2018 Penobscot-Piscataquis-Hancock

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Maine’s History Magazine Volume 27 | Issue 3 | 2018

15,000 Circulation

Penobscot~Piscataquis~Hancock Counties

Bucksport’s Elephant Summer Escapee from circus runs loose for two weeks

The Ellsworth Schooner Dispute Who’s the Captain here?

The Origin Of The Brewer Witch A mystery in orange and black - Part 1

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Inside This Edition

Maine’s History Magazine 3 It Makes No Never Mind James Nalley 4 Discovery Of Stacyville & The First Hunt A Maine deer hunting tale Pat Cassier 6 The Eggemoggin Mining Company Riches at Bayard Point didn’t pan out Jeffrey Bradley 10 The Origin Of The Brewer Witch A mystery in orange and black - Part 1 Daniel Stewart 16 The Curran Homestead Village Museum Orrington, Newfield museums merge as one Brian Swartz 19 Bangor’s Ora Willis Knight A pioneer in forensic ballistics Brian Bouchard 24 The Ellsworth Schooner Dispute Who’s the Captain here?

Brian Swartz 28 Donald Sidney Skidgel Keep going forward James Nalley 32 The Lincoln Pulpwood Revolution And the end of traditional industry ways Charles Francis 38 Bucksport’s Elephant Summer Escapee from circus runs loose for two weeks John Murray 44 The Great Penobscot River Log Drive Mismanagement and Maine weather created a disaster Charles Francis 48 John James Audubon Visits Houlton The Military Road had been swamped out six years earlier Charles Francis

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Advertising & Sales Dennis Burch Ryan Fish Tim Maxfield

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Contributing Writers

Brian Bouchard Jeffrey Bradley Pat Cassier Charles Francis | fundy67@yahoo.ca John Murray James Nalley Daniel Stewart 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.

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Front Cover Photo: Main Street in Dexter, Item # LB2007.1.100518 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org All photos in Discover Maine’s Penobscot-Piscataquis-Hancock Counties edition show Maine as it used to be, and many are from local citizens who love this part of Maine.

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

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It Makes No Never Mind

B

by James Nalley

y the time you read this, you should be in the midst of another long Maine winter. Thus, it is appropriate that this month’s column focuses on three snow-related structures: quinzhees, snow forts, and igloos. First, a quinzhee is a small shelter created by hollowing out a large pile of snow. It can take several hours to build, but it can be an effective way to stay warm, especially if you are lost. Basically, you shape the pile about 6-7 feet high and dig a small entrance so that you can hollow it out. With walls about 1-2 feet thick, it is important to dig a narrow trench in the middle of the structure so that cold air flows down and out of the entrance. In regard to its effectiveness, in March 2015, a lost teenage skier actually survived two days on Maine’s Sugarloaf Mountain by building a quinzhee. As stated in the New York Daily News, “with wind chills in the 20s, he slept at night in his shelter and went out in daylight until he was found.”

Second, a snow fort basically consists of walls of compacted snow that are

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designed according to their purpose. Although its function is not as “lifesaving” as a quinzhee, a snow fort is extremely useful in snowball fights. The forts can vary in appearance from uneven piles of snow to perfectly formed castles, complete with turrets and flags for territorial intimidation.

Third, if your inner Eskimo is calling, you can build an igloo. It is important to note that, in contrast to popular depictions at the North Pole within sight of Santa’s workshop, an igloo is NOT spherical. According to Richard Handy of the Arctic Institute of North America, “they more closely resemble a paraboloid” (picture a parabolic dish that scans the stars) “in which the snow, as it ages and compresses becomes stronger.”

Architecturally, an igloo is built by using independent blocks that are arranged from end-to-end around the perimeter into a tight spiral. An igloo that is built correctly will, in fact, support the weight of a person on its roof. Although inner heat (e.g., from a heat source) can slightly melt the interior, the melting and freezing process actually

strengthens the igloo. As for the cold inside an igloo, The New York Times stated that “one body puts out as much heat as a 100watt bulb. So, add two or three bodies, and you will start taking off your mittens.”

Well, in light of these snow structures, let me close with the following: Three Eskimos were having a contest about whose igloo was the coldest inside. So, they went into the first Eskimo’s igloo, where he threw a cup of water into the air, after which it immediately froze. “Not bad,” said the others, but they believed that their igloos were colder. Next, they went into the second Eskimo’s igloo, where he took a breath and exhaled, after which it froze and fell to the floor. However, the third Eskimo still believed that his igloo was colder. After they arrived at his igloo, he retrieved a ball of ice from his bed. Then, he placed it on a spoon and held a match under it. After a few seconds, the ball began to melt and it went “FFFFAAAARRRRTTTT.” The third Eskimo easily won the contest.

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Discovery Of Stacyville & The First Hunt

T

by Pat Cassier

A Maine deer hunting tale

he first year, I was with my first wife’s father, Arthur April. We were headed to New Brunswick, Canada, and, at that time, the Maine Turnpike ended in Augusta. We had to get off there and take Route 100 all the way up until we hit Route 9. My father-in-law was never a hunter; he just wanted to go up for a week to get away from his wife, I think!

Anyway, we stopped at Old Town to buy a New Brunswick hunting license.

We saw a sign at a sport shop that read “New Brunswick Licenses sold here.”

So we went in and told the guy we wanted two New Brunswick hunting licenses. He said, “Why do you want to go all the way up there, when there is better hunting right close by here in Maine?” We said that a fellow back

home had been going to this place in New Brunswick and got his deer every time.

Then he told us, “I’ll tell you a place to go and it’s only 50 or 60 miles from here and I’ll guarantee you’ll get your deer. I’ll show you on the map Stacyville, Maine. Take Route 11 in Medway, and go about 18 miles to the town of Stacyville. You will come to a sharp corner that turns right and goes to Sherman Mills and Patten. On that sharp corner you will see a big farm on the right which belongs to Harold Boulier. They call it Boulier’s Corner. They will put you up in a small log cabin in the field behind the farm. Ask him to direct you to a fellow named Cedric McLaine. He will gladly guide for a

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That was easy; my father-in-law already thought the world of Cedric, because he drank close to a half-gallon a day himself! So we told the guy to give us two non-resident Maine hunting licenses and we would give it a try.

We paid for the licenses, which at that time were $19.50 each.

Well, we found our way to Stacyville and stopped at the farm of Harold Boulier. Sure enough, he put us up in the cabin in the field, and said his wife would make us breakfast, lunch, and a good old-fashioned Maine supper. If I remember right, it was $12 each per day. We had arrived there in

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com the afternoon, and after putting away all our gear, we asked Harold where Cedric McLaine lived. He told us to go seven houses down on the right, heading toward Sherman Mills, and look for a tar paper shack; we couldn’t miss it.

We knocked on the door and when his wife Mary opened it, I said, “Does Cedric McLaine live here?” She said, “Yes, come on in!” I told them that the guy in Old Town said to look him up for a guide and asked Ced, “Are you available and what do you charge?”

Cedric answered, “That sink spout (shotgun) doesn’t come off the wall for less than ten dollars a day for 2 men.

Isn’t that right, Mary?” She agreed, so we told him that we were staying at Harold’s place and would see him in the morning at daylight.

We picked him up the next morning and drove down to Swift Brook. There was a sawmill there at the time, two camps and a large barn where they kept all the workhorses. They didn’t have

skidders in those days!

Anyways, the road only went in about two miles and stopped before the Y and an old camp. The bridge wasn’t across the East Branch at the time.

Well, Cedric put me on a road where they were cutting to the right going to Swift Brook. I think he and my fatherin-law stayed in the car and drank all morning. I saw three single flags. The tote road only went in about a half mile and chainsaws were going all over the place, so I turned around and started out toward the car again. Around the second corner, there was a nice doe and skipper standing still looking at me. I had my old model automatic .35 Rem with the big barrel. It looked like Cedric’s sink spout. Well, I shot the big doe; she went right down and the small one ran behind a tree. I waited for a couple minutes because I could see his tail going up and down on one side of the tree he was hiding behind. Finally, he walked out to see what was going on.

They heard my shots and Cedric came down to see. He gutted the deer out for me and helped me drag them out. We stayed that night and came home next day with two deer. Cedric and my father-in-law had a pretty good party that night. He also gave Cedric a pretty good tip!”

And so it was that the hunt was over as quick as that. Thus began the long odyssey of Binettes, Morrissettes, and later Cassiers, Eames, Wilkinsons, and Barlows….which continues to this very day…….55 years and counting!

Stay tuned to our next issue, as I will relate the entire story of the 1954 weeklong Stacyville hunt with Bill Morrissette and Red Bennett….crossing the East Branch of the Penobscot with canoes, hunting the Flats (the home of Paunch Hill), ascending Hunt Mountain before the roads and bridges were installed……all in the days of yesteryear.

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The Eggemoggin Mining Company Riches at Bayard Point didn’t pan out

by Jeffrey Bradley

“

Thar’s silver in them thar hills!”

While probably nobody ever actually said that, they could have.

Oddly enough, more than a few silver strikes happened in Maine between the years 1870 and 1890, when the whole state seemed hellbent on pulling minerals of some kind or another out of the earth. This one, inside of Eggemoggin Reach, in the eastern channel of Penobscot Bay, at Bayard Point, was most famous for what it didn’t produce. Profits.

A snapshot from the 1920s shows two women sitting serenely on a grassy knoll that overlooks the water while behind them looms an immense but abandoned smokestack, the sole remnant of the long-lost and busted dreams that literally went up in smoke. Now itself

gone, the smokestack in that grainy old black-and-white photo still conveys an impression of the haunted and spectral region.

Even the name Eggemoggin is shadowy; it may or may not be an Abenaki word loosely defined as “place of the fish-traps.”

On the face of it, the site was ideal for the mining and smelting — a process of heating and melting to separate valuable metals from ore — of silver.

The deep-water harbor allowed ships of considerable draft to sidle right up to the dockside, and the point itself was surrounded on three sides by a profusion of pine trees that seemed just awaiting the chance to be burned as fuel. And then there was all that silver and gold.

A prospectus for attracting investors at the time put it best: “This Mining Property cannot be surpassed,” re: A Report by J. Manes, Sr., Prof. of Mining and Metallurgy to the Eggemoggin Silver Mining Company: Gentlemen, In compliance with your request I have the honor to submit the following report: The tract of land, comprising 300 acres, is admirably situated on the shore, in the township of Sedgwick.

The metallic lode lies in a fissure of four feet… and I am of the opinion that this will connect with one or more extensive main veins of ore. The vein is of great breadth. Two Argentiferous Galena Veins, which are rich in Gold and Silver, are superior to many of the

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com ores in Nevada [Argentiferous galena, also called lead glance, is the mineral form of lead sulfide, an important ore of silver; gold may be present, too].

The cost of labor, I have ascertained, ranges being about one-half the Western mining rates. Coal can be delivered

by Vessels at the Wharf of the Mines, which is on the property.

According to every indication, these Mines, with proper superintendence and the assistance of the most improved machinery of the day [give] every reason to anticipate excellent remunerative results to capital applied to its development.

So from the viewpoint of an investor, with rich ore veins, plenty of natural resources, cheap labor on hand, and ‘only’ a four-hour coach ride from Bucksport through “the most enchanting scenery” — and all of it ready to be stripped from the ground, smelted, and shipped just about anywhere in the world for “a very trifling cost” — what’s

not to love? The professor even put his credentials on the line: “In conclusion I would state, during thirty-five years of mining experience and observation…

I have never examined a better located Mineral Property, that presents greater inducements for extensive mining and smelting operations.”

In the event, nearly $250,000 in operating capital was ultimately raised.

The rest of the story grows a bit hazy, but there was apparently money enough to sink a shaft fifty feet deep and build most of a two-story smelting-reduction works. Then alas! Tragedy struck.

Somehow, the mine never lived up to its expectations. Already, by 1876, a report found that “the gold at this site is economically interesting but not currently recoverable,” and that the small deposit was also not considered to be of “world-class significance.” For reasons that remain unclear, the smelting did not only not start as planned, but records

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indicate that the plant was never used at all. Be that as it may, one dark night in July of 1880, lightning struck the building and it burned to the ground. Worse, a major depression soon engulfed the country and the whole shebang was abandoned. The Eggemoggin Silver Mine, built at a great expense, after just a very short time, simply went kaput!

And that old, otherworldly chimney that stood on Bayard Point for all those years? They say it made an excellent spot for picnics.

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2nd Congregational Church. Photo courtesy of the Brewer Historical Society.

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1920s Boy Scout troop outing. Photo courtesy of the Brewer Historical Society.

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The Origin Of The Brewer Witch A mystery in orange and black - Part 1

by Daniel Stewart

T

he mystery surrounding the adoption of the Witch as a mascot is a frequent topic of discussion in Brewer. While a definitive answer remains elusive, I have pinpointed when the Witch arrived on the scene and can offer a plausible theory as to her origin, given the context of contemporary events.

I began my hunt for the Brewer Witch’s origin by analyzing the Bangor Daily News (BDN) sports pages from the mid-1930s. The earliest reference naming Brewer as the Witches was a February 19, 1932 article titled “Two Tilts at Brewer High Gym: Bangor-Brewer Girls Clash at 7:30 To-

night” in which ‘Witches’ was used to describe Brewer teams four times.

However, as my research progressed, a larger story emerged that seemed to explain the Witch’s origin. To put the story of the Brewer Witch into context it is necessary to tell the story of two remarkable football seasons, 1930 and 1931.

In the early 1930s, Brewer’s athletic teams, like most, were referred to in the sports pages by their team colors, Orange and Black. In September 1930, Brewer had a new coach, Dana Dogherty (also spelled Dougherty in the BDN). Coach Dogherty and the 1930 Brewer football team were introduced

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to readers in the September 13, 1930 article Brewer Team Hopes for Winning Eleven. The sportswriter predicted that Brewer had “the makings of a fairly good eleven this year” under the mentorship of its new coach. The article also provided Brewer’s schedule for the season: two games against Bangor (often referred to as the Crimson), and one each against Old Town, Waterville, John Bapst, Madison, Millinocket, and Belfast. The sportswriter predicted “The big barricades on the highway will be the two games with Bangor.” Brewer’s first game of the season, against Old Town, was predicted to be a “battle in the true sense of the word.” In fact,

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Brewer defeated Old Town, 20-6. The Orange and Black’s next challenge in 1930 was their first meeting with Bangor (the Crimson). The game was expected to be exciting but predictable.

As the Bangor Daily News article “Old Rivals Prepare to Reopen Struggle” (09/25/30) explained: “Crimson and Orange and Black have fought it out on the gridiron at least once each season for twenty-seven years – fans always assured of battle royal, although Bangor has lost but once.” While the article favored Bangor, it noted “Brewer this fall has a football team as good as any she has been able to enjoy for several seasons, and … has a good grid mentor who knows his stuff.” Bangor did win 7 – 0, according to an article on September 29, 1930. However, it noted the Orange and Black played well, admitting “the Brewer players showed plenty of stuff” and mentioned that they played much better than the previous season.

There were winds of change blowing (cont. on page 12)

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(cont. from page 11) in the Brewer athletic program and a hint of new magic in the air. Nevertheless, things did not all go Brewer’s way in the 1930 season. Waterville defeated the Orange and Black 13 – 0, John Bapst defeated Brewer 12 – 6, and Millinocket defeated the Orange and Black team 9 – 0. Brewer did achieve victories over Madison 20-7 and Crosby (Belfast) 19 – 0. Despite this mediocre record, the season was capped by one of the most exciting games in the history of Bangor-Brewer football, and may have contributed to the eventual rise of the Witch.

Excitement for the upcoming rematch was evident in the sports pages leading up to the game. In a November 4, 1930 article, Finale of Schoolboy Season Looks Bright, the upcoming Bangor – Brewer game was anticipated to be exciting: “Bangor vs. Brewer – Crimson vs. Orange and Black has come down through the years to mean

schoolboy football packed with punch, drive, power, and fight.”

Brewer was the underdog in the games against Bangor as stated in another article that day titled Brewer Eleven is Given Rest: “The Brewer team may not realize it but the fans all know that Brewer will be the underdog by far. Reports have it that Bangor will walk all over Brewer, but still other reports point to a real hard-fought game.” Still, there was a notion that Coach ‘Swede’ Mulvaney’s Crimson might suffer from overconfidence, as shown in the cartoon Local Rivals in Holiday Football Clash.

It turned out those who believed the Crimson needed to exercise more caution were right. The November 12, 1930 article Inspired Brewer Team Defeats Crimson 7-6 tells the story, underscoring the importance of the game in the statement that this was “Brewer’s second gridiron victory over Bangor in 27 long years.” Brewer was long the

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com recipient of bad luck, and some might say a curse had been lifted, raising the question, who does it take to lift a curse? The article goes into detail about the game but more important is the way it describes the reaction of the fans. “Did Brewer celebrate? They did.

The crowd afoot and in motor cars invaded Bangor and did the snake dance and other things that school students do on such occasions.” This reference to a snake dance hinted at magic or witchcraft. Was I finally onto something?

I read on and, near the end of the article, my eyes fell on a word I had longsought: mascot! I expected to read of a paper mache witch on a broomstick or a student in a witch costume but was dumbfounded as I read “Brewer had a mascot. A beautiful pony was paraded around the field wearing the Orange and Black colors.” I was not disappointed, but I was surprised, and my search went on.

The town of Brewer was in a state

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of euphoria after the final game of the 1930 season as evidenced in the November 13, 1930 article Many Parties to Brewer Team.” This was the second time I had found mention of a Brewer mascot. Again, it discussed the pony from the previous article but with additional details. The article was focused on the honors bestowed on the team and coach, asserting that the team mascot, the pony, carried Coach Dogherty to the school after the victorious game.

The article also discussed the Brewer marching band parading about the streets of Bangor afterwards, noting that on Exchange Street they were pelted with rotten tomatoes. It further states that the goal posts at Bangor’s athletic field were “torn down and sawed into bits which were distributed among members of the Brewer squad….” This is not the last time we will hear about such celebratory vandalism. The importance of this game to the students of Brewer High School is summed up best

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in their 1931 Trident yearbook: “The game was all over, Brewer had won another victory, registering Brewer’s second triumph on the gridiron over Bangor in twenty-seven long years.”

As I poured over these old articles of a football season 86 years in the past, I could not help but get caught up in the excitement of that long-gone Maine autumn. Yet, I had not found what I was looking for and the mystery deepened.

Instead of a witch I had found a pony!

A sampling of sports articles from the spring 1931 basketball season provided no additional clues, and so I turned my sights on the 1931 football season, which was as exciting as the 1930 season and yielded still more clues.

[Part II of this drama will continue in July’s Hancock-Washington-Penobscot edition.]

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Early view of Main Street in Ellsworth. Item # LB2007.1.100695 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Charles Wescott’s blacksmith shop in Blue Hill, ca. 1956. Item # 1977.55.221.11 from the Carroll Thayer Berry Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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The Curran Homestead Village Museum Orrington, Newfield museums merge as one

by Brian Swartz

T

wo venerable history-based non-profit groups combined in late 2016 to preserve their excellent museums in Orrington and Newfield and to educate visitors via handson activities about what rural life was like in New England from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century.

According to Museum Director Dr. Robert Schmick, Ph.D., the new Curran Homestead Village at Fields Pond & Newfield will also demonstrate how “that rural life was affected by the Industrial Age of the 1850s to the 1920s” as “new technologies affected farm life.”

Occupying both sides of the Fields Pond Road, the Curran campus in Orrington lies almost in the shadow of nearby Copeland Hill. According to Schmick, “Peter Field was the first settler on this property” in 1804 and lent his name to the adjacent pond, its shoreline still largely undeveloped.

Field’s descendants owned the approximately 350 acres until its purchase by Arthur Conquest later in the 19th century. In 1914 he sold the property to widower Michael J. Curran, who moved his five children to the subsistence farm. Curran died in 1941; the

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farm passed to his children, and eventually ownership lay with the survivors, Alfred and Catherine.

They died five weeks apart in 1991. Catherine, the last Curran heir, “wanted to preserve it all (the property)” and stipulated in her will that the farm should go to a non-profit group, Schmick said.

The Maine Audubon Society acquired more than 200 acres that became the Fields Pond Audubon Center.

Local history lovers formed the Curran Homestead Living History Farm & Museum to preserve another 31 acres,

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com the farmhouse, the barn, and other buildings. The non-profit group leased the property for $1 a year before being deeded full ownership in 2014.

“In the course of that time, they fixed up this property,” Schmick said.

The group also enlarged the campus by buying an adjacent 42 acres from the estate of Josephine Ford.

The seven original buildings coming with the farm were the Field House, a farmhouse, an ice house, a heavy equipment shed, an outbuilding that became the “Sugar Shack,” a carriage ell, and a circa 1860s-1880s barn that Schmick described as “a hybrid mix of other buildings that were cobbled together” over the years. Though the Field House was originally believed to be built in the 1860s, Schmick thinks that based on specific architectural details, it dates to the 1880s.

A blacksmith shop, a woodworking shop, and a garden shed have been added since the farm became a living his-

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useums in Orrington and Newfield educate visitors via hands-on activities about what rural life was like in New England from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century.

tory museum.

The Yarmouth-based Davis Family Foundation awarded Curran Homestead Village a grant in 2009 to hire a full-time director for a year. The Curran directors hired Schmick, and after the grant expired, he stayed on two more years without pay.

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in western York County, Willowbrook Village opened in 1970 after Don King of Massachusetts acquired a mill pond and surrounding properties, restored existing buildings, brought in historic buildings from elsewhere, and developed various collections.

Encompassing 34 buildings and some 10 acres, Willowbrook depicted a 19th-century village, while the Curran living history farm depicted a turn-ofthe-20th-century rural farm. Among the buildings at Willowbrook are the 1813 William Durgin House and its ell, the Durgin barn, a blacksmith shop brought from Lincolnville, a cider mill dating to the 1870s, and the Amos Straw Country Store.

According to Schmick, one centerpiece of Willowbrook is the 1894 Armitage-Herschell carousel, originally steam-powered but converted by Willowbrook to run on compressed air. Featuring hand-painted horses, the carousel was a southern Maine tourist (cont. on page 18)

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(cont. from page 17) attraction into the 1920s.

The village’s collections include some 5,000 artifacts ranging from farm tractors and other farm equipment to tools, furniture, antique gasoline engines, and horse-drawn carriages and sleighs.

Operated for 46 years as an open-air museum emphasizing hands-on experiences, Willowbrook saw its attendance peak in the late 1970s and then decline as changing demographics and waning interest in American history took families elsewhere. Don King and his wife, Pan, established an endowment that covered operational deficits until the national economic downturn late in the last decade.

After the Kings died, their son Doug continued as president of the Willowbrook board. Hired in July 2013, Robert Schmick was the last full-time director of Willowbrook as a stand-alone entity.

After reluctantly voting to close

Willowbrook for good after the 2016 season, the board members contacted 18 Maine museums to see if any were interested in obtaining Willowbrook’s collections or its property.

“No one was really interested (in the property) except the Curran Farm in Orrington,” Schmick said.

In late 2016, the board members from Curran and Willowbrook agreed to transfer the Newfield property (including its buildings) to the Curran Farm, which became “the sole owner of what was Willowbrook,” Schmick said.

The two entities merged as the Curran Homestead Village at Fields Pond & Newfield, overseen by a single board that appointed Schmick as the full-time museum director for both campuses on January 1, 2017.

In the past, both museums offered various classes and programs that attracted visitors. Popular classes such as blacksmithing and metal casting will

continue, and others will be added. Artifacts from Newfield will be displayed in Orrington, and both campuses will be open for specific events in 2018.

Some 1,500 students visited the Newfield museum on field trips in 2016. To accommodate greater public visitation and develop the capability to handle similar school field trips at Orrington, the Field House is being remodeled into a visitors’ center replete with three public restrooms.

To meet its new mission, Curran Homestead Village will utilize “handson history experiences that have STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) objectives in mind,” Schmick said.

Expertise gained with hands-on exhibits at Newfield will be brought to Orrington. Volunteers are needed at both campuses — and what better way to learn about history can there be than getting hands-on with it?

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Bangor’s Ora Willis Knight A pioneer in forensic ballistics

I

by Brian Bouchard

t is largely accepted that the investigation into the Brownsville, Texas Raid of 1906 was a milestone in forensic ballistics examination and was one of the first instances to attempt to tie fired cartridges back to the specific gun that fired them based on the study of impressions left by the firing pin on the shell primer. The truth of the matter, however, is that this method of identifying shells based on the microscopic abrasions left by the firing pin’s impact had been used in a court case in Maine several years prior to the Brownsville affair, and it was ironically a Maine man, hired to disprove the new identification method, that led the investigators

of the Brownsville incident to attempt the same examinations when he wrote to the President of the United States, “I can prove conclusively by actual test that this rule of firing pin marking the primer can be depended upon.”

Ora Willis Knight, the man who wrote these words in a letter directed to Theodore Roosevelt, was born on July 15, 1874 in Bangor to George and Nellie (Blood) Knight. He graduated from Maine State College (University of Maine) in 1897, receiving a Master of Science degree. He was an assistant chemist at the Maine Experiment Station from 1897 through 1903. Knight was also an accomplished ornitholo-

gist, authoring a nearly 700-page book titled The Birds of Maine in which he not only described the various species of birds found in Maine, but also discussed migration and distribution patterns as well as the history of each species.

5 years prior to the Brownsville Raid, Knight was called upon by the defense attorneys of Alexander Theriault, to disprove scientific evidence which had been used to convict Theriault of the murder of Mathias Paré near Moosehead Lake. The evidence came from the examinations of Professor Frank N. Whittier of Bowdoin College, who successfully proved to the jury (cont. on page 20)

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(cont. from page 19) that he could identify the gun which fired a shell based on the microscopic abrasions left by the firing pin on the primer of the shell. Theriault, who had been arrested and held for months in the Somerset County jail based on piles of circumstantial evidence, was convicted of the crime largely based on this new technology, according to local newspapers.

Ora Willis Knight, a microscopic analysis expert in his own right, was hired by the Theriault defense team to disprove the science behind this new identification technique and help secure a new trial. But, as he wrote to the President “After securing a great number (over a hundred) of firing pins and inserting these in rifles and firing shells with them, I became fully convinced that each firing pin had on its surface irregularities, visible under the microscope, and that these irregularities were plainly impressed on the primers; or

in other words, a given exploded shell could be viewed under the microscope and the firing pin that exploded it could then be picked from all the others at hand.”

By 1906 the events of the Brownsville Raid had taken the country by storm. On the surface it appeared that some, or all, 167 black troops of the 25th Infantry stationed at Fort Brown attacked the town, killing a white civilian, a horse, and wounding an officer of the law so badly he had to have an arm amputated. Brownsville became the poster child for racial tensions in the south. White citizens in the town clearly put the blame on the black soldiers, by what they saw and heard (some citizens claimed to know the attackers because they heard voices that “sounded like negroes.”) The soldiers all maintained they had nothing to do with the outrageous acts and felt they were generally under attack by the

white citizens who routinely let the soldiers know they were not welcome in town. Under much pressure to get something done about the situation, Theodore Roosevelt ultimately acted on the recommendation of his investigators and dismissed all 167 black enlisted men without honor based on the idea the soldiers has entered a “conspiracy of silence” by not telling what they knew of the attack. Many Americans, black and white, were outraged by the President’s actions, but he stood his ground and refused to give an inch on the matter to anyone.

Ora Willis Knight may have been one of those men who read newspaper accounts each day and was shocked to see how whole companies of soldiers were being mistreated. He took it upon himself to write a letter to the President explaining the results of the Theriault trial investigations and the scientific study performed by both Professor Service, Quality & Professionalism

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Whittier and himself which had, in his eyes, successfully proven the science of this new type of ballistics identification. After explaining the details of how it worked, he wrote, “Of course you see the bearing of this on the Brownsville affair… If this information leads to measures being taken which will identify any of the participants in the outrage I shall be satisfied.”

Ultimately, the method described

by Knight in his letter was applied and used to investigate dozens of shells secured by the citizens of Brownsville and offered as evidence in the Military Affairs hearing that followed. All but a few of the shells recovered were traced back to the guns of the 25th, but it was argued that nearly a dozen of those shells belonged to a rifle which had been securely locked up the night of the shooting, and the other shells, which largely belonged to the rifles of Company B, had been collected days

earlier and left on a porch, accessible to anyone who might pass by, soldier or civilian.

While the investigation of the shells was unsuccessful in proving either the guilt or innocence of the soldiers of the 25th Infantry, the science discussed in the Knight letter to the President proved sound, and investigators were able to place nearly all shells to the guns which fired them. Thus, the investigations of the Brownsville Raid have often been reported as a major breakthrough in the field eventually dubbed “forensic ballistics.” It was, however, Professor Frank N. Whittier of Bowdoin College who first successfully used this technique in a Maine court, and it was Ora Willis Knight, a Bangor native originally hired to disprove the technique, who called it his “duty” to write President Roosevelt and share this ground-breaking investigation with the Brownsville investigators.

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Workers at Brooks Brick Yard in Brewer. Photo courtesy of the Brewer Historical Society.

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The Ellsworth Schooner Dispute Who’s the Captain here?

by Brian Swartz

A

business dispute involving a Hancock County schooner spread all the way from Ellsworth to New York City in early spring 1896.

The previous fall, Captain James Farrell of Ellsworth boarded the schooner Fair Wind, then moored at Ellsworth after being loaded with wood staves. Farrell planned to sail the schooner to Rondout, a Hudson River port within the city limits of Kingston, New York.

Farrell and his good ship and crew departed Ellsworth by standing down the Union River and pointing the schooner’s bow south. Then cold weather closed the Hudson to shipping in late

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1895; Farrell moored the Fair Wind at Salem, Massachusetts for the winter.

He came home to stay with his family in Ellsworth.

Like most American-flagged merchant ships, the Fair Wind had multiple owners, often sea captains or merchants who purchased “interests” in such ships. The owners equally shared success and risk; if a voyage proved profitable, the owners made money, and if a ship suffered damage or sank, the owners hopefully could recover the insurance.

With springtime warmth reopening the Hudson River, Farrell traveled to Salem to ready the Fair Wind for sea.

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Meanwhile Captain John Kief, another Ellsworth-based skipper, “bought a controlling interest in the schooner,” the Ellsworth American reported on Thursday, April 2, 1896.

Kief headed to Salem to take over the Fair Wind, which was ready for sea when he arrived at the dock. The paperwork evidently was not in order; a surprised Farrell denied Kief permission “to come aboard” at Salem. Farrell later indicated to the Ellsworth American that the “agent of the Fair Wind never hinted to him that he was to sell” Kief “an interest in the schooner.”

The April 2 account in the Ellsworth paper saw Kief leaving the dock while he “communicated with the other own-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com ers of the schooner.” Seizing the opportunity caused by “the delay,” Farrell “slipped quietly out of the [Salem] harbor in the gloaming, leaving Capt. Kief on shore,” according to the paper.

Farrell later stressed to the Ellsworth American, as reported in its April 9 issue, that “the story that he gave Capt.

Kief the slip at Salem is not true. He had sailed from Salem before Capt.

Kief left Ellsworth, and did not know of the sale until he got to New York.”

Knowing that Farrell was headed for New York, Kief then caught a train in Boston. On Sunday, March 29, he boarded the Fair Wind after Farrell had brought her alongside Tebo’s Wharf in South Brooklyn.

“Capt. Farrell planted himself on the deck of the schooner and declared that he would not give her up until certain bills were paid,” the Ellsworth American reported on April 2. “I haven’t finished this voyage yet,” Farrell told Kief, “and I don’t give up command

until I know exactly where I’m at. I’ll be pretty well posted on that, however, when certain bills due me are paid.”

An eyewitness claimed that “Capt.

Kief cussed and fumed,” actions that “did not move the man who had nine points of the law in his favor.” Farrell and Kief finally agreed to take their case to Deputy United States Shipping Commissioner James P. Keenan.

The captains met with Keenan on Monday, March 30. Farrell produced several bills totaling $128. Hearing the various arguments, Keenan ruled that Kief should pay all the bills for sailing the Fair Wind from Salem to South Brooklyn; Kief did so, then assumed command of the schooner at Tebo’s Wharf.

As for Farrell, Keenan allowed him “nothing for getting the schooner from Ellsworth to Salem last fall, nor for his time this spring,” the Ellsworth American reported on April 9. “Capt. Farrell then gave up and came home.”

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Audience at the Bar Harbor Horse Show, ca. 1910. Item # 7765 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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28

Donald Sidney Skidgel Keep going forward

by James Nalley

S

panning the Sebasticook River on Route 2 in Newport is a relatively new bridge that was dedicated in 2011. At a cost of approximately $1.7 million, it replaced its 81-year-old predecessor. Unlike many bridges that simply serve as a conduit between two sides of a city, this one is special. Located on one side of the bridge is a dedication plaque memorializing the bridge’s namesake, U.S. Army Sergeant Donald Skidgel, who sacrificed his life in the name of his fellow soldiers and earned the rare Congressional Medal of Honor.

Born on October 13, 1948 in Caribou, Maine, Donald Sidney Skidgel joined the U.S. Army in Bangor at the age of 20. Like most of the enlistees at

Sgt. Skidgel, courtesy of the Vietnam Memorial Fund

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that time, Skidgel was slated for combat in Vietnam. According to The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, U.S. military forces in Vietnam reached 536,100 in 1968, which was the highest number of the entire war. Unfortunately, that year was also the deadliest, with approximately 15,000 deaths in battle.

By September 1969, Skidgel had moved quickly up the enlisted ranks and was serving as a Sergeant in 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. On September 14, Skidgel (as a reconnaissance section leader) and his unit was assigned to guard a military convoy traveling through Binh Long Province. Then, on a road near Song Be, the convoy came

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com under heavy enemy fire. The enemy (an entire battalion), had been hiding in the tall grass and in bunkers along the road.

As stated in his official Medal of Honor citation, “Sgt. Skidgel maneuvered off the road and began placing effective machinegun fire on the enemy automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade positions. After silencing at least one position, he ran with his machinegun across 60 meters of bullet-swept ground to another location from which he continued to rake the enemy positions.” After running out of ammunition, Skidgel headed back across the same landscape to resupply his weapon. Immediately after gaining the necessary ammunition, a cry for help was heard on the radio. Apparently, the command element’s armored personnel carrier (APC) was under intense enemy fire, including automatic weapons fire, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and mortar fire. According to the book, Vietnam Medal of Honor Heroes, by

According to The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, U.S. military forces in Vietnam reached 536,100 in 1968, which was the highest number of the entire war.

Unfortunately, that year was also the deadliest, with approximately 15,000 deaths in battle.

Edward Murphy, Skidgel immediately boarded his vehicle and “using his machine gun with brutal effectiveness, he knocked out several more enemy positions. He was still urging the driver forward when an RPG hit his vehicle. The blast blew Skidgel out of the gunner’s seat and onto the rear fender. With blood streaming down his body from multiple wounds, Skidgel crawled back to his gun. His driver called for him to quit, but Skidgel would not…He ordered the

driver to keep going forward.”

As they pressed on, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) stopped their attack on the command vehicle and refocused their fire on Skidgel’s approaching vehicle. As stated by Murphy, the enemy “concentrated their fire on Skidgel, at last shooting him from his perch.” During that short reprieve, the command vehicle could withdraw (without casualties) and organize a counterattack that forced the enemy to temporarily retreat. Skidgel’s valiant effort and sacrifice had saved the convoy. He was just one month shy of his 21st birthday.

According to Murphy, “On December 16, 1971, Vice-President Spiro Agnew, in the presence of Skidgel’s parents, presented Skidgel’s posthumous Medal of Honor to the three-year-old son who he had never seen.” Like numerous other soldiers’ worthy of this honor, Agnew stated that his actions “reflected great credit upon himself, his (cont. on page 30)

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(cont. from page 29) unit, and the U.S. Army.” Skidgel was buried at Sawyer Cemetery in Plymouth, Penobscot County.

On October 15, 2011, “The Donald Sidney Skidgel Memorial Bridge” was officially dedicated, after being signed into law the previous May by Maine Governor Paul LePage. The speakers at the event included U.S. Senator Susan Collins, U.S. Representative Mike Michaud, State Representative Kenneth Fredette, and Maine National Guard Major General John Libby. According to the Bangor Daily News, Skidgel’s three children unveiled the plaque with their father’s name and image. As Representative Michaud stated at the event, “The story of his actions is inspiring, but it’s difficult to find the words to say how profoundly appreciative we all are as a country for what he did…his actions are the very definition of bravery.”

The Donald Sidney Skidgel Memorial Bridge (photo courtesy of Mike Beane)

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Early view of North Street in Dover-Foxcroft. Item # LB2007.1.100539 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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32

The Lincoln Pulpwood Revolution And the end of traditional industry ways

by Charles Francis

“

All this pulp mill business here, some trust company…had it and Lincoln got hold of it. Lincoln Pulp came down here from Bangor; they were a subsidy of Eastern Corporation. Their mill was in South Brewer, Maine. We had lots of pulpwood here that could be shipped by water right into their yards. About all they were interested in was softwood, mostly spruce.”

Those are the words of Wilbur Parker of Bear River, Nova Scotia, back in the early 1980s. Parker spent his life working in the woods as a scaler, timekeeper, truck driver and camp cook. He is describing something that few in Lincoln remember today, that Lincoln Pulp and Paper was, in addition to being a

major presence in eastern Maine, a big player in the pulpwood industry much further downeast in Canada’s Maritime Province of Nova Scotia. In fact, it can be said that the Maine concern, whether you want to call it Lincoln Pulp and Paper or Eastern Fine Paper, had something of an empire there.

The man behind Lincoln Pulp’s Nova Scotia empire was Ern Wade.

Wade was a Lincoln Pulp surveyor.

Wade and a five-man survey crew went into the Nova Scotia woods behind Bear River and surveyed some five or six townships that a local company named Clark Brothers had been cutting hardwood from. The hardwood went into building ships, making spools, shooks

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and other similar products. What Wade and his crew did that was different was surveying those woods for softwood, spruce and pine. What they found on their survey must have looked good to them from the perspective of Lincoln Pulp, because the company bought out Clark Brothers. What happened then was almost a reprise of what happened in the Lincoln area when the Mattanawcook Mill Company had control of Lincoln Pulp and Paper.

The real backbone of the Bear River timber industry wasn’t Clark Brothers, but rather the small operators that sold to the Clark’s sawmills. These were, for the most part, family operations. During the winter months, when

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33

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com farming was out of season, farmers and their sons went into the woods to cut timber. The timber was pulled to rivers and streams, and then rafted down to sawmills in the spring. In this manner, farmers were able to support their family year-round.

In the 1920s Lincoln Pulp took over the Clark Brothers’ Nova Scotia timberland, but the only thing it was interested in was softwood. The company’s arrival in Bear River spelled the end of traditional shipbuilding and other hardwood industries. It was more or less the same thing that had happened in the Lincoln area only a few decades earlier.

The first settlers to the township that would become Lincoln began arriving around 1824-25. They had names like James Huntress, Israel Heald, John Carpenter and Ira Fish. These early settlers found that the soil located near the Penobscot was poor farm land, rocky and hard to cultivate. What the township did have was a good stand of pine. Be-

cause of this, the settlers soon had the first wheels of Lincoln’s industry turning on the water of the Mattanawcook.

Ira Fish was the first of the timber barons on the Mattanawcook. Fish built one sawmill and then another.

Fish’s mills produced lumber. Others, like James Emerson, followed in his footsteps. John MacGregor built a mill that manufactured spools for the Clark Thread Company of New Jersey. The spools were made of white birch.

As with Bear River, Nova Scotia, it was the small, part-time logger that really made the early logging of the Lincoln area a community industry.

And, as with Bear River, the arrival of the wood pulp industry ended this traditional means of putting food on the table year-round.

Lincoln Pulp and Paper began producing paper in 1883. The company’s early years of production were somewhat tenuous, however. In 1888 the operation shut down for some four or five

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years. It reopened as Katahdin Pulp and Paper, specializing in sulfite pulp.

In 1914 Katahdin Pulp was taken over

by Eastern Manufacturing of Brewer.

The latter company underwent several name changes, but the most wellknown entity was Eastern Fine Paper.

The man who was responsible for the pulpwood revolution in Lincoln (and in Bear River, Nova Scotia) was named Stuart Brown Copeland. Copeland was an MIT graduate that Katahdin Pulp hired as a plant engineer in 1911. His rise from that position was meteoric. In 1914 he was promoted to the position of Katahdin’s assistant general manager. He became resident manager when Eastern Manufacturing took over. Two years later, he was named the number two man for all of Eastern’s operations.

It was Stuart Copeland that resurrected the Lincoln Pulp and Paper name. It was Copeland that prompted the company’s search for more soft(cont. on page 34)

Penobscot-Piscataquis-Hancock Counties

34

(cont. from page 33) wood. And it was also Copeland that hired Ern Wade as their surveyor.

Somewhat ironically, Eastern Manufacturing and Lincoln Pulp never completely gave up on the hardwood business. In the 1950s, Lincoln began the process of converting its Nova Scotia mill to hardwood production. The intent was to send hardwood from Maine to that plant, but the plan was never followed through. Around 1960 the Nova Scotia holdings were sold off to raise money to bolster the Maine business.

There is one final note to this story that connects Lincoln Pulp and Maine to Nova Scotia. The company that bought Lincoln Pulp’s Nova Scotia holdings was a local Nova Scotia company, Mersey Pulp and Paper. In 1992 the same company that had purchased Great Northern acquired Mersey — Bowater. The paper industry continues to be a topic of discussion on the tip of every tongue in Northern Maine.

Holmes Cottage at Lake Mattanawcook in Lincoln. Item # LB2007.1.107616 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Early view of Main Street in East Millinocket. Item # LB2007.1.100623 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Businesses and opera house in downtown Millinocket, ca. 1950. Item # 5425 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Penobscot Avenue in Millinocket during a winter storm in 1926. Item # 23302 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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38

Bucksport’s Elephant Summer Escapee from circus runs loose for two weeks

by John Murray

T

he summer of 1892 in the quiet town of Bucksport was different than other summers. This summer was buzzing with anticipation, and that was linked to the posters hung throughout the town announcing that the circus would soon be arriving. A circus putting up the big tent in Bucksport was a unique event for this quaint New England town. The children could barely contain their excitement, and the women were picking out their fancy dresses for the show.

The Leon W. Washburn railroad circus shows were certainly a premiere event, and this traveling circus act was noted for putting on a fantastic show that was well received by everyone.

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The Washburn circus had kicked off their touring season during the month of May, and were already immersed in a very busy schedule. After touring a considerable number of northeast towns and cities, the circus train entered the state of Maine for a show in South Berwick on June 24. The three-day gap between the next show in Biddeford on June 27 was a temporary rest for the busy circus performers and crew, because the next show in Portland on June 28 would begin a nonstop pace of daily shows in ten different locations.

For the observer, the concept of moving an entire fourteen-car trainset into a town must have seemed to be a monumental task. Setting up a giant

tent and preforming a circus show, then pulling the giant tent down, reloading the train with equipment, circus animals and performers – then repeating the same process the very next day in another town was quite an arduous task. Undoubtedly, the performers, circus animals, and crew were beginning to feel tired and stressed from the daily hectic pace.

To complicate matters, many of the performers and crew couldn’t shake off the feeling of uneasiness after a near tragic event that occurred during a previous circus performance in Hackensack, New Jersey. It was in the middle of May, and the change of the seasons can bring about unpredictable and sud-

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39

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com den storms. For the circus performers, this day had begun like all others, and few noticed the darkening skies that began to form before the show started. A ferocious rain storm and strong winds began to shake the huge circus tent, which was filled to capacity with a large crowd of spectators. Then the unthinkable happened as two heavy ropes snapped, and the wind raised the huge canvas tent until the center positioning pole was lifted off of the ground. The wind was unmerciful, and tore apart a portion of the tent. There was complete panic among all inside the huge circus tent. Children and women screamed in terror, and everyone fled the confines of the tent. Several people were injured during the stampede of the crowd. The resulting panic impacted the circus animals as well. Weeks later, many were acting abnormally.

Among the circus animals was the main attraction, and he was a giant Asian elephant named Charlie. Re-

~ Circus elephant in the late 1800s ~ cently purchased from the Adam Forepaugh circus show, Charlie was still in the phase of getting used to his surroundings, and the new people as well.

Charlie was truly a huge elephant, and Leon Washburn headlined him as the biggest elephant in the circus world.

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Little known to anyone except those that were around him on a daily basis, was the fact that Charlie had a reputation for being aggressive.

When the Leon W. Washburn circus train pulled into Bucksport on Sun(cont. on page 40)

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(cont. from page 39) day July 10, 1892, a crowd of locals gathered near the train. Charlie was acting nervous upon seeing so many surrounding the area, so one of the animal handlers decided to unload Charlie from the train, instead of waiting for the regular handler to arrive. It was felt that the unloading occurred at too frantic of a pace for Charlie, and the large elephant became frightened, and then stampeded. The terrified residents of Bucksport scattered to avoid being run over by the huge beast, and he nearly trampled some bystanders. For the next few hours, he ran amok through the town, terrifying the residents of Bucksport to the extent that they locked themselves inside their homes.

Ultimately, Charlie would head off into the outskirts of the town, ran into the dense wood forest, and then took refuge in a swamp. The next day, Charlie was recaptured for a few fleeting

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minutes, but broke away from his captors. In the midst of the struggle and the resulting escape, Charlie became enraged, and charged a team of horses, then turned his rage on a nearby cow, which was killed in the resulting hav-

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oc. Fully angered, the elephant crashed back into the dense woods, and returned to the waters of the swamp. The circus men gave up attempts to recapture the elephant at this point, and considered other options. It would come to be known afterwards in the New York Times, that one option had been to poison Charlie with opium-laced oats, or calling upon the military to shoot the out-of-control animal.

Other attempts were made to capture Charlie during the next few days, but all were unsuccessful. In the following days, he would disappear for periods of time, then be sighted in a different location in or near Bucksport. Residents reported him in their yards and gardens, and others reported sightings of him walking down Main Street late in the evening. The people of Bucksport were uneasy, and a rumor that the elephant was a man killer was being whis-

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pered among the townsfolk.

Two weeks later, the steward of the circus, Thomas W Lawrence, decided to take matters into his own hands and capture the elephant. Lawrence was a seasoned circus man, and he had once been employed by the Barnum and Bailey circus. The capture effort took nearly six hours, and was accomplished with multiple animal handlers, and the aid of a large pit bull dog who eventually cornered the elephant. Cornered against a stand of trees with nowhere to run, the handlers were able to secure the elephant and lead the exhausted beast back to an awaiting train car.

Upon being captured, Charlie would travel to other towns throughout the country and perform his normal routine at the circus shows. All were reported to be without incident. The Leon W. Washburn railroad circus ended its traveling season on October 8. 1892, and went into winter quarters. Throughout

the winter, additional animal performers were acquired, including a baby elephant named Cupid, who was only 26 inches tall. Later, another elephant was purchased, and this large male Asian elephant was named Jupiter. Forever the master of hype, Leon Washburn now touted the fact that the circus now had the world’s smallest and largest elephants.

Charlie grew more aggressive with the passing years. In 1898 Charlie was sold to the JH Lapearl railroad circus show. The time Charlie spent there was short, and it was rumored that it was due to the fact that he was getting hard to control. In 1900 Charlie was sold to the Great Wallace Brothers circus show.

After being transported to the Wallace Brothers winter quarters, Charlie killed his handler, Harry Hoffman. On January 6. 1901 Charlie was euthanized due to his aggressive tendencies.

For the residents of Bucksport, those

two weeks were the most unusual activity that the town had ever witnessed.

Newspaper reporters came to Bucksport to interview the shaken residents of the town, and the story was spread across the country. Eventually, the people of Bucksport returned to their normal pace, but the summer of 1892 was talked about for years to come.

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The Wyman House in Sebec Village ca. 1880. Pictured from left are Lizzie Wyman, Theodore Wyman Jr. and his wife Alice and Theodore Wyman Sr. At the far right is their maid. Item #1517 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Vassalboro Manufacturing Company in Enfield, Ca. 1899. Item #1056 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Penobscot-Piscataquis-Hancock Counties

44

The Great Penobscot River Log Drive Mismanagement and Maine weather created a disaster

by Charles Francis

T

he enterprise began far up the West Branch of the Penobscot River, some 1600 or so feet above sea level. It concluded, for the most part, in Penobscot Bay. Old timber barons bearing names such as Bass, Appleton, Prentiss and Rice expected to make a good deal of money from it.

So did Great Northern Paper, which had yet to start up one of its paper machines.

By the time it was over, the bridges connecting Bangor and Brewer had been destroyed. So, too, had most of the docks and wharves from Medway all the way to Verona Island. At one

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point the Penobscot, from Mattawamkeag to Sandy Point, was nothing but one continuous logjam.

Men who knew the Penobscot well, like legendary master river driver John Ross, would have said the great drive

was an impossibility. But others, men who were part of a new breed of loggers who had launched Great Northern, thought they knew better.

All told, the great Penobscot log drive lasted for more than three years.

When you include the lawsuits that resulted from the drive, it actually lasted some three times those three years.

The people who really profited from the drive were the salvagers who hauled the logs up the banks of the Penobscot all up and down its length, from Mattawamkeag to Stockton Springs, and out of Penobscot Bay in towns

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45

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com like Castine and Camden, and even further. Also, the greatest log drive brought about the demise of the most established log driving company on the river, the Penobscot Log Drive Company, and gave birth to another, the Great Northern-dominated West Branch Driving and Reservoir Dam Company. The latter company didn’t get its start until Great Northern had been forced to pay some $70,000 in damages. The court order was based on its mismanagement of its dams around Quakish Lake.

The Quakish Lake dams diverted the water from the lake to an artificial channel and pond, thereby feeding logs to Great Northern’s mills. Begun in the spring of 1899, the project was to become a part of the most extensive system for controlling northern Maine waters up to that time. The whole idea was the brainchild of Charles W. Mullen, Great Northern’s first clerk. Mullen was also the originator of that great Penobscot log drive.

The great Penobscot log drive began in the spring of 1900 to the north and west of the northern end of Moosehead Lake. The previous year Charles Mullen hired Great Northern loggers to work in the woods cutting timber for the drive. This wasn’t the only source of logs for the great drive, however.

They came from all up and down the West Branch, and were joined by others from the East Branch at Medway, and still more from the Piscataquis River at Howland. But it was the East Branch, with its newly constructed dams at Quakish Lake, which the court decided was the root cause of the massive pileup.

From Northeast Carry above Moosehead, the West Branch turns north, and then flows into the northern end of Chesuncook Lake. It proceeds through Ripogenus Gorge, Ambajejus, Pemadumcook, North Twin, Elbow and Quakish lakes. A few miles below Quakish Lake the waters of Millinock-

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et Lake contribute to it via Millinocket Stream. Then, ten miles further, at Medway, the East and West branches join forces. Another twelve miles further, Mattawamkeag River adds its flow. Altogether, some 1600 rivers and streams feed the Penobscot. It is a huge river basin, draining some 8,200 square miles. Because of this, the Penobscot can flood downtown Bangor during heavy rains. In a drought, it is impossible for anything other than the smallest of twigs to make its way downstream.

For this log drive, Great Northern contracted with the Penobscot Log Drive Company. In 1900 Great Northern had just three of its projected eight paper machines in operation. The logs the Millinocket plant couldn’t handle continued down the Penobscot to the mills at Old Town and Veazie. The initial drive of twenty million feet of timber got to Chesuncook in 1900. It remained there until the spring of 1901.

By then, more timber had been cut. So (cont. on page 46)

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Penobscot-Piscataquis-Hancock Counties

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(cont. from page 45) much, that Chesuncook was filled with thirty-six million feet. In addition, other timber companies had been cutting along all the tributaries of the Penobscot. The total footage of timber the Penobscot Log Drive Company had to deal with was estimated in the range of eighty million feet.

The winter of 1900-01 had seen heavy snows. The summer of 1901 saw drought. First the logs jammed in the heavy spring runoff. By the time they were freed there wasn’t enough water to move them. At this point there were logs all the way from Northeast Carry to below Mattawamkeag.

Starting early in the fall of 1901 the drought that had plagued Maine broke, and logs that had been stranded from Medway down were worked to the great booms of the Penobscot at Argyle, Old Town and Orono. Heavy snow, and temperatures that froze the river, followed the rain. Then, in December, a warm spell broke the ice and the

subsequent rushing high water carried even more logs and broke the booms.

Logs and ice went tumbling over Bangor Dam and eventually formed a jam at Verona Island. It broke up of its own accord and floated into Penobscot Bay. This was only a hint of what was to come in 1902.

Spring 1902 started with heavy rains. The entire Penobscot, including the East Branch, rose, and it was the East Branch where the problem started. Throughout the winter of 1901-02, Great Northern had been holding water back at its Quakish Lake series of dams.

The company wanted to be sure that it could float its logs out of Chesuncook to process at its mills. Suddenly, all of the excess water from the heavy spring rains needed a place to go. The Quakish Lake dam system was opened, adding still more fluid. Of course, timber came along. The already timber-filled and swollen lower Penobscot could handle no more.

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It was then that the inevitable happened. The booms above Bangor couldn’t hold back the onslaught, which came as a succession of walls of timber-choked water. Jams above the Bangor broke, only to reform and then break again. Altogether, the Penobscot carried the bulk of some three years of harvesting to their destructive destinations.

Naturally, there were lawsuits.

Great Northern blamed the Penobscot Log Drive Company. The company blamed Great Northern. The courts decided Great Northern was the culprit.

A positive result of the great Penobscot log drive was the chartering of the West Branch Driving and Reservoir Dam Company in 1903. For the first time, log driving and water control on the West Branch were under the control of a single entity. The company went on to build dams at North Twin and Chesuncook. As a result, catastrophes like that have been avoided ever since. * Other businesses in this areaare featured in the color section.

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Early view looking up Court Street in Houlton. Item #6618 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

Hanington Bros., Inc.

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Penobscot-Piscataquis-Hancock Counties

48

John James Audubon Visits Houlton The Military Road had been swamped out six years earlier

I

by Charles Francis

n 1833 John James Audubon paid a visit to Houlton. At the time, Audubon, who was near the end of his life, was recognized as America’s greatest ornithologist, and Houlton was in a transitional state, moving from a tiny settlement of isolated log homes, a stone’s throw from the New Brunswick border, towards becoming the gateway to the Aroostook region. The references to Audubon’s trip to Houlton are found in his Ornithological Biography. In addition, some of the studies in his famous The Birds of North America are a direct result of his experiences traveling such back country eastern Maine roads as the just-completed Military Road connecting Macwahoc to Houlton and beyond to the Aroostook River.

John James Audubon is one of America’s most revered artists. It is doubtful that the name of any American painter, with the possible exception of Norman Rockwell, is better known today. Prints of his works, like those of Rockwell, are more often than not to be found adorning homes in the United States. The same is true of coffee table editions of various excerpts from his multi-volume The Birds of North America.

Audubon spent almost his entire life sketching and painting the wildfowl of North America. However, most of his attention was centered on the southern United States. It was not until his last years that he ventured into New England. And, had it not been for the fact

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that he paid a visit to eastern Maine in 1832, he might never have expanded his ornithology studies much further than New York.

At the time of Audubon’s visit to Houlton the Aroostook region was still a part of Washington County. The first settlers of New Salem, as Houlton was then known, began arriving in 1805.

One of the earliest was Joseph Houlton, who came to the township in 1807, and who would give his name to the town at the time of its incorporation in 1831.

When Joseph Houlton and other early settlers came to New Salem they came by water, traveling up the St. John River and then overland by tote road.

The first Maine road to New Salem was swamped out in 1827. It ran from

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49

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Calais up the New Brunswick border, much as Route One does today. It was this road that Audubon used when he began his trip to Houlton. From it he would access the Military Road as well as a number of tote roads, which gave him a real taste of what travel was like in the Aroostook region.

Audubon’s first visit to eastern Maine was to Dennysville in 1832. At the time, he had been in Boston conferring with fellow naturalists like Louis Agassiz and sketching the northern marine birds that frequented Boston harbor. Some of his Boston friends suggested he travel further east, as he would find a much greater diversity of waterfowl there. This suggestion would lead to his trip to Labrador during the same summer that he visited Houlton.

In Dennysville, Audubon stayed with the family of General Benjamin Lincoln, the man who had accepted the Cornwallis sword at the surrender

of Yorktown. It was at this time that Audubon made the decision to visit Labrador to further expand his wildlife studies.

Two individuals Audubon met while in eastern Maine were to play a part in his 1833 travels. They were Thomas Lincoln and Joseph Coolidge. While Audubon was in Dennysville in 1832 doing studies of the waterfowl of Passamaquoddy Bay, the road connecting north central Maine and Houlton was nearing completion. (This was the Military Road built by the government to facilitate the movement of troops to the Aroostook region should hostilities break out there over the northern boundary question.) Apparently, Lincoln, Coolidge or both, suggested that Audubon would find it worthwhile to travel up this new road.

Audubon returned to eastern Maine in the spring of 1833, this time staying in Eastport with Jonathan Weston, the attorney who had done the legal work

for returning that town to American control after the War of 1812. While the bulk of his time was allocated to his Labrador trip, he also set aside time to investigate the area around Houlton as well as some of New Brunswick.

Thomas Lincoln and Joseph Coolidge accompanied him on his travels. In fact, Audubon wrote a rather detailed account of Lincoln killing a moose.

It appears in one of the early volumes of the Ornithological Biography as “A Moose Hunt.” From Coolidge, who was just in his early twenties and had developed a case of hero worship for Audubon, we have a description of the great naturalist. Coolidge described Audubon as “childlike in his simplicity, kindhearted, noble-souled, a lover of nature and lover of youth, a friend of humanity, and one for whom religion was the golden rule.”

At the time Audubon and his party journeyed to Houlton, the new Military

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MILLINOCKET

Financial Services • Asset Management • Financial & Investment Planning • Life, Disability & Long-term Care Insurance

429-9500

53 Main Street, Mars Hill, ME

Ryan.Shaw@pioneer-financial.com

Glidden Paints Makita & Dewalt Tools ~ Open 7 Days ~

(207) 746-5722 8 Main Street East Millinocket

www.crandallshardware.com

Katahdin Health Care

HOUSE OF PIZZA TUES-THURS & SUN: 11am-9pm FRI & SAT: 11am-10pm | Closed Monday

~ Delivery Service Available ~

723-4528

782 Central Street Northern Shopping Plaza • Millinocket

KEITH MITCHELL & SONS TRUCKING

22 Walnut Street • Millinocket

207-723-4711

(cont. on page 50)

YOU’RE ALWAYS WELCOME AT THE SCOOTIC IN 5 Flat Screen TV’s Live Lobsters • Seafood Steaks • Italian Food • Pizza

AHCA Bronze Recipient Five-Star Nursing Home Rating

Open 11am-10pm Downtown Millinocket

70 Penobscot Ave. • 207-723-4566 www.scooticin.com

207-365-6006

133 Gallison Road • Sherman, ME 04776

Penobscot-Piscataquis-Hancock Counties

50

(cont. from page 49) Road was just coming into regular use.

Audubon describes it as “a rough thoroughfare full of bumps, holes and beds of mud after rainfalls.” In addition, he describes being set upon by hordes of mosquitoes and black flies, irritation that he found particularly irksome. The trek from Houlton to the Aroostook River, which was over the newest section of road, he found the most arduous.

One of the reasons Audubon found his trip to Houlton so trying was that he made it in a wagon, which was needed to carry his equipment as well as the specimens he acquired for mounting.

Nevertheless, he wrote that the excursion was worthwhile, as he had an opportunity to travel through the territory which was virtually untouched by civilization.

Audubon was not to return to Maine.

From his two trips here, however, came the first ornithological studies of the most northeasterly section of the United States.

We‛re !

Bigger

Jerry’s Shurfine

To Serve You Better!

Full line of Groceries, Fresh Meats, Produce, In-Store Bakery, Cold Beverages, Beer & Wine, Frozen Foods, Ice, Live Lobsters, Live Bait (Seasonal), Fishing Supplies, Hardware Agency Liquor Store • Beer Cave

Check Our Weekly Flyer for Great Buys Throughout the Store Mon-Wed 7AM-6PM, Thurs-Sat 7AM-7PM, Sun 9AM-5PM

463-2828 Route 2, Island Falls, Maine

The Patten House in Patten. Item # LB2007.1.108978 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

FRANK LANDRY & SONS, INC. ~ Raymond Landry ~

• Backhoe • Bulldozing • General Contracting • Plowing • Screened Gravel • Road Construction ~ Proud to be part of Patten’s history ~

538-7506 Patten, Maine

LONE WOLF AUTO BODY Collision & Rust Repair Frame Painting • Auto Unlocks Jordan Ouellette ~ Over 10 Years Experience ~

lonewolfautobody@gmail.com

294 Houlton Street • Patten │ 207-538-7598

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

BUSINESS

DIRECTORY OF ADVERTISERS PAGE

A.C. Auto Sales - Vintage Volvos .......................................6 A.E. Robinson Oil Co., Inc. .............................................30 A.N. Deringer, Inc. ............................................................47 A.R. Whitten & Sons Inc. ...................................................3 ABM Mechanical, Inc. ......................................................19 Access Auto ...................................................................45 Action Septic Service ......................................................26 ADA Fence Company, Inc. .............................................27 Albert Fitzpatrick .............................................................48 Amherst General Store & Restaurant .............................11 Andy’s Auto Repair .........................................................40 Angelo’s Pizzeria ..............................................................8 Bangor Frameworks .........................................................9 Bangor Natural Gas ........................................................18 Bangor Tire Company ......................................................20 Bangor Truck & Trailer Sales, Inc. ....................................8 Bangor Window Shade & Drapery Co. ..........................19 Bates Fuel, Inc. ..............................................................47 BDC Heat Pump Installation ...........................................46 Bear Brook Kennels ........................................................11 Bear Paw Inn .................................................................34 BKB Construction ............................................................48 Black Bear Media Blasting & Construction ......................26 Blackwell Insurance Agency ..............................................5 Bowden Marine Service .................................................39 Bowers Funeral Home ....................................................48 Boyce’s Motel .................................................................15 Bradley Redemption Center ...........................................16 Brewer Historical Society ................................................10 Brewer Veterinary Clinic, PA ..........................................22 Briarwood Motor Inn .......................................................32 Brookings-Smith ................................................................4 Brooks Tire & Auto ...........................................................28 Bryant Stove & Music, Inc. .............................................40 Bucksport Bay Area Chamber of Commerce ...................15 Bucksport Monuments & Sandblasting ...........................26 Bucksport True Value ......................................................38 C&J Variety .....................................................................43 C.A. Newcomb & Sons Fence & Guardrail Co. ....................3 Call Construction .............................................................17 Cantrell Seafood .............................................................19 Carousel Diversified Services ..........................................16 Carroll Drug Store ...........................................................39 Cary Brown Trucking & Excavating .................................33 Champion Concrete Inc. ..................................................24 CJN Construction ............................................................27 Clay GMC Chevrolet of Lincoln ......................................32 Clouston Trucking ............................................................10 CMD Power Systems ......................................................10 Coach House Restaurant ..................................................6 Cold River Campground .................................................23 Colin Bartlett & Sons, Inc. .................................................4 Colonial Health Care .......................................................45 Complete Tire Service, Inc. .............................................13 Corinna Auto Body .........................................................41 County Connections Renovations Inc. ............................21 Crandall’s Hardware .......................................................49 Crossroads Motel & Restaurant .....................................46 Cyr Northstar Tours .........................................................16 D&D Paving, Inc. ............................................................33 Daigle & Houghton ...........................................................23 Deerfield Leathers ............................................................4 Dennis Ewer Trucking & Logging ....................................11 Dexter Lumber Company ................................................41 Doane Foundations & Construction ................................38 Dover True Value Hardware ............................................42 Downeast Sharpening Services .....................................12 Dr. Durwin Libby, DMD ...................................................32 Driveway Maintenance Paving .......................................24 East Grand Health Center ..............................................47 East Road Electric Inc. ...................................................32 Ellis’ Greenhouse & Nursery ..........................................43 Ellsworth Chain Saw ......................................................13 Ellsworth Moose Lodge ...................................................14 Employee Health Solutions .............................................18 Exeter Country Store ......................................................41 F.A. Peabody Company ....................................................33

BUSINESS

PAGE

Francis Cormier Construction ..........................................15 Frank Landry & Sons, Inc. .............................................50 Freedom Paving Group, LLC ...........................................16 Freightliner of Maine Inc. ....................................................5 Gerald Pelletier Inc. ........................................................35 Gordius Garage & Island Motors ......................................40 Graham’s Warewashing & Laundry Repair ......................7 Greater Northern Paving .................................................17 Greenhead Lobster, LLC ................................................25 Guagus Enterprises, LLC ................................................24 H.C. Haynes, Inc. ..........................................................46 Haley Power Services ......................................................27 Hammond Lumber Company ..........................................18 Hanington Bros., Inc. ......................................................47 Hannaford - Bucksport .....................................................38 Hannaford - Ellsworth .......................................................12 Harmon’s ..........................................................................29 Harold’s Transmission Repairs, Inc. .................................12 Herrick Excavation ..........................................................31 High Street Market ...........................................................44 Hogan Tire .......................................................................48 Hometown Health Center .................................................28 Houston-Brooks Auctioneers .............................................3 HW Dunn & Son Inc. .......................................................13 In-Home Care Personal Care Services ............................35 Island Auto Repair ..........................................................26 Island Fishing Gear & Auto Parts .....................................15 Island Nursing Home ........................................................25 J. McLaughlin Construction, LLC .......................................34 J. Wilbur Construction .......................................................41 J.D. Logging, Inc. ..............................................................41 J.E. Tracey & Son, LLC .....................................................24 Jato Highlands Golf Course .............................................44 Jerry’s Shurfine ................................................................50 Jimar Construction Products LLC ....................................19 Jim’s Small Engines .........................................................23 JKA Motor Sports Cars & Trucks .......................................14 J.M. Brown Construction, General Contractor, Inc. ..........20 John R. Crooker Insurance Agency ..................................38 John Williams Construction .............................................23 Johnson Foundations ......................................................31 Jon D. Woodward & Son, Inc. ............................................14 Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce ...........................35 Katahdin Health Care ......................................................49 Katahdin Valley Motel .......................................................37 Keith Mitchell & Sons Trucking .........................................49 Kimball Insurance, LLC ...................................................42 King’s Appliances & Floor Coverings ..............................28 Ladd Brothers Engine Works ..........................................42 Law Office of Charles W. Hodsdon II ................................9 LeClair Construction .........................................................7 Lee Historical Society & Museum .....................................46 Levesque Business Solutions ..........................................17 Lincoln Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce ................45 Lincoln Powersports ........................................................45 Lone Wolf Auto Body ......................................................50 Lougee & Frederick’s Florist ............................................20 Lovell’s Guilford Hardware & Building Supplies ................31 Magoon Realty, Inc. ........................................................13 Maine Collision Center .....................................................21 Maine Energy Inc. ............................................................20 Maine Equipment Company ..............................................5 Maine Highlands Federal Credit Union .............................28 Maine Historical Society .....................................................5 Maine’s Outdoor Learning Center ....................................14 Maritime International ......................................................20 McKusick Petroleum Co. .................................................29 Merle B. Grindle Insurance Agency .................................25 Mike’s Masonry ...............................................................12 Milford Motel .....................................................................7 Millinocket House of Pizza ..............................................49 Milo’s Full Service Grocer ...............................................32 Newport House of Pizza ...................................................28 North Country Auto .............................................................6 Northeast Applicators LLC ................................................5 North Woods Real Estate .................................................36 O’Brien & Sons Trucking & Contracting ............................41

BUSINESS

PAGE

Parker Ridge Retirement Community ...............................25 Pat’s Pizza - Hampden, Holden, Orono ...........................17 Penobscot Marine Museum ..............................back cover Perkco Supply, Inc. ..........................................................29 Perry O’Brian - Attorney at Law .......................................10 Pine Grove Crematorium ...................................................4 Piscataquis Chamber of Commerce ...............................31 R.A. Seger Paving ...........................................................40 Ray Builders Inc. .............................................................13 Red’s Automotive ............................................................27 Registered Maine Guide School .......................................14 River’s Edge Motel ...........................................................36 Rocky Shore Realty ..........................................................11 Rogan’s Memorials ..........................................................26 Roger’s Market Inc. .........................................................43 Ronnie’s Truck Service .....................................................24 Rowell’s Garage Sales & Service and Car Wash ..............42 Rt. 9 Towing & Recovery ..................................................12 S&S Energy .....................................................................43 S.O.B. Oil & Earthworks Co., LLC .....................................44 Savage Paint & Body .......................................................37 Scootic In Restaurant ......................................................49 Sebasticook Valley Chamber of Commerce .....................40 Sebasticook Valley Federal Credit Union ..........................27 Shaw Financial Services .................................................49 Stardust Motel .................................................................34 STEaD Timberlands, LLC ...............................................47 Steinke & Caruso Dental Care ..........................................4 Stewart’s Wrecker Service ..............................................23 Straight Up Roofing ...........................................................8 Stucco Lodge ...................................................................17 Sturdi-Bilt Storage Buildings LLC ....................................34 Sullivan’s Wrecker Service .............................................16 Superior Service Heating & Cooling .................................43 Swett’s Tire & Auto .............................................................3 T.G. Dunn Plumbing, Inc. ..................................................39 Tax Resolution Doctor, Inc. ...............................................7 The Charles Inn ................................................................21 The Chimney Guys ..........................................................29 The Maine Store ...............................................................40 The Pioneer Place, U.S.A. Country General Store ...........46 The Wilson Museum ........................................................15 Thibodeau’s Lawn Care ...................................................18 Thomas Logging & Forestry, Inc. ....................................31 Thomas W. Duff Financial Advisor - Brewer ...................22 Thomas W. Duff Financial Advisor - Millinocket ..............35 Thompson’s Hardware Inc. .............................................44 Tim Merrill & Co., Inc. ......................................................29 Town of Enfield ................................................................43 Town of Lincoln ...............................................................33 Town of Mars Hill ...............................................................6 Tradewinds Market - Milo ................................................32 Trapier’s Steak and Seafood ...........................................44 Tri City Pizza ...................................................................10 Tucker Auto Repair ..........................................................11 Union Street Towing ..........................................................9 U-Save Car & Truck Rental ............................................28 Vacationland Inns ............................................................21 Vancil Vision Care ...........................................................38 Varney’s Newport Ford ...................................................39 Vintage Maine Images ......................................................5 Wagner Forest Management, Ltd. .....................................9 Wardwell Construction & Trucking Corp. .........................38 Wardwell Oil .....................................................................25 Ware’s Power Equipment ...............................................45 WCL Carpentry ...............................................................42 West End Drug Co. .........................................................26 West’s Coastal Connection ...............................................4 Wheaton’s Lodge ...........................................................33 Whited Truck Center .......................................................19 Whitney’s Outfitters .........................................................44 Whitten’s 2-Way Service, Inc. ..........................................22 Willey’s Sport Center .......................................................24 Williams & Taplin Well Drilling Services ............................14 Wing Wah Restaurant .....................................................45 Winter Harbor Food Service ............................................12 York’s of Houlton ..............................................................48

52

~ Penobscot-Piscataquis-HancockPenobscot-Piscataquis-Hancock Counties ~ Counties

Own a piece of history!

Visit our museum online www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org 80,000 historic photographs A photograph is a perfect gift!

Route One Searsport, Maine 04974 207-548-2529 www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org