Midcoast 2016

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Volume 25 | Issue 5 | 2016

Maine’s History Magazine

16,000 Circulation

Midcoast Region

The Yarmouth Clam Festival

Delicious Maine clams put festival on the summer calendar

Richmond’s T.J. Southard His handprints spread all over town

Lindbergh’s Unexpected Visit Fog grounded couple on North Haven

www.DiscoverMaineMagazine.com facebook.com/discovermaine

Midcoast Region

Inside This Edition

2 3

It Makes No Never Mind James Nalley

4

Sunken Treasure...Lost And Found St. Anthony answered her prayers Hannah Dougherty Campbell

7

The Yarmouth Clam Festival Delicious Maine clams put festival on the summer calendar Brian Swartz

Maine’s History Magazine

Midcoast Region

11 Stratton Of The OSS The spy author from Brunswick

Charles Francis

Publisher & Editor

15 Richmond’s T.J. Southard His handprints are spread all over town

Roger Gordon

Layout & Design

20 The Turncoat Privateer The Liverpool Packet was the “Scourge of New England”

Charles Francis 26 Topsham Hero American Legion Post 202 honors Corey Edwin Garver

Jeffrey Bradley 30 Abbott’s Reach An excerpt from the book published by Islandport Press

Ardeana Hamlin 34 Phippsburg’s Herbert Spinney

Bird Man of Seguin

Charles Francis 38 Gardiner’s Historic A-1 Diner Skip that I-295 toll booth heading north Dave Bumpus 41 The 1951 Labor Strike Many city employees struck out

Brian Swartz 44 W estward Ho The saga of China’s Nathan Stanley

Charles Francis 47 Damariscotta’s Favorite Son Maurice “Jake” Day Local man helped create Disney’s animated film Bambi

Steve Hrehovcik 51 Hilda Edwards Hamlin Christmas Cove’s legendary lupine lady Leah Dearborn 56 Lindbergh’s Unexpected Visit Fog grounded couple on North Haven

Brian Swartz 60 The Ardent Spirit Of Miss Harriet Rice History of a Maine native

Nancy Nicol 64 Herbert Foss

A real knight of the round table

Charles Francis 71 Francis Greene And The History Of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor

A classic in the field of local history

Charles Francis 74 Owls Head’s Blinn Curtis

Sailor climbed for his life as slaves captured his ship

Brian Swartz 79 Pioneer Inventor Nathan Read

The great inventor from Belfast

Charles Francis 82 The Great Albion Gold Hoax

Land values immediately skyrocketed

Charles Francis 84 Remembering Rural Life In 1950s Maine

We walked three miles to school and four miles home

Richard Baumgardner 88 Stockton Spring’s Kenneth “Skeet” Wyman Jr.

Amateur boxer got to wear Muhammad Ali’s gloves

Brian Swartz

Jim Burch

Liana Merdan

Advertising & Sales Manager Tim Maxfield

Advertising & Sales Julian Bither Dennis Burch Ryan Fish Tim Maxfield Sam Pelletier Zackary Rouda

Office Manager Liana Merdan

Field Representatives

George Tatro

Contributing Writers

Richard Baumgardner Jeffrey Bradley Dave Bumpus Hannah Dougherty Campbell Leah Dearborn Charles Francis | fundy67@yahoo.ca Roger Gordon Steve Hrehovcik James Nalley Nancy Nicol 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 © 2016, CreMark, Inc.

SUBSCRIPTION FORMS ON PAGES 31, 83 & 86

Front Cover Photo:

The Bowdoin College baseball team, ca. 1896. Item #12388 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

All photos in Discover Maine’s Midcoast Region edition show Maine as it used to be, and many are from local citizens who love this part of Maine.

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

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It Makes No Never Mind

by James Nalley

W

hen it comes to heroic actions, regardless of the war or conflict, there are numerous accounts in which such death-defying feats are simply unbelievable. One story in particular is about Lt. Thomas Hudner, a naval aviator during the Korean War. In December 1950, Hudner was part of a six-aircraft squadron sent on a search-and-destroy mission near the Choisin Reservoir. Flying alongside Hudner was Ensign Jesse Brown, Hudner’s wingman and the first African-American Navy pilot. At the Maine Maritime Museum’s lifetime achievement ceremony for Hudner, held in 2013, Admiral Gregory Johnson (from Harpswell) stated that the “squadron received a report that Brown’s aircraft was leaking fuel, possibly due to small arms fire by Chinese troops.” Brown, losing fuel pressure and unable to control his aircraft, crashed into a snow-covered valley approximately 15 miles behind enemy lines. As the aircraft broke up on impact and caught fire, Brown was not only severely wounded, but his leg had become pinned beneath the fuselage. Realizing that Brown had survived the crash, Hudner intentionally crashed his own aircraft (i.e., performed

Bring a piece of history home!

a wheels-up landing) within a few hundred feet of Brown’s in an attempt to save his life.

Hudner then ran over to Brown’s wreckage, attempted to put out the fire by covering it with snow, and unsuccessfully tried to free Brown’s body with an axe. After the rescue helicopter had arrived a few hours later, Brown had begun to lose consciousness.

His last words were to Hudner were, “Tell Daisy, I love her.” Hudner was then forced to make the difficult decision of leaving the site due to the oncoming darkness of night, the sub-zero temperatures, and the increasing possibility of Chinese forces arriving to plunder the aircraft. In regard to that moment, Hudner later recalled, “Staying there would have been suicide.”

After returning to his ship, Hudner begged his superiors for permission to go to the site and extract Brown. However, it was denied due to the high possibility of additional casualties. Two days later, the order was given to bomb the site with napalm so that Brown’s body and aircraft would not fall into enemy hands. The remains of Brown were never recovered.

In April 1951, for his valiant efforts, Hudner was awarded the Congressional Medal

of Honor by President Harry Truman, with Brown’s widow, Daisy, in attendance. In a lasting tribute to the Medal of Honor recipient, Bath Iron Works is currently building the U.S.S. Thomas Hudner, an Arleigh Burke Class DDG 116 destroyer, which is scheduled to be completed in 2017.

Well, since my time with you is coming to an end, let me close with the following military-inspired jest: After discovering that every hotel room in town had been taken, a tired Marine pleaded with one manager: “You've got to have a room somewhere or at least a bed!”

The manager replied, “Well, I do have a double room with one occupant, a Navy guy.” But to tell you the truth, he snores so loudly that people in the nearby rooms have complained in the past.” “No problem,” said the Marine. The next morning, the manager saw the surprisingly well-rested Marine and asked, “You look like you slept well, but how?” The Marine smiled and said, “Well, as the guy started snoring, I went over, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and said, ‘Goodnight beautiful.’ He sat up all night watching me.”

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Sunken Treasure...Lost And Found St. Anthony answered her prayers

by Hannah Dougherty Campbell

A

fter a delightful seafood lunch at the Dolphin Marina in Harpswell, I stepped from the nearby dock into my friend’s boat. To steady my balance, Randi held me by the wrist and at that instant, our eyes met. My 14 Karat Gold charm bracelet slipped from my arm and into the harbor waters beneath us. I was horrified and helpless.

Young men perched on the surrounding rocks witnessed this sight and we yelled to them for help. I offered money for them to dive down to find it and so they did, over and over — each time coming up empty and out of breath. “It’s gone, you’ll never find it,” my friends murmured. With all the boats’ motors churning in this harbor,

the sand will toss and turn it deeper and deeper.” “Don’t feel bad, a fisherman said.....the other day a guy changed from his shorts to his swimsuit, jumped in for a cool dip, restarted the engine and sped away...only problem was that he had left his shorts on the boat roof with his wallet, a thousand dollars in cash, his credit cards, ID..oh, and his car keys..all blew into the surf below never to be seen again.”

As the boat left the dock, I looked back at the fellows on the rocks. I figured they saw the boat’s New York license plate and figured we’d never be back; that after we were out of sight, they’d find it and keep it. “We’ll be back in half hour!,” I yelled back to

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scare them from doing so. Our friends, good naturedly trying to comfort me, said that a dolphin wearing my shiny bracelet on his fin waved to them.

Returning to our cabin on Bailey Island, I was heartbroken. Each little gold charm held such significance to me...the shamrock for my Irish heritage, “Mom” for my 4 children, “Blessed Mother” for my Catholic faith, an angel for our baby who died, among many others. It wasn’t the value of the gold, it was the value of each little treasured symbol...the combination of which I could never replace again.

“How was the lunch and boat ride?,” our cabin friends asked. Tears running down my cheeks, I told them the tale.

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com “Say a prayer to Anthony!,” each advised me. “It’ll turn up, I know it and feel it,” each said. “Go back and look” one said...when the tide is low. We were leaving for Philadelphia at promptly 8 a.m. the next day, and my husband Mike was insistent on punctual departure for the nine hour trek home.

I called dear friends in Harpswell who assured us they would put a sign on the Dolphin Marina’s bulletin board.

They would tell all their fisherman friends to be on the lookout for the bracelet and that a reward was being offered.

Tossing and turning next to my husband that night, I hatched my last ditch plan to find the bracelet. The newspaper’s tide schedule confirmed low tide the next day was at 5 a.m., and as I arrived at the Marina, the harbor was as flat as a beach. Beer can tabs lay everywhere, dimes, pennies....but no bracelet. “What are you looking for?” , a lobsterman asked me. When I told him he

asked what time of day I lost the bracelet. “Oh, 4 p.m. yesterday? Well, then the bracelet would be in the area behind you now.” I looked up to dock sections backed up to the pier....there was now no way I would find it, no way.

I prayed to St. Anthony on the car ride home to Philadelphia, prayed for a miracle. Upon our arrival, the phone rang and it was my Harpswell friend calling. She asked me what the bracelet looked like. As I started to describe each charm again, she replied...”I’m holding it here in my hand. I hope you don’t mind but we have friends who dove for it..they were about to give up when on the last dive, they found it. We gave them $100.00 for their trouble, you don’t mind, do you?”

My screams of joy must have been heard around the world. It came back to me, the gold bracelet with special charms. It lay in the sea, amidst tides and shifting sands..waited for a miracle to happen, for its rightful return to its

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The Yarmouth Clam Festival Delicious Maine clams put festival on the summer calendar

by Brian Swartz

A

ccording to Christopher Hyde writing in his “Landmarks” column in The Notes on July 8, 1986, the origins of the Yarmouth Clam Festival “are veiled in mystery.” He thought the festival had “two, maybe three, antecedents,” including a “firemen’s field day” featuring such activities as “contests, water fights and a carnival.”

Hyde reported that the firemen’s field day last took place in Yarmouth in 1961.

Meanwhile, the Maine Publicity Bureau and the Portland Chamber of Chamber co-sponsored the Millionth Visitor Celebration the third weekend of each July in Portland. Yarmouth

entrepreneur Howard Ingalls Small, well-known for opening the Royal River Park (an amusement park) in New Gloucester in 1946, played a pivotal role in creating the Millionth Visitor Celebration.

Besides a carnival and a parade, the 1957 celebration saw Portland-area hotels, motels, and stores (especially Benoit’s) joining with the Chevrolet Dealers of Maine to offer a new 1957 Chevrolet to the lucky person registering for a contest that included two all-expenses paid week-long vacations in Maine.

Not anchored to a particular holiday or a specific theme, the Millionth Visitor Celebration slowly lost steam

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and participants. Looking at some land (then the site of a pony-racing track) he owned on Route 1 in Yarmouth, Small decided to launch the Vacationland Fair to lure visitors to Yarmouth.

Ending his affiliation with the Portland celebration, he kicked off his fair in 1962. Targeting young people (and thus their parents, who had the money for rides and food), the fair “featured a horse show/race, agricultural fair, fireworks, outdoor lobster/clambake, and carnival,” according to Small. He promoted and financially supported the fair for three years, but lost “a sizable amount of money” on the event.

Not a man to admit a defeat, Small negotiated with Ken Larrabee and the (continued on page 8)

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(continued from page 7) Yarmouth Chamber of Commerce to transfer the fair to that organization.

Larrabee and other civic backers quickly chose a deliciously appealing theme.

Rockland had its lobsters; Yarmouth would have its clams — and thus did the first Yarmouth Clam Festival take place in 1965.

People (especially tourists) scratched their heads. What was appealing about a bivalve, other than its taste when steamed or dipped in batter? Christopher Hyde noted, “The first festival was (a flop, a modest success, a blockbuster) depending on who you listen to.”

But something had clicked. Backers relocated the festival to downtown Yarmouth in 1966; many events were held at the North Yarmouth Academy campus. A year later, Marjorie Sinclair could note in a newspaper article that “the town [had] staged one of the main events of its second annual Clam Fes-

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tival — the big parade.” For sure the Casco Bay fog rolled in to turn everything a bit murky, but people had a good time nevertheless.

Yarmouth and clams: The two went together like a tasty Maine clam roll.

Besides a parade and a carnival that offered children’s rides, food, and games, the Yarmouth Clam Festival added a bike race circa 1972. Arlyn Roffman recalled that the Yarmouth Police Department helped organizers design a race route, and K-Mart donated a new bicycle for the race’s winner.

A fast-moving tropical storm literally soaked Yarmouth before the race, passed its eye overhead so the riders could pedal in dry conditions, and resumed its torrential downpours after “the last cyclist had passed the finish line,” Roffman remembered.

The 11th annual clam festival drew 40,000 people to Yarmouth in 1976.

“Events ranged from pole climbing and

tree chopping contests, to a clam shucking competition and a nighttime variety show,” a newspaper reported. Other activities included a frog-jumping contest, a diaper derby, and a Sunday visit by the Budweiser Clydesdales.

Festival attendance rose as the years past — and especially so after tourists started scheduling the Clam Festival as a “must-do” vacation activity. The 1980 festival chairman, Charles Mansfield, estimated that around 50,000 people packed Yarmouth to eat clams and enjoy the fun.

The festival became so popular that the honor of being named grand marshal started going to well-known public figures. Ann Sward, known as “Lyla Montgomery” on As The World Turns, served as the grand marshal in 1986; Red Sox slugger Ted Williams was the 1987 grand marshal.

In time, festival organizers added (in shades of ’61) a Firefighter’s Muster

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that brings competitive teams from fire departments in Maine and other New England states to Yarmouth.

Backers added the Great Royall River Canoe Race in 1986, and four years later a reporter noted the festival was “back this year, bigger than ever, pulling out all the stops.” He understated the festival’s role in Yarmouth culture; in 1999, the Clam Festival coincided with the town’s 150th birthday, and backers added two days (July 14-15) to the festival and designated them as Yarmouth Appreciation Days.

Attendance exploded by the early 21st century. Approximately 150,000 visitors attended the 2001 festival, and people packed the Main Street sidewalks as five firefighters from New York City marched in the “Hurray for Heroes”-themed 2002 parade. Rolling from a fire station in Queens, the “firefighters reached the World Trade Center 10 minutes after the second tower

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collapsed” the previous September 11, a newspaper noted.

With its 50th anniversary observed in 2015, the Yarmouth Clam Festival has become a permanent date on Maine’s summer calendar. Every year the festival attracts more than 100,000 people from the United States and at least a dozen other countries. The parade extends 1½ miles, organizers run 10 miles of electrical wire to meet the festival’s electrical needs, and the popular foods served by non-profit vendors include lobster rolls and strawberry shortcake.

And, as always, as a reporter put it so well more than 25 years ago, “The festival will feature clams in all forms — steamed, fried in batter, fried in crumbs.”

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Stratton Of The OSS The spy author from Brunswick

by Charles Francis

W

hat kind of author writes travel books about the Middle East, the Far East and islands in the Indian Ocean and calls them biographies? A spy might. Working on a travel book of Turkey or India or Madagascar would be a good way for a spy to explain his presence in one of those far-flung places. At least it was during World War II and during the Cold War. Anyway, that’s what Arthur Stratton did. He wrote books about those places and he was a spy.

Arthur Stratton was recruited into the OSS when he was recovering from war wounds at his alma mater, Bowdoin, late in 1942 and early in 1943.

Stratton had been wounded in the Lib-

yan Desert. He had been an ambulance driver. His first OSS station was Istanbul, once capitol of the old Ottoman Empire.

Arthur Stratton was very much a traveler. He was the kind of traveler

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who immersed himself in the culture of whatever country he happened to be visiting. Stratton was also a war hero, a teacher, a novelist, a biographer and a travel writer. Given these myriad identities there is a natural inclination to compare Stratton with like-minded individuals. Ernest Hemingway comes to mind. Hemingway was a World War I ambulance driver as well as a novelist. Stratton’s persona as an espionage agent in the Middle East brings to mind T. E. Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence immersed himself in local culture. And Lawrence wrote books. Then there is Paul Theroux. Theroux is a travel writer. He has written extensively of India and elsewhere. He was also a teacher. (continued on page 12)

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(continued from page 11) That one can find elements of Ernest Hemingway, Lawrence of Arabia and Paul Theroux in the life and accomplishments of Arthur Stratton can’t be denied. Stratton was, however, his own person. And in his own way he outshone the three authors mentioned above with whom he might be compared. Take, for example, Stratton’s stint as an ambulance driver.

Stratton was in France in 1939 at the beginning of World War II. At the initial call for volunteers he signed up with the American Field Service (AFS). The AFS made him an ambulance driver. He served on the Western Front. Stratton was the first foreign national — and, of course, American — of World War II to be decorated by the French government with the Croix de Guerre for bravery under fire. He was awarded the medal a second time. This was when he was wounded.

Stratton was wounded in late spring of 1942 in North Africa. He was serv-

ing with the Free French Forces assigned to Montgomery’s Eighth Army.

The incident occurred at Bir Hakeim in the Libyan Desert. Stratton received over ten wounds.

Bir Hakeim is the site of one of the most important battles of the North African campaign, the Battle of Gazala.

During the battle the First Free French Division defended Bir Hakeim from German and Italian forces under Rommel. Resisting for sixteen days, the Free French gave the retreating Eighth Army enough time to reorganize, allowing them to halt the Axis advance at the First Battle of El Alemein.

Stratton was wounded while trying to evacuate wounded soldiers from the trap laid by the Germans. He was driving the second ambulance of a convoy.

The following description of what happened appeared in Coronet magazine.

The first ambulance ran into a storm of lead. The driver, George Tichenor, was killed instantly by a machine gun

burst. His best friend, Arthur Stratton, like him a hero of the AFS in France, was in the ambulance behind Tichenor.

Stratton’s car, too, was struck by a machine gun burst and the steering mechanism destroyed. He hailed a truck and continued the perilous journey under tow. But he had advanced only a few hundred feet when a shell struck the front of his ambulance. Stratton, wounded in 11 places by machine gun fragments, helplessly watched his loaded ambulance destroyed by flames…

This is when Stratton was shipped home to recuperate at Bowdoin.

Arthur Stratton was born in Brunswick in 1911. He graduated from Bowdoin in 1935. He went on to earn a masters at Columbia. His area of concentration was English.

In Istanbul, Stratton taught English at Robert College. Just how much of a cover this actually was isn’t clear.

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GROCERIES • BEER-WINE-SODA • LOTTERY TICKETS AGENCY LIQUOR STORE • GAS-DIESEL-KEROSENE FISHING SUPPLIES • GIFT SHOP • FIREWOOD GREEN MOUNTAIN COFFEE • BAKED GOODS PIZZA - 10” OR 16” • HOT & COLD SANDWICHES ICE CREAM CONES • ICE - CUBES OR BLOCK PROPANE EXCHANGE

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602 Berry’s Mill Rd. • West Bath, ME 04530

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Route 209 • Phippsburg, Maine

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Hike, kayak or simply relax and enjoy breathtaking views of Harmon’s Harbor from one of our 13 rooms and our award-winning restaurant Blue 96 Seguinland Rd., Georgetown Island (207) 371-2616 | Toll-free (800) 473-9428 NRHP #85000614

13

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com tors over the years. The College also funneled students to North Yarmouth Academy as preparation for Bowdoin.

As to the importance of Istanbul in the OSS scheme of things that is clear.

The Office of Strategic Services was established by a Presidential military order issued by Roosevelt on June 13, 1942. The mandate of the OSS was “to collect and analyze strategic information required by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to conduct special operations not assigned to other agencies.” The Istanbul offices of the OSS were set up in 1943. Turkey, a neutral during WW II, was a center for Allied and Axis spy networks. Istanbul was ‘the’ crossroads of intelligence gathering. The goal of the OSS Istanbul operation was “to infiltrate and extenuate subversive action in the old Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires.” Arthur Stratton was at the very heart of the European espionage system. Later, while working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),

he returned to Turkey and travelled to India, Indochina and Madagascar. Out of these travels came his most important books: One Man’s India, The Great Red Island: A Biographer of Madagascar and Sinan: Biography of One of the World’s Greatest Architects and a Portrait of the Golden Age of the Ottoman Empire.

Just what Stratton’s CIA functions were in India, Turkey and Madagascar are a mystery. The backdrop is, of course, the Cold War and the spread of Communism. As to the books, they are quite good.

Sinon is set in the time of Suleiman the Magnificent. Suleiman ruled the Ottomans from 1520 to the 1560s. Sinan is Mimar Sinan, the greatest architect of the period. During a span of some fifty years, Sinan built more buildings than any other architect who has ever lived. One of the buildings he designed was the Mihrimah Mosque, named after Suleiman’s daughter Mihrimah,

with whom Sinan is said to have been in love.

The Great Red Island has been described as an extraordinary book, weaving “back and forth between past and present, between personal experience and historical event, between reflection and vivid description.” In more than one respect the book is Stratton’s own meditation on Malagasy sea-shells, birds and wood-carvings. It is both bizarre and fascinating. One reviewer described it as “a personally conducted safari into new literary territory.”

Arthur Stratton died in 1975. Two years before his death Stratton made a donation to Bowdoin. Just what we don’t know. It is simply referred to as “a donation.” Stratton dearly loved Bowdoin. He taught there briefly beginning in 1948. Today the college is a repository of his more important papers. * Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

Pogies • Herring • Redfish ~ Fresh or Salted ~ Wholesale & Retail Deane & Amy Stanton, Proprietors Linda, Christina & Kathy, Barbers Business Hours Monday-Friday: 8:30am-5pm Saturday: 8:30am-2pm

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TOWN and COUNTRY SALON AD GOES WILSON’S HERE DRUG STORE • DIABETIC CLUB DISCOUNTS • SENIOR CITIZEN DISCOUNTS • TRICARE, PCS PAID Prescriptions & OTHER 3rd CARE PARTY PLANS AVAILABLE

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197 Water Street • Bath, ME 04530

ED’s STUFF — Recycled Goods — Coins • Currency • Vintage • Tools Reproduction • Hardware Books • Furniture Antique Chair Caning

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Just over the Bath bridge on the right

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BOSTON GLOBE “One of the best in New England!”

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OFFSHORE MAGAZINE “A local tradition. Some would argue the best pizza in the entire state of Maine.”

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Midcoast Region

14

Launching of the VILLANOVA in Bath. Item # LB1998.34.54 from the Atlantic Fisherman Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

Dana R. Bowdoin Carpenter • Building • Remodeling • Finishing • Repairs

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Carl M. P.

Larrabee Insurance

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Complete Insurance Coverage 152 MAIN STREET, WISCASSET

15

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Richmond’s T.J. Southard His handprints are spread all over town

by Roger Gordon

H

e left home at 11 years of age with dreams of becoming a sailor.

Born in Boothbay on May 18, 1808, T.J. Southard hiked some 20 miles northwest from one small town to another, arriving at his destination spot of Richmond, a town of which he would eventually become one of the founding fathers. Southard was hired by Captain Solomon Blanchard, for whom he worked for a year as a ship’s boy and cook. He then completed a blacksmith’s apprentice before he set up his own forge on the Kennebec River in which he worked as a shipsmith. The forge burned down early on, but the people of Richmond, appreciative of his skills, helped him rebuild it.

While honing his craft, Southard Visit Maine’s premier historic two-foot narrow gauge railroad museum operating on the original right-of-way.

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Go 4.5 miles to Cross Rd. and take left.

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97 Cross Rd. • PO Box 242 • Alna, ME • (207)882-4193

www.wwfry.org for steam schedule

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“We specialize in homemade food”

continued his education, studying draftsmanship and ship construction until he became wealthy, and knowledgeable enough to open his own shipyard. At just 28 years old he built his first ship, Texas.

Three years later Southard married Jane Jones Springer, with whom he would have eight children – seven daughters and a son.

About the same time, Southard designed a series of small ships intended for the Southern coastal trade. He then went into business with a young shipbuilder named Stanwood Alexander.

Together, Southard and Alexander built 16 ships until the latter’s death in 1852.

Southard continued as a sole trader under the name T.J. Southard & Co.

With Southard’s son Charles a partner beginning in 1865, the Southard shipyard continued its success. During the course of 44 years it built 75-100 wooden-hulled sailing ships of all kinds and sizes that had an industry-wide reputation for reliability of workmanship.

Southard became the head of his own merchant fleet.

Two notable ships built by Southard were the Buena Vista in 1848 that was known for its speed, and the Gauntlet in 1853 that for many years had the distinction of being the largest ship ever built in Maine. The two biggest ships Southard built were the Eureka in 1876 and the Commodore T.H. Allen in 1884 – the latter 2,390 tons and 245.2 feet long, the former 2,101 tons and 230.7 (continued on page 16)

You’ve got to visit

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Midcoast Region

16

(continued from page 15) feet long.

One of Southard’s ships, the Ellen Southard, is best known for what led to its destruction. When the ship wrecked in a gale near the mouth of the Mersey River off Liverpool, England, causing the loss of nine lives, the courage of British lifesavers attempting a rescue prompted the United States Congress to alter the statute covering Lifesaving Medals to allow them to be awarded for the first time to non-Americans. A total of 27 Lifesaving Medals were awarded over the Ellen Southard disaster.

Southard was a busy man. Besides shipbuilding, he was a major contributor in numerous other ways to the economic and social development of Richmond and the surrounding areas.

He founded the Southard Cotton Mill, and a mineral spring business that sold its product nationally. He owned several other companies – three other shipyards, a brass foundry, a grist mill, a saw and planing mill, a furniture fac-

tory, a sail loft, a bakery, an edged tool store, a drugstore and a dry goods and West Indies goods store. Southard’s handprints were everywhere. He also worked to bring other businesses to Richmond, including shoe factories, a bag mill, the telegraph and railroad. He built 50 homes, and owned and rented farmland in the area as well.

Southard constructed or commissioned several notable buildings, one of which was the T.J. Southard Bank and Counting House, later known as Southard Block, that was designed by Southard himself and included a cast iron façade transported from Boston.

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in the 1970s. Another well-known structure developed by Southard was his son’s residence – a wedding gift that today serves as the C.H.T.J. Southard Museum.

The list is seemingly endless when it comes to Southard’s contributions to the Richmond area. He was the town’s

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first postmaster. He later served as director for a number of boards of several New England railroad and telegraph companies, towage corporations, banks and other institutions. He was president of the Sagadahoc Agricultural and Horticultural Society. He even dabbled in politics, first as a member of the Maine House of Representatives and later as a state senator.

Southard died at age 88 on September 15, 1896, in Richmond. His wife passed away about a month later. Three years after that, his son closed the Southard family shipyard.

Southard’s hopes of becoming a sailor may not have come true, but he became, among many other things, one of the most reputable shipbuilders ever. It is no surprise that he has been described as a workaholic and had the reputation as a tough business negotiator.

After all, as the old saying goes, nice guys finish last.

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285 Prescott Rd. • Manchester, ME

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TAX SERVICE, INC. Greg Dow, Owner

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20 Kinderhook St. Randolph, ME

17

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

TOM FINN SHOE REPAIR Thomas LaCasse ~ Owner

“Shoe Repair Saves You Money”

The full-rigged ship Olive S. Southard, built by T. J. Southard in 1871

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165 Water Street • Augusta, ME

Dom’s Barber Shop

All-Things Landscape and Stonework

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Estate Gardening & Landscape Restoration

Established 1936

~ The tradition continues ~ Specializing in military and modern hair cuts Mon.-Fri. 8:30am-7pm • Sat. 8am-1pm Walk-ins Welcome

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156 Water Street • Hallowell, Maine

Luncheon Specials Breakfast All Day Your Hosts: Mike & Kim

Homemade Soups & Desserts Take Out Available Mon.-Fri. 5am-2pm Sat. 6am-2pm Sunday 7am-1pm Breakfast Only

Jason Allerding Proprietor

504-2422

allthingslandscapeandstonework@gmail.com Hallowell, ME

AMERICAN AWARDS INC

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Your Heating Experts R.J. Energy Services, Inc. Fuel Oil & Propane Delivery Commercial • Residential • Estimates Complete Heating & Air Conditioning Systems

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Midcoast Region

18

Early view of the Lithgow Library in Augusta. Item # LB2007.1.110977 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

KIRKPATRICK’S SERVICE & REPAIR

C&S Market Gas ~ Deli ~ Groceries Pizza ~ Sandwiches Beverages

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785 Riverside Drive • Augusta, ME

BUG BUSTERZZZ Pest Control & Wildlife Services

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MATT ALLEN - Owner

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Lakeview Lumber Co. Complete Building Materials & Hardware for the Homeowner and Contractor Great Arts & Crafts Department!

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968-2498 Rt. 202, China Village, Maine

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Foreign Car Specialists 207-622-1557

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19

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Early view of Chandler’s Garage on Elm Street in Damariscotta. Item # LB2007.1.105158 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

Maple Lane Builders, Inc..

For that extra peace of mind that someone cares

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Midcoast Region

20

The Turncoat Privateer The Liverpool Packet was the “Scourge of New England”

I

by Charles Francis

n the Fall of 1812, the coasting schooner Four Brothers of Thomaston became one of the earliest victims of the most famous and feared privateer of the War of 1812, the Liverpool Packet. The Four Brothers was captured almost within sight of the Georges River and her homeport.

The Four Brothers and other Maine vessels, or Maine-bound vessels, like the Union out of Philadelphia carrying a load of rice for Bath, were easy targets for the Liverpool Packet in the months of September and October of 1812.

One of the reasons for this was that the war which would become known as the War of 1812 had only been declared some four months earlier in June. At

this time skippers of coastal vessels thought their greatest danger lay with British warships, not privateers. Another reason why the crew of the Liverpool Packet found the Maine coast easy pickings was that the men who manned her knew ports like Thomaston, Wiscasset and Boothbay Harbor as well as the entire Gulf of Maine like the proverbial back of their hands, as they

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were from neighboring Nova Scotia.

The total number of American vessels captured by the Liverpool Packet has been estimated at between sixty and a hundred. While this figure is so general as to be almost meaningless, it is an established fact that the Liverpool Packet had forty-four captured American vessels successfully condemned in a British Court of Vice Admiralty. The origins or ports of call of those vessels indicate that the Liverpool Packet’s greatest success as a privateer came in Gulf of Maine waters and with Maine and Maine-bound ships in particular, and New England vessels in general.

For this reason, the Liverpool Packet was dubbed the “Scourge of New

207.633.9406

633-2300

21

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com England” by the local press. With the hindsight that history offers, however, it might be more fitting to call the Liverpool Packet the “turncoat privateer.” One reason for this was that for a time during the War of 1812 she was an American privateer. In addition, she was also an American-built vessel.

When the Liverpool Packet put to sea as a privateer in September of 1812, she carried a deadly combination of some 140 money-hungry men, and was armed with a battery of five cannon installed at the British naval armory in Halifax as well as twenty-five muskets and forty cutlasses also supplied by England looking to beef up its naval might with the addition of privateers. Another fact made her even more deadly, however. She was fast.

Some sources indicate the Liverpool Packet was a schooner. She was not.

She was a Baltimore clipper, built in the seaport that inspired the record-breaking clipper ships of the Golden Age of Sail. She was built for speed because

she was initially intended as a slaver, which explains the name she was first given, Black Joke. For all of her speed, however, the Black Joke fell victim to the British Navy in 1811 and was sold by order of a Court of Vice Admiralty in Halifax. (Britain had made slavery illegal and the British Navy treated slavers of any nation as fair game.) The new name for the former slaver came from her new home port, Liverpool, Nova Scotia.

The Liverpool Packet’s initial success as a British privateer occurred on her first two cruises. The reason for this was that it took American skippers that long to learn that just because a vessel bore the distinct shape of a sharp Baltimore clipper it didn’t mean the vessel was American. During her second cruise, Maine or Maine-bound vessels captured by the Liverpool Packet included the Chase of Portland and the Kennebec River-bound Edward and Hiram of Nantucket Island.

By the time the Liverpool Packet began her third cruise in March of 1813 she was a marked vessel. In fact, some American privateers took it upon themselves to end the Nova Scotia ship’s affront to their own maritime reputations.

One of these was the heavily armed Little Duck from Falmouth. The Little Duck proved incapable of catching the fast Baltimore clipper, though.

Another American vessel proved a match for the Liverpool Packet’s speed, however. This was the Thomas of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Thomas simply outclassed the Liverpool Packet in every respect. To begin with, the Thomas carried ten carriage guns and four swivel guns. Moreover, she was faster than the Liverpool Packet.

The captain of the Liverpool Packet, Joseph Barss, first saw the Thomas as a potential prize when he sighted her off the southern Maine coast. Then, when Barss realized the Thomas outgunned (continued on page 22)

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Midcoast Region

22

(continued from page 21) him, he tried to run. Even throwing the Liverpool Packet’s guns overboard didn’t help, however. The Liverpool Packet ended this part of her story by being sold in a United States admiralty court in Portsmouth and becoming the American privateer Portsmouth Packet. This was not the end of the Liverpool Packet, however.

The Portsmouth Packet was on her first cruise as a privateer and in Bay of Fundy waters when she encountered the British warship Fantome. After a thirteen-hour chase the Fantome overhauled the Portsmouth Packet. Ironically, the capture of the Portsmouth Packet occurred at almost the same location where the Liverpool Packet had taken the Four Brothers of Thomaston.

The Portsmouth Packet was sold by the same British Court of Vice Admiralty where she had been sold as the Black Joke. The same buyers that had purchased the Black Joke in Halifax

Shop to Shore Carpentry Specializing in Wooden Boat Repair Rene J. Goulette President

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shoptoshore@nnei.net │www.shoptoshore.com Do You Enjoy Writing?

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If so, give us a call.

We Are Always Looking for History writers to Contribute to our Magazine!

Discover Maine Magazine (207) 874-7720 • 1-800-753-8684

now purchased the Portsmouth Packet.

She again became the Liverpool Packet, a privateer.

The Liverpool Packet went on to capture at least fourteen and possibly eighteen more American vessels. The story of her former captain is perhaps even more ironic than the story of the Liverpool Packet, however.

After spending two years in a Portsmouth, New Hampshire jail, Joseph Barss was released. He went on to captain the ship that had captured the Liverpool Packet, the Thomas. The Thomas had thus become a British privateer having been captured by a British warship.

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

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23

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Man unloading boxes of crabs with a wheelbarrow at Hilton Bros. in South Freeport. Item # LB1995.72.87 from the Atlantic Fisherman Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

here Go w cals go o l the

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Midcoast Region

24

A group poses for a photo in Freeport ca. 1900. At right are R. Cutler Libby and Amelia F. Libby. The boy holding the cat is Herman B. Libby. Item #13720 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Aerial view of Shiloh Chapel in Durham, ca. 1930. The Chapel was built between 1896-1897 by the Reverend Frank W. Sanford. Item #25244 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society/Maine Today Media and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Midcoast Region

Topsham Hero

American Legion Post 202 honors Corey Edwin Garver

by Jeffrey Bradley

A

rmy Sergeant Corey Garver of Topsham was killed by an improvised explosive device while on security detail in Patakiya Province, Afghanistan, in 2013. In 2015 Topsham American Legion Post 202 was renamed in his honor in a ceremony also observing its 50th anniversary. It was the first time in Maine an American Legion post was named for a serviceman killed in that country.

In an official online statement, the Defense Department confirmed that the 26-year-old “died June 23, in Zormat, Afghanistan of wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.” In one of combat’s most hazardous missions, Garver provided security while roads

and villages were being swept clear of lethal devices. Earlier in that same region, a suicide bomber killed two NATO soldiers, ten children and an Afghani police officer, besides wounding 16 others. Garver died barely a month later.

The website also informed that since Operation Enduring Freedom began in 2001 over 2,000 U.S. servicemen have been killed, and 18,000 more wounded in action.

Garver was assigned to Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry and the 4th Brigade Combat Team, stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where the 101st Airborne Division is based. Photographs show him searching for homemade explosives, running

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security while a village is cleared, and sighting through the scope of his weapon from behind a pile of rocks.

Sgt. 1st Class Rodney Gagnon, a Topsham resident stationed in Utah, knew Garver from when their families vacationed together on Bailey Island. “He loved the Army,” Gagnon remembered, and was “very excited” over enlisting — a sentiment echoed by practically all that knew him. Nate Gerrish, also from Topsham, and a graduate from Mt. Ararat High School, recalled that Garver played hockey and fit in well with the other students. “He was an average guy who stayed out of trouble,” said Gerrish, who also found his former classmate’s death overseas “eye-opening.”

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Garver joined the Army after graduating in 2007. He followed his father, a career military man, into the service.

He always seemed destined to be a soldier, said Ellen Garver, his mother. “‘If anything should happen to me, I’m just going to thank God [because] I love my life,’” he told me, she said, before adding that he was thankful for the opportunity of serving his country.

She spoke at the rededication ceremony with several American Legion national commanders on her son’s behalf.

Afghanistan has long been a locus of skirmish and strife. This strategic locale — even the Silk Road from China passed by this way — led a host of invaders, Darius I, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Islamic Mughals, even Sikhs from India, to pour through the narrow gaps of the Khyber Pass, hard by the Hindu Kush — “Hindu Killer”— mountain chain that runs like a spine through the country. This sheer-sided plateau abuts the border with Pakistan and is not far distant from Patakiya

Province. Some parts of Afghanistan are deeply forested and cut by tumbling streams; but mostly, the rugged hillsides and rocky defiles familiar to Westerners make it a chilly and permanent desert with a hardened people eking a hardscrabble life of seemingly endless privation.

More recently, the land has practically swallowed British, Soviet and American armies.

Garver was raised in the Old Farm Road neighborhood of Topsham before he joined the Army. His was “a very outgoing personality,” according to Principal Craig King of Mt. Ararat High School. “We [were] saddened to hear that this young man has passed away.” King said it was evident that following Garver’s recruitment, “He was proud of the commitment he was making.”

During his brief career, Garver earned several awards for valor and distinguished service, including two Army commendation medals, the Army

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Achievement medal, two Army Good Conduct medals, the National Defense Service Medal, two Afghanistan Campaign medals, and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. Not bad for a short stint in the military.

The muddled conflicts in the Middle East appear as a failed policy. Rather than a series of quick, knockout strikes, American leaders pursued concepts of “nation building” and “unilateral withdrawal, which either ended with the U.S. mired in local politics, or squandering a hard-won advantage. For all that, Iraq — perhaps for the first and only time in its long and troubled history — was free to choose its own destiny.

That it devolved so quickly and completely into religious zealotry is hardly surprising. In Afghanistan, where the enemy was put to flight, inept doctrines and politically-driven “rules of engagement” have hamstrung our efforts to the point that the enemy now is verging on victory. While no U.S. soldier dies in (continued on page 28)

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(continued from page 27) vain, many have probably died needlessly. The specter of Vietnam hangs over this conflict. Pouring billions into a weak and war-torn country — a “nation” really in name only — benefits few besides an ineffectual and corrupt elite. A remark recently made by U.S. Army analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters put it fairly succinctly: “We’ve taken a country of pickpockets and turned them into major felons.”

To the Garvers of these confusing wars it is of little import that history does not actually repeat itself, but that historians merely repeat other historians.

In a joint statement, Maine’s congressional delegation expressed its condolences. “He was a true American hero who valiantly dedicated himself to the defense of our country. His actions on the battlefield demonstrated the highest caliber of leadership and courage and we owe him our enduring gratitude,” it read.

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Abbott’s Reach An excerpt from the book published by Islandport Press

by Ardeana Hamlin

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his is an abridged excerpt from the book Abbott’s Reach by Ardeana Hamlin, published by Islandport Press. Abbott’s Reach is a historical novel set in nineteenth century coastal Maine. It’s the story of a young married couple setting sail on their honeymoon voyage. Their travels around Cape Horn to Hawaii and back are rife with excitement, romance, adventure, and family strife. This novel is the sequel to the author’s now-classic Pink Chimneys.

Mercy Maude Giddings pointed her chin resolutely into the wind blowing up the channel of Maine’s Penobscot Bay, where it flowed around Verona Island and narrowed to become the river.

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The breeze pulled her dark auburn hair, free of its pins, away from her fine, freckled face. It was her sister Grace’s birthday, and she had come to the water, as she always did on that day, to commune with the past.

M had lived with her grandmother in the big, airy boardinghouse for ten years. She had been eight when her stepfather Abner Giddings’s ship, the Fairmount, foundered in a tropical storm off Cape Hatteras. Her younger sister, Grace, a child of five, had been lost that terrible day. After that, Abner and her mother, Elizabeth, would not take M with them on their voyages, as had been their habit since M was an infant. They decided M would live with her grandmother, Fanny Abbott.

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com On this day — Grace’s birthday — M walked on the beach, eager to give in to an overwhelming urge to stand knee-deep, thigh-deep, waist-deep in the dark, billowing water. It was in water that the bones of her sister lay. In the water, she felt close to Grace, as if the water itself had the power to renew her fading memories of her sister.

M remembered how anxious she had felt, how bereft, how abandoned — how terrified that the sea would take her parents, too. She withdrew into herself more and more, unable to express her grief and her fears.

On this day, if she could not be on the water in the Fairmount, then she would be in the water — like the Fairmount, she would be a creature of the waves. For a few moments, until the cold temperature sent M back to shore, her skirts dragging heavy and wet around her legs, the wind chilling her to the bone, she took a perverse kind of

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pleasure in being as cold as her sister, asleep in her watery grave.

M glanced toward the house. She knew they were up there watching, peering at her through the spyglass, Mrs. Maude and her grandmother, whom she called Grand Fan. But she did not care. Let them fret. Let them wonder if she was about to have a fit of melancholy. At this moment she only wanted to be alone, immersed in the water of the bay, tossed and blown by the currents of her emotions.

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Bailey Island ferry, ca. 1910. Item #25568 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Phippsburg’s Herbert Spinney

by Charles Francis

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Bird Man of Seguin

n August 13, 1902 Herbert Spinney took a specimen of the Stilt Sandpiper off Matinicus.

(Spinney used the bird’s common name as well as its scientific one, Micropalama himantofus.) Spinney thought it the first recorded instance of the species in the region. By “took” Spinney meant he shot and killed the bird.

Herbert Spinney wrote of the shooting of the sandpiper in a 1903 issue of The Auk, an ornithological magazine of the day. He wrote he had been bird hunting on “some half-tide ledges between Matenic and Matenic Green Island, when I noticed a bird flying in from seaward which I took to be a Summer Yellowleg. When it came within

shooting distance I dropped it....” The fact the bird was a Stilt Sandpiper surprised Spinney. He noted it was female.

Anyone today possessing environmental sensitivities will, of course, be taken aback by the above description.

A rare bird has been deliberately killed by a hunter. With a bit of reflection, however, one begins to wonder about the nature of the hunter and his almost off-handed identification of the bird.

Then there is the question as to why Spinney sent the story of his find to The Auk. Here’s a bit of background as to the seeming, ironic contradictions. Herbert Spinney was a recognized amateur ornithologist. Amateur is used here in

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the sense of knowledgeable lay person. Spinney was not a college-trained biologist or zoologist. Herbert Spinney was, however, among the officers as well as one of the presidents of the Maine Ornithological Society. As one of the presidents of the Society, Herbert Spinney had a role in the founding of the Maine Audubon Society. He was also involved in the passage of the state law that protects nongame birds, their nests, and their eggs.

In the same issue of The Auk that contained the episode of the Stilt Sandpiper, Spinney wrote of finding numbers of Wilson’s Petrel (Oceanites oceanicus) four miles south of Seguin Island. The birds were feeding in a

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Spinney noted seeing the birds “plunge beneath the surface of the water for the food they were after.” Spinney makes a comparison between Wilson’s and Leach’s Petrel, noting “Though I have watched many thousands of Leach’s Petrels while they were feeding, I have yet to see one plunge beneath the surface.”

So just how does it happen Herbert Spinney was off Matinicus and Seguin?

Well, for a fair number of years Herbert Spinney and his family lived on Seguin Island. Spinney was a Seguin light keeper. He was assistant keeper from 1893 to1898, and head keeper from 1903 to 1907.

Sequin Light is an isolated station. It lies one and a half to two miles south of the mouth of the Kennebec. From the shore it looks to be bare rock, devoid of trees and shrubs, which it is. The only thing on Sequin besides the lighthouse facilities is a bit of grass. The most fre-

quent visitors to Seguin are birds. The island is smack on the North Atlantic Flyway. This latter fact says something as to Herbert Spinney’s interest in the natural world in general and birds in particular.

In 1904 the Boston Globe did a sketch of Herbert Spinney. The hook to the piece was Spinney as “Lighthouse Keeper and Naturalist.” The article talked about Seguin Light as a museum housing Spinney’s collection of mounted birds, birds’ eggs, butterflies, minerals, and corals. It talked of Spinney always carrying a camera and developing his own prints. The Globe piece described the Spinney family as living in quarters filled with Herbert Spinney’s collection, the walls filled from floor to ceiling with the evidence of Spinney’s avocation.

Seguin Light was the perfect station for a keeper with Herbert Spinney’s interest in birds. It wasn’t just because Seguin Light was on the North Atlantic

Flyway but also because of the nature of the light itself. The Seguin beacon is the highest lighthouse on the Maine coast, and the only one with a first order fresnel lens in the state. The height of the light coupled with its intensity attracts birds. On one occasion Spinney found 275 birds dead at the foot of the lighthouse.

Herbert Spinney was the typical coastal Maine boy who grows up collecting shells and sea urchins and learning the names of local flora and fauna.

He wasn’t the first to carry the hobby into later life, either. Spinney was from Georgetown. Albert Bickmore of St. George grew up doing much the same as Spinney. Bickmore went on to be one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History. Arthur Norton was another St. George native who was an active naturalist. Norton was longtime curator of the Portland Society of Natural History. Bickmore, Norton (continued on page 36)

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(continued from page 35) and Spinney all knew each other. Spinney was vice president of the Maine Ornithological Society the same time that Norton was secretary-treasurer.

Arthur Norton was also a member of the Maine Audubon Society. In 1906, while curator of the Portland Society of Natural History and an officer of the Maine Ornithological Society along with Herbert Spinney, Norton was elected secretary-treasurer of the Maine Audubon Society. Norton’s triple involvements cemented an alliance of the three organizations that lasted well beyond his lifetime. To paraphrase a writer on the history of Maine Audubon, it seems clear that from this period on the distinction among the societies blurred. This point being made, we return to Herbert Spinney and Seguin.

In the first decade of the 1900s Seguin recorded the thickest Maine fogs ever. According to meteorologists the particular conditions caused by the

Kennebec emptying into the Gulf of Maine can create a sort of vortex, trapping fog and other atmospheric debris for unnaturally long periods of time.

This speaks to the importance of Seguin Light and its horn. Fog hasn’t been the only atmospheric phenomenon to try the patience of the Light’s keepers, however. Smoke from forest fires on the mainland can be trapped in the region surrounding Seguin in much the same manner as fog.

Herbert Spinney was an inveterate journal keeper. Late summer of 1899 an especially bad series of forest fires plagued the mid-coast area. Spinney recorded the effects of one such fire in a journal entry for September 3.

Spinney came on duty at midnight.

In part, his journal entry reads: “the air so impregnated with smoke as to make my throat smart in breathing... on going into the lantern I found about 75 birds on the outside; pine warblers,

black and white yellow throats, oven birds, two hermit thrushes and one yellow-bellied flycatcher; all seemed to alight on the glass as fast as they appeared; very few seen flying around the light.” The entry is pure Herbert Spinney. The birds odd behavior are as much a fact of the environment as the unusual atmospheric conditions.

Herbert Spinney retired from the Lighthouse Service to live out his years on Court Street in Bath. His home there became, like Seguin Light, another veritable museum of Maine flora and fauna.

Today many of Herbert Spinney’s papers can be found in the Fogler Library of the University of Maine. They are part of the Arthur Norton collection.

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Gardiner’s Historic A-1 Diner Skip that I-295 toll booth heading north

I

by Dave Bumpus

f you find yourself headed to Augusta, northbound on I-295, I have a little trick that will help you out in two ways. Get off the highway at the Gardiner exit, and take a right onto Brunswick Ave / Route 201. This will take you through the town of Gardiner alongside the Kennebec River. From there, you can follow the main road through Farmingdale, Hallowell, and after about 15 minutes or so, you’ll be in the heart of Augusta.

The first reason this trick helps you is because you just avoided a toll booth on I-295 that comes immediately after the Gardiner exit. So you sacrificed a little bit of time to save a little bit of money. But, the 2nd, and more important reason, is because this route gives

you the opportunity to experience one of the best local diners that Maine has to offer.

As you travel down route 201 through Gardiner, just after you pass the intersecting Main Street, on your left side you will see the A-1 Diner. It is nearly impossible to miss; it almost

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looks like an old passenger train car, because it was originally a lunch car.

It sits snuggly on steel girders at street level, about 20 feet above and to the side of the Cobboseecontee Stream.

The food there is delicious (I have eaten there many times growing up in Gardiner), service is fast and friendly, and the price doesn’t break the bank by any means. But besides its charm, the A-1 Diner has a vast history behind it, as it has been a Gardiner landmark for over 65 years.

In 1946, Eddie Heald ordered the food car to be delivered from Worcester, Massachusetts. It arrived by truck, and opened as “Heald’s Diner.” The restaurant opened to great success and public praise. Many of the local teenag-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com ers made the eatery a hang-out spot in their off time, and workers from several of Gardiner’s surrounding factories ate at the diner frequently. All in all, Heald’s Diner was off to a great start.

And in true fashion to good old Maine hospitality, Heald would pass along his successful establishment to new owner Maurice Wakefield in 1952. Maurice changed the name of the restaurant (named after himself), but kept the original “Heald’s” sign, a homage to the original owner. However, during his 27- year run, the restaurant saw what were arguably some of the diner’s bleakest times. But it wasn’t for lack of great food or management.

Unforeseen and uncontrollable outside forces would cause the unique hotspot to nearly go under.

The 1950s saw a harsh decline in industrial productivity in Gardiner. Several of the factories were being forced to close down, and the workers that had made Heald’s Diner such a success

when they opened were taking their families elsewhere. To make matters worse, in the 1970s a new McDonald’s restaurant opened its doors right up the street, and attracted the attention of the teenagers that hung out at the small diner. It seemed that the two biggest demographics for the restaurant were moving on.

Maurice Wakefield sold the struggling diner to Al Giberson in 1979, and the new owner renamed it “Gibey’s Diner.” Giberson saw first-hand how much the location had declined after the factories closed, but he remained diligent. He kept the doors open, despite having little business. For him, though, the breaking point would come almost 10 years later, in 1987.

The “April Fool’s” flood was far from a joke. A heavy snowstorm had sent a pressure system hurling towards Maine, carrying extreme amounts of rain. As a result, riverside towns were hit with massive flooding, including

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Gardiner, perched on the Kennebec River. The flood caused enormous amounts of damage to the businesses in the downtown district, and Gibey’s Diner was no exception.

Mr. Giberson, however, did not have the insurance money to cover the damages, and later that year, the restaurant once again closed its doors. And with everything that had happened in its history, it looked as though this time it might stay that way for good.

But then two partners stepped up to the plate. Michael Giberson and Neil Anderson decided they would try to breathe some life back into one of Kennebec County’s most beloved, historical landmarks. Michael was Al Giberson’s son, and he and Anderson had been considering opening up a diner in Boston, before ultimately deciding on his father’s former establishment. They quickly got to work on fixing the diner, but made sure to maintain its original

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(continued from page 39) nostalgia. They fixed up the damages and kept its retro, 50s style atmosphere.

Some more modern items were also added to the menu, while they kept some of the classic diner favorites. They even replaced the restaurant’s outdated coffee with their own delicious blend.

They reopened the doors later that year, under the name “A-1 Diner.”

Since it was first loaded off a truck in 1946, the current A-1 Diner has seen plenty of owners, plenty of characters, and certainly plenty obstacles. But thanks to two determined and ambitious businessmen, it has come full circle, and is once again a favorite amongst locals and tourists alike. So the next time you are headed north on I-295, skip that toll booth and treat yourself to a meal that you are sure to never forget.

And yes, the original “Heald’s” sign is still displayed across the front of the building.

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The 1951 Labor Strike Many city employees struck out

by Brian Swartz

W

hen members of the Augusta Highway Department voted to form a union in 1951, they likely did not realize how seriously that city officials would resist a potential strike.

The Augusta Highway Department employed some 60 people that summer as hourly workers voted to form Local 1433 of the National, State, County and Municipal Employees’ Union. Afterwards, city officials fired Alton Humphrey, a highway-department employee involved in organizing the local.

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Richard B. Sanborn, an attorney who became the city’s de facto spokesman, said Humphrey was let go for being “inefficient.”

During a boisterous meeting held in the evening on Thursday, July 12, Local 1433 members voted 31-0 to strike over the firing of local member Alton Humphrey. They were also unhappy with several workplace changes made after the union’s certification.

The strikers wanted Humphrey rehired, a 20-minute mid-morning lunch break restored, a half hour of daily overtime restored for mechanics servicing city trucks, and the elimination of “yellow dog” contracts that city of-

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ficials had allegedly forced some highway department employees to sign.

By signing such a contract, an employee promised not to join Local 1433 — or his job might just disappear.

Strikers also wanted the city to allow highway department crews to work nine hours daily, Monday through Saturday, so the workers could take Saturdays off during summer 1951.

So at 6:30 a.m., Friday, July 13, two pickets appeared at the Sewall Street entrance to the Augusta City Garage.

According to Local 1433 president Henry Austin, only a pair of strikers would walk the picket line during the highway department’s regular working (continued on page 42

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(continued from page 41) hours.

But more strikers appeared outside the city garage, and other Local 1433 members picketed a sewer project on Gage Street that was being handled by a private company. The hourly laborers arriving to work at that construction site at 8 a.m. honored the picket line, and work ceased there for the day.

Early Friday morning, non-striking city employee William Taylor accidentally struck and knocked down striker Ralph Cady while operating a city dump truck. When Cady tried to yank Taylor from the cab, witnesses said that the angry Cady “roughed up” the driver.

Municipal officials promptly let the strikers and the public know that they weren’t playing around. The highway department would “carry on its business as usual, and the City will protect the right to work of any regular employee who wishes to work,” rumbled

Sanborn.

He also promised that Augusta might replace strikers with non-union workers.

Suddenly the labor strife apparently ended. In late afternoon, Waldo White of Local 1433 and Leo Kramer, an NSCMEU international representative, met with Sanborn at his law office.

Supposedly the city agreed to restore the mechanics’ overtime.

As for the other union demands, forget it.

That night, Local 1433’s Executive Board voted to ask union members to return to work — and the members responded “no,” according to Henry Austin. Much confusion reigned in municipal and union circles over the weekend, with Sanborn claiming the city was already hiring men to replace the strikers and he and union officials trading accusations in the local media.

On Sunday, July 15, Municipal

Court Judge Frank Southard Jr. issued a reckless driving warrant against Taylor and scheduled him to be arraigned on the charge on Wednesday.

The strike was all the talk in Augusta churches and homes that Sunday, with strikers hoping that the city would agree to their demands and Sanborn saying that “we’ll continue to hire until the crews are at full strength.”

On Monday, July 16, about 40 highway-department employees arrived at the Sewall Street garage to start the day’s work. A few strikers returned to work, and six new employees reported for duty that day. They and other city workers ignored the pickets outside the garage.

Suddenly — and this time for real — the labor strife abruptly ceased. After reviewing the staffing levels for the Augusta Highway Department, city officials decided at some point between Monday night and Tuesday morning to GOOD PEOPLE. GREAT PLACES.

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reduce the department from 60 workers to 50 — and the 10 eliminated positions all belonged to Local 1433 members.

Approximately 50 men reported to work on Tuesday, July 17, said City Engineer Waldo Hill.

Sanborn stressed that city officials had decided that “no one against whom we had clear evidence that he threatened other workers would be taken back” — and ditto those specific strikers whose jobs had been taken by new hires.

With 10 members of Local 1433 fired and other members returned to work, Sanborn figured that the strike was over. “About 50 [men] are working,” he said. “That’s all we need, so I guess that’s the end of it.”

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Westward Ho The saga of China’s Nathan Stanley

by Charles Francis

C

hina and the communities surrounding it prospered during the first half of the nineteenth century. Agriculture was the base of the economy. Except for a few years when “Ohio Fever” hit, the towns of the region grew in population. 1816 and 1817 were the years of “Ohio Fever.”

1816 was also the year that has gone down in the books as “1800 and froze to death.” Unprecedented cold killed crops. That was one of the motivations for people leaving the area. But except for this brief period, things were fine.

The big change population-wise for China and the region of which it was a part came around 1850. That was when the call of the west hit. Popula-

tion dropped markedly, mainly because of western migration, though there was some movement to populous urban centers where some deemed there was a ready job market. What set off the move west was the discovery of gold in California. Gold wasn’t the only thing that was attractive about the west, though. There was all that land, almost free for the taking.

Nathan Stanley was one of those China men who heard the call of the west. He succumbed to gold fever.

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from China. You can add the names of other towns in the region too — Vassalboro, Palermo and Albion, to name a few.

You could say Nathan Stanley had itchy feet. He made it to the California gold fields and more. He made it to Wyoming and Montana. In between he was an Aroostook pioneer. He also found time to serve as an officer in the Civil War. He recruited the better part of a company in Vassalboro, started his service as Captain Stanley and ended it as Lt. Colonel Stanley. Eventually Nathan Stanley ended up in Reno, Nevada.

There he was elected to the legislature.

Stanleys were and are prominent in China and the surrounding area. They

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com were early settlers of Palermo. They helped found Monticello and Littleton in Aroostook County. They were prominent in Belfast on the coast. They left their name in those places, too. China has a Stanley Hill to give one example.

Its slope reaches to China Lake.

Nathan Stanley’s story is a fascinating one. In a sense it seems to typify the Mainer of bygone days, the adventurous downeaster who made a name for himself by seizing opportunity, by taking the bull by the horns.

We hear about a Nathan Stanley and think, that’s what my ancestors or long gone relatives were like. Most likely they weren’t, but we’d like to think so.

When we hear of the likes of a Nathan Stanley we think there’s the kind of person that was Maine as Maine once was and could still be.

Though a China man, Nathan Stanley was born in Belfast. The family had business interests there. Nathan was born in Belfast in 1824. He was brought up in China, though, and went

to China Academy.

Nathan Stanley was the son of Gould and Mary Ward Stanley. The Wards are another old China family. Gould Stanley was born in Palermo. Mary Ward was born in China. There are a lot of Stanley and Ward connections. Stanleys and Wards seem to have married about every generation.

Gould Stanley died when Nathan was just eight. This didn’t mean Nathan didn’t have a good role model. He did, his grandfather and namesake.

Nathan Stanley fits the definition of family patriarch to a “T.” Nathan the elder was an early settler of China.

He had some 200 acres not far from Twelve-Mile Pond, near the Vassalboro line. In fact, he owned land in Vassalboro, too. Twelve-Mile Pond is, of course, China Lake.

On occasion the elder Nathan Stanley left China. He lived in Belfast for a while. He ran a hotel there, at the corner of Main and High Streets. That was in the 1820s. In the 1830s he lived

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in Monticello. He had a 160-acre farm there. In the 1840s he moved to Littleton.

Nathan the elder was an officer in the war of 1812. He was a colonel.

The men he commanded were from China and Vassalboro. During the war they were detailed to Edgecomb. The fear was Wiscasset would be sacked and burned. The elder Nathan Stanley died in China in 1859. He was eightyone when he died. He was his grandson namesake’s idol.

It is relatively easy to summarize the high points of Lt. Colonel Nathan Stanley’s life. They seem to gather in momentum and they seem to touch on a fair number of the great moments of nineteenth century American history.

They begin in Aroostook where Stanley lived after finishing his education at China Academy. There Stanley assisted in the survey of the Northeastern Boundary.

Nathan Stanley went to California (continued on page 46)

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(continued from page 45) by the Cape Horn route in 1849. Gold drew him. He mined in the area around American River. One thing he learned was that gold wasn’t that easy to come by. He also learned prices were high.

Staples like dressed pork on the round was two to three dollars per hundred.

It was a merchant’s market. Stanley stayed a year in California. Then it was back to China.

Two years later Stanley went back to California by the isthmus. He stayed till 1853 making a good deal of money in the grocery business. Then he returned to China and married his cousin Luenda Ward. The couple had four girls.

In the mid-1850s, Stanley engaged in moving merchandise in the early days of mid-western settlement. He drove teams of oxen from St. Louis, Missouri to Montana through a region of hostile Indians. The trains required about 200 oxen. The distance was some

1500 miles, a trip of about 100 days.

Stanley returned to Maine about 1860 and farmed in China. In 1862, he assisted in raising the war quota for Vassalboro. These men became part of Co. D, of the 21st Maine. Stanley was elected company Captain. Later a convention of the line officers of the several companies chose him as Lieutenant Colonel. The 21st went to Baton Rouge. The regiment took part in the Siege of Port Hudson. Stanley and the 21st mustered out in August of 1863.

The Lt. Colonel then resumed farming in China.

The West wasn’t done with its pull on Nathan Stanley, though. In 1882 he moved his family to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he opened a grocery store with his brother Albert. In 1886 he again uprooted his wife and daughters, this time to Reno, Nevada, where he opened another grocery.

Nathan Stanley died in Reno in

1897. He is buried in the Reno Masonic Cemetery. He isn’t the only Stanley buried there. There are several other stones besides Nathan Stanley’s that say born in China, Maine. These include three of Nathan’s daughters as well as his wife and other relatives.

These markers stand testimony to the call of the West.

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Damariscotta’s Favorite Son Maurice “Jake” Day Local man helped create Disney’s animated film Bambi

by Steve Hrehovcik

W

hen Walt Disney started production of his animated feature Bambi in 1938, he intended to use a mule deer as the model for the film’s hero. But one of the most talented artists in the Disney Studio, Maurice “Jake” Day, had a better idea.

Day, a native of Damariscotta, convinced Disney that Bambi would look better as a white tail deer. Day pointed out that mule deer, which got its name from its large mule-like ears, are indigenous to western North America, while white tail deer live throughout America.

Disney had great confidence in Day and sent him to Maine to sketch

Maurice “Jake” Day painting at his desk

and photograph deer, fawns and natural wilderness settings. Many of Day’s drawings of views in Baxter State Park served as background for action in the film. Day also arranged to have two fawns and other forest animals sent to California to use as models for Dis-

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ney’s animators.

Day had moved to California in 1936 with his wife and family. He had a promising art career in Damariscotta and Boston until the Depression brought an end to his commissions. In California, Day’s whimsical painting style impressed producers in the film industry. Before long he began work at the Disney Studio. Day had a rewarding career with Disney, but his work on Bambi made him homesick for Maine.

He moved back to Damariscotta in 1940.

Day’s family goes back several gen(continued on page 48)

Midcoast Region

48

(continued from page 47) erations in the town. He was the descendent of shipbuilders who settled in the area in the 1600s. Day was born in 1892 in the same house his great grandfather built in 1797. He attended Lincoln Academy in Newcastle, Damariscotta’s twin city across the Damariscotta River. While there he discovered his love of art.

He studied painting and drawing at the Massachusetts College of Art and graduated from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1915. A short time later his art career had a detour when he entered military service. During World War I he served with an artillery unit on the Mexican border and later in the Naval Camouflage Department.

When the war ended, Day returned to Damariscotta to continue working as an artist. His reputation grew, and he created illustrations for magazines and children’s books. He had commissions from publications such as Vanity

Fair, Life, House Beautiful, National Wildlife, Outdoor Life and the Atlantic Monthly. His wildlife drawings became popular with the National and Maine Audubon societies. Known for his wit and sense of humor, Day created editorial cartoons for the Maine Sunday Telegram, Lewiston Sun Journal and Waterville Sentinel. He also worked for a variety of advertising agencies and illustrated numerous books. Prominent magazines used his art work on their covers.

One of Day’s grandsons, Dan Day, and his wife Sandi, own the house that has been part of the family for more than 200 years. They carry on the memory of their famous ancestor by making select originals and prints of his works available in their gallery, Maine Art Prints by Maurice Jake Day, located at 20 Bristol Road. Dan Day says, “It’s easy to find. It’s on Route 130, the third house on the left after the Baptist

Church.”

Jake Day’s works promoted Maine and his respect for conservation. In 1967 Governor Percival P. Baxter appointed him “Artist in Residence” of Baxter State Park. Day also designed the park’s seal and illustrated the map for the park. Three other governors selected him for membership on the Maine’s Art Commission. Unity College and the University of Maine awarded him honorary degrees. His watercolors of playful animals with human qualities, plus his landscapes and ocean views became popular exhibits throughout Maine and the nation.

Dan Day says, “No one is sure where my great grandfather got the nickname ‘Jake.’ He loved the outdoors and took nature trips with groups of friends they called the Rangers. He and his best friend Lester Hall often hiked in Baxter State Park to explore, paint and take photographs.”

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During World War II, two of Day’s sons served in the military. As a way to cope with the fears he felt for their safety, he began to carve and paint detailed Christmas dioramas. Day placed the dioramas in the windows of his home and they became a favorite Damariscotta attraction.

For several years the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland exhibited the dioramas. Dan Day says, “After a while the dioramas fell into disrepair. A curator at the museum fell in love with them and she restored them to their original condition. The Days display them at their homestead again during each December. They are very popular, in particular with children. Our guest book shows people have come from as far away as Anchorage, Alaska.”

Soon after Jake Day returned to Damariscotta from California he began carving miniature birds and forest animals. He sold them in the Whittle Shop, (continued on page 50)

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(continued from page 49) a cottage adjacent to his home. He worked in balsa wood and often added chickadees to driftwood and weathered branches. These delicate works became his signature pieces.

Day’s art helped make Damariscotta a tourist destination. The town’s storied history dates back to the mid-1600s. It derives its name from the Algonquian word Madamescontee. There are several translations. One is “place of an abundance of alewives.” Alewives are small fish that spawn in Damariscotta Lake, several miles north of the town.

One of the area’s “must-see” attractions takes place in May when alewives make their annual migration to the lake. Their passage is made possible by the oldest fish ladder in the country at Damariscotta Mills.

Early settlements suffered from devastating attacks during the King Philip’s War in 1676. In 1729 Fort Frederick was built to replace another

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fort destroyed during ongoing battles.

When the American Revolution threatened the area, colonists destroyed the fort to prevent British troops from occupying it. The French and Indian War (1756 – 1763) brought more destruction, and the colonists had to rebuild the town several times.

Once hostilities ended, Damariscotta residents developed the town into a major trade center. It became known for the clipper ships built in local shipyards. Industrialists operated sawmills, a match factory and tannery. Brickyards on the river provided bricks for areas in Boston’s Back Bay. With prosperity came construction of opulent homes designed in Federal, Italianate and Greek Revival architectural styles.

These houses add to the character and charm of the town.

A distinction Damariscotta almost received had another connection with Jake Day. In recognition for the creative

work he did on the film Bambi, Disney planned a world premiere in Augusta, Maine’s capital. But, as a result of fears of disapproval from the strong hunting community in Maine, the state objected to its release there. Instead, the premiere took place at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Another fact that links Jake Day and the film Bambi concerns the James Bond feature Diamonds Are Forever.

One of the two villainesses who fought Agent 007 had the name Bambi. The other was named Thumper, Bambi’s rabbit friend.

Maurice “Jake” Day passed away in 1983 at the age of 90 in his beloved home in Damariscotta. His memory lives on in his art, carvings and photographs of scenes of Maine and the animals he loved all his life.

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Hilda Edwards Hamlin Christmas Cove’s legendary lupine lady

by Leah Dearborn

T

he lupines along Maine’s coastal roadsides are difficult to ignore in the months of early summer.

In tones of vibrant pink and purple, they’re everywhere from Bath to Bar Harbor. Lupinus polyphyllus, however, is not native to Maine. Their vibrant spindles dot the hills and byways of the Pemaquid Peninsula thanks to Hilda Edwards Hamlin, whose efforts to populate the area with lupines earned her the nicknames “Hilda Lupina,” “The Lupine Lady,” and “the female Johnny Appleseed.”

The title character of popular children’s book Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney was partially inspired by Hamlin, who was known to wander the

roads of the area in the early twentieth century with her pockets full of seeds.

The house illustrated in the book was Hamlin’s actual home, her granddaughter told the Lincoln County News in 2014. She owned a cabin in Christmas Cove on Juniper Knoll for nearly 75 years.

Hamlin first arrived in the town of South Bristol from England in 1904 to stay with her uncle, Smith College Professor H. Norman Gardiner. What

was initially meant to be a short stay evolved into a seasonal arrangement as the young woman’s fondness for the area grew. After graduating from Smith herself, Hilda married the architect Talbot Faulkner Hamlin at her beloved Christmas Cove. Much like the fictional Miss Rumphius, the two left Maine to travel extensively for a number of years, moving to Paris for the earlier part of the Roaring Twenties.

The couple had several sons, twins Talbot Fancher or “Tab,” Wilfrid, and Norman, who would continue to visit the cottage on Juniper Knoll for the rest of their lives, even after Hamlin separated from her husband in 1926. She (continued on page 52)

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(continued from page 51) became a reader of courses at Smith, but headed directly back to Christmas Cove every June.

Hamlin was a stealth-gardener. She rarely spoke of her activities, preferring to watch her flowers grow in silent pleasure as neighbors exclaimed over their beauty (although she was known to give handfuls of seeds to the residents of Christmas Cove for use in their own gardens). Those who offered her a ride would sometimes turn to witness her tossing seeds out the windows.

Over time, she found that the lupines thrived when spread across the sites of old fires in the woods, in keeping with the flower’s known tenacity in environments that have been decimated by volcanic activity. When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, it was the lupine that helped repopulate the barren landscape.

A June, 1971 article in Yankee magazine did succeed at bringing Hamlin out of her seclusion, however, and an

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ples of lupine seeds. “‘Hilda Lupina’ is not in competition with Burpee and other seed suppliers,” the note sternly reminded readers and would-be correspondents.

Unfortunately, Hilda Hamlin’s favorite flowers do present a potential environmental danger to the migratory monarch butterfly by crowding out their favored host plant of milkweed.

The management at Acadia Park began efforts to control the lupine population while it’s still small a number of years ago.

But even knowing the more dangerous side of the lupine, it’s impossible to say that Hilda Hamlin didn’t succeed at what the fictional Miss Rumphius wanted most of all: “To make the world more beautiful.” editor’s note had to be added after its publication, begging the public to stop asking the now aged gardener for sam-

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Lindbergh’s Unexpected Visit Fog grounded couple on North Haven

by Brian Swartz

W

hen he heard a plane landing in Warren around 6 p.m., Sunday, July 9, 1933, Rockland shoe merchant Charles E. Dorman knew that something was happening out of the ordinary.

Minutes later someone knocked politely on the front door of Dorman’s camp on South Pond. Dorman and his wife opened the door, noticed the man and woman standing there, and gaped — because not every quiet summer’s night did Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh come calling in the Midcoast!

About four hours earlier, the Lindberghs had taken off from New York City with plans to land in Halifax that

night. Charles Lindbergh, known in the press as the “Colonel,” was mapping a possible air route to Europe for Pan American Airways.

The Lindberghs had explored a similar Great Circle route to the Far East for Pan Am in 1931. The mission had taken them from a Long Island airport to destinations in Alaska, Siberia in the Soviet Union, Japan, and China. Though the Lindberghs completed their flight, Pan Am could not establish a specific route due to political differences between the United States and the USSR. And China and Japan would be shooting at each other soon enough, anyways.

But by 1933, a transatlantic route to

Europe looked possible. Charles Lindbergh knew that current technology limited how far a multi-engined aircraft could fly, thus a safe transatlantic air route must encompass airfields at strategic locations.

Although they had no specific schedule in mind, the Lindberghs planned to explore possible airfield locations in Canada, Greenland, and Iceland. In less than seven years, American military aircraft sold to Great Britain would “hop” the Atlantic via bases in Newfoundland and Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland.

As he navigated northeast toward Maine on July 9, Lindbergh suddenly realized that a cable had snapped on the

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com plane. Although the unexpected maintenance problem “apparently was causing the Colonel no concern,” according to media accounts, nature intervened.

Rolling with an onshore breeze, fog blanketed portions of the Maine coast by late afternoon on Sunday. His initial plan to touch down “near Rockland” around 6 p.m. now thwarted by fog, the “Colonel” aborted his flight about 3¾ hours into his intended flight time.

He landed his low-winged, single-engine floatplane on South Pond in Warren and taxied to shore — and got his floats stuck in the mud.

Removing their luggage and some blankets from the plane, the Lindberghs walked to the nearest camp. Immediately recognizing the man and woman knocking on their front door, the Dormans invited the Lindberghs to spend the night.

Leaving Anne at the camp, Charles Lindbergh walked two miles to a garage and asked its owner for permis-

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sion to use his phone. He called North Haven to let his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Morrow, know that he and Anne had arrived in Maine; then Lindbergh called a New York business to order a replacement cable for his plane.

While Lindbergh climbed into his place’s cabin on Monday morning, Charles Dorman clambered into his rowboat and paddled behind the aircraft. He used a rope to help “move the ship into deeper water,” the press reported.

The Lindberghs took off for Halifax around 9 a.m., but a light onshore breeze disrupted their flight plans.

Lindbergh was “forced inland by banks of fog along the coast,” according to the press. While the sky above central Penobscot Bay was clear, the fog clung to the Down East and Nova Scotian coasts, so Lindbergh — a careful pilot unlike many of the barnstormers buzzing the crowds at Maine fairs that summer — diverted to North Hav-

en and landed there about 9:45 a.m.

The Lindberghs still reeled from the kidnapping and murder of their first child, Charles Lindbergh Jr. Born five months after his brother disappeared, 10-month-old Jon Lindbergh was staying with Elizabeth Murrow at her family’s North Haven summer home. If his parents could not reach their intended destination that day, they would certainly spend it with John.

And another guest of Elizabeth Morrow was Evangeline Lindbergh, Charles’ mother. Little Jon could not be in better hands.

Unfortunately, the stubborn fog grounded the Lindberghs on Tuesday, July 11. A reporter familiar with Maine’s vagarious coastal summer weather explained that “drizzling rain fell from low-hanging clouds, while easterly and south-easterly winds brought little promise of clearing.”

A slow-moving cold front had all (continued on page 58)

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(continued from page 57) but stalled out along the Maine coast.

The nonplussed Charles Lindbergh had called the Rockland-based Maine Air Transport Company Monday night, explained that he needed a replacement strut, and got the good news that MATC would send out a replacement part to North Haven.

As for that broken cable? Until the replacement cable arrived, Lindbergh substituted a tightly tied rope.

After visiting with Jon and their respective mothers, the Lindberghs got a break in the weather as an approaching summertime high nudged the stubborn cold front eastward. The Lindberghs finally took off for Halifax; landing there safely, they prepared to depart on Wednesday, July 12.

Charles Lindbergh had obtained papers for landing in Newfoundland, so as he checked his plane at Halifax, onlookers speculated that he planned to spend the night in St. John. Anne Lindbergh got on the radio to listen to the

weather forecasts for Chebucto, Canso, and Cape Race; an alert newspaper reporter realized the last two places “are along the route to the Newfoundland capital.

“The reports showed favorable weather conditions,” he noted.

The Lindberghs took off at 12:26 p.m., Atlantic Daylight Time. Because Nova Scotia did not shift its clocks twice a year like the United States, the corresponding time in Maine was 10:26 a.m.

The Lindberghs landed at St. John, relaxed for a day, and left for Cartwright in Labrador on Friday, July 14.

They were on their way to Greenland and Iceland, and two Rockland camp owners would never forget who came knocking on a Sunday evening.

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The Ardent Spirit Of Miss Harriet Rice History of a Maine native

by Nancy Nicol

H

arriet Rice was born 1806 and lived in Maine her entire life.

She was eldest of eleven children born in Union every two years to Nathan Drury and Deborah Banister Rice. As newlyweds, the couple emigrated that same year from Sudbury, Massachusetts, where Nathan’s ancestors Edmund and Thomasina Rice had settled in 1638. The couple came with Nathan’s father, James, a Private in the American Revolutionary War; his wife Sallie and his widowed mother-in-law Sarah Drury. He was a member of the church and he was elected as an officer of the town.

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James sold forty acres to his son Nathan in 1808. It was a start.

Twenty years earlier, there were 2579 distilleries in the U.S. and a growing concern among religious folks, North and South, about the effects of drunkenness as well as disagreements about the use of slavery. Devout Methodists, the Rice family abstained from alcohol, believed slavery was sinful, and did not work on the Sabbath: more than once Nathan had to pay the tithing man when one of his sons shoed a horse or fixed a wagon wheel on Sunday.

They aspired to live by the word of the Bible and be fruitful — their children

were their legacy, vital to successful farming. Mrs. Jameson, called “Granny James,” was likely the family midwife.

After Harriet came four brothers — Albert, Richard, James and Nate. Then a sister, Sarah, followed by three more boys, Elisha, Cyrus, Lyman and a sister, Eveline. After a gap of four years, Ann Maria was born on April 6, 1828; she is this writer’s great-grandmother.

There is a compelling motivation for writing about the lives of my Maine ancestors. I have letters — boxes of them, as well as deeds, wills, and diaries with names and dates. My mother’s

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Aunt Adele mailed her claim tickets for two trunks stored in a warehouse in Brooklyn. Mom paid the accumulated fees on just one of them. For the rest of her life, she regretted she hadn’t gone back for the second or ‘sister’ trunk.

Remorse may have kept her from fully appreciating what she did have, but even as a young girl I recognized the importance our family correspondence dating back to the early 1800s. I wanted to find out what the letters said.

Most of the documents were addressed to Harriet, and she had her reasons to save them. Of course, she was on the receiving end, but they seemed to be answering her questions and reacting to her statements. Detective work! Eventually the letters were faceup under my magnifying glass, disclosing intimate stories that include invention, temperance, abolition, religious fervor, typhus and… romance. It has taken hours to decipher aged and elegant handwriting in fading ink on pale

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paper, with closing remarks wrapped around the margins.

What I found out was that “Dear Sister H…” helped raise younger brothers and sisters… she was ten when Sarah was born. She was housekeeper for her mother, who had asthma and was bedridden at times. (It is possible Deborah smoked jimson weed, a narcotic leaf prescribed at that time to ease breathing and create an illusion of well-being).

Their farm was run like a small factory, humming along with each member assigned a job. Like other farm daughters, along with her duties in child supervision, Harriet spun, wove, stitched and knitted; planted, harvested, and put up goods for the winter; raised and butchered small animals and poultry; swung an ax; rode a horse; cooked and baked.

Her siblings came to her for advice and to settle disagreements. The Rice property grew to a thousand acres with three hundred head of cattle.

As was customary, sons were sent to board and learn by apprenticing.

Albert, who was starting a business in Bangor, contracted typhus and died at age twenty-one. Dr. Harding wrote that typhus takes some, others are spared, and there is always hair loss. James died at home the following year, also typhus. Deborah, Nathan and Harriet, who took turns nursing him forty-five days until he “fell asleep in death,” developed symptoms but lived, phys(continued on page 62)

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(continued from page 61) ically weakened and vulnerable. Nate removed to New Orleans and was overseer of slaves on a plantation owned

by Southern Methodists. Nathan disapproved and asked his son to be kind, as they were human beings, too. Nate started his own business, Star Bakery, holding a patent for an oven that could bake multiple loaves. Richard apprenticed at a print shop in New Hampshire and was spared. Lyman died in a marine hospital in Liverpool, England, at age nineteen.

Harriett had a childhood illness, possible scarlet fever and after that, never had “women’s courses,” menstrual cycles, again. She would not be fruitful and multiply. At thirty, an old maid by the standards of the day and unable to have children, Harriet married the widower Amos Barrett, twenty-seven years her senior. She was bald and losing her teeth. Apparently this did not bother Amos, who gave her a

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thoroughbred horse as a wedding gift and saw to it she was fitted for wigs in Boston. Amos had inherited property adjacent to the Rice homestead and he was prosperous. His only pre-nuptial requirement was that she join with him in the temperance movement, which had begun in 1833. Amos sent (penciled “Mr. Amos Barrett to Miss Harriet Rice”) the following Circular addressed to the Head of each Family in the town of Union: What we ask of you, and for each member of your family is, that you will not only abstain from the use of Ardent Spirits, but for the sake of doing good to others, unite with the Union Temperance Society; and for this purpose, that you will give your names, and the influence which is attached to them to the Constitution which is annexed to this paper, for the following reasons, viz: 1) Ardent Spirit as a drink, is not needful. 2) It is not useful. More than a million persons in the US have

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found they are better without it 3) Alcohol, which forms the basis of ardent spirits, is a poison. When taken even moderately, forms a dangerous appetite. This appetite increases and cries continually “give, give!” 4) It impairs and in many cases destroys reason. 5) It weakens the power of motive to do right, and thus is shown decisively to be in its tendency immoral. 6) It strengthens the power of motive to do wrong. If you join the Union Temperance Society you pledge abstinence from the internal use of the Ardent Spirit (except for medicinal purposes): and to use all proper and prudent means to prevent and discourage its use by others, including the serving, buying, or selling Ardent Spirit.

Harriet agreed. By marrying Amos, her financial worries and physical labors came to an end. She lived in a big house, once a landmark and later burned from lightning strikes. She had

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access to his vast library. She traveled to Marietta, Ohio, where her mother’s family lived. She sent her sisters money during the Civil War years, raised orphan nieces and nephews and took in various other children from Union.

She cared for her mother during her final days, Deborah being “called” at age forty-seven. She remained close to her brother Richard, a Superior Court Judge in Augusta.

Harriet is buried in Common Cemetery next to Amos and his first wife, Susanna. James Rice, his wife and mother-in-law are also buried at the Common. Deborah and Nathan are buried in Lake View Cemetery, next to Albert, James, Lyman, Sarah and other family members.

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Herbert Foss A real knight of the round table

by Charles Francis

H

erbert L. Foss was honored with a graveside service on the anniversary of his birth. The date of the ceremony was October 12, 2007. The year of his birth was 1871.

The place of Foss’ birth was Belfast.

The graveside ceremony took place in the appropriately named Fort Hill Cemetery in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Herbert Foss died in 1937. For much of his adult life he was superintendent of Fort Hill Cemetery. That fact, of course, indicates something of the appropriateness of the 2007 ceremony paying tribute to the Maine-born man.

However, it doesn’t tell us why Herbert Foss was described as “one of an elite

group of Americans — [one of] our nation’s Knights of the Round Table.”

The metaphor Knight of the Round Table which was applied to Herbert Foss appeared in a number ofMassachusetts newspapers, including the Boston Herald. While it is not clear who first made the comparison, it was picked up by at least one graveside ceremony speaker, a Veterans Agent named Michael Cunningham.

Herbert Foss was a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. This explains the reference to the Knights of the Round Table. No group of Americans is more deserving of the comparison.

Herbert Foss was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. Foss stands out in Maine as just one of two men to have been awarded the Medal of Honor for services rendered during that now long ago conflict with Spain. The other recipient of the medal bearing the likeness of George Washington was Thomas Doherty of Newcastle. Doherty served in the Army. Herbert Foss was in the Navy.

In analyzing where the Congressional Medal of Honor has been won, one realizes that the majority are awarded for action above and beyond the call of duty on land. This is true even for members of the U.S.Navy. Herbert Foss (continued on page 66)

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(continued from page 64 stands out among Navy men awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery while on shipboard. The nature of this circumstance takes on significance when one realizes the conditions that existed when Foss acted as he did “with extraordinary bravery and coolness under fire” in that conflict that has sometimes been called “a splendid little war.”

The phrase “splendid little war” is sometimes attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. It is doubtful that he said it, though. Roosevelt experienced firsthand the horror of the conflict. His descriptions of the suffering brought to soldiers and civilians alike during the conflict clearly indicate he neither viewed the Spanish-American War as splendid or little. In the same respect, what Herbert Foss did in the war should not be described with either term. There was nothing little in what Foss did. And in a military sense — meaning tactical or strategic — what Foss did was not

splendid but necessary.

The name Foss is a familiar one in the midcoast area. Herbert Foss was a member of a large extended family.

As would be expected of a Belfast native, Foss had relatives who made their living off the water. He had relatives in Searsport, Northport, and Lincolnville who were fishermen. He had relatives in Searsmont and Monroe who were farmers. Herbert was drawn to the sea, however, not inland. It would not be until he settled in Hingham after the war that he found his true vocation and avocation maintaining the grounds of Fort Hill Cemetery.

Herbert Foss joined the Navy when he was twenty-five, at the end of January 1897. His naval rank was that of seaman. He served until July of 1899.

Foss enlisted in the Navy in Portland.

His ship was the USS Marblehead. The Marblehead’s home port was Key West, Florida, just ninety miles from Cuba,

where Foss saw his wartime duty.

The Marblehead was an unarmored cruiser. She was small, some 269 feet in length. Her crew complement numbered eighty-one. She was unarmored because she was intended for speed.

Her top speed was 18 knots. If the Marblehead had been protected with heavy armor plating she would have been dead in the water, useless as a pursuit vessel, which was the function she was intended to fulfill.

This fact must be considered when one considers what the Marblehead accomplished during the Spanish-American War. Most of the Marblehead’s active wartime duty took place off Guantanamo Bay. She served as a support vessel for the invasion of that now controversial piece of American real estate. Even though the Marblehead was an unarmored cruiser, she was directed in close to shore to take part in shelling Spanish

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com fortifications. It was on May 11 that the Marblehead accomplished what was considered by naval strategists one of the most important objectives of the war.

On May 11 the Marblehead snagged the undersea communication cable connecting Cuba with Spain.

The Marblehead was just off heavily fortified Cienfuegos when her men managed to lift a section of the communication cable over the bow of the ship.

The Marblehead was under intense fire all the while this highly risky task was being accomplished.

The goal of the Marblehead’s crew was, of course, to cut the cable. It was Herbert Foss that did it. He cut through the thick plating protecting the cable with a simple hand-held hacksaw. All the time he was sawing away, the deck of the Marblehead was being peppered by rifle fire. In addition, heavy shells were striking the water around the ship, sending up great spouts and gouts of

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Herbert Foss’ Congressional Medal of Honor citation reads in part as follows: “Facing the heavy fire of the enemy, Foss set an example of extraordinary bravery and coolness throughout this action.”

Following the war Herbert Foss moved to Hinghan. Before working as superintendent of Fort Hill Cemetery, he was an employee of a federal ammunition depot. He died of heart failure while working in the cemetery.

Herbert Foss’ story does not end here, however. Hingham honored him with the largest military service ever seen in the town. His casket passed along the streets of the town on a horsedrawn caisson provided by the 110th Cavalry. Later a section of the cable Foss cut was presented to Hingham. It is currently on display in the town office.

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In 2009 Herbert Foss’ name resurfaced in Hingham. There were those who thought it fitting to name a new school in his honor. There were others who thought otherwise, though. They wanted to name the school for the sitting school superintendent. The controversy made the newspapers. As of this writing, the matter has not been settled to the satisfaction of those who wished to honor Herbert Foss. Perhaps there are those in Herbert Foss’ home state who will decide to rectify the matter with a fitting memorial to this Belfast-born Knight of the Round Table.

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Webber House after cyclone hit in Searsport on May 22, 1921. Item #LB1999.27.22 from the Frye Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Francis Greene And The History Of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor A classic in the field of local history

I

by Charles Francis

t has been said that “Adopted sons make the most loyal sons.” Undoubtedly this can also be extended to daughters, and just as undoubtedly has implications that extend far beyond families to towns and countries. Certainly there are a good many examples of immigrants to foreign lands who became more devoted and possibly even better citizens than their native-born brethren. This point aside, there are plenty of examples of individuals “from away” who contributed much of importance to the place they chose to make their home. Francis Greene of Boothbay Harbor is a prime example of this.

Francis Greene was a remarkable

individual. Although he had limited schooling beyond high school, Greene became a lawyer and school administrator. Beyond that, Greene wrote one of the most comprehensive and erudite local histories produced in Maine: the History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor. In fact, Greene’s history was so good that when it came out it received national attention. Today, first editions of it can still be found in university libraries as far away as California and in Canada. And, as proof of its durability, it was republished twice in the last half of the twentieth century.

The late Ronald Banks of the University of Maine — considered the dean of

Maine historians — often referred his students to the work, saying it was one of the most significant Maine local histories. The other work Banks referred to in the same manner was Jasper Stahl’s History of Old Broad Bay and Waldoboro.

The History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor can be appreciated and used in a number of ways. Those researching family history find its genealogical section extremely well-documented. The same can be said of the historical data in the work. The history is also a wonderfully well-written excursion into the past, so much so that (continued on page 72)

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(continued from page 71) anyone interested in the history of the communities it covers, or simply loves reading history, finds it a “good read.”

Part of the latter is due to the fact that Greene makes the times he writes of come alive, and part of it is due to the natural flow of his words. For example, in writing of Southport, Greene gives a real sense of how important the Grand Banks cod fishery was to the town, and the dangers that Southport men encountered on the Banks.

Francis Byron Greene, the author of the History of Boothbay Southport and Boothbay Harbor, was born in Augusta on June 16, 1857. His parents were Abiathar and Elmira (Winans) Greene.

(Her name also appears as Almira and Hannah Almira. Greene usually wrote of her as Myra.) Abiathar Greene was born in Farmington and made his living making carriages and axes and farming.

Myra Greene was from Milton, Ohio.

Some two years after Francis was born,

the Greene family moved to Newport.

What we would identify as Francis Greene’s formal education consisted of the common schools of the day and advanced study at Maine Central Institute. From the latter school, he went on to take a commercial course at Dirigo Business School. Then, at the remarkable age of twenty-two, he was admitted to the Maine Bar and opened his own law practice. He accomplished this latter feat not by attending law school, but in reading for the law in the offices of E. F. Pillsbury. (Pillsbury has the unique distinction of having been taken to court by the Farmington Village Corporation in a suit that reached the United States Supreme Court. The case was decided in Pillsbury’s favor.)

Greene opened his law practice in Newport in 1880. At the time, he was still living with his parents and two younger brothers, William and Charles.

The elder Greene was farming at that

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time. Eventually, Greene’s legal training led to an appointment as one of the secretaries of the Maine State Senate.

The same year that Greene opened his law office he married Cora Murray.

The couple had one daughter, Maude.

Sadly, Cora Murray Greene died, and in 1885 Greene married Nettie Woodward. They had two children, Grace and Francis B., Jr. Oddly, for someone with his background, neither the bar nor politics were to be Greene’s chosen lifetime profession. What Greene did was to move to Boothbay Harbor and go into business as a merchant.

Francis Greene’s History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor was published in 1906. Given that Greene was not that old a man — he was forty-eight when the book went to the printer — it, like much of Greene’s life, is a remarkable accomplishment.

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for a history class can attest to the time required for research before writing even commences. To produce an entire history the way Greene did when one is supporting a family by running a general merchandise store is indeed extraordinary.

Francis B. Greene was most definitely a presence in his adopted home town. His business, Francis B. Greene & Son, was a long-time Boothbay Harbor fixture. In addition, Greene served as Boothbay Harbor superintendent of schools, and was in a number of local organizations, including the Masons.

He also wrote several other books, local and family histories.

Francis Greene’s life serves as an example of hard work and devotion to causes or projects he believed in, most notably the History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor. * Other businesses in this area are featured in the color section.

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Owls Head’s Blinn Curtis Sailor climbed for his life as slaves captured his ship

by Brian Swartz

A

fter sailor Blinn Curtis survived a sea-borne mutiny and attempted homicide by angry slaves in early November 1841, a homestead on the Weskeag River in Owls Head suddenly looked good.

More than 170 years after Curtis desperately climbed for his life into the rigging of an American cargo ship idling near Abaco Island in the Bahamas, his great-grandson Arthur Adolphsen is among the few Americans aware of what happened aboard the brig Creole that bloody night. Although born 80 years after Curtis died, Adolphsen long enjoyed a connection with the sailor who came home from the sea after slaves spared his life.

That connection is “the old house,

abandoned now, [but] still standing, that Blinn built is 1842,” Adolphsen said. Erected on Ash Point, the house overlooks Ballyhac Cove, separating Owls Head and South Thomaston.

But Curtis almost did not return to Maine to settle down. His story begins with his birth in 1811, “probably on the Isle of Wight,” Adolphsen said. Known as Blinn or Blynn, Curtis emigrated to Maine and settled on the Midcoast.

Later October 1841 found him in Tidewater Virginia, where Robert Ensor (who identified himself as “master of the brig Creole of Richmond”) planned to load his ship with valuable freight bound for New Orleans. Curtis signed aboard as an able seaman.

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ginia on Wednesday, October 27, 1841, the two-masted Creole carried “a cargo of [135] slaves, tobacco, and other merchandise,” Ensor said.

Other crew members aboard the Creole included First Mate Zephaniah C. Gifford, Second Mate Lucius Stevens, and sailors Blinn Curtis, William Devereux (a free black working as the ship’s cook and steward), Jacques Lacombe (the helmsman), Jacob Leitener (a cook), John Silvy (also known as “Antonio” or “Anthony”), and Henry Speck.

Accompanying Ensor on the cruise was his wife, their baby, and a niece.

The Creole also carried several white passengers, including slave traders John R. Hewell, Thomas McCargo,

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com and William Henry Merritt. McCargo had brought along his nephew, Theophilus J.D. McCargo, and an elderly slave, Lewis, who was not listed on the ship’s cargo manifest; he was the older McCargo’s servant.

Rounding out the passengers was Jacob Miller.

Kept under close watch, slaves were allowed on deck each day. Taking advantage of this freedom, slave cook Madison Washington plotted a mutiny.

The Creole gradually worked south along the Atlantic coast. According to Gifford, “everything was quiet on board when the ship “hove to” near Abaco Island in the Bahamas about 8 p.m. on Sunday, November 7. The Creole floated on a quiet sea as Gifford stood watch. Jacques Lacombe was at the ship’s helm.

About 9:30 p.m., a slave named Elijah Morris told Gifford about a problem in the main hold. The warning kicked off the mutiny.

Slave trader Merritt was settling in

for the night when Gifford tapped on the cabin door and quietly said “there was a man in the main-hold with the females (women slaves).” Accompanying Gifford to the grate above the main hold, Merritt waited while Gifford “got the lamp and matches.”

The two men removed the hatch; Merritt took a lantern and a match, climbed down into the hold, and lit the candle inside the lantern. In the dim light he saw Washington, “who was head cook of the slaves,” standing among the women, Merritt said.

Gifford peered into the hold from where he stood on deck. “You are the last person I should expect to find here,” he told Washington.

“Yes, sir,” replied Washington, suddenly moving toward the main deck.

Sensing a threat, Merritt grabbed Washington’s leg; the slave kicked free and bolted on deck, where he shoved Gifford.

Mutineer Elijah Morris suddenly produced a pistol and fired. Gifford re-

membered hearing the loud explosion, and the bullet struck the first mate in the back of his head. Bleeding badly, Gifford heard Washington shout, “Come on, my boys, we have commenced, and must go through with it.”

Gifford staggered to the cabin where Ensor and other sailors slept. “The first mate came running below, saying there was a mutiny on deck and that he was shot,” Second Mate Lucius Stevens said.

Curtis was asleep when Ensor shook his men awake while shouting, “The Negroes have risen!”

Meanwhile, after shooting Gifford, Madison Washington “ran forward, and called for his men to assist him,” said Merritt, who blew out the candle and plunged the hold into darkness.

He climbed on deck “and attempted to get to the cabin”; seized by a mutineer, Merritt watched as another slave approached “with a piece of wood.”

Two or three slaves shouted, “That is

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(continued from page 75) he, kill him, by God!” As the mutineer swung his rough club, Merritt ducked; the club struck the slave holding him in the head, and as the man relaxed his grip, Merritt escaped to the cabin.

Along with Ensor, several sailors rushed on deck. Blinn Curtis grabbed a handspike and “found the slaves fighting in and near the cabin.” He clobbered “one or two of the blacks and knocked down one” with the handspike. Then a slave “clinched” Curtis and tried to yank the handspike from his hand; sailor John Silvy stopped the assault.

Curtis “rushed down into the cabin with several slaves” chasing him. The slaves “were armed with handspikes cut in two, a musket, bowie-knife, and sheath-knife.”

A slave struck Curtis “a severe blow on the head,” cutting the Mainer “on the left eye,” and he fell to the deck “quite stunned.”

Stevens saw Ensor rush on deck and John Hewell emerge from “the state-

room with a musket.” Going to the cabin door, Hewell ordered the mutineers not to come below deck.

They threw “a handspike into the cabin,” according to Merritt, and Hewell instinctively fired. He hit nobody, and the mutineers seized the musket; Hewell grabbed the handspike and threatened the slaves with bodily harm.

More confident than smart, Hewell “went on deck, but soon returned to the cabin, took hold of the side of the table, and said, ‘I am stabbed,’” Merritt said, watching as Hewell “sidled away, and fell, apparently helpless, on the floor.”

He crawled into the stateroom that he shared with Theophilus McCargo.

Jacob Leitener slipped into the room, where he checked Hewell and “heard the blood running out of his berth.”

Hewell died as four slaves, including Blacksmith (who according to McCargo was carrying “a long dirk, which was bloody”), stepped through the door.

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McCargo thought his time had come. Then a mutineer “called Jim” confronted McCargo and told the other slaves, “Boys, do not hurt him.” Lewis, Thomas McCargo’s servant, also loudly protested against harming the younger Theophilus; mutineers quickly tossed him and Lewis into the after hold.

Leitener returned to his cabin; mutineers suddenly surrounding him, he said, “Here I am. You may kill me if you like.”

“No, you shan’t be hurt,” several slaves replied. Armed “with sticks and knives,” they hustled Leitener into the after-hold prison. There he remained until the mutineers brought him back to the main cabin to find and distribute the liquor that Ensor kept on board.

Perhaps briefly unconscious after the blow that felled him, Blinn Curtis gathered his senses and scrambled topside, likely passing slaves who had believed him dead. He sprang into the rigging.

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“Who is that going up?” a slave shouted.

“It is Jim,” replied Curtis, known to the crew (and apparently the slaves) as “James Blinn.”

“Come down. You shall not be hurt,” a slave told him.

Descending to the deck in his own sweet time, Curtis witnessed Blacksmith — whom he identified as “Ben Johnstone” — and a slave named George Grundy stab Hewell. Soon confined to the stateroom, Curtis was present when four mutineers dragged “the corpse of the said Mr. Hewell from the cabin on deck.”

Lucius Stevens had retreated to his cabin; after trapping Mrs. Ensor and her baby and niece in their cabin with promises of “let those alone for the last,” the mutineers pounded on Stevens’ door.

Resigned to his fate, Stevens opened the door, saw a slave pointing a musket at him, and knocked it aside as the

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man fired. The musket ball struck and wounded another slave; bolting through the gun smoke, Stevens “ran on deck.”

As he scrambled onto the lines, a slave “struck him with a piece of a flag-staff, and another stabbed at him (Stevens) with a knife.”

Stevens climbed high “into the foreroyal-yard.”

By now Zephaniah Gifford had “retreated to the main-top.” About 10 minutes later the “severely wounded” Captain Ensor scrambled up the ratlines after being stabbed twice by Ben Blacksmith.

“Mr. Gifford, I am stabbed, and I believe I am dying,” Ensor muttered as he clung desperately to the lines. Gifford soon lashed the captain in place to keep him from falling to the deck.

Merritt fled into an after berth cabin and tossed “some bedclothes” over him for concealment. Two women slaves sat on him as mutineers searched the ship for crew and passengers. “Don’t

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hurt the steward (Devereux), don’t hurt Jacob (Leitener), or Mrs. Ensor,” a mutineer said near where Merritt hid.

The mutineers particularly wanted the surviving slave traders McCargo and Merritt, who was soon discovered and “hauled out, and menaced with death” by the knife-wielding Blacksmith. Washington intervened, then told Merritt he would spare his life “on condition he would navigate the vessel to any port they might require.”

Holding a lantern, Washington scoured the deck; around 10:30 p.m. he saw a man high in the main top.

Mutineers called for the deaths of all whites; the language was explicit on that point. Recognizing Gifford, the slaves threatened to shoot him if he did not climb down. Merritt interceded “to save” the crew and passengers; why the mutineers did not kill Merritt remains unclear.

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(continued from page 77) watched slaves “searching different parts of the vessel, going below, and destroying and taking provisions.” He watched “several” slaves “throw Mr. Hewell’s corpse overboard, out of the starboard port-hole.”

Mutineers marched Merritt and Mrs. Ensor and the children “and cabin servants” to “the after-hold” and confined them there, according to Stevens.

Gifford descended to the deck, where Blacksmith prodded him in the chest with a musket muzzle. “If you do not land us at Abaco, we will put you overboard,” Washington promised.

Stevens clung to his perch until the mutineers spotted him about 4:30 a.m., Sunday. Threatened with death, he took five minutes to climb down to the deck, where slaves surrounded him. There he “told them if they would spare his life he would take them to an English island in three days.”

“If you do not do so, we will throw you overboard,” a slave promised.

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The mutineers prodded Stevens to the poop deck, where he discovered Gifford and Merritt, the latter released from his imprisonment. Mutineers wanted the ship’s sails raised; assisted by some slaves, crewmen started to comply with the order, but other mutineers suddenly ordered the sails lowered.

“Some say make sail, and others say not,” Gifford protested. “Who shall I obey?”

Approval was finally given to raise the sails and steer toward a Bahamas port. Afraid for his life, Stevens “went on with his regular duty” until Gifford told him “to take a bottle of water” to Ensor “in the main-top.”

Stevens had just started up the lines when Washington and Morris told him “to come down.” Doing so, Stevens explained what he was doing; Washington granted consent to assist Ensor. Later, Stevens and another sailor climbed to the main top, placed the wounded En-

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sor in a sling, and lowered him to the deck.

Mutineers locked Ensor, his wife, and Stevens in the fore hold and placed two guards on its hatch. On the poop deck, Gifford and Merritt listened as the mutineers debated their choice of destinations; finally fed up with the indecision, Merritt asked that three men assist him and Gifford in navigating the Creole.

At 11 a.m. on Monday, November 8, Gifford asked the mutineers to release Stevens so he could assist with the celestial navigation. Freedom was shortlived for Stevens; marched back to the fore hold by the musket-toting Blacksmith, he spent the afternoon huddling in the semi-darkness with the Ensors.

The mutineers had seized the Creole; what happened next would determine the fate of Blinn Curtis and the ship’s other crewmen and passengers.

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Pioneer Inventor Nathan Read The great inventor from Belfast

by Charles Francis

W

hat did Nathan Read do on his Belfast farm? There are hints, but only that. There are suggestions that Read did extraordinary things, had ideas quite out of the ordinary, ideas more than a little advanced for the day.

Nathan Read was one of America’s great inventors, though he is not recognized as such. A portion of Read’s lifespan coincides with that of Benjamin Franklin. The latter is, of course, famous for his inventions. Nathan Read could be just as well-known as Ben Franklin. Why isn’t he? Read isn’t famous because he didn’t publicize himself the way Franklin did. Read wasn’t a newspaperman. He didn’t publish a Poor Richard’s Almanak. He didn’t

write an autobiography. We do know a fair amount about Nathan Read, though.

Nathan Read was a public figure. He served in Congress and he was a judge in both Massachusetts and Maine. Neither position relates to Read’s real claim to fame — as an inventor. For the latter, we look to Nathan Read’s nephew David Read. The younger Read wrote a book about his uncle. Before we get to David Read’s book, and how nephew rescued uncle from complete obscurity, a brief introduction to our subject is due.

Nathan Read invented the necessary machinery to adapt James Watt’s steam engine to boats and land vehicles, including but not limited to steam loco-

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motives. He developed his machinery with the prior intent of applying what he designed to the aforementioned means of transportation. Read built a model of a steamboat, complete with paddle-wheels, and a working version of his steam engine to drive them.

Read’s engine and design were substantially the same as those used by Robert Fulton on the Hudson River. Read was eighteen years ahead of Fulton. Read designed, and then built a model of what he called a land carriage. It was equally suited to run on open roads and railroad tracks. The principles behind Read’s engine were essentially those used by George Stevenson for his locomotive. Read’s designs and inventions (continued on page 80)

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(continued from page 79) included a threshing machine and a windmill.

The evidence for the above Nathan Read inventions rests in the U.S. Patent Office and in Read’s papers, papers that David Read fell heir to, and which he used in writing his uncle’s biography.

Nathan Read was a practical man.

He wasn’t a figure of light and shadow. He was a line and contour man, a pattern man. His designs speak to this.

This isn’t to say Nathan Read wasn’t an artist. His design patents are poetic maps of ideals, a scaffolding of something real or in some cases a scaffolding for something that might be real.

Nathan Read was an American genius. When he died in 1849, at age ninety, in Belfast, there weren’t all that many that knew him for what he was.

He was a gentleman farmer and that was it. He was a gentleman because he was financially secure, because he spoke as a gentleman did, in an edu-

cated way, and most of all because he seemed a man of the world.

Nathan Read was Harvard-educated. He taught there from 1783 to 1787.

He also taught in schools in Beverly and Salem. His subjects were Hebrew and the classics. The latter indicates a mastery of Greek and Latin.

At Harvard, Read studied medicine.

He didn’t stick with it as a profession, though. Instead, he became an apothecary in Salem. He didn’t stay with this either, but while he did he developed potassium bicarbonate. Today potassium bicarbonate is used for leavening in baking, extinguishing chemical fires, and as a buffering agent or reagent in a variety of medicines.

Read began experimenting to discover some way of utilizing the steam engine for propelling boats and land vehicles in 1788. His efforts were primarily devoted to developing lighter, more compact machinery than that

currently in use. This brings us to what some call Read’s greatest invention. It was an improved boiler, with a cylinder that utilized a cross-head beam running in guides and had a connecting-rod to communicate motion. The new cylinder was double-acting. To make the boiler more portable Read invented a multi-tubular form. Read patented the tubular form, the cylinder, and a chainwheel. Today these patents are identified by some scholars of the subject as the foundation for the development of the high-pressure steam engine.

The Read patents are some of the concepts that led to the first great revolution in steam power for navigation and land-transport.

Read submitted patents for a steamboat and steam car in 1790. This was at a time when Congress had direct oversight of the Patent Office. When Congress ridiculed the steam car, Read withdrew the design application. So

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much for what would have been the first patent for an automobile.

When Read failed to get funding to build a steamboat, he turned to manufacturing iron goods, first in Salem and then in Danvers. He made cables, anchors and other hardware for sailing ships. In 1898 he invented a nail machine. The machine cut iron strips into the right length for nails, then formed a head and point on the ends.

Nathan Read was appointed to Congress to fill out the term of Samuel Sewell in 1800. He was then elected in his own right to another term. He did not seek nomination again. In 1803 he was named judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Essex County. Then, in 1807, at age forty-eight, he moved to Belfast. The same year he served as Hancock County judge. Belfast was in Hancock County when Read moved.

David Read presents his uncle as moving to Belfast because of the opportunities there for testing inventions.

The opportunities were of wind, land and sea.

David Read’s book was first published by Houghton and Co. in 1860.

The demand was such that there was a second printing in 1870. In the preface to the book the younger Read identifies himself as both friend and nephew of Nathan Read. The book’s title almost serves as a summary of the elder Read’s most significant accomplishments.

That title is Nathan Read: his invention of the multibular boiler and portable

high-pressure engine, and discovery of the true method of applying steam-power to navigation and railways; a contribution to the early history of the steamboat and locomotive engine.

Thanks to David Read we know Nathan Read continued his innovative ways in Belfast. David Read writes that his uncle kept inventing. However, there is a problem with what the younger Read says: we don’t know if he is talking of actual working inventions or designs or working models. The inventions David Read identifies include a windmill controller, a tidal energy system, a threshing machine, and a coffee huller. David Read says his uncle invented a system that used the expansion of metals under varying temperatures to make a self-winding clock.

Nathan Read has a place in the history of science and scientific advances.

It is not the purpose of this piece to identify that place, just to say it is there.

As to a definitive statement of Nathan Read’s importance to America and the world, that would seem a matter of future consideration. If one were to visit Nathan Read’s final resting place in Belfast’s Grove Cemetery, they might find themselves contemplating the subject.

For those who are interested in learning more about Nathan Read’s place in history, Andrea Sutcliffe’s Steam: The Untold Story of America’s First Great Invention, devotes a chapter to Read.

There is also a study of Read that was done at the University of Houston.

From the standpoint of Belfast alone, Nathan Read’s most important contribution probably was Belfast Academy.

Nathan Read is variously identified as ‘the’ founder and as ‘one’ of the founders of Belfast Academy.

At the time of the founding of Belfast Academy, academy and high school were not the synonyms they are today. Academies for many represented advanced educations. David Read tells us his uncle saw Belfast Academy as supplying teachers for district schools.

District here is used to identify the oneroom schoolhouse that served particular neighborhoods. District schools generally went as far as grade eight.

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The Great Albion Gold Hoax Land values immediately skyrocketed

by Charles Francis

O

n June 9, 1837, a Maine newspaper announced, “A gold mine was lately discovered in Albion, Maine, the gold of which was imported from Mexico, especially for the purpose. The land sold at a very high rate in consequence of this discovery; but is not so valuable now.”

A close reading of the above should generate a bit of a mental double-take.

Just what is being said here? Someone discovered gold in Albion. That is clear. But what happened next? It would seem someone else discovered the gold came from Mexico. In short, the gold mine was salted.

What happens when gold is discovered somewhere? Back in the nineteenth century this invariably meant “gold rush.” And yes, there was something of an Albion gold rush. That’s why land in Albion suddenly jumped in price. Then, when the hoax was discovered, the price of land in Albion fell, or as the newspaper article suggests, went back to its normal valuation. Before this happened, however, a great many people were taken in. Some of them ― most notably two experts in the field of geology ― should not have been.

The story of the two experts who were taken in by the Albion gold hoax is what makes this an interesting story.

Both were noted mineralogists. Both were respected college professors. But before we get to these two, a bit of background is called for.

Over the years gold has been discovered in Maine. It has been found in the Sandy River, the Swift River, and in the upper Saint John River. However, it has never been found in sufficient quantities anywhere in Maine to make any investment in a big mining operation profitable. This fact hasn’t stopped the unscrupulous from trying to drum up interest in gold mining ventures, though. And, of course there are those who are more than willing to invest time and hard earned money in the dream of owning and developing a lucrative mine. The vaguest hint of a gold strike turns even the most cautious of individuals a bit foolish.

The two geologists who were taken in by the Albion gold hoax were James Dwight Dana and Parker Cleaveland.

Dana was a Yale geologist. Cleaveland taught geology at Bowdoin. Cleaveland was the elder of the two. It was Cleave-

land who first called attention to the Albion gold strike. Dana picked up on the strike from Cleaveland and accepted it as fact.

In 1837 Dana published System of Mineralogy. The book became a standard in the field. In was in the work that he cited the discovery of the Albion gold. It should be noted that in 1837 Dana was at the beginning of his career. At the time of the publication of System of Mineralogy he was an assistant at Yale. Immediately following the release of his book, Dana set out with the United States Exploring Expedition as mineralogist and geologist.

Parker Cleaveland was a long-time fixture at Bowdoin. He taught there from 1803 to 1858. He conducted some of the earliest studies of mineralogy in the United States. His 1816 work Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy and Geology, included a volume on types and localities of American minerals.

The work became the standard textbook on mineralogy and geology in American higher education, and the model for future mineralogy scholarship and publications. The work earned Cleaveland the title “Father of Ameri-

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can Mineralogy.”

James Dana did nothing to check out the the facts of the Albion gold strike.

He couldn't have. If he had he would not have written about it. Beyond that, he should have known a gold strike in Albion was highly unlikely.

Parker Cleaveland likewise did nothing to check out the facts of the strike. He could have done so easily.

Instead, Cleaveland simply accepted what others told him about the claim.

It was Cleaveland who spread the story of the strike in Maine. People believed him, too. That’s why the price of land in Albion rose like the proverbial skyrocket. Like Dana, Parker Cleaveland should have known that the chances of a gold strike in Albion were basically nil. Even a cursory examination of the geology and geological history of Kennebec County makes this clear.

The terrain of Kennebec County is largely the result of glacial action. It consists of hills and plains. The hills are variously called called horsebacks, whalebacks, hogbacks, ridges, and sadddlebacks. They were formed as the glacier retreated. They often contain rounded depressions called sinks, hoppers, pounds, kettles and bowls and punch-bowls. They are not the sort of land formations noted for gold deposits.

The geology and mineralogy of Kennebec County in general and the area around Albion in particular was

well-known and had been accurately surveyed by the 1830s. Albion itself is largely farmland: flat and well-drained with no noteworthy mineral deposits.

The Kennebec region of the 1830s was recognized as suited for granite quarries. It was known that the area had several varieties of valuable minerals, including zircon, pyrite, muscovite, jasper, graphite, beryl, mica, hornblende and garnet. Of gold there was, with one exception, little evidence.

One of the few working Kennebec County gold mines was opened in Litchfield. It was at Oak Hill. It was typical of every attempt at gold mining in Maine. It lost money. It cost more in terms of operating capital to keep going than the extracted gold was able to offset.

Parker Cleaveland actually invested in the Albion gold rush. At a date well after 1837 one writer used the word “inveigled” to describe Cleaveland’s motivations. What this means is Cleaveland was taken in. He was hoaxed. It is proof that ever a wise man can be a fool.

James Dana never commented about his mention of the Albion gold mine. By the time he resumed his career at Yale, the matter was largely forgotten anyway. That is it was all but forgotten except by those who had been hoodwinked in the scheme, people like Parker Cleaveland. Cleaveland didn’t talk about it, either. It isn’t hard to imagine why.

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Remembering Rural Life In 1950s Maine We walked three miles to school and four miles home

by Richard Baumgardner

B

ack nearly sixty years ago, when I went to school, we walked three miles to school and four miles home. Don’t believe me, you younger ones? Well, sometimes things grow a bit in our minds, I admit. Actually, I rode a Winterport school bus most days — for about ten minutes to go to school, arriving at approximately 7:30 a.m. Our school day ended at 3:00 p.m.

My first year of school, I rode about ten minutes to return home also, but they later changed that and I rode for an hour, much to my delight, all over the countryside and was dropped off last, right at the edge of darkness. There wasn’t much warmth in that old bus as it emptied of brightly colored wool jackets jumping for warmth and for the sheer joy of it.

Sometimes I sat in the back of the bus, especially as we crossed the Boston Road. This was a real roller coaster ride, and if Mr. Knowles pushed on the gas pedal and then released it just at the right time, we enjoyed the biggest belly-whoppers ever! “Step on it! Go, go!”

We yelled from the back of the bus,

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“Go, Mr. Knowles, go!” As he slacked off the gas, we back seaters bounced up with our heads often hitting the ceiling while our tummies bottomed out. “Oh what fun it is to ride, in Mr. Knowles’ old bus, hey!”

But there were days when I just wanted to get warm; I rode on top of the heater which was right beside the driver, beneath his left window. We had some great talks on those days. His daughter was my Aunt, so we shared some common ground.

Then there were the days when I went to Brownies, too young for Girl Scouts. Brownies were held in a big old colonial house down by the Penobscot River. What fun it was to walk on Patrol with Mrs. Nardi leading the town kids. A few of us branched off, heading down Dean Street for Brownies.

The neatest parts of Brownies for me, were: 1) I made a gift to give my parents for Christmas every year and 2) We sang Taps at every meeting’s end.

That song always filled my young heart with peace. I can still envision Mrs. Nickerson, seated at the pump organ,

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accompanying us. Now, there was a peach of a woman.

In the dead of winter, it could be a long walk home, and sometimes I do believe that three miles back home (well okay, perhaps two miles) on Coles Corner Road came close to four miles.

The long, high waves of snow drifts back in the mid-1950s were something else. The sun usually set as I passed Bohunk’s. Alders grew near the road blocking the wind, but also blocked the last vestiges of light hanging in the western sky. Trees snapped in the cold, owls hooted. My heart pounded as my imagination worked overtime. After I passed Bohunk’s, the drifts were sometimes too deep for me to wade through, even though I used my tin lunch box to push into the snow as I pulled a leg out.

On occasion, I had to lie down sideways too, and roll up and over the drift, hanging onto my lunchbox. The gale winds picked up snow, and my wool scarf slapped my face with the flakes.

That was tiring indeed. Still, with no trees, only wide open fields on both (continued on page 86)

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(continued from page 84) sides of the road, I worried less about unsavory creatures. I kept in the road, lost under blowing snow, by following the telephone poles and power lines. It sometimes occurred to me that I might get caught and lost in a snowdrift and eventually get plowed up by the snowplow.

That howling wind stung my face, tears and snot froze, chapped lips burned as legs beneath snow pants grew numb. Oh how my toes ached.

When finally I trudged through the back door at home, I lit the gas oven, left the oven door open, dropped my snow-encrusted trousers and warmed my hard, rosy legs dotted with white splotches. Lord, how they itched as they came back to life. Often, I scratched them to the point of bleeding.

Soon as my legs thawed, I heated a pan of milk and toasted bread. Three cups of hot chocolate with toast made a feast of delight for my two younger sisters and me, fifty-nine years ago. And that part has not changed.

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Stockton Spring’s Kenneth “Skeet” Wyman Jr. Amateur boxer got to wear Muhammad Ali’s gloves

by Brian Swartz

S

everal years ago, Kenneth “Skeet” Wyman Jr. of Stockton Springs watched as his teenage son tried on the first boxing gloves worn in a fight by a famous boxer named Muhammad Ali. The moment was poignant for Skeet Wyman, a boxing trainer well-known in Maine and northern New England.

Ali is his hero; watching his own son wear Ali’s gloves meant a lot to a father whose affiliation with boxing began when he was young.

Born in New Jersey while his father was in the Air Force, Skeet Wyman moved to Stockton Springs with his parents “47½ years ago, and I’ve been here ever since.”

Kenneth Wyman Sr. had dabbled in boxing in the military; he enjoyed watching boxing matches on TV, and “when he watched it (boxing), I watched it, “ Skeet Wyman said. The first televised fight that he remembers watching was the March 31, 1973 bout between Muhammad Ali and Ken Norton.

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Skeet Wyman took up boxing in 1976, “when I was 14.” He started training at a Bangor gym run by firefighter Brian “Spider” Goggins.

Several months later, the 14-yearold Wyman weighed 83 pounds when he fought his first amateur bout at Skowhegan Area High School. “I had a total of four bouts with Brian,” he said.

“I won my first two and lost my third and fourth.”

At age 15 Wyman switched his training to the Waldo County Boxing Club, sponsored by American Legion Post 43 in Belfast. “I trained under Bruce Copson,” the former boxer who at age 17 fought Sugar Ray Robinson to a split-decision loss.

Wyman went 20-0 in the amateur bouts he fought under Copson’s tutelage. He remembers meeting outstanding young boxer Joe LaRue. “This kid was a weight class above me. I fought a split-decision win with him in Waterville,” Wyman said.

LaRue and Wyman were scheduled to meet again in Laconia, New Hamp-

shire on October 15, 1983. That morning Wyman went bird hunting with friends. They took a break in late morning, then “when I went to stand up, my 12-gauge shotgun accidentally went off” and destroyed his right hand.

“My boxing career was over,” he quietly said.

But his career as a boxing trainer was just beginning as “I got healed up and went back to work” at different jobs, including being a longshoreman in Searsport, Wyman said.

Now a full-time commercial lobsterman with 800 traps, he owns three businesses. The one located on the third floor of a 13,000-square-foor former poultry barn that Wyman bought on Middle Street in Stockton Springs is the business that connects him closely with boxing.

Wyman’s Boxing Club opened in 2004 after Wyman had started training three young boxers. He had never lost his passion for boxing. To his pleasant surprise, one day his 10-year-old son, Travis, said, “Dad, I’d like to try box-

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That expressed desire became reality four years later as father and son watched the September 14, 2002 bout fought between Oscar De La Hoya and Fernando Vargas in Paradise, Nevada. “In the 11th round, De La Hoya knocked him (Vargas ) out,” Skeet Wyman said.

And Travis Wyman was hooked.

In terms of a boxer’s physical conditioning, Skeet Wyman firmly believes that “without running, there is no boxing.” Travis started running, averaging 4½-6 miles a day, five days a week. He kept training at his father’s gym and, at age 16, was its first Golden Glove champion.

And then there were Muhammad Ali’s gloves.

Cassius Clay Jr. was a 100-5 amateur boxer who won a gold medal in light heavyweight boxing at the Rome Olympics in 1960 and turned professional that October. He won his February 1964 fight against Sonny Liston in Miami by a TKO. Clay soon converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali, as he was known when he and Liston met in a highly publicized fight in Lewiston on May 25, 1965. Ali put Liston down for the count in the first round “with a lot of controversy,” Skeet Wyman said.

The Maine State Boxing Commission sanctioned the Ali-Liston fight, and chairman George Russo took possession of the boxers’ gloves afterwards. When he died, the gloves passed to nephew Bobby Russo, president of the Portland Boxing Club and a close friend of Wyman’s.

While not the first boxing gloves worn by Cassius Clay Jr., the gloves are the first boxing gloves with which Muhammad Ali fought professionally after converting to Islam. Bobby Russo had confirmed the gloves’ (both Ali’s and Liston’s) lineage.

One day Skeet Wyman asked Russo if his Travis “could wear those gloves,” so in 2010 he “got to try ’em on,” Skeet said.

“Travis was amazed,” Skeet said.

“He sticks his thumbs up in them, and he was surprised the gloves weren’t thumb-less” like modern boxing gloves, Skeet said.

Slipping on Sonny Liston’s larger gloves, Russo “posed with Travis wearing Ali’s gloves,” Skeet said. “Travis probably wasn’t as amazed as I was.

He certainly was privileged to try on the first gloves that Ali fought with.”

Russo later sold the gloves.

Muhammad Ali “didn’t just change boxing, he changed the world,” Skeet Wyman believes. “Ali is the greatest, period. If it wasn’t for Ali, boxing wouldn’t be what it is today.”

He has trained many boxers since the early 21st century. Eight to 10 “people are coming regularly” to Wyman’s Boxing Club, he said. Many people express enthusiasm about boxing “until they learn about the discipline, not only the physical part of it, but the requirement on your time.”

Among the boxers training with Wyman is Brandon Berry, a 27-yearold professional fighter from West Forks on the upper Kennebec River. Making the 225-mile round trip to Stockton Springs three nights a week, Berry started training at Wyman’s Boxing Club more than seven years ago.

“My brother got into boxing when we were real young,” said Berry, whose family owns Berry’s General Store on Route 201. He remembers watching George Foreman stage “a big, big upset” in a fight against Michael Moorer in November 1994.

After starting at the Skowhegan Boxing Club, Berry was working in the Bangor area when he started training at Wyman’s Boxing Club, which was much closer to where he was living

at the time. As an amateur boxer, he fought more than 40 times in northern New England, including Massachusetts.

Pausing for a few minutes during a strenuous workout at Wyman’s Boxing Club, Berry talked about his decision to turn pro on May 11, 2013. “I’m a prizefighter,” he said. “I make money. There is no headgear, and we wear smaller gloves.”

He has gone 8-1 since becoming a professional boxer. Berry has goals in mind; “I want to build a house one day” from his boxing earnings, and “I would love to be in some of the big magazines one day, maybe not on the front cover, but certainly inside.”

And Berry would like to fight in Las Vegas or at Madison Square Garden in New York. He trains relentlessly. When not at Wyman’s, he works out year round.

Well known in New England boxing circles, Berry has developed a loyal following; he mentioned his pleasure at attending a Portland Sea Dogs’ game and seeing many “Team Berry” t-shirts being worn by fans in the crowd.

“I don’t have any ‘quit’ in me,” Berry quietly said. “At the end of the day, if you train real hard, you feel real good.”

“I have had no fewer than eight world championships in my ring,” Skeet Wyman said as boxers of various ages started warming up in his gym on a pleasant spring evening. He has staged fights in different locations and has met many boxing legends, including Wilber “Skeeter” McClure, who won the light middleweight gold medal in the 1960 Olympics.

“Boxing, it’s been my life,” Wyman said. “A lot of my success is due to boxing.”

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Viek, CPA .......................................9 Cotton Weeds Quilt Shop ...............................23 Country Storage ............................................61 Creamer & Sons Landwork, Inc. .....................34 Creative Catering ............................................68 Curtis Custom Meats ......................................55 Cushing Diesel ................................................73 Daffy Taffy Factory - Fudge Factory ...................49 Damariscotta Charters ..................................64 Damon’s Beverage Mart .................................19 Dana R. Bowdoin Carpenter ..........................14 Daniel A. Gerry Painting Contractor ...............63 Dan’s Towing & Auto Repair ...........................64 Dave Blackwell Plumbing & Heating ..............11 Dave’s Diner ....................................................16

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Days Crabmeat & Lobster, Inc. .........................23 Decorum Hardware .........................................6 Depot Country Store .........................................4 Dews Door ......................................................4 Dirt Diggers, Inc. ..........................................67 Domace LLC ....................................................84 Dom’s Barber Shop ........................................17 Don Manson Jr. Plasterer ...............................78 Doucette Builders ..........................................70 Doughty Painting ...........................................71 Downtown Diner ............................................17 Dow’s Eastern White Shingles & Shakes ........3 Drywall Unlimited .........................................16 Dunton’s Doghouse .........................................71 Eastcoast Recovery & Road Service ................72 Ed’s Stuff .......................................................13 ElderCare Network ..........................................46 Elliott Healy Books, Prints, Antiques ..............36 Elmer’s Barn & Antique Mall ..........................15 EquiNine .........................................................83 Erica’s Seafood ................................................35 Eureka Counseling Service .............................75 Evergreen Mechanical LLC ..............................72 Evergreen Self-Storage ...................................59 Fairground Cafe ..............................................27 Fat Boy Drive-In ..............................................28 Fenimore’s Landscaping .................................27 Five K First Class Landscape Arborist ..............51 Flagg’s Garage ...............................................80 Fleet Service ..................................................38 Frankfort Automotive .....................................83 Fred’s Yard Work ..............................................76 Freeport Auto Repair ........................................7 Freeport Cafe ...................................................6 Freeport Salon ................................................6 French & Brawn Market Place ........................61 Fresh Off The Farm ..........................................77 FRW Tile .........................................................63 G. 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Wallcovering ...........................................39 Game Box Video Games & Comics ..................26 Gardiner Apothecary .....................................39 Gary Ladner Landscape Design, LLC ..............38 Gene Reynolds & Sons Paving ........................35 Genuine Automotive Services .........................59 Georgetown Country Store ............................14 Georgetown Pottery .....................................36 Giant Stairs Seafood Grill ...............................33 Giles Rubbish ................................................70 GLP Builders ....................................................38 Goggins IGA ...................................................16 Goose River Golf Club .....................................60 Granite Hall Store ............................................53 Green Bean Coffee Shop ...............................43 Gregory Hills OTHF Construction ...................77 Grey Havens Inn ...........................................12 Griffins The Other Place .................................81 Gulf of Maine Books .........................................9 H.T. 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Knights Inn ....................................................10 Knowles Mechanical Inc. ...............................44 Kokernak Generator .......................................40 Kopper Kettle Cafe .......................................26 Lake Pemaquid Campground .........................47 Lakeview Lumber Co. ....................................18 Larrabee Insurance .........................................14 Liquid Blue Organics ......................................67 Lisbon Community Federal Credit Union .........26 Lobster Pound Restaurant ..............................61 Longchamps & Sons Inc. ..................................8 Lucas Construction ........................................64 Lyric Meadow Farm .......................................50 M&T Detailing ..............................................73 Macomber, Farr & Whitten .............................19 Maine Circuit Electrical .................................59 Maine Foodie Tours .........................................60 Maine Forest Service ......................................87 Maine Historical Society ...................................3 Maine Instrument Flight ................................42 Maine Lighthouse Museum ...........................57 Maine Lobster Festival ...................................58 Maine Maritime Museum ................................33 Maine Pellet Sales LLC ......................................7 Maine’s Outdoor Learning Center ..................17 Maine State Aquarium ...................................20 Maine State Music Theatre .............................31 Maine State Prison Showroom Outlet ............55 Maine Virture Inc. 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Reunion Station Restaurant ...........................19 Richard’s Restaurant & Edelweiss Lounge .....10 Riverfront Barbeque & Grille ..........................42 Robert’s Auto Center ........................................9 Rockland Mercantile Co. ................................76 Rocky Ridge Motel .........................................88 Rodeway Inn Brunswick .................................30 Rogers Ace Hardware .....................................34 Rolfe’s Well Drilling Co. ...................................42 Roosters Coal Fired Pizza & Tap House ..........41 Royalsborough Inn at the Bagley House ..........25 Rt. 127 Diner ...................................................15 Russ Piercy and Company ..............................70 S&L Upholstery & Auto Tops ...........................40 Sadie Green’s ...................................................49 Sail Muscongus ..............................................50 Salt Cod Cafe ....................................................11 Salt River Music Festival .................................21 Samuel Miller Mason Contractor ....................25 Sarah J. Dunckel & Associates .........................41 Sawyer Brothers Inc. .....................................56 Scarborough’s Collision ....................................46 Schooner Bay Motor Inn ................................60 Scrummy Afters ..............................................40 Seagate Motel .................................................71 Septic Systems Designed ...............................76 Shady Glen Nursery & Gardens .......................23 Shaw’s Fish & Lobster Wharf Restaurant .......54 Shea’s Plastering Co. ........................................11 Shed Solutions LLC ........................................74 Ship 2 Shore Store ...........................................30 Shop To Shore Carpentry .................................22 Skip Cahill Tire Pros .........................................48 Sonny’s Museum .............................................41 South Bristol Fisherman’s Co-Op .....................52 Southern Midcoast Chamber of Commerce ....29 Spinney’s Restaurant .....................................34 Sprauge & Curtis Real Estate ............................42 Sprague’s Lobster ..........................................36 Spruce Head Marine, Inc. ...............................74 St. Pierre Concrete Services .............................27 Steve Brann Building & Remodeling .............24 Strong-Hancock Funeral Home .....................45 Stump & Grind ................................................10 Tardiff Timber Sand & Gravel / Excavation .....18 Thai Garden Restaurant ................................24 The Birches Resort .................................bk cover The Bradley Inn ..............................................52 The Cabin .......................................................13 The Cashmere Goat .........................................79 The Chimney Doctor ......................................11 The Country Inn ..............................................62 The Driftwood Inn ..........................................32 The Gin Mill .....................................................42 The Good Table ...............................................65 The Harbor Room ...........................................52 The Mansion ...................................................32 The Miss Wiscasset Diner ................................37 The Narrows Tavern ........................................54 The Salvation Army .........................................56 The Sea Gull Shop ............................................72 The Tidewater Motel ......................................58 Thomas Bandsaw Mills ...................................82 Thomaston Grocery .........................................54 Thor Construction ...........................................30 Tom Finn Shoe Repair .....................................17 Top Notch Heating ..........................................15 Triple K Excavation ...........................................7 Union Area Chamber of Commerce .................76 Unique Spiral Stairs .........................................79 Uprising Solar & Electrical ..............................51 Vail’s Tree Service ...........................................31 Vancil Vision Care ..........................................87 Vasvary Electric ..............................................15 Vintage Barber Shop .......................................13 Waldoboro Chimney Service, Inc. ..................53 Wall 2 Wall Painting & Odd Jobs ....................74 Wardwell Construction & Trucking Corp. .......85 Warren Auto Barn ..........................................56 Waterfront Flea Market ..................................10 Watson’s General Store ...................................11 Weaver’s Roadside Variety ..............................82 WellTree, Inc. ....................................................5 Weskeag Inn ..................................................74 White Flour Catering ......................................42 Whitecap Builders ..........................................66 Wilson’s Drug Store ........................................13 Windsor Fair ...................................................44 Windsor Preventive Dental Care .....................45 Winterport Pizza ...........................................85 Wiscasset, Waterville, & Farmington Railway ...15 Woodard Tree Care .........................................67 Working Man Construction Co. .......................21 Y Knot Farm ...................................................64 Yankee Yardworks ..........................................25 Yarmouth Chamber of Commerce ....................6 Ye Olde Forte Cabins ........................................52 Young’s Lobster Pound ....................................65

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Midcoast Region