Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago Region

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Volume 10 | Issue 4 |

2013

Maine’s History Magazine

Androscoggin Oxford Sebago Edition

The Legacy Of Samantha Smith The young ambassador from Manchester

A Migration To Capturing The Best Of Times With Frank Gross Oxford County Lisbon’s Norman Rockwell

A history of the Richards family

www.DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

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Inside This Edition

Maine’s History Magazine 3

I t Makes No Never Mind James Nalley

5

Americans On The Move John McDonald

8

The Old ‘29 Coupe Adventures with the old man’s car Franklin Irish

10 The Wonderful Department Store Lewiston’s Bradford Peck

Charles Francis 12 Capturing The Best Of Times With Frank Gross Lisbon’s Norman Rockwell

Charles Francis 16 The Legacy Of Samantha Smith The young ambassador from Manchester

Charles Francis 19 The Town Of Raymond

A brief history

Ernest Knight

24 Auburn’s George Merrill The meteorite man

Charles Francis 29 John Nevins Andrews’ Horned Demon

Poland native instrumental in early years of Adventism

Charles Francis 33 Tory Hill’s Reverend Paul Coffin Buxton’s circuit-riding Congregationalist Ian MacKinnon 38 The Fire Of 1947 Old-time firefighting heroics

Franklin Irish 42 Old Uncle Solon The beloved storyteller from Turner

Charles Francis 46 Still Sits The Schoolhouse By The Road The little schoolhouse at Norlands

Billie Gammon 52 Rumford’s Moontide Spring A phenomenom of nature successfully marketed Charles Francis 56 A Migration To Oxford County A history of the Richards family

Rita Richards Furbish & John Furbish 62 Bethel’s Margaret Joy Tibbetts The lady was a diplomat

Charles Francis 66 The Fascination With Furniture

A short history

Charles Francis 70 Eastward Ho! With Captain Charles Farrar A sportsman’s authority on the Rangeley Lakes region Charles Francis

Androscoggin / Oxford / Sebago Region

Publisher Jim Burch

Designer & Editor Liana Merdan

Advertising & Sales Manager Tim Maxfield

Advertising & Sales Edward Blumenthal Barry Buck Catherine Driscoll Chris Girouard Khaled Habash Tim Maxfield Jeremy Schumacher

Office Manager Liana Merdan

Field Representatives George Tatro

Contributing Writers

Charles Francis / fundy67@yahoo.ca Rita Richards Furbish & John Furbish Billie Gammon Franklin Irish Ernest Knight Ian MacKinnon John McDonald James Nalley

Published Annually by CreMark, Inc. 10 Exchange Street, Suite 208 Portland, Maine 04101 Ph (207) 874-7720 info@discovermainemagazine.com www.discovermainemagazine.com Discover Maine Magazine is distributed to town offices, chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations, shopping centers, libraries, newsstands, grocery and convenience stores, hardware stores, lumber companies, motels, restaurants and other locations throughout this part of Maine.

NO PART of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from CreMark, Inc. | Copyright © 2013, CreMark, Inc.

SUBSCRIPTION FORM ON PAGE 16

Front Cover Photo: Main St., Bridgton, ME. 43 #100303 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org All photos in Discover Maine’s Androscoggin Oxford Sebago edition show Maine as it used to be, and many are from local citizens who love this part of Maine.

Photos are also provided from our collaboration with the Maine Historical Society and the Penobscot Marine Museum.

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

It Makes No Never Mind

by James Nalley

F

or anyone who has ventured away from the southern coast of Maine and into the Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago region, you will quickly see why lumberjacks and woodsmen were the first white inhabitants of the area due to the seemingly endless miles of thick forests.

Of course, other prominent attractions include the serene Sebago Lake, which is noted for its depth (Maine’s deepest). However, located at the junction of Routes 5 and 35 in the unassuming town of Lynchville is a road sign that brings the uniqueness of the region to light. Dubbed as the “Around the World” sign, it includes the following: Norway, 14 miles; Paris, 15 miles; Denmark, 23 miles; Naples, 23 miles; Sweden, 25 miles; Poland, 27 miles; Mexico, 37 miles; China, 94 miles; and Peru, 46 miles. Apparently, the founding fathers in this area enjoyed naming their towns after notable countries and cities that they had probably never stepped foot on.

On a more serious note, there is the 178mile Androscoggin River, which once teemed with Atlantic salmon that fed the region’s Native American tribes only until

dams were constructed by the white settlers. Over time, the river spawned a number of thriving factories as well as formed new towns along its banks where generations of Franco-Americans would eventually call “home.” In fact, by the end of the 19th century, the Androscoggin included some of the largest paper companies in the world and floating logs on the river was an everyday sight. Like many industrial cities across the country, the towns along the Androscoggin were not immune to the changes of society. As you travel along the streets between Auburn and Lewiston, you can still see some of the abandoned factories that are now used for everything from antique shops to art galleries. Fortunately, many of the buildings still bear their original designs, which allows us to stretch our imaginations back to a time when sweaty men completed their long hours in hopes of “something better someday.”

Of course, despite the man-made “enhancements” that diverted the river’s power into energy, there was always Mother Nature’s reminder that she was actually in control. According to historical records, between 1723 and 1987, there were a total of 12 major floods or freshets (sudden floods) on the Androscoggin. One memora-

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ble one occurred in October 1869. Known as the “Pumpkin Freshet,” thousands of pumpkins were carried into the Androscoggin via its tributaries. According to the valley’s residents at the time, “it was a sight long remembered.” Hopefully, stories such as these in this issue of Discover Maine Magazine will inspire you to take a glimpse into the region’s past. And if you are now imagining an armada of floating pumpkins, that is OK too. Anyway, let me appropriately close with something I once heard regarding lumberjacks: A scrawny man asked for a job as a lumberjack. “I’m sorry,” said the man in charge, eyeing the man up and down, “You’re just too small.” The small man said, “Just give me one chance!” “Okay,” said the boss. “You see that giant pine over there? Let’s see if you can chop it down.” 20 minutes later, the massive tree came crashing down as the boss asked in amazement, “Where did you learn to cut trees like that?” The smaller man replied, “In the Sahara Forest.” The boss laughed, “You mean the Sahara Desert.” The little man looked at him with a smile and said, “Sure… if that’s what they call it now.”

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Americans On The Move

by John McDonald

T

o hear Europeans tell it we Americans are always on the move, always ready to pack up and take off to see what’s over the next hill, down in the next valley, around the next curve or on sale at the next mall.

It was that restlessness that inspired us to settle our continent from coast-tocoast in a little over a century, as millions of Americans and newly arrived immigrants traveled by steamboat or train to St. Louis and then packed everything they owned into covered wagons and set off to settle places like Oregon, California or Texas.

Some headed west from Portland and never made it any further than Oxford County.

Even now, when most of the country is pretty much settled, some of us still AUTHORIZED SALES AND SERVICE FOR

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don’t like to stay put.

After our covered wagon faze we Americans moved on to motor homes and pop-up campers. Some people bought mobile homes just so they could pick up and move whenever they felt to urge or they felt someone might be after them.

Back home there was a family ― the Willey’s ― with a mobile home that they were always moving around for one reason or another. They seldom moved far but if the Willey clan thought there was a better water source or free firewood in another part of town they’d slap the wheels back on their mobile home and they were gone ― often in the dead of night.

Sometimes a simple dispute with neighbors was all they needed to inspire

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a move to another lot. This, of course, was back in the days when quarter-acre house lots were plentiful and available in town for a few hundred dollars ― even less in some cases.

When the Willey’s moved to a new lot, they usually insisted it belonged to a relative who lived out of state, and was therefore ‘sort-of’ “heirship property.” Occasionally a dispute arose over ownership of a particular lot but it would take so long to have surveys done and papers filed that the Willey’s would be off to another lot long before anything was resolved.

While on a particular lot the Willey’s always liked to store various items they insisted were essential to their lifestyle.

They stored these items first around their trailer and ― if they stayed long (Continued on page 6)

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(Continued from page 5) enough ― the items would completely cover their lot and then spill over onto surrounding lots. Before too long the small lot and adjacent lots were filled to overflowing with such ‘essentials’ as refrigerators, bath tubs, engine blocks, car doors, hoods and windshields and other car parts. There’d be wood scraps, old boats (both wooden and aluminum), broken bicycles, wrecked ATVs, wood stoves, gas stoves, electric stoves, televisions and other broken family entertainment items.

Neighbors who shared a particular road with the Willeys would eventually complain that the place looked like a dump but old man Willey would insist that he had plans to use every item on the lot and he considered none of it to be junk.

Eventually the disputes with neighbors would become more heated and the Willeys would move on. In every case the essential items old man Willey insisted were part of his future plans never made the move but always remained behind for someone else to deal with.

I thought of old man Willey the other day because my wife and I recently sold our large house in western Maine ― a house we lived in for almost 18 years and we moved to a new place here in western Maine. Downsized?

That’s a definite yes.

Although our old place lacked many of the Willey’s essential dooryard items we could not believe how many things we managed to collect inside our house over the years.

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Before the closing we arranged to have two huge yard sales, advertised several large items in local newspapers which we sold off but when all that was done we still had lots of stuff to get rid of.

Remembering old man Willey and his family, I wished I could have slapped some wheels on out big, old place and just dragged it to our new land. Trouble was we would have had trouble finding a house lot selling for a few hundred dollars that was big enough for a nine-room house.

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

Hydraulic Hose & Assembly of Gorham MEETING THE TOUGH STANDARDS OF THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

On the National Register of Historic Places

RYCO HYDRAULICS

Open June 1 to September 15, daily Tuesday - Sunday 1-5PM or by appointment until October 15 Closed Monday

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Lighthouse on Lake Cobbosseecontee, East Winthrop. Item # 116863 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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The Old ‘29 Coupe Adventures with the old man’s car

by Franklin Irish

A

fter writing about Dad and his driving, I thought the old Ford had a history coming. That was a second-hand car when Dad got it and the Lord only knows how much it got tortured before he got it. I tried to teach him to drive but he had his own idea, so it was an impossible task. I bought a nice, clean 1929 sedan for fifty dollars, put a two-speed rear end under it and it was all he would have ever needed. But when he got to shifting, he thought he had to have a three-speed car. So he got the coupe. It was a nice little car when he got it.

He first went into the garage and let out the clutch and pushed the backside of the garage off the foundation.

I jacked that back and pounded out his bumpers. Then I got a big block

of wood for him to stall out on, which lasted him out.

About the time he stopped driving, my oldest son got a license, so he did most of Dad’s driving from then on, and of course got to use it, too. Anyway, if I had any idea how he and his brother were using it, they would have been grounded until they were twenty-one.

After they were married, I heard them laughing one day. They were telling stories about some of their stunts. There’s a town road in Sebago known as the Folly Road. It still has some pretty sharp knolls. But anyway, there’s one where they could really get airborne. They used to take turns.

The one driving would jump, while the other one would lie in the ditch to see

how far the other one could jump and then swap places. If I had known that, I would have had a fit! They would also borrow it to take their girls to the movies.

Dad lived on the main road and he and Mother used to sit on the lawn. So the boys would wait until dark, shut off their lights, and coast by with kids all over the car — up to a dozen, I think.

Maybe Dad wasn’t so unaware as they thought, because he finally gave the car to my brother-in-law to make a farm tractor.

He told the boys he would have let them have it but the old car had enough “hurrah” and it needed a rest. So maybe they didn’t fool the old man as much as they thought. Anyway, it ended up farming for a number of years.

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

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Lewiston St. in Lisbon. Item # 107766 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

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The Wonderful Department Store Lewiston’s Bradford Peck

by Charles Francis

L

ooking out his apartment window Percy Brantford saw a beautiful parkway, in fact, he saw an entire range of parkways. The parkways were so designed as to present “…a view of glorious magnificence, besides filling the air with fragrance arising from the vast collections of flowers and shrubs so artistically arranged.” As far as Percy Brantford was concerned “…it seemed as if Paradise had dawned before him.”

Percy Brantford is looking out the window of his Lewiston apartment.

The year is 1925. Brantford had gone to sleep twenty-five years before. He had taken a double draught of sleeping powder. Now what he saw before him was a city planner’s dream. it was Lewiston idealized. Lewiston and utopia had become one.

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Percy Brantford was the fictional creation of Bradford Peck. Peck was a highly successful marketing genius and entrepreneur. He was also something of a visionary. What he envisioned was a perfect world — or at least a collection of perfect communities. To get his vision before the masses of America, Peck wrote a book with the whimsical title The World a Department Store.

The setting of the book was Lewiston.

The title and the setting of The World a Department Store were chosen for simple reasons. Bradford Peck owned a department store and it was in Lewiston. The name of the department store was B. Peck Co.. It was the largest department store north of Boston. The only department store in New England that was bigger was Jordan Marsh. Peck also had interests in

at least one store in the Midwest ― in Joliet, Illinois.

Bradford Peck was a utopian along the lines of Edward Bellamy and Robert Owen. Bellamy was the visionary author of Looking Backward. In Looking Backward , the central character goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes in 2000. What he finds in 2000 is a utopian socialist society.

Robert Owen was the socialist utopian who established the cooperative factory of New Lanark in Scotland.

New Lanark served as a model for utopian industrial communities like the Amana community in Iowa, famous for its refrigerators.

Most utopians were intellectuals like Edward Bellamy. They were thinkers rather that doers. The Robert Owen that actually established working

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com models of their vision were a decided minority. This is what makes Bradford Peck a notable figure. He tried to put his vision into practice and he did so in Lewiston.

The World a Department Store was published in 1900. It was published in Lewiston. Bradford Peck was the publisher. In short, the book was published at Peck’s expense.

Bradford Peck and The World a Department Store are notable for two important reasons. Unlike Edward Bellamy, Bradford Peck was more than just a visionary. Unlike Robert Owen, Bradford Peck had success in business before he began to put his vision to the test. Peck had close to thirty-five years of business experience and business success behind him when he began to implement the ideals put forward in his book. To say it another way, one of the things that makes Bradford Peck unique in the history of American utopian/collectivism is that he did more than simply describe a perfect world — he tried to create one.

The other reason why Bradford

Peck is important in American history had to do with Peck as a city planner.

Peck’s utopian vision was for urban environments. What Peck described in The World a Department Store was an urban setting composed of broad streets, and businesses and apartment buildings interspersed with parks. This was at a time when city planning was in its infancy.

Bradford Peck was a self-made man.

He started his business career as an errand boy for Jordan Marsh in 1865. He was twelve when he landed the job.

Fifteen years later, in 1880, he had his Lewiston store. Success in business wasn’t enough for Peck, however. In 1899 he set up the Co-operative Association of America.

The purpose of the Co-operative Association of America was twofold. On an idealistic level it was to serve as a springboard for regenerating American society along cooperative lines. On a practical level it was to provide a concrete model for that restructuring.

Peck’s concrete model was in Lewiston. It included a cooperative restau-

rant and a cooperative grocery. There was a reading room. The funding for these enterprises came from Peck’s department store.

The World a Department Store also had a practical side. It asked for donations for the Co-operative Association of America. More than this, the book had drawings of the perfect city.

Lewiston served as the model. A city block had eight apartment buildings.

All apartments had spacious views of parkways and parks. One innovation called for streets set on a diagonal. The Co-operative Association of America lasted until 1912.

Bradford Peck died in 1935. He was eighty-two years old. Though the Co-operative Association of America didn’t last, Bradford Peck never gave up calling for collective reform.

B. Peck Co. closed in the 1990s.

Today the five-story department store is an L.L. Bean telephone order center.

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

RDA Automotive Major & Minor Repairs • Brake Service Tune Ups • Electrical Diagnostic Testing Air Conditioning Service & Repair Exhaust Systems • State Inspections

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68 Adams Ave • Lewiston, ME • 783-0581

The mission of the Good Shephed Food-Bank is to provide food for those at risk of hunger by soliciting surplus food and distributing it to non-profit programs throughout Maine, and in doing so, to do the work of Jesus, who is The Good Shepherd.

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Capturing The Best Of Times With Frank Gross Lisbon’s Norman Rockwell

by Charles Francis

A

little boy in short pants and yellow shirt sits on a stool at an ice cream counter. He is looking intently at the man on the stool next to him, a police officer in a blue uniform.

The officer is weighted down with a utility belt. The officer’s attention is on the boy. The boy’s red book-bag is on the floor to the right of the stool. The implication is that it is afternoon, the after school hours.

The above description is straight out of the past, a past of better times for small town New England, for small town Maine and America as a whole.

The sense of the past is heightened by the presence of a third figure in the

scene, the man in the white shirt behind the counter. He is a figure we don’t see these days, the ice cream counterman who dishes out vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, and concocts sundaes and splits.

The above description is that of a painting. It isn’t a Norman Rockwell painting, though. It’s the sort that Rockwell was and is famous for creating. The painting was done by Frank Gross of Lisbon Falls.

Frank Gross is a man in his eighties.

As of this writing he is eighty-two. As a general statement, Frank Gross is not as well-known as Norman Rockwell.

At least not nationwide, nor in Maine for that matter. Frank Gross is famous,

though. He is almost as well-known as Norman Rockwell in Lisbon Falls. At least there are those Lisbon Falls residents who feel that way.

Frank Gross’s work has been or is on display at the town’s Marion T. Morse Community Center. Reproductions of Gross’s work can be found scattered around Lisbon Falls, for example, on a wall of Downeast Energy. The interest in Frank Gross and his work is community-wide.

Frank Gross’s subject matter is reminiscent of a long-gone time period and done with a perspective which most of us can only describe as viewing the past through rose-colored glasses. Perhaps (Continued on page 14)

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Upper Main St. in Lisbon Falls. Item # 101240 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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(Continued from page 12) that explains why so many are involved in the project. Besides the backing of Downeast Energy, Aubuchon Hardware donated paint for the recreation of a Gross mural. As to the mural itself, it looks as though it was straight out of the 1930s. That’s right ― the 1930s, the Depression era.

To call the era of the Depression the best of times may seem surprising or tongue-in-cheek irony. People lost jobs, homes and farms and businesses in the 1930s. They pulled together, too.

It was a time when Americans pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

It was a time when neighbor helped neighbor. At least that’s part of the myth that has come down to the present from that now long ago time. In substance or essence one thinks of the Depression as a time when the institutions and beliefs that we think of as being uniquely American worked.

Frank Gross can be termed a tradi-

tional painter or artist. By that I don’t mean a folk artist, although there are elements of folk art in his work. Traditional artists speak with a public voice.

Their work is representative of a public mind and public aspirations. The traditional artist speaks with a group-defining voice. They do not speak as individuals. There is nothing confessional ― or at least very little ― in their work.

In other words, most anyone recognizes something they know, relate to, and intuitively understand in the work of the traditional artist. This is what is appealing in the work of Norman Rockwell and in the work of Frank Gross.

So what kind of a man is Frank Gross, the painter?

Andrea Marshall, Frank’s daughter, says her father was “a carpenter from the early 60s to late 90s. When he retired he picked up a pencil and that was it.” She said, “Dad went on to paint on anything he could get his hands on.

[Then] he found oil and canvas.”

Most of Gross’s work features scenes in Lisbon and Lisbon Falls.

Gross grew up in Lisbon. Some of his work comes from memory. Andrea Marshall says her father “has painted places he used to go to as a kid that are no longer around.” In other words, Gross’s paintings speak to the past, to tradition.

The requirements imposed on the traditional artist are demanding, so much so that it would not be unfair to use the word fierce to describe these demands. They are demands that militate against an individual style. It is as if society says this is the way things must be. It is the way things must be because the work of the traditional artist belongs to the public, not the individual creator. Frank Gross’s Town Meeting is an example.

Frank Gross’s Town Meeting has many of the same elements of the Nor-

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of this calling at their peril. A thorough grounding in its conventions ― mixing colors, perspective and so on ― is needed to achieve anything meaningful.

The Frank Gross mural which has been recreated by community effort shows the town’s Main Street in the 1930s. It has form. There are many who argue that formless art does not really exist. Why? Painters and artists inevitably create patterns in art that replicate forms of experience. This is the essence of Frank Gross. This is the heart of the work of replicators in Lisbon Falls.

I wish to thank Andrea Marshall, Frank Gross’s daughter, for her contributions to this piece.

man Rockwell painting of the same name. (The Rockwell painting is one of the Four Freedoms.) The subject of the Gross and Rockwell paintings is that most traditional of New England political practices, the right to speak one’s mind at the annual town meeting.

Gross’s painting is much like the Rockwell painting for a reason. It has to be, because the public mind demands that it be. Yet Gross’s painting is different.

You have to study the two together to see this. It’s what makes Gross’s work unique but still within the tradition.

Frank Gross’s work is clearly reminiscent of the 1930s, the time period of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency.

That was the time period of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA put the out-of-work to work. The out-of-work included writers and artists. Some writers collected folk tales and stories told by senior citizens of the period. Some artists painted murals

on and in public buildings. Part of the impetus for WPA work projects of this nature was to create a sense of community and identity. That’s what one sees in Gross’s work. Community and identity are linked to the past. We see this with what is going on in Lisbon Falls today. Recreating the work of Frank Gross, recapturing his traditional message, speaks to and for the community that is Lisbon Falls.

Art doesn’t matter to most people.

That is, most people are not artists and they don’t have any idea why anyone would spend valuable time doing it.

We live in a period dominated by television, the internet, earphones and the like. Culture comes in tiny tidbits, from MTV, CNN and Fox. Yet, amid all this, the Lisbon Falls community is proving that the voice of the artist has a place, that art has a place.

Painting is a traditional art form.

Artists sometimes ignore the traditions

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The Legacy Of Samantha Smith The young ambassador from Manchester

by Charles Francis

F

ew things make teaching more real and rewarding for students and teachers alike than when there is a subject that students can truly relate to. Most definitely the one thing that students tune in to is when one of their own or someone they can relate to does something that serves as a worthy classroom topic. Unfortunately, it is an all too rare happenstance. In the early 1980s it happened twice, however, when Samantha Smith and Christa McAuliffe made the national headlines.

Samantha Smith was the schoolgirl who became famous as an ambassador for peace and traveled to Russia. Christa McAuliffe was the school teacher who was tapped to be the first civilian in space.

At the time Samantha Smith and Christa McAuliffe made national and international headlines, I was a Maine social studies teacher. As news about the two unfolded in the press, I – like any number of teachers – used the events surrounding the two as subject material. Students made scrapbooks, created bulletin boards and posters and did reports on anything and everything that related to them. The fact that Samantha Smith was from Maine and Christa McAuliffe from neighboring New Hampshire made it all the more real as both – besides being easy to pic-

ture in a classroom environment – were local. Then came their deaths in aircraft disasters: Smith in August of 1985 and McAuliffe in January of 1986. Both events were tragedies that were more than significant in Maine, especially that of Samantha Smith. As to how the years have dealt with the memory of the two, that depends upon the individual’s perspective.

Today there is a Samantha Smith monument in Augusta, and Maine has a Samantha Smith Day. However, even in the few short decades since her untimely death much has been forgotten about her and the times in which she lived. As such, this may be appropriate as she is now regarded as a citizen of the world rather than as a resident of a particular community. However, Samantha Smith first made headlines as a schoolgirl from Manchester.

When Samantha Smith was ten years old she wrote a letter to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov asking “…please tell me how you are going not to have a war.” At the time she wrote the letter Smith was in the fifth grade. Samantha and her parents, Arthur and Jane Smith, had moved from Houlton, where she was born in June of 1972, to Manchester in time for Samantha to start third grade.

In April of 1983, the principal of

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Samantha’s school called her to his office. A reporter from United Press International was on the phone wanting to know if she was the Samantha Smith who had written the letter that was in

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the latest edition of Pravda, the official Communist newspaper of the Soviet Union. With that began the series of events which would make Samantha Smith’s name a household word not only in the United States and Russia but all around the world.

Yuri Andropov answered Samantha’s letter. In his letter, the former leader of the KGB said that he desired most of all that there be peace in the world, and especially between the Soviet Union and the United States. He also invited Samantha to visit Russia.

When the contents of Andropov’s letter were made public, the big question was, would she go to the Soviet Union?

She went.

Suddenly the Soviet Union took on new meaning for young people all across America. It became a real place ― one that they wanted to know about.

For the United States government, however, Samantha’s odyssey was a Samantha Reed Smith (June 29, 1972-Aug. 25, 1985)

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(Continued from page 17) less-than-momentous event. Officially, Washington refrained from making comments about Samantha or even recognizing her existence as an unofficial American ambassador. The word in Washington was that the trip was a Communist propaganda ploy. In fact, it was called that in a number of national news magazines. On the whole, though, the American people, especially young people, could have cared less what Washington thought. Samantha’s visit made Russians real people. American kids suddenly learned that there were kids in Russia, not just a lot of communist grownups.

One of the things that my students pointed out to me about Samantha Smith over and over again was that she was a real person. To them there was a difference between her and the child and teenage actors and actresses of the day. Samantha was not someone who played a role both on and off the screen. This was true even when she

went on to host a program about the presidential election or Disney and appeared on shows like Johnny Carson.

In Maine, the fact that Samantha Smith was just another kid seemed especially true when Manchester hosted a parade for her upon her return from Russia. A small town Maine parade was something that everyone was familiar with and seemed the appropriate setting for her.

Just what the future might have held for Samantha Smith we will never know. With the help of a ghost writer, she wrote a book Journey to the Soviet Union. She was cast as Robert Wagner’s daughter in the television show Lime Street. As her parents appeared to be sensible down- to-earth people, it seemed that Samantha had a future as something more than someone who had their “fifteen minutes of fame.” Then came the tragic plane crash.

Samantha Smith and her father were returning from a filming of Lime Street

on August 25, 1985 when the small plane they were on went down while making a landing at the airport in Auburn. Less than two months earlier, Samantha had celebrated her thirteenth birthday.

In 1987 the Maine Legislature declared the first Monday of June Samantha Smith Day. The month was chosen because that was her birth month. The first Monday was chosen because the day was to be recognized in Maine schools. Samantha had been born on June 29.

The Samantha Smith monument in Augusta includes a small bear cub at her feet. The symbol of the cub is doubly fitting as it is both a Russian and Maine symbol.

Today one of the things Christa McAuliffe is remembered for is the statement “I touch the future, I teach.”

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The Town Of Raymond A brief history

by Ernest Knight

T

he town of Raymond had its start with the arrival of its first two settlers in 1770. But its story would start a century earlier when William Raymond of Beverly, Massachusetts, earned public recognition by leadership participation in the 1675 militia attack on the Rhode Island Indian stronghold of Narragansett in King Phillips War. When the resentful Indians allied themselves with the French adventurers in Quebec to harass the English settlements along the Atlantic coast, Captain William Raymond raised a company of 60 men from Beverly to participate with some 2500 other Massachusetts colonists under Sir William Phipps in an attempt to destroy the French fortress. They did attack and

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enter the city, but the arrival of winter and epidemic in the fleet resulted in disaster and great loss of life.

Massachusetts had no money for payment of their services and the promise of gain through captured loot was not realized, leaving the survivors and dependents without compensation until 1735 when a move was made to reward them with grants of land. Townships of land were taken by these companies of soldiers as settlement. Called “Canada Town” due to their origin to differentiate them from other types of land grants, the Beverly Company township was called “Canada #1” or “Beverly-Canada.” Some three dozen other similar companies from seacoast towns north and south of Boston formed a semi-circle of settlements 50

to 100 miles further inland, intended to act as a defensive barrier to discourage further French and Indian depredations.

In 1741 another continuing problem — that between Captain John Mason who, together with Sir Ferdinando Gorges had been granted the “Province of Main” in 1622 and claimed the land north of the Merrimac River — was terminated. With now an acknowledged boundary between Massachusetts and Mason’s province of New Hampshire, Beverly-Canada was found to be in the new Province along with many other invalidated Massachusetts grants. Attempts to come to terms with the New Hampshire Proprietors were unsuccessful and the illegal squatters could only go back to Beverly and other towns and forfeit their rights and hard (Continued on page 21)

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com (Continued from page 19) work. Eventually what had been Beverly-Canada became the present town of Weare, west of Concord, and Manchester, New Hampshire.

By 1760 another attempt was initiated to compensate the deprived “Canada Soldiers” with grants of land in the Province of Maine which belonged to Massachusetts by acquisition from the Gorges heirs. Permitted in 1765 to select from unappropriated land adjacent to a settled town, the Beverly Proprietors, still led by descendants of William Raymond, considered sites and visited one up the Royal River above North Yarmouth but finally selected our present location next to the settled town of Windham in 1767. Many of the other Canada towns similarly evicted from New Hampshire were doing the same, such as Rowley-Canada (Bridgton), Newbury-Canada (Poland), Gorham-Canada of Barnstable (Otisfield), Whitman-Canada (Waterford), New-

ton-Canada (Paris), and Sudbury-Canada (Bethel).

Cumberland County had been formed in 1760 from a part of York County and the land, except for the townships established in 1735 at the time and manner of the Canada towns, was virginal wilderness. A surveyor, George Peirce of Otisfield, was engaged to survey and lot out the town of Raymond for settlement. The Beverly Proprietors drew for their lots again, in four divisions of 64 shares in accordance with the terms of the grant. Taxes or assessments were paid to Massachusetts through the tax collector of Windham and prospective settlers acquired their 100-acre parcels directly from the individual proprietors.

The first arrival of settlers was in 1770 when Joseph Dingley and Dominicus Jordan of Cape Elizabeth came up the Presumpscot River to Sebago Pond, attracted by the proprietors’

offer of a free 100-acre lot to the first claimants on the spot. Resting overnight at the foot of the lake, Dingley stole away early with their canoe to arrive first (at the head of Kettle Cove), leaving Jordan to walk the shore to the mouth of the Jordan River where he set his stake in second place. Arrivals continued with early names of Cash, Davis, Brown, Gay, Staples, Leach, Tinney, Crisp, Smith, Simonds, and others.

In the first rush of settlers to provide shelter on a productive site, assigned lots according to the Peirce survey map were difficult to discover, and more ignored than observed. By 1790 tenancy and lines were in a mess, unsolvable by Peirce or the proprietors. Jordan and Dingley were directed by the proprietors to get a new survey, discovering the Peirce lines if possible, and present the plan by March 17 of 1791, or forfeit their play. This they did on that date, with Nathan Winslow of Portland (Continued on page 22)

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(Continued from page 21) as surveyor, though they failed to note on each lot the nature of the land as directed due to the work being done with snow on the ground. Lines were not cleared for sightings or elevations and generous allowances were made for “swag of chain” so that most 100-acre lots were, and still are, in excess of that size. Many adjustments and changes in both map and sites were necessary before the first deeds could be written and recorded on March 29, 1794, but at last there was some order and legitimacy to the township of Raymondtown, Massachusetts.

Raymond became the 146th incorporated town in the District of Maine, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, on June 21, 1803. Town offices were established to afford self government, but Boston was a long way off and indifferent to the needs of the people. Given this situation, together with the interposition of the State of New Hampshire between the Commonwealth and Dis-

trict, it was not long before there was agitation for Maine statehood, which came in 1820. Growth had been rapid and continuous as settlers arrived, prospering through agriculture and timber.

Raymond was difficult to administer, since it was one of the largest townships in Maine by virtue of the original land request in 1765 being enlarged to offset the large area taken by lakes and ponds that were then of little agricultural use. But in 1829 the town was reduced in area by the taking of that part of Raymond to the west and north of Crooked River, which, together with portions of Otisfield, Harrison, Bridgton, and Sebago, formed the new town of Naples. Then, with the wilderness of Rattlesnake Mountain in the center of town, there was dissatisfaction by those living in the western part due to their insulation from and the greater attention given the eastern part, where town meetings were held in Raymond Village. In 1838, by pe-

tition to the legislature, the western part tried to become a separate town but did not succeed. In 1841 a second try was successful and on March 18, 1841, a new town was named Casco, reducing Raymond to about half in area and population. There were, however, gains when, in 1859, a gore of land between Raymond and Gray, and another between Raymond and Standish Cape, were annexed to Raymond followed by, in 1869, the annexation of Standish Cape itself.

Steady growth and activity in the area continued to a peak in 1860, terminated by a combination of effects of the Civil War followed by the postwar movement of people and business to the newly opened west, leading to a precipitous decline in population. This reached its nadir in 1930, since which time it has resumed its earlier rapid increase and had passed its 1860 peak by 1970 with no indication yet of any tapering off. ❦ Other businesses from this area

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Auburn’s George Merrill The meteorite man

by Charles Francis

F

or close to forty years George Perkins Merrill was the foremost American authority on meteorites. Since Merrill died in 1929 some today might think this a less than notable accomplishment. Possibly this is because we tend to think the serious study of space began with the launching of satellites and putting a man on the moon. This is not the case, however.

The study of meteorites is a branch of geology, more particularly petrography. Meteorites, those fascinating wanderers of outer space, are rocks. They consist of minerals. Petrography is the description and classification of rocks, especially by microscopic analysis.

With the development of petrographic microscopy in the late nineteenth century, geology came of age. This meant the scientific analysis of meteorites did,

too.

If there is anything out of the ordinary in George Merrill’s accomplishments ― and he was much more than an expert on meteorites ― it is to be found in the fact that he accomplished so much given his rather humble beginnings. Those accomplishments include serving as Head Curator of the Department of Geology of the U.S. National Museum. The U.S. National Museum is more familiarly known as the Smithsonian.

George Merrill was the son of an Auburn carpenter. For a time he worked in an Auburn shoe factory attaching lasts to shoes. Then he put himself through the University of Maine, earning a B.S. and a Ph.D. in chemistry.

He then secured a position as an assis-

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tant professor of chemistry at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. None of this background, no matter how remarkable given Merrill’s origins, would seem to prepare for a career in geology. In order to understand how Merrill came eventually to the discipline in which he would

25

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com make a name for himself, we have to look to his antecedents and to Minot.

George Merrill was born in Auburn.

His parents were Lucius and Anne (Jones) Merrill. Though there was nothing in Lucius Merrill’s background or those of his immediate ancestors of a scholarly or academic nature, he was hard-working and respectable. It is to the mother’s family we must turn to discover George Merrill’s academic bent as well as the origin of his true love, geology.

George Merrill’s maternal grandfather was the Reverend Elijah Jones.

Elijah Jones was Congregational minister in Minot for some forty years.

Jones was an educated man, a graduate of Bangor Theological Seminary.

The Reverend had a hobby, one he introduced to his grandson George. The hobby was collecting rocks and minerals. Today we would think of the Reverend Jones as a rock hound.

Today the area which includes Au-

burn and Minot is known as a rock hound’s paradise. Old mines abound there. Mt. Apatite is famous for minerals, especially violet crystals. Recent works on the history of the area’s mining suggest that the region did not catch the attention of geologists until the early 1900s or possibly just a bit earlier.

The story of Mt. Apatite dates to Civil War times at the least, however.

In 1862, near the line separating Auburn and Minot, a young boy happened upon what he thought to be a piece of green glass. The boy ― his name was Lane ― took the glass home. There it was seen by Dr. Luther Hills. Hills recognized the glass as tourmaline. That is one of the stories involving the discovery of Mt. Apatite gems.

Luther Hills was a member of the Boston Society of Natural History.

He collected rocks and minerals from around the world. On several occasions he collected in Maine. Hills wasn’t the

only trained geologist to collect in and around Auburn and Minot in the eighteenth century. Dr. Charles U. Shepard of Amherst College did, too. Shepard collected some of the finest specimens of tourmaline ever found in the area in 1826. Ironically Shepard was the first great American authority on meteorites. He wrote some forty monographs on the subject. George Merrill would write over eighty. Merrill’s papers were, of course, the more inclusive, as he had the use of advances in microscopy.

George Merrill went to the Smithsonian as an assistant curator of geology in 1881. In 1897 he was named Head Curator. He was also a professor of geology at what is now George Washington University from 1893 to 1916.

When Merrill went to the Smithsonian the museum had about 12,000 geology specimens. When Merrill died in 1929, the museum had over 2,000,000.

(Continued on page 26)

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It should be noted that Merrill had nineteen assistants working under him at the time of his passing.

So how was it that George Merrill came to the Smithsonian? One must conclude that from the very first he did not care for the profession of chemistry teacher. Merrill left Wesleyan in 1881 to work for a federal fish census in Washington. There he attracted the attention of the head of the Smithsonian, G. Browne Goode. Goode suggested Merrill go to work for George Hawes, who at the time was the only person working in the Smithsonian’s Department of Geology. Clearly Merrill and Hawes hit it off, for Merrill stayed with the department, assuming Hawes’s position when the latter died.

George Merrill’s rate of publication was prodigious. Altogether he produced some 200 serious works ranging from monographs to books. One of his books is Contributions to the History

of American Geology. He was ‘the’ acknowledged world expert on non-metallic minerals. Then there were the meteorites.

In 1908 Merrill investigated the Canyon Diablo Meteor Crater in Arizona. He collected twenty tons of meteor fragments, the largest weighing 1800 pounds. His conclusion that the bulk of the meteor was still to be found within the crater was at first attacked, then later accepted.

Merrill’s theory regarding meteors striking the earth was also attacked.

He believed the source contemporary meteors to be a single body. The earth, he said, was “passing through and receiving from space a deposit of materials representing one and the same original body, and that body was one of an exceedingly basic nature, not necessarily resembling... materials that have reached us during past and earlier

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stages of earth history.” At a later time he said, “We are bound... to regard meteorites as world matter.” In short, meteorites were not random bits of rock floating about space, but the detritus of formerly complete worlds.

George Merrill was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1922.

Some six years later the Smithsonian published his last paper. It was a posthumous publication. Merrill was working up to the moment of his passing.

The boy who had first begun to develop a love for rocks and minerals at his grandfather’s side in the fields and hills of Auburn and Minot never lost that love. As the grandfather had a calling, so did the grandson.

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John Nevins Andrews’ Horned Demon Poland native instrumental in early years of Adventism

by Charles Francis

O

ne of the cardinal beliefs of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church is that salvation will come only when all sins have been blotted out by Christ and placed upon Satan. At least that is how Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart explain it in their 1989 book Seeking a Sanctuary. The book by Bull and Lockhart is regarded by some authorities as the most informed study of the Advent Church. Whether this is indeed the case ― or not — the idea of Satan as scapegoat in Adventism appears a crucial one, one that would seem to owe its origins to a Poland man named John Nevins Andrews.

John Nevins Andrews was the most

accomplished writer among the early intimates of Ellen Harmon White, the prophetess founder of Adventism. (Intimate is the proper word choice here rather than follower, the reasons why will shortly be made clear.) Andrews was the first Adventist missionary.

Upon the occasion of Andrews’ departure for Europe as missionary, Ellen White is reported as stating “We sent the ablest man in our ranks.”

In describing Andrews as able, Ellen White was probably understating the matter. John Nevins Andrews was a scholar. Scion of an influential and respected Androscoggin River Valley family (an uncle served in Congress), Andrews left school at eleven so that

he could take up serious studies. These studies led to his mastery of seven languages.

In her Young Adventist Pioneers Lynette Frantzen credits Andrews as incorporating Satan into Adventist prophetic tradition. For Andrews, Satan was the two-horned beast of Revelation. The idea of Satan taking on all sins is also found in interpretations of rituals in Leviticus. Several religious scholars, including Harold Bloom, call this particular theological doctrine Satanic atonement.

If one accepts the above interpretations of Adventist theology as being a fair representation of Adventism, then one must view the role played by John (Continued on page 30)

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(Continued from page 29) Nevins Andrews in the early history of the church and his vision of Satan as crucial. Simply put, if there were to have been no Satan as envisioned by Andrews or were Satan to be erased prematurely, there would be no salvation for Adventists.

The Adventist Church as it is today owes much to John Nevins Andrews.

Among other things, he is credited with defining the church’s sabbath. The Adventist sabbath begins at sunset on a Friday and runs to sunset on Saturday.

Andrews had a legal influence on the church. It was Andrews who did the work for the church to acquire standing in the courts. This meant the church was a legal entity entitled to own property. Andrews also established the church’s publishing house. This was Battle Creek Stream Press of Battle Creek, Michigan. More importantly, Andrews was the church’s chief publicist. Andrews wrote well.

Today the general public most often associates the Adventists with medicine and health. Some of this has to do with the fact that Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, long-time proponent of a vegetarian lifestyle and inventor of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, was a prominent Adventist spokesperson. Then there is the fact that Adventists live on the average six years longer than the rest of the general population of North America. This is undoubtedly due to two Adventist admonitions. The first comes in the form of the Seven Principles: good air, good water, nutrition, scheduling, rest, exercise and moderate eating. The second admonition involves abstaining from alcohol, tea, coffee, tobacco, drugs, most meat and even strong spices. Some also know that rock musicians Little Richard and Prince are Adventists. Few, however, are aware of the fact that there was a time when the Advent Church was decidedly an-

ti-American.

John Nevins Andrews identified the the two-horned beast of Revelation, Satan, as the United States. America was viewed as a land of excess. It was decidedly materialistic. And it was militaristic. During the War Between the States, Andrews formulated the Adventist principle that allowed Adventist young men to receive the wartime designation of noncombatant.

All of the above considerations of John Nevins Andrews’ influences on the early Advent Church aside, his greatest contributions to the early survival of Adventism would have to be found in his writing skills. Andrews wrote clearly and succinctly. Ellen Harmon White, the church’s founder, did not.

I have read Ellen White’s The Great Controversy. Rather, I managed to get through The Great Controversy. I started Spirit of Prophecy but bogged down. White’s syntax does not flow. It

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com is convoluted, repetitious, redundant.

Subordinate ideas do not follow from main ideas. Theses are left hanging, unexplained.

My foray into the writings of Ellen White was made when I was in college.

I was working on a paper on the Advent movement. What saved my paper — and my course grade — was John Nevins Andrews’ The History of the Sabbath and the First Day of the Week.

The work is clear, concise and readable.

The same can be said of the Adventist periodical Andrews edited, the Review and Herald.

The fact that John Andrews could use language to his and the Advent Church’s advantage probably explains why Andrews was sent to Europe as the church’s first missionary. That and the fact that Andrews was in on the ground floor of the church’s founding.

John Nevins Andrews, like many other Adventists, started out as a follower of William Miller. He was one of those who waited for the coming of Christ on October 22, 1844. The

Millerite Great Disappointment served as inspiration for Ellen Harmon White or more particularly White’s Testimonies. Acceptance of the Testimonies is necessary for admission to Adventism.

Ellen White is generally described as less than charismatic. She was not a natural leader or speaker as say a Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church. To spread the word of her prophecies, she turned to others, others such as John Nevins Andrews.

John Andrews’ introduction to Adventism may be said to actually predate that of Ellen Harmon White. The immediate influences on Andrews were Hiram Edson and Joseph Bates. Edson had joined William Miller in waiting for Christ’s coming. With the Great Disappointment, Edson realized Miller had gotten things wrong. On that October 22 day in 1842, Christ had not descended to earth to cleanse but merely entered “the second apartment” of the Heavenly Holy of Holies. Because of Joseph Bates, Andrews began celebrating Saturday as the Sabbath. The later

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practice came from the Seventh-day Baptists.

When John Andrews met Ellen White and her husband James White in 1849, he was grounded in Adventism.

Probably because of this the White and Andrews families became intimates.

The Whites would even live with the Andrews family.

John Nevins Andrews left America for Europe in 1874. His two children accompanied him. The children’s mother was deceased.

The Andrews family settled in Basel, Switzerland. There, Andrews founded an Adventist publishing house and a French language newspaper, Les Signes des Tempes (Signs of the Times).

Andrews died nine years after leaving the country he identified with the twohorned beast of Revelation.

Today there is a college in Michigan named for John Nevins Andrews.

In 1993, Andrews University erected a statue of its namesake. It purports to show the missionary and his two children about to leave for Europe.

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Tory Hill’s Reverend Paul Coffin Buxton’s circuit-riding Congregationalist

by Ian MacKinnon

C

ircuit-riding ministers, sometimes called “preachers,” endured hardship while visiting their far-flung flocks in Maine. Often confined to horseback during long rides across rough terrain, these ministers served congregations ranging from a few individuals gathered in a house to organized churches sharing space in rudimentary meeting halls.

And other ministers, such as Rev. Paul Coffin from Buxton, traveled farther afield on so-called missionary “tours” that buttressed religious faith where no formal churches existed.

Born in Massachusetts in January 1737, Coffin graduated from Harvard College before arriving in Maine and

receiving his ordination as a Congregationalist minister in March 1763. He ministered at the Tory Hill Congregational Church in Buxton until his death on June 6, 1821.

During those six decades, Coffin occasionally ventured into the Androscoggin Valley to visit Congregationalists and preach to whomever else would listen. As he crisscrossed western Maine, Coffin recorded pertinent information about late 18th century land, people, economy, and religious fervor.

Among Coffin’s initial trips was a 1768 ride from Buxton (then Narragansett No. 1) to Fryeburg (then Piggwacket or Pequawkett). Decades later

Coffin conducted his first missionary tour, a 1796 journey that left him saddle sore and eager to complete a similar tour the next year. Coffin recorded his first missionary tour as Missionary Tour in Maine, My Travels and Labors for Two Months, With an Account of Sandy River. 1796.

Departing Buxton on June 15, Coffin rode to Windham and reached Raymondton (now Raymond) before noon on June 16. There he “tarried three days” while staying “with Lewis Gay.” Coffin “preached at Capt. Simonton’s … among the Baptists,” who “allowed my doctrine to be good, and me a good man, but not a preacher, as I read my sermons.”

(Continued on page 34)

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(Continued from page 33) Coffin noted that “about sixty families” lived in Raymondton and recorded an economic tidbit; the previous spring, one man “sold his logs” for $1,100.00, then a princely sum.

Coffin rode to Otisfield, “a good township” where the meeting house stood “on a beautiful hill” offering views toward “Poland, Paris, Rustfield.” A wealthy farmer, Benjamin Patch, sheltered Coffin for two days; Patch introduced his guest to “a trout in a spring” that “darts to the top of the water and takes a fly … as soon as you drop them.” Coffin would meet the fascinating fish again.

After hearing “Mr. Stephen Hall, the Methodist” speak in Philips Gore on June 23, Coffin penned “a scathing critique of Methodist doctrine and Mr. Hall’s performance.” Then considered an almost heretical sect by traditional denominations, including the Anglican

Church in Great Britain, Methodism appealed to many country folk, and after Hall preached that day, Coffin responded “at Ezekiel Rich’s” farm, where Hall “now heard me.”

Riding 3 miles along “a road rocky, rooty, muddy and truly bad,” Coffin reached Rustfield Gore (later merged into Norway) on June 23 and preached there the next day. He dined with Henry Rust and his wife, “hospitable and agreeable folks” who “used the settlers kindly.” Coffin duly noted the rich grass before crossing the “Little Androscoggin” to reach Paris on June 25.

There he “preached all day [on June 26] … to about three hundred hearers” who were “very attentive, decently dressed and well behaved.”

Afterwards Coffin rode to Hebron, a “place [that] like all the rest had some Baptists.” On Monday, June 27, he “preached from Hebrews 4:12” and

listened as Methodist Stephen Hall preached “a very lean discourse” based on “Isaiah 40:31.

“He remembered my talk with him [from Philips Gore], I suppose,” Coffin wrote in his journal. Hall “often begged us to be patient under his broken way of speaking.” Coffin then noted three local “fine farms” before leaving Hebron for Buckfield and then Turner, where he arrived on June 29.

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On June 30, Coffin rode to Leeds.

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He would complete his journey that August.

In 1797, the hardy Coffin began his second missionary tour on August 28; he would return home on October 28, as cold autumn rains convinced travelers to finish their journeys before winter settled across the District of Maine. After preaching in Raymondton, he rode to Otisfield on August 31 and “visited faithfully a Mr. Kneeland and a Mrs. Sawyer, both in a dangerous and decaying state of body” (Coffin’s phrase alludes to a particularly nasty disease).

While in Otisfield, Coffin called upon Benjamin Patch and “saw my little trout in a spring, and fed him as my last year’s acquaintance.” On September 2, he reached “Rustfield, alias Norway,” where grasshoppers apparently infested some fields. Then Coffin rode to Paris to preach on Sunday, September 3, 1797.

Coffin attracted fewer listeners than he had 15 months earlier. “At Paris, the Baptists heard their minister Hooper, and the Methodists heard a Stoneman,” he wrote. “So that I had only about one hundred hearers, very attentive and respectful. Paris would make a fine parish, if united.”

On Monday, Coffin “rode alone … through real woods” from 8 a.m. “to four p.m.” while en route to Pennycook (Rumford) … a Plantation of about thirty families, on the Androscoggin, twenty-five miles northwest of Norway. “Pennycook is rich land, lying on both sides of the river, which is wide,” Coffin paid attention to local geography. “Here are the Great Falls, nearly two hundred feet high.”

September 5th saw Coffin reach “Sudbury-Canada, now Bethel,” where “maple sugar was plenteous” and lived “a number of Yorks from Standish.” He

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spent the night “with Deacon Kimball, who has a capital farm … which yield last spring one thousand pounds of [maple] sugar].”

Returning downriver to Pennycook on September 6, Coffin “crossed the river by swimming [his horse] to Holmantown, alias Dixtown (later Dixfield)” before traveling “through good land, well timbered” to Jay and then Canton, where “they have plenty of good watermelons.”

Now Coffin traveled quickly, preaching at “Mr. Morse’s” in Jay in September 8 and then waiting while Morse, “an admirable smith … cured a lame foot of my horse.” Coffin noted that two Baptist preachers and a Methodist preacher lived in Jay; by the late 19th century, some Androscoggin Valley towns were becoming wellchurched.

In 1798, Coffin departed Buxton (Continued on page 36)

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(Continued from page 35) on August 13 to undertake a third missionary tour in western Maine. Readers sense the aging Coffin growing weary as he rode this year; his frequent stops in places like Windham, Raymondton, Otisfield, Philips Gore, and Paris often saw him dispensing books and instructions to specific families. Fewer people gathered to hear him preach; the disappointment lies behind his journal entries.

Coffin “preached to a small audience” in Raymondton on August 15 and visited seven families in Otisfield the next day. This time he made no notation about the spring-living trout; perhaps the fish had responded to one too many “flies” earlier that year.

Coffin followed a familiar route that took him to Paris, Hebron, Buckfield, and Buckfield Mills, where on August

25 he opined in his journal that “all preaching is thought by many here to be needless; and the ‘Age of Reason’ is too sweet to the people. Oh! The bad effects of lay teachers of several sorts and of deistical writers” caused “the low state of religion in this place.”

On Sunday, August 26, Coffin “preached to about six score people” as rain fell in Buckfield; “I lost about half of my hearers I believe by the rain,” he wrote that night. The next day he rode “through part of Hartford” and to Livermore, where he visited with different families and noticed more grasshoppers cleaning out local grain crops. In Livermore lived two Baptist ministers “and one Methodistical preacher,” men described by Coffin as “superstitious, ignorant and predestinarian” in their religious beliefs.

Such criticism, plus the isolated praise that Coffin heaped upon specific families — he referred to one Jay family as “Christians of the old stamp; and steady, good folks” ― suggest that many folks in western Maine were becoming Baptists and Methodists, denominations not respectful in Coffin’s eyes. Yet he continued to minister to Christians in Buxton and “up county” along the Androscoggin River and its tributaries. The 63-year-old Coffin would complete yet a fourth missionary tour in 1800 ― and he would serve his Buxton congregation for another 21 years.

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The Fire Of 1947 Old-time firefighting heroics

by Franklin Irish

I

t had been a long dry summer. Now it was October and the leaves were about all off. I was helping build a house in Gorham. In the forenoon, I can’t remember the exact date, I saw smoke coming up over Hollis way.

It kept increasing, and at noon I quit working and went over, since I knew my sister was home alone.

I got to her place and the fire wasn’t too far away, so I went down to the telephone office and told them I wanted to call the Sebago Fire Department. She had orders to only accept necessary calls, so I said that I was calling for more help and she then put the call through.

My niece by marriage answered – she was all upset. She said they had gone to Denmark to fight the fire. I took my sister to a neighbor’s and went home.

One of my other nephews pulled in, so

JT

can’t burn water.” So we put the nozzle on spray and wet each other down. Then we went after the fire. We put it down and were beginning to go over the ridge. We yelled for more pressure and got a return out hose. The chief and driver saw the fire coming, and although they had plenty of water, they panicked and pulled out, dragging 1000 feet of hose. They wore the little knobs off the hose end, and, of course, the hose was ruined. We were left on the hill with no transportation. We ran down to the road and were going for the river when we saw a car coming. It was my nephew, Gardner. He had been back to pack up the portable pump, which they had left at Dunn’s farm. He had a ‘40 Ford Tudor. He opened the right hand door and tipped the seat ahead.

Well, if you can imagine four men diving through the door at once, it was done. He (Continued on page 40)

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(Continued from page 38) slammed the door and took off through the fire, which was jumping the road by then. You would have burned your hand if you had touched the glass. Why the old car didn’t blow is still a mystery to me. We followed the scratch marks to Moose Pond and found the truck at Moose Pond Dam. I have lost my temper several times, but I never was so mad in my life. I said, “What in Hell are you doing down here?” He replied, “Oh, we went to save Denmark.” I said, “How about the people in between? I want the portable and all the hose you have.” Roy Wood was there so we went back up to the store where the Denmark crew had gathered. It’s a wonder that someone didn’t poke me, but I guess one look and they thought better of it. I said that we were going back to the meadow brook and try to stop that fire. Then I really laid it on. I said, “If you yellow bastards have got the guts, we can use your help.” No one said a word but they filed out and

followed us back.

We set the pumper up on the brook and started in and kept adding hose until we had it all out. I told the Denmark selectman who was there to take a crew with Indian tanks since it was only about 50 feet. We couldn’t reach with our hose, but they could get it with tanks. We pulled out and went home for the rest of the night. The rest didn’t try to put it out, so they had to fight a half mile nearer the town to get it. That was the story all through the fire – no head pressure.

In the morning, I drove over to Brownfield and saw what was left of it.

A few scorched houses were still standing where the owners had the guts to stay and fight. The Mechanic Falls Fire Department came in and drove into the village and cut the fire in two and saved what was left. They found a portable pump hosed up and running. No one was around. That’s what panic can do.

I saw a sight I’ll never forget ― a

poor cow was trying to find something to eat and was lowing steady since she was so hungry. There was also a pig rooting for breakfast, and all it could find was ashes. I went back and joined the fire department and we went down on the Bull Ring Road and more or less patrolled. The Mechanic Falls boys came over to East Hiram. We drove up back of the village and found an old field burning. They had water in their truck, so they drove around that field and put the fire out. It was still going in the woods. Our crew fought it all night with shovels and Indian tanks.

The next morning, we drove to the river, which I think was called Goose Cove. Anyway, we put out the smoldering stumps and roots. We set up the portable run. Our hose was all out – maybe 1200 feet. I guess everyone knows the longer or higher the line, the less pressure you get. At first all we could really do was fill the Indian tanks, and the boys carried them over the top and wet

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that all down. Understand, this was on Sebago’s side of the river, so we really were concerned. We probably pumped up there for a half hour or so. Then we got our watches together, and ten minutes to a place, Lester would shut it off.

Four of us would jump on the hose, take out a length and take off the nozzle. I think we took three minutes to change and then he started up again. It worked real well. One crew was rolling up the hose and taking it to the truck. As we got nearer we covered more ground as the pressure built up. We finally filled two tank trucks with 500- gallon tanks chained on.

We had a 100 - gallon per minute pumper, and it would fill one of the tanks in five minutes. We met the night shift and they were some relieved to see us. The chief had called to see where we were and some guy said we were up at Goose Cove surrounded by fire.

He routed out the crew and came over to get us out. I forgave him for leav-

ing us stranded. Anyway, we set up a 1000-gallon tank that had at least a 3-foot platform the length of it. We had no adapters at the time. So we had to pump out of the top. It was a heck of a job to get the pump primed, but after we got it going it did a nice job.

We patrolled on the Cornish side of the Saco. Someone in Cornish or West Baldwin came too, and realized a backfire was the answer. They bulldozed a road ahead of the fire, put men in and got it going. The trouble was, it was so dry, it burned for days in stumps and roots. The wind came up, and from someplace, pieces as big as your hand began to fly across the road almost out of sight. We pulled up and yelled for them to get the hose beyond the fire, if we had enough. We just did have enough. Well, we got the pumper going and we made short work of it. It was lucky we found it when we did, or we would have been fighting the blaze in West Baldwin. We put several layers of

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water on it and put it out. After that, we patrolled the river road for a week or so. All the Hiram firemen went back to work. We had a meeting, and decided Hiram could watch their own fire. So we went home, but we patrolled the town until we had rain.

My nephew was a pilot who lived in Ohio. He borrowed a little two-seater and flew to East Baldwin where a friend had a strip since he had a plane.

He took me up to where we started patrolling. The fire was still burning across the railroad tracks up on Mt. Cutler and also on the high pineals at Hiram Falls. We doused all we could reach as we went along.

Now it’s over 50 years later, and there is not much growing now in some places. I don’t think we will ever see anything like that again. At least we have got some organization now.

Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

42

Old Uncle Solon The beloved storyteller from Turner

I

by Charles Francis

f you have ever attended one of those evenings of entertainment designed to recreate the Maine of a hundred or 150 years ago you may have heard the name Solon Chase. What I am talking about here is the sort of evening where a speaker, one prone to humorous exaggeration, talks about the “real” Maine.

This is the sort of presentation where you hear of figures referred to as Uncle so-and-so or Aunt thus-and-such. Most often Uncle and Aunt are fictive creations, some sort of imaginative fancy along the lines of Bert of Bert and I fame. Every so often, though, there is a real person involved, as with the case of Solon Chase. Just about everybody knew him as Uncle Solon from Chase’s

Mills up there in Androscoggin County.

With the passage of time he came to be known as Old Uncle Solon.

Uncle Solon was a folksy sort, an earthy type. He was a farmer. He also had a way with words. Put these characteristics together and you have the beginnings of a folk hero and a storyteller. Uncle Solon told tales. The tales made him famous and they made him a political power, not only in Maine, but in the country as a whole.

Uncle Solon’s most famous story was that of Them Steers. The steers Uncle Solon talked about were ones he wanted to sell for a goodly sum. The story of Them Steers got to be se well known that Solon Chase’s name came to be anathema to none other than

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James G. Blaine, the most powerful political figure in Maine and perhaps in the whole of the country back in the 1870s. Uncle Solon used the story of Them Steers to push the Greenback Party firmly into the consciousness of the American voter.

To appreciate why Uncle Solon was a burr under the saddle of James G. Blaine’s particular horse, you must understand Blaine was riding high, so high that he felt Maine voters would do anything he wanted. Blaine’s goal was, of course, the White House. In line with this goal Blaine spent a good deal of time touring the country. He was so sure of controlling his home state that he felt secure in leaving its politics elsewhere. Then one day he looked to

43

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com home and found that instead of electing his handpicked candidates, Maine voters were electing Greenbackers. That happenstance had a lot to do with Uncle Solon.

Solon Chase wanted soft currency.

He wanted the government to print Greenbacks, currency with no hard backing. This was just the opposite of what James G. Blaine stood for. Uncle Solon said “Inflate the currency, and you raise the price of my steers and at the same time pay the public debt.”

Them Steers gave Chase a prominent place in politics for half a decade. In 1878 the Greenbackers elected fifteen candidates to the House of Representatives. Two of them were from Maine.

James G. Blaine hated it! It was Uncle Solon’s fault!

In some ways you can compare James G. Blaine and Solon Chase. For the most part, you can’t, though. It is more a matter of contrast. Blaine was elegant. You couldn’t find a wrinkle or

crease out of place in his attire. Uncle Solon was a farmer. He looked the part.

There was nothing of the haberdashery about his style of dress. He looked as if he had slept in his clothes, maybe for a week or more.

James G. Blaine was an eloquent speaker. He spoke with rolling sentences replete with coordination and subordination. Blaine has been compared to Daniel Webster. His sonorous verbiage would reach the furthest corners of a great hall. Uncle Solon’s voice has been described as high, even, at times, squeaky. Yet, he, too, was possessed of certain eloquence. It was eloquence of a homespun variety, of a man of the people.

Bertrand Russell has remarked that “to acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of democracy.”

Until Uncle Solon came along, Maine had been a Republican preserve with James G. Blaine the warden. Un-

cle Solon showed Maine voters had acquired certain immunity to Blaine’s eloquence. Eventually they would become immune to his, but Blaine would be dead by the time that happened.

Solon Chase was born at Chase’s Mills, Turner, in 1822. He attended the neighborhood school and Gorham Seminary. He was admitted to West Point and spent three weeks as a student there before being declared physically unfit to continue. From that time on he spent most of his time on the Chase family farm in Chase’s Mills. He was a Whig and a Republican before becoming the driving force behind and in front of the Greenback movement. He served two terms in the Maine House and was appointed collector of internal revenue, an appointment the United States Senate did not confirm. In 1929 Uncle Solon’s portrait was presented to the state for display in the State House, not because Chase had been a member of the Maine House but because he was (Continued on page 44)

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(Continued from page 43) viewed as the founder of the American Greenback Party. The latter assertion comes from the Chase family sources.

The same sources describe Uncle Solon as “a strong man in argument; [but possessing] a mind which was peculiar.”

He is also “one of the most engaging, humorous, logical and convincing public speakers ever reared in America. He [was possessed] of [the] quaint mannerism of the pioneer Yankee; a rough and ready repartee; a winsome and engaging manner; keen logical mind; mastery of facts and figures; personnel magnetism of such powerful force as to hold audiences spellbound for hours; masterful and magnetic kindness and humanism; sincere belief in his dogma; and was able to debate his subject with the masters of the times and not come away second best.” The latter description is, of course, prejudiced, coming as it does from the Chase family. Other – and not only James G. Blaine – held

Uncle Solon in less high esteem.

In 1882 Uncle Solon ran for Maine’s highest office on the Greenback ticket.

He didn’t do well. He garnered 1324 votes out of the 138,478 cast.

In the three previous gubernatorial elections Greenbackers had joined with Democrats to support a mutually acceptable candidate. It was a powerful amalgamation, one with definite clout.

It led to Alonzo Garcelon and Daniel Davis becoming Maine governors. In 1882 Uncle Solon refused to work the Democrats. He also refused to work with the majority of his own party. An out-of-state newspaper described the situation in the Maine Greenback Party in the following manner: Out of 465 members only 72 could be found to follow Solon Chase…., but those 72 can make as much grief as if they were half of the Convention, for a few votes for their straight-out ticket will spoil the small majority which the

combined opposition appears to have.

Solon Chase is the most ‘infli rutin!’ man in the Greenback party in Maine.

He is the Greenback party in Maine.

He is also a pig-headed old soft money fanatic, and if his 72 followers should desert him he would organize himself into a Convention and nominate a straight-out Electoral ticket…

Uncle Solon comes off as cantankerous and curmudgeonly in the above account. Maybe it was a trait that ran in the family.

Uncle Solon’s father was named Isaac as was his grandfather. The elder Isaac Chase married a half Indian girl by the name of Lois Smith. Uncle Solon used to say that Lois was a Cape Cod Indian. Lois was born in Windham, though. Saying Lois was from Cape Cod went along with the story that Solon used to tell of his grandparents. He called the tale The Cape Cod Pot. Uncle Solon set the tale of Cape

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Cod Pot in Buckfield. According to the story, Grandmother Lois had just one kitchen utensil when she and Isaac set up housing in the wilderness in the late 1700s. That utensil was a pot that came from Cape Cod. Whenever Lois asked for more cookware, Isaac would say “Haven’t you got the Cape Cod pot?”As Uncle Solon put it, one day his grandmother “got her Indian blood up and she rose up without a word and took the pot and set it bottom up on the chopping block and smashed it with the axe into a thousand pieces.” Grandfather Isaac saw to it that Lois had all the utensils he needed from that time on.

That’s the kind of tale today’s storytellers tell of Old Uncle Solon. It’s the kind of story Uncle Solon used to tell to push principles of the Greenback Party. Just maybe the tale of The Cape Cod Pot tells us a bit about Old Uncle Solon’s true nature. Or maybe the appeal lies in how we think we once were or how we like to think of us being once more.

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46

Still Stands The Schoolhouse

By The Road The little schoolhouse at Norlands

by Billie Gammon

A

little one-room schoolhouse sits at the Norlands crossroads.

Its floor is worn; its desks are stained with ink. It is often cold and drafty and a mouse lives in the woodshed.

Dozens of such schoolhouses still stand at Maine country crossroads bearing mute testimony to a vanished educational system. Many of these buildings now serve as dwellings, garages, storage facilities, and museums.

Others, in various stages of decay, await their ultimate end. One, however, still serves the purpose for which it was built in 1823. The Norlands District #7 school in Livermore, Maine, which is

still a genuine classroom where children of assorted age daily experience education as it was in the 1840s under the district system.

Built at a cost of six hundred dollars, the Norlands school was located in the geographical center of district #7 at the junction of two roads. As was the common practice it was placed so near the road that the children could reach out the rear window and almost touch the vehicles passing by. It replaced an earlier school on the same site – a little scrap of land from the farm of Dr. Cyrus Hamlin. Like all such country schools it had no playground, nor was one needed. Children could roam the

surrounding fields and woods, or play in Blacker House Brook during the long nooning.

Hand-hewn timbers salvaged from earlier buildings formed the frame of the little schoolhouse. Clapboards finished the exterior. The east and west walls had three windows each; the rear wall two. The front, facing south, had two doors and, high above them in the gable, one window was placed to light the attic. Rising from the cedar shingled roof was a stubby little chimney supported by a flat rock laid across the ceiling beams. Photos taken sixty years ago show a jaunty little cupola astride the ridge pole, but it is doubtful if this was

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com part of the simple original construction, and it has long since disappeared.

Nearby stood an outbuilding, a woodshed, built of fragments from the former schoolhouse. No record exists of any conveniences such as privies, and it is possible that conditions in Maine paralleled those in New York state where, in 1840, “not more than one school in twenty had appendage.”

William G. Crosby, Secretary of the Board of Education of the State of Maine in 1848, expressed quite delicately the deficiency of school privies: “I have had frequent occasion in my travels through the State to express my surprise at the utter destitution of the conveniences which the necessities of nature and common decency demand.”

Originally the schoolhouse interior was a single room. A partition across the south end, forming two entries for hanging wraps, appears to have been added later. Bare plaster walls above board wainscoting were completely un-

adorned – no pictures, no flag, no wall clock. Only one small wooden blackboard broke the expanse of unpainted plaster. Wall benches extended around three sides of the room, providing seating for twice the number seated at the double desks.

The teacher’s desk, a primitive lifttop contraption, boasted a sturdy lock.

Here the master’s fire list, hand bell, and books were secure from unruly scholars arriving earlier than he.

An “open stove,” no doubt, heated the building at first. Replacing it was a “close stove” with a long pipe so that all the heat from the smoke could be used to heat the building. Although such stoves were said to cause “headache and vertigo,” there were used in the interest of economy.

For sixty years the children of the district trooped to this simple structure until the little community surrounding it faded away. As early as November 1871 the decrease in number of schol-

ars was humorously noted by Samuel B. Washburn in the Washburn Journal: “There is no school in the district until toward spring and only a short one then as there are but fifteen scholars in the district. This country must be early worn out. They can’t even raise children and they will grow where you can’t raise white beans or toadstools.”

But now, after a long recess of ninety years the children have returned.

In October 1974 the little building roused from its long rest to receive a new name and a new purpose. It became “The Little Time Machine,” with power to give those who enter its door a trip into the past. Its new purpose is to help children establish an identity with the past and develop an appreciation of the present. And the children returned, hundreds and hundreds of them! All local grade school pupils came to take “The Little Time Machine Journey I” back to 1842 to experience a typical (Continued on page 48)

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(Continued from page 47) day of school.

A testing program proved that significant learning had taken place and produced some interesting revelations into the children’s thoughts.

For example, fifth grade pupils said: (1) “In the 1840s the textbooks weren’t very good but the children behaved very well. In the 1970s the textbooks are very good but the children behave worse.”

(2) “I liked the old school because there was no clock to watch the time go slow.”

(3) “The schoolmaster told us what to do in the textbooks. We were expected to behave at all times. I liked it.”

Primary age children were entranced with the facilities at the old school. Everything fascinated them: from the quill pens to the two EAP’s (Early American Plumbing) half hidden in the bushes

behind the school.

However, across the whole age range, discipline was the one factor mentioned more than any other. The strict, formal atmosphere of the 1840 classroom made a tremendous impression upon all ages.

Usually a male teacher taught during the winter term, receiving a salary of $15.50 per month. This led Alonzo Potter, a noted educator, in 1842 to advocate having schools “taught by a female throughout the year as it would be a cheap system. The best qualified female teachers would be glad to accept what is paid to men of the poorest quality.”

Perhaps Potter’s advice was taken, for a year later these lines were penned

by Israel Washburn, “Charles is at home, calculated to have kept school, has not got one. Schoolmasters are as thick as hail this winter.”

On the subject of wages an 1843 female teacher wrote, “For aught I know I may as well do nothing the compensation is so meager.”

Though the pay was small much was expected of the teacher. He was, first of all to be a paragon of virtue!

“The teacher should be a true patriot and a Christian, judicious and learned, upright in morals, temperate, patient, just, possessing strength to govern and power to lead. He should be a person of profound learning and deep scientific attainments,” according to an 1847 report of the Committee on Qualifications and Education of Teachers.

The school day was long, usually nine a.m. to four p.m. with an hour’s “nooning.” Of necessity the present re-created version is much shorter. Now, as in the 1840s, the morning is taken up with reading, writing, and arithmetic.

All written work is done with slate pen-

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cils and slates, or with goose quill pens and homemade copybooks, hand sewn with brown paper covers.

In Livermore, in the early 1840s, there were dozens of country children learning the three R’s in the twenty-three district schools of the township. Considered of equal importance were the three main subjects – Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, although some local school committeemen expressed the opinion that for boy arithmetic was of primary importance.

In general, each school year was made up of two terms. The short summer term of six to eight weeks was attended by younger children and older ones not needed at home for farm work.

The winter term of eight to twelve weeks usually had a larger attendance of older scholars. Sometimes when the number of scholars was too great for the small schoolhouse attendance was

limited to those who could read in two syllables.

Children in the ungraded one-room district schools were grouped according to ability. It was not uncommon for a boy to be reading from the first book, while doing arithmetic from the second book. The reverse was often true of girls. Writers of textbooks generally divided a subject into three parts, each part making up a book, with the result that three books were all a pupil needed for each subject for his entire education in the district school.

Textbooks were not provided by the town; each scholar had to purchase his own. Smith’s Geography with an accompanying atlas could be bought for 67 cents at Squire Haines’ store at New Boston (Haines Corner, East Livermore). Noah Webster’s Speller sold for 21 cents. Readers ranged in price from 34 cents to 50 cents and goose quills for

Lakepoint

_____________ ____________

making pens sold from 10 to 21 cents a bunch. Slates were priced at 20 cents.

Ink was made from purchase ink powder, or, more frequently, homemade from the bark of swamp maples which produced a faded brown ink which smelled deliciously like maple syrup. The husks of butternuts were also used to produce a brown ink. Such inks permanently stained clothing and were difficult to The little one-room schoolhouse still sits at the Norlands crossroads. Its floor is worn; its desks are stained with ink.

It is often cold and drafty and a mouse lives in the woodshed, but as long as the children come, expectant and eager, the little school will fulfill the purpose for which it was created more than one hundred and fifty years ago.

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Locals husking corn in Farmington. Item # 100745 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

52

Rumford’s Moontide Spring A phenomenom of nature successfully marketed

by Charles Francis

E

very July since 1996 Rumford has held one of the most unique celebrations anywhere in the world. In fact, there is only one other place in the world where a similar celebration could be held, in Africa. The annual celebration is the Moontide Water Festival.

The Moontide Water Festival pays tribute to – of all things – a mineral spring. That spring is Moontide Spring.

Moontide Spring bubbles from the earth’s depths on the western slope of Mt. Zircon two and one-half miles from Rumford and 1000 feet above sea level. The spring’s pure water boils up through fine white sand at a rate of forty-two gallons a minute – except during

a full moon. As the moon waxes and draws closer to the earth and the tides in the Gulf of Maine rise their highest, Moontide Spring increases its flow to sixty gallons a minute. Only one other spring in the world, a spring in Africa, exhibits the same phenomenon.

Moontide Spring has played a role in the history of Rumford and of the northeast. In recognition of this, Rumford hosts the Moontide Water Festival.

The festival draws thousands of people every year. They come for events like the carnival, the road races, the fishing tournament, the classic car show and the fireworks, all of which are part of the festival. There is entertainment, lo-

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cal groups of all sorts and stripes are involved, and there is even a Moontide Water Festival Cookbook.

There are any number of legends and stories connected with Moontide Spring. One has it that a Pennacook Indian sagamore who was suffering from kidney stones drank from the spring and was cured of his painful malady. There was a catch to the cure, however. He had to keep drinking from the spring.

Whether or not there is any truth to the above legend, the Pennacooks and other Indians living in the northeast attached some sacred or spiritual significance to what would become known as Moontide Spring. Because of this, the (Continued on page 54)

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Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

54

(Continued from page 52) first white settlers of the area found a clearly established trail leading up the side of Mt. Zircon to the spring.

The first whites to drink from the Moontide Spring were probably Jonathan Keys and his son Francis. The Keys settled at the foot of Pennacook Falls in 1782. Keys was one of eightyfour Concord, New Hampshire men granted the territory around the falls when a new state line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire deprived them of their rights in New Hampshire.

The first settlers called their little town Pennacook after Pennacook, New Hampshire, the original home of the Pennacook Indians. (In 1800, when the town was incorporated, its name was changed to Rumford to honor Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.)

The early residents of Rumford quickly came to value the water of

Moontide Spring as well as the uniqueness of its flow. Within a short period of time the Indian’s trail up Mt. Zircon was a well-worn path tramped out by the heavy boots of those who came seeking a drink of the pure, slightly alkaline spring water or to search for the brown mineral which, when heated and polished, turned to the brilliant bluewhite stone that gave the mountain its name.

In the 1890s Rumford became the richest and most populous town in Androscoggin County. The chief reason for this growth was 180-foot Pennacook Falls with its potential to generate more power than the three largest manufacturing cities of New England put together. Rumford’s first paper mill opened in 1893. That same year the Portland and Rumford Falls Railroad began operation. In succeeding years

both Oxford and International Paper opened mills, and two more railroads linked Rumford with the rest of New England. By the turn of the century hundreds of tons of freight was moving to and from Rumford daily, and the town had miles of streets with electric lights, sewers, churches, schools and stores.

It was during this period of Rumford’s expansion that the Mt. Zircon Water Company was established to market the water of Moontide Spring and build the resort which became famous to those in search of health and recreation. The success of the Mt. Zircon Water Company came largely through the efforts of three men: James Kerr, Fred Weeks and Matthew McCarthy.

James Kerr played a significant role in the development of the Mt. Zircon Water Company. Kerr, who was born in Nova Scotia in 1874, typifies the

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growth and entrepreneurial spirit of Rumford. At the age of twelve he went to sea as a cabin boy. At eighteen he was master of his own ship. But he saw greater opportunities on land, specifically in the rapidly growing town by Pennacook Falls. In 1897 Kerr opened a general contracting business in Rumford. He built roads, the buildings for the Oxford Paper Company, the Hancock and Sullivan Bridge in Hancock County, a five-story garage in Haverhill, Massachusetts, theaters and dams, and he served as vice president, general manager and director of the Mt. Zircon Spring Water Company.

Fred Weeks, sales manager for the Mt. Zircon Water Company, was a typical hardworking Mainer always ready to seize opportunity when it presented itself. Weeks was born in Canton in 1875. From 1890 to 1898 he worked

in the lumber camps of Maine’s north woods. For the next two years he worked on the Boston and Lynn Railroad. Returning to Maine, he opened a real estate office in Oxford County, served as a deputy sheriff and as Mexico Road Commissioner. In 1921 he joined the Mt. Zircon Spring Water Company. He was also president of the Maine Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages Association.

Matthew McCarthy, treasurer of the Mt. Zircon Spring Water Company, was born in Glenburn in 1874. In 1900 he opened a law office in Bangor.

Two years later he moved his practice to Lewiston, and in 1905 to booming Rumford.

Under the guidance of Kerr, Weeks and McCarthy, the water of Moontide Spring became famous throughout New England as a cure for all the diseases of

the digestive tract, kidneys and bladder.

The company was so successful that it opened offices in Boston. In addition, through the company’s advertising, thousands of tourists were attracted to the Rumford area to visit the mysterious spring whose water flow increased with a full moon.

While the Mt. Zircon Water Company is now but a footnote in the history of Rumford and the company’s resort burned, Moontide Spring is still bringing visitors to Rumford for the Moontide Water Festival.

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

Est. 1996

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207-933-4805

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Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

56

A Migration To Oxford County A history of the Richards family

by Rita Richards Furbish & John Furbish

O

fficially, our Richards family line relocated to Maine in 1827. The patriarch, Miller Tristram Richards, had spent his entire life in southeastern New Hampshire (except for a brief period helping guard West Point, N.Y., during the revolution) where he raised one daughter and eight sons. Tristram and his wife Abigail moved from Strafford County, New Hampshire while in their sixties, going in 1827 to live with their children, who themselves earlier had migrated to the adjacent county in southwest Maine.

While the couple was still actively parenting, several of their oldest children had helped populate a growing Oxford County, Maine. The oldest child Rhoda settled in Hebron before

1811, and oldest son Benjamin moved to the town of Oxford proper before 1819. John (who changed his last name to Lee after joining a religious cult) lived in Oxford from before its incorporation, and Stephen was cited as being there from 1828-30. The second youngest Samuel moved to Oxford just before youngest Isaac brought his parents family to fill the wild lands in Penobscot County. In a growing country where land was so readily available, a young person’s conduct did not have to include Old World, traditional responsibilities. Land was so plentiful along the frontiers that it could have been easiest for the children to move on, move

away, and make their own way. Thus, for Isaac, Samuel, and the others not to leave their parents behind, reflects on the character of both generations, parents and children.

The older Richards couple moved in with Samuel, who then married Mary Lane of South Oxford on January 16, 1829. This extended family settled in Paris, the shiretown of Oxford County, where the younger couple had two children: a new Tristram in 1830 and Samuel Jr. in 1832. Very probably as they began family life, Samuel and Mary had continued in the old subsistence style of making their own woolens. But the times were changing, and (Continued on page 58)

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~ Gravestone of Tristram Richards (submitted by Rita Richards Furbish) ~

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Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

58

(Continued from page 56) water-powered carding machines had been introduced around Oxford at the turn of the century. So the young Richards couple would have continued handling the shears and spinning wheels, but Tristram and Abigail would have been spared the toil and tedium of carding wool. In an area noted for its orchards, Samuel Richards advanced from basic farming to become a gardener. He would go on to become well-todo, while his parents were living with him, so they would have seen the good life materially in their final decades.

And also, they would have had the enjoyment and excitement of having a growing family nearby. Tristram died in 1845 at 84, and Abigail survived until 1856 (91 years of age). They were

buried side-by-side in Oxford.

Located inland in southwest Maine, the frontier town of Oxford was about 60 miles from Middleton, where Tristram had moved (and married Abigail) after the Revolution. A forested area within the Androscoggin River valley, Oxford’s lands were good, both for pasturage and for growing crops. The town was first settled in the 1760s by pioneers from Concord, New Hampshire. An early settler-proprietor was Andrew Craigie, the revolutionary army’s Apothecary General. Intently ambitious, Craigie encouraged both agriculture and manufacture on his lands.

He dammed Lake Thompson and built grist and lumber mills. Making woolen products in a mill, he dreamed of

manufacturing cotton (which did not happen there until 1825). Others built mills for making shingles, staves, sashes and blinds, pegs, and shovel handles.

As a retired miller, Tristram would have enjoyed keeping track of these developments. Maine became a State in 1820, and the town of Oxford (taking its name from the county) was divided from the western section of the town of Hebron in 1829.

The town of Paris, where the older Richards ended up living for their final decades, was located just north of Oxford. First settled in 1779, it was incorporated in 1793. Some manufacturing resulted from the Little Androscoggin River flowing through the town. With soils that were superior for pastur-

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59

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age and hay crops, it was one of the best stock and dairy towns in Maine.

Snow’s Falls and the mountains on the east were among the most picturesque parts of Paris, Maine.

The migrations of Rhoda and Benjamin Richards helped the district of Maine grow by one-third from 1810 to 1820. In the next decade, more Richards children and their parents were included among the 101,000 new people who moved into Maine, and the new state once again grew by a third to reach a population of 399,000 in 1830.

Much like the earlier ocean-crossing of the first John Richards, or his helping to pioneer Rochester, New Hampshire in the eighteenth century, much of this new migration was a selective process

wherein only the most vigorous and venturesome souls, like Tristam’s children, forsook lower New England, and moved to the northeast in order to help build Maine.

Following Frederick Jackson Turner and his “frontier thesis,” Willard Cochrane and other historians would place the Richards children’s and their parent’s relocations to the northeast in the context of a “western movement” in the early 19th century, as young and youthful people abandoned land-scarce communities in the hilly, thin land east of the Appalachian Mountains, and moved to the rich farmland in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys (then the northwestern United States). This “Ohio Fever” spilled over, they say, and sent

folks from Massachusetts and New Hampshire into Vermont and Maine.

In his History of Maine Agriculture 1604-1860, Day described how these “builders of Maine” were primarily from English and Scots-Irish ancestry, mostly Protestant, sharing manners and customs, and manifesting the frontier characteristics of courage, determination, self-reliance, independent thought and action, and that resourcefulness known as “Yankee ingenuity.”

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

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Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

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Bethel’s Margaret Joy Tibbetts The lady was a diplomat

by Charles Francis

M

argaret Joy Tibbetts passed away on April 25, 2010. For those who tend to consider death as something more than the end of a life — and I do — Tibbett’s passing speaks to a loss of connections, connections to things once deemed important and significant, but now simply viewed as past and distant.

Margaret Joy Tibbetts loved western Maine, especially her hometown of Bethel. She loved the mountains and valleys of western Maine, the beauty and serenity of the region. She valued the history and culture of the region and that of Bethel. Being highly educated, Tibbetts did all that she could to

pass that appreciation to contemporaries and on to future generations. She did this through writing about things now lost, or lost but for her memories and research. Tibbets was more than a Mainer, though. For a time she moved in circles, far from her hometown and native Maine.

Margaret Joy Tibbetts had a career as a representative of the United States.

That career took her to the Foreign Service, the Office of Strategic Services, the Department of State in Washington, and abroad. She was stationed in the American Embassy in London, and the American Embassy in Brussels.

She worked in the Bureau of Europe-

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an and Canadian Affairs, and as officer-in-charge of the consulate general at Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo.

She was the ranking woman Foreign Service Officer in charge of negotiation for military bases and atomic weapons agreements. She was American Ambassador to Norway. It was while Tibbetts was in Norway that she took part in what some call, or consider, the defining act of the twentieth century.

As U.S. Ambassador to Norway, Tibbetts escorted the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and his family when Reverend King received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1964. That recognition is regarded by some historians

63

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com and theologians as the symbolic high water mark of nonviolence. In a century which included such horrors as the Holocaust, religious violence in Northern Ireland, and Gandhi’s failure to bring about the peaceful settlement of religious tensions between Indian and Pakistan, Reverend King’s successful utilization of the Sermon on the Mount in the Equal Rights Movement as recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize offered hope to a century torn by conflict.

And Margaret Joy Tibbetts of Bethel was part of that moment. For those at all familiar with Tibbets, it might be seen as a symbol of the life of a remarkable Maine lady.

The listing of appointments above says something about the life of Margaret Joy Tibbetts. There is more to her, though.

Tibbetts was appointed Career Minister in 1969. In 1971 she was awarded the Distinguished Honor Award, the highest decoration bestowed by the United States Department of State.

That same year she retired to Bethel to care for her aging mother. She was active in Bethel organizations, like the Library Association and the Historical Society. She was a member of the Bethel Planning Board. Tibbetts was also a professor at Bowdoin.

Margaret Joy Tibbetts was born in Bethel, August 26, 1919. Her parents were Dr. Raymond and Pearl Ashby Tibbetts. She graduated from Gould Academy and Wheaton College, and earned M.A. and Ph.D degrees at Bryn Mawr.

Tibbetts collected and wrote on western Maine history. Her work here is insightful, refreshing, and a pleasure to read. The enthralling piece The Ghost Town of Grafton is but one example.

Tibbetts began The Ghost Town of

Grafton with the following: “The town of Grafton surrendered its’ charter in 1919, the year in which I was born.”

The line is a wonderful beginning.

It’s personal. It’s an end and a beginning. We have the sense that life is over and that of a little girl starting her journey in life. Right away we want to see just what Tibbetts has to say. And right away Tibbetts says what make us want to continue on reading. She says she remembers “…going through Grafton when I was about five years old and our family accompanied my father (Dr. Raymond R. Tibbetts) on a trip to Upton to see Cedric Junkins.”

Is there any better way to capture a scene or capture the past than through the eyes of a child? Not when the description includes a picnic just shy of Grafton Notch. It is here that we get a sense of what past generations were like in their views.

Tibbett’s parents are amazed by what they see here. What they see is the local timber company, planting trees to reforest. Tibbetts says “my father and mother, who had grown up in nine-

teenth century rural Maine, where the forests seemed limitless, could hardly believe that anyone would plant trees, and exclaimed at the Brown Company’s foresightedness.”

Tibbetts goes on in this vein. There is a description of a Grafton Fourth of July celebration and Christmas celebrations, and “such things as molasses candy, roasted peanuts, lemonade in the summer, berry pies, and fudge from a new recipe…” In short, to read something written by Margaret Joy Tibbetts is like unwrapping a present. In short, there was a lot more to Margaret Joy Tibbetts that her career as a diplomat.

And others recognized this. Bowdoin College certainly did.

Margaret Joy Tibbetts was awarded a Honoris Causa, DOCTOR OF LAWS

by Bowdoin in 1973. the statement accompanying the honor includes, in part, that Tibbetts “brought the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of her years of extraordinary service to bear in the classroom at Bowdoin…evaluating United States leadership in Europe.

Conscious that sound policy formulation rests on the widest possible base of knowledge, she has been an outstanding scholar, as well as a remarkable practitioner of her craft. A model for others to emulate, she fully embodies that conception of public service which inspires the College in its concerns.”

The last sentence may be said to sum up the life of a remarkable Maine lady.

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Childrens cottage at Western Maine Sanatorium in 1928. Item # 23632 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Seavey’s in Auburn. Item # 26148 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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The Fascination With Furniture A brief history

place things on and in might be termed a fascination with furniture.

The fascination with furniture is a relatively modern happenstance. It is modern if we think of the modern world as dating back to the days of the first settlers to our hemisphere. The first settlers thought of furniture not simply as equipment but as valuable possessions.

This is why they brought prized chairs, cupboards and the like across the Atlantic. The chairs and tables they brought were room decorations.

Mainers that have a fascination with furniture are most often concerned with wood. There is a wonderful gallery in Farmington devoted to wooden home furnishings and accessories. If you want to know what can be done in wood to make your home an expression of your particular artistic sensitivities, the SugarWood Gallery is the place to go.

The gallery is a tribute to the ingenuity of the accomplished Maine artisan.

by Charles Francis

M

ost of us are artists even if we don’t think of ourselves in that way. We have a concern with the beautiful that may express itself in keeping the lawn mowed and the gardens weeded. Some might call this concern with aesthetics minimal.

Nevertheless, we want to lay the dinner table in just such a style that we deem appropriate. In like manner, we want the interior of our homes to look tasteful. Having things look right matters.

It matters in being pleasing to the eye and in expressing meanings and values which are important to us. And as far as weight and value is concerned, it may just be the furniture in our home that is our most conscious expression of our aesthetic value system. This concern with the object we sit in, sleep in and

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com The furniture preferred by the first settlers of Maine wasn’t – as one would expect – pine, but rather hardwood. And it wasn’t oak but walnut.

It must be understood here that we are talking about those able to afford wellmade chairs and tables. The wealthy weren’t really satisfied with walnut, either. What the wealthy did was to import period pieces made of ebony.

The late 1600s and early 1700s saw the back-stool, which had evolved to accommodate women with wide skirts, become the side chair. Side chairs were among the first chairs to be upholstered.

That the creation of the upholstered side chair dates from this particular time period indicates just how modern the fascination with furniture really is.

The 1700s saw the chair become the most common device for sitting, at least for the well-to-do. In the poorer home the standard was the stool and the bench. The 1700s was the time period when furniture and accessories came to be viewed as a means of conveying the

wealth of the homeowner.

Chairs of the 1700s almost always lacked arms. The upholstered chair was a statement of taste and wealth.

Padding covered with velvet or other costly materials was attached with copper nails. While poorer homes had pine tables like the traditional harvest table, the wealthy had tables of oak and walnut. These were adorned with elegantly turned legs. The wealthy had four-poster beds, some sporting curtains. These, too, were adorned with elegantly turned wood. Ironically, the most important piece of furniture in the home was neither chair, table nor bed, but cupboard.

Again it must be emphasized that we are talking about the middle and upper classes here.

Cupboards replaced the horizontal chest as the chief means or place of storage. Those homes that could afford them boasted two. There was a cupboard for tableware and a cupboard for linens. Today’s sideboard and credenza are descended from the cupboard. This

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evolution coincided with the acquiring of expensive silver, crystal, porcelain and china. The wealthy might have cupboards with inlays of teak or other expensive wood. Delft porcelain and oriental china would be displayed in glass-fronted credenzas.

The construction of furniture of the 1700s and to a lesser extent of the 1800s was the province of the cabinetmaker. The cabinetmaker’s expertise can be identified as falling into two broad categories: comfort and decoration. Today we often overlook the former while being taken by the later. It was the cabinetmaker of the 1700s who can be viewed as the first to consider and understand ergonomics as a factor in furniture making.

The chairs of the 1700s were comfortable. In many cases they were more comfortable than those of today.

The comfort was a result of the understanding of the use of padding. We all know a padded chair is more comfortable than one on which we have simply (Continued on page 68)

Pinkham’s

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Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

68

(Continued from page 67) dropped a pillow. The poor were lucky if they had a pillow. The first cabinetmakers that began attaching pillows to chairs started a revolution. Other, less successful methods of achieving comfort in seating involved the use of leather, cane and rushes. Then there was the form of the chair itself.

Comfortable seating means proper support of the body. There must be sufficient padding to alleviate pressure on one’s bones but not so much so that lower extremities are pressed upward.

If a chair has a front rail, it must be lower than the cushion so that it will not dig into the back of the leg. Back supports are necessary to keep one more or less erect. The ideal back support has a slight backward tilt. The best back supports accommodate the curve of the spine.

The old time cabinetmakers who became experts in designing chairs were very good. In fact, they were more than

good, they were exceptional. They designed chairs with the large person in mind and with the light person in mind.

They said these were chairs for men and women, respectively. Chairs for men were padded with horsehair. Chairs for women were padded with goose down.

Chairs of the turn of the eighteenth century were comfortable because they accommodated biology and posture.

Remember this point when you find yourself sitting in a less-than-comfortable modern-day creation.

When we go to buy a piece of furniture today we consider such things as style, comfort, price and lasting value. If we are looking to buy something in wood, we consider hardwood and softwood. Hardwood comes from deciduous trees like maple or cherry.

Hardwood is known for its durability. However, it is difficult to carve or detail. Softwood comes from conifers like pine or cedar. It is easy to carve but

may look weathered due to its soft surface. The soft surface also marks and blemishes easily.

Furniture styles come and go. Sometimes there is a revival. After about fifty years, a particular furniture style tends to look “old-fashioned.” Some styles don’t last that long. Art Deco didn’t nor did post-modern. What seems to last is artisanship and a concern for comfort.

Personal taste is a matter of aesthetics.

How one furnishes their home is a matter of personal taste. We hope that the manner we furnish our home engenders respect rather than surprise. Perhaps this hope more than anything explains the fascination with furniture.

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Conlogue

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View from Belgrade Lake Camps. Item # 103265 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Eastward Ho! With Captain Charles Farrar A sportsman’s authority on the Rangeley Lakes region

by Charles Francis

A

re you a fisherman? Is fly fishing your thing? Then maybe you know of the Magalloway Fly. This particular fly is named for the Megalloway River, one of the tributaries of the Androscoggin way up there in northwestern Oxford County. The Magalloway, the fly, was a favorite of Captain Charles A.J. Farrar. The Magalloway, the river, was one of Captain Farrar’s favorite fishing haunts.

If it happens you don’t know either the Magalloway Fly or River, I suggest you look into Captain Farrar. Farrar probably knew as much about camping

and fishing in Oxford and Androscoggin counties of the late 1800s as any dedicated sportsman of that time period. And the Captain wrote about what he knew. In fact, he wrote a good deal about Maine’s western lakes and rivers.

Charles Farrar loved western Maine.

While others went west for sporting excitement Farrar went east. That explains why he titled one of his books Eastward Ho! Or Adventures at Rangeley Lakes.

Captain Charles Alden John Farrar did more to publicize sporting life in western Maine of the late nineteenth

century than anyone else. Farrar wrote of his personal adventures in Maine in books, magazines and newspapers. Just how much he wrote is impossible to say.

That says something as to how much he wrote, which was a lot. Farrar wrote a lot and he wrote well. Look into one of his books and you will see how well he wrote. They are readily available today, which says something as to how good a writer he was.

As to just how good a writer Farrar was consider the following description of the Magalloway region as viewed from Mt. Aziscohos: (Continued on page 72)

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2013 Greater Kennebec Valley Edition

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Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

(Continued from page 70) From the top of Mount Aziscohos you gaze upon a forest wilderness, bounded only by the blue sky in which it is lost.

A grand upheaval of mountain peaks and ranges, many of which are wooded to their summits. Circle upon circle of billowy ridges, their tops green or gray, extending from beneath you to the utmost limit of your sight. This is the first impression of the view as it bursts upon your bewildered gaze. Afterward you have time to notice that between nearly all of these mountains are ponds, lakes or rivers. Indeed, I doubt if there is a mountain in New England from whose summit you can distinctly see and count so many other mountains and so many pieces of water as from this one.

Charles Farrar lived in and did most of his writing in the Boston area. His books were best sellers in the northeast.

One reason they were best sellers – be-

The

sides the fact they were well written – was the price. For example, Camp Life in the Wilderness, a 224 page book, sold for all of thirty cents! All of Farrar’s books were illustrated. They usually included the word “Illustrated” in the title. The Androscoggin Lakes, Illustrated was one of his biggest sellers.

Charles Farrar didn’t just write with the sportsman in mind. By this I mean adult males. He also wrote with women in mind, and he wrote for young people as well.

The trip in which Farrar described the view from the top of Mount Aziscohos had included the wives of the men in the party. Farrar carefully described where the women had been left off to enjoy the amenities of a well-furnished lodge while the men trekked on into the wilder country. It should be noted Farrar took the time to describe the dress

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of the wives, which was all the current fashion. In short, he wrote for his audience, an audience he largely created.

For young people Farrar wrote a series for juvenile readers. The series went by the name Lake And Forest Series. Eastward Ho!, which was the first in the series. The second was titled Wild Woods Life: or A Trip to Paramachenee. Both books are carefully crafted for young readers. For example, in Eastward Ho! Farrar describes The Devil’s Den, and says, “it is from sixty to eighty feet deep, and about thirty feet across at the top.” Campers there have reported hearing weird and strange noises. Maybe it’s ghosts, maybe the noises are made by the devil. What young person can resist a good ghost story?

For the more practical-minded Farrar has a description of how to make

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a raft. It’s in his Lake To Lake. In this particular yarn Farrar and a companion have to find a way to get across the Rapid River. The companion is stymied as to how the passage can be accomplished, and asks… “how are you going to make a raft without hammer, saw, or nail, and an axe with a blade like a handsaw?” Captain Farrar, of course, knows what to do.

What Farrar did to make the raft was to use what was at hand. What was at hand included four large dry logs for a bottom and plank from an abandoned logging camp to cross them.

Three logs went on top of the planks.

All were bound as securely as possible with marline and withes. The spaces between the logs were filled with light, dry poles, taken from the deserted river-driver’s camp. Then more boards were secured for an upper deck. Lashed on top of these were dry pine stumps.

The stumps provided a place to sit on about a foot above the floor of the raft.

A couple of the longest and lightest poles were used to propel the raft.

As to why Captain Farrar was so much the sporting authority on Oxford and Androscoggin counties, it seems he had ties to both. Though a Boston writer, he had Farrar relatives in Paris and elsewhere in western Maine, where the Farrar name is an old one.

There is no question that Farrar’s books have stood the test of time. One of them, Farrar’s Illustrated Guide Book to Rangeley, comes in at number thirty on the Mirror of Maine Reading List. There are 100 books on the list.

One of the reasons why Farrar’s books were, and to a certain extent, are still popular, are the illustrations.

Though one can’t be sure, it would seem the Captain took most of the pic-

tures. The same would seem to be the case for the pen, ink and pencil sketches – they are Farrar’s work. The latter are real gems, too. In fact, on occasion original Farrar sketches appear at art circuit auctions.

There is one final point that must be made in concluding this brief essay on one of western Maine’s most successful promoters. For those of you who are dedicated to the art of fly fishing and don’t know the Magalloway Fly, it is one of the old-time classic flies.

The dominant feature of the Magalloway is a peacock sword wing. The tip is Golden pheasant crest. The body is light brown dubbing and the hackle is of Furnace hen.

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Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago

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President Warren Harding (1865-1923) visited Poland Spring in 1921, enjoying the recreation. Item # 6752 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

Jordan Lumber Co. Your Local Source for: Lumber & Building Materials Roofing Materials & Masonry Products

KELVIN’S AUTO REPAIR State Inspection Station Kelvin Pillsbury

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207-491-6116

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212 Rangeley Rd. • Avon, ME 04966

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Business

Directory of Advertisers Page

A&W Paving & Excavating ......................................... .......................... 40 A.C. Auto Sales / Vintage Volvos ........................................................... 16 A.J. Levesque Excavation, LLC ............................................................. 64 ABT Plumbing, Heating & Cooling ....................................................... .51 Affordable Tree Service ...........................................................................35 Allen’s Drilling & Blasting ....................................................................... 8 Alvin Yates Logging Contractor ............................................................. 42 Andrew Ames Logging ..............................................................................3 Androscoggin County Chamber ........................................................... ...11 Archie’s, Inc. .......................................................................................... .70 ARS Interiors ..................................................................................... ... 38 At Home Electric .............................................................................. .... 66 Autumn Green Funeral Home ............................................................. ....34 B&M Auto Repair ................................................................................... 13 Backstreet Grill ........................................................................................21 Barclay’s Skin Divers Paradise ............................................................. ..25 Belgrade Boat Shop ........................................................................... .....47 Benchmark Appraisal ......................................................................... ....40 Bergeron’s Shoes ................................................................................ ......3 Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce .................................................... .. 62 Betty’s Laundry ..................................................................................... 58 Big Fish Fence Supply, Inc. .................................................................. .20 Blue Door Primitive Peddler .................................................................. .20 Bob Temple Well Drilling ...................................................................... 29 Bookkeeping Plus ................................................................................. 12 Boomers Restaurant & Saloon ............................................................ 59 BRC Carpentry, Inc. ............................................................................. 56 Broderick Construction ......................................................................... 50 Buddies Meats & Groceries .................................................................. 67 Buy The Fire Stoves & Fireplaces ........................................................ 56 C.M. Nichols Landscape Design ........................................................... 40 Cardinal Printing Company, Inc. ........................................................... 22 Carl Huston Excavation Contractor, LLC ............................................. 29 Carrabassett Real Estate & Property Management ............................... 54 Casco Federal Credit Union ................................................................... 7 Cedar Mountain Cupolas ....................................................................... 31 Center Street Auto Service & Repair ..................................................... 13 Chris’ Electric ........................................................................................ 38 Cliff Roderick, Inc. ................................................................................ 36 Clipper Merchant Tea House ................................................................ 35 Cobb’s Pierce Pond Camps ................................................................... 54 Cold River Cafe ..................................................................................... 35 Coldwell Banker / Thomas Agency ...................................................... 15 Cole Harrison Insurance ........................................................................ 54 Collins Carpet Cleaning ........................................................................ 24 Collins Enterprises ................................................................................ 69 Colonial Valley Motel ........................................................................... 49 Conlogue Building & Property Management ....................................... 68 Coos Canyon Campground & Cabins ................................................... 72 Copp Excavating ........................................................................ .......... 28 Cote Crane Service ................................................................................ 13 County Seat Realty ................................................................................ 67 Craig’s Carpentry .................................................................................. 66 Creaser Jewelers .................................................................................... 40 Crescent Lake Collision ........................................................................ 56 Crosstone Conference Center & Restaurant ........................................ 43 Crostini’s Catering ................................................................................. 29 Cushing Construction ............................................................................ 47 D&R Paving & Sealcoating / Tree Removal ......................................... 20 D.A. Wilson & Co. ................................................................................ 41 D.H. Pinnette & Sons, Inc. ..................................................................... 8 Daddy O’s ............................................................................................ 56 Deer Farm Camps & Campground .......................................................... 8 Dependable Painting & Roofing .......................................................... 59 Depot Laundry ..................................................................................... 68 Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers .................................................. 67 DeWolfe & Wood Rare & Used Books ................................................. 34 Dick’s Auto Body & Collision Center .................................................. 44 Ditchbrook Custom Woodworking ....................................................... 32 Doug’s Power Equipment ..................................................................... 30 Dream On A Stream Alpaca Ranch ....................................................... 66 Dutch Treat ............................................................................................ 51 Dyer Septic Service .................................................................. ............ 37 EarthWorks Landscaping ...................................................................... 29 Edmunds Market ................................................................... ................ 73 Ed’s Grove Discount Warehouse ............................................................ 21 End Of The Rainbow Alternatives ......................................................... 51 Erin’s Cafe on Main ............................................................................... 62 Fairfield Antiques Mall ............................................................................ 7 Farmington Farmers Union .................................................................. 69 Farmington Travel ................................................................................. 68 Fast Eddies ............................................................................................ 14 Fayette Country Store .......................................................................... 65 Finelines Auto Body ............................................................................. 56 Firefly Boutique ................................................................................... 37 Fireside Inn & Suites ............................................................................. 13 Fireside Stove Shop & Fireplace Center ............................................... 26 Flagstaff Fuel ....................................................................................... 73 Four Winds Too Lobster Co. & Redemption Center ............................. 45 Franklin County Chamber of Commerce .............................................. 67 Franklin Savings Bank .......................................................................... 10 Franklin-Somerset Federal Credit Union ................................................ 5 Fusion Dining & Entertainment ............................................................ 24 G3 Firearms ........................................................................................... 64 Gagne & Son Hardscapes & Masonry Centers ...................... Back Cover Galloping Goose Woodworking ............................................................ 55 Gammon’s Garden Center ..................................................................... 26 Gediman’s ............................................................................................... 4 Gingerbread Farm Perennials ............................................................... 48 Glen Luce Logging, Inc. ....................................................................... 45 Goin’ Postal .......................................................................................... 58 Good Shepard Food Bank ..................................................................... 11

Business

Page

Goss Berry Farm .................................................................................. 39 Gray Family Vision Center ...................................................................32 Great Northern Motorworks ..................................................................65 Greater Bridgton Lakes Region Chamber .............................................22 Gridiron Restaurant & Sports Pub .........................................................25 Group Adams Propane Services ............................................................65 Hall Implement Co. ...............................................................................33 Hammond Lumber Co. .........................................................................48 Heart & Hand, Inc. ................................................................................35 Henry’s Concrete Construction, Inc.......................................................41 Highland Lake Resort ...........................................................................36 Hilton Garden Inn / Auburn Riverwatch ...............................................27 Hodgdon Well Drilling, Inc. .................................................................. 4 Houston-Brooks Auctioneers ................................................ .................7 Hungry Hollow Country Store ................................................................3 Hunter’s Truck & Tire Service, Inc. ......................................................14 Hydraulic Hose & Assembly ................................................................. 6 J.L. Brochu, Inc. ....................................................................................73 J.T. Reid’s Gun Shop ...............................................................................5 Jake’s Garage ....................................................................................... 51 James A. Wrigley Well Drilling ...............................................................3 James Reid Heating, Inc. ......................................................................38 Jason Stevens Excavation .....................................................................66 Jay-Livermore-Livermore Falls Chamber ............................................ 64 JCZ Yard Care & Tree Service ..............................................................29 Jean Castonguay Excavating .................................................................44 Jerry Douglass Realty ...........................................................................28 Johnny Castonguay Logging & Trucking .............................................45 Jordan & Son Contracting .....................................................................44 Jordan Lumber Co. ................................................................................74 JT Custom Carpentry ........................................................................... 38 Judy’s Variety ........................................................................................71 K&J Heating Inc. ................................................................................. 31 Kelvin’s Auto Repair ............................................................................74 Ken’s Yamaha .......................................................................................58 Kiesman Drywall, Inc. ......................................................................... 36 Kniffin’s Specialty Meats ......................................................................34 Knopp Chiropractic ...............................................................................59 Korhonen Logging ................................................................................46 L.V. Allen & Sons, Inc. ...........................................................................8 Ladd Logging ........................................................................................49 Lakepoint Real Estate ...........................................................................49 Lakeside Antiques .................................................................................15 Lamoreau Improvements, Inc. ............................................................. 29 Langlois’ Auto Body & Sales ................................................................12 Larsen’s Electric ...................................................................... .............70 Lisbon Community Federal Credit Union .............................................28 Load of Dirt.com ...................................................................................30 Long Pond Camps & Guide Service .....................................................10 Luce’s Maine Grown Meats ..................................................................51 Lyn’s Spring Service, Inc. .................................................................... 31 Maine Historical Society ........................................................................5 Maine-Ly Foam .....................................................................................36 Maine Mineral Adventures ........................................................... ........42 Maine Motel & Cabins ........................................................... ..............24 Maine Pellet Sales, LLC ............................................................ ...........14 Maine Toy Log Homes ......................................................... ................72 Maine Veterans’ Homes ..................................................... ..................40 Mainely Puppies ............................................................. ......................38 Major’s Heating Services ................................................................. ....57 McAllister Accounting & Tax Services ............ ................. ...................65 McCormick & Sons Trucking .............................................................. 19 Meadow Ridge Perennial Farm ...........................................................57 Mel’s Raspberry Patch ......................................................................... 34 Merced’s on Brandy Pond .....................................................................55 Mexico Chicken Coop ............................................................ ..............71 Mexico Trading Post .............................................................................70 Mike Wainer Plumbing & Heating ........................................... ........... 46 Mike’s Stump Grinding .........................................................................44 Minot Gun Shop ....................................................................................57 Moe’s Italian Sandwiches .....................................................................34 Mollyockett Motel & Swim Spa ...........................................................43 Monmouth Federal Credit Union ............................................................8 Montello Heights Retirement Community ............................................25 Moose Pond Harbor Marina & Garage .................................................22 Morrow’s Garage ................................................................................ . 48 Moulton Lumber Co. .............................................................................. 7 Mount Blue Motel .................................................................................50 Mountain View Carpentry .....................................................................72 Naples Packing Co., Inc. .......................................................................70 New Portland Agricultural Fair .............................................................10 Niboban Camps .....................................................................................53 Nicky’s Hair Salon 2000 .......................................................................35 Nordica Memorial Museum ................................................................... 6 North Bay Estates ..................................................................................66 Northeast Laboratory Services ................................................................4 Northland Custom Flooring ................................................................. 50 Northwoods Builders ........................................................................... 10 Oberg Insurance & Real Estate .............................................................22 Olde Mill Stream Ice Cream Shoppe .....................................................65 Olde Mill Tavern ...................................................................................41 Oquossoc Marine ................................................................................. 52 Orr Excavation ......................................................................................49 Otis Federal Credit Union .................................................................... 65 Oxford Federal Credit Union ................................................................52 Oxford Hills Chamber of Commerce ....................................................56 Oxford Hills Taxi ..................................................................................58 P& A Mechanics ............................................................ .......................39 P&C Automotive, Inc. .......................................................................... 18 Packard Appraisal, Inc. ..................................................... ....................37 Penobscot Marine Museum ........................................................ 23/60/61 Peppers Garden & Grill .................................................. ......................14

Business

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Pete’s Roast Beef ........................................................... .......................14 Phin Enterprises ............................................................ .......................39 Pine Tree Orthopedic Lab .....................................................................46 Pinkham’s Elm St. Market ................................................................... 67 Plummer’s ACE Hardware ....................................................................19 Plummer’s Shop N’ Save ......................................................................19 Poland Mining Camps ...........................................................................30 Portland Pirates .......................................................................................9 Premier Groundscapes ......................................................................... 26 Pretty Fair Carpentry ............................................................................39 Provencher’s .................................................................... .....................11 R.E. Lowell Lumber, Inc. ................................................... ..................42 Railroad Restaurant .......................................................... ....................14 Ralph Libby Chain Saws ..................................................................... 42 Ramada Conference Center ................................................................. 24 Range Pond Campground .............................................................. ......15 RDA Automotive ................................................................. .................11 Rent It! ..................................................................................................12 Richard Wing & Son Logging, Inc. ......................................................18 Rising Sun Cafe & Bakery ...................................................................58 River Valley Chamber of Commerce ................................................... 71 River Valley Grill ..................................................................................71 Riverbend Campground ..................................................... ...................16 Riverside Realty ........................................................... ........................71 Robert W. Libby & Sons, Inc. ................................................ .............. 4 Rocky Mountain Terrain Park ............................................. .................50 Ron’s Market .........................................................................................68 Ron’s Transmissions ............................................................................ 17 Rooster’s Roadhouse ............................................................................59 Rose-Beck Farm ...................................................................................58 Rottari Electric ......................................................................................31 S&M Property Maintenance ................................................................ 19 S&M Towing .................................................................. ......................19 S.A. McLean, Inc. .................................................................................35 S.S. Milton ............................................................................................41 Sacopee Valley Eye Care ......................................................................21 Sandy River Farm Market & Driving Range ........................................49 Sandy River Golf Course ......................................................................69 Sebago Lake Lodge & Cottages ...........................................................33 Sebago Lakes Region Chamber ............................................................18 Select Auto Service ...............................................................................25 Shadowed Birch Kennels ......................................................................21 Shaker Hill Small Engine .....................................................................17 Shaky Barn Farm Gardens ....................................................................47 Shamrock Stoneworks & Landscaping, Inc. ........................................ 47 Sheer Bliss Salon & Spa .......................................................................32 Small Engine Specialty ...........................................................................5 Smile Again Dentures, Inc. ...................................................................10 Solon Corner Market .............................................................................54 Spillover Motel .....................................................................................52 Springvale Hardware ............................................................................ 21 Springvale Lock and Safe .....................................................................21 Stetson’s Auto Service ..........................................................................56 Stevens Electric & Pump Service, Inc. ...................................................8 Stevens Forest Products ........................................................................51 Stone Shapers Custom Landscaping .....................................................24 Stratton Pizza & Traitor Lounge ...........................................................73 Stratton Plaza Hotel & Lounge .............................................................73 Strong Hardware & Building Supply ....................................................74 Sully’s Restaurant & Tavern .................................................................29 Super 8 Motel ........................................................................................33 Tall Pines Trucking ...............................................................................51 Temple Well Drilling ............................................................................28 The Brake & Exhaust Center ................................................................18 The Irregular .........................................................................................53 The Little Red Hen ...............................................................................52 The Looney Moose Cafe ......................................................................72 The Milk Room Store ................................................... ...................... 20 The Shop - Raymond .......................................................................... 19 The Shop - Lisbon ................................................................................ 28 The Stow Corner Store .........................................................................35 The Village Inn Restaurant ...................................................................26 Tilton’s Market ......................................................................................64 Tindall’s Country Store & Dam Diner ..................................................54 Town & Lake Motel & Cottages ...........................................................53 Town of Mexico ....................................................................................70 Tranten’s ...............................................................................................67 Twin Rivers Building Supply, Inc. ...................................... ................ 69 Two Lakes Camping Area .....................................................................57 Tyler Concrete Foundations & Excavation ..................................... ....62 UPWI Plumbing & Heating ..................................................................44 Valetone Cleaners ..................................................................... ............12 W.L. Sturgeon, Inc. ...............................................................................22 Ward Cedar Log Homes .......................................................................36 Warren’s Florist ..................................................................... ...............37 Waterways Coffee Shop & Quick Lube .......................................... .... 20 Watson, Neal & York Funeral Home .....................................................22 Weathervane Restaurant & Lounge ......................................................45 Western Maine Flooring .......................................................................70 Western Maine Marble & Granite ........................................................57 Western Maine Pharmacy, Inc. .............................................................53 Western Maine Towing & Recovery ....................................................38 Whitney Building .................................................................................48 Whitney Tree Service .............................................................................6 Wholesome Homestead ........................................................................15 William Perry Cigar Lounge .................................................................55 Wilson Excavating, Inc. ........................................................................62 Wilson Funeral Home ...........................................................................17 Windham Dental Associates .................................................................33 Wings Hill Inn & Restaurant ................................................................66 Woitkos Talk of the Town .....................................................................41 Wood-Mizer of Maine ..........................................................................64

2013 Androscoggin / Oxford / Sebago Region 76

Androscoggin-Oxford-Sebago