride the rails all the way into Portland.

In 1898, the railroad’s owners extended the line north to Harrison. The Maine Central Railroad purchased the B&SR in 1913, and subsequently renamed it the Bridgton & Harrison Railroad (a name that stuck with some historians), and abandoned the Harrison branch in 1930.

The B&H continued running until the early 1940s, long after a disastrous Depression and the automobile had claimed other Maine narrow-gauges.

Financial hard times caught up with the line during World War II, however, and the B&H owners finally “shut ‘er down.”

Except for overgrown rights-of-

way, most narrow-gauges disappeared in toto during the war. According to Phineas Sprague Jr. of the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad, the 2-footers “were all operating under ICC rules.”

“The stockholders were afraid that once they shut down, they would be forced to run again. They quickly took their rolling stock onto a siding and burned it so the next judge couldn’t make them start up again,” he said.

This did not occur to the B&SR, however, because somewhere in time, Bridgton acquired the former railroad’s rolling stock. When town officials planned to sell the equipment for scrap, railroad buffs descended on Bridgton en masse to purchase locomotives and other rail cars.

According to Sprague, a Massachusetts cranberry grower named Ellis Atwood came to Bridgton during the sale “and bought everything that was

left.” He transported the rolling stock to South Carver, Massachusetts, where he intended to build a narrow-gauge to access his cranberry bogs.

Unfortunately, Atwood died without completing his railroad. Nelson Blount, a seafood canner, purchased the line and made it into a tourist attraction, known as the Edaville Railroad, that attracted some 10 million riders by 1988.

The railroad was then owned by George Bartholemew. Business disputes with the Atwood estate cost the Edaville Railroad its lease in April 1992; “it had to be auctioned off because it was in default. A number of people perceived that it was an excellent opportunity to bring this historic technology back to Maine,” Sprague said.

Transportation enthusiasts formed the Trust for the Preservation of Maine Industrial History and Technology in

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

December 1993, then acquired about 50 pieces of narrow-gauge rolling stock from the Edaville Railroad. This equipment included steam and diesel locomotives, passenger cars, flat cars, boxcars, and even a tank car. Everything was subsequently brought to Portland and stored at the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad & Museum.

Based at the former Portland Co. at 58 Fore Street, the museum now runs excursion trains with former Bridgton & Saco River Railroad stock. Whenever the engineer sounds the train whistle, people are hearing a blast from the past.

The Cabin and Lodge on Moose Pond in Bridgton. Item #100305 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Whitney Farm in Harrison, ca. 1880. Item #11168 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Aerial view of Norway in 1936. Item #5543 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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42

A Fourth Of July To Remember

by Brian Swartz

Harrison celebration drew thousands

R

ain-delayed Independence Day festivities left a lasting impression on a Harrison youth in

1851.

When the Temperance Watchmen Club organized a memorable July 4th celebration in Harrison in 1851, a young Charles O. Stickney recorded the day’s exciting sights and sounds with his mind’s eye. Years later, he would become “the well-known newspaper writer,” as described by Alphonso Moulton in Centennial History of Harrison, Maine.

“The mention of that memorable affair calls up graphic pictures of the scenes thereof,” Stickney wrote in 1905 while recalling July 4, 1851. So many people flocked to Harrison that

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day, he remembered “the patriotic army of peaceful invaders by whom Harrison Village … was occupied.

“That old-time celebration was a big thing in every sense of the word,” he recalled. “It was big in the number of people attending it, big in inception and culmination, big in enthusiasm and enjoyment.”

“In one respect it was big with fate, for to that celebration is due the introduction into local life of that important feature, the brass band,” he wrote.

The Temperance Watchmen Club pulled out all the stops for Friday, July 4, 1851. Viewed as “a joint celebration

by Harrison and North Bridgton” and “held at the head of Long Lake,” the festivities would take place at different

locations in Harrison Village. Volunteers erected a speakers’ platform and cut down trees in a pine grove so that tables could be set up outdoors for a hot meal.

According to Stickney, the same temperance movement that organized Harrison’s exciting July 4th festivities banned alcoholic beverages. “The celebration was largely representative of the temperance elements … whose shibboleth was: ‘Touch not, taste not, and give not to thy fellow man the accursed drink!’” he wrote.

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com North Bridgton, described the Boston-based Charlestown Brass Band as “‘the best of them all’” — not the least because his “sons, Lyman and Frank, were members of it,” Stickney wrote.

Acting on Savage’s advice, the Temperance Watchmen Club hired the band, whose members traveled by stagecoach from Portland to Harrison on July 3. A hard rain fell on July 4, so the Temperance Watchmen Club postponed holiday festivities until Saturday, July 5. Forced to lay over an extra night, band members “broke up into twos and threes, and these squads were entertained” at homes in “‘Harrison Flat’ and ‘Head of the Pond,’ as the two villages were then called,” according to Stickney.

“It was the first time a brass band was ever in this region,” and Harrison residents “vied with one another in showering … attention and hearty hospitality” upon band members, he wrote. Some musicians played “the (continued on page 44)

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(continued from page 43) cornet, bugle, alto horns, etc.” and “relieved the monotony of that dark rainy day … to the great delectation” of the wide-scattered audience members.

Saturday, July 5 dawned “as fair and lovely as the 4th had been foul and dismal,” according to Stickney. People poured into Harrison Village “from all points of the compass.”

Wearing “stunning uniforms” and carrying “elegant equipment,” Charlestown Brass Band members arrived “promptly on time … at parade headquarters,” Stickney recalled. He later scribbled notes “in my juvenile journal” that fine day; the detailed eye with which Stickney recorded the “grand parade” presaged his future journalistic career.

Stretching “more than a quarter of a mile” due “north and south” along “Harrison’s Main Street,” the parade had as its grand marshal Colonel James Webb. He hailed from North Bridgton.

Stickney wrote that Webb “rode down between the two ranks, as they stood facing each other a few feet apart, and shouted in stentorian tones: ‘Straighten out your lines — keep your lines straight! Steady there!’

“Then he rode back to the head of the column and ordered the ranks to face to the front by twos. This was promptly done,” Stickney recalled.

“The [Charlestown] band struck up a stirring air, and the long column began to march through the principal streets” toward the distant pine grove, where lunch awaited.

Accompanied by Horace Billings and George Farnsworth, Webb led the parade. The Charlestown Brass Band played professionally and enthusiastically while marching behind him, and several “Watchmen Clubs” walked behind the band, according to Stickney.

Following those parade units came the “Juvenile Temperance Cadets, Secret

Societies and Other Bodies” and, last, but not last, “Citizens Generally.”

“I have seen many a magnificent pageant, but as seen by my dilated juvenile eyes the memory of that procession transcended them all,” Stickney wrote 54 years later. “Gaily uniformed,” Webb “rode his mettlesome gray steed with the firmness and grace of a veteran dragoon.”

Recalling that “Mr. Farnsworth … rode a handsome black horse,” Stickney noted that Billings — “at that time Bridgton’s tanner and business king” — rode “his favorite gray driving horse,” which had cost him $500.

Other vivid memories slipped from Stickney’s pen in 1905. The Juvenile Temperance Cadets wore “white duck paints and dark coats … adorned with white crossed sash[es] with blue rosette.” Watchmen Club members marched “wearing regalia” and carrying “beautiful banners,” and “the long

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retinue of the ‘common people,’ likewise marching in two ranks — well, well, it was a sight for the gods!”

So that Fourth of July parade left a favorable impression with young Stickney, who accompanied the marchers to where “the literary exercises took place on an improved high platform in the shady [pine] grove.” The primary speaker, a Norway minister, delivered a speech replete with “popular spread-eagle platitudes” that included Britain-aimed barbs, with Revolutionary War loyalists “shown to have been fiends incarnate, compared with whom Judas Iscariot was a gentleman and a scholar,” Stickney wrote.

Apparently memories of a war fought 70 years earlier had died hard around Long Lake. Of course, some men celebrating American independence that day had faced British troops during the more recent War of 1812.

People grew hungry, so when “the

program concluded, the crowd adjourned to the near-by, gaily decorated pavilion, where a sumptuous dinner was served,” Stickney recalled. Toasts flowed back and forth as “the hungry banqueters” dined on cold chicken and other items; then, their appetites sated, parade participants reformed and “marched back to the village proper.

“The festivities of the day were supplement by a ‘grand display of fireworks,’” he wrote. “There was no accident to mar the enjoyment (evidently fireworks had inflicted casualties during past July 4th festivities), and the celebration was in all respects a decided success.”

DID YOU KNOW? Quoting from Maine, A Guide Downeast, on Laurel Hill in Auburn, not far from Beth Jacob Synagogue, is the site of an Anasagunticook Village, wiped out when Major Benjamin Church led an expedition in reprisal for a coastal raid. The area was a great Indian gathering place with burying grounds where ceremonials were held. Many Indian artifacts have been found here.

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Western Maine

48

The Genealogy Corner The wonderful worlds of William Berry Lapham

by Charles Francis

T

he best genealogists are family historians. Though some might argue this point, I will state it as a given. Simply put, there is no way to build a comprehensive family tree without historical research. To a great extent this research takes the form of delving into local history.

Those of us with roots in Maine are extremely fortunate. Maine has a large number of excellent local histories, a number far in excess of what one might expect to find in a state or region of similar population. In some cases the writing of these histories was their author’s sole reason for being. For others the compiling of local history was an

escape from the tedium of a colorless occupation lacking mental challenge, a case of avocation verses vocation. Then there are the rare few who produced local history as a part of a healthy and balanced life. The works were but another aspect of a life full of meaning and dedication. William Berry Lapham is an example of this latter type.

Anyone who has ever done a significant amount of genealogical or historical research in the towns of western Maine’s mountains and lakes region will have encountered William Berry Lapham. He did histories of Bethel, Rumford, Woodstock and Paris. He wrote pieces for the Maine Farmer.

He wrote on his Civil War service. He founded the Maine Genealogist and Biographer. This listing barely touches on everything of a genealogical or historical nature Lapham did. And the work was done while Lapham was conducting a medical practice and raising three daughters.

William Berry Lapham was a wonderful writer. His work is enthralling.

The reason for this is he often inserted himself into his work. Plus, much of what he wrote is not, strictly speaking, history. Lapham does not always write like a historian. Often as not his perspective is that of the essayist.

It is the perspective of an Emerson or

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com a Thoreau when they wrote of their hometown of Concord, Massachusetts for commemorations of the Revolution and the like or of the passing of close friends like Margaret Fuller. Much of Lapham’s writing gives one a sense of the author’s personal involvement with his subject. This is the mark of the exceptional essayist, a Montaigne. At the same time, one knows that Lapham has a thorough understanding of his subject. It is a rare combination.

Though born in Greenwood, William Berry Lapham spent most of his early life in Bethel. His impressions of those years can be found in his History of Bethel. Lapham’s medical career centered in Bryant Pond in Woodstock.

For the most part, it was only interrupted by the War Between the States.

Lapham wrote of the latter experiences in Recollection of the War of Rebellion.

The work provides one with an exceptionally literate view of what the Civil

War was like. Far from glorious, the book is a nonfiction version of The Red Badge of Courage. Stanley Howe has written an excellent summary of Lapham’s life and contributions to the local histories of western Maine communities.

Professor of history and author Dr. Stanley Russell Howe of the Bethel Historical Society tells us William Berry Lapham died at sixty-five of acute diabetes. According to Howe, Lapham was working on a history of Kittery at the time of his death. One wonders why Lapham chose this particular town at this stage of his life.

There is no question that the State of Maine lost something of great worth when William Berry Lapham died. But for his diabetes Lapham might have continued his histories for decades.

Most notably, he might have done one of Buckfield. In fact, it is strange that he didn’t. He had significant links to the

community. In fact, had it not been for the ancestor that settled in Buckfield, the ancestor with whose name Lapham was christened, the most important of western Maine’s local historians might never have been born in western Maine at all. This is not to imply that Lapham never wrote of Buckfield. Among other places, he wrote of Buckfield in The Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder. He did it in writing of the death of his great uncle Zeri Berry.

Zeri Berry was born in Buckfield.

He was a son of Deacon William Berry.

William Berry Lapham was the son of Louisa Berry and John Lapham. Louisa Berry was the daughter of Levi Berry, another of the sons of the aforementioned William Berry. Deacon William Berry sometimes appears in the historical record as Sergeant William Berry.

He was a veteran of the Revolution.

The settlement of Buckfield has been described by Mary Louise Stetson (continued on page 50)

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Western Maine

50

(continued from page 49) with the following words: “In 1776, a party of which Abijah Buck was a member set out from New Gloucester in a northwesterly direction looking for a place for permanent settlement; for like Caleb and Joshua of Bible days, some of them had already ‘spied out the land’ and found it good.” One of those unnamed others was most likely William Berry, our subject’s namesake.

In his piece on his great uncle Zeri Berry, William Berry Lapham tells us that William Berry was one of the founders of Buckfield. And he does more than this. He gives William Berry’s antecedents and some of his immediate family members.

William Berry was from Falmouth.

He settled in what would become Buckfield about 1780. Why the gap between 1776 and 1780? The gap is the result of the Revolution. William Berry volunteered his services for the Patriot cause on at least four separate occasions.

The Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder was not the only place where William Berry Lapham wrote of his particular antecedents. Lapham was also a member of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). In fact, he was the organization’s historian for a considerable period. In Maine in War, Organization and officers of the Society, Lapham gives a detailed charting of his paternal ancestry and where and when various ancestors served in the Revolution. This sort of detail is required of anyone seeking membership in either the Sons or Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).

The point to the above discussion of William Berry Lapham and his contributions to the local history of western Maine is that local histories are an important source for the genealogist, one not to be overlooked.

William Berry Lapham died in 1894.

Twenty-one years later Alfred Cole’s

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The work, like those of William Berry Lapham, is another of the reasons why genealogists and family historians with ties to western Maine may find their labors much the easier.

DID YOU KNOW? Milton Bradley from Vienna was the creator of the famous board game Monopoly.

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Western Maine

52

Remembering “Pete” Sickels

by Charles Francis

I

A local legend

met “Pete” Sickels when I was twelve or thirteen, not quite a teenager or a brand new one proud of my new status and seeming maturity. I met Pete on an island off Freeport. Bustins Island to be exact. Pete had family there.

Or, I believe his wife did. It would have been 1954 or 1955.

Maybe the reason I remember that now long-ago meeting has something to do with my age at the time. I am more inclined to think, however, my memories are based on the kind of man Pete was. He made an impression on me.

Porter “Pete” Sickels was a pretty good baseball player. He starred at the sport in high school and in college. He was a good enough baseball player to make it to the minors but not quite good

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enough for the majors. At least that’s what some sportswriters say. There are those, though, who suggest Pete left the game because his true calling was teaching and coaching. I do know Pete Sickels loved kids. That statement comes from my having met him when I was a kid. I just naturally took to him.

Plus, like any teen or almost teen, I loved listening to older folks talk about sports when they knew what they were talking about. And Pete knew his stuff.

Pete Sickels died in 2008. He passed away at his camp in Weld. The camp was where Pete went to hunt and fish.

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high school. Among other things, he was responsible for the establishing of Farmington’s American Legion baseball team.

Pete Sickels received all manner of accolades during his adult life. Some would say the most significant was his induction into the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame.

The home of the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame is Hadlock Field, where the Sea Dogs play. It is a fitting place for the Hall. Most every avid Maine baseball fan sees at least one game at Hadlock. This means they have the opportunity to visit the displays of the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame, where some 500 Maine baseball players and Maine contributors to the sport like (continued on page 54)

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Western Maine

54

(continued from page 52) Pete Sickels are memorialized.

Pete Sickels is in the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame as a player and as a coach. He played at Deering High School and at the University of New Hampshire. And, of course, he played in the minors. He was under contract with the St. Louis Cardinals. His high school coaching was at Kents Hill in Readfield as well as at Mt. Blue.

High school teachers who coach are too often remembered just for coaching one sport. This is a sad commentary on teaching and coaching. For one thing, it makes the individual under consideration appear one-dimensional. I am speaking now from the standpoint of having been both a high school teacher and a coach.

Pete Sickels was not one-dimensional. He was not just a high school baseball coach who had played in the minors. He was not just a ball player who happened to have a college degree

so that he could get a job as a teacher which allowed him to stay with the game.

Pete Sickels taught two of the most difficult high school subjects there are to teach. He taught math and physics.

And he didn’t just coach baseball. He also coached skiing and tennis. These facts alone point to Pete being multidimensional.

Pete Sickels was born in 1931, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He grew up in Buxton, outside of Portland. Buxton was a good place for Pete to grow up. There was a ball field not far from his home and there was, at the least, a pick-up game whenever Pete wanted. And Pete Sickels was, as they say, a natural athlete.

Pete Sickels was a good enough ball player to make the Deering High School baseball team while still in junior high. From Deering he went on to the University of New Hampshire,

ORR

where he was a good enough player that a scout from the Cardinals tendered him a contract to play in the St. Louis farm system. That’s the kind of opportunity any kid growing up loving and playing America’s national pastime dreams about.

I have been referring to Pete by his first name. That’s because when I was introduced to him, that’s how he was introduced. Pete was a young man then, and he was neither teacher nor coach.

At least that’s how I remember things.

Something else I remember from that long ago meeting has to do with the weather. The day I met Pete Sickels happened to be an extremely hot one for Casco Bay. It was hot and there weren’t any ocean breezes. Everyone was complaining about it, too. Everyone but Pete, that is. As I recall, his comment had something to do with how great Maine weather was in comparison with Georgia. Georgia was (continued on page 56)

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(continued from page 54) where Pete played minor league ball.

I learned of Pete Sickels’ passing from a newspaper. Prior to that I had read of his induction into the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame. The former saddened me, especially when I read that Pete had Parkinson’s Disease in his last years. The latter had heartened me.

Pete Sickels was nine years older than I. Emotional reactions are a factor of age. When I met Pete in ‘54 or ‘55 he was an adult. I wasn’t. When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame he was a slightly older contemporary, one whose career as a teacher and coach was similar to mine.

Being inducted into the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame, as Pete Sickels was, is an honor. It’s recognition from one’s peers. That’s why halls of fame have meaning. There’s something even more meaningful though, something which I believe applies to Pete Sickels. It’s be-

ing able to look back on one’s life and know that one has contributed something that is significant to others. That’s why high school teachers and coaches like Pete Sickels are important in the world.

DID YOU KNOW? Quoting from Maine, A Guide Downeast, in 1906 the Stanley twins of Kingfield clocked an official speed of 128 mile per hour. The car only weighed 1800 pounds, and this accomplishment (with a car of that size) has never been equaled.

A later trial clocked speed of 190 miles per hour until the car hit a bump in the sand and rolled over into the sea.

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Western Maine

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Western Maine

60

The Rangeley Name Squire James Rangeley gave the town its name

by Charles Francis

W

and winter sports area, …deep in the heart of a forest region that reaches across the Canadian border.” The population ― probably that of the 1960 census ― is given as 1087.

An even earlier, quasi official description, written at least fifty years before the above, begins by saying Rangeley was named for James Rangeley, the first proprietor. The main industries are given as “summer hotels and camps, lumber, wagons and sleds.”

The population, which is probably that of 1920, is given as 1028. With this we have the namesake of the township, the town and the region. So who was James Rangeley, and what can be said of his origins?

hen you hear the name Rangeley, what comes to mind? It could be a town.

It could be recreation, of the all-season variety. It could be lakes and streams.

It could be pine and spruce-clad hills and mountains. It could be bear, deer, moose, salmon and trout. Or it could be a wilderness so great it stretches beyond the Maine border into Canada. It could be all of these and more.

A State of Maine travel brochure dating from fifty years ago describes “Rangeley Town” as having “hotels, lodges, camps, guides, boats, golf, water skiing, and a seaplane base.” It continues on to say the “Rangeley Region” is a “summer

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intend to suggest Squire Rangeley gave his name to the town, lake and region?

It is not clear.

With the statement that Squire Rangeley essentially gave his land away, we come to another sort of mystery. What kind of a man gives his land away? Why does he do it? Beyond that we might ask how did the Squire come by his holdings, and just what was their nature? And what became of the Squire anyway?

The region that Squire James Rangeley (his full name was James Henry Rangeley) had title to was huge, some 31,000 acres. He came by it through his father, who was also named James Henry Rangeley. In short, the Squire’s holdings were inherited. One might conclude from Elizabeth Ring’s statements that the Squire gave land to settlers because he hoped to establish something akin to a medieval feudal system, one based on the old English

In the late 1960s, Elizabeth Ring, then Vice President of the Maine Historical Society, was asked for a brief statement on James Rangeley. Ring identified Rangeley as “Squire.” She said the “Squire” was an Englishman from Yorkshire. She said “soon after his arrival here (it is not clear where here is) in 1825, he began the establishment of a great estate patterned after those of his homeland.” Ring went on to say that Rangeley built a grist mill, a sawmill, and a ten-mile long road through the wilderness. The road was to transport lumber from the Rangeley region to markets. While Squire Rangeley was first developing his estate, he lived in a mansion on Portland’s State Street, in an area known as the “Gold Coast.”

And as to Rangeley’s nature, Ring said “He asked no price for his land, giving extensively of his acres to settlers.”

There is a bit of mystery regarding Elizabeth Ring’s statements. Did Ring

landlord and tenant system. In keeping with this image, the Squire built a two-story, brick house in the community that still bears the Rangeley name.

The house has been described as opulent for both time and place. It had two exceptionally large rooms downstairs, and two upstairs. Though called a mansion, manor house might be the more appropriate term. Eighteenth century English squires occupied manor houses; they didn’t live in mansions.

Rangeley had house servants and groundskeepers.

The north woods occupied Squire Rangeley’s attention for some fifteen years. The early 1840s finds him back in Portland, looking for buyers for his Maine holdings. It would seem the Squire preferred his Gold Coast mansion to his wilderness manor. Or perhaps not. The move doesn’t mean the end of the Squire, or of the Rangeley name in the pages of history. Sell(continued on page 62)

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(continued from page 61) ing his manor house, lands, and other Maine property, Squire Rangeley headed south. One might ask why?

James Henry Rangeley, Sr., the father of the Squire, was a Philadelphia businessman. In 1796, the elder Rangeley, along with some Massachusetts business partners, purchased the bulk of what would become known as Maine’s Rangeley Region from the Massachusetts General Court. The elder Rangeley also invested in substantial acreage in Virginia.

James Rangeley, Sr. was from Leeds, in Yorkshire. Leeds, neighboring Manchester, and surrounding area towns were textile centers. Rangeley, Sr. came to Philadelphia because that city was midway between the North and South, both being major suppliers to English textile manufacturing, either in the form of machined cloth or raw material. There is correspondence between the elder Rangeley and

businessmen in the Leeds area around 1800, indicating his function was that of a sort of middleman or buyer. The mid-Atlantic positioning and North/ South business interests explains in part why the Rangeley family came to have holdings in Maine, as well as Virginia.

There is a Rangeley in Virginia. It is a hamlet, not an incorporated political entity. It is in Henry County.

John Rangeley was probably the first of the Rangeley family in Henry County. Account books in the Southern Historical Society indicate he operated a combination tannery and general store there. This is where Squire Rangeley moved and set himself up, much as he had in the north woods of Maine.

Squire Rangeley’s Virginia home was not all that different from the one he built in the Maine woods. There were two large rooms downstairs, and one that took up the entire upstairs. The

house was brick. it was commanding.

The Squire prospered in Henry County.

He had slaves, possibly as many as 150.

The Squire and his family were significant figures in Henry County.

One Maine writer has stated that Squire Rangeley served the Confederate cause as a colonel. Henry County muster rolls do not back this up. A James Henry Rangeley served as a Confederate lieutenant.

Given his age at the time of the war between the states, he would have been the Squire’s son. John James Rangeley also served as a lieutenant. Joseph Ellis Rangeley was an enlisted man, in the artillery. The latter two were probably sons of John Rangeley.

Squire Rangeley was a man who valued position. His use of “Squire” calls attention to the fact. The squire was a man of circumstance. That is what being a Rangeley meant, that is what the name stood for. If you are

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familiar with the novels of Jane Austen, you have a sense of the importance of circumstance. Think of Pride and Prejudice. The Rangeley family understood the nature of circumstance, thanks to their Yorkshire origins. The Yorkshire countryside was where one found country squires and manor houses. It was typical Jane Austen country.

To say the above in a slightly different manner, Squire Rangeley had inherited wealth but not lineage or title. His wealth allowed him the latitude to create an artificial landscape in the form of his estates and manor houses.

The wealth allowed him to create an artificial self, “Squire.” The artificial is decorative in the sense that it is not intended to engage the intellect, but rather to be accepted without question, like an ancient code of behavior. What does this say of Squire James Rangeley? It says he was a cliché. Alexander Pope put it best when he said the imagination “gilds all things but alters none.”

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The Genealogy Corner A passion for the past in Norway

by Charles Francis he serious genealogist is a unique individual. If you are one you know what I mean. First of all, you are one of those rare birds that those with little or no interest in their heritage fail to understand.

The non-genealogist simply can’t grasp the desire that someone addicted to tracing out and recreating their family history has to walk the street and paths their grandfather or grandmother or some ancestor further back in the past walked. Nor can the non-genealogist appreciate the work that goes into researching one’s family history.

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mounds of paper, scribbled notes tacked or paper-clipped to a cork board, books of the trade, boxes or a file cabinet stuffed to capacity, computer discs and, of course, a computer. There may be Xeroxed copies of barely legible ships’ passenger lists, books in foreign languages with accompanying translation dictionaries and the collection of local histories. We love the seeming confusion at the visitor who doesn’t share our passion for the past and simply shakes his or her head when viewing it.

If you are a genealogist, you are not alone. Not too long ago American Demographics, the magazine devoted to amassing and publishing data and statistics delineating the characteristics of

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the American people, came out with the fact that slightly more than four in ten adults are “somewhat interested in genealogy.” A more recent poll by Maritz Marketing came up with the figure of seven percent for those Americans who are “involved a great deal in tracing their lineage.”

As with any vocation or avocation, genealogy and family history has its heroes and icons. Recently one of those heroes or icons passed away. He was Marshall Kirk.

Marshall Kirk was a long-time member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the foremost American institution devoted to genealogical research. For a good many years (continued on page 70)

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(continued from page 69) he was the Society’s librarian. The Harvard-educated Kirk was a recognized authority on and ground-breaking researcher into some of the most difficult areas of genealogy research. Kirk’s untimely death at age forty-seven sent shock waves through the American genealogical community and abroad.

Marshall Kirk was born in Norway, Maine and grew up in Mechanic Falls.

The son of Roger and Kathleen (Murphy) Kirk, Marshall was a true scholar and probable genius. Not only was Marshall his high school valedictorian, he graduated Harvard magna cum laude. That was in 1980.

If anyone had a passion for the past it was Marshall Kirk. It was passion that – as with most of us who are drawn to untangling our roots – began with researching his immediate ancestry. In Kirk’s case the immediate ancestry was in Maine and New England. From his New England ancestors, Kirk moved back to his family’s roots in Europe and beyond.

Marshall Kirk was internationally known and respected in genealogical circles as an expert on medieval and ancient genealogy. This was where some of his ground-breaking work was done. In the area of medieval genealogy Kirk researched the time period of the Merovingians and the Carolingians.

The latter was the period of Charlemagne. The Merovingians preceded the Carolingians.

If researching medieval genealogy sounds difficult, Kirk’s ground-breaking work led him even further back into history and further afield than Europe.

Marshall Kirk was also a recognized expert on the genealogy of ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Persia and Armenia.

At the occasion of Kirk’s passing, Gary Roberts, an acknowledged expert on the genealogy of New England immigrants, said Marshall Kirk “possessed very likely the finest logical mind I have ever encountered.”

Marshall Kirk’s logical mind was a

major factor in the writing of the 1999 Genealogist’s Handbook for New England Research, a must for the library of any genealogist intent on unearthing New England ancestry. Kirk also pioneered the methodology of the somewhat controversial speculative identification in the near English ancestry of New England immigrants. His more mundane work on New England ancestry included the families of Massachusetts General Court members and the ancestry of New England colonial figures like Governor Thomas Dudley and the divine John Cotton.

Marshall Kirk passed away in 2005.

His passing may have been related to the massive migraine headaches he suffered from all of his life. Kirk had gone so far as to undergo electroshock treatment for the malady.

Comments at the time of Kirk’s passing included “He was certainly the smartest person I ever met” and “Truly a light has gone out for scholarly geneOther businesses from this area alogy.” are featured in the color section.

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Western Maine

The Weary Club In Norway The mysterious club of the “weary ones”

by Leslie Holden

Y

ou don’t need to know how to whittle, gossip or philosophize to be a member of Norway’s Weary Club, but it sure can’t hurt.

Tucked in the center of a National Register Historic District on Norway’s Main Street, the little Greek Revival building, with its two tidy rooms, is the meeting place of about 190 members of the Weary Club who hail from across the United States.

Organized in the early 1920s as a gathering spot for men who were known as “the weary ones,” the club has held an aura of mystery about it since the beginning.

The club was formed by the editor of the local Advertiser-Democrat Fred

Sanborn and a few other local businessmen who would gather around a potbellied stove in Beal’s Tavern, a wellknown local inn on Main Street, with their cedar for whittling and spittoons for spitting.

Writers of the club’s history said the gathering grew out of many long winter Maine nights when men gathered at the inn to play cribbage, smoke, whittle and tell tall fish tales about the big one that got away. When the proprietor closed the inn for the winter and went south to Florida, Sanborn found another site in a vacant downtown store for the weary ones to whittle.

But as luck would have it, that building was soon sold to a local bank.

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So Sanborn simply acquired a portion of the land and built the building that became known as the Weary Club. The smallest building in the business district, with its distinctive four columns and broad porch, was constructed under the shadow of Main Street’s tallest building — the imposing Norway Opera House.

The club was incorporated when the first share in the club was sold in 1926 to John Woodman, a former proprietor of Beal’s Tavern. Each share held one vote so no one person or groups could hold control of the club.

Officers were elected and bylaws adopted, including some that prohibited gambling, drinking and telephones. (continued on page 74)

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Photo is of the present day Weary Club on Main Street during the 2013 downtown Halloween fest. A woman dressed as a princess stood in front of the club passing out candy to costumed children. Most businesses on Main Street participated in the festival. Photo by Leslie Holden.

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(continued from page 72) Conversations had to be restricted to fishing, hunting and a few other topics, including limited village gossip.

The club’s slogan, “ The Weary Club of Norway, Maine — Makers and Dealers in Cedar Shavings, Social Gossip, Political Wisdom and Yankee Philosophy,” was composed by Sanborn, who was considered the most expert whittler in the club. It probably best sums up the mission of the club.

Whittling was serious business for club members for years. In October of 1928, for example, the Weary Club received an express shipment of 70 pounds of cedar from Bucksport that members used to whittle into cedar shavings.

Over the years, the club actually did more than provide a place for men to gather and tell tall fish tales and whittle.

When Sanborn died in 1938, he left the club $20,000 with instructions that

it be invested by a local bank and that the club give $40 to local children at Christmas who were under the age of 10. Today that amount has been raised by members to $100 each year.

Members also collected tinfoil, rolled it into a ball and sold it to raise funds for the Shriners’ Children’s Hospital in Boston.

No one seems to know exactly how the Weary Club got its name, but members do know the founders liked to whittle and membership to the club was said to be granted only to those who could carve a cedar shaving light enough to float. Others believe the Weary Club got its name from the men who escaped to the clubhouse, perhaps “weary” of their domestic duties.

Membership, which the bylaw caps at 200, was and still is obtained by application only. Until very recently, only men applied. Early on, members included judges, lawyers and even a ce-

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It wasn’t that women were banned, they simply knew not to venture across the broad porch and step inside the door.

That is until the day then Congresswoman Margaret Chase Smith stopped by to get some “political wisdom,” during her campaign for the Senate in 1948. She promised to repay the club member’s gracious reception by adding to their tinfoil collection and calling on them for more “expert Yankee philosophy” once elected to the Senate.

“It was never not allowed. It was just understood it was a place for the men to go,” said Mary Lou St. John, who not only became a member, but this past year broke the long-time bastion of male dominance by being elected the club’s first female president.

As if to add emphasis to the historic moment, Anita Hamilton was elected vice president. Stephen Bell was elect-

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For all your excavating needs.

Family Business Since 1968

444 Bisbee Town Road Waterford, ME

75

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

ed treasurer/secretary — the only male on the ballot.

Today the members still meet every third Saturday morning each month at 8 a.m. to offer coffee and good conversation to the public.

What do they do there? “We do absolutely nothing,” chuckled St. John.

“We chat and solve all the problems of the world and probably create a few too.”

St. John said if anyone wants to go to the basement to whittle, there’s still pieces of dry cedar wood in the back room of the Weary Club.

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

Interior of the Weary Club around 1960. Photo courtesy of the Norway Historical Society

NORSEMAN MOTEL

Across from Rite Aid

Route 2, Bethel 824-3637

Route 2 • Bethel, ME

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Serving Wine, Beer & Spirits

Now Offering Gluten-Free Dough & Beer www.patspizzabethel.com

KEITH HADLEY We INC Deliver!

NoJobTooLarge or Too Small Free Estimates Fully Insured Rob James

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674-2466 • 592-6755

Western Maine

76

Early view of Berry’s Ledge from Main St. in West Paris. Item #115901 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

Nick DiConzo Builder / Craftsman Finish Carpenter Quality Work Project Management ~ Over 35 Years Experience ~

Custom Logging & Excavation Inc. Sitework • Foundations • Driveways Septic • Wells • Lot Clearing Right-of-Ways Stumpage • Logging • Estimates

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Sumner, Maine

58 High Street • Buckfield, ME

207-557-0292

Locally Owned & Operated by Andy J. Levesque Excavation • Foundations • Demolition Septic Systems • Driveways

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On The Way Cafe Breakfast Served All Day!

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(Tuesdays)

Come See Them Local Turner Girls!

Mon: Closed Tues-Fri: 7am-2pm Sat-Sun: 7am-12pm

207-225-3333 Route 4 • Turner, ME

ComeToTheFrontDoor...onRoute4!

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Early street scene in Turner. Item #102769 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

T.W. Varney

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225-2749 Turner, ME

224-2226 754-1701

Leeds, ME

Owner: Eric Brown

Roofing • Decks • New Construction • Remodeling

Long Green Variety Meet Comethe Moose Rocko

Intersection of 108W and Rt. 4 Livermore, ME

Agency Liquor Store • ATM Sunoco Gas • New England Coffee Soda • Beer • Tobacco • Lottery Pizza & Sandwiches • Ice Cream

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Soper Logging & Trucking 30 Years Experience

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Home: 207-897-5216 Cell: 207-931-7046

153 Boothby Rd. • Livermore, ME

Western Maine

78

Readfield’s Elias Gove The homespun messiah

by Charles Francis

I

n January of 1865 Abraham Lincoln received a letter asking him to convene a Congress of Nations for the purpose of creating a new world order. While the letter was laced with any number of misspellings, oddities in capitalization for emphasis and a variety of spaces that seemed to serve as punctuation, it is possible to get the gist of what its writer intended to impart to the President.

In part, the letter called for establishing a single nation in each hemisphere of the globe. Each nation would have its elected king. (Lincoln would be one.

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria seem to be designated joint monarchs of another.) There was to be a world consti-

tution prohibiting the buying and selling of slaves. The letter’s author also asked that Lincoln send him $25,000. It was signed PRINCE EMANEL. Elias Gove. Lincoln labeled the letter “Foolery,” forcefully underlining the world.

Elias Gove’s letter of January 1865 is one of almost a dozen the self-proclaimed Prince of Peace sent President Lincoln. They all make outrageous claims on the President, while at the same time declaring the writer’s undying support of the chief executive.

As each bear a comment by Lincoln – “Crazy-man” is typical – one assumes the President at least skimmed them.

Elias Gove was one of those odd individuals who are most often found

living in small to middle-sized rural communities who, for want of a better term, are generally labeled as “harmless characters.” They are the sort that seem to have “a mission” in life, to be self-anointed messiahs bent on delivering some messages that only they know the full import of.

A picture only labeled as from the 1800s and purporting to be of Elias Gove shows a somber-looking man in his late thirties or early forties with mutton-chop whiskers and wearing a broad-brimmed hat similar to those of the Amish of Pennsylvania. A description from what can only be a later period of his life pictures him with a long gray beard, a red, cutaway suit in the

of Maine “From Our Forest to Final Form”

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79

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Prince Albert style and wearing the same style hat as in the alleged portrait.

The description appeared in the Lewiston Evening Journal in March of 1894.

There are some problems, however, involving the Evening Journal article, problems which in part seem to have been generated by Elias Gove himself.

According to the newspaper article, Gove died in Lewiston. His death record, however, gives Turner. The Journal also states that Gove lived the latter part of his life in the Riverside Hotel in Lewiston and that he was born in Readfield. Census records show his residence as an Auburn hotel run by William Robertson. They also give his place of birth as New Hampshire. His birth is recorded in Readfield, however.

Another peculiarity involving Gove is his age. In 1880, he gave his age as sixty. On later occasions he refused to give it at all, saying that it was no one’s business other than his own and that

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he would never die. His birth record shows a date of July 9, 1807.

Elias Gove was the son of Elias and Betsy (Johnson) Gove of Readfield.

His parents came to Readfield from Rockingham, New Hampshire. The elder Gove was a prosperous farmer.

When Elias Gove was asked about his personal beliefs in his latter years, he is described as becoming secretive, flustered and reticent. When asked about his early life he seemed to return to normal, speaking fondly of his family and his experiences growing up on and working on the family farm.

The Gove family were members of the Methodist Church in Readfield.

This is not to say, however, that they were untouched by some of the religious and political enthusiasms of the day, one of which was the American Peace Society movement founded by William Ladd of Minot. The American Peace Society was an abolitionist

movement which seems to have spurred Elias Gove to take up the antislavery cause. In his early twenties Gove established himself as a strong pro abolitionist. Later he became a supporter of the Republican Party, and especially – as his correspondence reveals – of Abraham Lincoln. As to what brought about his mental imbalance, which is clearly what it was, the latter seems to be a matter of personal tragedy.

In 1838 Gove married Betsey Bradford of Turner. The Bradfords were one of the wealthiest families in the region, owning several farms as well as controlling the Turner bank. Elias and Betsey Gove seem to have settled down to a normal life living on a farm in the area until their only child died in infancy. Shortly after this the couple separated, although they never divorced.

Betsey Gove appears to have provided financially for her husband for the rest of his life. (contiued on page 80)

BN Bilodeau Logging

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fayette country store

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Old Mill Stream Ice Cream Shoppe Food • Gas • Groceries • Gifts Hard & Soft Serve Ice Cream Agency Liquor Store Convenient Hours

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Western Maine

80

(continued from page 79) It was sometime after the death of his son that Gove began calling himself Emmanuel, the Prince of Peace.

He lived in a number of towns between Turner and Readfield, seeming to be drawn to Lewiston and Auburn the most. It was in the latter two that he caught the attention of the press so that some of his behavior has been captured in print.

Elias Gove is most often described as hurrying from place to place, his coattails flapping behind him. Whenever someone engaged him in conversation, Gove would pause for a few moments before dashing off to some more demanding engagement. Every so often, he would take time out of his self-imposed schedule to give short talks and speeches on what he saw to be the issues of the day. A portion of one of the letters Gove wrote to Lincoln illustrates what it might have been like

to listen to the Prince of Peace. It runs as follows.

An A message I request from you…

By which the Queen is petitioned by Gods Command to Donate to me on half ove one Billion An deposite the same and present Drafts or Checks and Bonds by which I can Command the same At my Pleasure if so I will Reveale Christ, Jesus An Explaine the mode ove his Crucification Today one might say Elias Gove had a messianic complex. If that is appropriate, the complex was certainly of a homespun variety with a distinct Maine flavor. When James G. Blaine lost the election for President, Gove somehow blamed Lincoln. From that time on he had nothing but impious pronouncements to attribute to the assassinated President.

Elias Gove died on March 21, 1894.

Whether he died in Turner or in Lewis-

ton one hopes that the Prince of Peace, who thought he would never die, rests in peace.

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

DID YOU KNOW? Elvis Presley was scheduled to appear at Augusta’s Civic Center two days after he died. _______________________ Somerset County consistently has the highest deer harvest by hunters. Coyotes account for the second most kills, illegal hunting the third most common reason.

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Boat landing at Belgrade Lake Camps in Belgrade Lakes. Item #103257 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

Fine Lines HAI R

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Professional Family Hair Care Tues & Thurs 9-8 Wed 9-2 Fri 9-4 • Sat 8-3

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90 Church Street • Oakland, ME 04963

T&N SEALCOATING

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680-8622

465-5370

Sandy River Golf Course & Driving Range •APPLIANCES•

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HEATING & COOLING Sales & Service

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TiTcomb Hill Road • FaRmingTon CJSAPPLIANCE.COM

• Daily Specials • Tournaments • Loads of Fun • Summer Leagues • Junior Camp 154 George Thomas Rd. Chesterville, ME 04938 207-778-2492 www.sandyrivergolfcourse.com

Western Maine

82

A Giant Remembered Childhood memories of a Carthage schoolteacher

by Nancy Mason

E

xperienced pugilist that he was, he knew when to throw punches and when to duck. I didn’t have a chance from the day I walked into his sixth-grade classroom…

I worshipped him.

I hated him.

I dreamed I would someday grow up and marry him. But how could he make me so angry with myself – this little man who became a giant in my life?

I wondered how he had come to be the principal of our new three-room school. The man was obviously an outsider. Of course, anyone who hadn’t grown up within a ten-mile radius of Berry Mills was a foreigner. Tucked

in the western foothills of Maine, the Mills section along Webb River in Carthage – first settled in the early 1800s by my industrious ancestor Tom Berry – was no longer on the map. With the recent abandonment of our old belltopped schoolhouse next door, we were unwittingly readying ourselves for the upheaval of the 60s.

Part of me realized that change was inevitable, but that didn’t ease the heartbreak that our former teacher had retired. Still spry at seventy, he had been educating the local populace of 395 for nearly half a century. He KNEW us. Suddenly having a stranger, a handsome young upstart with a

massive chest, impossible wavy hair, and bluer-than-a-robin’s-egg eyes, was pushing the fountain of progress to heretofore untested heights. Not only did he lack local roots, he sported several sharp-looking suits and a plump wardrobe of flashy bowties. He even talked funny. Besides, what could he possibly know about us? Our town?

The way things were done? Furthermore, rumor had it that he had “ideas.”

My mother, who ran the general store, was treasurer for the town, and served on the school board, took some jawing from the male citizenry for hiring him. Just because the man looked good and had a degree from a univer-

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www.hanlonpethaven.com

Locally Owned & Operated 2 Car Service

Caitlin Hanlon Martin Hanlon

Farmington, ME

83

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com sity (out-of-state, no doubt) didn’t hold much weight with some of them. He might be impressive in the ring, they argued, but could he teach? Keep the school books? Fix a furnace? Get along with a 73-year-old janitor who had an occasional spurt of custodial independence? But none of those questions plagued me half so much as the man himself.

His was basically a very simple plan of attack, but one which never failed to obtain the desired results. He found our Achilles’ heels and turned them into blessings. For all the days I labored in his classroom, I never realized he’d found mine (I couldn’t stand being second). I never caught on to his strategy: challenge, goad and retreat, give subtle praise, and then challenge again. I was destined to be out-maneuvered by sixty-six inches of burned-out professional boxer turned principal. A ridiculous combination, but deadly to an insecure, spoiled, porkchop of an underachiever.

Our romance was stormy. We wanted totally different things from the relationship. I wanted him to leave me alone. Contact getting A’s and B’s (my C’s in social studies didn’t count because social studies was stupid), I spent my school day hours getting by with a minimum of effort. I read books only when boredom threatened to overcome me. I was happy being the best I wanted to be. But he wanted me to change.

He said I could do better – that I was capable of so much more. He was disappointed with my work. Didn’t I admire the new student’s near-perfect handwriting? Wasn’t her vocabulary remarkable? Her detailed social studies answers so complete? Nasty man!

I developed a new cursive style and wrote longer answers. It irked me that I needed to learn more to come up with those extra details. My vocabulary was just fine, but I memorized pages of definitions anyway, and got an A in social studies.

ool Lots of c stuff!

He even had the nerve to hint that my recess Twinkies and chocolate milks weren’t in my best interests. Was he implying he’d like me better a bit slimmer? He fought dirty. I lost fifteen pounds.

Our love affair continued to burn its stormy course into seventh grade. What more could he want from me? I was already an academic A. But he wouldn’t quit. Did I know that boys consistently scored higher in math and science on S.A.T.’s? What did I care about the happenings outside the concrete walls of our tiny three-room schoolhouse?

I’d swum to the top of the barrel. Math and science? How could he keep doing this to me? I would study biology and become a surgeon.

He introduced physical education.

Wasn’t recess enough? I groaned and whined. Perhaps sports weren’t my forte, he’d responded with a smirk.

Sweat wasn’t feminine, was it?

I had to find out. Baseball, tackle (continued on page 84)

Knowledge, Selection & Service Farmington’s Independent Bookstore since 1991

(207) 778-3454

Discount Beverages and Tobacco Agency Liquor Store • Lotto Pizza • Deli • Snacks

Jon & Lois Bubier, Owners 144 Franklin and High Streets Farmington • 778-3344

Mon-Wed 10-5, Thurs 10-5:30 Fri 10-6:30, Sat 9-5, Sun 12-3 Email: info@ddgbooks.com

193 Broadway, Farmington, ME 04938

www.ddgbooks.com

Western Maine

84

(continued from page 83) football, ice hockey – tough opponents.

Quitting looked good, but whenever I got frustrated and threatened to throw in the towel, he was there with the magic words: “Quit. Some things just aren’t meant to be.”

Fateful words. Halfway through seventh grade we were brutally separated by conspiring townspeople. S.A.D.’s had arrived. Somehow I couldn’t bear to see my old classroom as my bus passed by on its way to a strange new destination. I was suddenly flung into a bigger barrel. I fought my way to the top. The game plan was the same, only my opponents were smarter and tougher. It was a challenge I knew well.

Twenty years and many barrels later, I ran into my giant at a supermarket checkout. He was as handsome as ever.

A thick mop of wavy gray hair, that same strong chin, and those incredible, magnetic blue eyes. Oh, yes, wasn’t it

funny that I’d grown up to be a teacher – of all things. But why had I decided to leave medical studies when I was doing so well? I was on to him in a flash. This time I refused to pick up the gloves. He grinned and we both laughed. We chatted. New England weather, families, the State of the Union. We both had to run. I said good-bye. As he disappeared down the cereal aisle, I heard him mumble something about Twinkies. I needed to lose fifteen pounds. He still fought dirty.

What made this man so adept at reaching into my mind? A look, a raised brow, a frown could send me into the clouds or the depths of despair. I meant to ask him how he always seemed to find the right questions to ask. How he knew when he’d pushed enough, when I needed a hug or a word of praise. Was it uncanny intuition? A teacher’s wisdom? Or just a boxer’s lucky punch?

I’ll never know. My giant, William Gildart, died a few days later. We never got married, and I never told him I loved him. I imagine he always knew.

Author’s note: William Gildart taught grades five through eight at the Carthage Elementary School in Carthage, Maine, from 1961 to 1977.

“The Heart of Maine’s Lakes & Mountains”

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

PLUMBING & HEATING

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MAINE SOLAR

starks general store

Photovoltaic Equipment Sales • Installation • Service The Off Grid Expert, The Professional, The MAN When You’ve Had It With The Rest, Call The Best!

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SunAutoSalvage.com

85

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Russell’s Novelty Works in Farmington. Item #100747 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

Mon-Sat 9-4 Featuring State of the Art Tanning by Tropical Rayz

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Oosoola Park, Rte. 2 Norridgewock, ME 04957

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Western Maine

86

Firecrackers-fueled Fires Sparked Outrage in Rumford

by Brian Swartz

F

Inferno on Waldo Street

irecrackers running amuck in Rumford led town officials to ban the pyrotechnics in July 1948.

While celebrating Independence Day on Sunday, July 4, someone tossed a lit firecracker beneath an automobile trailer parked in Rumford. The firecracker exploded, and its sparks apparently ignited oil and grease that had accumulated on the trailer.

While Rumford Fire Chief Solomon Mercier and his experienced firefighters responded promptly, the resulting fire destroyed the trailer.

Late Monday morning an unidentified individual lit a firecracker and

threw it into a garage next to a large tenement house at 335 Waldo Street.

The firecracker blew up and ignited an oil drum; flames merrily ate away at the garage until a 71-year-old woman, Mrs. Mark Carey, smelled smoke in her third-floor apartment.

Fire fully consumed the garage by now as, according to a newspaper account, Mrs. Carey “spread the alarm as she raced the flames down two flights of stairs.” The alarm sounded in the Rumford fire station at 12 noon; trucks and firefighters immediately rolled.

Twenty-six people lived in the tenement house. Fortunately some ten-

Experience Small Town Maine

Gateway to the Western Mountains

ll

b We

A Jo

ants were not home; others escaped only with their lives. “Mr. and Mrs. Albert Plante escaped from their firstfloor apartment with their five-year-old granddaughter … by climbing through a window to the roof of the burning garage and dropping to the ground,” the newspaper reported. Another woman refused to leave her apartment until a family friend convinced her to do so.

Rumford firefighters successfully tackled the fire, which caused an estimated $13,000 in damage. Falling glass cut Mercier’s hand, and three other firefighters suffered injuries ranging from similar hand cuts to burns and a right

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DAN’S Automotive ~ Repair & Sales ~ “The One Automotive Service You Can Count On!” • Major And Minor Repairs • Quality, Clean Pre-Owned Automobiles For Sale

Daytime - (207) 369-9302 Evening - (207) 562-8169 625 Crescent Ave., Rumford, ME

Email: jnicolsbros@yahoo.com Jim Nicols Bill Nicols

29 Industrial Park Road Rumford, Maine

87

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com elbow and right knee damaged when struck “by a falling timber,” the newspaper detailed the casualty count.

No lives were lost; the displaced tenants moved elsewhere, with the American Red Cross chapter finding shelter for one family.

By the time firefighters doused the fire’s last embers, Mercier had witnessed enough firecracker-caused carnage. But the Rumford fires were not the only trouble caused by firecrackers that July.

Downstate in Bridgton, burglars took advantage of the Independence Day hoopla after dark on Saturday, July 3 by setting off firecrackers in front of Bardsley Clothing Store and Smith Sporting Goods. As firecrackers exploded by the front doors, burglars busted in the back doors and entered the businesses.

The explosions allegedly masked the sounds of doors being kicked open.

Burgess Store and residence in Rumford Center. Item #102273 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

(continued on page 88)

Meader & Son

Hair by Tim

Established 1915

Serving Western Maine for over 50 years!

Funeral Home

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Mon - Sat 4:30am - 8:00pm Sun. 6:30am - 7pm

Propane Refill Station & Full Service Gas Every Day 7am - 7pm

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Owners: Judy & Kenny Gill 876 Route 2, Rumford, ME

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Western Maine

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(continued from page 87) At the sporting goods store, owner Edward Smith soon reported that the burglars made off with $1,600 in cash and with six guns ranging from $800 to $900 in cumulative value. Bardsley’s apparently offered the B & E artists no reward for their noisy endeavor; nothing was reported stolen there.

And in Augusta on July 4, “approximately 15 persons were treated at the Maine General Hospital” after dark “for burns and injuries related to fireworks,” according to a local newspaper. And farther south during a fireworks display in Falmouth that night, one woman “suffered a deep laceration in the forehead” after “a youngster had thrown a firecracker.”

Upstate in Rumford, members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars met at the Robert Shand Post on Wednesday, July 7 and “passed a resolution … opposing [the] sale and use of fireworks

in Rumford and Mexico,” except only for “public displays,” another press account noted.

Rumford selectmen had already received an earful from Chief Mercier, local firefighters, and town residents.

During a July 9 meeting, selectmen cited the two recent fires as why they voted to ban the “sale and use of fireworks in this town,” the paper assured its Rumford readers.

More than 60 years would pass before fireworks could be legally sold in Rumford again. After the Legislature approved the sale and use of previously banned fireworks, Rumford voters approved a fireworks ordinance on June 11, 2013.

Titled the “Chapter 21-D Consumer Fireworks Discharge and Possession Ordinance,” the new law regulated the use (by location and the user’s age, among other factors) of so-called “con-

sumer fireworks.” One section stipulated that such fireworks “shall not be ignited within 50 feet of any structure, overhead utilities or woodlands.”

If only such regulations had been in existence in July 1948, perhaps the house at 335 Waldo Street would not have burned down.

But the firecracker fiend would have probably struck elsewhere that Independence Day week.

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

Main Street Service Main Street, Strong

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Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes Railroad

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Across the boardwalk to Rangeley Lake House in Rangeley. Item #109900 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Flagstaff Lake Scenic Boat Tours

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Jeff Hinman, Master Maine Guide

J&J Haines Excavation, INC.

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Jordan Lumber Co.

Tel: 639-3011 • Cell: 491-6522 29 Mt. Blue Pond Road • Avon, Maine

1-800-750-2231 207-265-2231

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354 Main Street • Kingfield, Maine

Western Maine

90

The Eustis Cemetery

by Charlotte Mayo

History of a Dixfield landmark

T

he Eustis Cemetery is located in Dixfield across from the Front Porch Café, on the left as you head towards East Dixfield. There are many families buried there, along with veterans from a variety of wars.

This being 2012, I decided to spend the year checking on the veterans of the War of 1812.

The Eustis Cemetery is so named for a man, Charles Lyman Eustis, who built a house just across from what is now a driveway, and the location of a local quaint restaurant “The Front Porch Café.”

Mr. Eustis owned the house for many years after building it. Sometimes living there, sometimes renting it out to others — to the Reverend Wil-

liam V. Jordan among others.

In 2011 Charles Lyman Eustis’s great great-granddaughter came from Ojai, California to look at the house her ancestor built, and where several of his children were born.

Charles Lyman Eustis also bought

the land in northwest Maine that eventually became Eustis, after his efforts to develop the town there.

Veterans of the War of 1812 buried in the Eustis Cemetery are: Silas Barnard, born September 16, 1795, died 1873. Silas Barnard was a surveyor by profession, and was chosen to survey the Maine-Canada border after the so-called Aroostook War. Mr. Barnard came to Dixfield from Marlboro, Massachusetts, and lived here until his death, which was a result of a fall from a load of hay.

In 1810 Silas built the clapboard and shingle mill in Dixfield, which later burned and was rebuilt in another location.

Silas served many terms in the state

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legislature as a representative from the Dixfield district, and cast an electoral vote for President Andrew Jackson in 1832. He was a state senator in 1842, and an Oxford County commissioner in 1857. He filled many positions of public trust as a member of the Dixfield Temperance Society, and in 1836 was appointed to a committee to help persuade local merchants to give up the selling of liquor.

He married Lucy Trask (born December 16, 1800, died 1896) in 1819, living in the 1820 house (which history says Silas helped build) for fifty years, raising seven children, daughter Mahala, son Albion, son Joel, daughter Lucy Ann, son George, daughter Emily, and daughter Delphina.

History from family ties has it that many of the children continued to live in the 1820 house for a time as well.

Lucy Trask Barnard wasn’t just a wife and mother. She made a name for herself and still is today. She learned to

spin, dye and weave yarn in the early years, and began to hook rugs, drawing her own designs, and preparing dyes from plant materials.

Lucy created three rugs depicting scenes from her childhood home that remained in the Trask family for several generations. Her rugs were later donated to the New York Museum of Art, and have been the subject of several articles in the Antiques Magazine and others, as well as in a book on early American tapestries.

Other War of 1812 Veterans buried in Eustis Cemetery are: John Chamberlain Eustis, died may 25, 1853 was known as a deserter of the war.

Isaac Torrey, died April 18, 1855 Harvey Wait, died May 14, 1843

Discover Maine Magazine has been brought to you free through the generous support of Maine businesses for the past 21 years, and we extend a special thanks to them.

Please tell our advertisers how much you love Discover Maine Magazine by doing business with them whenever possible.

Thanks for supporting those businesses that help us bring Maine’s history to you!

Authors note: Thank you to Mr. Peter Stowell from the Dixfield Historical Society and their paper The Dixfield Star for his input with this article.

The

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Country Doctor

by Clarence W. Bennett

Rural medicine of days gone by

T

his story is about Clarence Joel Dunlap. He was born in Farmington, Maine on April 25, 1888.

Fresh from Bowdoin College in Brunswick in the early 1900s, he went to Kingfield as a teacher.

Kingfield was, and still is, a small town — present population is 850 — located about 75 miles north of the state capital, Augusta. It was a lumber town in those days, but is now best known as a springboard to the very popular ski resort at Sugarloaf Mountain.

At that time, an elderly doctor lived in Kingfield who was ready to retire.

His problem was if he retired, there would be no replacement to cover a large geographic region running to the Canadian border. That doctor had a comfortable house with a large attached barn and stable, typical of that era in New England. The house had a wrap-around screened porch with comfortable outdoor seating. There was a cleared field behind the barn running to woods. On the other side of the woods was the Carrabasset River.

The house itself had a basement and two stories of living space. The first floor housed a large working kitchen

with a wood stove and doors leading to the porch, barn, dining room, and main house entry. The kitchen also had a wall opening to the dining room to allow the passing of food and dishes from one to the other.

The dining room had a bedroom entrance on one side, and larger access to what would normally be the living room. The doctor used that as his office, where he saw patients and their families. The second floor had three bedrooms, a bathroom with tub, and an operating room. As an aside, diagonally across the road was the Stanley house. The Stanley twin brothers were best known for inventing the Stanley Steamer. A museum is dedicated to the Stanleys in Kingfield. They actually did much more.

But I digress. Back to my story.

The old doctor suggested that Dunlap, the young teacher, who had soon become recognized for many qualities, go to medical school and come back as his replacement. He offered the house, equipment, and his practice. Since this presentation is entitled “Country Doctor,” you can guess what happened next. The young man’s wife accompa-

nied him to Boston University, where they both studied — he to be a physician and she, a registered nurse. In the mid-1920s the two of them returned to Kingfield, moved into the house and practiced medicine as a team.

Dr. Dunlap was a rare individual.

He was tall — about six-foot-six, not heavy, not light, not handsome, highly intelligent, and old-school all the way.

He did not go into medicine to make money. In fact, he resented those who did. He would charge $1.00 for an office visit and $2.00 for a house call. But it really didn’t matter. He often accepted vegetables, etc., in lieu of payment.

In the upper part of the barn, he had the makings of a pharmacy where he developed and dispensed some medications.

In fact, he pioneered some medications for major pharmaceutical companies.

Three or four times a year, Doctor Dunlap would drive to Boston to update himself and supplement his studying. Apparently, he was well-known and highly regarded as an innovator and diagnostician, because Dr. Leahy of the famed Leahy Clinic would greet him personally and take him on a tour.

Throughout those tours, Dr. Leahy

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com would try to talk Dunlap into taking a practice in the greater Boston area. But his loyalties remained true to his practice in Kingfield.

Dr. Dunlap usually wore a suit and dress hat, drove a Dodge sedan, read the daily Boston Herald, and was an avid fan of the Boston Celtics and Red Sox teams. He cared about all living things.

That manifested itself in many ways, but I will cite one example. He was once featured in the Farmington, Maine, newspaper with an article calling him the “Bird Man.” Seems he put an old Christmas tree beside the barn near the rear of the porch to feed the birds. Of course, squirrels created the usual problems. He built a chicken wire cage around it with an opening so that only the birds could go in and out. The article included a picture of the doctor

in his suit and dress hat with many birds on his hat brim, shoulders, sleeves, and pockets. There was also the abandoned wild cat he spent months luring into the barn until finally it became a one-man cat, and many other similar stories were told.

An example of the extraordinary experiences a country doctor could have in those days would be the time when a woodsman came to the house during winter. He said his partner was “cutup in the woods.” Would the doctor come? Of course. They hitched a horse and buggy and went into the woods as far as they could. They tied the horse to a tree and snow-shoed to the injured woodsman. The doctor patched the woodsman up, snow-shoed back to the horse-rig, and headed home. The story has the doctor falling asleep near the house, but the horse continued into the

barn. The doctor’s wife then took care of them both.

How do I know all this, you ask? A little over 82 years ago Doctor Dunlap, assisted by his wife/nurse, delivered me on the second floor of that house in Kingfield. That very able wife/nurse was my aunt, Dena Lovina (Bearce) Dunlap. Dena was born in Lakeville, Maine on August 4, 1895. She was one of 13 children in a family living on a farm on the upper part of Almanac Mountain — 1,052 feet high, in the Grand Lakes region of eastern Maine.

I could go on at length about the exploits of the son who became head of the test division for the U. S. Air Force as a civilian employee.

Or I could go into the doctor’s dowser days when he located farmers’ well sites. Or his many years on the school committee while his wife tutored high (continued on page 94)

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(continued from page 93) school students preparing for speech competitions. And the many honors and recognitions bestowed upon the two of them by a very grateful citizenry.

I slept in the front bedroom of that Kingfield house many times. The Doc was a remarkable man who lived to be 94, and he enjoyed a long and productive life. The last time I visited him in a nursing home in Farmington, he came out of the bathroom slightly disoriented. I asked if he needed help. I do not remember his exact words, but they involved helping others. I’m sure you could write just as good an ending for what he might have said as I can.

Office building at Crocker Lake Camps in Jackman. Item #101096 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Directory Of Advertisers

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A&A Hardware & Lobster Company ...................................................30 A.J. Levesque Excavation, LLC ...........................................................76 A-1 Seamless Gutters .......................................................................26 Absolut Services, Inc. ........................................................................91 ABT Plumbing, Heating & Cooling ...................................................54 Ace Insulation .....................................................................................76 Acorn Fence II ...................................................................................15 Affordable Tree Service ....................................................................34 Andrew Ames Logging ....................................................................... 4 Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce ...............................12 Annabessacook Equine Clinic ..........................................................16 Annabessacook Veterinary Clinic ...................................................16 Anne Plummer & Associates .............................................................70 Annie’s Teeny-Tiny Quilt Shop ........................................................34 A-Plus Auto Repair ...........................................................................26 Apple Valley Golfers Club ................................................................12 Archie’s Inc. Rubbish Removal .......................................................85 At Home Electric ............................................................................. 49 Augusta-West Lakeside Resort & Kampground .............................29 Augustus Bove House .......................................................................39 B&M Auto Repair ............................................................................14 B. Lamarre Carpentry .......................................................................81 Barclay’s Skindiver’s Paradise .........................................................25 Bedard Excavation ............................................................................39 Belgrade Boat Shop ............................................................................49 Bessey Motor Sales ............................................................................72 Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce ................................................75 Betty’s Laundry .................................................................................72 Big Dawg Concrete ...........................................................................44 Big Fish Fence Supply, Inc. ..............................................................66 Bill Stevens Auto ................................................................................15 Blanchette Moving & Storage Co. .....................................................6 Blue Door Primitive Peddler ............................................................65 BN Bilodeau Logging ........................................................................79 Bookkeeping Plus ..............................................................................14 Boomer’s Restaurant & Saloon ...................................................... 73 Bowley Brook ....................................................................................55 BRC Carpentry, Inc. .........................................................................72 Bridgton Books ...................................................................................68 Bridgton Hospital ..............................................................................37 Brill Lumber Co. ...............................................................................37 Broderick Construction ....................................................................52 Brown’s Construction .......................................................................77 Bruce A. Manzer, Inc. ........................................................................ 57 Buster’s Barber Shop .........................................................................20 Caleb C. Chessie Excavation .............................................................34 Campbell’s Building Supply / True Value .......................................62 Carpentry and Construction Services ............................................34 Carrabassett Real Estate & Property Management ..................... 62 Casco Federal Credit Union ..............................................................9 Central Maine Powersports ..............................................................23 Chartier Company, Inc. ...................................................................64 Chateau Cushnoc Apartments ...........................................................9 Chris’ Electric ...................................................................................41 Christian Science Reading Room .....................................................73 City Cove Realty ................................................................................59 CJ’s Appliances...................................................................................81 Clay Hill Farm ...................................................................................85 Cobbossee Motel ................................................................................29 Cobbossee Colony Golf Course ........................................................15 Cobb’s Pierce Pond Camps ..............................................................57 Coldwell Banker ................................................................................17 Cole Harrison Insurance ..................................................................58 Collins Enterprises ............................................................................83 Colonial Valley Motel ......................................................................83 Connell’s Auto Collection ................................................................ 42 Cooper Farms ....................................................................................44 Coos Canyon Campground & Cabins ..............................................6 Cornerstone Country Market .........................................................65 Cornerstone Plumbing & Heating ...................................................84 Craig’s Carpentry ............................................................................ 80 Creaser Jewelers ............................................................................... 40 Crosstone Conference Center & Restaurant ....................................45 Cushing Construction ........................................................................49 Custom Logging & Excavation, Inc. ...............................................76 D&R Paving & Seal Coating / Tree Removal .................................65 D.A. Wilson & Co. ..............................................................................43 D.B. Industries ....................................................................................18 D.H. Pinnette & Sons, Inc. ................................................................. 3 D.R. Struck Landscape Nursery .......................................................29 Danny Boy’s Irish Pub & Restaurant .............................................13 Dan’s Automotive Repair & Sales ...................................................85 Dave’s Appliance ................................................................................16 David Stevens Excavation & Septic Systems .................................51 Deer Farm Camps & Campground .................................................. 8 Den’s Automotive Services, Inc. .....................................................67 Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers ......................................... 83 DeWolfe & Wood Rare & Used Books .......................................... 33 Dick’s Auto Body & Collision Center ............................................. 46 Dolbier Builders, Inc. ........................................................................59 Don’s Automotive ...............................................................................29 Double R Crane Services, Inc. ............................................................19 Douin’s Market & Diner ....................................................................51 Dufort & Son Builders .......................................................................13 Dutch Treat ........................................................................................52 Dyer Septic Service .............................................................................42 E.W. Moore & Son Pharmacy ..........................................................92 Edmunds Market ...............................................................................89 Ed’s Grove Discount Warehouse ......................................................66 Elite Body Essentials ......................................................................... 32 End Of The Rainbow Alternatives ............................................... 52 Ernie’s Cycle Shop .......................................................................... 20 Evergreens Campground & Restaurant ..........................................4 Faded Lines ........................................................................................81 Fairfield Antiques Mall .......................................................................10 Farmington Farmers Union ............................................................82 Fast Eddies..........................................................................................16 Fayette Country Store ........................................................................79 Fiber Arts Cottage ..............................................................................68 Fieldstone Landscaping ......................................................................43 Fine Lines Hair Design.......................................................................81 Finelines Auto Body .......................................................................... 69 Fireside Inn & Suites Auburn .......................................................... 13 Fireside Stove Shop & Fireplace Center ............................................26 Fixit Farm ......................................................................................... 90 Flagstaff Construction .....................................................................90 Flagstaff General ............................................................................. 90 Flagstaff Lake Scenic Boat Tours .................................................. 89 Foster Tree & Landscaping ............................................................. 51 Four Seasons Restaurant ..................................................................93 Four Winds Too Lobster Co. & Redemption ................................ 48 Franklin County Chamber of Commerce .......................................84 Franklin Memorial Hospital ........................................................... 53 Franklin Savings Bank ..................................................................... 5 Franklin-Somerset Federal Credit Union ......................................... 8 Fryeburg Glass ................................................................................. 67 Fryeburg Health Care Center ......................................................... 67 G3 Firearms .......................................................................................46 Galeyrie Maps & Custom Frames ....................................................... 5 Gateway Marina .............................................................................. 42 Gateway Recreation & Lodging ........................................................92 Gingerbread Farm Perennials .......................................................48 Glen Luce Logging, Inc. ...................................................................47 Good Dog Firewood ...........................................................................59 Good Times Unlimited .....................................................................52 Gosselin Mechanical Services ..........................................................14 Gratefully Dead Custom Meat Cutting ..........................................27 Gray Family Vision Center ............................................................ 33 Greater Bridgton Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce ...............69 Gridiron Restaurant & Sports Pub ..................................................23

Business

Page

Grinnell Consulting & Security ..................................................................69 Grinnell Services ........................................................................................ 69 Group Adams Propane Services ............................................................... 78 Hair By Tim ................................................................................................ 87 Haley Farm ................................................................................................ 35 Hall Implement Co. ...................................................................................32 Hall’s Collision Center ...............................................................................16 Hammond Lumber Company ...................................................................27 Hanlon Pet Haven ........................................................................................82 Hardy’s Motorsports ................................................................................ 85 Harris Drug Store ................................................................................... 59 Harting’s Auto Detail ................................................................................ 54 High Tide Low Tide Seafood ..................................................................... 63 Highland Lake Resort ...............................................................................38 Hilton Garden Inn Auburn Riverwatch .....................................................28 Hodgdon Well Drilling, Inc. ...................................................................... 3 Holly & Doug’s Country Diner ...................................................................54 Hoyt Chiropractic Center .........................................................................16 Hungry Hollow Country Store .....................................................................9 Hunter’s Truck & Tire Service, Inc. ......................................................... 15 Hydraulic Hose & Assemblies ..................................................................... 7 J&J Haines Excavation, Inc. .....................................................................89 J&R Davenport Trucking ......................................................................... 57 J.L. Henry Excavation & Landscaping ...................................................... 48 J.T. Reid’s Gun Shop ................................................................................... 8 Jackman Auto Parts ....................................................................................60 Jake’s Garage ............................................................................................ 55 James Painting & Renovations .....................................................................75 Jason Stevens Excavation & Earth Work ..................................................79 Jean Castonguay Excavating .................................................................... 47 JL Brochu, Inc. .........................................................................................90 JMH Excavation ..........................................................................................40 John Marvin Tower Apartments ................................................................. 9 John S. Plowden Draft Horse Logging & Instruction ..................................67 Johnny Castonguay Logging & Trucking ..................................................48 Jordan Lumber Company ..........................................................................89 Judy’s Variety ..............................................................................................87 JW Awning Co. .........................................................................................15 K&J Heating, Inc. .....................................................................................31 K&W Aggregates, LLC ............................................................................. 36 Kedar Quilts & Gallery ...............................................................................41 Keep’s Corner Cafe & Bakery .....................................................................91 Keith Hadley, Inc. .......................................................................................75 Kelvin’s Auto Repair ..................................................................................59 Kennebec Tree Service, LLC......................................................................29 Ken’s Lawn Care ....................................................................................... 10 Kiesman Drywall Inc. ............................................................................... 36 Knopp Chiropractic ....................................................................................73 Knox Auto Body ...................................................................................... 34 L.P. Poirier & Son, Inc., Excavation ........................................................... 22 L.R. Nadeau, Inc. Excavation .....................................................................30 La Fleur’s Restaurant ................................................................................49 LaFleur’s Carpentry ................................................................................. 19 Lake Region Auto Supply .........................................................................69 Lakeside Antiques ......................................................................................17 Larsen’s Electric ........................................................................................85 Lavallee’s Garage ........................................................................................93 Leland’s Masonry .......................................................................................51 Lisbon Community Federal Credit Union ................................................. 27 Long Green Variety .....................................................................................77 Luce’s Maine-Grown Meats ........................................................................62 Lynn’s Place Family Hair Salon ...............................................................79 Lyn’s Spring Service, Inc. ..........................................................................31 Madore’s Market ........................................................................................82 Main Street Service ....................................................................................88 Maine Crafts Association ............................................................................ 22 Maine Crafts Festival .................................................................................. 4 Maine Historical Society ................................................................................8 Maine Home Recreation ............................................................................ 23 Maine-ly Foam ............................................................................................36 Maine Motel & Cabins ................................................................................ 24 Maine Pellet Sales, LLC ............................................................................ 14 Maine Solar ..................................................................................................84 Maine-ly Elder Care ................................................................................. 50 Mainely Puppies ...........................................................................................71 Major’s Heating Services .......................................................................... 72 Mama Bear’s Den ......................................................................................60 Martin’s Service & Sales ........................................................................... 56 Masonry & General Contracting .................................................................84 Matheson Tri-Gas ........................................................................................23 Maurice Restaurant ..................................................................................... 39 MB Logging & Stump Grinding ...............................................................15 McAllister Accounting & Tax Services .....................................................79 McCormick & Sons Trucking ...................................................................64 Meader & Son Funeral Home ....................................................................87 MEI Excavation .........................................................................................41 Mel’s Raspberry Patch ............................................................................. 33 Memco Supply ............................................................................................78 Merle Lloyd & Sons Earthwork Contractors ............................................93 Metcalf’s Trading Post ............................................................................. 35 Mid-Maine Equine & Canine Therapeutics .............................................. 50 Midnight Boutique Lingerie, Inc. ............................................................. 11 Mike Wainer Plumbing & Heating ......................................................... 50 Mike’s Stump Grinding ..............................................................................79 Mills Market ...............................................................................................87 Mineral Collector .......................................................................................43 Mollyockett Motel & Swim Spa .................................................................45 Mom the Mender ........................................................................................46 Montello Heights Retirement Community ................................................. 24 Morning Dew Natural Grocery & Deli ...................................................... 68 Motor Supply Co. .......................................................................................10 Moulton Lumber Co. ................................................................................. 6 Mountain Rustics .......................................................................................41 Mount Blue Drug ........................................................................................52 Mount Blue Motel .......................................................................................83 Murray Oil & Propane .............................................................................. 47 Nadeau Development Corp. .......................................................................44 Naples Packing Co., Inc. .............................................................................85 Neo-Kraft Signs, Inc. ................................................................................ 11 New Portland Agricultural Fair ................................................................ 4 Niboban Camps .........................................................................................60 Nick DiConzo Builder & Craftsman .......................................................76 Nicols Brothers Trucking & Logging, Inc. ..............................................85 Nordica Memorial Museum ..................................................................... 5 Norm’s Auto Tops ......................................................................................13 Norseman Motel ........................................................................................75 North Bay Estates ..................................................................................... 80 North Country Property Services, LLC ...................................................74 Northeast Gems ..........................................................................................36 Not-A-Con Home Improvements ................................................................71 Oberg Insurance & Real Estate Agency ............................................... 68 Old Mill Stream Ice Cream Shoppe ........................................................79 Olde Thyme Prim ........................................................................................14 On The Way Cafe ......................................................................................76 Oquossoc Marine ......................................................................................61 Orr Excavation ...........................................................................................54 Otis Federal Credit Union ........................................................................78 Oxford Federal Credit Union .....................................................................56 Oxford Hills Chamber of Commerce ...........................................................71 Oxford Hills Taxi .......................................................................................73 Oxford Mud Run ........................................................................................70 P&B Remodeling, LLC ............................................................................20 P&C Automotive, Inc. ...............................................................................64 Packard Appraisal, Inc. .............................................................................37 Page’s Repair ..............................................................................................17 Pat’s Pizza Auburn ........................................................................................27 Pat’s Pizza Bethel .......................................................................................75 Penobscot Marine Museum ......................................................................21 Phillips Towing & Auto Repair ..................................................................58

Business

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Phin Enterprises .................................................................................40 Pierce Hill Construction ...................................................................92 PLC Builders ......................................................................................88 Plummer’s Ace Hardware .................................................................65 Plummers Shop ‘N Save ........................................................... 65 Poland Mining Camps ..................................................................... 30 Polly’s Variety ...................................................................................71 Portland Pirates ...................................................................................7 Premier Groundscapes ......................................................................26 Primitive Days ...................................................................................35 Provencher’s ........................................................................................11 Puiia Lumber Co. ..............................................................................85 R.E. Lowell Lumber, Inc. ................................................................. 46 R.L. Builders ......................................................................................17 R.W. Merrill Electrical Contractor, Inc. .........................................74 Ralph Libby Chain Saws .................................................................46 Ramada Conference Center ............................................................22 Range Pond Campground .............................................................. 18 Rangeley Electric .............................................................................. 59 Rangeley Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce ............................60 Rapid Ralph & Son Concrete Foundations ....................................40 Ray Corporation ................................................................................11 Red Mill Lumber ..............................................................................69 Remco Radiator & Auto Care ..........................................................27 Richard Wing & Son Logging, Inc. ................................................ 64 Ricker Hill Orchards ..........................................................................46 Rick’s Garage .................................................................................... 57 Rising Sun Cafe & Bakery .............................................................. 72 River Valley Chamber of Commerce ...............................................87 Riverbend Campground ...................................................................17 Robin L. Day & Sons ........................................................................52 Robin’s Bait Shop .............................................................................48 Rocky Mountain Terrain Park ..........................................................55 Rodney Ellis Jr. Construction ............................................................50 Ron’s Market .....................................................................................83 Ron’s Transmissions ..........................................................................18 Rooster’s Roadhouse .........................................................................74 Rulo Timberworks, Inc. ................................................................... 31 Russell & Sons Towing .......................................................................74 Russell’s Lakeside Rentals ...............................................................90 S.A. McLean, Inc. ..............................................................................34 S.S. Milton ...........................................................................................43 Sabattus Antique Mall ......................................................................12 Sacopee Valley Eye Care ....................................................................66 Sanborn’s Auto Sales & Salvage.......................................................65 Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes Railroad ....................................... 88 Sandy River Cash Fuel ......................................................................87 Sandy River Golf Course & Driving Range ...................................81 Scribners Mill & Homestead .............................................................42 Sebago Lake Lodge & Cottages .......................................................32 Sebago Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce ................................20 Select Auto Service ............................................................................ 25 Shadowed Birch Kennels ..................................................................66 Shaker Hill Outdoors ........................................................................31 Shamrock Stoneworks & Landscaping, Inc. ...................................49 Sheet Metal Services, Inc. .................................................................18 Shutterworks .........................................................................................4 Small Engine Specialty ......................................................................9 SMB Electrical Services ....................................................................25 Smedberg’s Crystal Spring Farm .................................................... 70 Smile Again Dentures, Inc. .................................................................12 SMS Inc. ..............................................................................................18 Snow’s Excavation, Inc. ....................................................................37 Solon Corner Market ..........................................................................62 Solon Superette ...................................................................................61 Soper Logging & Trucking ...............................................................77 Spencer Group Paving & Seal Coating ............................................47 Spice & Grain Natural Foods ............................................................36 Spillover Motel ...................................................................................58 3 Springs Greenhouse .......................................................................58 Spruce Mountain Pharmacy ............................................................78 SR General Contractors ....................................................................10 St. Peter’s Cemetery .........................................................................11 Starks General Store ........................................................................84 Stetson’s Auto Service .......................................................................71 Stevens Electric & Pump Service, Inc. ............................................... 6 Stevens Forest Products ....................................................................30 Stony Brook Recreation & Campground ........................................56 Stratton Plaza Hotel & Lounge .........................................................88 Sturtevant Plumbing ........................................................................40 Sun Auto & Salvage ...........................................................................84 Sundae’s Ice Cream Shoppe ..............................................................13 Sunrise Property Services ................................................................38 Super 8 Westbrook ..............................................................................32 Swimming Pool Liner Repair ........................................................... 45 T&N Sealcoating & Asphalt Maintenance ........................................81 T.W. Varney Excavation ......................................................................77 The Brake & Exhaust Center ...........................................................19 The Carrabassett Group, LLC .........................................................62 The Chickadee’s Nest ........................................................................82 The Garden Goddess ....................................................................... 41 The Irregular .....................................................................................58 The Korner Store & Deli ...................................................................80 The Little Red Hen Diner & Bakery ................................................56 The Local Hub Market & Cafe .......................................................44 The Looney Moose Cafe ...................................................................91 The Phoenix House and Well .............................................................44 The Poland House ..............................................................................18 The Shop .............................................................................................20 The Sterling Inn ..................................................................................62 The Victoria Inn & Restaurant .........................................................43 Thomas Agency ..................................................................................17 Tindall’s Country Store & Dam Diner ...............................................57 Tomhegan Camps ............................................................................. 61 Town Line Pipe & Truck LLC ........................................................... 63 Town of Mexico ...................................................................................85 Town Taxi ............................................................................................82 Triple D Redemption & Tanning Spa ................................................85 Tuttles Auto Sales ................................................................................51 Vintage Maine Images .........................................................................8 W.L. Sturgeon, Inc. ............................................................................67 Walmart-Oxford .................................................................................71 Water’s Edge Gallery & Studio..........................................................38 Waterways Coffee Shop & Quick Lube ........................................64 Webster Corner Antiques ..................................................................12 Western Auto - Livermore Falls .........................................................77 Western Maine Flooring ...................................................................54 Western Maine Pharmacy, Inc. ..........................................................58 Western Maine Towing & Recovery ..................................................39 Westwood Cottages ...........................................................................39 Whisperwood Lodge & Cottages .....................................Back Cover Whited Peterbilt / Whited Truck.......................................................25 White’s Land Management ...............................................................55 Whitney Tree Service ........................................................................19 Whittemore Pool & Spa Management ..............................................54 Whynot Electric ..................................................................................39 William Perry Cigar Lounge .............................................................68 Willie’s Towing ................................................................................20 Wilson Excavating, Inc. ......................................................................74 Wilson Funeral Home ........................................................................19 Wilson Small Tree Care ...................................................................36 Wind Swept Acres Arabians ............................................................50 Wings Hill Inn & Restaurant ..........................................................80 Woitko’s Talk of the Town ........................................................... 41 Woodland Valley Disc Golf ..............................................................35 Wood-Mizer of Maine .......................................................................78 Woody’s Lawn Care & Landscaping .................................................31 York’s Market .....................................................................................85

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Western Maine

1941 USGS map of Bethel. courtesy of John Barrows at Galeyerie Maps & available at www.Galeyrie.com