Hancock Washington Penobscot counties

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Volume 24 | Issue 6 | 2015

Maine’s History Magazine

15,000 Circulation

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

Teeing Off At Fort George

Castine golfers were teed off about history

Bar Harbor’s Esther Ralston The American Venus

The Early Anglers Of Grand Lake Stream “Sports” came here from far and near

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Inside This Edition

2

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties 3

I t Makes No Never Mind James Nalley

4

Pleistocene Park It’s Ice Age but it’s cool!

Jeffrey Bradley

8

The Cliffords Maine’s dedicated basketball family Brian Swartz

Maine’s History Magazine

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

13 Officer Down A bizarre series of events

Dave Bumpus

Publisher & Editor

18 Cherryfield’s Hiram Burnham Colonel led Maine soldiers into battle at Williamsburg

Brian Swartz

Layout & Design

23 Teeing Off At Fort George Castine golfers were teed off about history

Brian Swartz 27 Disaster Could Not Dishearten Ellsworth Christians Great fire of 1933 leveled much of Ellsworth

Brian Swartz 31 Bar Harbor’s Esther Ralston The American Venus

Charles Francis 36 Silence Is Not Always Golden Above The Taunton River

1999 saw the end of the old singing bridge

Brian Swartz 40 The Amazing Weed Otherworldly undersea kelp holds many of Maine’s secret surprises Jeffrey Bradley 44 Into The Maelstrom Between a rock and a hard place is the whirlpool

Jeffrey Bradley 48 The Genealogy Corner Tracing Italian family history

Charles Francis 52 Erwin Kreuz Bangor’s accidental tourist

James Nalley 56 Brave Boys In Flight Brewer and Bangor teenagers flew for Britian Brian Swartz 61 Stockton Springs Soldier Marched Home A Captured Confederate Adapted from Maine At War

Brian Swartz 64 The Coyote Villian or victim?

Kenneth Smith 68 The Early Anglers Of Grand Lake Stream

“Sports” came from far and near

William B. Krohn 75 Sherman’s Sacrifice In The Civil War

Aroostook County town paid a high price to save the Union

Brian Swartz 80 The Penobscot And Lake Megantic Railroad

The growth of Chester and Mattawamkeag

Charles Francis 84 Irishman William Conners

Bangor’s famed lumber baron

Matthew Jude Barker 88 Parker Eaton’s Floating Bridge

Plymouth native served in the Aroostook War

Charles Francis 92 The Man Who Chose D-Day

Bangor’s Donald Yates

Charles Francis

Jim Burch

Liana Merdan

Advertising & Sales Manager Tim Maxfield

Advertising & Sales Dennis Burch Ryan Fish Chris Girouard Tim Maxfield Zack Rouda

Office Manager Liana Merdan

Field Representative George Tatro

Contributing Writers

Matthew Jude Barker Jeffrey Bradley Dave Bumpus Charles Francis | fundy67@yahoo.ca William B. Krohn James Nalley Kenneth Smith Brian Swartz Published Annually by CreMark, Inc. 10 Exchange Street, Suite 208 Portland, Maine 04101 Ph (207) 874-7720 info@discovermainemagazine.com www.discovermainemagazine.com Discover Maine Magazine is distributed to town offices, chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations, barber shops, beauty salons, newsstands, grocery and convenience stores, hardware stores, lumber companies, motels, restaurants and other locations throughout this part of Maine.

NO PART of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from CreMark, Inc. | Copyright © 2015 CreMark, Inc.

SUBSCRIPTION FORM ON PAGE 91

Front Cover Photo: George Beal in front of his shop in Jonesport in 1935 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org All photos in Discover Maine’s Hancock-Washington-Penobscot counties 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.

3

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

It Makes No Never Mind

by James Nalley

R

egarding the eastern trio of Hancock, Penobscot, and Washington Counties, they cover a vast region ranging from 1,600 square miles for Hancock to a combined total of approximately 7,000 square miles for Penobscot and Washington. However, if one delves deeper into the statistics of Washington County, there are even more extremes. For example, according to the Washington County Office, it includes “the deepest cargo port, the longest coastline…the highest tides…and the most lobster and clam landings.” In addition, the county “does not have a lot of traffic lights (only three), an interstate, a Red Lobster restaurant or poisonous snakes.”

Although it is only briefly mentioned, Washington County produces roughly 85% of the world’s supply of wild blueberries, which is amazing if you put it into perspective. In fact, as stated in a January 2015 article in the Bangor Daily News, “The largest-ever annual blueberry harvest in Maine was in 2000, when Maine’s wild blueberry growers harvested a total of 110.6 million pounds.” Furthermore, between 2000 and 2014, the annual crops have continued to near or exceed 100 million pounds. However, like many other

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situations, such growth has caused the farms to utilize mechanized harvesters, which, according to Dave Bell of Cherryfield Foods, are “efficient…faster, and it helps preserve fruit quality, mainly because contractors work through the night, harvesting cooler, firmer blueberries, which hold up better.”

Unfortunately, the down side to such innovation is that each mechanized harvester removes the need for roughly a dozen workers.

Known as “hand rakers,” these sweaty and sun-baked workers (consisting of mostly migrants) work their way across the vast landscapes carrying plastic totes/buckets and earning their pay with each swing of a two-handed aluminum blueberry rake. In fact, a good raker, which is one who can consistently rake 100 boxes of blueberries a day, is referred to as a “harvester.”According to a July 2009 article in Yankee magazine, “A 16-year-old Micmac harvester raked 196 boxes, shattering the previous record of 175 boxes in one day. That’s $490 for a day’s work.” As the need of migrant workers (aside from the difficulty of obtaining and using them) slowly declines, the traffic that once clogged up the back roads to these fields has also diminished.

So, the next time you happen to see some sweat- and blueberry-stained workers, make sure to acknowledge what they do for the various reasons that draw them there. Well, my short time is up, so allow me to close with the following yarn regarding blueberries: Every summer, a lawyer would invite a friend to spend a week up at his cabin in a backwoods section of Maine. On one particular occasion, he invited a Czechoslovakian to stay with him. Early one morning, the lawyer and his friend went out to pick blueberries for their morning breakfast. As they went around the field gathering tremendous quantities, two huge bears (a male and a female) approached.

The lawyer, upon seeing the bears, immediately dashed for cover, while his friend was swallowed whole by the male bear. Witnessing the entire incident, the local sheriff grabbed his shotgun and dashed toward the field. “He’s in THAT one!” cried the lawyer.

The sheriff looked at the two bears, and immediately shot the FEMALE. “What did you do that for?” asked the lawyer. The sheriff replied, “Would YOU believe a lawyer who told you that the Czech was in the male??”

In these pages you will see businesses from Maine’s Hancock-Washington-Penobscot counties which take great pride in serving the public, and business owners and employees who also take pride in being Mainers.

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

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

Pleistocene Park

by Jeffrey Bradley

It’s the Ice Age but it’s cool!

T

he glaciers that retreated from Maine millennia ago revealed a faceted, rough-cut landscape.

Mile-high ice sheets, large enough to alter the weather, heavy enough to buckle the bedrock, oozed from the north to level mountains, carve valleys, gouge lakes, and emulsify the stone into slurry. Undeterred by the sea,long lobes of ice spread many miles from land. For generations everything lay locked in blue-white hues of cold while the waves beat fitfully against sheer walls of ice. Gale force winds whipped up wintry storms of glacial grist in swirling drifts of loess, while endless boreal forests sheltered the browsing mammoths, huge-horned rhinos and

shovel-jawed mastodons alert for cave bears and sabre-tooth cats. The lee crest of fault scarps offered a degree of safety but would soon fill with paleo-hunters.

For now it was only the cold, always the cold, the relentless and frigid cold.

Long gone these 10,000 years, the ice helped shape a different tableau.

And the best way of viewing these changes is by following the margin

of the last great glacier along coastal Maine’s “Down East” Ice Age Trail.

Glaciers form when snow falls faster than it can melt. Compacting over eons, the bottom layer turns slushy and goes critical mass. The whole thing slides into motion. Creeping a couple of yards a year, in time it permeates into every crevice. Maine is riddled with their features, the ribby coastline of shoals, coves, inlets, islets, points and promontories, especially so.

Prodigious amounts of dirty melt water gushing from the icy cliffs built gigantic alluvial fans. Once submerged, these hummocky deltas are now crisscrossed by roads and covered with fields of blueberries. Sources of sand,

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com gravel, and also aquifers, scores of these parallel ridges are scattered east of Penobscot Bay. Nearer Portland, the Presumpscot Formation, a series of terraces pocked with low-lying sumps, was drowned by the sea then covered with mud. Stacked now like tiers in a wedding-cake, some layers contain fossils.

Everywhere Maine was affected by ice. Even the summit scapes lay buried beneath infinite drifts of snow. The Ice Trail compresses distances, and many sites are within reach of an afternoon’s walk. Winding from atop Cadillac Mountain, across remote blueberry barrens to an ancient peat bog at the easternmost tip of the nation, where the foghorns mournfully dole, it wends a primal region. With interpretive map in hand (see http://iceagetrail.umaine.edu/ trail.htm), dozens of “glacial stops” can be explored by hiking or driving the back country roads. Offering iconic vistas of North America’s only fjard (not quite a fjord) at Somes Sound; the

Bubbles, two small irregular mountains (or big pink granite hills); and Tunk Lake, gouged from the living rock and reputedly the clearest in Maine, the trail abounds in distinctive “kame and kettle” topography. One example is the University of Maine’s Blueberry Hill Farm near Jonesboro. This cubic-mile pile of sediment was left by melt water passing through a tunnel-like esker formation. Moraines, a glacial method of wresting land from the ocean by depositing silt, are ubiquitous. When warmer conditions made the glaciers retract, huge land-locked icebergs were left to melt into boulder-strewn hillsides and immense pothole sinks. Some are still discernible as fields of staggered erratics in the oddly-configured terrain.

A peat bog near West Quoddy Head in Lubec demonstrates the power of glaciers to commingle earth and ocean.

Varves, thin layers of sandy gravel displayed on a wave-cut cliff, show the stupendous volumes of “till” shed in coating the ocean’s bottom. When

the waves receded, the peat bogs, or “heaths,” appeared. South of Eastport is another depression most probably formed by an immense block of ice stranded when the glacier retreated.

Looming like some surrealistic sculpture, it probably took dozens of years to evaporate. Along the beach are exposed chunks of eroded rock bearing grooves that indicate the ice trended southeasterly.

The Bold Coast, near Milbridge, east of Machias, not too far from Meddybemps, is a tumbled relict domain little different from when the paleo-Indians passed this way. Riven mica-flecked tors thrust over jumbled slides of raw talus, another legacy of glaciers. Patchwork forests grow to the very edge of a precipitous cliff where the jutting headland bears witness that here, too, the land bent to ice.

Over time climate and sea levels oscillate wildly. On the crest of the moraine near the Naval Station in Cut(continued on page 6)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 5)

ler a prominent shoreline proves that this feature formed underwater. Yet, just about any hilltop will turn up fossil fragments or bits of ancient wood.

From the moment the ice sheets arrived, erosion stooped to its labors. Terminal grounding-lines delineate where ice met sea and formed the clustered ridges of a glacial beach. In a retrograde basin filled with seaside cliffs, a shelf marks the bygone high-tide line.

Beyond, parallel peaks, offshore sandbars and a flaky escarpment stretch toward Big Rock Ridge. Just back of the dunes is the line of trees and shattered outcrops defining the glacier’s furthest advance. From here on, the Ice Age would be in decline. Drumlins abaft the beaches spill gravelly innards of rough-hewn cobbles that once ground tough granite to rock flour. Towering mudstone hillsides of buff-colored till blend into bands of gritty sand and a crumbly blue-gray marl. Massive erratics — boulders carried from elsewhere — working free of the matrix tumble

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in heaps that suggest an arrangement of conscious design.

When the sea drained away, the land, freed from the ice, rebounded.

Now the waters are slowly returning.

Forlorn Shipyard Cove near Dog Town was abandoned when the Benjamin Sewall was pulled from the muck of the fast-silting pond; at Bad Little Falls, the docks sit under 5 feet of water. The waves even appear bent on reclaiming the salt marshes, home to a once-thriving harvesting industry. And on lonely Mowry Point protrude the blackened stumps of a drowned forest subsumed by the rising tides.

For centuries the glaciers appeared static but were all the while furrowing, filling, reshaping. Then they seemingly melted for good, hard evidence of a climate shift. The glaciers were here and, in a geologic heartbeat, were gone.

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8

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

The Cliffords

Maine’s dedicated basketball family

by Brian Swartz

S

ince Gerald Clifford instilled a love of basketball in his sons, fans from Maine to North Carolina have watched the results.

Hailing from Wytopitlock (a village in Reed Plantation in Aroostook County), Clifford graduated from the University of Maine at Farmington and coached high school basketball at Mattawamkeag High School. That school closed in the late 1960s when Mattawamkeag students started attending Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln.

Sons Steve and Daniel grew up learning the fine points of playing (and coaching) basketball from their father. They also played basketball under his tutelage when Gerald coached the Falcons’ boys’ var-

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sity team at North Country Union High School in Newport, Vermont.

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the brothers noted his coaching techniques. “My dad was a really successful coach at North Country, and I think that’s really where it all started,” Steve told media representatives in June 2013.

“There were a lot of nights spent sitting around the kitchen table [while] talking basketball,” he said. “We definitely were a basketball family — it was a big part of how we lived.”

Born in Lincoln in May 1961, Steve Clifford graduated from North Country in 1979 and followed his father’s footsteps to the University of Maine campus at Farmington. There, while earning a bachelor’s degree in special education, Steve initially played varsity basketball for Len MacPhee, who

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com coached the Beavers’ men’s team for 24 years before retiring in 2001.

“Playing for Coach MacPhee at Farmington was just an incredible experience,” Steve Clifford told Morning Sentinel sports reporter Randy Whitehouse in September 2014.

“I learned so much from him, and he had a huge impact on how I looked at the game and how I coach today,” Clifford said.

While completing his last year at UMF, Steve Clifford started coaching the boys’ varsity basketball squad at Woodland High School in Baileyville in Washington County. Graduating from UMF in 1983, Clifford taught in the Baileyville school system and coached the Dragons through the 1984-85 season; the Woodland boys appeared in two Eastern Maine High School Basketball Tournaments with Steve Clifford as their coach.

Dan Clifford, also a North Country Union graduate, attended the Uni-

versity of Southern Maine and played varsity basketball for the Huskies. Not long after graduation, he took the men’s head coaching position at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.

Steve Clifford transitioned to collegiate coaching when he took an assistant coach’s slot with Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1985. Clifford left that school in 1989 to become an assistant coach with the Stags of Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Assistant coaching positions at the collegiate level are typically stepping stones to larger schools and, perhaps, a coach’s job. After a year at Fairfield, Clifford followed Saint Anselm Coach Bob Brown to Boston University and worked for four seasons as an assistant coach for the Division I Terriers.

In 1994 Steve Clifford took an assistant coach’s position at Siena College in Albany, New York. Then he was offered the head coach’s post at Division

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(continued on page 10)

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II Adelphi University in Garden City, New York in 1995. His Panthers won 20 games per season for the next four seasons and attained an 86-36 record before Clifford left Adelphi. His teams also made four trips to the National College Athletic Association’s Division II tournament.

Departing Adelphi in 1999, Steve Clifford left the Northeast to work as an assistant coach at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

Clifford transitioned to the NBA in 2000, when the New York Knicks hired him to be an advance scout. From 2001 to 2003 he worked as an assistant coach for the Knicks; then Jeff Van Gundy, head coach of the Houston Rockets, brought Clifford to Texas as an assistant coach.

Clifford stayed there until Stan Van Gundy named him an assistant coach for the Orlando Magic in 2007. The Magic went to the NBA playoffs during each of Clifford’s five seasons with the

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 9)

team; after winning the first two games of the 2009 NBA Finals, the Magic lost the league championship to the Los Angeles Lakers by losing the next three games.

In 2012, Steve Clifford became an assistant coach with the Lakers. He stayed there for one season.

On May 29, 2013, Rod Higgins — the president of basketball operations for the Charlotte Bobcats — announced that the NBA franchise had hired Clifford as the team’s new coach.

“He brings a strong pedigree and a track record of success to our franchise,” Higgins said. “He has built a reputation as an innovator, especially defensively, and has experience in multiple systems.

“We look forward to utilizing his knowledge as we continue to build this team,” Higgins said.

“I didn’t set out to be an NBA coach,” Clifford told the media. “I’ve

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com always just loved my job and went where the opportunities presented themselves.”

The Bobcats were renamed the Hornets before the 2013-2014 season began, and Rod Higgins and team management were not disappointed in their choice of coaches. Stressing tight defense with his players, Steve Clifford took the Hornets to the NBA Playoffs in 2014 after the team ran up a 43-39 record. Although Charlotte lost to the Miami Heat in the first round of playoffs in the Eastern Conference, the Hornets could look back on their 20132014 season with pride.

During the previous two seasons, Charlotte had won a cumulative 28 games.

Looking back on his first season with Charlotte, Steve Clifford told the Morning Sentinel’s Whitehouse, “I feel like we built a foundation for how we want to do things and the way we need

to play. Our defense was really good.

Our offense needs to get better, and it was toward the end of the season.”

While brother Steve pursued an NBA career, Dan Clifford became a teacher, a basketball coach, and a school administrator in Maine. During his three seasons as the varsity basketball coach at University of Maine Fort Kent, the Bengals’ boys accumulated a 68-25 record and appeared twice in the National Small College Athletic Administration championship tournament.

Leaving University of Maine Fort Kent, Clifford moved south and later taught social studies at Ellsworth High School. For nine seasons he coached the school’s varsity boys’ basketball team, which plays in Eastern Maine Class B. Under Clifford’s leadership, the Eagles made six trips to the Eastern Maine High School Basketball Tournament in Bangor. The Ellsworth boys reached the semifinals three times.

In early November 2005, Dan Clifford was named by the School Union 96 board as the athletic director at Sumner High School in Sullivan and at the three middle schools within the district. The Sumner Tigers played basketball in Eastern Maine Class C. Then 35, Clifford had completed the Educational Leadership Cohort Program offered through the University of Maine. He had also finished all but one of the courses necessary to be certified as a principal; he soon completed that course, and in April 2011, the RSU 25 school board hired Clifford to become the principal of Bucksport High School. He took over that position after Robert Doar retired at the end of the 2010-2011 school year.

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

DID YOU KNOW? Ellsworth was Maine’s fastest growing city from 2000–2010 with a growth rate of nearly 20 percent.

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13

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Officer Down

A bizarre series of events off the coast of Maine

by Dave Bumpus

W

hen looking at the current state of affairs we are in, it is sometimes hard not to fathom what got us here. The timeline stretches back virtually forever. A species here, an empire there, all leading up to this one particular moment. And along that timeline is an even more infinite array of human stories. History definitely has a way of repeating itself, be it corruption or prosperity and everything in between. But it is when we take a moment to look into the details of a story and the fibers that construct it, that we find uniqueness. And if there is one thing this story is, it’s unique.

It’s the stuff movies are made of. It would almost be comical if it weren’t

surrounded by tragedy, like something out of a Cohen Brothers’ film.

Our story takes place on a small body of land known as Isle Au Haut, located due south of Mount Dessert Island and east of Rockland. Like most small coastal towns in Maine, the community thrives on boating, fishing and good old Maine hospitality. The shores face out into the seemingly endless Atlantic Ocean, offering majestic sunrises and beautiful scenery.

But things weren’t always so splendid in this region of Knox County. In fact, in the early 1800s there was an all out war going on between import goods smugglers and officials as to what could be deemed illegal trade. Smugglers

wanted to sell and trade their goods and officials wanted to stop them from importing illegally. The tension had been growing for a long time between the two groups, and when it finally boiled over, violence began erupting.

What was once the smugglers’ “goods” quickly turned into “what they had stolen.” Strong-arming intimidation was common from both parties. But on occasion it would become more.

Which brings us to Lazaro Bogdomovitch, a customhouse officer working off the docks of the small island at that time. Little is known about the man. A foreigner, he had no known relatives in the states. History suggests that he was of Italian descent and was (continued on page 14)

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14 (continued from page 13)

most likely a defector from foreign armies. And that is pretty much it on Lazaro. It is unknown where his story began, but we do know where it ended.

And his end would act as a catalyst to a series of events that would literally go down in Isle Au Haut’s history.

Thunderstorms blanketed the shores of the island on the night of November 6, 1808. Bogdomovitch was one of a handful of officers on the docks that night at Kimball Harbor (known today as Isle Au Haut Thoroughfare).

They were assigned to guard a cargo of rice and flour. With Bogdomovitch was officer Wilson. At around 7pm, as the winds gushed over the group, a boat named the Peggy, steered by 8 men, approached the docks. When the men exclaimed that they were from the nearby Vineyard, they were directed by officer Wilson to row the boat ashore.

Though they obliged, these men were not innocent boaters. As officer Wilson

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

approached the boat, they sprang from the waters brandishing firearms. They took him as a hostage and approached the docks. Minutes later, gunshots pierced through the sounds of thunder and heavy winds. One smuggler was wounded. Another shot ripped through the night air and went straight into the body of Lazaro Bogdomovitch. He fell, dead from a single gunshot wound.

While the group of smugglers used Wilson as a bargaining chip, the remaining officers could only watch as Bogdomovitch’s lifeless body was cast into the ocean. After their firearms were stripped of them, the officers fled. They reached the other side of the island where they found a boat and proceeded to Castine. Once there, they informed the man in charge of the customhouse of the ordeal, a one Collector Hook.

Hook gathered up a posse of 13 men, and two wind-propelled boats were launched; one containing Hook and 8

other officers and the other (a much smaller boat) containing 4 officers.

The events that immediately followed are somewhat unclear. It is known that a chase ensued through the violent waters. The smaller boat with the 4 officers disappeared in the storm and they were never seen again.

They were presumed drowned, but no evidence was ever recovered. Eventually, hook caught up with the Peggy.

The smugglers were apprehended and Wilson was taken to safety. The 8 men were taken to jail in Castine to face murder charges. It would seem that this story would be over, but it is only the beginning.

One month later, the men remained in their cells. At about 2am on December 15, a group of men dressed as women and heavily armed, stormed the facility. They demanded the clerk hand over the keys to the cells, and the clerk had no choice but to oblige. The

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15

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

group opened the cell doors and began corralling the prisoners out. In the end, 4 of the prisoners managed to escape before guards showed up to restore order. Neither the men in drag, nor the 4 prisoners were ever seen or heard from again. The remaining 4 prisoners were shackled to await trial.

The trial, however, would not go in officials’ favor. Back in the 1800s the citizens of Knox county were very community oriented (which is not to say they aren’t today), and they viewed the goods smugglers as an important attribute to the good of the common people. In their eyes, smugglers were providing a valuable service and were the victims of bullying from officers and other government officials. So the people of Isle Au Haut would not testify against the men. Due to a lack of witnesses, the prosecution’s case against the 4 men fell apart. All of them were set free.

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(continued on page 16)

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16

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 15)

When Federal courts stepped in to take over the case, they were much more successful. After impounding and auctioning off the Peggy and her cargo, the courts convicted the 2 men who organized the robbery. The first to be tried was Andrew Webster, a physician and deputy sheriff in Castine. He was convicted in March of 1809 and was placed in jail. He would be there for only 4 days before breaking out (it is suspected that, since he was a deputy sheriff in the same town he was jailed, he knew the layout of the facility). He was never seen in the states again. Records indicate that he fled to Canada, married and lived out the rest of his life in Nova Scotia. The second man to be tried was not so lucky. John McMasters was a merchant and had a long track record involving smuggling activities. He was known to authorities as far south as Boston. After he was convicted, he spent six years filing appeals, all of which would be ignored by Congress.

“Right here since 1976”

In 1815, while still housed in jail, he was beaten to death by a drunken sailor.

Who was Lazaro Bogdomovitch?

Why was he here? Who were the group of men who organized the prison break and where did they all disappear to?

Sadly, these questions (and many others swirling around this case) will most likely never be answered. The case is so obscure that it isn’t even documented in the town’s public record. Many of the citizens and officials of Isle Au Haut deny that the incident ever happened at all. But official government records and documents suggest otherwise. Since an officer was killed, reports were filed covering the tragedy and its aftermath, which are available in the State of Maine’s official history.

So, when we step back, we see that a murder took place during a time of corruption and poor government public relations. But when we step in closer, when we inspect the fibers that hold this story together, we find a story that

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17

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Early view of the post office in Bar Harbor. Item # LB2007.1.106260 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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18

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

Cherryfield’s Hiram Burnham Colonel led soldiers into battle at Williamsburg

by Brian Swartz

F

ed up with the positive press that another Maine regiment received after an 1862 Virginia battle, Hiram Burnham of Narraguagus (later Cherryfield) set the record straight with a Maine governor.

Born in Machias in 1814, Burnham grew up in a rough-and-tumble Washington County that made or broke a man economically and socially. The physically tough Burnham was wellknown in local lumber camps; his business acumen advanced his fortune and social status in Narraguagus, to which he moved while a young man.

A militia officer during the Aroostook War, Burnham rallied to the flag in spring 1861. Just before the Battle

of Bull Run, he was named lieutenant colonel of the 6th Maine Infantry Regiment, which contained several Washington County militia companies. Promoted to colonel late that year, Burnham commanded the regiment as the Army of the Potomac advanced on Williamsburg, Virginia in mid-spring 1862.

Confederate and Union troops fought there, and Burnham and the 6th Maine Infantry got in their licks. The 7th Maine Infantry was also involved, but according to Burnham, the articles about that regiment that “appeared in the Boston Journal, Portland Transcript, Maine Farmer, and perhaps in other papers … are in the main erronious (sic),” he informed Governor Israel

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19

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Washburn Jr. from “Camp No. 19 in the Field” on May 24.

Writing in a neat hand that leaves his words crystal clear on his Maine State Archives-preserved report, Burnham suggested that Maine residents “are much interested in the Battle which we fought at Williamsburg” on May 5.

Because “Maine soldiers occupied positions in our line of battle,” he thought that “it is desirable for our citizens to know how they (soldiers) discharged the duties which devolved upon them.”

But Burnham had another reason for writing. He blamed hyperactive and imaginative “newspaper correspondents” for filing inaccurate articles that “distorted” the truth and brought “glory” to “troops which were not on the field of battle.”

Let me present the facts and nothing but the facts, Burnham essentially told Washburn.

At 8 a.m., Monday, May 5, fighting

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broke out about a half mile to the “left and center” of the 6th Maine Infantry, assigned to a brigade commanded by Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock. Held in reserve, Burnham and his men listened “to the wild uproar of the battle.”

Then at 11 a.m., orders came for Hancock to maneuver his brigade to “the extreme right of our line of battle and endeavor to turn the enemy’s left flank,” according to Burnham. “Making a wide detour through the woods,” the brigade reached a dam on Queen’s Creek, opposite some empty Confederate earthworks atop “a high bluff” across the creek.

The water depth behind the dam kept Union soldiers from fording the creek, so they walked along the top of the dam, climbed the bluff, and “hoisted the stars and stripes over the rebel fort,” he wrote. Leaving some men to garrison the post, Burnham pushed the rest west “through a narrow skirt of woods.”

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His men emerged “into an open field” beyond which rose “another rebel earthwork of a formidable nature,” but also deserted.

By now the artillery accompanying Hancock’s brigade was shelling Confederate positions nearer the actual fighting. Hancock ordered his cannons advanced, with the 6th Maine guarding their left and the 5th Wisconsin Infantry guarding their right. (continued on page 20)

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20

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 19)

Burnham and his boys subsequently witnessed an artillery duel as Confederate artillery stationed inside Fort Page (near the center of the Confederate line) targeted Hancock’s guns. In turn “our artillery replied with excellent effect,” and the shooting continued for four hours, Burnham wrote.

Shot and shell “showered around us thickly,” but caused “but small loss on our side,” he informed Washburn.

“I cannot forbear to remark with what coolness my men withstood this fire,” Burnham stressed a key point with the governor. The 6th Maine lads — so many of them from Washington County — displayed “less concern” than if they had “been … upon dress parade.”

At 5 p.m., Confederate generals Dwight Harvey Hill and Jubal A. Early “made preparations to drive our Brigade from the field by a desperate charge.” Burnham set the stage for what happened next.

Some 1,000 Confederates (Burnham’s estimation) “deployed … across the field and bore down upon us,” he told Washburn.

Enemy gunners in Fort Page provided covering fire for the attack. Hancock decided to pull back his artillery and the Maine and Wisconsin regiments; riding out in front of the 6th Maine, Burnham faced his men as “the bullets were already whistling through the air.”

Marching back to the captured earthworks, the Maine and Wisconsin soldiers faced about with the artillery.

“The enemy was within a few hundred yards of us, pushing on in the most determined manner,” Burnham noted.

“We at once opened fire … with such awful execution that it seemed as if every bullet picked its man.”

Washburn, who found hostile gunfire disagreeable, could only imagine the battle. “With thinned ranks the rebels still pushed on, but nothing could withstand the steady courage of our

men,” he learned from Burnham. The Confederates had “halted and faltered” about “ten or fifteen rods from us” when Hancock ordered a charge.

“Panic-stricken and dismayed, the rebels broke and fled as we approached them,” Burnham wrote. “A few volleys from our rifles completed the rout, and they cleared the field in wild disorder, leaving it literally black with their dead and wounded.”

The 6th Maine boys then helped “care” for “their wounded adversaries” until nightfall, he noted. At least 103 wounded Confederates were evacuated into the captured earthworks, where Union soldiers placed their prisoners on wooden boards to raise them above the fort’s floor, described by Burnham as “a perfect bed of mud.”

Rain sheeted across Tidewater Virginia that night. Although now covered

by Union “woolen and rubber blankets,” wounded Confederates suffered; their “groans and shrieks … pierced

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21

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

our ears and attested to the agonies they endured that weary night,” Burnham wrote.

He was pleased to report that only four men from the 6th Maine had been wounded.

The talented Burnham rose in rank to brigadier general and assumed greater responsibilities as the war wore on.

He led a Union brigade sent to attack Confederate-held Fort Harrison east of Richmond on Sept. 29, 1864.

Mounted on his horse, the intrepid Burnham was a large target. An enemy bullet punched through his gut; mortally wounded, the heroic Burnham died soon afterward.

His embalmed body was shipped home. Burnham received a hero’s funeral, and a massive crowd escorted him to his final resting place at Pine Grove Cemetery in his beloved Narraguagus. * Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

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22

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

MaY 23 - OCtObER 18, 2015

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23

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Teeing Off At Fort George Castine golfers were teed off about history

by Brian Swartz

A

George in summer 1814 and hung around Castine well into 1815. After the Brits sailed away for good, the fort lost its military purpose, but found a new lease on life after golfers started playing a rudimentary course in Castine in the late 19th century.

Apparently dubbed the Madockawando Golf Links, the nine-hole course spread across the spine of the Castine peninsula; this high ground is locally called Windmill Hill. With its ramparts rising above the adjacent fields and woods, Fort George was a great place to tee off for the first hole.

As a historically ignorant (and unidentified) reporter explained in the Bangor Daily Commercial on September 1, 1919, “golfers looking for

Castine golfer who got teed off about history in summer 1919 literally teed off on history.

A sport forever linked with Scotland, golf was not a pastime that most British soldiers pursued after occupying Castine in June 1779. General Francis McLean expected an American counterattack any day, so his men furiously constructed a tetragonal fort on the peninsula’s highest point.

Four corner bastions provided flanking positions from which artillery could sweep the curtain walls. Americans did attack Fort George later that summer, but an arriving British fleet turned Castine from a “win” to a “loss” in the Continental battle column.

British troops reoccupied Fort

(continued on page 24)

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24

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 23)

something unique are finding it in historic old Castine, down in Maine, where links have been laid out on Fort George, built before the Revolution, its ramparts making wonderful bunkers and hazards and traps.”

Golfers had built the first tee atop the fort’s ramparts and had placed the ninth hole inside the fort. “The first tee is on a rampart elevated some 18 or 20 feet” above the surrounding terrain, according to the Commercial’s astute reporter. A “lucky” duffer teeing off here “can get a tremendous drive” that should carry past “Backshore Road.”

However, a “fortunate” golfer could watch the golf ball “drop into what was formerly the moat.”

From there, “it takes a skillful niblick play to extricate oneself,” the reporter commented.

“The course crosses and recrosses the old fort several times in its winding, and finally reaches the ninth hole on what was once the parade ground,”

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he informed readers.

The reporter had definitely walked the course; more likely he had played it, because he noticed such interesting details as “a hazard, which beats almost anything in America for being unique” to golf courses.

“The old dungeon, where, back in 1776 and 1778, the English kept their prisoners of war” was a natural catcher of errant golf balls, according to the reporter, who still could not get his history right. The British did not capture Castine until 1779, so whoever kept prisoners there a few years earlier did not use the Fort George dungeon.

This golf-ball grabber “is a grewsome (sic) place, and where once one could go entirely through the ford (sic), underground, it can now be penetrated but a few feet, it having caved in and grown up,” wrote the reporter. “This ‘dug-out’ however, makes a formidable hazard and a ball well in the mouth of it is unplayable.”

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The informal golf course centered on Fort George coalesced into the Castine Golf Club when 30 to 40 people gathered in Emerson Hall in Castine in 1914. Supporters pledged “yearly subscription for a period of five years” to covers greens’ maintenance, according to information provided by the golf club.

Supporters incorporated the Castine Golf Club a few years later and, in 1918, acquired the Battle Avenue house — “the old Stevens place,” sniffed the Commercial reporter — that became the well-known clubhouse.

“It is only this season that it (golf course) has really been perfected and an old residence nearby, at the head of Main Street, bought and remodeled for a clubhouse,” wrote the reporter, a year later in terms of the building’s actual acquisition.

A la “Downton Abbey,” he played to the Castine social set. The clubhouse opened in mid-August 1919 “with a

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25

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com tea, and now is the social center of the summer colony as well as the townspeople,” the reporter rapturously exclaimed without an exclamation point.

“Teas, card parties and dances are held weekly and the place has already become very popular and fills a long felt want” since the nearby Acadian, “the big summer hotel,” had not opened that summer.

Clubhouse remodeling had added “broad porches” and “lockers with showers,” as well as “a card room” and other facilities, the reporter noted.

Then the Castine Golf Club underwent a magnificent remodeling itself.

In September 1921, golf-course designer Willie Park Jr. (a spry 58 that year) arrived in Castine to create a nine-hole course to replace (and in some places incorporate) the existing course.

Hailing from Scotland, Park was famous for designing innovative golf clubs many years before he started designing golf courses. According to the

Castine Golf Club, his “expertise was in conceiving playable golf courses using, as much as possible, the natural contours of the land.”

After stepping up to the existing first tee atop the Fort George ramparts, Park likely realized that the fort’s manmade walls did not constitute “natural contours.” Fort George and its golf-ball-swallowing dungeon had to go, at least figuratively.

Park designed the present nine-hole course, which stretches along Battle Avenue and across a few sites where Americans and Brits shot at one another in summer ’79. Everyone approaching Castine by road (either Route 166 or the less-than-a-shortcut Wadsworth Cove Road) must pass the Castine Golf Club and its familiar links and tennis courts.

On a warm summer’s day, when a light offshore wind skims a few puffy white clouds across the pale blue sky,

there are few more scenic places to play golf in Maine than at this historic course once located within a fort.

As for the golfer-abandoned Fort George, it has since become a state park. Albeit poorly visited, the fort and its grassy ramparts overlook the Castine Golf Club and nearby Maine Maritime Academy; some commuter students use the fort’s parking area during the day.

Buildings and trees have grown up considerably since those long ago days when Francis McLean could stand atop a Fort George bastion and “glass” the few British warships keeping the numerous American warships out of Castine harbor.

After the shooting stopped, he would probably have enjoyed knocking a golf ball around Windmill Hill, if only to vent his frustration at being fired upon by upstart Americans.

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Disaster Could Not Dishearten Ellsworth Christians Great fire of 1933 leveled much of Ellsworth

by Brian Swartz

D

uring my heyday as a wedding photographer, I captured on film a lovely wedding that took place inside the United Baptist Church at 28 Hancock Street in Ellsworth in the early 1990s. The young bride and groom exchanged their vows on a perfect Friday evening in mid-June; afterwards the bridal party posed for photos on the front steps, amidst the four Greek columns rising high above the church’s main entrance.

Then the setting June sun suddenly emerged from behind a puffy cloud and liberally illuminated the peach-colored dresses worn by the

bridesmaids. They literally glowed in the fading sunlight; with the bride sliding into position among her attendants, I snapped several photos.

On that June evening I assumed that, with its striking architecture, the United Baptist Church had been around for a long time, at least since the mid-19th century. I made the same assumption about the Ellsworth United Methodist Church, located at 21 Hancock Street.

Only Spruce Street separated the two churches; surely the buildings had been here “forever” — or for at least the past 100-plus years.

Not true, as I later learned. The

church buildings were actually less than 60 years old, and if not for an arsonist haunting Ellsworth in spring 1933, the churches would have looked significantly different in the 1990s … and today.

Methodists and Baptists arrived in Ellsworth perhaps 15 years apart. Some Methodists worshipped in Ellsworth by the late 1790s; the 1800 hiring of Rev. Joshua Soule as their first “permanent” pastor indicates that local Methodists formed a sizeable congregation by that year.

Rev. Joshua Emery replaced Soule in 1801. Various ministers served the (continued on page 28)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 27)

local congregation into mid-century; with their numbers increasing, Ellsworth Methodists paid $200 in 1859 for a vacant lot on Bridge Hill and erected a church that was dedicated in January 1860.

Rising along the west bank of the Union River across from downtown Ellsworth, Bridge Hill is where Route 1 intersects the Surry Road (Route 172). The new Methodist church stood downhill from Court Street, now only a short, locally used connector between Routes 1 and 172.

After the church burned flat in 1904, congregants decided to move across the Union River to a large lot at the intersection of Hancock Street and Spruce Street. Dedicating their new church building in mid-October 1908, church members also acquired a parsonage.

United Baptist Church traces its lineage to 1816 and a Baptist meeting house constructed at a price of $2,500

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at the intersection of Court Street and Pleasant Street on Bridge Hill. Local Baptists named Rev. David Sands as their first minister.

In 1859 a new Baptist church was built at the intersection of Hancock Street and Pine Street, only a block from Main Street. Known as the Ellsworth Village Baptist Church for the next 38 years, the church became the

Ellsworth Baptist Society in 1897. The congregation adopted the church’s formal name, United Baptist Church of Ellsworth, in 1929.

For almost 25 years the Baptist and Methodist churches stood side by side, with only Spruce Street between them.

The Baptist church projected skyward a belfry and steeple rising more than 100 feet above the ground. In its exterior lines, the Ellsworth United Methodist Church resembled some other Methodist and Congregational churches in eastern Maine.

By now incorporated as a city, Ellsworth was a place of many wooden buildings in spring 1933. Local residents that year lived in fear of an arsonist, headlined in the Ellsworth American as “the Firebug,” who was torching various buildings around the downtown that dry spring.

People attended church services on Sunday, May 7 and went about their

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

business afterwards. Then an arsonist later identified as Norman Moore started a fire at the Bijou Theater. Wind-carried embers ignited nearby buildings and jumped across streets; the Fire of 1933, which swept into history as the greatest disaster to ever strike Ellsworth, consumed 130 buildings and caused more than $1,200,000 in damages before firefighters brought the flames under control.

Local historian Darlene Springer noted in her 2008 book, The Great Fire of Ellsworth 1933, that local residents believed “all of the buildings on the east side of Hancock Street, including the Baptist Church, would escape the fire.” In “a great rush,” the wind-driven fire “had ‘gone by’ the church and was headed … toward Water Street and the [Union] river” well after dark on Sunday, she wrote.

But that 100-foot belfry and steeple snagged loose embers early on Mon-

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day morning. Its supports consumed by flames, the church’s bell plummeted earthward and carried embers into the building’s lower floors; “just as tinder dry as the rest of Ellsworth that night,” the church quickly burned, Springer wrote.

So, too, did the Ellsworth United Methodist Church. A newspaper photographer captured a startling nighttime image of roiling flames silhouetting the doomed church. Fire fills the magnificent stained-glass sanctuary window facing High Street. The outlines of a surviving utility pole and wires stand in stark contrast to the inferno.

The congregations of surviving churches rallied to the aid of the stricken churches. The Unitarians invited the Methodists to use their church, and on May 14 the Baptists worshipped at the First Congregational Church on State Street.

After some finance-related hesita-

tion, local Methodists voted to build a new church on the site of the old. Construction started in spring 1934; the congregation soon resumed worship services in their own church.

Construction on a new Baptist church (designed by Bar Harbor architect Arthur McFarland) began in autumn 1933; members dedicated the new building in mid-October 1934.

Today no evidence remains of the 1933 fire that destroyed both churches and forever changed the architecture of downtown Ellsworth. Brick buildings replaced the wooden structures lost to Moore’s arson.

Local and tourist traffic hums up and down Main Street. Separated from that busy artery by only a block or so, the Methodist church and Baptist church stand as quiet testimony to the determination of local Christians to not let a disastrous fire prevent them from worshipping their God.

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Bar Harbor’s Esther Ralston The American Venus

by Charles Francis

S

he was born Esther North in Bar Harbor in 1902. At the age of two she was in vaudeville. A major star of 1920s, she was relegated to bit parts in B movies when she refused the advances of Louis B. Meyer.

At one point things got so bad for her that she was forced to work as a clerk in a New York department store, denying that she had ever been in movies, even though she was clearly recognizable as the ethereal waif once known as “The American Venus.”

Esther Ralston was indeed beautiful.

There is no question of that. In fact, there is some question as to whether the movie The American Venus was the source of the actress’s appellation or whether she gave the film its name.

You can still find Esther Ralston films today. They include the silent film classics Peter Pan — she was Mrs. Darling — and A Kiss for Cinderella — she played the Fairy Godmother. Late in life, after working as a store clerk, she made something of a comeback on television. Among other things, she was a regular on the 1960s soap opera Our Five Daughters. She also became something of a celebrity as one of the last survivors of the great silver screen personalities, being interviewed on numerous occasions by movie historians.

This was because she lived until 1994.

In a way, she had the last laugh on Louis Meyer. Her first-hand observations backed up numerous sordid details about the mogul that had hitherto been (continued on page 32)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 31)

conjecture.

Esther North was born to a family that already included four boys. Possibly because it was decided that Esther would be the last child, the entire North clan went on the road as a vaudeville family when Esther was still in diapers. Changing their name to Ralston, they began in a small way, first working from Bar Harbor, then Boston. By the time Esther was just into her teens, the Ralstons were touring the entire country. At fourteen, Esther made her east coast film debut in a bit part in Deep Purple. The next year the family moved to Hollywood and Esther joined the ranks of the first generation of child stars.

The American Venus came out in 1926. The Esther Ralston of that time is described as “a wholesome, incredibly beautiful blond. Later, when she made what she considered her favorite and best film, Old Ironsides, opposite Charles Farrell, she was described as

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33

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com possessing “a vulnerable yet defensible beauty.” In short, her looks made her a center of attention. This was true, even when she was a child, when she was billed in the Ralston family act as Juliet. In fact, the name of the family act was The Ralston Family with Baby Esther, America’s Youngest Juliet.

Esther Ralston would be described as one of those women who was lucky enough to be beautiful all her life. It was a beauty that was apparent as a child, a teenager, and later as a young woman and finally in her mature years.

That beauty led to her being cast in the first production of Huckleberry Finn in 1920 and then in the first production of Oliver Twist with Jackie Coogan and Lon Chaney two years later. Ralston would go on to co-star with the likes of Clara Bow, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford and cowboy stars Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson and Ken Maynard. It was as a western heroine of the early ‘20s that she made the most money, being one of

the highest paid actresses of the day.

When one considers silent film stars of the now-distant past, stars that movie historians say were once the equal of names like Julia Roberts, Demi Moore or Drew Barrymore today, one wonders just how much truth there is to the sentiment. These stars command giant salaries, have entourages and seldom go anywhere without the splash of flashbulbs. Esther Ralston’s own recollections recall what it was like for her.

Ralston was once very wealthy. She made $8000 a week acting in westerns.

When she made the western serial The Phantom Fortune, it was the most viewed film up to that time. Paramount supplied her with cars — she preferred Lincolns — and bodyguards.

Esther Ralston appeared in some ninety-five films made under the Hollywood aegis. That figure does not include early shorts made on the east coast. Nor does it include films made while she was in England in the late

‘20s and ‘30s before her unfortunate confrontation with Louis Meyer. Nor does it include television of the ‘60s and stage appearances as late as 1975, her last formal acting.

In 1985, Ralston published her autobiography Some Day We’ll Laugh. Its insights into the ups and downs of Hollywood from the 1920s to the 40s and Ralston’s own feelings regarding what some call the golden age of film make for fascinating reading.

Unfortunately no copies of Old Ironsides, Esther Ralston’s favorite film, or The American Venus have been found in extent. However, there are countless pictures of the actress that was once known as “The American Venus” in books of the silent film era and on the World Wide Web. You can decide for yourself if the little girl from Bar Harbor who went on to vaudeville and Hollywood was, or is, deserving of that title.

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

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35

36

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

Silence Is Not Always Golden Above The Taunton River 1999 saw the end of the old singing bridge

by Brian Swartz

T

he “Singing Bridge” never carried a catchy tune, but when lost in a Route 1 fog in Hancock or Sullivan, even out-of-towners like me knew where we were when our tires hummed along with the melody.

Okay, so maybe the bridge played only three notes, but the tires’ alternating hums clearly told me that I was driving above the Taunton Bridge … on a bridge that liked to sing.

Since retreating glaciers carved the rocky shoreline of modern Hancock County some 10,000 years ago, the Taunton River — which was known by its Native American designation until colonial times, of course

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People traveling between Hancock and Sullivan either traveled by land

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through Franklin or by boat across the Taunton River. Essentially a double-ended scow, a toll ferry long operated between West Sullivan and Hancock. Similar ferries connected many river-divided towns elsewhere in Maine.

The ferry men playing the Taunton River had to watch for large ships “sailing” with the appropriate tides. Granite and lumber shipped from wharves farther “up” the river or somewhere on the bays. The captain of a granite-laden coastal schooner tried to catch the right wind and tide to navigate the river, especially the narrows known today as “Tidal Falls.”

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37

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Local resident John Sargent spanned the quarter-mile channel between West Sullivan and Hancock with a wooden bridge in 1812. He charged a toll; the income could not match the expenses, however, particularly when winter storms and ice churned the river.

Sargent’s bridge literally disappeared with the time and tides; ferry men carried people and freight back and forth across the Taunton River for the next century.

The state constructed a better bridge in 1916, but that span could not adequately handle post-Great War cars and trucks. The Maine State Highway Commission (forerunner of the Maine Department of Transportation) contracted construction of a wider bridge in the mid-1920s.

The new Sullivan-Hancock Bridge (not to be confused with the future Waldo-Hancock Bridge on the western border of Hancock County) officially opened on Saturday, May 1, 1926. Sullivan and Hancock were now a quick

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drive apart.

The Taunton River ferry went out of business.

Steel girders formed the abovedeck section of the Sullivan-Hancock Bridge, which featured a metal-grid deck for its entire length. Although this design enhanced runoff (rain drained through the deck), the crisscrossed steel grids caused a motorcycle’s rear tire to slip slightly from side to side, similar to the motion caused by grooved pavement.

And the metal grids quickly gave the bridge its unofficial name. As a car rolled onto the deck, the revolving tires “hummed” on the steel grids. The humming changed frequency three times from shore to shore.

Local wags quickly dubbed the new span the “Singing Bridge.” That nickname stuck for 73 years as the venerable 1926 bridge almost (but not quite) carried traffic into the 21st century.

Route 1 was considerably narrow-

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er in the early 1970s, when I first encountered the Singing Bridge. When the recapped tires of my rust-bucket ’63 Dodge 330 hit the Hancock end, the loud hum startled me; the “music” produced by the Singing Bridge strongly resembled the “tune” that a disintegrating retread tire on the Dodge had made a month earlier on Route 1A in Dedham.

After a quick inspection on the Sullivan shore found all four tires intact, I headed Down East. On the return leg I listened to the music of the Sullivan-Hancock Bridge — and I heard that same tune many times during the next 25 years.

The bridge deck could also visually entertain a driver with an overactive imagination. When the sun was right and the tide was high, I could look through the metal grids and see sunlight glinting on the river. Occasionally I would think, “What would happen if a grid section comes loose and flips as I drive over it?” (continued on page 38)

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38

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 37)

Would the car and driver take a dip in the river?

By the early 1990s, the MDOT was widening Route 1 sectionally — a mile here, a half mile there, a long bypass on the high hill west of Hancock Village — as traffic picked up between Ellsworth and points Down East. The “Singing Bridge” had made Sullivan, Sorrento, Gouldsboro, and even distant Winter Harbor suburbs of Ellsworth.

Lacking a sidewalk, the 1926 bridge was narrow by modern transportation standards. Budgeting for the bridge’s replacement, the MDOT contracted the project in the late 1990s.

A new steel-and-concrete bridge took shape alongside the Singing Bridge. The MDOT opened the new bridge in August 1999 and promptly closed its predecessor.

Unlike the Waldo-Hancock Bridge, which elegantly rusted alongside the Penobscot Narrows Bridge between

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Prospect and Verona Island for a few years before being torn, the Singing Bridge vanished swiftly into history.

The drive “over” the Taunton Bridge went quiet. Recognizing the melodious loss, local residents dubbed the new Sullivan-Hancock Bridge the “Silent Bridge.”

For those of us who remember humming along with the Singing Bridge, the silence is not golden.

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40

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

The Amazing Weed Otherworldly undersea kelp holds many of Maine’s secret surprises

by Jeffrey Bradley

E

nthusiasts claim it’s a “super food” containing all the essentials for optimum health. And certainly kelp has gone mainstream thanks to the efforts of Maine’s seaweed aficionados. But within its natural element, a swirl in the cold currents of the Gulf of Maine and backlit by the glow of the open ocean, kelp’s transcendent qualities really become apparent.

Most Mainers are familiar with their inland mountains, but with those offshore, not so much. Yet right on the Downeast doorstep sits a formation of underwater ridges, ledges, shelves, seamounts, spires, pinnacles, basins,

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banks and outcroppings rivaling anything anywhere for wildlife. Fringed by sheltered coves, sandy white beaches, verdant rolling hills and sea cliffs that drop straight into the sea, the Gulf of Maine is largely enfolded within jutting

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Massachusetts and maritime Canada.

This sea-within-a-sea comprises 36,000 square miles, averages 500 feet of depth, and boasts 7,500 miles of stunning coastline. And it all was carved by ice.

From any cobble-strewn shingle, the spindrift over the wave-dashed rocks seems a veil obscuring a shipwreck realm, the deep dark sea, devoid of life, below. Yet, nothing could be any the less true. At the confluence of the southerly Gulf Stream and cold Labrador Current, the gulf has been a vital fishing ground providing sustenance for Downeast communities like Milbridge and Jonesport since time imme-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com morial. Plankton-dense currents washing in and out on the turbulent tides are twirled below where gyres stream past looming seamounts the way a racing prow knifes through waves. A nutritious aqueous broth, plankton is the oceanic stuff of life. Carried to every shallow and depth on the riptides, cats’ paws and eddies caused by the underwater jumbled geology, every finny denizen in the gulf partakes in some way of this manna.

Inshore kelp communities start with the heaps of wrack left stranded by the high tides. Here the green crabs scuttle, hunting sand fleas while dodging the seabirds that scavenge the jetsam. Low tide reveals congeries of boulders slick with sea lettuce and reddish-brown Irish moss. Rockweed — the stuff you can pop between your fingers — hangs in limp rubbery mats awaiting the tide’s turning. The bunchy, olive-brown “finger” kelp festooning the rocks also hides tide pools. These tiny briny habi-

tats are strife with strange life. Beneath the overhang of seaweed hide the baby lobsters that in time will attain size enough to terrorize the deeps. For now this puzzling crustacean — it navigates by smell, listens with its legs, and ponders, if ever, with the “brains” in its throat — needs all its attributes to avoid being eaten. By contrast, weird brittle stars writhe unconcernedly over the lumpish limpets clinging uncommonly fast to the slippery rocks before they sidle into a crevice. Colorful anemones bloom with abandon until, bumped by a boisterous bug-eyed shrimp, the “blossoms” vanish, withdrawn within by the startled animal. But mind the bloodworm. This iridescent, foot-long marine creature may undulate entrancingly but has powerful jaws that deliver a nasty bite!

The offshore kelp forests, also known as the Serengetis of the Seas, harbor some 2,000 different kinds of species, making this oddly-configured

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underwater topography among the world’s top productive marine environments.

Seamounts are mountains whose peaks do not break the surface. In these waters, they were not thrust up from below by volcanoes but laid down from above by glaciers. In all the world, coastal New England holds the most, with the Gulf of Maine holding the best: Cashes Ledge, a feature miles offshore from Bay Harbor marking the terminal advance of a glacier that spilled stupendous amounts of debris before evanescing. Averaging 100 feet of depth, its tallest peak, Ammen Rock — the underwater equivalent of Mt. Washington — rises to within 30 feet of the surface. And here grow the coldest, deepest, most extensive kelp communities along the entire Eastern Seaboard.

Fishermen have shunned this place for its gear-busting obstacles. Yet, this broken bedrock has enabled a complexity of life that scientists deem the gulf’s

(continued on page 42)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 41)

last remaining undisturbed ecosystem.

As a “living laboratory,” it is studied for clues to the health of the North Atlantic.

Ammen Rock swarms with life.

Precipitously sloping sides pulse fluxes of plankton through the seaweed communities. Near the sunlit surface sprout lush beds of laminarian kelp 30 feet tall, while further down are horsetail, shotgun and sugar varieties. A vertical wall of psychedelic echinoderms, blue, gold and yellow sponges, and invertebrates resembling the mossy lichens clinging to fence posts, this granite pinnacle leaves no patch unfluoresced.

Deeper down brachiopods, sea squirts and lumpy green algae proliferate.

Heavy-shelled wavy whelks, crawling heedlessly, stir sea scallops to clattering flight. An out-sized cod or pollock on patrol sends flashing schools of little squid darting away like living arrows.

The limpets, crabs and periwinkles encrusting the rocky finger appear blasé to

the presence of stiff-legged amphipods or the tumbling antics of hermit crabs.

From out of the gloaming appears a dogfish or porbeagle shark to scatter the visiting schools of tuna; further along, where the water turns murky, northern shrimp whirl in a mad profusion. In the deepest trenches, fathoms below, lurk giant hake and haddock.

Pincushiony sea urchins, relatives of the starfish of startling hues, infest the forest. Able to literally munch through the kelp, sea urchins pose a danger.

Once hunted by cod, fanged wolf fish now attempt to keep the pests in check.

With its blunt, oversized head and rolling obsidian-black eyes, this creature appears totally fearsome but is really a sea-going pussycat. Left alone, it will glare from a burrow when not devouring urchins. But even they have suffered from overfishing, and for now, the sea urchins rule. All this bounty makes seamounts a tempting target. But trawling the kelp for fish is like clear-cutting

a forest to catch a few squirrels. And the shredded kelp may never recover.

Exploring this hushed and shadowy realm can evoke insights not usually encountered in nature. Dived by cormorants, hunted by sharks, and denizened by a plethora of oddities, including the raffish wolf fish and those brilliant starfish of impressive dimension, otherworldly kelp conveys an imposing cathedral-like aura. Back dropped by the cliffs, coves and headlands of the Gulf of Maine, inshore coastal communities of kelp and those immense offshore forests are both worth preserving if for no other reason than their grandeur of life.

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44

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

Into The Maelstrom Between a rock and a hard place is the whirlpool

I

by Jeffrey Bradley

know, I know; you’re probably thinking it’s pronounced Old “Sow”, as in plough, but it’s really a sough — suff — an open drain or a rustling wind. Plough, sow, suff — enough! Mainers will tell you that it’s a hole in the water off Eastport.

Tucked away in the northeast corner of the Gulf of Maine between the mainland and Nova Scotia lies the oddball Bay of Fundy. Two hundred miles long by 700 feet deep and shaped like a funnel, the bay formed as continental plates “rifted” apart hundreds of millions of years ago. Stresses of this magnitude are transformational; here, tremendous upwellings of mag-

ma engulfed the land. When the seas eventually filled the basin, powerful tides scored fast-running channels and deep defiles into the bedrock. Due to the tangled deep sea topography, a relentless planetary “resonance” and oceanic configurations, Fundy contains more watery wonders than any comparable body of water on Earth.

Famous for having the world’s highest tides (boats floating in 8 fathoms of water, about 50 feet, six hours later are left on the red mudflats of low tide) and also the fastest, a dire fate may befall those venturing out too far in search of the “disappearing” tide. The ocean pours in over the broken bedrock at a

brisk 25 knots, over 30 miles an hour.

Moreover, the influx is moiled by the sunken geology, producing a turbulence that even threatens navigation. Besides stupendous tides, the bay is replete with riptides, cross-currents, sudden swells, and “seiche” waves that oscillate wildly around the bay until unexpectedly crashing ashore. Less unnerving but hardly prosaic are thunder holes, tidal bores, standing waves, reversing waterfalls — and the Western Hemisphere’s largest whirlpool known as “Old Sow.” Understanding these phenomena requires insight into what occurred when the land was dry. Eons ago, Pangaea, a supercontinent, began to break up due

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com to the shifting crustal plates that carry Earth’s continents. According to “plate tectonics,” the plates float on molten magma extending deep in the planet’s core, much the way contents in a pot of simmering soup coalesce or move about at the whim of bubbling currents.

Likewise, Earth’s plates also “drift” by the action of thermal currents. When two plates meet the heavier sub ducts, or dives under the lighter one, setting off seismic activity like that of the Pacific Ocean’s “rim of fire.” (Sub ducted plates emulsified by heat and pressure are later extruded as fresh new bedrock.) This process takes millennia, and continents creep across the surface at about the same rate your fingernails grow. Europe and North America are already drawing together via subduction, causing the Atlantic Ocean to eventually disappear — in about 200 million years!

North America and Africa were once conjoined but split along the Fun-

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dy Basin “seam,” triggering massive eruptions. Largely eroded, these ancient flood basalts are still visible in the reddish-brown rock formations near Gouldsboro. While the rifting ceased, the future Bay of Fundy formed.

Enter the glaciers. These immense ice sheets covered Maine to the depth of a mile and locked up so much water that the coastline ended at the seaward edge of today’s Scotian Shelf — 150 miles from Bar Harbor! Here the glaciers halted, unable to overcome the miles-deep drop into the abyss. Behind and beneath them was mostly dry land.

Forming, advancing, retreating, then reforming, pulses of ice occurred over many millions of years. The last one scraped through about 25,000 years ago and reconfigured the basin by steepening walls and deepening trenches and gouging Cobscook Bay and Passamaquoddy Bay from the living bedrock.

When it finally retreated (actually the ice simply melted), enough rocky ac-

(continued on page 46

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cumulation had been dropped to alter the seabed. The returning ocean carved this debris into the shelves, shoals and seamounts of today. Now the tide flows around and through these formations with enough force to tilt the landscape and conjure up weird anomalies.

Tidal agitation creates a plethora of oddities. A thunder hole is a coastal cave or crevasse that resounds like thunder when conditions are right. The “thunder,” really a retort of compressed air, resembles an artillery barrage when the rolling waves encounter a series of grottoes such as those along Quoddy Head State Park in Lubec. In an area riddled with them, a particularly fine example exists just south of Boot Head. A tidal bore occurs where the tide surges into an embayment or river against the current, or where shoaling and narrowing adds impetus to the waves. These long white foaming crests, resembling a mini-tsunami and big enough to surf, mark where tide is overcoming current,

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 45)

and are fairly frequent near Perry. The convoluted shoreline of Cobscook Bay, adjacent to Fundy, produces a different paradox: the Reversing Falls at Mahar’s Point in Pembroke. These “falls,” set against a rocky tableau, are really a set of rapids emptying into Dennys Bays. Water coursing over the jutting outcroppings emits a distinctive howl until the tide turns some six hours later.

During a brief lull, with high and low tides in equipoise, the clamor fades to a burble; the channel calms, the birds sing, and the wind sloughs softly in the trees. But as the tide inexorably turns and heads back to sea, small cat’s paws appear in the water, the seaweed unfurls in the opposite direction, and the water seethes and recommences its roar, for another six hours, at least. In contrast, a standing wave may appear absolutely stationary due to offsetting currents or a hidden obstruction. This uncanny apparition may be often observed on the

incoming tide off the southern end of Moose Island, a freaky unmoving wall of white water running from the tip of the island into the distance, but going nowhere.

At mid-tide the astonishing volume of water that flows through the Bay of Fundy equals all the rivers and streams on Earth combined! This “tidal friction” imperceptibly slows the Earth’s rotation and gradually increases the distance from the Earth to the moon. In slowly spiraling away, the moon is destined to abandon the Earth altogether and become a lonely galactic wanderer.

But while still in orbit our lunar companion aligns with the Sun and our planet to produce a “resonance” that amplifies the quirky effects of that seabed topography in creating spectacular spectacles.

Whirlpools, like fabulous beasts, are the stuff of legend. Old Sow may personify mythical Scylla from the tales of

brave Ulysses, but whether that monster was also borne of tidal action can only be guessed at, for Old Sow is surely the work of natural forces. Incoming tides must surge around islands, surmount seamounts, stream through narrow channels and over boulder-strewn bottoms, race down deepwater trenches and merge with counter-currents sweeping down from the north to produce conditions ideal for a whirlpool — exactly what the deepwater canyons and hard-angle turns in the Western Passage of Passamaquoddy Bay provide. Powerful tides and an influx of water allows this vortex to thrive.

Vigilance is necessary when hunting Old Sow at the slack tide. But when the deceptively tranquil surface turns a stippled pother of unusual troughs, with a fizzing and frothing of vortices about to erupt, and a rapidly spinning effervescence suddenly revolves into a dizzying spiral, you have found Old

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Sow the whirlpool. Snuffling and snorting, it whirls into motion to chuff and churn for the next three hours on either side of the tide. Its sheer size — 250 feet across — and erratic wobble tells you that here is a volatile entity. Beware the creeping but hidden “event horizon” — beyond which whatever crosses is whirled to perdition — which the “piglets” and turbulence in no way dispels. Small craft are advised to avoid the menace, which becomes exponentially more treacherous on a running tide with a stiff easterly breeze The Old Sow Whirlpool Survivor’s Association — there actually is such an organization — further cautions intrepid kayakers, adventurous daredevils and adrenaline rush junkies of all kinds to keep well clear of the gyre. For not all who dare challenge Old Sow come back to tell the tale.

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48

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

The Genealogy Corner

by Charles Francis

Tracing Italian family history

I

ndividuals of Italian ancestry make up a significant percentage of the Maine population, almost 5%.

Those of Italian ancestry are only exceeded by French Canadians, English, Irish and those who simply identify themselves as American, in that order.

In short, Italians and individuals of Italian origin played an important part in building Maine and its history. And those of Italian ancestry — like most everyone else — are caught up in that all-engrossing hobby of seeking out their roots or building their family tree.

The earliest Italian settlers of Maine came in the late nineteenth century.

They were hired by contractors in ports of entry like Boston. Many came to work

in the quarries like those of Brownville.

More were employed to help establish Great Northern in Millinocket. In fact, one section of Millinocket is known as “Little Italy” because that is where most of the community’s first Italians made their homes. They squatted there

rather than first establishing land ownership. The town allowed them to do so. “Little Italy” is on the east bank of Millinocket Stream. It started on one of the town’s public school lots.

The first Italians of Millinocket were hired between February and April of 1900 by John Merrill. Merrill was the supervisor in charge of early Great Northern construction. He went to Boston to hire crews. Initially he hired some 400 Italians as well as much smaller numbers of other immigrant laborers.

The laborers were paid $1.50 a day plus board. Board was beans, bread, potatoes, macaroni and rice. Skilled workers got up to $2.50 a day. Machine men could make up to $5.00 a day.

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com If you have ever tried to research your Italian ancestry you have probably found that problems arise even before you delve into records in Italy. The problems start with the most important record (for the genealogist) of the first ancestor in the United States, the death certificate.

Death certificates are supposed to be official records. However, information contained on a death certificate can often differ from information on other “official” records or data in resources like the family Bible.

For example, a birth date or birth place on a death certificate can differ from that presented by census records.

Even the spelling of a surname can vary. How can this be?

The first thing the genealogist must consider in weighing variances like these mentioned above is the source.

Most often, census data was supplied by the head of household. Let’s say for the sake of argument, the person whose name is on the death certificate. Why

the discrepancy between census data and death certificate? The person who supplied the information for the latter was someone other than the subject, who was dead.

Death certificates include the following information: age at death, birth date, birth place, parents’ names, including mother’s maiden name, parents’ birth places, citizenship, how long in the U. S., in the armed service?, and so on. They should be easy for someone to answer, but not if the person supplying the answers had difficulty with English or if the person supplying the answers was not a family member but a neighbor or friend. Then, too, there is sometimes something of a mystery surrounding someone from a foreign country, especially if they might have been reticent about their origins or were jealous of their privacy.

The best way to deal with the problem of conflicted official records like that mentioned above is to collect as many as possible. For example, natural-

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ization records, employment records, church records and so on. The next step is tracing the family record in Italy.

If you have no idea where in Italy your particular ancestor or ancestors came from, a good starting point is the book Our Italian Surnames, by Joseph G. Fucilla. First published in 1949 by the Genealogical Publishing Company of Baltimore, Maryland, its demand has been so great as to have gone through four reprints. It is an invaluable resource, in that it includes, among other things, how Italian names have been anglicized, what prefixes mean, and it connects a good many names to locals.

There is also a good resource close to hand. It is the Family History Center of the Mormon Church. Church members have done intensive work in Italy (and other foreign countries) and you can access them at the center at 639 Grandview Street in Bangor. You must be prepared to do the work there, though. The center’s volunteers are just (continued on page 50)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 49)

that, volunteers, not experts in genealogy. There are also a myriad of books on researching Italian genealogy. A trip to the bookstore will allow you to browse through current titles.

As a final note: There is an excellent Internet site on researching Italian genealogy in Italy, ItalianGenealogy.com.

The site delineates many of the problems on researching in Italy, and may save you from investing in procedures which will net nothing of value.

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

Erwin Kreuz

I

Bangor’s accidental tourist

by James Nalley

Airways flight from Germany to San Francisco as his first international trip.

When the plane landed at Bangor International Airport to refuel, Kreuz, still half asleep from the transatlantic journey, missed the announcements regarding the stopover to clear U.S. customs. According to the Bangor Daily News, as the passengers disembarked, a flight attendant stopped by Kreuz’s seat and told him, “Have a great time in San Francisco!” Upon hearing this, “he took his suitcase through customs, walked out the terminal, hailed a taxi, and asked to be taken to a hotel.”

Amazingly, for four days, Kreuz wandered the streets of Bangor in search of the Golden Gate Bridge and

n the days before the Internet, smart phones, and heightened U.S. Homeland Security and Customs regulations, travel was in many ways much simpler. Such simplicity, however, sometimes resulted in outrageous cases in which travelers unknowingly took detours in their itineraries.

Take, for instance, this story about a San Francisco-bound German tourist who, for four days in October 1977, believed that downtown Bangor was actually the iconic “City by the Bay.” Erwin Kreuz (b. 1927) was a friendly and down-to-earth Schaller Brewery worker from a village near Augsburg, Germany. Although he spoke no English, he booked a World

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com other major landmarks that he had only seen in magazines. After discovering only two Chinese restaurants, he simply concluded that he was in a suburb of San Francisco. He then hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take him to downtown San Francisco after which the driver responded, “That is a 3,000mile journey!” Somewhat unnerved by this revelation, Kreuz found a German restaurant in Old Town, where he befriended its German-speaking owner, Gertrude Romine. Kreuz was then provided with a complete picture of his dilemma and a hotel room in Milford while they figured out how to help the man. Through word-of-mouth, Kreuz’s story was eventually written up as a short humorous article in the Bangor Daily News. At that point, the article seemed to fulfill its purpose of simply “filling the page.” However, the story went national, and Kreuz unintentionally gained his so-called “15 minutes of fame.”

Over the following two weeks, Kreuz was welcomed by the people of Bangor and transformed into a local celebrity. For example, he was made a member of the Rotary Club in Old Town, an honorary member of the Penobscot Indian nation, and the guest of honor at an Oktoberfest event. He was even flown to Augusta to meet the governor and the Secretary of State at the Maine Statehouse. On his 50th birthday, Kreuz celebrated the milestone at a McDonald’s on Union Street in Bangor since his wish was to taste a Big Mac after having seen a German television commercial regarding the “Big Mac Attack.” Finally, a couple from the town of St. Francis gave him a one-acre lot overlooking the St. John River.

In the U.S., Kreuz’s story was covered in Time magazine and on NBC’s Today Show, where Tom Brokaw praised the people of Bangor for their hospitality. In Germany his story was covered by two well-known magazines:

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Stern and Der Spiegel. When the news reached San Francisco, the people there were so amused that the San Francisco Examiner offered to pay for his flight to the city. Upon arriving in San Francisco, then Mayor George Moscone gave him a key to the city and he was honored both in Chinatown and at the famed San Francisco Cow Palace.

However, as quickly as everything occurred, the interest in Kreuz ended when he boarded the flight back to Germany. In an awkward acknowledgement of their mistake, World Airways officials asked Kreuz to pose with a sign that read (both in English and German), “Please let me off in Frankfurt!”

In October 1978, one year after his highly publicized excursion, Kreuz was invited back to Bangor for a rather lengthy one-month visit sponsored by the Equitable Life Assurance Company (now known as Equitable Life Insurance). The purpose of this second visit was to capitalize on his fame by invit(continued on page 54)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 53)

ing him to officiate at the opening ceremony for the Bangor Mall. Naturally, this provided considerable publicity for the mall and for Kreuz himself.

Meanwhile, back in Germany, the relationship between Kreuz and Schaller Brewery was beginning to sour due to his boldness of requiring a higher salary for his so-called “celebrity status.”

In addition, Kreuz insulted the brewery by admitting to the German press that he normally drank a competitor’s beer.

Needless to say, after his month-long visit in Maine, the brewery fired him upon his return to Germany through a letter stating that cuts had to be made due to “continuously increasing staff costs and stagnating turnovers.” Kreuz was the sole recipient of such a letter.

In 1979, Kreuz made a third and final visit to Bangor. This time, he paid for his own plane ticket and there was little to no fanfare. It was clear that his “15 minutes of fame” had ended and

Amazingly, for four days, Kreuz wandered the streets of Bangor in search of the Golden Gate Bridge and other major landmarks that he had only seen in magazines.

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the general public had moved on to more pressing issues. With hopes of “cashing in” on his former celebrity status and permanently moving to the United States, Kreuz searched for employment and utilized his old connections. Unfortunately, the best he could obtain was a minimum wage janitorial position at the Bangor Mall.

According to his final interview with the Bangor Daily News, Kreuz stated that “he was grateful for the job offer…but this third trip to Bangor was a mistake.” Bangor would never see Erwin Kreuz again, and as quickly as his plane flew off over the Atlantic, the story disappeared into the annals of Maine’s interesting history.

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

Brave Boys In Flight Brewer and Bangor Teenagers Flew for Britian

by Brian Swartz

T

wo planes diverged in a British sky, and one young pilot flew on to die.

Anxious to join the war effort against Imperial Germany, 17-yearolds James Mutty of Brewer and Hal Savage of Bangor plotted to get into the fighting sooner than they could by enlisting in the U.S. Army. In June 1917 the good friends were students at Bangor High School, where Mutty had finished his junior year and Savage his sophomore year.

The son of Joseph Mutty and his wife of Brewer, Mutty decided in June that “it was time for him to get into the big game against the Hun,” he later told a Bangor Daily News reporter.

It’s clean. It’s safe. It’s reliable.

Savage concurred with Mutty’s desire.

As the Great War raged in Europe, Maine newspapers carried exciting articles about the scarf- and helmet-clad aviators writing history in the skies above France, Belgium, and Germany. Attracted by potential adventure and romanticism — women went wild about the daring young men in their

flying machines — Mutty and Savage discussed how they could become pilots for Britain.

Both teenagers were too young to fly for the United States Army.

Their first step would involve enlisting in the Royal Flying Corps of Canada, then headquartered in Montreal.

Without revealing their goal, Mutty and Savage asked Bangor High Principal H.R. Eaton for letters of recommendation, evidently addressed “to whom it may concern.”

Then, probably catching a Canadian Pacific Railroad train at Brownville Junction, the would-be pilots traveled to Montreal, walked into the RFC headquarters, and expressed their desire to

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57

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com sign up. Passing the requisite medical physicals, Mutty and Savage went to Toronto for a six-week ground school “which included machine gunnery, map reading, wireless telegraphy, and bomb work,” the BDN reported.

After studying military aeronautics at the University of Toronto, the Bangor boys split up. Mutty went to an RFC landing strip at Armour Heights in North Toronto; Savage headed to an American training base in Texas.

The RFC instructors wasted little time in getting pilot recruits airborne.

“I remember the first day I was sent solo, for when I went up alone for the first time, it was shortly before Thanksgiving Day in 1917,” Mutty told the BDN reporter.

“It’s a great experience, the realization of a cadet’s greatest hope, this being sent solo, for after you have flown alone once, you always do it alone,” Mutty said.

He trained in a Curtis JN-4 “Jenny,”

“It’s a great experience, the realization of a cadet’s greatest hope, this being sent solo, for after you have flown alone once, you always do it alone” a single-engine biplane manufactured

by Curtiss Aerospace Co. in Hammondsport, New York. “There was in the course 65 hours of flying, including cross country flights, bomb dropping, and wireless interception of messages,” Mutty said. “We carried on, too, in aerial navigation lessons.”

Completing his flight training, Mut-

ty transferred to Camp Hicks in Fort Worth, Texas for additional training.

Then the now 18-year-old Mutty returned to Toronto to receive a lieutenant’s commission in the Royal Flying Corps. After a brief visit with his family in Brewer, Mutty traveled to Halifax and a transatlantic voyage to Liverpool. He landed there on April 19, 1918.

Although the RFC desperately needed pilots in France, Mutty trained for several weeks in Britain. Surviving “a crash from 5,000 feet in the air” and mending at a military hospital in Chester, he took his last training at a base in Wales and finally reached the front in late September.

Reporting to No. 3 Squadron in northern France, Mutty flew a Sopwith Camel outfitted as scout plane and equipped “with two Vickers guns, synchronized to fire through the propeller,” he told the Bangor Daily News.

Although he did not shoot down a Ger(continued on page 58)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 57)

man plane, Mutty “was … engaged in trench strafing, offensive patrol, and other active service,” according to the newspaper.

The November 11 armistice ended the fighting. Taking a brief furlough in England, Mutty rejoined No. 3 Squadron for additional service at bases in Belgium, France, and Germany. He often flew in the last country until the Spanish influenza (which killed between 50 million and 100 million people worldwide) dropped him onto a sick bed.

The recuperating Mutty remained in Germany when No. 3 Squadron deployed to Egypt. He later returned to England and flew air mail between various British air fields.

The Royal Flying Corps mustered out Mutty on Saturday, June 28, 1919.

Boarding the steamer SS Megantic at Liverpool, he disembarked at Montreal on September 24 and caught a series of trains to Bangor, where he arrived on

September 26, 1919.

Hal Savage did not survive the war.

He ultimately reached Britain as an RFC lieutenant. In September 1918, Savage was “killed in an aeroplane crash … when the student he was instructing made an error which resulted fatally for the young American,” the Bangor Daily News reported.

Savage was buried with military honors in a British cemetery.

“I knew it only about a day after Hal was killed,” Mutty quietly informed his interviewer. “He met his death after splendid service and while teaching another to do his work.

“It was as he would have wished, I think, and his was the privilege of giving all,” Mutty said.

“It was my loss I regretted when, reading the casualties as they were announced to us, I saw the name of my pal,” he said. “Somehow, to go out like that is gain for the one who goes out.”

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Stockton Springs Soldier Marched Home A Captured Confederate

by Brian Swartz

Adapted from “Maine at War”

W

hen the Civil War ended, Confederate prisoners of war headed south from POW camps in the North, but Union soldier Philip Souder Holmes of Stockton Springs “marched” his gray-clad Confederate prisoner north from Louisiana.

A private with Co. K, 26th Maine Infantry Regiment, Holmes fought in the Battle of Irish Bend, which took place in southern Louisiana on April 14, 1863. When a Confederate gunboat fired on the Maine soldiers a day earlier, a shell “struck a tree and knocked a nest of young [fox] squirrels out,” Holmes noticed.

Checking on the young squirrels,

he “got one and put it in my haversack, and I always carried him with me.”

The next day, during the Battle of Irish Bend, “I was hit three times by as many different bullets,” Holmes later wrote. A comrade, Josiah Nickerson of Swanville, “helped me up and I started for the rear. I went to where the wounded were coming in and had my wound hastily dressed and was sent to an old sugar house, where I lay on the cold ground.”

The young fox squirrel went with him. “When I was wounded at Irish Bend the squirrel was found tucked snugly in the breast of my coat[,] and it refused to leave me even at the hospi-

tal,” according to Holmes.

The fox squirrel went up the Mississippi River with him and the 26th Maine, which fought at Port Hudson as May passed into June and then into July. The rodent prisoner — Holmes never named it, apparently — seldom strayed far afield from the regiment’s encampment.

“When [I was] lying in the trenches in the day time[,] he would go off and be gone for some time but on the firing of a gun he would come back on the run and dive for the old haversack,” Holmes noticed.

“The squirrel had become so tame (continued on page 62)

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(continued from page 61)

that it would go the full length of the regimental line, jumping from shoulder to shoulder of the men, but it always came back and crept into my knapsack to sleep,” he remembered.

When Holmes returned to Stockton Springs, he brought his all-too-willing prisoner with him. The squirrel “was given the full run of the farm and would go off into the woods and fields but always returned at meal times and to sleep,” Holmes recalled.

The fox squirrel still slept “in the old haversack[,] which was kept hung up on the corner of the chimney-place, filled with paper. One day, in cleaning [the] house, Mrs. Holmes neglected to hang the haversack back in its place,” according to Holmes.

The Confederate squirrel disappeared.

Holmes frantically searched his house and outbuildings; then, to his relief, he discovered the fox squirrel

“snugly tucked in my old haversack at the bottom of a barrel in a shed and beneath a lot of papers as well.”

Holmes made sure that “the haversack was returned to its place,” and “the squirrel slept in that the remainder of his life. This wasn’t for long, as one day he was missed and never returned.

“I think someone shot him,” Holmes believed.

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

The Coyote

I

by Kenneth Smith

Villian or Victim?

t was the summer of 1954. The oriental year of the horse, French Legionnaires surrendered their fort.

Senator Joe McCarthy is red hunting, President Eisenhower warns China not to invade Taiwan, Englishman Roger Banister breaks the 4 minute mile barrier, Dr. Jones Salk’s anti-polio vaccine is released for general use. Backto-back hurricanes Carol and Edna lashed New England creating havoc. I am bagging bobcat droppings in New Hampshire’s Passaconaway Valley.

To obtain a B.S. degree in Wildlife Management, after my junior year, it was a requirement that I attend an 8week program at U.N.H.’s Forestry Summer Camp, and then to carry out

an original research project. The camp was actually a hotel, formerly an Artist Colony that had been donated to the college. Hardly the pristine Swift River, some 20 miles of dead end dirt road from Conway. The so-called Kancamagus Highway. It was paradise in the heart of the White Mountain National Forest.

My task was directed at the wildcat reputed at the time to b the major predator of the white tailed deer. The same statues currently ascribed to the coyote in Maine.

Bobcat scat laid down the previous fall and winter is, by the next summer, a small white mass of undigested fur and bone fragments. Examined under a binocular microscope it is a simple mat-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com ter to identify the origin. My finished research paper concluded that 90% of the Lynx Rufous diet was rodent origin, not deer. What little deer hair I did find could have come from road kill or hunter wounded animals that later died. Still the fable of killer cats persisted.

Today in Washington County the coyote, victim of the same wolf paranoia and bad press is held primarily responsible for the precipitous decline of our once legendary deer herd.

Some coyote history and biology is in order. South Dakota’s state animal, usually presented as a cunning, a malicious creature, subject of many North American Indian myths and story, this brush wolf is a survivor. Scientifically Canis Latrans is a member of the family Canidae (dogs, foxes and wolves).

Make no mistake, our Maine coyote is a wolf. Bold, shy, resourceful, adaptable this critter predates our arrival on the continent by many millennia. It has spread from the desert in the southwest

to the Canadian Maritimes.

These ubiquitous prairie wolves, keen of eye, ear and smell, and fleet of foot are worthy adversaries. Great communicators, their calls carry for miles.

Our federal government owns or controls much of the land west of the Mississippi. For the last 100 years, in an effort to placate lease-holding ranches and farmers, animal danger control agents (professional hunters and trappers) have been hired. These men pursued coyotes by planes, hounds, horses and vehicles. Bounteed, poisoned, trapped, snared and shot, their annual kill of 250 to 300 thousand only served to push their quarry eastward. The more they were harried the higher the birth rate.

In paranoid programs around the planet man has exterminated some 20 subspecies of wolves. Early New England settlers dug deep baited pits lined with sharpened stakes to trap timber wolves and mountain lions. It worked.

By the 1930s coyotes were being taken in western Canada. Pushing across Manitoba and Quebec they migrated into the Northern New England.

During this odyssey they probably interbreed with the Algonquin wolf. They began to trickle into Maine in the late 1940s and in the early 1950s bred with wild domestic dogs producing a coydog hybrid. At this juncture the genealogy becomes muddy. Some genuine coyotes were probably released in state either by choice or chance.

Some 50 were killed and when examined by U.M.O. biologists and later at some Washington D.C. area museums — all were crosses. This coydog phenomenon did not persist. By 1960 most specimens were true-new ‘Eastern Coyotes’, 20 pounds heavier, healthier and better built than their scruffy western counterpart.

What then has happened to our Virginia white-tailed deer? Is the Eastern coyote the real culprit. Records from (continued on page 66)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 65)

1946 indicate that Wesley, Crawford and Alexander collectively logged 1,200 legal kills. Meat was still WWII scarce. Men had to feed their families so poaching counted for many more.

The deer population could not continue to support this mortality rate.

Today the annual hunting season is no longer a factor. Does are protected and one key element is the reckless destruction of habitat. Road kill, accidents, night hunting, domestic dogs (150,000 statewide) coyotes, mountain lion, severe winters, all take a toll, but the crux of the crash in the white tail population is the removal of deer yarding areas. These are low-land generally swampy sites containing dense stands of Northern White Cedar. These locations provide critical winter shelter and nutritious browse.

With the advent of behemoth tree eaters, more wood can be harvested in a day than 40 lumberjacks with their

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crosscuts, buck saws double-bitted axes and horse teams could cut and haul in a week. The stands of Oak and Beech rich in dietary element their mast (nuts) provided are gone. Currently the two most abundant woody species are Red Maple and Raspberry.

No Argument! Coyotes prey on deer especially in late winter when the snow pack is deep and crusty and in June when the does birth their young. Otherwise a healthy deer can outrun their predator.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the coyote but in ourselves.” One Native American legend maintains the coyote will outlive mankind. I’ll leave that up to the reader.

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

The Early Anglers Of Grand Lake Stream “Sports” came here from far and near

by William B. Krohn Land-locked salmon drawn by Walter H. Rich in 1915.

I

t puzzles me when I hear someone say: “Well, this pace has such a history. I had no idea.” Because all things have a history, this basic fact should not surprise anyone. What is worthy of surprise, however, is the discovery that a place you love has an exceptionally well-documented history. I love to fly-fish, and Grand Lake Stream and it’s source, West Grand

Lake, are two of my coveted fishing destinations. But I also love studying Maine’s outdoor history, and as I dug into the written angling history of this region, I quickly realized that I was not the first to bond with this special piece of Down East Maine.

Native Americans, of course, had long been living in the Grand Lake region thousands of years before Eu-

ropeans arrived. These people fished the brooks, streams, rivers, ponds, and lakes of the St. Croix watershed and beyond; and hunted the marshes and vast forests which feed the region’s watersheds. It was not until the white settlers arrived that experiences and stories became captured on paper. The earliest written fishing record I found for the region, dating to the time of

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com the American Revolution in the late 1700s, was a footnote on page 122 of Frederic Kidder’s 1867 book titled Military Operations in Eastern Maine and Nova Scotia During the Revolution: Some two hundred of the Passamaquoddy tribe make their residence here [lower Schoodic lake], among whom he [Col. John Allen] has often encamped when on hunting and fishing excursions, and on Grand lake stream which connects it with the Witte-quer-cawgum or Grand lake; the fishing is superior to any other locality he had ever visited. A fisherman can often land thirty to forty salmon trout in a few hours; they are very uniform in size, weighing about two pounds each.

Today, we know the “salmon trout” as the land-locked salmon, a species native to the watershed since glaciers retreated from these lands some twelve thousand years ago. But not all of the region’s earlier anglers believed this.

Dr. Augustus C. Hamlin, a Bangor

doctor (as well as an accomplished artist, Civil War medical officer, published mineralogist, Bangor Mayor, and nephew of Lincoln’s Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin), was an early student of Maine’s salmon. In an 1870 letter to Dr. Spencer Baird, a Federal fisheries biologist, Hamlin wrote: “The Schoodic [landlocked] salmon are about forty years old, and the old Indian hunters have given me the precise time of their appearance and the disappearance of the migratory [i.e., sea-run] salmon, which coincides with the erection of impassable dams.” Subtracting 40 years from 1870 yields 1830. Obviously, Hamlin did not know that Col. John Allen had caught “salmon trout” decades earlier, long before major dams were built in the St. Croix watershed.

While today’s fisheries biologists would disagree with Augustus Hamlin on when Atlantic salmon first became landlocked in Down East Maine, we nevertheless must give Hamlin credit

for putting his ideas on paper to face evaluation. Hamlin suggested, in a 1869 article in Lippincott’s Magazine, that he first started fishing Grand Lake Stream around 1850. Hamlin used flies made by his Indian guide from the feathers of hummingbirds, woodpeckers, and blue jays. Such flies, while today considered “primitive” by some, readily caught large numbers of land-locked salmon.

Hamlin first fished Grand Lake Stream just before access to the area improved. As access became easier, word of the stream’s wonderful landlocked salmon fishing spread, and it quickly became a nationally recognized fishing destination. Minnie Atkinson, on pages 27-28 of her 1920 history of the region titled Hinkley Township or Grand Lake Plantation, wrote: William Gould came to the northern edge of Township 27 where it borders on Hinkley[Township] in 1854 or 1855. Here, almost at the outlet of (continued on page 70)

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(continued from page 69)

Grand lake stream, he built a landing which at once became the point of entry into the Township for sportsmen. For by that time the fame of the salmon in the stream was known to many zealous fishermen.

Many distinguished men were among those who came here from all parts of New England, New Brunswick, New York and even Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Sometimes as many as fifty tents would dot the woods along the side of the stream during the spring season. A favorite site for them was on the east side of the stream. Beginning at the dam they would stretch a quarter of a mile or more along the bank.

What a sight this must have been with all these anglers from away, many dressed in the latest sporting attire, camping within such a relatively small area. As observed by the noted author, editor, and sportsman Charles Hallock in The Fishing Tourist (1873:

108): Here [on the east shores of Grand Lake Stream], at the height of the fishing season, selected spots are occupied by dozens of cozy tents of anglers in full-blown costumes of latest cut and fabric – for there arefashions amongsportsmen as well as beaux. Here are bifurcations of velveteen and corduroy set in capacious leather boots and thatched above with hats of enormous brims, from whose crowns dangle flies of every hue and size. There are some with coats slashed with multitudinous pockets, and others with plain woolen overshirts; some with veils of gauze protecting face and shoulders, and others with blue goggles gleaming like saucers beneath their shaggy brows.

Fishing then, like today, was not limited to the stream. Charles Hallock noted occasional boats trolling for lake trout, although another observer noted that “Fishing was done on the stream only, and just above the dam. Lake

trolling did not come into vogue until the seventies (1870s).”

An early out-of-state angler who wrote about his Grand Lake Stream fishing experiences was Lorenzo Prouty. A Boston sporting goods dealer, Prouty made a number of fishing trips to Down East Maine in the early 1860s. His adventures are described in three chapters in his book titled: Fish – Their Habits and Haunts and the Methods of Catching Them. His book was published in 1883, a year after he committed suicide due to illness. Prouty described what it was like to spend 31 hours on an ocean steamer going from Boston to Calais, and then taking a 40-mile train ride to Lewey’s Lake where he met his guide, Piel Tomach. Gear was loaded into Piel’s birch-bark canoe for the crossing of Big Lake to Gould Farm at the foot of Grand Lake Stream. A horse would carry their gear to the dam at the

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(continued on page 72)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 70)

head of the stream, and there they set up camp and assembled their rods. In late spring, Prouty found “the insects very annoying, and were obliged to use our veils and gloves; thus protected we soon raised a fish of the salmon tribe. After several desperate plunges his strength became exhausted and he was captured. The scales put him at three and a half pounds, a very good beginning.” Prouty noted, as did other anglers from this time, that the salmon averaged two pounds, and rarely was a four-pound or heavier fish taken.

The route taken by Prouty into Grand Lake Stream was called, in the early years, the “southern route.”

There was also the longer, more physically demanding, and time consuming “northern route.” This route was described by Boston angler Charles W. Stevens in his book, Fly-Fishing in Maine Lakes; or, Camp Life in the Wil-

Clark

Early angler Dr. Augustus C. Hamlin, (1828-1905) Photo from his 1895 book History of Mount Mica.

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derness. First published in 1881, Stevens’ book was popular, running a total of four editions (last was published in London during 1885). The northern route started in Bangor where the traveler would go up the Penobscot River via steamboat or stagecoach to Winn.

From Winn, it was on buck-board or horseback to Duck Lake, where travelers usually stopped at Gowell’s Cottage to rest and hire a guide before striking off into the wilds. Travelers would go from Duck Lake into Junior Lake, and then West Grand Lake. If a longer trip was desired, anglers could go from Junior into Pocumcus and Sysladobsis Lakes, and from these lakes they could portage over into the Machias watershed. The northern route was ideal for anglers wanting to spend a few weeks, or more, exploring the waters and woods of eastern Maine. By the turn-of-the century, sporting camps had

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73

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com sprung up throughout this area to support outdoor enthusiasts, and many anglers took day trips out of these camps rather than tent and canoe the region’s interconnected waterways.

Guides were essential in the early years of fishing this region because of the requirements to camp, cook outside, paddle canoes, and perform other labor-intensive activities so that the “sports” had time to fish. Many of the best guides were local Native Americans. Anglers would come back year after year – camping, canoeing, and fishing with the same guide. The relationship between anglers and their Native American guides started from necessity, but often quickly grew into lasting friendships. For example, the color plate in the front of Charles Steven’s book is of a set of 6 fishing flies.

One of these flies, the Tomah Jo, was named for Stevens’ guide. Stevens had such a high regard for his guide that his book devotes an entire chapter to

Tomah Joseph.

In December 1898 the Washington County Railroad was completed; it ran from Bangor to Princeton, on the shores of Lewey’s Lake.The railroad declared in July 1899 that “The hunting and fishing resorts reached by the Washington County Railroad are the best to be found in New England.” With rail-lines replacing canoe routes, sporting camps replacing tents, and paddles eventually yielding to motors, the need for working guides diminished. But the demand for writers to promote outdoor activities reached by rail to help increase the railroad’s passenger traffic, increased greatly. One of Maine’s most famous promotional outdoor writers at this time, who often worked for the railroads, was Cornelia Thurza Crosby (a.k.a., Fly Rod Crosby).

Fly Rod Crosby visited West Grand Lake in May of 1897. In an article published in Shooting and Fishing shortly after her visit, she wrote about landing

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7 land-locked salmon and 4 lake trout in less than three hours. She was “high line” (i.e., caught more fish than anyone else) for the day, and was proud of it. Fly Rod considered West Grand a “paradise” and a “quaint little New England village.” As innocent as these comments seem, Fly Rod hit a nerve because in the next issue of Shooting and Fishing one of her readers took issue: The ideal or typical New England village, as I understand it, is the village described by our poets and novelists, and this settlement of Grand Lake Stream is about as far from ideal as anything possible could be. In fact, it is the most God-forsaken settlement I eversaw, and that is the general opinion of nearly everyone who goes there.

But not many years ago this spot was a wilderness, but the Shaw brothers erected a tannerythere, with a subsequent cutting off of timber for the homes of their employees. The detailed,

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 73)

negative. … Grand Lake Stream is a nice place to go to, good fishing and good quarters, but your correspondent [Fly Rob Crosby] overdoes it in praise.

Ideal or not, the village of Grand Lake Stream – and it’s surrounding waters – continue to this day to support healthy fish populations that attract anglers from far and near.

This article touches on only a few of sporting anglers who first wet a line in Grand Lake Stream and West Grand Lake. In addition to these few, other notables from afar who fished and wrote about Grand Lake Stream included: A. Leith Adams (British military officer and naturalist), Dr. George Washington Bethune (Philadelphia preacher, writer, and early camp owner on Grand Lake Stream), Walter M. Brackett (Boston artist), Charles Hallock (author and magazine editor), and Joel Parker Whitney (wealthy California businessman). Notable local anglers included Calais lumberman and amateur natu-

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ralist, George A. Boardman, and New Brunswick’s Fisheries Commissioner, William H. Venning. There were many other less well-known anglers who also fished and wrote about the region. Surely, Idid not locate all that has been written about Grand Lake Stream during the early years. To see what I did find for the years 1775 to 1935, check out the website mentioned below.

The lesson here is clear: If you’re interested in a certain place during an earlier time period, go to the nearest library and dig. Not only will this research earn you knowledge, but with a little luck the surprise of finding more information than you every thought existed.

This article is based on a presentation the author gave to the Grand Lake Stream Historical Society in 2013. For an annotated listing of the published works about the early fishing in the West Grand Lake Region, see:http:// works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.

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75

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Sherman’s Sacrifice In The Civil War Aroostook County town paid a high price to save the Union

by Brian Swartz

T

he survivors of Company B, 8th Maine Infantry Regiment, held their outfit’s reunion in Sherman in southwestern Aroostook County on Thursday, June 17, 1886.

During the reunion, the aging heroes heard from a local historian about the high price that Sherman paid to help save the Union during the Civil War. Its western border abutting Penobscot County, Sherman was “the fourth township north from the extreme southern line of Aroostook” County, Edward Wiggin described Sherman in his History of Aroostook, vol-

ume 1. In 1832, Alfred Cushman left Sumner in Oxford County and moved to Township 3, Range 5 in the future Aroostook County. He paid $350 for 200 acres that, according to Wiggin, lay “some two and a half miles north of the southwest corner” of Township 3, near where Route 11 enters Sherman from Siberia in Stacyville today.

Wiggin credited Cushman as being “the pioneer settler of Sherman.” Cushman brought his wife and their children to their new home in 1833.

Drawn by reports of rich soil — Cushman willingly discussed the

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“enormous crops raised upon his farm,” including “210 bushels of handsome corn [harvested] on an acre” one particular year — other settlers arrived in Township 3 and established farms. Of particular value was the fertile acreage on Golden Ridge, the higher terrain encompassing the half of Township 3 east of Molunkus Stream.

Initially part of Benedicta and then part of Island Falls, Township 3 became Golden Ridge, legally a plantation under Maine law. Not until January 28, 1862 did the state legislature incorporate the Town of Sherman, which was

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 75)

named for Ohio Senator John Sherman.

He was a staunch supporter of his brother, Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.

The new town lay within Aroostook County, established by the Maine Legislature in 1839. Settlers farmed in summer and fall, harvested wood in winter, and primarily made their livings off the land. Facing both harsh winters and a rugged landscape, men and women had to be tough, physically and emotionally, to thrive in Sherman.

Including “130 voters,” the town had 486 residents when Confederate troops captured Fort Sumter in 1861, said local historian May H. Spooner while speaking to the Company B boys at their 1886 reunion in Sherman.

The town “could boast of but two advantages for war,” Spooner said.

Sherman lay too far from the Confederacy to worry about a Southern invasion. Coincidentally, the town lay near

“to the ‘lines’ of New Brunswick, thus making it easy for those who did not wish to remain here to ensure their own safety.”

She referred to the ability of Maine draft dodgers to flee to Canada to avoid military service; the contemporary verb was “skedaddle,” and men who did so were called “skedaddlers.” Any Sherman man of military age could have skedaddled into New Brunswick to avoid the war.

“But I am proud to say that not one of our citizens fled from duty and sought refuge on foreign soil,” May Spooner told her rapt audience.

The Company B boys had met in Maine’s — if not the country’s — most patriotic town, based on a particular criteria. Spooner explained that “Sherman holds the undisputed honor of being the Banner Town in the United States,” a designation based on the percentage of town residents who served in the Amer-

ican military.

The 130 Sherman voters registered in 1861 were all men; women’s suffrage was a future political dream.

According to Spooner’s calculations, the town sent 113 men off to war; 102 Sherman men enlisted, and another 11 went off as draftees. This meant that 87 percent of Sherman voters (and 23 percent of the town’s residents) donned a Union uniform.

These figures have been accepted since the Civil War. However, according to John Forbey, who hails from Lincoln and now lives in Arizona, one more name must be added to the list of Sherman’s heroes.

“A lot of my relatives were in the Civil War and are buried in Sherman,” Forbey said.

The town’s Roll of Honor includes four Emerys: George W., Edward, Wesley, and James M. The last listed, James Madison Emery, “is my

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great-great-grandfather,” Forbey recently noted. Edward and Wesley, first cousins to James Emery, served in the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery Regiment.

George W. Emery was a brother to James Emery — and to Benjamin F. Emery, who enlisted in Company B, 8th Maine Infantry Regiment. In her 1886 address, Spooner described Benjamin Emery as “the youngest [Sherman recruit], being fifteen years old at enlistment,” although Joseph Gerry and Irvin King were 15, too, “when they enlisted.”

But Benjamin’s name did not appear on the copy of the Sherman Roll of Honor obtained by Forbey some years ago. Emery “is recognized as being from Sherman and being in the Civil War,” Forbey stressed.

This means that 114 Sherman men (87.7 percent of registered voters) helped save the Union.

No other municipality in Maine

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Forty-two local children were left fatherless after 13 Sherman dads died in the war. could claim such an honor.

“Thirteen men re-enlisted, eleven for three years, two for one year,” Spooner told her audience. Al Cushman sent four of his sons off to war; although they all survived, brothers “Edward, Joseph and Cyrus were severely wounded.”

A family named Caldwell sent six men into the U.S. Army. Phillip Caldwell died in a Washington, D.C. hospital and Hiram Caldwell at Covington,

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Kentucky, a town opposite Cincinnati on the Ohio River. “Shot before Petersburg,” Asbury Caldwell “died on the field and was buried in a rifle-pit,” Spooner said.

And a fourth Caldwell, Leonard, “returned severely wounded with a [musket] ball in one lung,” she said. After the war, Leonard Caldwell moved south while “hoping … to regain his health in the more favorable climate of Florida,” Spooner told the tale. With his health slowly failing, Caldwell headed home in spring 1885.

He died not far from Sherman that June. Spooner reminded her listeners that “his many friends and comrades who had so earnestly hoped to meet him again in life were only permitted to lay his remains tenderly to rest” near the town’s Civil War monument dedicated on July 4, 1883 at Sherman Cemetery No. 2, located on the Golden (continued on page 78)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 77)

Ridge Road.

Leonard Caldwell was likely the town’s last Civil War fatality. “The first of our soldiers to die in the war was Nathan E. Morrison,” Spooner said. Another 32 Sherman men died; their names, plus those of Caldwell and Morrison and two soldiers not “enlisted from this town,” were engraved on the town’s Civil War monument (known locally as the Soldiers Monument), according to Spooner.

So 34 Sherman men — or 30 percent of the local boys and men who went to war — died in service, including five men lost in Confederate prisoners and a sixth soldier, Darius Daggett, who died while en route home after being freed from a Texas prison.

Forty-two local children were left fatherless after 13 Sherman dads died in the war. “How often the sad news of death to those who had gone out from among us was repeated,” Spooner said.

The news could be slow in arriv-

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ing — and was always dreaded. The local post office was on the Sherman Road, and the mail arrived three times a week. Many women walked “from five to eight miles to get a letter” from a husband, brother, or son away at war, according to Spooner.

These women “walked all that distance in feverish anxiety, half hoping that no news would be received for fear it might be sad,” she said. “And how many poor wives or sisters have had to walk all that distance home, foot-sore and weary, with hearts ready to break from the news that some loved one was wounded, missing, or slain.”

Thirty-one Sherman men went to war with Company B, 8th Maine Infantry; the survivors played a critical role in bringing the outfit’s reunion to Sherman in 1886. In fact, though company reunions remained fairly rare after the war, regimental reunions were far more common.

Discover Maine Magazine has been brought to you free through the generous support of Maine businesses for the past 24 years, and we extend a special thanks to them.

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

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

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

The Penobscot And Lake Megantic Railroad The growth of Chester and Mattawamkeag

1

50 years ago, give or take a few decades, there was little reason to tarry in towns along the Penobscot, like Chester and Mattawamkeag.

Those who made their living in the nearby woods had a reason to be there.

Most, however, knew Chester and Mattawamkeag only in passing. They passed through the River Road towns on their way further north and east and west. The Military Road ran to Houlton, the gateway to the Aroostook region.

Mattawamkeag had a stage connection to Patten. It had a tavern, and hotel of sorts. That was a reason to stop there.

Chester didn’t have these. Hardly any-

one ever stopped there. What changed this was the railroad coming to town.

The railroad that transformed Chester and Mattawamkeag went through a variety of name changes. Some called it the Lake Megantic Railroad. This was a shortened version of Penobscot and Lake Megantic Railroad. The latter is probably the most appropriate name.

The line we are talking about here was constructed to connect Mattawamkeag and Lake Megantic in Quebec. By happenstance the line passed through Chester.

The Penobscot and Lake Megantic was also known as the International

Railway. Sometimes this name appears as the International Railway of Maine.

You can also find references to it as the European and North American Railway. This is a bit misleading but there is a relationship. The line also has a connection to the Canadian Pacific and the Maine Central.

The Penobscot and Lake Megantic Railway came to Chester and Mattawamkeag in the 1880s. It was around this time because that is when the two townships took on the form and sense of a country village, of a community.

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the region immediately sur-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com rounding Chester and Mattawamkeag was wilderness. Wilderness came almost to the very doorsteps of the few settlers who called either township home. More Native Americans made the region home than settlers. The Penobscots lived on river islands like Snow, Brown and Gordon and on the shore at Mattanawcook. The population of Chester and Mattawamkeag taken together was under 1000. It was the Penobscot and Lake Megantic that brought the two townships into the nineteenth century.

Actually, Chester and Mattawamkeag began their transformation around 1870. In 1869 the European and North American Railway reached Mattawamkeag. The European and North American gave communities along the Penobscot a rail connection with Bangor.

The Bangor to Mattawamkeag line was part of an overall plan to link Portland and an ice-free port in Nova Scotia.

The European and North American

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didn’t stop once it reached Mattawamkeag, though. In 1871 the line extended to Vanceboro. As part of this railroad construction program, the European and North American built repair shops and storage barns in Mattawamkeag.

The European and North American was leased to Maine Central in 1882.

The Maine Central maintained this proprietary role for the Bangor to Vanceboro part of the line until purchasing it in 1955. The Canadian Pacific purchased the Mattawamkeag section of the line from Maine Central in 1982.

Other transformations followed. This takes us to the question of the connection between Penobscot, or more particularly Mattawamkeag, and Lake Megantic.

Some might find the name Megantic romantic, intriguing. Perhaps that explains why there were those who chose to shorten the name Penobscot and Lake Megantic Railroad to the

(continued on page 82)

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Lake Megantic. So how exactly does a Quebec lake come to be linked to the Penobscot? What is the relation between this Canadian body of water and a down east Maine river?

Around 1870 a small rail line began operating in Quebec to service the timber industry. This line went by the rather grandiose name of the St. Francis and Megantic International Railway. The line connected Sherbrooke and Lac-Megantic in Quebec. In 1875 the line was taken over by the Canadian Pacific which shortened the name to International Railway. There was nothing in any way “international” about the line at this point, though.

The Canadian Pacific had a line running from Montreal in Quebec to Vancouver, British Columbia on the Pacific. The line wanted to link with the Atlantic. The nearest Canadian port to Montreal on the Atlantic was St. John, New Brunswick. St. John was accessi-

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82

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 81)

ble by a route across northern Maine which was less mountainous than other options for reaching the Atlantic coast.

In fact, there was already a line running across a section of Maine in the direction of St. John. This was the line connecting Mattawamkeag and Vanceboro.

The Canadian Pacific had a connection between Montreal and Lac-Megantic. What needed to be done was bridge the some 100-mile distance between Lac-Megantic and Mattawamkeag.

The Canadian Pacific surveyed a line running from Lac-Megantic to Mattawamkeag. Along the way the line passed through Chester. The line crossed the Canada/U.S. boundary at Jackman. This meant there was an “international” railroad for real. In Canada it was incorporated as the International Railway. In Maine it was incorporated as the International Railway of Maine.

Construction on the International Railway of Maine began in 1886 at a number of points on the surveyed line.

The Canadian Pacific purchased track rights from the Maine Central for the Mattawamkeag to Vanceboro section.

The line opened in June 1889. The Canadian Pacific also purchased the New Brunswick Railway to acquire control of the route from Vanceboro to Saint John. It also purchased a branch line

network in western New Brunswick and the Aroostook River Railroad in northern Maine.

The International Railway of Maine existed only on paper. The name and the line’s Maine incorporation were for operating purposes only. All track and all operations were seamless parts of the Canadian Pacific system.

Stone axes, arrowheads and other Native American artifacts have been found not all that far from the location of the International Railway of Maine tracks in Mattawamkeag. Chester is described as a community where one can find privacy and seclusion in a rural setting just an hour away from Bangor.

Neither Mattawamkeag nor Chester bear much resemblance to what they were before the coming of the railroad.

As to how either might have developed without it one can but conjecture. * Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

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84

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

Irishman William Conners Bangor’s famed lumber baron

by Matthew Jude Barker

B

angor, Maine, the “Queen City,” has had a long history of lumbermen and lumber barons.

It was one of the fastest growing cities in America in the early 1830s, when the lumber business was booming, and Canadian and Irish immigrants, among many others, flocked to the city for work.

One of the most famous lumber barons was Irish native William Conners.

William Conners was born in the County Cork, Ireland, about November 1832 and came to Bangor via St. John, New Brunswick with his parents when he was two years old. According to his obituary in the Bangor Daily News, “his first boyhood experiences

were along the Penobscot River, on the logs at Bangor boom. While there were many expert drivers and rafters in Bangor and all along the river for miles above, William Conners and his three brothers John, Edward and Patrick, early gained distinction as fast and hard workers, afraid of nothing, knowing all the ways of the river and details of the business, and each of them having the knack of getting the best service out of a crew and keeping the men contented.”

William began his lifelong career as a “wedge boy” at Bangor boom. He “advanced rapidly to the positions of camp boss in the woods, boss driver and operator on his own account. He “drove”

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every stream in the great Penobscot system, lumbered for himself and in company with his brother Edward and the late John Ross, and finally became contractor for rafting at Bangor boom, the clearing house for all logs sawed at tidewater mills.” For many years he was associated with two other famous Bangor Irishmen, Timothy Fields and James O’Donahue, who had earlier, in the 1850s, literally struck gold mining out west. The three intrepid Irishmen were involved in many successful enterprises, including shipping. One of Bangor’s best known West Indiamen (a schooner built in nearby Brewer) was named after Conners, who also built his

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com own steamers, the William Conners and the Charles P. Conners. The latter vessel was named after his youngest son.

William married Mary, an Irish emigrant, and together they had at least eight children born in Bangor between 1857 and 1879: Mary, John, Margaret, William, Edward, Helen L., James Augustus, and Charles P. Conners. In 1870 William was enumerated in the Bangor census as a lumber dealer, with real estate valued at $5000 and a personal estate estimated at $4000.

According to his obituary, “From 1861 to 1909, inclusive, excepting two years, Mr. Conners held this great rafting concern, and in that time he handled not less than four billion feet of logs, while his operations on various driving waters prior to the long period at the boom would considerably increase the total. At the lower estimate, the logs rafted and driven by William Conners would, if placed end to end, make a girdle of spruce, pine and hemlock four times around the world and

“Of all the lumbermen of Maine, none won wider fame than he, and the name of Bill Conners has been familiar for more than half a century among loggers from coast to coast.”

(continued on page 86)

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It was said every year Conners and his men “rafted out from 75,000,000 to 100,000,000 feet of logs, and delivered them to the saw mills at and below Bangor.”

For most of his career, William Conners employed scull oar men for the log drives. The Bangor Daily News stated “Among the rafters at Bangor boom were many of the best oarsmen to be found anywhere,” including Conners himself. “Bill” Conners, as he was most commonly known, was either captain or stroke oar of many champion batteau crews for years.

William Conners realized substantial profits in the lumber industry, of course, and purchased a fine home at 354 State Street in Bangor. For many years he hired his own Irish domestic servants to tend to his family and home, including, in 1900, a County Galway emigrant named Bridget “Delia” Flaherty.

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Conners was a 85) staunch Democrat (continued from page

and was elected several times as alderman for Ward 7 in Bangor, as well as being elected as a state representative to the Maine State Legislature in 1908 and 1910. He was a member of the Bangor Water Board from 1879 to 1883 and a director of the Penobscot Loan & Building Association for many years. His obituary also says “In the affairs of St. John’s Catholic parish and in all Irish-American activities here he always was prominent and a generous contributor.” In 1909 Conners retired from his lumber activities and “devoted himself to the management of his real estate interests, and to the affairs of various enterprises with which he was connected as stockholder or in an official capacity.”

William “Bill” Conners died on June 21, 1921 at his home on State Street at the age of 88. He was survived by his wife, two daughters, five sons, and two brothers. Perhaps the best tribute given

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to him was written for his obituary in the Bangor Daily News: “Of all the lumbermen of Maine, none won wider fame than he, and the name of Bill Conners has been familiar for more than half a century among loggers from coast to coast. He won fortune by hard work and superior ability and was respected in the business community as a man of great capacity and high integrity. Enjoying the confidence and esteem of the community at large and the affection of those who knew him best, his name will long be held in honored memory along the great river where his life work was done.”

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Parker Eaton’s Floating Bridge Plymouth native served in the Aroostook War

by Charles Francis

I

n 1915 Virgil Eaton, editor of the Bangor Daily News, wrote a letter to Sprague’s Journal of Maine History. The letter involved Virgil Eaton’s father Parker Eaton. It seems Francis Sprague, editor of Sprague’s Journal, had printed a list of officers from Maine who had served in the Aroostook War. The name Parker Eaton was missing from the list. Virgil Eaton had documents to the effect that his father had been captain of a militia company that went to the Aroostook region at the time of the so-called “bloodless war.”

Virgil Eaton was quite complimentary in his letter to Francis Sprague.

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ry, I wonder to myself as to the exact truth of the documents which I have lying before me....” Editor Eaton had two documents indicating his father’s service in the Aroostook War. He included them with his letter to Francis Sprague.

Francis Sprague responded to Virgil Eaton in Sprague’s Journal of Maine History. The response is “absolutely classic.” I can think of no other words to describe it. Sprague began by describing Virgil Eaton as the “versatile, charming and brilliant writer and editor of the Bangor Daily News.” He included in his response what are either verbatim copies of Virgil Eaton’s letter and documents or else extracts; it is impossible to tell which. Sprague didn’t

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comment on the validity of the documents. What he did say was that lists pertaining to the service of Maine men in the Aroostook War were sometimes incomplete.

Considering the nature of the documentation and their source, there is little question of Parker Eaton not serving in the Aroostook War. One document was signed by Governor John Fairfield and Secretary of State A. R. Nichols as well as Adjutant General A. B. Thompson. It was dated November 4, 1839. It was addressed to Parker Eaton and stated in part: “ You having been elected Captain of the H. Company of INFANTRY, in the Third Regiment, of the Second Brigade, and

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Second Division of the Militia of this State, to take rank from the thirtieth day of September A. D. one thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine....”

The second document was dated June 13, 1843. It stated “THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF has accepted the RESIGNATION Captain Parker G. Eaton of Plymouth of the H. Infantry Company in the third Regiment, second Brigade, and second Division, of the Militia of this State: and he is hereby honorably Discharged at his own request from the office aforesaid.” It was noted as “Registered Vol. 6. No. 153.

Alfred Redington, Adjutant General.”

In his letter to Francis Sprague, Virgil Eaton noted that the two documents had been in his sister’s possession.

They were among other papers belonging to Parker Eaton.

From the above, it is quite clear Parker Eaton served in the militia during the Aroostook War. His name can also be found on muster lists of the war.

This piece has more of a subject that the simple fact that Parker Eaton served in the Aroostook War. It has to do with with an invention of Parker Eaton. I doubt very much that Francis Sprague knew of the invention. I am reasonably sure Virgil Eaton did, though I can find no instance of him writing of it. Note: I use the word “invention” advisedly here, and mainly because others have used it. The invention is the floating bridge. There are references to Parker Eaton’s floating bridge in Maine history. There are also references to a floating bridge that Parker Eaton was involved in building in the place of his birth. Records, or at least tradition, indicate Eaton used a modified form of the floating bridge in the Aroostook War. Parker Eaton was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Background on the Eaton family of Fitchburg can be found in History, Genealogical and Biographical, of the Eaton Families by Nellie

Molyneux.

Parker Eaton apprenticed as a joiner. This background led him to Boston where he signed on as a ship’s carpenter. During the War of 1812 he was on board a ship that floundered in the mouth of the Penobscot. Eaton, probably for want of nothing better to do, explored inland, following logging roads that eventually brought him to Newport, where he stayed for a time. In 1821 he moved to Plymouth. At some point, he made a trip back to Fitchburg where he married Mary Manson. The couple had eight children, all born in Plymouth.

Parker Eaton was a highly successful and respected man. In Plymouth he first supported himself and his family by following the trade of joiner and farming. In later years he was a justice of the peace and a selectman. He held the mail contract for the route from Dixmont to Plymouth, a distance of seven miles, when one travels around (continued on page 90)

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 89)

Plymouth Pond. The contract paid $40 a year. Eaton was a long time Penobscot County deputy sheriff. He operated Plymouth’s only hotel. This brings us to his floating bridge.

Some sort of temporary bridge was constructed across the Aroostook River during the Aroostook War. It rode on the water. That much is clear. It was necessary when the ice went out.

It was built by the 3rd Regiment, Parker Eaton’s regiment. It is also clear the bridge was an ingenious affair. It rested on barrels and boats.

The History of Penobscot County suggests Parker Eaton invented his floating bridge shortly after he settled in Plymouth. As a young man Eaton worked on something quite similar for Whalom Pond in the Fitchburg area.

The most direct route between Dixmont and Plymouth is across Plymouth Pond. Today Route 7 crosses the pond at the shallowest section. There

is a causeway. The supposition is that Parker Eaton built his floating bridge to facilitate carrying the mail. The logical location would be that of today’s causeway.

There is nothing unique in a floating bridge. The military uses pontoon bridges. They were used during the War of 1812 and in ancient times. There is a famous floating bridge in Brookfield, Vermont.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a description of the floating bridge Parker Eaton “invented” in Plymouth. The History of Penobscot County treats it as if it were well-known. In fact, it calls it famous. Fame is a fleeting thing.

Perhaps the Plymouth’s floating bridge was, too.

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

The Man Who Chose D-Day Tech). He was the first chief meteorologist of the U.S. Air Force. Because of his expertise as a meteorologist Donald Yates was named Commander of the Air Force Missile Test Center at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida.

The North Pole reconnaissance mission wasn’t the only flight Donald Yates made because of his expertise in the field of weather forecasting. Nor is it his only claim to fame as a ‘weatherman.’ In 1942 Yates was the chief meteorologist on a flight that went from Washington D.C. to Yakutsk, Siberia.

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study of global weather patterns. This flight provides us with a second reason why Donald Yates’ name appears in history books that have the weather and weather forecasting as their subject.

Donald Yates’ greatest claim to fame as a weatherman doesn’t have anything to do with World War II. Donald Yates was the U.S. Army Air Force officer who helped select June 6, 1944 as the date for D-Day. D-Day is the day of the Allied invasion of Europe. Yates helped choose the date of the invasion in his capacity as chief meteorologist of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s staff. The other individual involved in the choice was Yates’ British counterpart, James Stagg. Yates and Stagg chose well. As it turned out, June 6 was

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D

onald Yates flew the first scheduled weather reconnaissance mission over the North Pole. That was on March 17, 1947.

Barely a month earlier Yates had been promoted to the rank of brigadier general. The promotion came on Feb. 5, 1947. The promotion came when Yates was head of the Army’s weather division. Yates transferred to the Air Force on Sept. 26, 1947.

It would be simplest to say Donald Yates was a weatherman. Quite likely, however, he would have been offended if someone referred to him as that as an official designation. Yates was a meteorologist. He earned a master of science degree in meteorology at California Institute of Technology (Cal

50

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com the only day that month the English Channel could have been successfully crossed.

Donald Norton Yates was born in Bangor in 1909. His parents were Archur Orcutt and Gertrude Agnes (Wilson) Yates. Archur Yates’ name often appears as Archie. He was from Coos County in New Hampshire. Gertrude was from Portland. She was a member the same Wilson family that produced the notable Judge Scott Wilson. It would appear that the mother was ‘the’ influence in early years of Donald Yates and that of his brother Elmer. Elmer Yates also went on to a noteworthy military career, rising to the rank of major general in the Army.

Donald Yates graduated from Bangor High School in 1927. Late summer found him a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy. At West Point Yates excelled in science and mathematics. Following his graduation in 1931, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Cavalry. This was still a time when the

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Army had horses. Yates’ real interest was not horses, however, but flying.

He applied for and was accepted as a student officer at the Army Air Corps Flying School at Kelly Field, Texas.

He earned his wings late in 1932. In December of that year, he was assigned duty with the 23rd Bomb Squadron at Luke Field, Hawaii.

The mid 1930s saw Yates serving at

a variety of flying fields in the southwest and on the west coast. He earned his master of science degree in 1939.

This led to his assignment as weather officer with the Third Weather Squadron at Barksdale Field, Louisiana. He went on to serve as group commander and post operations officer. In December of 1941, he was named assistant chief of the weather section in the operations division of the Office, Chief of Air Corps. In March of the following year he was appointed deputy director of weather at Army Air Force headquarters.

Donald Yates’ rise through Army ranks could be described as meteoric. What makes his early career more than simply remarkable is that this rise to command came at a time when the military, especially the Air Corps, was downsizing. The downsizing was a part of the reaction to the country’s involvement in World War I. Generally speaking, it was a time period when

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Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties

(continued from page 93)

military expenditures were cut, the Navy scrapped warships; aircraft were viewed as superfluous and new technology such as that used in weather forecasting was considered better handled by the private sector. That is the way things were until December 7, 1941.

The entry of the U.S. into the war with Germany and Japan saw science come to the forefront as a military priority. Donald Yates was a scientist.

This meant his particular expertise was on call everywhere and at any time.

Anywhere included Yates being sent to Russia from May to December of 1942 to coordinate weather research. It was one of the very earliest of joint U.S./ Russian scientific collaborations.

In February 1944 Yates, now a full colonel, was named director of weather service for the U.S. Strategic Air Force in Europe. The assignment meant Yates was on General Eisenhower’s staff. This explains how he, along with

James Stagg, came to call the date for the D-Day invasion.

For his role in the D-Day invasion Yates was awarded the U.S. Army Legion of Merit. In part, the citation reads “through Colonel Yates’ good judgment, skill and sound leadership, reconciliation of the differences in forecasting methods were affected, resulting in the development of a procedure capable of utilizing the talents and facilities of both nations and all services in a unified manner. The value of Colonel Yates’ advice has been proven, as the day selected for the continental assault was probably the only day during the month of June on which the operation could have been launched.”

Following the war and his realignment with the Air Force, Yates was appointed Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Development at Headquarters U.S. Air Force. This was followed by his being named Director of Research and

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Development with the headquarters. In 1952 he was promoted to the rank of Major General.

General Yates’ longest single tour of duty was at Patrick Air Force Base from 1954 to 1960. During this tour he was awarded the Navy Legion of Merit for his services in connection with the Navy’s Vanguard and Polaris ballistic missile projects. In 1960 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General and appointed Deputy Director of Defense Research & Engineering at the Pentagon.

Donald Norton Yates’ career is extraordinary. That is obvious. Perhaps the most notable point in it – notable, that is, from the standpoint of Mainers who love their state – is that it was a Maine-born man who chose the date for what some historians call the most successful and important invasion in history.

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4 Main Street Antiques ...............................38 A.C. Carver Inc. ...........................................40 A.N. Deringer ..............................................70 Abbott Insulation Plus .................................82 ABM Mechanical, Inc. .................................55 Access Auto ................................................79 Action Septic Service ..................................30 Adam’s Tree Service ....................................80 Advanced Hypnosis Center P.A. ...................8 Airline Lodge & Snack Bar ........................72 Al Benner Homes ........................................23 Albee’s Shorehouse Cottages .....................17 Albert Fitzpatrick .........................................75 Ames Construction Inc. ...............................65 Amherst General Store & Restaurant ......87 Andel Construction Services, LLC ..............45 Apparel Artz ................................................25 Auto Radiator Service ...............................54 Bangor Inn & Suites ......................................5 Bangor Natural Gas ...................................56 Bangor Pipe & Supply, Inc. ........................85 Bangor Tire Company ................................55 Bangor Truck & Trailer Sales, Inc. ...............86 Bangor Window Shade & Drapery Company..57 Bar Harbor Campground ............................32 Bar Harbor Historical Society .......................16 Bar Harbor Inn .............................................35 Barnes Law Office .......................................4 Barren View Golf Course ............................19 Bass Harbor Campground ........................13 Bay City Garage and U-Haul ......................68 Bayview Market & TakeOut ......................24 Bayview Take-out ........................................24 Beach Front Cottages ................................13 Beal’s Auto Repair ......................................19 Beals-Jonesport Co-op ...............................19 Bear Paw Inn .............................................75 Bento’s Grocery, Diner & Sports Bar ...........75 Berry Construction ......................................42 Big Easy Lounge ........................................87 Birchwood Cottages & Guide Service ..........3 Birmingham Plumbing & Heating ..............82 Black Bear Aviation ......................................54 Blaze Restaurants .......................................58 Blue Hill Co-op ..............................................9 Blue Hill Peninsula Chamber of Commerce .26 Blue Hill Screenprinting ...............................25 Bluenose Cottage .......................................38 Bob & Tom’s Gun Shop ................................76 Bo’s Sand & Gravel ....................................40 Bowden Marine Service...............................15 Bowman Constructors .................................89 Bowman Mini Storage .................................89 Boyd Place at Phillips-Strickland House .....85 Bradley Redemption Center .......................49 Brandon & Laura’s Cafe .............................13 Brewer Veterinary Clinic, PA ......................58 Brookings-Smith ...........................................4 Brooklin General Store ..............................25 Brooks Construction ....................................46 Brooks Tire & Auto / U-Save Auto Rental ....91 Brown Funeral Home ................................88 Bucksport Motor Inn ......................................7 Bud’s Shop ‘n Save Supermarkets ............61 Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse .....................52 Burnham Tavern Museum ...........................20 Burnt Cove Market ..................................25 C&I Custom Builders, LLC .........................49 C&J Variety .................................................93 C&J York Electric, Inc. ...............................24 C.A. Newcomb & Sons Fence & Guardrail ..88 Cafe 2 ...........................................................14 Cafe Drydock & Inn ......................................15 Campbell’s Service Center ........................77 Canterbury Cottage Bed & Breakfast..........15 Cantrell’s Fresh Seafood Truck ..................88 Carousel Diversified Services .....................50 Carroll Drug Store ........................................14 Carroll F. Look Construction Co. Inc. ..........20 Carter’s Citgo ...............................................7 Carver Heating ...........................................41 Cary Brown Trucking & Excavating ...........73 Case Concrete Service ................................64 Center Street Congregational Church ........42 Central Maine Smiles.com.............................6 Chester Pike’s, LLC ....................................16 Christies Lakeside Camping & Cottages ....63 City of Old Town ...........................................51 Clark Insurance Agency ..............................72 Clay Funeral Home .....................................78 Clay GMC-Chevrolet of Lincoln ..................79 Clement’s Starter & Alternator Repair ......87 CMD Powersystems ...................................84 Coach House Restaurant ............................86 Cobscook Bay Area Chamber of Commerce.66 Cobscook Lumber ........................................43 Cold Stream Storage ..................................80 Cole Land Transportation Museum ..............6 Colonial Inn ..................................................29 Complete Tire Service, Inc. ...........................12 Cottle and Downes Construction ...............23 County Concrete, Asphalt & Paving ............39 Covered Bridge Motel .................................65 Cox Law Offices ..........................................62 Crandall’s Hardware ....................................78 Cross Timber Carpentry ..............................92 Crossroads Motel & Restaurant .................76 Cummings Health Care Facility, Inc. ..........49 Cunningham Brothers, Inc. .....................75 Currie Roofing .............................................47 Curtis Family Shoe ....................................29 D&D Paving, Inc. ....................................48 D.C. Welding & Fabrication ........................11 D.L.C. Cedar ................................................3

BUSINESS

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Dana Altvater, Inc. .................................68 Dan’s Lawn & Yard Service ..................89 Dastardly Dick’s Wicked Good Coffee ..70 Dave’s Auto Repair & Towing Inc. .......29 David Schofield Carpentry .....................26 Davis Unlimited ........................................28 Dexter Lumber Company .....................91 Doughboys Pizza Shoppe ...................82 Dover Audiology & Hearing Aid Sales ....65 Downeast Home Improvement ...........18 Downeast Self Storage .........................71 Downeast Windjammer Cruises ..........34 Dow’s Eastern White Shingles & Shakes .5 Dr. Durwin Y. Libby, DMD .......................48 Drummond Construction .........................93 Dudley’s Refresher ...............................24 Durkee Lobster Bait ................................39 Eagle Arboriculture .................................28 Eagle’s Lodge Motel ................................28 East of Acadia Lobster & Seafood ......37 East Ridge Stable ..................................83 Eastland Realty, LLC...............................42 Eastport Area Chamber of Commerce .68 Eastport Chowderhouse ........................69 Eastport Pets ...........................................69 Eastport Windjammers ...........................44 Eat-A-Pita..................................................14 Eaton’s Chipping Service .......................24 Ellsworth Historical Society .....................12 Ellsworth Moose Lodge ............................11 Elwood Downs Incorporated .................79 Enfield Citgo & Service Center ...............80 Ever-Green Auto Glass, Door & Window .44 Exeter Country Store ............................92 F.A. Peabody Company .............................4 Family Tradition Tree Service ..................10 Flaherty’s Heating ...................................37 Fort View Variety ........................................7 Foss & Sons, Inc. ...................................73 Frank’s Bake Shop & Custom Catering ..52 Freightliner of Maine Inc. ........................83 Friends & Family Market .........................29 Frost’s Garage Inc. .................................60 G. Drake Masonry ..................................63 G.A. Porter & Son Construction ..............49 G.F. Johnston & Associates .....................31 Ganong Chocolatier ................................71 Gateway Lobster Pound .........................30 General Rental Center ............................81 Gerald L. Wood & Son LLC ..................21 Gerry’s Used Cars ..................................89 Gillmor’s Beef ‘n’ Ale .................................48 Glenn Russell Painting ............................12 Gosselin’s Garage ..................................82 Gray’s Custom Builders ..........................47 Greater Northern Paving .........................83 Greenhead Lobster, LLC ......................26 Greenland Cove Campground ...............46 Guagus Enterprises ...............................38 Guptill’s Lawn & Garden .....................21 Gutter Guys ..............................................38 H&H Disposal & Tree Service .............72 H.C. Haynes, Inc. .....................................76 H.C. Rolfe & Sons, Inc. ............................17 Haley Power Services .............................61 Hammond Lumber Company.................55 Hanington Bros., Inc. ................................76 Hannaford Ellsworth ...............................11 Hannaford Lincoln ....................................79 Hannaford Supermarket Bar Harbor .....31 Harbor View Motel and Cottages ...........32 Harley Plumbing & Heating Plus ............84 Harmon’s ..................................................65 Harriman & Sons Construction ................60 Harrington Trading Post ...........................18 Harriott Tree Service ................................12 Harris Drug Store ...................................63 Harris Point Cabins & Motel ..................44 Hartt Transportation Systems, Inc. .......53 Heanssler Oil Co. .....................................9 Heath Enterprises ...................................54 Herring Brothers Meats ..........................93 Highland Builders ....................................17 Hilton Garden Inn Bangor ......................56 Historic McCurdy’s Smokehouse ..........67 Hogan Tire ................................................80 Home Care For Maine ................................4 Horton, McFarland & Veysey ...................12 Howard Johnson Inn, Restaurant & Lounge...85 International Motel ...................................71 Island Auto Repair ..................................33 Island Country Club .................................8 Island Nursing Home ..............................24 J&J Auto and Recycling ............................6 J&N Automotive Repair ..........................93 J. Garnett Construction ..........................37 J. Wilbur Construction .............................90 J.D. Logging .............................................94 J.E. Tracey & Son .....................................37 J.M. Brown General Contractor, Inc. ......57 J.O. Builders ............................................23 Jamison & Son Tile, Inc. .......................46 JCB Horse Sales LLC ...........................82 Jeannie’s Great Maine Breakfast .........34 Jerry’s Shurfine ........................................74 Jimar Construction Products LLC ..........52 JKA Motor Sports ...................................11 John Firth Builders ..................................64 John H. Gray Electrical, Plumbing & Heating..8 John R. Crooker Insurance Agency.............8 John Williams Construction ....................60 Johnson Foundations ...............................65 Johnson’sTrueValue.................................45 Jon D. Woodward & Son, Inc. ....................9

BUSINESS

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Jones Lobster Co. ........................................25 Jonesport Pizza ...........................................40 Jonesport Realty .........................................19 Jordan’s Snack Bar ......................................27 Just South of the Border ..............................45 K.C. Archery ...............................................72 Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce ....77 Katahdin Shadows Campground & Cabins ....76 Katahdin Valley Real Estate ........................46 Keenes Lake Family Campground .............70 Kents Hill School .........................................66 Kimball Insurance, LLC ................................93 King Construction Services ........................41 King’s Appliances & Floor Coverings ........88 Knights’ Grocer .............................................73 L&W Builders ................................................90 LaBelle Electric .............................................50 LeClair Construction ....................................81 Levasseur’s True Value Hardware ...............77 Lighthouse Digest .......................................41 Lighthouse Inn & Restaurant .....................32 Lincoln House Motel ...................................78 Llangolan Inn and Cottages .........................32 Look Bros. Septic & Pumping ......................41 Lougee & Frederick’s Florist ........................85 Lovell’s Guilford Hardware ...........................64 Lucerne Golf Course ...................................11 Lunt’s Lobster Pound ...................................30 M&M Handymen ........................................43 Machias Bay Area Chamber of Commerce....20 Machias Wild Blueberry Festival ..................42 Main Stay Cottages & RV Park ..................36 Maine Collision Center ................................54 Maine Equipment Company ..........................5 Maine Evergreen Wreaths ...........................61 Maine Historical Society ..............................7 Maine Warden Service ................................94 Mainely Eyes ................................................55 Mainely Heat Pumps ...................................61 Maine’s Own Treats ......................................13 Mainescape Garden Shop ..........................10 Manaford’s Market .......................................41 Martin’s Cleaning Service ............................94 Matheson Tri Gas .........................................57 Mattawamkeag Wilderness Park Campground .46 McClure Family Funeral Services ...............21 McFadden’s Variety ...................................66 McKusick Petroleum Co. .............................65 McPhail Realty .............................................46 Merle B. Grindle Agency ................................5 Merrill Brook Cabins ....................................49 Mike Stevens Plumbing ..............................62 Millinocket House of Pizza .........................77 Millmark Products, Inc. ................................12 MMP Services ..............................................12 Moosabec Marine .....................................40 Moosabec Video & Variety .......................19 Moosehead Family Campground ..............92 Moosehead Historical Society & Museums..93 Moosehead Motorsports .............................92 Morrison Manufacturing Inc. .......................68 Nelson Decoys ...........................................40 Newcomb Construction ...............................69 Nice Twice ....................................................29 Nickerson’s Septic Tank Pumping Service ..62 Nook & Cranny Restaurant .........................72 North Woods Real Estate ............................47 Northeast Applicators, LLC ...........................4 Northern & Coastal Painting .........................73 Oakfield Railroad Museum ........................74 O’Brien & Sons Trucking & Contracting.....91 Ohio Brook Disposal ....................................69 Oliver’s Heating & Plumbing LLC .................53 Pat’s Pizza Orono, Hampden, Holden.........50 Patten Drug Co. ..........................................74 Paul’s Garage ...............................................19 Peavey Manufacturing Co. ........................83 Penny’s Bed & Breakfast & Gallery...............9 Penobscot Marine Museum ........................22 Perkco Supply, Inc. ......................................63 Perry O’Brian, Attorney at Law ...................86 Peter Qualey, Broker ....................................46 Piper Mountain Christmas Trees ................74 Pleasant Hill Campground .........................52 Pleasant River Builders ...............................18 Prin A. Allen & Sons Builders ....................10 Quietside Cafe & Ice Cream Shop ...............31 Quoddy Bay Lobster ..................................44 RE Raymond Construction LLC ...............90 R.J. Morin, Inc. ...........................................81 Ray McPherson Master Carpenter ..............91 RaymondJamesFinancialServices,Inc.......59 RaymondJamesFinancialServices,Inc.......48 Red’s Automotive ......................................60 Results Physical Therapy ..........................84 R.H. Auto Sales ............................................74 Richard Parks Furniture..................back cover River Cafe ....................................................74 River’s Edge Motel .....................................47 Robbins Motel .............................................33 Robinson’s Cottages ..................................44 Roger’s Market Inc. .....................................82 Rollins Orchards ...........................................90 Roosevelt Campobello International Park...43 Rooster Brother .............................back cover Route 2 Antique Mall .................................87 Rowell’s Auto & Truck Sales.....................89 Rowell’s Garage ......................................94 Roy I Snow, Inc. ........................................23 Rumery’s Marine ......................................38 S.O.B. Oil & Earthworks Co., LLC .............81 Sam’s Trucking & Excavation ..................50 Sara Sara’s ..............................................26 Sawmill Woods Golf Course ..................86

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Schooner Gallery ..................................17 Scootic In Restaurant ...........................77 Seawall Motel ........................................30 Sebasticook Family Doctors ..................62 Shannon Drilling, Inc. ............................21 Shaw’s Hiker Hostel ...............................64 Shop Maine Made ....................................67 Shute’s Seafood .....................................60 Sign Services, Inc. of Maine .................61 Skywalker’s Bar and Grille .....................41 Small Woodland Owners Association ...94 Solar Marine, LLC ..................................24

Southwest Harbor & Tremont Chamber of Commerce..14

Spanky’s Pizza and Pub ........................92 St. Croix Country Club ..............................70 St. Croix Valley Chamber of Commerce..70 State St. Wine Cellar .............................53 STEaD Timberlands, LLC ......................76 Steinke & Caruso Dental Care .................6 Stephen Oliver Custom Builder ..............39 Stephen Stanley, Inc. Electrical Contractor..30 Stewart’s Wrecker Service ......................23 Stitham’s Custom Homes ........................7 Stonington Lobster Co-op ......................9 Storage Plus .............................................28 Striking Gold Jewelers ..............................27 Stucco Lodge ..........................................58 Sullivan’s Wrecker Service ....................50 Summersweet Landscaping ..................58 Sunrise Realty ..........................................21 Sunset Park Marina & Auto Repair.........73 Sweet Seniors Guest House ................77 Sweet Timber Frames ..............................14 T&W Garage ............................................62 T.A. King & Son Building Supplies............39 Testa’s Restaurant ...................................33 The Black Sheep ....................................10 The Brooklin Inn ......................................9 The Burning Tree ...................................16 The Charles Inn ......................................87 The Colony Cottages & Motel ...............36 The Curran Homestead Living History Farm & Museum.53

The Dockside Inn & Restaurant ............31 The Fish Net ............................................26 The Galley ...............................................25 The Maine Store .....................................89 The Milbridge House Restaurant ...........37 The New Friendly Restaurant, Inc. ..........68 The Olde Creamery Antique Mall ...........11 Pine Grove Crematorium ........................4 The Pioneer Place, USA ......................75 The Puffin Pines Country Gift Store ......67 The Quoddy Tides ..................................68 The Red Barn Motel ...............................37 The Ruggles House ................................18 The Tax Clinic ..........................................81 The Young House Bed and Breakfast .....48 Thomas Logging & Forestry, Inc. .........64 ThomasW.DuffFinanicalAdvisor-Millinocket.48

ThomasW.DuffFinancialAdvisor-Brewer.59 Thompson’s Hardware Inc. .................79 Tideway Market ......................................36 Timberland Acres RV Park ......................30 Timkin Pike Tires .....................................18 Tom’s Mini-Mart, Inc. ............................20 Town Auto Sales .....................................29 Town Hill Market .....................................34 Town of Enfield ........................................80 Town of Hampden ..................................61 Tri City Pizza ............................................83 Tucker Auto Repair .................................87 Ultimate Image Hair Salon ......................20 Unique Rock Shop ....................................8 United Country Bold Coast Realty ......43 Vacationland Inn .......................................59 Varney’s Newport Ford ..........................88 Vazquez Mexican Food ........................17 Vintage Maine Images .............................7 WaCo Diner .............................................69 Wagner Forest Management, Ltd. ........83 Waite General Store, Inc. .......................46 Walls TV, Appliances & Home Furniture....21 Wardwell Custom Builders ......................27 Wardwell Oil .............................................8 Washington County Community College .45 Wellness Connection of Maine .............60 West End Drug Co. ................................33 West Quoddy Station ...............................67 West’s Coastal Connection .......................6 Wheaton’s Lodge ....................................73 Whiting Bay Bed & Breakfast ..................67 Whittens 2-Way Service, Inc. .................59 Wikhegan Old Books .............................16 Wilcox Auto .............................................52 Wilderness Edge Campground ...............48 Willard S. Hanington & Son, Inc. ..............5 Willey’s Sport Center ...............................27 William Coffin & Sons ...............................19 Williams & Taplin Well Drilling Services ....10 Wind & Wine By The Sea ........................33 Winn Equipment & Parts ........................47 Wiinter Harbor Food Service ...................17 Winter Harbor Lobster Coop ................36 Winterberry Heights .................................57 WK Construction & Sons ........................42 WKIT .......................................................54 Wood’s Seafood Market .........................23 Wreaths Across America ........................38 Yancy’s Restaurant ...............................45 York’s of Houlton ......................................75 Yu Takeout ................................................36

96

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties ~ Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties ~

Rooster Brother The Store for Cooks

and those who love them. by the Union River Bridge in Downtown Ellsworth 207 667 8675 800 866 0054 www.roosterbrother.com

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Richard Parks Furniture

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132 High St., Ellsworth 667-3615

Cottage & Patio: 993 Bar Harbor Rd., Trenton 667-0400

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Main Street Bridge, Ellsworth

Photo courtesy of the Ellsworth Historical Society