Inside This Edition
3 It Makes No Never Mind
James Nalley
4 Shenanigans At The Lewiston Fairgrounds Be careful who you rent from Brian Swartz
8 Windham’s Jean Marie “Jeff” Donnell Recurring character actress James Nalley
12 Fryeburg’s James Ripley Osgood Publisher of numerous literary figures James Nalley
18 Railroading Over Crawford Notch Celebrating 150 years
Brian Solomon
26 Auburn’s Payson Smith And W.W. Stetson Maine’s great education reformers
Charles Francis
30 Golf Pro Arthur H. Fenn He left his mark at the Poland Spring Resort
Brian Swartz
36 Cornish Dinner Parties Good conversation and good pie Jennie Pike (1851-1922)
38 Rufus Porter Finds A Home Bridgton honors a restless genius Toni Seger
44 Bethel’s Marshall Stedman Versatile actor of stage and screen
James Nalley
48 William Lloyd Garrison’s Visit To Waterville Sparks the anti-slavery movement
Charles Francis
52 Farmington’s First Congregational Church Stained glass windows tell a story
Greg Davis
57 The Genealogy Corner Internet use — some pros and cons
Charles Francis
61 Maine’s Rangeley Lakes Region A haven of fishing and birding
Brian Swartz
64 The White Nose Pete Fly Fishing Festival The perfect event for all fly-fishing enthusiasts
Sue Damm
69 Skowhegan High School Baseball It was all the rage in 1911
Brian Swartz
74 Strong’s Elizabeth Dyar Participant in the Boston Tea Party
Barbara Adams
77 Moosehead’s First Sporting Camps From public domain to a way of life
Charles Francis
79 1909 Fire Scorches Downtown Skowhegan “Box 34” alarmed residents to danger
Brian Swartz
80 General Russell B. Shepherd Skowhegan’s reluctant hero Rosemary K. Poulson
Maine’s History Magazine
Publisher Jim Burch
Editor Dennis Burch
Design & Layout
Liana Merdan
Field Representative
Don Plante
Contributing Writers
Barbara Adams
Sue Damm
Greg Davis
Charles Francis
James Nalley
Rosemary K. Poulson
Jennie Pike
Toni Seger
Brian Solomon
Brian Swartz
Exchange Street, Suite 208 Portland, Maine 04101 Ph (207) 874-7720 info@discovermainemagazine.com www.discovermainemagazine.com
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SUBSCRIPTION FORM ON PAGES 37 & 82
All photos in Discover Maine’s Western Maine issue show Maine as it used to be, and many are from local citizens who love this part of Maine.
BIt Makes No Never Mind
by James Nalley
y the time of this publication, Western Mainers will have survived yet another winter and are probably ready to get out and do something (or at least see something that is actually green). The following are just a few suggestions in this region of the state. However, remember to bring your trusty pair of Muck Boots (for the mud) and note the roads posted with red “Heavy Load Limited” signs.
First, there is the Heart of Poland Trails, which are a wooded network of easy hiking trails from Tripp Lake Road to the public library that takes visitors to a vernal pool (or spring pool), a quarry, rare white oak trees, and a small cave formed millions of years ago. Specifically, it includes the Cave Trail (0.3 miles), the Huntress Trail (1.2 miles), the Quarry Spur (0.1 miles), the Ricker Trail (0.3 miles), and the White Oak Trail (0.7 miles). As for the latter, due to a unique cellular structure that makes their timber water- and rot-resistant, they were once highly valuable for shipbuilding in the colonial days. Interestingly, Poland includes the only white oak hill in Maine.
Second, for those who want a bit more, there is the Maine Wildlife Park, which reopens in mid-April. Located
in Gray, it is home to approximately 30 species that cannot be returned to their natural habitats. Some are there because they were injured or orphaned, while others were raised (sometimes illegally) in human captivity. In other words, they are entirely human dependent. As the park states, “You are guaranteed to see moose and more animals in a day than you could ever spot in the wild!” Season or day passes are available online.
Third, there is Nezinscot Farm in Turner. As the first organic dairy farm in Maine, it has evolved into a one-stop shop that offers farm-raised beef, pork, chicken, dairy, eggs, fruits, and vegetables. They are particularly known for their bread (oatmeal, seven-grain, wheat, cinnamon swirl, etc.), cheese (made without synthetic hormones, antibiotics, etc.), and pastries (doughnuts, muffins, cookies, cinnamon rolls, croissants, etc.). There is even an herbal apothecary (with medicinal herbs grown on the farm), headed by resident herbalist Gloria Varney.
Finally, for something a bit different, there is the Western Maine Beer Trail. This is a self-guided tour of the local craft brew scene in western Maine. When launched in 2009, it in-
cluded around 25 breweries. However, there are currently more than 100. To participate, visit beertrail.me to create an account. When visiting a Maine brewery, look for the poster titled, “Visit Breweries, Get Rewarded.” Enter the four-digit code within the Maine Beer Trail online web-app to “stamp” your beer trail. In this case, 25 visits earn you a Maine Brewers’ Guild hat and 50 visits earn you a short-sleeved shirt, with a prize pack for visiting all the breweries.
At this point, let me close with the following jest. A lawyer comes home after a long trial in which it was decided that his client, John Wright, would be hanged that night. He is greeted at the door by his wife. “You’re home late and tracking mud all over the place… please take your shoes off!” He replied, “Look, I’ve had a hard day…I’m gonna take a bath.” Later, her husband’s boss calls and tells her that they are not going to hang Mr. Wright. She immediately runs upstairs and opens the bathroom door to see her husband bending over drying off his naked body. She proclaims, “They’re not hanging Wright!” He scowls, “Geeze woman! Can you just stop criticizing me for one minute!”
Shenanigans At The Lewiston Fairgrounds
Be careful who you rent from
by Brian Swartz
Did the Lewiston fairgrounds owner set a trap for a local attorney on May 5, 1935?
Bespectacled lawyer Harold Redding resembled a banker, but after serving as the Androscoggin County district attorney, he had returned to private practice and had professionally represented his clients, no matter their legal woes.
For Lewiston residents Isaac Cripps and his wife, that woe was Frank W. Winter, an Auburn resident who owned the Maine State Fairgrounds on Main Street. The Cripps owned Cottage 19
on the fairgrounds, but Winter owned the land beneath their home.
Other cottage owners had similar arrangements with Winter, but he wanted everybody out, not just the Cripps. In fact, Winter had issued 30-day notices to all his tenants “more than two years ago,” according to a local paper.
The Cripps did not leave, so early on Friday, May 5, 1935, “Winter ordered me out,” Mrs. Cripps told a newspaper reporter. Winter had already turned off the water to Cottage 19 and begun ripping up the water line, an altogether unfriendly act.
On top of that, the Cripps had paid for the water line’s installation.
That morning, Winter’s hired hands “started piling boulders, tree stumps,” and dirt “in front of my cottage,” Mrs. Cripps said. “I can’t open my front door as the dirt and boulders are piled up to a height of three or four feet.”
She telephoned Redding, a lawyer who defended the underdog. He “told me to keep count of each load they brought” and dumped outside the front door, as well as “the time each load was dumped here.
“That is all I have done all day
long,” Mrs. Cripps sighed.
The elderly Crippses had returned to Lewiston in April after wintering in Florida. Imagine their surprise when they arrived at their cottage and found “horse dressing” (a euphemism for what was removed daily from the horse barns) stacked 6 feet high between their cottage and its next-door neighbor.
The horse dressing, which included manure, covered the side door of Cottage 19.
Soon after the Crippses arrived home, Winter told them to move their house elsewhere. When they failed to respond quickly, he apparently decided to block access to the cottage to deliver a message: Get out or you won’t get in.
And if the rough barrier blocking the front door proved ineffective, Winter had his men drop “a huge stump” outside the next-door cottage.
“They intend to put that in front of my side door,” Mrs. Cripps told the press.
So, she called Harold Redding on May 5, and he promptly drove to the fairgrounds. According to Winter, “Redding entered despite the three large signs which warn against trespassing. Those gates had been closed for six months.
“When he (Redding) went into the grounds, he slipped in behind another car which had a right to be there,” Winter said.
“I went there to see a client,” said Redding, referring to the Crippses. He looked over the debris piled outside their cottage, took notes, and slipped into his car to head home.
Frank Winter knew that Redding was visiting the Cripps. The fairgrounds had three gates, and Redding had entered the grounds via the Cottage Street gate. While the attorney spoke with his clients, Winter ordered that gate closed and his own car parked to block the exit.
“A man was locking the gate” as
Redding drove up after leaving the Crippses. “I asked him to move his car and open the gate, and he refused.” Redding checked the other locked gates. Had Winter deliberately trapped him? Not wanting to spend the night inside the fairgrounds, Redding apparently returned to Cottage 19 and asked to use the telephone.
He contacted Benjamin L. Berman, a well-known local attorney, explained the situation, and essentially asked, “What should I do?” “Wait til I get there,” Berman responded.
Hopping into his car, Berman drove to the Cottage Street gate and, after arriving around 9 p.m. and chuckling about his friend’s predicament, figured out that a locked gate was not necessarily a secured gate.
“Ben and I lifted the gate off the hinges, drove my car through, and then replaced the gate,” Redding explained. Still steaming about being trapped, he drove to his office to cool off and de(cont. on page 6)
(cont. from page 5)
cide if additional action was warranted against Winter.
“Redding got caught trespassing,” said Winter, wanting to press charges against the attorney.
Dubbed the “Fair Ground Trapping,” the incident stirred conversation in Lewiston for days to come. Redding and Winter each had their supporters, but many people found the tale humorous.
The Crippses did not, because on Monday, May 8, “several rugged timbers similar to timbers used to move buildings” were placed outside Cottage 19, a newspaper noted.
Then news broke that Isaac Cripps, 72, had allegedly assaulted Winter on April 26. Arrested on a charge of “threatened assault,” Cripps was arraigned at Lewiston municipal court on May 15.
Harold Redding represented Cripps,
accused of throwing a rock at Winter and then approaching him while carrying a straight razor. Two training-stable operators, brothers William J. McManemon and J.W. McManemon, testified about seeing Cripps “throw a rock” at Winter while holding a razor in his hand.
Denying he had threatened Winter, Cripps said, “I called him names.”
Unfortunately, other neighbors testified to seeing Cripps throw the rock, and Redding did not help his client’s case by persistently asking Winter questions that the judge “deemed irrelevant.” Ultimately Redding was threatened with fines for contempt of court if he continued with those questions; Cripps signed a $500 bond promising that he would keep the peace.
In the end, the Crippses moved elsewhere as Winters removed Cottage 19.
of the Civil War, as
and
who
and preserve the United States. Maine At War Volume 1 draws on diaries, letters, regimental histories, newspaper articles, eyewitness accounts, and the Official Records to bring the war to life in a storytelling manner that captures the time and period.
Written by Maine at War blogger and Discover Maine contributor Brian Swartz, the new book Maine At War, Volume 1: Bladensburg to Sharpsburg tells the story of Maine’s involvement in the first 18 months
experienced by Maine men
women
answered the call to defend
Windham’s Jean Marie “Jeff” Donnell
Recurring character actress
by James Nalley
In the 1940s, a Maine-born actress became a fixture at Columbia Pictures, one of the so-called Big Five production studios in the country. Under their contract, she steadily worked in everything from comedies and mysteries to Westerns and musicals. Despite her versatility, she typically played the house tomboy, the comic sidekick, or the plain-speaking confidante to a glamorous or dramatic lead. Although Columbia did give her the glamour treatment in the late 1940s, she never managed to move past the sidekick image in films or the recurring supporting character roles in her numerous television appearances. Jean Marie Donnell was born on July 10, 1921, in South Windham. As a child, she self-appointed her nickname
“Jeff ” Donnell in the 1940s
of “Jeff,” based on her obsession with Mutt and Jeff, the long-running and widely popular American comic strip created by Bud Fisher in 1907. Later in her career, to avoid gender confusion, she was sometimes billed as “Miss Jeff Donnell.” In 1938, she graduated from Towson High School in Towson, Maryland, and attended the Leland Powers School of Drama in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut. Subsequently, she was active with the Farragut Playhouse in New Hampshire, which was founded by her first husband, whom she married at the age of 19.
In 1941, she was noticed by a talent agent from Columbia Pictures, after which she signed a multi-year contract
with the studio and was immediately whisked off to Los Angeles, California. Interestingly, despite her dramatic training and stage experience, she made her film debut as Helen Loomis in My Sister Eileen (1942). According to Turner Classic Movies, this “screwball comedy starred Rosalind Russell, Brian Aherne, and Janet Blair. It even had an appearance by The Three Stooges.” As stated earlier, although the studio gave Donnell the glamour treatment, especially after playing the troubled heiress in The Phantom Thief (1946), she never shed the sidekick/supporting character image.
When her contract with Columbia Pictures ended, she freelanced at other studios, with most of her appearances in low-budget action films. However, in 1948, Donnell met Lucille Ball on the set of the RKO Radio Pictures production Easy Living. In 1950, Ball remembered Donnell and recruited her to play her sidekick in the Columbia Pictures (cont. on page 10)
(cont. from page 9)
slapstick comedy The Fuller Brush Girl (1950). Meanwhile, as stated by Turner Classic Movies, although “she stepped it up a notch to play a larger role in the 1950 noir In a Lonely Place, as the best friend to the tormented Gloria Grahame,” Donnell still found her way playing smaller character roles in various films and television series.
According to Quinlan’s Illustrated Dictionary of Film Character Actors (1993) by David Quinlan, “Jeff Donnell was a happy-looking, red-haired American actress who played bobby-soxers, kid sisters, prairie flowers, best friends, secretaries, shop-girls, and other second-leads for 15 years, only graduating to mothers when she turned 40.” Such roles included: George Gobel’s wife, Alice, in The George Gobel Show (1954-1957) on NBC-TV; the needy secretary in Sweet Smell of Success (1957); and Gidget’s mother, Dorothy Lawrence, in the films Gidget Goes
Hawaiian (1961) and Gidget Goes to Rome (1963).
In the mid-to-late 1960s, Donnell moved more squarely into guest spots on television series, including five appearances as Evelyn Driscoll on Dr. Kildare (1966), with only a few more film roles, including a part as a flight instructor in the drama of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Her final Columbia feature was as Ruth in the 1972 women’s lib-themed comedy Stand Up and Be Counted, starring Jacqueline Bisset, Stella Stevens, and Steve Lawrence.
As for her personal life, Donnell’s first marriage was in 1940 to William Anderson, who was her teacher at the Leland Powers School of Drama. She had her only children with him, Michael (b. 1942) and Sarah Jane (b. 1948), before they divorced in 1953. She would eventually get married three more times, with all the unions short-
THE MILK ROOM STORE
lived. For example, there was American television and film actor Aldo Ray (married 1954, divorced 1956), John Bricker (married 1958, divorced 1963), and Radcliffe Bealey (married 1974, divorced 1975).
In 1979, Donnell began a recurring role as Stella Fields (the wealthy Quartermaine family housekeeper) on the soap opera General Hospital. According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), on April 11, 1988, “Dogged by ill health, including a serious bout with Addison’s disease (a rare disorder of the adrenal glands), Donnell died of a heart attack at her home in Hollywood.” She was 66 years of age. As per her wishes, she was cremated, and her ashes were scattered at sea in the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, her sudden absence from General Hospital was simply explained away by the writers as her character having won the lottery and quitting her job.
Fryeburg’s James Ripley Osgood Publisher
by James Nalley
In 1881, Walt Whitman, one of the most influential poets in American literature, finalized a 10-year contract with a successful publishing company in Boston, led by James Osgood, a Fryeburg-born, Bowdoin College graduate. In October of that year, they agreed to publish Leaves of Grass, which was highly controversial during its time for its explicit sexual imagery. However, Osgood agreed to let Whitman “retain all the ‘beastliness’ of the earlier editions,” after which the 7th edition was to be sold to the public at two dollars a copy. However, Boston District Attorney Oliver Stevens classified Leaves of Grass as “obscene literature,”
James Ripley Osgood
ordering Osgood to remove several offending poems/passages or cease publication altogether. Although Whitman was willing to make some changes, he refused to completely change his manuscript, resulting in a settlement in which both men parted ways. This was one of Osgood’s many well-known clients, which included William Howells, Harriet Beecher-Stowe, Bret Harte, Thomas Hardy, and Mark Twain.
James Ripley Osgood was born in Fryeburg on February 22, 1836. A child prodigy, Osgood understood Latin by the age of three and entered Bowdoin College at the age of 12. He graduated in 1854 at the age of 18 and briefly
read law in Portland, Maine. However, his career path changed when he was introduced to the publishing world in the following year. Specifically, he started working as a clerk for Ticknor and Fields, a prominent Boston publishing company. According to his biographical article in The Vault at Pfaff’s by Lehigh University, “In 1868, he attained the status of partner, along with James T. Fields. Then, the pair established Fields, Osgood, and Company.” In 1869, the newly formed company published American author and abolitionist writer Harriet Beecher-Stowe’s comedy-drama novel, Oldtown Folks. By that time, she had written the immensely popular Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). The firm also inherited The Atlantic Monthly, which focused (and still features) articles on politics, foreign affairs, business, and the economy. As a publisher, Osgood’s reputation continued to rise with the successful
publication of American short story writer and poet Bret Harte’s The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Stories (1870), followed by a volume of poems and another “condensed novel.” Although Osgood advanced Harte $10,000 for future work, Harte did not write another story for him. In 1875, Osgood published American writer Blanche Willis Howard’s One Summer, which became a best-selling novel. In this case, Osgood became the most important publishing contact for most of her career.
Interestingly, the publishing world changed names as quickly as they started, with some attempting to avoid bankruptcy and others attempting to expand. For instance, The Walt Whitman Archive states, “By 1871, the firm had become R. Osgood and Company, with Osgood and Benjamin Ticknor as partners. In 1878, the firm merged with H.O. Houghton to form Houghton, Os-
good, and Company, which only lasted until 1880, when Osgood left to form James R. Osgood and Company. In 1881, Osgood offered to publish Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass As stated earlier, Whitman finalized a 10-year contract, with the 7th edition of his collection of poems to be published at two dollars a copy. However, Osgood had to give into the criticism of the work as “obscene literature.” The settlement in which the two men parted ways included a payment of $100 to Whitman in cash and 225 copies of the book (along with the stereotype plates).
Meanwhile, Osgood had befriended Samuel L. Clemens, also known as “Mark Twain.” In 1882, Osgood’s company published Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper and The Stolen White Elephant. The same year, Osgood accompanied Twain on a riverboat trip collecting material for Life on the Mississippi, which was published the fol(cont. on page 14)
(cont. from page 13)
lowing year. The book was simultaneously sold in the United States and the United Kingdom.
According to The Walt Whitman Archives, “After the Boston ‘suppression,’ Richard Maurice Bucke (biographer of Whitman), John Burroughs (American naturalist), and William O’Connor (American author) rallied around Whitman and used the event to promote the poet as a victim of prudishness and comstockery.” Moreover, “Using the plates from the Osgood edition, Rees Welsh and Company of Philadelphia sold approximately 6,000 copies of Leaves of Grass. Although not a direct result of the Whitman fiasco, Osgood and Company went out of business in May 1885.”
After the company’s bankruptcy, Osgood’s young partners, Thomas and Benjamin Ticknor, found a third partner and started a new firm. Meanwhile, Os-
good went to work for Harper’s Magazine, which was (and still is) a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. However, Osgood returned to the publishing business in 1891. In partnership with Clarence McIlvaine in London, England, they formed James R. Osgood, McIlvaine, and Company.
This new firm had its greatest success with English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891). Osgood personally saw its initial three-volume publication that year. However, on May 18, 1892, Osgood died in London, before its publication as a single volume. According to the New York Tribune (May 20, 1892), “For some time, he had been suffering from bronchitis, with the transatlantic voyage and the subsequent London climate aggravating the disease. His death was unexpected to his friends, since let-
ters received the first of the week stated that he had been feeling much better.” He was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in Kensington, England. He was 56 years of age.
As for his legacy, one can consider that his life was not necessarily successful, based on his constant shifting from one company to another, his relatively early death, and the fact that his definitive biography titled, The Rise and Fall of James Ripley Osgood, was published in 1959 by Carl Jefferson Weber. However, like any business venture, there are many factors to consider. In Osgood’s case, the benefits of publishing the renowned works of the some of the greatest authors in the field outweighed the business risks.
Railroading Over Crawford Notch Celebrating 150 years
by Brian Solomon
The opening of the railroad to the Gateway at Crawford Notch on August 7, 1875 was a momentous event. At 12:24pm, Portland & Ogdensburg Railroad’s president General Samuel Anderson drove the final spike in place. A cannon, brought by train from Portland, fired ten cacophonous salutes and a brass band played The Star Spangled Banner. The history of this railroad line is a story of unintended consequences while the mystique of running trains and the allure of its rugged scenery, has captivated visitors for a century and a half.
In the 1830s, farsighted entrepreneurs and industrialists began construction of numerous independent and largely disconnected railroads in the eastern United States. Some projects emulated the success of the Erie Canal by aiming to connect port cities with the interior of the country. By comparison, Northern New England was slower to build than the more industrialized areas. Where the bulk of American railroad traffic was focused on an east-west axis, railroads in northern New England focused on connecting cities in Quebec with New England ports while developing local traffic. After the American
This
is looking east from the
Civil War, American railroads entered a dynamic phase characterized by consolidation and rapid evolution of larger regional railroad systems.
In 1867, the Maine legislature granted a charter to the Portland & Ogdensburg Railroad to build west from Portland. P&O would follow the course of the Saco River to its headwaters at New Hampshire’s Crawford Notch, and then to a point on the Connecticut River as the eastern portion of a through trunk
route to Ogdensburg New York. This developing port on the St. Lawrence River had been identified as a suitable point to tap Great Lakes freight traffic for forwarding via Portland.
Portland was a major investor in the P&O. In September 1869, westward construction of the line quietly began in the city and by that time New Hampshire had authorized P&O construction to the Vermont border. Tracks reached Steep Falls, Maine by Novem(cont. on page 20)
Portland & Ogdensburg trains meet at Crawfords Station ca. 1875.
view
highest point on the railroad toward the Elephant Head Rock and the Gateway Cut. # 482509 (photographer unknown, author collection)
(cont. from page 18)
ber 1870, and North Conway, New Hampshire. on August 10, 1871, where the railroad built a temporary western terminus. This included a small roundhouse to service locomotives, complete with turntable to turn them, along with freight and passenger stations. These facilities were located off Depot Street, and today vestiges of the turntable pit survive in the trees near the modern day North-South road. Less than a year later a second railroad was completed to North Conway. This was the Conway Branch built by the Portsmouth, Great Falls & Conway (a component of the Massachusetts-based Eastern Railroad, an erstwhile competitor to the Boston & Maine). By 1874, P&O and Conway Branch had both extended their lines to Intervale where a connection between them was built that included interchange tracks and a small station. P&O continued to Bartlett, New Hampshire, where it constructed a small yard and
terminal facilities.
Building west of Bartlett presented P&O’s builders with a huge engineering challenge. This involved conquering the rugged, and comparatively steep
eastward ascent to Crawford
(On the P&O, the directions regardless of the compass were always considered ‘east’ toward Portland, and ‘west’ toward Ogdensburg). West of Bartlett, at
Call 207-582-1960 or
Conway Scenic Railroad’s Mountaineer approaches the Gateway Cut at Crawford Notch during peak autumn foliage. In 2025, the railroad plans for expanded operations over Crawford Notch. (courtesy of Brian Solomon)
Notch.
Bemis (now known as Notchland) the gradient reached 2.2 percent (a rise of 2.2 feet for every 100 feet traveled), which had been previously established as the recommended maximum gradient for many railroads built in the American West. P&O’s line required several large bridges, including a spindly tower-support curved iron trestle over the gorge near the Frankenstein cliffs (almost 80 miles west of Portland) and another high bridge over the Willey Brook gorge near the top of the Notch. Shelves were cut out of stone in many places to provide the rightof-way for the line and combined with high fills constructed from stone debris. At the so-called ‘Gateway’ at the top of the Notch, a 300-foot long cutting was blasted out of the stone that in places was 75 feet deep. Beyond was a natural plateau, where the railroad located its Crawford Station.
On June 29, 1875, an excursion train operated from Portland to Fran-
kenstein. More famous was the previously described trip on August 7, 1875, to celebrate the opening of the line at Crawford Notch. Excursions were different than the railroad’s regularly scheduled passenger trains operated for general transportation. Where regularly scheduled trains made stops along the way to board and discharge passengers and collect and distribute the US Mail, these excursions were strictly aimed at bringing passenger out and back to view the scenery and marvel at the achievement of the railroad.
The eastward assent of Crawford Notch was immediately acclaimed for its outstanding views. Early on, P&O recognized that passengers would travel over the line simply for the thrill of taking in the scenery and to reach one of the many grand hotels in the White Mountains. The railroad capitalize on this traffic by advertising the stunning scenery, while cooperating with connecting lines, notably the Eastern
Railroad via the Conway Branch, in the operation of through trains to bring passengers from Boston directly to the White Mountains without needing to change trains. Significantly, P&O pioneered covered, open-air observation cars with swiveling seats to allow its passengers to better enjoy the scenery. Passenger traffic was a supplemental business, and the railroad hoped to earn its greatest revenue by hauling local and through freight traffic. Opening of the P&O route had helped develop the Mount Washington Valley’s timber trade, and several purpose-built logging railroads were constructed to feed traffic to P&O’s mainline. The most significant, and by far the longest lived of the these, was The Sawyer River Railroad (1877-1937). This connected with the P&O route four miles west of Bartlett at its namesake and climbed into the mountains to serve the company logging settlement of Livermore (now a ghost town).
(cont. on page 22)
(cont. from page 21)
The railroad’s original vision of moving great volumes of through freight via Ogdensburg never materialized. While most of the projected route was built, it was never coordinated under unified ownership. Complicating matters was that in the 1880s the middle and western portions of the Ogdensburg route came under the control of established railroads that were focused on Boston and New London, which competed with Portland for traffic. During that time the vision of a Portland-Ogdensburg trunk faded, and the P&O subsisted largely on local freight and passenger business.
Meanwhile, in the 1870s the Eastern took controlling interest in the Maine Central. And then Boston & Maine leased the Eastern in 1884 and melded this one-time competitor into its growing network. In 1888, the struggling P&O was leased by the Maine Central, which continued to operate the line
as its Mountain Division. The P&O route offered Maine Central alternative western connections via St. Johnsbury (principally with Canadian Pacific), while the railroad also built a secondary route compass northward into the province of Quebec. The former remained an important freight route for many years, while the latter adventure proved short-lived and was scaled back to the US border during the 1920s. Maine Central continued to invest in its Mountain Division, significantly upgrading bridges and track to accommodate heavier modern locomotives and cars, and much longer freight trains.
During the Golden Age of railroad passenger service—before the proliferation of the automobile and modern paved highways — some Mountain Division passenger trains carried through cars between Portland and Montreal, and for a short time carried through sleeping cars between Portland and
BEER. WINE. SPIRITS
Chicago (via Montreal). In the 1930s, B&M and Maine Central assigned their jointly-owned state-of-the-art Buddbuilt stainless steel diesel streamliner to service as Mountaineer. This train operated for the benefit of summer tourists between Boston and Littleton, New Hampshire, running by way of the Conway Branch to Intervale, over the Crawford Notch to Whitefield, and then via B&M’s line to Littleton. This distinctive train had been purchased in 1935 for Boston-Portland-Bangor Flying Yankee service for which it is still remembered today. (In 2024, the historic Budd train was relocated to Conway Scenic Railroad’s Conway, N.H yard for eventual restoration by its new owner, the non-profit Flying Yankee Association.)
With the rise of automobile ownership, Maine Central’s regularly scheduled intercity passenger services ceased operating profitably, and the Crawford (cont. on page 24)
(cont. from page 22
Notch service ended in 1958. Through freight service continued until 1983, at which time the melding of B&M and Maine Central operations under the recently formed Guilford Transportation Industries resulted in the railroad’s through freight being routed west over B&M’s lines instead of via Maine Central through St Johnsbury. After a decade of dormancy in the mid-1990s, Maine and New Hampshire acquired significant portions of this historic route in their respective states. New Hampshire assigned Conway Scenic Railroad as the designated operator of the route over Crawford Notch, and CSRR invested in rebuilding and reopening this scenic route, and developed it into a significant tourist line that has entertained tens of thousands of passengers annually. In 2025, Conway Scenic plans to expand its Crawford schedule and run special event trains to celebrate the line’s 150 years
of rail service. CSRR is also actively exploring opportunities to work with Maine to reopen the Mountain Division to Portland to redevelop and revitalize this historic railroad as a passenger and freight corridor.
Brian Solomon is the manager of marketing at Conway Scenic Railroad. He has authored more than 70 books on railroads, and writes a monthly column for Trains Magazine.
A Portland & Ogdensburg train poses at the Willey Brook Bridge led by an American type 4-4-0 locomotive. In the 1870s, trains were small by modern standards. Passenger train, including a mail car, were only four or five cars and freights were rarely more than 15 cars. (courtesy of Conway Scenic collection)
Auburn’s Payson Smith And W.W. Stetson
Maine’s great education reformers
by Charles Francis
At the end of the nineteenth century, public school education in Maine was in a state of chaos. The primary reason for this was fragmentation. Except for a few school unions, school management resided at the town level. For much of their history, most Maine towns had partitioned themselves into school districts that had their own governing boards. For example, the town of Perham in Aroostook County, which had a population of just under six hundred and fifty, had six oneroom schools, each governed by its own school committee that was responsible
for hiring a teacher, purchasing supplies, and keeping the building in an appropriate state of repair. Then, in 1894 the legislature abolished this system requiring each town to have a single superintendent to oversee a town’s schools. Towns then chose a school superintendent by popular vote, and this individual, in many cases, was not qualified for the position. In other words, the state of public education in much of Maine around 1900 was much as it had been in colonial times. The man who did more than anyone else to modernize public school education in Maine was Payson
Smith, who built upon a foundation of reform initiated by W.W. Stetson. Smith and Stetson were both from Auburn. Payson Smith was Maine State Superintendent of Schools from 1907 to 1916. His immediate predecessor was W.W. Stetson, who served from 1895 to 1907. Payson Smith and W.W. Stetson were well acquainted with public education in Maine. Besides having served in various positions in the Auburn educational system, both had taught in a variety of Maine schools ranging from the one-room schoolhouse to large city schools.
When W.W. Stetson became state superintendent, the position was little more than ceremonial and demanded next to nothing. State superintendents had an annual salary of fifteen hundred dollars and a five hundred dollar expense account. By statute, the state superintendent was charged with preserving “all school reports of the State and other States that may be sent to his office... and other articles of interest to school officials and teachers as may be procured without expense to the state.” Obviously most state officials were content with the existing status of Maine public education. Stetson and Smith were to change this, most notably in the area of industrial education and in teacher training.
In 1895 W.W. Stetson visited two hundred schools in rural Maine. Forty-one percent of them he graded as “poor” or “very poor.” Many schoolrooms were even decorated with ad-
vertisements for tobacco. In forty-three percent of the schools Stetson visited, the teaching of arithmetic was nothing more than a memorization of rules, and reading was the recitation of unintelligible words.
Stetson also sent out a questionnaire to town superintendents. He presented the results of his findings at a meeting of the Maine Pedagogical Society in Lewiston in December of 1896. Some of the statistics Stetson revealed are as follows: Four percent of superintendents had never attended school, Thirty-five percent had never taught. Sixty-eight percent had never read a book on teaching methodology. Thirty-five percent of Maine’s teachers had not even attempted the certification test required by state law.
At the close of Stetson’s presentation, President Hyde of Bowdoin College commended him by saying, “The State superintendent has done an au-
YOUR FUTURE STARTS HERE
dacious thing. He has had the courage to tell the plain and awful truth about these schools of ours.”
In the next few years, W.W. Stetson lobbied the state legislature for new laws to improve public school education in Maine. Among other things, he received funding for summer schools for teachers and a law saying that teachers who held state certification were not to be examined by local school boards or superintendents. He also made recommendations regarding teacher training, especially in the areas of science, mathematics, and industrial or manual training. In addition, he called for the amalgamation of small towns into school unions.
Payson Smith’s educational philosophy centered around his belief that “The common schools are for the common people.” For this reason, he fought for state support of and state mandates for vocational and industrial training. (cont. on page 28)
(cont. from page 27)
In 1909 Smith persuaded the legislature to pass a resolution authorizing him to conduct “an investigation of systems of industrial education in other states and countries and to make a report thereon.” Smith even secured a small appropriation from the legislature to carry out the endeavor. In other words, Payson Smith had now directly involved state government in the future direction of education in Maine.
Smith then got some of the most influential individuals in the state to serve as a committee to make the investigation and report. Included on that committee were George Fellows, President of the University of Maine, Francis North, Principal of Portland High School, W.E. Sargent, Headmaster of Hebron Academy, C.S. Stetson, Grand Master of the Maine State Grange, E.M. Blanding, Secretary of the Maine State Board of Trade and Charles O.
Beals, President of the Maine Federation of Labor.
Payson Smith’s committee represented a broad range of talents, interests, and resources. By the time it produced its report the committee had visited various industries in Maine, collected similar investigative reports from across the United Satiates, most notably from Massachusetts and New Jersey, the two most highly industrialized states of the period, and the American Federation of Labor. In addition, it collected data on industrial education in England and Germany, where it was much more advanced than in America. The results of the committee’s efforts were more than even Payson Smith could have hoped for.
In 1911 the legislature passed a law to encourage the development of industrial education in Maine public schools. Under the law, the state provided two-
thirds of the salary paid each teacher in those schools that established manual training or domestic science programs. It gave approval authority to the State superintendent for courses of study, equipment, and qualifications for manual training and domestic science instruction. Aid was also given to those high schools and academies giving instruction in agriculture and the mechanical and domestic arts. Included in the latter were carpentry, such business subjects as typewriting and stenography, and such home economic subjects as sewing.
Payson Smith left Maine in 1916 to become the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education. Before he left, however, he successfully lobbied the legislature for Maine’s first teacher pension system.
Payson Smith was succeeded by Dr. Augustus O. Thomas, who had been
Commissioner of Education in Nebraska. In 1928 Thomas reported that “Considerable progress has been made in vocational education, consisting of all-day schools, part-time schools, and evening schools and classes. The work covers industrial forms, home economics, and agriculture.” He also reported that the eighteen agricultural high schools in the state were turning out between three and four hundred graduates a year. In addition, Thomas reported that eighty percent of Maine teachers had normal school training and that by 1930, it would no longer be necessary for Maine schools to employ any teacher who was not “technically prepared for the service they are to render.”
Payson Smith and before him, W.W. Stetson, both sons of Auburn, almost single-handedly moved Maine public school education into the modern age of industry and technology.
Counselors and campers posed outside Methodist Camp in Winthrop. Item # LB2010.9.118723 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org
Golf Pro Arthur H. Fenn
He left his mark at the Poland Spring Resort
by Brian Swartz
Hired to design a nine-hole golf course at Poland Spring Resort in the 1890s, Arthur H. Fenn left his mark on golfing in Maine and New England.
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1857, Fenn “was obliged to make his own way in the world,” a Maine newspaper later reported. A self-starter, he skillfully played baseball in Waterbury. Offered the opportunity to play for the New York Nationals in the nascent National League, he declined and went into the hospitality industry, managing hotels in South Carolina and New Hampshire.
Along the way Fenn met Almon C. Judd, a New England hotel manager, and later married his sister, Mary E. Judd. They would have a son, Harris Fenn, and a daughter, Bessie Fenn, who would become famous in her own right. Arthur Fenn started playing golf; a newspaper claimed, “he was one of the first men in this country to take up golf seriously and is said to be one of the first homebred professionals.” Poland Spring Resort historians claim that Fenn was America’s first native-born golf pro.
While managing the Poland Spring House in 1895, Almon Judd spoke with
the Ricker family about hiring Fenn to design a golf course at Poland Spring Resort. Fenn and the Rickers negotiated a scenario by which he would design a nine-hole course while working as the resort’s pool-room manager as “the course was being built.” Fenn was “anxious to keep his standing as an amateur,” essentially because he was pursuing the Lenox Golf Cup in the annual tournament played in Lenox, Massachusetts. Fenn won the Lenox Golf Cup in 1895, 1896, and 1897. He turned professional afterwards. He designed Poland Spring Resort’s nine-hole course and played it imme-
diately. After establishing a course record with a blistering 47 strokes, Fenn returned the next day and blitzed the course with just 45 strokes!
His design placed the ninth hole near the Maine State Building, which the state constructed for the 1894 Chicago World’s Fair. The Ricker family later purchased the building and had it dismantled and moved to the resort.
After the Poland Spring golf course opened, Fenn stayed on as the resident pro, living in a cottage across the road (modern Route 26) from the resort’s road entrance. The renovated cottage opened in 2015 as Fenn Ice Cream Shop.
In May 1897 Fenn competed for the prestigious Worthington Whitehouse Silver Cup at the Knollwood Country Club in Westchester County New York. Facing stiff competition from American and European golfers, he won the cup with his masterful 85 strokes, nine
strokes ahead of the second-place golfer.
Fenn returned to Westchester County that October to compete in a St. Andrew’s Gulf Club tournament featuring a “who’s who” of professional golfers. William H. Sands, the club’s amateur champion, offered a silver cup to the tournament’s winner.
Golfers and fans remembered how “the strong wind which swept over the course with the force at times of a small gale made low scoring … more difficult” that day. Hitting “a beautiful long drive” that landed four feet shy of the hole on the difficult fifth green, Fenn sank a putt on his third stroke. He won the silver cup with his 76 strokes. While competing against top golfers, Fenn talked about the Poland Spring Resort course. Recognizing Fenn’s skill, top golfers from the United States, England, and Scotland played golf at the resort. The golf course closed
in the fall, and each winter Fenn traveled to Palm Beach, Florida to work as a golf pro until warm weather returned to Maine. He was the Palm Beach Golf Club’s pro for 27 years.
Fenn designed other New England golf courses. In 1895 he established the Fall River Country Club in Massachusetts in 1895 and designed its first ninehole course. Early in the 20th century he designed a nine-hole golf course for the Country Club of Farmington in Connecticut. His course replaced a nine-hole course laid out east of the Waterville Road in 1895. Fenn left seven greens to the road’s east side and placed two greens west of the road. His course was later replaced by an 18-hole course.
At age 61 Fenn captured the title in the first Maine Open golf tournament, played at the Waterville Country Club in 1918. Now located at Poland Spring Resort, the Maine Golf Hall of Fame (cont. on page 32)
(cont. from page 31)
inducted him in 1993.
Arthur Fenn died in Lewiston on May 21, 1925; his funeral took place at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Waterbury, Connecticut on May 23. Bessie Fenn took his place as Poland Spring Resort’s golf pro that summer, and later that year she applied to replace her father at the Palm Beach Golf Club, now known as The Breakers’ Ocean Course. Competing against 399 male applicants, Bessie got the job and held it for 34 years. She was a nurse by education and profession, but her father instilled in her a love for golf.
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Cornish Dinner Parties
by Jennie Pike (1851-1922)
About this time of year the old folks gave parties, and as interesting as the young people’s gatherings were, I really think that the older folks’ dinner parties were more so. We called them “the old folks” even then, and as I think back, the ones who made up our visiting list were no doubt all somewhere between twenty-five and forty years of age — just the right age to begin to be sensible.
There was the McKusick family, Stone and Bracken families, all with many children. There were two Clark families in one house with a maiden sister who was a most congenial neighbor. Three Guptill families there were,
and to distinguish them, the heads of these households were always spoken of by their first names, thus Mr. Frost, Mr. True, and Mr. Wilson, many of us not knowing for years that they owned any other names. An Eastman household, a Parker, Pease, and a Merrifield family made up the immediate circle that I remember.
Oh, yes, and the Crowleys, Jerry and Betsy as they were always called, who lived over behind Hoosac Mountain in a little bird’s nest pocket of a farm, their only way out being up over the back of the mountain and into our valley neighborhood. Jerry had only one hand, and the lack of it appeared to
have strengthened his brain, for he read and thought so much in solitude that when he got out among his neighbors he could argue and expound mightily. Theology in all its branches was ABC to Jerry. Betsy was as big, fat, and jolly as Jerry was lean, lank, and serious, yet they were a happy pair, seemingly well content with each other.
So when mother spoke up lively some morning thus; “Come, girls, you must fly around and help me now, for we are going to have company for dinner.” We knew our parts — to put the downstairs bedroom in perfect order, for here the lady guests were to lay aside their things, to brighten the parlor
andirons, to sweep, dust, and wash up the red brick hearth, and to stay out in the kitchen after the company arrived, for “children are to be seen…” Oh, how I hated that saying, forever dinned into our ears. I hated it and disregarded it, for after my father, Jerry, and Mr. Frost settled into a deep religious or Civil War controversy, I would always slip in unnoticed with my little cricket and listened to my heart’s content.
Mrs. Jerry and Mrs. Frost knitted and gossiped aside by themselves, the wonder being how they could knit without looking at their work.
As the dinner hour approached, the odor of fresh-roasted spare ribs, mince pie, coffee, cake, and homemade cheese grew stronger until the door was thrown open. “Come, lay aside your work,” was the call to dinner, each guest expressing surprise that dinner was ready notwithstanding that they were there for the express purpose
of dining. Each one did ample justice to the eatables for the better part of an hour, while the children waited hungrily in hopes that there would be some pie left.
Sometimes the minister came, sometimes the doctor’s family, and sometimes the schoolmaster, which sent me into a seventh heaven of quivery delight, for a schoolmaster was a small god in those days.
And all the afternoon long, whoever the guest chanced to be, I recall their conversations were always learned, argumentative, courteous, and everything else that was delightful to remember. God bless the memories of the old days. We are forgetting them too fast.
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Rufus Porter Finds A Home
by Toni Seger
RBridgton honors a restless genius
ufus Porter, (1792-1884) artist, musician, educator, cultural promoter, inventor, and founder of Scientific American magazine, led a nomadic life that took him from his birthplace in West Boxford, Massachusetts, across the country and as far away as Hawaii. During the course of his almost constant journeying, Porter frequently supported himself by painting the residential wall murals depicting idyllic landscapes that collectors have come to prize. In this manner, Porter created a style and a school of folk art painting that has left its mark, especially around New England.
Though Porter is finally being laud-
ed for his major contribution to and influence on period folk and primitive art, it’s been all too easy to lose touch with this extraordinary man. Decades of wallpaper have obscured many of his murals. Fire and neglect have taken many of the homes in which he painted.
Now, for the first time, Porter’s life is being celebrated with a museum dedicated to his work and legacy.
The Rufus Porter Museum and Cultural Heritage Center at 67 North High Street (Route 302) in Bridgton, gives this “Yankee DaVinci,” as he was described by Time Magazine (September 7, 1970), a home at last.
The museum is believed to be the
original residence of Nathan Church, Bridgton’s first Congregational minister. It contains authentic Porter murals exposed after removing wallpaper. In the Bridgton area alone, between 1825 and 1835, Porter painted wall murals in a dozen area homes. Unfortunately, all but three are gone.
Rufus Porter’s family arrived in Massachusetts in the early 1600s from Dorset, England. They moved to Flintstown, later called Sebago, in 1802, and to Pleasant Mountain Gore, in 1804. Rufus Porter’s uncle, Nathaniel, was one of the founders of Fryeburg Academy, at that time a one-room schoolhouse young Rufus attended for six
months. It was all the formal schooling he ever received.
Throughout his long, peripatetic life, Porter taught, painted, and invented. He taught music in New Haven, Connecticut where, in 1816, he briefly opened a dance school. He built wind-driven gristmills in Portland and developed his first ‘camera obscura’ in 1820 while walking to Virginia. Between 1824 and 1844, he painted murals.
Despite all of his traveling, Porter married twice, fathering ten children with his first wife and five with his second, though only one of these survived infancy. Wherever he went, Porter’s murals contain reminders of the favorite views from his youth such as Portland Harbor and the Observatory on Munjoy Hill overlooking Casco Bay. Fryeburg’s surrounding scenic mountains figure frequently in his work, especially Jockey Cap.
Porter took out more than a hundred
patents in his life, a testament to his ever-curious mind. In 1936 a Boston Globe article stated that Porter knew “more about aerial dynamics than any other man of his time.” In addition to founding Scientific American magazine, Ported invented a hot air balloon and successfully demonstrated an airship in New York City, making it circle the rotunda at the Merchant’s Exchange eleven times.
Resourceful and brilliant, Porter’s restless intelligence was always moving to something new. Focused on the act of invention, he didn’t bother to associate his name with any of the extraordinary devices he created. Instead, his wandering intellect moved rapidly to his next idea, as when he sold all rights in his revolving rifle to Samuel Colt for one hundred dollars. Indeed, his intelligence was described as “grasshopperish” because his attention leaped from topic to topic.
Porter’s lack of business sense left him in a constant struggle for money. Sometimes he sold his rights to an invention just to be able to buy food. His never-ending travels meant his name was never associated with any single location. In the years after his death, no center ever formed around his work and little was written about him until he was rediscovered in the mid-20th century.
In 2004, when the two-acre parcel on North High Street containing two period buildings became available, a group of community advocates in Bridgton formed to support the development of a museum that would honor and bring attention to an extraordinary native son. This unique museum also contains a seasonal exhibit with work by Maine artist John Mead, born in the Stone House on Burnham Road in South Bridgton. Known primarily for his fish paintings, Mead painted the ex(cont. on page 42)
(cont. from page 39) hibited oil-on-board of his family farmstead in 1883.
Also displayed at the museum are four John Brewster portraits painted in Bridgton in 1825, early watercolor portraits by Rufus Porter, and other period paintings of Porter’s day, plus two small landscapes by Vivien Akers of Norway, painted in the 1940s.
Fifteen Porter murals removed from the home of Dr. Francis Howe of Westwood, Massachusetts are another part of the museum’s seasonal exhibit. Considered his best work, they are the only ones both signed and dated by the artist.
The Rufus Porter Museum and Cultural Center operates seasonally with plans of being open year-round. For more information visit www.rufusportermuseum.org
Bethel’s Marshall Stedman
Versatile actor of stage and screen
Iby James Nalley
n 1892, a Bethel-born man graduated from high school, and like many of his classmates, was considering a possible career path. His father was a decorated U.S. naval officer, and, at the time of his death in 1939, was the oldest surviving graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and one of only three retired officers who saw service in the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). Naturally, as his only son, this young man seemed destined for service in the navy. However, breaking from tradition, he went on to college in Colorado and began a decades-long career in stage and film. Edward Marshall Stedman, Jr. was born on August 16, 1874. He was one of two children of Edward Sr. and Eliza
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Putnam. He received his early education in the public school system of Chicago, Illinois, and eventually graduated from South Division High School. As stated earlier, it was assumed that he would continue and attend the U.S. Naval Academy, following his father’s footsteps. Nevertheless, Stedman attended Colorado College in Colorado Springs and joined William Morris’s stock company, as a fledgling actor. At the time, Morris was a star on the Broadway stage, usually playing “gruff fathers or bad guys,” according to The New York Times. Due to Stedman’s natural ability on stage, he quickly earned leading roles in Morris’s productions, playing, for
Marshall Stedman ca. 1914
example, Bob Appleton in Ludwig Fulda’s three-act drama The Lost Paradise, and Ned Annesley in Sowing the Wind, a four-act play by renowned English dramatist Sydney Grundy. As stated in the book Who’s Who in the Film World (1914) by Fred Justice, “Stedman later joined E.H. Sothern for two seasons and went on to star in several one-act plays. He was also versatile enough to land prominent roles in Shakespearean repertoire productions.”
Around 1899, Stedman’s family, including his father, sister, grandmother, and uncle, moved to Gilpin County, Colorado. According to The Weekly Register (December 1, 1899), the Stedman family (like many other families in the region) “became involved in a promising mining venture near America City, called the Charlemagne Lode.”
Yet again, after a relatively short stint, Stedman left his family and ventured back into acting and coaching.
In January 1900, Stedman married
Myrtle Lincoln, a young silent film actress who he had worked with in Chicago. Ironically, their only child, Lincoln Stedman, would go on to follow in his father’s footsteps and have an active career in Hollywood. In fact, between 1917 and 1934, he appeared in more than 80 films. Unfortunately, he died of a heart ailment at the age of 40.
By 1906, Stedman’s experience in teaching helped him earn a position as the Head of the Drama School at Chicago Musical College. However, after holding this position for roughly four years, Stedman again followed his passion and spent a season in vaudeville before heading into the film industry as a director with Essanay Studios. This motion picture studio, founded in Chicago in 1907 (with a film lot in California) included a roster of renowned stars such as Gloria Swanson and Charlie Chaplin. Then, Stedman signed with the Selig Polyscope Company, as an actor, director, and producer. As a direc-
tor, he became known for three works in particular: Between Love and the Law (1912), A Motorcycle Adventure (1912), and The Suffragette (1913).
Around 1915, Stedman returned to teaching as a drama instructor at the Eagan School of Drama and Music in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, during his tenure, he remained active on stage, this time as a villain in several films by director Hobart Bosworth, who was known for producing the Jack London melodramas for Paramount Studios.
Always one to venture into new, but related areas of acting, Stedman started writing. Conveniently, his first works were one-act plays in community theater productions performed by his students. In the late 1920s, Stedman founded the Marshall Stedman School of Drama and Elocution in Culver City, California. There, he served as an administrator and instructor, and honed his skills writing more plays and acting-related books. From 1925 to 1946, (cont. on page 46)
(cont. from page 45)
he wrote more than 25 works, including one-act plays and collections of monologues (both drama and comedy). Regarding the latter, they had interesting but straightforward titles such as Distinctive and Different Monologues (1927), Clever Monologues (1928), Sure-Fire Monologues (1928), and Amusing Monologues (1940). For the rest of his career, he maintained this balance of writing and teaching.
On December 16, 1943, Stedman died at his home in Laguna Beach, California. He was 69 years of age. He was buried at Melrose Abbey Memorial Park in Anaheim, California. As stated earlier, his son, Lincoln, would die just five years later at the age of 40. Aside from his impact on stage, drama teaching, and early silent films, Stedman is another example of one who has chosen to live his life not by a predestined path, but by his passion.
William Lloyd Garrison’s Visit To Waterville
Sparks the anti-slavery movement
by Charles Francis
It is often said that the people of the State of Maine were largely unaffected by the antislavery and abolition movements which swept the North prior to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. One reason for this is that by and large the Maine men who rushed to volunteer for the regiments that went off to fight in the War Between the States like the famous Twentieth Maine did so not because they were opposed to the institution of slavery but rather because they were determined to preserve the Union.
However, this fact does not mean that the issue of slavery went ignored in the state. In fact, Maine boasted two vigorous and well-organized associations that were affiliated with national movements opposed to the South’s “peculiar institution.” They were the Maine branches of the American Colonization Society and the American Antislavery Society, societies that, while they both agreed slavery had to be abolished, differed dramatically in the methods for accomplishing this end. It was this difference which brought the great ab-
William Lloyd Garrison
olitionist William Lloyd Garrison to Maine, where his visit to Waterville sparked the formation of the first antislavery society in the state and where he had his most notable confrontation with supporters of the American Colonization Society.
Few Maine residents ever had slaves. The few that did had slaves prior to 1780. That year the new constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, of which Maine was a part, forbade the keeping of other human beings as chattels. However, when Maine became a state in 1820 with the passage of the Missouri Compromise that was inexorably linked to slavery, some Mainers began coming out in opposition to the continued practice of keeping people in bondage. One of the first to do so was a young Congregational minister by the name of Asa Cummings.
Asa Cummings began his crusade against slavery the same year that Maine became a state. At the time he
was a tutor at Bowdoin. Cummings, however, was not a radical abolitionist. Cummings called for the gradual elimination of slavery. However, he believed that it was impossible for freed slaves and whites to exist side by side in the United States. Cummings’ ideas were those of the American Colonization Society, which advocated a gradual freeing of slaves and their orderly deportation or expatriation to Africa. In the early 1820s Cummings became editor of the Christian Mirror, a Congregational newspaper published in Portland which was in actuality the chief voice of the American Colonization Society in Maine. There were, however, any number of influential Maine figures who called for the immediate abolition of slavery, the most notable being General Samuel Fessenden.
Samuel Fessenden was something of a Maine hero, having been a militia general in the War of 1812. In addition, he was an able lawyer as well as
a Christian. Therefore, when he heard William Lloyd Garrison give one of his impassioned speeches coached in Biblical terminology calling for the immediate abolition of slavery, he became Maine’s most ardent antislavery proponent.
William Lloyd Garrison had begun his attack on the gradualism of the American Colonization Society in the pages of The Liberator in Boston in 1831. The next year he made Maine, where Asa Cummings and the Christian Mirror had been enjoying remarkable success with the plan to send freed slaves to Africa, his chief battleground. One reason Garrison chose Maine for the site of his first battle with the American Colonization Society was that he had Maine ties. His parents had spent the early part of their marriage in Eastport.
Garrison arrived in Maine in September of 1832. His first stop was Portland where he spoke before a large (cont. on page 50)
(cont. from page 49)
audience which included Samuel Fessenden. When Garrison finished, Fessenden took him aside and the two spent most of the night discussing the evils of slavery in general and the American Colonization Society in particular. Fessenden went on to be a driving force in the foundation of the Maine Antislavery Society as well as its vice president. He and Garrison also formed a friendship that was to last the rest of their lives. From Portland, Garrison went on to Hallowell, Bangor, Waterville, and Augusta.
Garrison’s Waterville host was Jeremiah Chapin, the president of Waterville College, which today is Colby College. Garrison’s message was so well received among the students of Waterville College that they formed the first antislavery society in the state. Garrison would later point to his sojourn to Waterville as a turning point in
Maine. After his visit, the state became serious about taking up the cause of abolition, and the state’s branch of the American Colonization Society began a steady decline.
Garrison’s last stop in Maine was Augusta. Here he had a face-to-face confrontation with the Reverend Cyril Pearl of the American Colonization Society who had come to Maine with the specific purpose of diffusing Garrison’s campaign in the state. According to individuals who witnessed the meeting, it was a clear victory for Garrison.
The Maine Antislavery Society was founded in 1834 when local societies like the one formed at Waterville College met to coordinate their efforts. The first line of the society’s constitution reads as follows:
“The fundamental principles of this society are that slave-holding is a heinous sin against God, and therefore that
immediate emancipation without the condition of expatriation is the duty of the master and the right of the slave.”
In the 1840s members of the Maine Antislavery Society formed the Maine Liberty Party with the abolition of slavery as its single issue. Samuel Fessenden was a four-time Liberty Party candidate for governor. However, as with most single issue political parties, it was markedly unsuccessful. Eventually it merged with the Free Soil Party, which in turn helped form the Republican party and elect Abraham Lincoln and Maine’s Hannibal Hamlin as the first Republicans to hold the nation’s highest offices. This whole sequence of events could be said to have happened because the first antislavery society in Maine was founded by a group of Waterville college students who were captivated by William Lloyd Garrison’s message in the fall of 1832.
by Greg Davis
CFarmington’s First Congregational Church
Stained glass windows
hurch members don’t really know the origin of the “Old South Church” label applied to the First Congregational Church in Farmington, according to Pastor Richard Waddell. He said one possibility is that the name was brought by the first preachers visiting from the Old South Church in Hallowell whose founders had, in turn, come from the Old South Church in Boston, Massachusetts. The Farmington church was organized in 1814 with a parish forming in 1822. The first pastor and the one of the longest
duration was Isaac Rogers who served the church from 1825 until 1858.
The first building was constructed on the site in 1836 but was a casualty of the great fire of 1886, which also leveled the nearby Methodist and Baptist churches as well as the entire end of downtown Farmington. When the loss occurred, contributions came from as far away as California, and a new brick building was rededicated in 1888. The architect was George Coombs of Lewiston and the building was constructed by Libby and Green-
leaf of Auburn. Waterville contractor Levi Bushy & Son did the foundation. Fresco work was created by L. Habberstrom & Son of Boston, with most of the church’s impressive stained glass windows created by Redding & Baird of Boston. The present organ, by M.P. Moller, Inc. of Hagerstown, Maryland, was installed in 1956 at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. Renovation work has continued over the years with some of the most recent performed only several years ago by Tony Castro.
All of the stained glass windows are
memorials to people who were central to the life of the church. One window memorializes Hiram Belcher, the son of Supply and Margaret Belcher, born in 1790, and who moved to Farmington with his family in 1791. He died in 1857. Hiram was admitted to the state bar in 1812 and was described as “honest, with a dry wit, a good lawyer, over six feet tall, (a rarity in those days), and thin and gangly.” Mr. Belcher served as town clerk from 1814 to 1819, served in the state legislature for three years and in the Senate for two years as a Federalist in a Democratic town. He was a U.S. Representative for two years during the Polk administration, and the only Whig in the Maine delegation. His office was located where the present office of attorneys Joyce, Dumas, David, and Hanstein now sits.
The Thomas Wendall (1790-1862) window remembers the first clerk of the church and one of the original twelve
who organized the church in 1814. An anchor motif in the window apparently refers to when, at age ten, an orphaned Thomas Wendall served as a cabin boy on a privateer during the Revolutionary War. At age ninety he could recite most Psalms and the four gospels from memory. He helped to establish Farmington Academy. The Frederick Stewart (1806-1887) window remembers a man whose family helped in the construction of the new church building. He saw the plans but died a year before the building was completed. The plans are now in the possession of the Portland Historical Society.
The Martha Norton Blake (17861875) window was presented by her son who also donated the three thousand pound bell that sits in the bell tower. The bell tolls in E-flat and was originally designed to harmonize with the nearby F-key Methodist and A-key Baptist bells.
Much information is known about Robert and Mary Goodenow for whom another window is dedicated. Goodenow was the last Whig U.S. Representative from District 2, from 1850 to 1852. As a Congressman, Goodenow once dined with Daniel Webster. Their daughter, Ellen, married Ambrose Kelsey, the preceptor/principal of Farmington Academy, and later Farmington Normal School. The Goodenows lived at 80 Main Street, and Robert founded the Franklin Savings Bank in 1868. Many letters between Robert and Mary survive. In one, Mrs. Goodenow writes of her son Nathan, “I am sorry to say that he smokes a good deal and also chews tobacco. One of those habits I think is quite sufficient.” Nathan went on to be a colonel in the Civil War and later a successful Chicago lawyer.
The Good Shepard Window above the altar remembers Rev. Isaac Rogers, pastor of the church for thirty-two (cont. on page 54)
(cont. from page 53)
years until 1858. He was known for his “long prayers which served all of the purposes of a local newspaper. From them, members of the congregation learned of those who during the preceding week had been married, who were sick, who had died, gone on a journey, to college or back from college. No names were given, so it was a guessing game,” according to the writings of Lyman Abbott. After retiring in 1858, Rev. Rogers was allowed to live in the parsonage rent-free until his wife, Eliza, died in 1867. He died in 1872 at the home of Frederick Stewart. Rev. Isaac and Eliza were popularly called “Father and Mother Rogers” during his time as pastor.
A rose window remembers Reuben Cutler who joined the church in 1858 and was a deacon until the time of his death. It recalls the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Cutler was part of the committee charged with selling the par-
sonage. Just three years later, the church bought it back to house its pastor.
A bronze plaque memorializes Mary S. Morrill who worshiped at Old South and graduated from Farmington School in 1884. She was active in the Sunday School class, and in 1889 went to China as a missionary in response to a Chinese student’s wish “that my mother in China could be told about Christ and his religion.” She was caught up in the Boxer rebellion in 1900 and murdered, and today is considered to be a martyr of the church.
Another plaque and baptismal front remembers Francis Gould Butler, given by his son-in-law, Dr. Charles Thwing, who was president of Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Mrs. Julia Butler was Thomas Wendall’s daughter.
The Genealogy Corner Internet use — some pros and cons
by Charles Francis
Almost everyone who has taken up researching their family history and building a family tree has dipped into the internet at one time or another. Some have come to rely on this modern marvel almost exclusively. Others have given up on it as simply too daunting to navigate. As a general statement, neither reaction is appropriate.
The recent growth spurt in researching family history and the rapid expansion of the internet have gone hand in hand. According to various marketing surveys, genealogy sites rank either number two or number three of all sites.
Internet genealogy and family history sites range from those requiring a user fee to free ones. Some of the sites
are massive and require one to hop from one subsite or link to another. A major portion of the 1880 United States census, as well as that of the 1881 census for Canada and Great Britain, is there.
At the opposite extreme, one can find family history or genealogy sites put up by a single individual interested in collecting data about his or her family or in letting others know what informa-
tion they have. There is an interesting example of a site in the latter category involving the Clough family and Androscoggin and surrounding counties.
Androscoggin County genealogy and family history is well represented on the internet. There are sites devoted to local historical societies, cemetery records, and well-known or once well-known individuals. The internet site for the branch of the Clough family mentioned above is not an example of individual first-hand research but instead comes from several other internet sources. These in turn were taken from books on the Clough family, and therein lies the problem with the site. It is a third-hand or even fourth-hand (cont. on page 58)
With digital banking we don’t need to be close by or even open to provide you with account access.
There are over 170 credit unions in Maine and 5,000 in the USA where you can make transactions just like you do with us.
From youth savings to making retirement plans, we are here every step of the way to help you grow.
You will always speak to a real person right here at Oxford FCU who will do all they can to help.
(cont. from page 57)
account.
The first thing to realize about anything on the internet is that it is second-hand information. Historians refer to this sort of information as a secondary resource. Unlike primary resources, secondary resources are always suspect. They are the same as hearsay. Simply put, anything on the internet was put there by someone who had control over what went up. Information can be altered either intentionally or by error. This alteration can take the form of a misspelling or incorrectly sited date to a totally falsified story. Therefore, it is necessary to cross-reference any data one sees popping up on their computer screen with another source to be sure of its accuracy.
The above comments do not mean that the internet does not have uses, however. It is a wonderful way to see what others with the same interests as you are doing and of discovering what
is out there in the way of resources. In addition, for those who can’t get out and research, it provides easy access to secondary resources as well as books that can be acquired through interlibrary loan. There are a number of caveats to keep in mind when accessing family history and genealogy sites on the internet, especially those that charge fees.
One thing to remember is that the information genealogy sites offer for a price can almost always be found elsewhere for free. Census data, birth, death, and marriage records and the like are a matter of public record. You don’t even have to contact the particular government agency responsible for them to access them. They can be found in big libraries which in turn can be accessed by smaller libraries through interlibrary loan. Whoever put the data you want on the internet for a fee did so by copying something for free.
As far as accessing the internet for family history research is concerned, there are a number of “how-to” sites. Look for ones that were put up by reputable sources, though. One of the best belongs to the University of Toronto in Canada. While a bit heavy on Canadian genealogy, it does cover the best American and European internet sites. It is Using the Internet for Genealogy. Make sure you go to the University of Toronto internet site.
The National Genealogical Society has a page devoted to internet use. It is Genealogical Standards & Guidelines: Standards For Use of Technology in Genealogical Research. The Society also sets out other standards which serve as a guideline for the beginning family history researcher to evaluate material he or she runs across.
The most comprehensive source for genealogy research is the Family History Library of the Mormon Church in
Salt Lake City. Most of the information there can be accessed for free, and it is a worldwide database. Information at the Family History Library can be accessed at a Family History Center. There is one in Oxford. Check the phone book for address and hours when it is open. The Family History Library also has an internet site. Though it grows continually, it only offers access to a fraction of the information archived in the Family History Library.
There are two other valuable internet resources in addition to that of the Family History Library. They are Rootsweb and the USGenWeb Archives Digital Library. Spending time logged on to either will quickly give one the experience to navigate them.
One often-overlooked internet practice is simply typing in the name of the person you are looking for. Doing so can take you to a particular genealogy site. Connecting the name of the person
you are looking for to a town or county is the best approach.
I have left what I consider one of the best and most intriguing uses of the internet for last. It is the use of Query or Family Boards. Query Boards are where researchers put up questions or information about particular families and individuals. For example, one might find “Looking for information about William Allen Clough of Rumford, Maine,” or more simply “Looking for information about Clough family of Androscoggin County.” (William Allen Clough was a prominent Rumford merchant in the first decades of the twentieth century.) Using Query Boards can even lead to the discovery of hitherto unknown relatives.
Maine’s Rangeley Lakes Region
A haven of fishing and birding
by Brian Swartz
For thousands of years the Rangeley Lakes Region hid a fishing secret known only to the Wabanaki, their ancestors, and early white settlers until George Shepard Page arrived here more than 160 years ago. Anglers have flocked to this region since then, and now birders have discovered prime habitat for their favorite pursuit.
Born in Maine in 1838, Page grew up in Massachusetts, worked in the chemical business, and became an avid angler. Traveling to Rangeley for the first time in 1860, he caught “his first brook trout” at the Upper Dam on Mooselookmeguntic Lake, according to The American Fly Fisher
Fishing for brook trout in Rangeley in 1863, Page “had such an amazing catch, he decided to send eight brook trout to the largest newspapers in New York City,” said Michelle Landry, executive director of Historic Rangeley, which operates the Outdoor Heritage Museum in Oquossoc. The museum offers extensive exhibits on the region’s fascinating outdoor history.
The trout ranged from 5 to 8½ pounds in size, and “stories were published about this incredible brook trout fishery.” Landry said. Wealthy sportsmen (and sportswomen such as Cornelia “Fly Rod” Crosby) began exploring the Rangeley waterways. Page, a fly
fisherman, was among the founding members of the Oquossoc Angling Association (still in existence) in 1867. Fishermen introduced landlocked salmon and rainbow smelts in 1875.
Today “brook trout is the most popular species to fish for” in the Rangeley Lakes Region, with landlocked salmon “a close second,” said Jason Latham, the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust conservation biologist. The non-profit RLHT works “to create a mosaic of interconnected, conserved, and accessible lands that sustain and promote the ecological, economic, and social vitality of our community,” he said.
The popularity of fishing also had (cont. on page 62)
(cont. from page 61)
“something to do with the experience,” Latham said. “The remoteness of the area, the abundance of water, miles of headwater streams, the main stems of rivers connected to deep-water lakes, the high elevation: All of these factors really contribute to this excellent habitat for cold water fish species.”
Sporting camps started appearing in the 1870s and 1880s, and “big hotels were built,” too, Landry said. The region enjoyed “a Gilded Age” that lasted from the 1880s to the 1920s.
A network of guides and outdoor recreation-focused businesses grew up to support fishing and hunting. The Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes Railroad and Rumford Falls & Rangeley Lakes Railroad improved regional access. “You could have all the comforts of home in this remote area and take the train right here,” Latham said. Access to fishing spots “was easy enough with
all these guides to take you around to these remote locations.”
The mode of transportation changed as more people traveled by automobiles in the 20th century. Today visitors arrive by road, and outdoor recreation has expanded to include hiking, paddling, boating, and leaf-peeping in the warmer months and skiing (alpine and cross-country), snowmobiling, and snowshoeing in winter.
Fishing spans the open-water season and winter. “Recently there have been several water bodies opened to ice fish-
ing; that’s new,” Latham said.
Brook trout attract anglers from all over the world, and the region is known for “having one of the most resilient” and “self-sustaining brook-trout populations” in North America, he said. The RLHT, state agencies, and other organizations collaborate in improving and protecting brook-trout habitat.
Birders have discovered the Rangeley Lakes Region during the past decade or so. Its location is the reason why. “We have some boreal species you can’t see in other places,” said Molly Shaw, the RLHT communications director.
“We’re at the southern extent of the boreal forest that extends into Canada,” and birders can find “the associated bird species that are difficult to find anywhere else in the United States,” Latham explained. Boreal species include the Canada jay, boreal chicka-
dee, black-backed woodpecker, spruce grouse, and Bicknell’s thrush. Neotropical bird species nest in the region, too.
Latham identified early summer as a prime birding time. “The fall can also be a good time to bird, too,” as birds migrate south, he said. Birders are armed with the latest technology (including eBird and the Merlin Bird ID app) and the Rangeley Lakes Region offers excellent access to where the birds are.
All local trails are open to birders, and the Mingo Springs Birding Trail and Perham Stream Birding Trail are dedicated birding sites. Jointly organized by the RLHT and Saddleback Mountain, the popular Rangeley Birding Festival will take place June 5-8 this year. Local guides will lead birding trips, and other activities are planned. More information can be found at rangeleybirdingfestival.com.
The White Nose Pete Fly Fishing Festival The perfect event
by Sue Damm
Are you curious about fly-fishing and want to learn more? Are you a fly-fishing enthusiast who can’t get enough fly-fishing gear, instruction, and talk? Whether you are the newbie, the enthusiast, or somewhere in between, we have an event for you in Rangeley on June 6 and 7: the White Nose Pete Fly Fishing Festival. If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to visit Rangeley and have stopped in at the Outdoor Heritage Museum, you probably saw a fish named White Nose Pete. He became famous in these parts because he could break the line of any
angler who tempted him. Pete ended up with a mouthful of flies and such a reputation that Shang Wheeler immortalized him with a carving and a poem.
White Nose Pete is now the mascot for Rangeley’s family friendly fly-fishing festival held annually in June. On Friday evening the 6th, we’ll honor people who have made great contributions to the fly-fishing community in Western Maine. Leslie Hilyard, a historian who specializes in the fishing history of this region, will emcee the presentations. Also, that evening will be a live auction of gear, art, guided trips,
and other fly-fishing related items the proceeds of which will benefit the local chamber of commerce and Casting for Recovery, a non-profit organization which uses fly fishing as part of its therapeutic outreach. There will be light refreshments and more. Contact the Rangeley Chamber of Commerce (207-864-5571) for information about how to attend this evening event.
On Saturday, activities are free and include casting demos, tying demonstrations, presentations on various angling topics, vendors of sporting art, books, gear, and more. There will be the chance to try equipment from some of the largest names in the industry, such as HMH, Redington, and Sage. Trout Unlimited, Native Fish Coalition, and similar groups will be represented and encourage the continuance of the sport through the preservation of natural resources.
Bob Romano will be on hand this June with his new book, Return to
Rangeley, and a new presentation “Favorite Flies of the Rangeley Lakes”. If you’d like to know which flies the local guides and tyers are using, you’ll love this presentation. A few more presentations will be announced closer to the date.
We always have special activities for children such as casting and tying lessons, and the chance to win a fly rod outfit. Kids in two age groups (5–10 and 11–15) have the chance to learn more about the sport and after complet-
ing several activities enter their name in a raffle for a complete fly rod outfit. One rod outfit will be awarded in each of two age groups (5–10 and 11–15).
HMH Vises will be back this year with their Maine-made vises and tools and a pro tyer, Scott Biron. There will be other tyers demonstrating their art and flies for sale.
At the time of writing, this year’s vendor list is not yet settled, but in the past people were able to cast fly rods from major names like Sage, Douglas, and Redington, as well as smaller manufacturers such as Maine Fly Rod and bamboo rod makers. We’ve had artists who work in mediums ranging from watercolor to metal, wood, and pottery. And there are lots of raffles….every vendor donates something to be raffled off: books, gear, flies, even rods are sometimes in the raffles. Be sure to come and join the fun this year! Remember the dates…June 6 and 7.
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Skowhegan High School Baseball
by Brian Swartz
Baseball was all the rage in Skowhegan in spring 1911 as the high school team and the amateur-level hometown nine provided fast and exciting action on the local diamonds. Weather kept the Skowhegan High players from practicing until late April, but the team was ready to open its season against Oak Grove Seminary on Saturday, April 29. Arriving aboard a Maine Central Railroad train, the visitors had to catch the 2:30 p.m. train to Waterville. The baseball teams took the field at 12:30 p.m. The timing was tight. Oak Grove’s pitcher, Whitehorse (the press rarely published first names), stepped to the plate to open the game. A few hits and some errors later, Oak Grove led, 5-0. Skowhegan right fielder
Wildes reached first base at the bottom of the first, and shortstop Pierce doubled to send him home.
Tied 8-8 at the top of the fifth, Oak Grove scored a run to go ahead. Skowhegan scored three runs in the bottom of the inning to win 11 to 9. Although technically not a full nine-inning game, the win counted, and the Oak Grove team sprinted for the train station.
The team from Good Will Home in Fairfield played at Skowhegan on Saturday, May 13. “The game was sharply contested and both teams did some good playing. The fielding was good,” a sports reporter wrote. Skowhegan High School led 2-0 after five innings. Good Will scored in the sixth and ninth innings, but Skowhegan won, 3-2.
The Saturday, May 27 home game against Farmington was “the best game of the season,” the reporter thought. “The two teams were well matched.” With the score tied 4-4 in the ninth inning and Farmington batting with two outs and a runner on second, Skowhegan first baseman Taylor “threw a wild ball,” and the runner scored. Farmington won, 5-4.
The Winslow High baseball team rattled into Skowhegan by train on Saturday, May 27. “It was an easy day for Skowhegan,” the sports reporter commented. “The game was loose from the beginning, and it was no work for the home team to score.” Skowhegan won, 13-4. Skowhegan High baseball went on to enjoy a good season, which grad(cont. on page 70)
(cont. from page 69)
uation ended on Friday, June 23.
Skowhegan’s amateur team played at Fairview Park. Checking his mail on Wednesday, May 31, Coach Hawes opened a letter from the Farmington team’s manager. Hawes was surprised; rather than take the MCRR’s roundabout route to reach Skowhegan for the upcoming June 3 game, the Farmington boys were coming by automobile! “We’ll arrive early Saturday afternoon,” the Farmington manager promised. Chugging and bouncing through New Sharon and Norridgewock, the cars delivered the Farmington team on schedule for the game, “the first time that Farmington has played here in the memory of present-day fans.”
Described as a “salaried slab artist,” Farmington pitcher Austin came “imbued with the idea that the Skowhegan boys were a little bit slow.” He hit a single. Skowhegan first baseman Laney “caught him napping off first on that
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moss grown trick of hiding the ball.”
Picked off at first, Austin “was mad clear through.” Skowhegan bats pounded his pitching; the home team was up 9-0 “before he recovered his equilibrium [after five innings] and quit trying to persuade [umpire] Mr. Abbey to make some freak rulings.”
Skowhegan tore Farmington apart. “Every one of the home team got a single, and all but two crossed the plate at least once,” the reporter noted. Skowhegan catcher Clark “gathered in three foul flies and nailed every man that tried to steal.” Skowhegan won, 11-3, and Austin “left the field at the end of the game, a sadder and wiser man.” The game ended at 2:30 p.m., which left “plenty of time for the return trip” to Farmington, the reporter noted.
Like many amateur teams organized in Maine cities and towns, the Skowhegan team belonged to no official league. Instead, managers contact-
ed other managers to arrange games, sometimes scheduled on short notice.
A problem quickly arose for the Skowhegan nine, dubbed the “Speed Boys” after outscoring their first three opponents 42 runs to 15 runs. Skowhegan’s manager realized by June 22 that other “managers seem to have all sorts of excuses” to avoid playing in Skowhegan. “The ‘Speed Boys’ are willing to go anywhere that they can get a return game,” but that wasn’t happening, the reporter noticed.
Unafraid of Skowhegan’s alleged batting prowess, the Madison team played at Fairview Park on July 4. Errors let Madison score two unearned runs in the second; “the rest of the game was a pitchers’ battle” limiting each team to five base hits. Madison won, 3-1, and Skowhegan baseball continued through the summer.
offer
complete line
& Lois Bubier,
Strong’s Elizabeth Dyar
Participant in the Boston Tea Party
by Barbara Adams
In one corner of a field in Freeman, near the village of Strong, there once stood an old gravestone in memory of Elizabeth Dyar. It was surrounded by a tamarack tree and a huge stone wall placed there to protect the resting place of one of the most remarkable women who ever lived and died in that town. The details of her early family history are long lost, but it is known that at age 22 she was one of three women who mixed and applied the vermillion paint to disguise, as Indians, the men who threw the tea into Boston Harbor at the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. Legend has it that she and her three children were smuggled through
the lines in Malden, Massachusetts. Her husband Joseph, whom she had married in 1771, was the leader of the “fierce Mohawks” who participated in the Boston Tea Party. He was born in England in 1747 and came to America and became a sea captain sailing in the foreign trade from Boston. During the Revolutionary War, Joseph was captured several times by the British. The ninth time he was captured transporting supplies to the Colonial army in Long Island. He was beaten and starved for three days and never fully recovered. Elizabeth lived the latter part of her life in Strong with her youngest son John at Prospect Farm and was buried
on this spot when she died. The gravestone was the original stone placed there by her son. It read, “My mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Dyar, died June 4, 1818, age 67. All flesh is as grass.”
In 1923 the Maine State Council of the Daughters of the American Revolution replaced the stone with a bronze tablet on a rock. It was said to have a longer inscription than any other tablet in Maine cemeteries.
Stonemason Benjamin Dodge of Strong found the rock in Freeman Center and cut it to fit the tablet placed onto it. It took a team of six horses to transport it to the gravesite. Since its base was to be of river gravel, the gravel was
transported in grain bags on a conveyance pulled by horses and the one truck available in Strong. Stone posts were placed at the corners of the lot.
Copied exactly as the inscription is written in the stone, it says:
“To Commemorate the Patriotism of ELIZABETH NICHOLS DYAR. One of Three Young Women Who Mixed and Applied the Paint To Disguise as Indians the Men of the Boston Tea Party December 16, 1773. With her Children she was Smuggled Through the lines to Malden. Passed Latter Part of Life Here With Youngest son, John Nichols Dyar On Prospect Farm And was Buried on this spot.”
“Also her husband JOSEPH DYAR Who was Nine Times captured by the British While Captain of Boat Carrying Supplies to American Army. Died from Effect of Ill Treatment in 1783 and was buried in Malden, Mass. This Grave Restored by Their Descendants, Town
(cont. on page 76)
Painting depicting the Boston Tea Party
(cont. from page 75)
of Freeman, and Colonel Asa Whitcomb Chapter of Kingfield, September 1923. Tablet placed by the Maine State Council Daughters of the American Revolution July 1924.”
The Kingfield Chapter retired in 1961, and the deed was given to Colonial Daughters Chapter DAR of Farmington. In 1965 Warren Dodge, son of Benjamin, had a new tamarack tree planted at the grave since the original one had died. He got the tree from Taylor Hill in New Vineyard, and he and Seward Marsh transplanted it at the site.
Moosehead’s First Sporting Camps
From public domain to a way of life
by Charles Francis
In 1848 and again in 1849, Aaron Capen Sr. submitted a petition to the State of Maine for an abatement of his taxes on two islands in Moosehead Lake. The islands were Sugar Island and Deer Island, about halfway between Greenville and Mt. Kineo. Capen acquired the islands in the early 1830s. He purchased Deer Island first and began a successful timber harvesting operation there. He then went on to purchase Sugar Island from a man named E. Crehore. According to one source, Capen claimed to have lost $30,000 in the transaction. That source is Henry David Thoreau, who visited Sugar Island in 1857.
Aaron Capen Sr., who is usually identified as General Aaron Capen, was one of the earliest land speculators in the Moosehead region. He and his son, Aaron Jr., went on to establish one of Moosehead Lake’s first hotels, as well as some of its earliest sporting camps. Eventually, General Capen was forced to sell Deer Island. Before that happened, however, the islands attracted a significant number of sportsmen and notables from the Boston area. In 1820, the year that Maine sepa-
rated from Massachusetts, a significant portion of the state had not yet been surveyed. In fact, a line drawn from Upton on the New Hampshire line east to Vanceboro on the Canadian border, would separate the known from the unknown. Property titles and lines were, for the most part, well established south of the line. North of the line, it was a different story, with the bulk of the land falling into the public domain. In other words, when Maine became a state, Massachusetts still owned much of the great north woods.
As part of the terms of separation, half of the public domain lands passed into Maine’s ownership, with Massachusetts retaining the other half. This amounted to Massachusetts having a claim to approximately 8 million acres in Maine. Massachusetts offered its holdings to Maine for $188,922, or about to .023 cents an acre. Maine refused the offer. For the next thirty-three years Maine and Massachusetts maintained separate land policies for the north woods as each went about trying to sell off its holdings.
Maine and Massachusetts divided their holdings in ranges running from
the south to the north. The states took every other township in a range. The first five ranges were specifically reserved for settlers.
Both states hired surveyors to set up township lines. In the general Moosehead area Hiram Rockwood, John Webber, and William Flint did most of the surveying in the first two decades of Maine’s statehood. Sugar and Deer islands, which Aaron Capen Sr. purchased, were part of a Hiram Rockwood survey.
General Aaron Capen was a member of one of the oldest and most distinguished families in the Boston area. His first Capen ancestor in America, Bernard Capen, had been one of the earliest settlers of Dorchester in the 1650s. Today Bernard Capen’s house, which for most of its existence has been in the Capen family, is a National Historic Site. Another Capen, the Reverend Lemuel Capen, who spent a good deal of time on Sugar Island, was an original member of the Brook Farm commune of Bronson Alcott, as well as a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. General Capen was a hero of the War of 1812. His promotion to (cont. on page 78)
(cont. from page 77)
general came just before he purchased Deer Island.
General Capen acquired Deer Island when he was investigating buying some of the Day’s Academy Grant, the township that includes both Deer and Sugar Islands. When the sale of timber from Deer Island proved profitable, he purchased Sugar Island and built a hotel there, which Aaron Jr. operated. Later the Capens built and operated sporting camps on both islands.
One story involving Sugar Island connects the poem Mary Had A Little Lamb to it. The Reverend Lemuel Capen was the uncle of John Roulstone. Roulstone, who died when he was seventeen, was the author of that famous poem. As the story goes, Roulstone was visiting the school where Mary’s lamb made its historic appearance. He wrote the poem from that experience. Lemuel Capen is credited with preserving the work of his ill nephew. He is also cited as influencing Thoreau to come to Maine and the Moosehead region.
The Capen Islands in Moosehead Lake, and the hotel and camps that Aaron Capen Jr. ran, are now part of the early history of Maine’s largest lake. Recently, the area around Sugar and Deer islands was acquired by the State as part of the Land for Maine’s Future program from the SAPPI paper company, the land’s most recent owner. It would seem that history has come full
HARDYS MOTORSPORTS
circle since Maine and Massachusetts went about divesting themselves of
Philbrick Block
1909 Fire Scorches Downtown Skowhegan
“Box 34” alarmed residents to danger
by Brian Swartz
Awarm after-glow from the Somerset County Agricultural Society Fair settled over Skowhegan as the late summer sun set on Thursday, September 16, 1909. Hours later, a far different glow erupted above the town.
The three-day fair (forerunner to the Skowhegan State Fair) ended Thursday afternoon with harness racing at Fairview Park. Competing in three timebased classes, fourteen horses ran in twelve heats that “were unusually interesting,” a reporter stated. The purses were significant ($200 for the 2:19 class, for example), and spectators enjoyed the racing.
Nearby, the Hartland and Solon baseball teams played an exciting game that “kept the bleachers rooting from the first to the last inning,” the reporter noted without providing the final score. The game ended, Fairview Park emptied and closed, the livestock remaining in the fairgrounds’ barns quieted for the night, and Skowhegan residents took to their beds.
Fire! Fire! Fire! A loud alarm sounded about 1:30 a.m., Friday. When Skowhegan’s strategically placed whistles blew the number “34,” a collective “aw, oh” passed through the town. “There was an immediate stirring among the sleeping residents,” said the reporter, likely rousted from a deep sleep himself. “Box 34 has not a good reputation and an alarm from that box is sure to bring out half the population of the town,” he thought.
Fire had broken out “in the rear of the R. W. Brown block” facing Water Street, investigators determined later.
The two-story wooden building housed two street-level businesses: jeweler Susman Russakoff’s store and Alton Whittemore’s “lunchroom.” Spreading westward, the fire attacked the wooden building at the intersection of Court and Water streets. Building owner George W. Gower operated a law office on the second floor; on the street level were George L. Cleveland’s barbershop and the Provencher & Laney lunchroom.
The burning buildings stood next to Railroad Square, named after the Maine Central Railroad tracks and train station just off Court Street. As the reporter predicted, “Railroad Square was packed with people almost before the fire fighters had gotten under way,” he observed. The crowd did not hinder the firefighting efforts, however; turning out “as promptly as could be expected considering the hour of the night,” the firefighters “experienced considerable difficulty in getting” the fire engine “in good working order.” Not until 2 a.m. or so was the fire engine pumping water onto the fire. By then it had literally turned the corner onto Court Street, where businessman Brown also owned the three-story wooden building next to Gower’s property. Flames from that building “were communicated to the rear and side” of Brown’s building.
Occupying its street-level offices were plumbers Nash & Viles; S. H. Swain, an agent for the Strout Farm Agency; and O. A. Priest, “dealer in mileage books.” Frank Pooler ran a boot-and-shoe store on the third floor. Three “tenements” (a period term for “apartments”) occupied the second
floor. Harry Cullen and his wife rented one apartment, Charles Elwell and his wife another, and the third was vacant. People packing Railroad Square scrambled to help “the occupants of the several buildings and much of the contents were removed,” the reporter noted. He watched “the splendid fight which the fire laddies put up,” especially when the fire threatened the Court Street building owned by Dr. W. M. Pulsifer. “It was thought for a time that this could not be saved,” but it was. No wind fanned the flames. Rain started falling “and helped to a small extent in quenching the flames.” The fire damaged Brown’s buildings so badly that they would be demolished. Although “drenched with water,” the Gower building “was not so badly burned” that it was irreparable. All three buildings were insured, but not enough to cover the losses estimated at $12,000 to $15,000.
Afterwards jeweler Russakoff published a “card of thanks” in a local newspaper. “I wish to thank all those who helped me save my stock from the fire,” he wrote.
Figuring that Brown would replace his gutted buildings with a “brick block,” the reporter apparently remembered a similar fire erupting in downtown Skowhegan the previous January. With the September 17 fire, the town had “again suffered at the hands of the fire fiend,” he wrote.
General Russell B. Shepherd
Skowhegan’s
by Rosemary K. Poulson
His name appears on no monuments; no streets are named for him. Neither school nor park bears his name. In fact, the town clerk admits she never heard of him. Yet, General Russell B. Shepherd was one of the outstanding men in Skowhegan history.
His obituary covers nearly the entire front page of the local newspaper the Somerset Reporter on January 3rd. It began, “General Russell B. Shepherd of this town died at his home on Tuesday, January 1, 1901 at 8 p.m, after an illness of nearly 11 weeks. The causes of death were many apparently, but no amount of medical help alleviated his suffering or prevented his death.”
Born in 1829 in Fairfield, he went to school in that town, at Bloomfield Academy and Colby College. He taught at the Academy and at the Girls High School in Bangor, was admitted to the bar in Penobscot County, served 3 years in the Civil War, and engaged in cotton planting for several years in Georgia.
After his stint at cotton farming, he established his home in Skowhegan, entering into various businesses which
reluctant hero
included farming, building, operating woolen mills, and water power. He was instrumental in establishing the construction of the electric railroad from Skowhegan to Madison.
He was president of the Second National Bank, the Skowhegan Pulp Company, the Milburn Company, the Skowhegan Water Company, and was involved with the Coburn House Association, as well as holding large ownership in water power and real estate.
He was a member of the local School Board, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Governor’s Council. He was a trustee of Colby College, and of the Maine Insane Hospital as well as of the State University at Orono.
He was a member of the Masons up to the level of the Knights Templar. He was also a member of the Milburn Club and the Abraham Lincoln Command of the Union Veterans Union. He was twice married with one stepdaughter.
More than two columns of the newspaper obituary are devoted to the reminiscences of a friend, Colonel Zemro A. Smith. Smith’s recollections are of the experiences he shared with Shepherd
during the Civil War. “Feeling that it was his duty to assist the army,” Zemro wrote, “Shepherd took part in enrolling the militia for that Section (Fairfield area) and subsequently helped to raise money for the 18th Maine Infantry which assembled at Bangor during August of 1986. He was appointed adjutant of the regiment.”
“Since his division did not see action right away, Shepherd spent his spare time learning everything the Army had to teach including engineering, ballistics, and all things military. On December 1st, several divisions including the ones under the command of (now) Colonel Shepherd, went to Virginia to destroy the railroads bringing supplies to Petersburg and Richmond. They started from the rear of the Army of the Potomac in excellent warm weather and marched rapidly through enemy country. The warm weather and the rapid marching caused many of the men to throw away their blankets. During the second night of their foray, it rained, the temperature dropped and the rain changed to snow. They worked all day in a blinding snowstorm and slept that night in two inches of snow,
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many of them with no blankets. It was nine days of cold and wet before they finished the job and got back to the Army of the Potomac, where the Colonel was promoted to General.”
Smith reported that when they saw the white tents of the encampment, Shepherd told him, “the men are suffering and if we don’t look after them we will have the hospital full of them.” He told Smith to go to the Assistant Quartermaster and borrow three hundred axes. Each of Shepherd’s captains was instructed to take a share of the axes and build shelters as fast as he could. “No officer is to have a man do a stick of work on his own quarters until every enlisted man is under cover,” Shepherd said. He said the shelter tent was good enough for him and for Smith, “because we have blankets enough.”
Fortunately, the Assistant Quartermaster was a former student of the General and they had been close friends. The axes were forthcoming, as well as the offer of any other help available. Within two days, all of Shepherd’s men were sheltered, but it was more than a week before the General had his men build a place for himself, and it was far longer before the other regiments in the brigade were more than half covered or had any shelter at all.
The only criticism ever leveled against Shepherd the soldier was a certain lack of enthusiasm. No wonder. According to his obituary, he was raised in the Society of Friends and
always tended toward peaceful Quaker ideals. “As soon as he was mustered out of the service with the rank of Brevet Brigadier General, he took off his uniform and from that day to the day of his death,” Smith wrote, “he took no active part in any organization of veterans with the exception of the Abraham Lincoln Command of the Union Veteran’s Union, whose members were all his neighbors. When urged to join the Grand Army or the Loyal Legion, he would say, ‘I am willing to do what I can for the men who served under me, but I have no taste for any military organization.’” Smith ended his reminiscences with the note, “He died full of years that were full of usefulness.”
The reading room in the Skowhegan Free Public Library is dedicated to the
Civil War Veterans and their names are all printed on the large plaque over the fireplace. The plaque was installed when the library was built in 1889, two years before our hero’s death. General Shepherd’s name is conspicuous by its absence.
Nor is he listed among the names of those who joined the Union Army in the history book Skowhegan on the Kennebec by Louise Helen Coburn. Skowhegan librarians surmise that he is not mentioned in Skowhegan because he enlisted in Fairfield. Inquiry at the Fairfield Town office produced the same lack of information. The Fairfield Town office directed us to the History House and Historical Society member Mark McPheeters for assistance. Alas, Mr. McPheeters has no more information other than that Shepherd’s grandfather and great-grandfather were among the earliest settlers there.
Shepherd is pictured in volume 2 of Coburn’s history. He was a large man, bordering on obese, with a bristling walrus mustache and bushy black pointed eyebrows. There is no smile on his face. He looks out of his picture as if to say that life is too short to expend time on anything but worthwhile projects which promote the well-being of mankind. There is no mention of his war record in the Coburn volume. Perhaps his reluctance to have any connection with warfare carried over even into his notation in history — even to obscurity.
In Loving Memory of Ruth Knowles
Ruth Irma (MacGowan) Knowles, 96, formerly of St. Albans, Maine, died peacefully and went home to be with her Lord Jesus Christ, on January 18, 2025.
Ruth was born on May 10, 1928, in Cornville, Maine, the daughter of the late Gordon and Charlotte (Kezar) MacGowan. She graduated from Wytopitlock High School and furthered her education by taking classes at the Farmington Normal School. She taught in the Bancroft, Danforth, Sidney, Clinton, and St. Albans school systems and served on the SAD 48 school board for many years. She resided in St. Albans for 40 years, Vassalboro for 20 years, and spent time in Ripley, Maine and Zephyr Hills, Florida. The last years of her life were spent at The Lincoln Home assisted living community in Newcastle.
Ruth’s passions were genealogy and history. She authored several history books, including the History of St. Albans, penned with her dear friend Gladys Bigalow, and the Knowles Genealogy, penned with friend Virginia Hufbauer. She wrote a children’s book The Snow Shovel Family, illustrated by friend Julie Babb, and wrote numerous articles for the magazine Discover Maine
Ruth was a member of several organizations over the years: the Hartland Baptist Church, Daughters of the American Revolution, New England Genealogical Society, the Maine Genealogical Society, the Outlook Club of St. Albans/Hartland, and the Sno-Devils Snowmobile Club in St. Albans.
She is survived by her daughter, Colleen Dunlap and husband Frank of Vassalboro; four grandchildren, Matthew Dunlap and wife Lindsay, Jennifer Potter and husband Jordan, Joshua Dunlap and wife Sydney, and Nathaniel Dunlap and wife Heather; 14 great-grandchildren, Josiah, Joanna, Micaiah, Jaden, Caleb, Susannah, Adaline, Camden, Eliana, Abigail, Levi, Elise, Seth and Owen; her sister, Cynthia MacGowan Hill of Windsor Locks, CT; brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, Elton Knowles and Gloria, Donald and Elaine Knowles, Betty Knowles, and Chris Graves; many dear nieces and nephews including Dorian and Kathleen Hill, Sharyl and Roger Kidwell and Linda and Allan Smith; and long-time friends Mildred Faulkner (friends since high school), and Gladys LaRochelle and Mary Bess (friends since early childhood). She was predeceased by her beloved husband, Lowell E. Knowles, in 1985.
The family would like to thank The Lincoln Home management and staff for their wonderful love, care, and friendship toward Ruth these last seven years.
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