Southern maine 2015-16

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Volume 24 | Issue 8 | 2016

Maine’s History Magazine

15,000 Circulation

Southern & Coastal Maine

Milling About Biddeford

A time when workers were the cogs in the machine

Following Finnegan’s Wake

The Irish dockworkers of Portland

Return Of The Puffins

A harbinger of coastal Maine’s restoration efforts

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Southern & Coastal Maine Region

Inside This Edition

2 3

It Makes No Never Mind James Nalley

5

Milling About Biddeford A time when workers were the cogs in the machine Jeffrey Bradley

10 Sebago’s Evans Fitch Local musician epitomized Maine’s bluegrass artists Brian Swartz 16 Saco’s Hilary Mahaney From football field to the courtroom Charles Francis 22 The Hamlin Line Of Waterford A family that made things happen Charles Francis 25 When Black Troops Guarded The Grand Trunk Railroad He also serves who only stands and waits Jeffrey Bradley 28 Following Finnegan’s Wake The Irish dockworkers of Portland Jeffrey Bradley 33 William G. “Billy” Hill The Mainer who outshot Annie Oakley William Krohn 40 Stroudwater’s Broad Tavern Colonial era tavern gave way to the modern airplane Brian Swartz 43 “Scarlet mastodon” Highlighted A Parade In Rural Gorham... ...and chewed its way through a pasture Brian Swartz 48 A History Of Red Fox Hunting In Maine A popular sport in the late 1800s John Murray 52 Return Of The Puffins A harbinger of coastal Maine’s restoration efforts Jeffrey Bradley 56 Bristol’s Marcus Hanna A lifesaving hero James Nalley 59 Carrabassett Valley’s John G. Norris Maine ski coach brought detente to the ski slopes of China Brian Swartz 62 Freeport’s Josiah Mitchell Shipwrecked sailors owed their survival to the skipper Brian Swartz 66 The Launching Of The USS Cummings Elegantly dressed crowd turned out at Bath in 1913 Brian Swartz 70 The Genealogy Corner Pedigree pride Charles Francis 72 Alden Blethen “Raise hell and sell newspapers” Lorraine McConaghy

Maine’s History Magazine

Southern & Coastal Maine

Publisher & Editor Jim Burch

Layout & Design Liana Merdan

Advertising & Sales Manager Tim Maxfield

Advertising & Sales Barry Buck Dennis Burch Chris Girouard Tim Maxfield Zackary Rouda

Office Manager

Liana Merdan

Field Representatives George Tatro Fred Connell

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

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

SUBSCRIPTION FORM ON PAGE 74

Front Cover Photo: Gas station & restaurant in South Portland, item # LB2007.1.102535 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org All photos in Discover Maine’s Southern & Coastal Maine edition show Maine as it used to be, and many are from local citizens who love this part of Maine.

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

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

It Makes No Never Mind

by James Nalley

C

hances are, as you thumb through this Southern and Coastal Maine edition, the first snowfall has already occurred and the winter holidays are drawing near. Now, regardless of what those in southern New England think, Mainers do not just put on their flannel and hide away like bears for a long winter’s nap. On the contrary, scattered up and down the southern coast are towns that celebrate this special time of year, but add a certain twist that reminds you that your feet are still firmly planted in Maine. The following are such examples, but not in any order or ranking.

First, recognized as the “2nd Christmas Town in the United States” by HGTV, Kennebunkport presents its annual “Christmas Prelude” (1st, 2nd weekend after Thanksgiving). In this event, visitors can stroll through the town to view shops decorated with Christmas ornaments, hear carolers singing holiday tunes, and witness the Pooch Parade in which our four-legged friends don the latest Christmas apparel. Second, there is the “Freeport Sparkle Weekend” (1st weekend of December),

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which includes a parade of lights, a talking Christmas tree, a holiday movie marathon, and a reading of “The Polar Express” aboard the Amtrak Downeaster. Of course, we cannot forget their Tuba Christmas Concert! Third, there is the “Lighting of the Nubble” (Saturday after Thanksgiving) in York, where the town lights the Nubble Lighthouse, which is one of the most photographed lighthouses in the state. Along with this event, visitors can sip on hot cocoa while Santa stops by for a quick visit.

Fourth, there is the “Christmas Boat Parade of Lights” (2nd Saturday in December) on Portland Harbor, where the famed Casco Bay Lines present its feast for the eyes that ends with a spectacular fireworks display.

Fifth, there is the “Festival of Trees” (late November through December) in Saco where dozens of decorated Christmas trees are based on a selected theme. There is, of course, a visit from Santa and his wife, and the ever-popular Gingerbread Village.

Sixth, although a bit up the coast, there is the “Festival of Lights” (late November to early December) in Rockland, which has certainly found a way to add “Maine” to the Christmas concept. For example, in addition to the carolers and the horse-drawn

carriage rides, they present the world’s largest Christmas tree made of lobster traps!

Of course, Santa finds time to visit, and he even arrives by boat! Finally, there is the “Christmas by the Sea” (1st, 2nd weekend in December) in Ogunquit. This two-week event includes it all: Christmas parades, holiday shopping, caroling, Santa’s village, holiday storytelling, and even cookie decorating. What a way to enjoy the holidays and realize why the town’s name of Ogunquit means “beautiful place by the sea.”

Well, my hot cocoa is ready and my short “holiday themed” time has come to an end.

So, I will leave you with the following: The television game show was really close and one contestant was asked to name four of Santa’s reindeer for the win.

He smiled (thinking that he had received an easy question) and yelled, “Rudolph, Olive, Howe, and Andy!” The host, looking puzzled, asked him to clarify his choices. The man replied, “Well, there is Rudolph, of course. Then, Olive, the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names. Then there is Howe, as in Howe the reindeer loved him.

Finally, Andy, as in Andy shouted out with glee.”

In these pages you will see businesses from Maine’s Southern & Coastal Maine Region which take great pride in serving the public, and business owners and employees who also take pride in being Mainers.

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

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Early view of the railroad station in South Berwick. Item # LB2007.1.111984 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Milling About Biddeford A time when workers were the cogs in the machine

by Jeffrey Bradley

L

uddites were the British textile workers that threw their wooden shoes into the milling machinery that was taking away their jobs. What they would have thought of the big red brick mills on the Saco River can only be guessed. But it’s a fact that by 1850 this factory district was already one of the country’s largest. And it’s also a fact that of the 12,000 people employed, not one was a Luddite.

Still, the mill workers did throw an occasional monkey wrench in the machine.

Below Biddeford, the Saco becomes two spilling falls. Reliable water power enabled industry of all kinds to materialize along the riverbank. Already,

in 1653, a sawmill stood where Main Street crosses over to Saco Island. By 1800, nearly twenty were cutting thousands of board feet a day.

This was pocket change to the cotton mills.

Crews began early on blasting the rocky hillsides to make way for the mills. The idea was to put the entire complex process of turning cotton into a finished product under one factory roof. Nothing would be left to chance.

And it worked. Business was brisk from the start, and markets opened as far away as the South Sea Islands.

After the American Revolution, the “Waltham system” of textile manufacturing began gathering together the

spinners and weavers that produced piecemeal work at home. The mills put this concept on steroids, in the process turning sleepy Biddeford into an industrial mega-center. Think of the mills as a kind of giant beehive. And what a hive! But no matter their size — and some were 500 feet long(the buildings, I mean) — the mills, like the hives, could not produce the honey — or the money — alone. Absent constant effort, production of either grinds to a halt. Workers need to tend to the drudge work, while drones (the managers) coordinate movement. Queen, or in the mills’ case, king bees (the owner-investors) keep the whole shebang moving.

And the soldiers? They were the goons (continued on page 6)

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(continued from page 5) that broke up the strikes.

The Biddeford-Saco Mills Historic District contains bygone-era manufacturing buildings designated as having “industrial and architectural significance.” Their minimalist facades still evoke a powerful sense of industrial might. In time, the gambrel silhouettes gave way to a flatter, more functional roofline with iron scrollwork under the eaves. Hundreds of workers, in an old black and white photo, cluster around an entrance gate, tolled there by a company bell. The trendy renovations of today cannot erase their ghostly legacy left imprinted where the colossal machines once clattered and clanged and roared.

The York Manufacturing Company opened Mill No. 1 on Factory Island in 1832. By century’s end, the company was running eight. Thousands flocked for the work, or in the allied industries of the Saco-Lowell Shops that built and maintained the massive machines, and

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Garland Manufacturing, producer of leather items like loom harnesses. The Saco Water Power Company was especially active: director and mill-building impresario Samuel Batchelder consolidated the Laconia Company in 1845, and Pepperell Manufacturing in 1850.

(They merged in 1899, with Laconia getting the blanket division and Pepperell getting the sheets.) York closed in 1958, one of the last great mills to do so.

A brief history of mill life Domestic labor first came by way of the “mill girls”;farm girls, really, seeking the chance for a life in “the city.” Instead they found that living in a boardinghouse, under strict supervision, was compulsory if you worked in a mill. A faded era tintype depicts two factory girls wearing severe expressions and frumpy working outfits. No wonder.

Three dollars for a seventy hour work week, minus the $1.25 for room and board, left little money for buying frou-

frou. No matter; most of them soon got married and moved away.

The mills devoured workers. When rising production overwhelmed the mill girls, French-Canadian, Greek and Irish immigrant workers were hired to fill the void.

The triumph of unreason But no pen-portrait can describe what it was really like to work in a mill.

Functionaries wielding clipboards, for instance, hovered just outside the bathroom stalls to time breaks and prevent loitering — if the stall had a door, that is, which most did not. As production soared, the pace grew frantic. Picture “slubber machines” looking like something from Stephen King drawing yarn whizzingly from hundreds of spinningspools; monstrous roving machines — banks of ‘em — that seemed capable of eating small children; rumbling looms looming side-by-side in the distance; untold rows of whirring spindles, rocker arms in crazy motion, venting stand-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com pipes all a-hissing, leather belts insanely twirling — and everything more jam-packed together than the insides of a submarine. Pity the poor worker who suffered from vertigo.

In a time unconcerned with “job fulfillment” or even safety, production was the only imperative. Any glitch in the complexity, and things could go haywire fast. Before automation, workers listened for subtle vibrations and oscillations amid the mechanical rhythms to gauge which lever to pull or what button to push. Keeping ahead of the curve was just part of the job.

Of course, this could call down the charge from the storm clouds, and strikes happened. Some turned ugly.

One, in 1893, actually increased wages and improved the miserable conditions.

But in this age of the robber baron, with capitalism run nearly amok, the smokestacks must belch and the machinery must whirl and the workers must toil unceasingly, and God help us all if pro-

A day in the life of…

Welcome to the job. There are a lot of people looking for work, you know. We start at 5 in the morning and finish at 7. Yes, pm. But we give you a half hour break for breakfast.

And you get three whole holidays — Fast Day in April, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving — off. But no Christmas. Bah, humbug!

We set a quick pace on the floor, so mind those conveyors and the looms underfoot or you’re liable to get injured. Sure, the rooms are dark and drafty, and the work is tedious and dull, but we bet it beats your cold-water flat stuffed to the rafters with family at home. Absolutely no complaining about pay cuts or layoffs, either, or you’ll get yourself a pink slip faster’n you can say “Pepperell Mills”. And remember — no shirking!

duction falters. The owners, you see, knew a thing or two about squeezing a nickel. But whether you viewed the mills as an employment opportunity run by captains of industry or teeming sweatshops that hideously exploited

the worker all depended which side of the spindle you were standing on.

Then, one day, the machinery stopped, and the formidable mills of Biddeford ran no more. * Other businesses in this area are featured in the color section.

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Early view of a store and post office in East Waterboro. Item # LB2007.1.100656 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Sebago’s Evans Fitch Local musician epitomized Maine’s Bluegrass Artists

by Brian Swartz

Insurance agent by day and bluegrass musician by night and on weekends: Evans Fitch of Sebago epitomized the devotees of a music genre popular throughout Maine, yet seldom heard today on airwaves dominated by country music, rock ’roll, and pop.

Born in Portland in September 1938, George Evans Fitch Jr. — known all his life as “Evans” — graduated from Potter Academy in Sebago in 1957. By then he had connected with his life’s passion: bluegrass and country music.

First he had to endure the bane of many youngsters of his generation: piano lessons. Tickling the ivories did not interest Evans; family lore reveals that he preferred learning the guitar and expressed his desire to do so by frequent-

Evan Fitch playing pedal steel guitar

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Getting the message, his parents relented, and Maine-based bluegrass and country music became all the better for their decision.

In his early teens, Evans listened to music emanating from performers affiliated with the World’s Original Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia. Fascinated by the chords that Buck Graves struck on his dobro guitar (its unusual name originated with the resonator guitar’s designers, brothers John and Emil Dopyera) while playing with Stoney Cooper and Wilma Lee, Evans learned to play the non-electric Hawaiian guitar before mastering its electrified version.

Before graduating from high school, Evans played with such Maine bands as

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Tennessee Ted and The Melody Folks and The Hill Country Boys; his first venture into live country music occurred when he was 14. He also played on The Ken McKenzie Show, which broadcast on WGAN 560 AM in Portland.

In time Evans got together with Roly Curit, Gloria Dee, and Bill Vashon (talented Maine country artists in their own rights) to form The Country Edition.

Although this band dissolved a few years later, Evans and Gloria Dee established the band Gloria Dee and The Dee-Lites, the predecessor to Country Cookin’, the band with which Evans played the pedal steel guitar well into the 1980s.

Another member of the band was Gloria, Evans’s first wife. They had two daughters, Allyson and Elaine.

In 1959 (during his pre-Country Cookin’ years) Evans was attending Portland University (merged with the University of Maine two years later)

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when the Defense Department sent him a “greetings.” He donned a Navy uniform for two years and served aboard the USS Boston (CAG-1), a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser that had been reconfigured as a guided missile cruiser.

Leaving the Navy in 1961, Evans returned to Maine and joined his father as a partner in the George E. Fitch Insurance Agency in Limerick. He worked long hours to help customers meet their insurance needs — and he also devoted many hours each month to performing bluegrass and country.

With a sparse population spread over a geographically large land mass, Maine has seldom afforded homegrown musicians an opportunity to earn a steady living with their music. Bluegrass and country artists work full-time in other professions and play when and wherever they can in their spare time.

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trysiders, and Rick Wells and The Wagon Wheels. While performing with The Country Edition, Evans helped record Country Music Sensation in conjunction with Jerry Evans.

Country music — often referred to as “hillbilly music” in the 1950s and ’60s — was popular on the AM airwaves in that era. Evans could be heard performing with Maine bands on WIDE 1400 AM in Biddeford, WGAN 560 AM (and its TV counterpart) and WCSH TV in Portland, and WLAM AM 1470 in Auburn.

Evans helped launch the Maine Country Music Association and later served as its president; he was also involved with the Down East Country Music Association.

Bluegrass music, which has its own distinctive sound, has long been a major component of country music. Although they often play country music, bluegrass aficionados relish the difference. (continued on page 12)

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(continued from page 11) “There’s something about the [bluegrass] music,” explained Barbara Fitch, who married Evans in 1998. “There’s a spirit to it … fast and moving and very energetic.”

Barbara, who is from Levant, moved to Maryland in the late 1970s and “discovered” bluegrass, a genre disappearing from the Maine airwaves. “I heard it on the radio [in Maryland], heard it at music festivals, heard it in so many places,” she recalled. “I loved it; I just listened to it.”

Barbara returned to Maine in 1980, worked for several years in Massachusetts, and moved back to the Pine Tree State for good in 1989. By now employed at United Bank in Bangor, she “didn’t know they had bluegrass in Maine.”

Ken Brooks, a United Bank customer and a talented artist, played the guitar in two bluegrass bands and displayed his paintings at the United Bank branch where Barbara worked. One day

~ Evans Fitch and the Shiloh Mountain Boys ~ he “put up a painting of a violin with a drapery behind it,” she said.

To a bluegrass devotee, a violin is a fiddle, not a violin. “‘They have bluegrass in Maine?’ I said, when I saw his painting,” Barbara recalled.

She later learned to play the guitar and upright bass. In June 1995 “a mutual friend” introduced her to Evans Fitch at the Blistered Fingers Bluegrass Fes-

tival in Sidney. Evans was not pickin’ that day, so he and Barbara listened to the music and got to know each other.

“When I met him, he was with Howard Allen and The Troubadours, a country band,” Barbara said. Evans played the dobro and pedal steel guitar with the band, which in October 1994 had garnered two prestigious American Eagle Awards at the Country Music Asso-

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Evans and Barbara saw each other every weekend and often attended different festivals or pickin’ sessions together; Barbara moved to southern Maine in September 1995, and she and Evans married three years later.

Evans “started the Country Heritage Band, and I did get up a few times and sing a few songs with his band” at clubs in southern Maine, Barbara recalled.

Evans Fitch died of a heart attack on May 27, 2002. Stunned members of the Down East Country Music Association dedicated the organization’s 22nd Annual Awards Show (held in early October 2002) to Evans’s memory.

“He was definitely one of a kind and will surely be missed by all that had the pleasure of knowing him,” the 2002 program indicated.

Barbara Fitch still attends several pickin’ parties each year. She enjoys listening as bluegrass musicians co-

alesce to play a tune or two. While the organized summer festivals (Blistered Fingers has relocated to Litchfield) feature scheduled performances, pickin’ sessions involve spontaneous performances. A few musicians start playing a melody, and other musicians join them.

Singing is an important aspect of bluegrass pickin’. “There is a certain etiquette to it,” Barbara said. “When

somebody takes the lead in singing, they sing the verses, and everyone else comes in on the choruses.”

Musicians are under no obligation to “pick” a certain number of songs. A guitarist may drop out, a banjo player may join the next song or two, and a bass player may perform for a while.

According to Barbara, “it is interesting how the music changes as people drop out and people come in.”

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Saco’s Hilary Mahaney

by Charles Francis

From football field to courtroom

H

ilary Mahaney loved football.

Proof of this can be found in the fact he was regarded as one of the best field officials to ever grace a southern Maine high school playing field. As an official, Mahaney was thoroughly objective and unbiased, even when his alma mater, Thornton Academy, was one of the teams on the field.

Some might say one of the reasons Hilary Mahaney was an objective football official had to do with the fact he was a judge. While that seems logical, it is too simple. After all, Mahaney dearly loved football. You don’t sully something you love.

Some might ask, why on earth would a judge take the time to officiate a football game? Shakespeare said “the

play’s the thing!” The bard placed the words in Hamlet’s mouth. The context of the line is conscience. It has to do with morality. Of course, Shakespeare was talking about a staged play, not sport as play. Yet, one can find parallels between stagecraft and the craft of football. Both require uprightness in

the sense of fair play. Law courts are supposed to be settings for ethical fair play. So, too, are playing fields.

Hilary Mahaney played football in high school. He played at Thornton Academy. He was very good. He was good enough to go on and play in college, at Holy Cross, where he was named All-American. From Holy Cross, Mahaney went on to study law at Boston University. There he coached the football team, first as an assistant coach and then as head coach.

Football wasn’t Mahaney’s chosen career goal, though — the law was.

Mahaney left the playing field of Boston University to return to Maine. He became an attorney in Saco and later a municipal judge. He could not put the

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com lure of the football field on a crisp fall day behind him, though. That, in part, explains why, of a Saturday afternoon, Mahaney was to be found running up and down the striped field of the gridiron wearing a football official’s jersey.

Hilary Mahaney is one of Maine’s sport legends. There is no question that Mahaney could have gone on to a career in professional football. He had all the skills and talent to become a star in the pros. He would have become a star because he was too intelligent to have been other.

Hilary Mahaney was a fullback on the Thornton football team. At Holy Cross he was a tight end. Both positions are the reserve of the strong and powerful. Both require good hands and ball handling. Mahaney had good hands. He played basketball and baseball at Thornton. He was a center on the basketball team and catcher on the baseball team. But it was football that was Mahaney’s great love.

Hilary Mahaney was an outstanding Maine football player. His senior year he was named to the All-State team.

In-state recognition is one thing, but what about out-of-state? The legendary Walter Camp named Mahaney to his All-American roster in 1924. He joined the great Red Grange of Illinois on that team. Adam Walsh and Harry Studldreher of Notre Dame were on the team, too. They played for Knute Rockne.

The were two of the backfield famed as the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.

That’s heady company, to say the least.

But if you want heady company consider some of Hilary Mahaney’s other accolades.

Mahaney’s name is also featured on the Boston Post All-Time All-American team. That team includes the likes of Jim Thorpe, Doc Blanchard, George Gipp and Red Grange. Then there is the Holy Cross Athletic Hall Of Fame. Mahaney’s name is there, too, along with that of another Maine native, Louis (continued on page 18)

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(continued from page 17) Sockalexis, the baseball player. A look through the Holy Cross list of greats also reveals other New England legends like Bob Cousy and Tommy Heinsohn of Celtics fame.

Hilary Mahaney graduated Thornton Academy in 1921. Thornton competed in the prep school league in football.

Back then the prep school league was regarded as the most competitive in the state, a sort of Division 1 of the secondary school ranks. Mahaney played football for four years straight. Three of those four years Thornton won the league championship. Mahaney was All-Conference fullback his junior and senior years. His senior year he was team captain.

When Mahaney entered Holy Cross, college football was still in its formative years. There was nothing akin to a national championship. However, football was making a transition. What had been referred to as the “Boston Game”

was being taken over by such powers as Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame. The first real college stars were coming to be recognized, hence the “four Horsemen” and Fordham’s “Seven Blocks of Granite.” Hilary Mahaney was one of these early college stars. As late as 1928, a New York Times sports writer referred to the “Hilary Mahaney Array” when Holy Cross played. By then, however, Mahaney was an assistant coach at Boston University.

Boston University had a long football history when Hilary Mahaney started law school there. The program had begun in 1884. Boston University’s football program was one of the reasons why the sport was known as the Boston Game, though it might be more appropriate to call it the New England game, given the Harvard/Yale rivalry.

Boston University under Mahaney posted a good record, though not a stellar one. Back when the Depression

was just beginning, Tufts was the big Boston University rival. Mahaney left B. U. in 1931 after two seasons as the school’s head coach. With that, his career in football ended, except for his high school officiating.

Hilary Mahaney was born in Biddeford in 1902. He died in 1969. In 1980 Mahaney became a member of the first class of inductees of the Maine Sports Hall of Fame.

There is one more recognition accorded Hilary Mahaney that must be commented on. He was named to the Swede Nelson All-Time-All America Football Squad. The Nils V. “Swede” Nelson awards are the most significant awards given by the Gridiron Club of Greater Boston. They recognize more than athletic accomplishment. Besides academic accomplishment, the awards are given for exemplary sportsmanship and citizenship. In a sense, the Swede Nelson awards have a Shakespearean (continued on page 20)

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(continued from page 18) ethic. They draw attention to fair play on and off the field, that “the play’s the thing!” This is the ethic that encapsulates the life of Hilary Mahaney, jurist, football official and great Maine athlete.

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The Hamlin Line Of Waterford A family that made things happen

by Charles Francis

E

leazer Hamlin was the progenitor of all the Hamlins who settled in Oxford County and most of those who settled the rest of Maine.

Eleazer was descended from James Hamlin of Devonshire in England.

James Hamlin was one of the original incorporators of Barnstable on Cape Cod. Most Hamlins in America trace their genealogy to James. Writing in her 1909 Eleazer Hamlin and His Descendants Myra Sawyer Hamlin cited a figure of 20,000 for James’ American descendants. Eleazer did his part in adding to that number. The patriarch of Waterford Hamlins fathered seventeen.

The Waterford Hamlin story begins shortly after the end of the Rev-

olution. The Massachusetts General Court awarded Eleazer a grant for his patriotic services. The grant was huge.

Even today the name Hamlin’s Grant is known, though there is some disagreement as to designation. The grant is sometimes identified with Woodstock and sometimes with Hamlin’s Gore and sometimes with Waterford depending on who you read. The grant isn’t the subject here; it’s enough to say Eleazer had a large tract of land.

In fact, Eleazer Hamlin had so much property that he was able to offer each of his eight living sons land enough in what would become Waterford to take up farming if they so chose. Four of them, Africa, America, Eleazer, and

Hannibal, accepted the offer. At the time there were only a dozen families in town.

Today the name Hamlin is one to conjure with... at least if you are a Mainer. From an historical perspective, the best known is Hannibal Hamlin, the man who served as Abraham Lincoln’s first term vice president. The Vice President was Eleazer Hamlin’s grandson. Hannibal Hamlin’s brother Augustus, one of the two discoverers of Mt. Mica tourmaline and president of the Mt. Mica Company, wrote histories. There are other Hamlins of similar note. Eleazer was also grandfather to Cyrus Hamlin, missionary to Turkey and founder of Robert College in Con-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com stantinople. Charles S. Hamlin, first chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, was another of Eleazer’s descendants.

Contemporary Maine writer and novelist Ardeana Hamlin is the author of Pink Chimneys and A Dream of Paris.

The list goes on.

The Hamlins who settled Waterford were a hardy lot. Their spouses were, too. Take Susanna, wife of Africa. Susanna Hamlin made the journey from Long Pond, in what would become Parsonsfield, by moose sled, a nursing infant in her arms. The use of the moose sled tells us Susanna’s trek was in winter. Susanna made the journey essentially on her own, without friends or family. Africa wasn’t with her. He had business back in Harvard, the Massachusetts town most of Eleazer’s family called home in the late 1700s. When asked if she wasn’t lonely in her new wilderness home, Susanna is said to have replied “No, not at all.”

Though Eleazer Hamlin lived in

Harvard when he received his Maine grant, his roots were in Pembroke where the majority of his children were born. Eleazer was living in Pembroke when the Lexington alarm of the 19th of April was sounded. At the time he was a second lieutenant in a militia company. Pembroke, however, was too far for him to take part in the fighting at Lexington and Concord. It doesn’t mean he missed out on the conflict, though.

April of 1776 finds the Hamlins living in Harvard. Eleazer has the rank of captain in the Continental Army. He is with Washington in New York. Tradition has it Eleazer is released from duty when General Washington learns of the size of the family he has left at home.

Back in Harvard Eleazer, a self-educated man, is a member of the Committee of Correspondence and Safety. The later organization served as conduit for information passing up and down the colonies on Redcoat troop movements.

In other words, it was an espionage or-

ganization. Sons Africa, Europe, America and Eleazer performed their Patriot duty too, serving in the Army.

The title of this piece is intended to present Waterford as a nexus point for the Hamlin family of Maine. The family’s origins were Pembroke and before that Cape Cod and before that England, not just Harvard in Massachusetts.

While not all of Eleazer’s immediate descendants to make Maine their home settle in Waterford, the majority did. In other words, Waterford is what drew the Hamlins to Maine and is the locus from which the Maine Hamlins spread.

Of Eleazer’s offspring who settled Waterford, Africa would appear to be the first. He and Susanna settled in what became known as South Waterford. Africa and Susanna had five children who went on to have families of their own.

Their son Polidor, a captain in the militia, would appear to have inherited the family farm.

America Hamlin settled not all that (continued on page 24)

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(continued from page 23) far from Africa. He married twice and fathered eight offspring who had families of their own. America’s son America was another Hamlin who sunk roots in Waterford. He settled just south of his father near the Harrison line. Another of the elder America’s sons, Luther, inherited his father’s homestead.

Eleazer, the third of the Hamlin brothers to take up his father’s offer of farmland, settled settled in the southwestern section of Waterford. Five of his children went on to have families.

Eleazer was a Waterford municipal official and represented the region in the legislature.

Hannibal, the last of the brothers to make Waterford his home, was, like his brother Eleazer, a municipal official.

He was also a militia officer, holding the rank of major. He served as Oxford County sheriff. Four of his children, one of whom was Cyrus, the Turkish missionary, had families.

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used for the children of the four Waterford Hamlin brothers who had families of their own. As with records of this kind there may be errors or omissions.

There was a fifth son of Eleazer who settled in Maine, though not in Waterford. This was Cyrus, who made his living both as teacher and as physician.

Cyrus was twin to Hannibal, the major mentioned above. In 1795 Cyrus was invited by the inhabitants of Livermore to settle there. At the time the community had no doctor. Records indicate that almost immediately upon arriving in Livermore, Cyrus secured a large practice and at the same time a most estimable wife. The wife was Anna, daughter of Deacon Elijah Livermore.

In 1804 Dr. Cyrus Hamlin purchased the farm known as Paris Hill.

By 1807 he had constructed a large and impressive two-story home. It was here the most famous of the descendants of Eleazer Hamlin was born, Vice president Hannibal Hamlin.

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by Jeffrey Bradley Wartime can sometimes be a strange thing. Take, for instance, the early 1940s, when a Nazi win in Europe seemed like a sure bet. Hitler’s reach extended not only from the North Pole to the trackless Sahara Desert, but his forces were pummeling Britain, even as they knocked at the gates of Moscow. Indeed, hard on the heels of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor, der Fuhrer had declared war on America, turning a continental power grab into a world conflagration. And God help everyone if that madman ever managed to link up with the warlords of Japan!

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And here was Maine, straddling the vital North Atlantic approaches, with its indented, near-indefensible coastline, suddenly thrust to the forefront. Worse, abutting Canada, the state was prey to

provocateurs. Hadn’t there been that international railway bridge bombing business up Vanceboro way during the last war caused by German mischief?

No, Maine was far too important to be left unprotected, especially when the U-boats began ravaging the Eastern seaboard to leave American shipping ablaze like lurid torches in the night.

The Pine Tree State must be held, and it must be guarded. But there was a problem: America’s industrial base was being harnessed for war, and in a hurry, but early on things looked much less than promising. Although presently the (continued on page 26)

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(continued from page 25) the strategic railway all the way to the Canadian border. During segregation, the upper echelons of “colored” units, as they were called, were white; the 366th was exceptional in that even its officers were black. (The same “separate-but-equal” statutes that segregated blacks and whites in civilian life also kept the troops apart — a situation not resolved until 1948 when President Truman integrated the military with a single stroke of his pen.)

Odd thing was, the Grand Trunk had been bankrupt for years; little freight and no passenger service rumbled over the rails. But there was that all-important strategic aspect to consider, and anyway somebody was going to have to pull guard duty. Why not the “colored troops,” who weren’t allowed in combat yet anyway? And so black soldiers were brought in to trudge up and down the abandoned line and protect some of the loneliest way stations

of any railroad anywhere, in what was probably the whitest part of the country, and in winter, in one of the chilliest states in the Union. And who says the Army doesn’t know what it’s doing?

Here was their situation: A tiny huddled cluster of soldiers, four, maybe, guarding a rickety trestle near Dunn’s Corners for many long uninterrupted hours. A photo online at the Maine Memory Network (to whom I am indebted) captures a soldier manfully striking a “Who goes there?” pose on the Royal River railroad bridge in North Yarmouth in 1942. Juxtaposed between receding rails and skewed bridge girders, he appears somehow to embody the dissonance of the times. How many unforeseen imponderables may bring a man to a certain situation having nothing to do with any prior experience or, in this case, a nation’s singular glimpse into its place in history?

What was at bottom, of course, was

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U.S. would smash both the Axis war machines simultaneously, for the moment, at least, there was a shortage of manpower. Meantime, the Eastern Defense Command was set up to protect the Northeast’s critical interests, one of four regional U.S. command centers formed in 1941.

The Vanceboro incident had spooked the high command, and German “wolf packs” running amok in the North Atlantic had given them a case of the jitters. If the main northern ports fell, well… the Grand Trunk Railroad would become instrumental in securing the region’s supplies. Headquartered in Canada and operating in many New England states besides Maine, the GT’s main line wound from Portland to Montreal. Therefore those trestles, bridges and junctions would have to be guarded.

In January of 1941 the 366th Infantry Regiment (Colored) arrived to protect

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the fact that these men were expected to lay down their lives, if necessary, in defense of a country that gave every indication of wishing them somewhere else. Writ large, this dilemma lay back of American life: keep separate, don’t ask to participate, and please don’t complain of exclusion. And oh, by the way, be willing to die for those rights you’re denied. But as conflicts go, this war was beginning to prove the point that either we stand or we fall together.

For shelter, the Army had provided boxcars or maybe a dilapidated caboose; anything else, and the troops were pretty much left on their own.

Usually, this meant locating a friendly house to ask for the privilege of hauling water. For men from the Deep South or a city like New York or Chicago, however much they were experienced as second-class citizens, this must have come as a cultural shock. No one could have blamed them had they chosen to

sullenly cling to their makeshift barracks.

Nor were hardscrabble rural Mainers, who generally got by on hard work and a pretty wide stubborn streak, much disposed toward strangers. With state-sanctioned Jim Crow laws penalizing Americans of African descent seemingly for being black, nothing could have been easier than ignoring a few “colored” soldiers holed up in a boxcar on some forgotten siding.

But in neither case did this happen.

Far from being ostracized, the lonely black troopers, hunkered down in their mean surroundings, managed to strike a resonant chord with the locals. And mostly, Mainers responded in kind.

In North Yarmouth, the troops were so befriended that they were soon being invited along to dances, in for dinner, down to the old swimming hole, for a game or two of cards, even potluck dinner at the church. Those stationed

in Falmouth at the Presumpscot River Bridge were encouraged to draw all the water they needed from the local firehouse. Aware that petty inconveniences could wreck a man’s morale, Mainers showed in such small ways that they understood and empathized with the soldiers’ plight. Another contingent guarding the crossing near the Falmouth Town Hall also found that their water supply relied on the kindness of neighbors. Yet so many offers came pouring in from the farms and houses inviting them to come and draw water, the troops, almost ruefully, quickly found themselves fairly afloat.

So much favor was given and found on both sides that a few of the more athletically-inclined soldiers joined a local baseball team, and ended up playing for the Portland Victory League — five years before Jackie Robinson famously broke baseball’s “color barrier” in 1947!

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Following Finnegan’s Wake The Irish dockworkers of Portland

by Jeffrey Bradley

S

ince 1786 Portland has been Maine’s major transit hub. And the “Old Port” warehouse district was always the heart of this storied seaport.

Molasses was the most common commodity on Portland’s piers. Since before the Revolution this sticky substance was condensed from West Indies sugar cane to a treacly syrup through a series of heating processes. Reduced to a granular powder by concerns like the JB Brown sugar refinery, it was also distilled by the McGlinchy brewery, among others, into tasty dark rum.

Loading and unloading the cramped holds of sailing ships fell to a stalwart band of black freemen living mostly on

Munjoy Hill. Then a remarkable combination of unforeseen events transformed these wharves into a powerhouse that rivaled Boston. The railroad, the Irish, and the Civil War, pretty much in that order, turned Portland from a sleepy seaport into a bustling New England entrepot for the next 150 years.

The South lost the Civil War mainly because it hadn’t the means to wage it.

“States’ rights” premised a weak central authority, which essentially left the Confederacy fighting with one hand behind its back. Its meagre resources could not be effectively mustered. The North suffered no such hardship. Vowing to hold the Union together at all costs, Lincoln wasted no time expand-

ing the federal government. Industry, the financial sector, public opinion, all were integrated in support of the war.

The unintended consequence was a repositioning of the nation for a quantum leap forward. Put another way, to beat the South, the president amassed a recognizably modern economy incidentally primed for prosperity. By 1863, following Gettysburg, it was becoming clear that the North might still lose the war but it could no longer be defeated. Time, for the Rebels, was running out. By contrast, the Union so prodigiously utilized its capacities that it could throttle the South, settle the West, and undertake a transcontinental (continued on page 30)

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(continued from page 28) railroad! Never before had a country in conflict ever pulled such a feat. While the Secessionist economy crumbled, up north it was booming; especially in New England, mostly in Maine, particularly in Portland.

Two happenings added impetus tothe pace of change in Portland: the railroad and the Irish came to town. Unlike Canadian ports that freeze solid during the winter, deepwater Portland remains virtually ice-free. To capitalize on this fact, visionary entrepreneur John A. Poor devised an ambitious scheme to link Portland by rail with Montreal.

Somehow, he brought it off. The arrival of what became known as the Grand Trunk Railroad in 1853 turned the port of Portland upside down. Now the transatlantic steamers with capacious holds could ply the seven seas brimming with Portland’s wares to every far-flung market on the globe. With its brand spanking-new railway and its

docks teetering under the piled goods, Portland was verging on hitting the big time.

But a glitch developed. A longshoreman’s lot was brutally hard, backbreaking work that demanded hard, brutal men with very strong backs to perform it. And there simply weren’t sturdy free men enough to handle the influx.

Besides, the sporadic work was hardly conducive to putting bread on the table on a regular basis. Finding capable roustabouts was in fact becoming something of a problem. But a whole new dynamic was about to set foot on the docks.

Coincident with the railroad came the first wave of Irish. Devastating potato famines had launched an endless Irish flotilla bound for America’s shores. Between 1848 and 1852 alone, more than a million arrived in New York. Many hailing from tradition-bound, hardscrabble County Gal-

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way booked passage straightaway for Portland. In what is called a “chain migration,” these early arrivals wired enough money home to finance their relatives into making the trip. When this great wave broke over Portland, many of those wearin’ o’ the green found themselves coming ashore near Munjoy Hill.

As Portland prospered, five more rail lines were added to keep the goods moving.

The Irish found opportunity along the docks. By sheer weight of numbers, they began edging the free blacks from the piers. More alarming, from their point of view, was the sizeable Irish incursion flooding Munjoy Hill and “Gorham’s Corner,” in the west end, near the old Catholic Church. Only recently these same Gaelic Irish had been harassed and scorned by Portland’s enclave of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians.

Unfazed, when time came to forming a

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union to protect dockworker interests, the Irish excluded the blacks.

Community can offer many immigrants a sense of protection. In Portland, the Irish pretty much kept to traditional ways. With reason, perhaps; hostile and powerful forces appeared everywhere. Some vested interests did consider them as clannish, congenital shirks (while the Gaelic speakers railed against the Anglo-Protestants as sharp Yankee bargain-hunters and anti-Romanists to boot.).Violence broke out, but nothing like the anthracite coal mines of Pennsylvania, where a dozen Irish “Molly Maguires” went to the gallows convicted of mayhem. Still, Portland witnessed enough bare-knuckle, back alley brawling to satisfy a whole ring full of John L. Sullivans. In time, these fighting Irish managed to leverage, elbow or slip their way into the halls of power.

All things considered, the Irish point

seems valid. The “Know-Nothings” were a politically powerful national movement reflecting the day’s popular biases. Of chief concern? The Roman Catholic Irish “tendency” to swear allegiance to the Pope in Rome; they felt this undermined the Republic. (They also found “Dutchmen”— Germans — alarming.). But before these nativists could act, they fell apart over slavery.

As late as 1960, feeling still ran high against candidate John F. Kennedy because of his Roman Catholicism.

American zeitgeist at one time condoned abusing immigrants. They came in droves anyway, for no place else offered these same opportunities. Despite the risks and the obstacles, capable men of persistent vision, performing undaunted the thankless task of building a nation, finally put this country on track for exceptionalism.

The Portland Longshoremen’s Benevolent Society incorporated in 1880. (continued on page 32)

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(continued from page 31) Composed nearly entirely of Gaelic-speaking Irish, one charter bylaw read: “No colored man shall be a member of this society.” Such attitudes were hardly unique to Portland, but irony abounds in the oppressed Irish ostracizing these black freemen. Especially given that Father Healy, the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Portland, was himself half-black and half-Irish. Of course, through innumerable social, cultural and political works, the Irish have infinitely strengthened Mainer society.

By the 1920s, the flush times along the docks were over. Canada began diverting exports to its own updated facilities, and icebreakers kept Montreal open all winter.

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William G. “Billy” Hill The Mainer who outshot Annie Oakley

by William B. Krohn miles from Portland, Maine on Chebeague Island in Casco Bay. He lived his early life on the island, and was educated at local schools. When in high school, Hill worked summers as a clerk in at the Rangeley Lake House in western Maine. At 24 years of age he was the “popular head Bellman” at the hotel; at this time he also managed the Rangeley taxidermists shop owned

by Walter D. Hinds of Portland, Maine.

While in western Maine, Hill spent much of his spare time shooting. One summer in the early 1900s when Annie Oakley visited Rangeley to display her shooting skills, one of the town’s summer residents arranged a shooting contest between Hill and Oakley. After (continued on page 34)

W

illiam George Hill, widely known simply as Billy, died at his home on Chebeague Island on New Year’s Eve of 1958.

A few days later, in newspapers large and small, his obituary appeared across America. While he was a man of many talents, the obituaries repeatedly praised Billy Hill for two accomplishments: (1) helping to teach millions of World War II soldiers how to shoot a rifle (“never aim, point and fire”); and (2) as a young man, outshooting Annie Oakley. Of the two events, it’s his head-to-head contest with Oakley that time has chosen to be Hill’s ‘claim to fame.’

William G. Hill was born on 26 November 1881, approximately 10

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(continued from page 33) Oakley completed her demonstration, the crowd gathered as Frank Butler, Annie’s husband, tossed into the air 25 glass balls to one shooter, and then 25 for the next. After each contestant had shot at 100 balls with their singeshot .22 caliber rifles, the scores were in: Oakley broke 88 balls; Hill hit 99.

When interviewed by a news reporter some 50 years later, Billy Hill considered this shot-out the highlight of his career. The 72- year old went on to say that “Annie took it [her loss] like the delightful lady she was” and that “She was a fine shot and a great show woman.

A wonderful person, too.” Shortly after Hill’s victory, Oakley returned to New York and immediately told the sales department of Union Metallic Cartridge Company (UMC) of Bridgeport, Connecticut. (Remington Arms of Llion, New York would merge with UMC in 1912 to form Remington Arms-UMC Company). In September 1904, Hill

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was offered, and took, a part-time job with UMC, demonstrating their ammunition and guns, and talking about UMC products whenever he competed or performed.

In 1905, now graduated from high school, Hill moved to Portland where he was a taxidermist for Walter D. Hinds (Walter’s father was Aurelius S. Hinds, maker of popular beauty creams). Walter Hinds had started his taxidermy and sporting goods business the year before. Over the years, Hinds expanded into a number of branch stores in rural Maine and elsewhere.

From spring through fall, when not performing or competing for UMC, Hill “managed Mr. Hinds’ branch store at Rangeley, being also connected with the Haines’ Landing and Belgrade stores.” Hill remained in Hind’s employment until 1907. While managing one of Hinds’ branches, Hill was approached by a man wanting to see him

shoot. There happened to be a shooting competition in town that afternoon so the stranger got his wish. After the shot, the stranger, who was a high-level representative of UMC (one source stated “President”), offered Hill a full time job. By 1918, Hill was a District Sales Manager for Remington-UMC, covering Maine and New Hampshire.

Hill resided with his wife and three children in the Portland’s Deering District. His solid salesmanship, along with the public’s enthusiasm for his shooting skills, caught the attention of upper management. Hill was again promoted, becoming the long-time New England Sales Representative for Remington Arms-UMC Company.

The year of 1907 was not only the year Hill earned full time employment with Remington-UMC. On April 27 of that year he married Ethylena (Ethel) Francis Merriam of Dorchester, Massachusetts. The couple was married

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In addition to selling his Company’s products to dealers across the New England, Hill spoke regularly to conservation, sporting, and other civic

groups; performed shooting exhibitions at fairs and gatherings of sporting groups; and travelled extensively to competitively shoot both rifles and shotguns. According to his obituary in a Portland newspaper: “For years, his trick, skeet, and trap shooting feats

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thrilled audiences. He monopolized New England and Canadian amateur and professional shooting titles for better than 24 years.” But it was in exhibition shooting that Hill excelled. For example, on 25 August 1938 an estimated 3,000 people attended the annual field day outing organized by the Androscoggin County Fish and Game Association. The event was held at the Bear Pond Park in Turner, and Billy Hill was the featured entertainment.

A local newspaper reporter noted that Hill’s shooting was widely considered one of the highlights of the day: Billy Hill’s exhibitions with the high powered rifle, 22 calibre rifle, and shot gun proved extremely interesting.

One of his features of his display of trick shooting was the hitting of golf balls in the air with the .22; another the splattering of a can of tomatoes with a high powered rifle. His most spectacular bit of trick shooting however was (continued on page 36)

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(continued from page 35) the breaking of five eggs thrown into the air at the same time.

Billy Hill was an exceptionally productive person. Throughout his life, he was no stranger to hard work, holding down multiple jobs. Around 1918, he started the Hill Quality Fishing Tackle business which was a parttime business that he ran out of his home. One of the lures Hill manufactured and sold was the Rangeley Spinner, first invented in Dixfield, Maine by Henry O. Stanley. Stanley was a longtime Maine Fisheries Commissioner, and his Rangeley Spinner proved to be exceptionally popular with anglers.

The Rangeley was produced by many makers, but the Hill Rangeley Spinner is unique in that the top of the spinner’s metal blade is clearly stamped “W. G. Hill.” As if fishing tackle, gun and ammunition sales, and shooting were not enough, in 1922 Hill became involved in yet another enterprise – Sportsman’s Supply Company. This company sold

everything needed for sport in the outdoors, and provided an array of services for anglers and hunters (i.e., would arrange trips, care for dogs, shipped dogs, for out-of-state hunters, and repair guns and fishing tackle). The store was located on Congress Street in downtown Portland. Hill was one of the Company’s Vice Presidents, and its Director of Sales, supervising two salesmen.

In 1926, Hill sold Hill Quality Fishing Tackle (it became Percy Fishing Tackle). At this same time, he apparently

ceased working at Sportsman’s Supply Company. The following year, the Hills moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, where he focused on his Remington-UMC work.

Hill was as active in civic activities as he was in business. Going back to his youth in Rangeley, his outgoing personality and remarkable gun skills resulted in him being elected President of the Rangeley Rifle Club. He was in high demand as a speaker. For example, four days after Christmas 1916, he spoke at the first annual game banquet

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com of the Davy Crockett Big Game Hunting and Angling Club. He also helped to organize this banquet and, with support from Remington decorated the event’s venue at the Falmouth Hotel. Many Maine notables were in attendance, including the Maine author and newspaper-man, Holman Day. In the 1920s, Hill was elected at least twice as President of the Maine Sportsmen’s Fish and Game Association. The purpose of this largely volunteer organization was “to improve, propagate and protect” Maine’s fish and game resources. Hill was an ardent conservationist who supported progressive fish and game laws, including a one deer limit per hunter per year. Hill was a member of the Masonic Lodge, the Odd Fellows, and the Kora Shriners. He was a founding member of the Portland Trap and Skeet Club, and the Chebeague Island Gold Club (where today he is honored with a named trophy).

While residing in Massachusetts,

Hill traveled regularly for Remington-UMC. He had stores to visit and sales to make, speeches to give, shooting competitions to win, and shooting exhibitions to perform. In February 1938, Hill was at the Boston Sportsmen’s Show. Although he was working a booth for the arms companies, a Lewiston, Maine newspaper reported that Hill “is regarded as a Maine man and does a heap of boosting for the State.

Billy is a Portland man and for years has been one of the crack shots of the country.” Although not living in Maine, many people knew where Billy Hill’s heart resided.

Hill worked for Remington for nearly 40 years, and in 1946 he retired to the place of his birth, Chebeague Island.

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(continued from page 37) years, Ethel, died. Bill followed his wife only three years later, dying at his island home on 1 January 1958.

William George “Billy” Hill was small in physical stature, being only 5 feet and 5 inches in height. In lifetime accomplishments (many more than space permits mentioning here), however, Billy Hill was clearly a giant.

While many today only know Billy Hill as the person who out-shot Annie Oakley, we should honor Hill by remembering that he also was an energetic Mainer of many interests and talents, including those of a record-holding marksman, successful businessman, sporting goods salesman, fishing tackle maker, outdoorsman, sportsman, conservationists, and civic-minded citizen.

The author became interested in William G. Hill while researching Maine’s early makers of fishing lures.

Should anyone know of any examples of Hill’s fishing tackle, especially the

Discover Maine Magazine has been brought to you free through the generous support of Maine businesses for the past 2 years, and we extend a special thanks to them.

Hill Rangeley Spinner (blade stamped “W. G. Hill,”) the author would appreciate hearing about it. (wkrohn@umaine.edu). I thank Jim Hanlon, Graydon Hilyard, and Jeff Knapp for providing W. G. Hill information and materials used in this article.

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Stroudwater’s Broad Tavern Colonial era tavern gave way to the modern airplane

by Brian Swartz

W

hen Thaddeus Broad built a wood-frame tavern in Stroudwater in 1782, the most noise he might have heard would be a stagecoach driver blowing a horn to announce the stage’s imminent arrival at the popular watering hole.

If Broad had lived another 165 years, he would have witnessed the transportation transition to the train and then the automobile. Broad’s Tavern might have survived as a restaurant appealing to local folks.

But Broad’s Tavern could not survive the modern airplane.

Moving to Cumberland County in January 1771, Broad married Lucy Skillings of Cape Elizabeth and later

leased land in Portland’s Stroudwater district from Isaac Winslow. Broad built a log building on the road that stagecoaches traveled between Portland, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Boston. His wood-frame tavern replaced the log building.

Growing beside Broad’s Tavern was a tall elm that Broad “used … as a novel, outdoor drinking place,” according to the May 17, 1947 “Portland Press Herald.”

“Steps were built up to where the branches begin to spread and a wide platform with chairs and tables encircled the trunk,” wrote the paper’s George P. MacCallum. “Thirsty travelers would hitch their mounts to a picket

fence surrounding the base, ascend to the cool bower,” and enjoy the food and drink.

Initially called the “Bar Room Tree,” the elm gained historical significance after the Marquis de Lafayette stopped at Broad’s Tavern to sample its drinks while en route to Portland in 1825. Locals dubbed the tree the “Lafayette Elm” afterwards.

That same name was appended to an elm tree that was planted in Kennebunk to commemorate Lafayette’s visit to that York County town in 1825.

Broad’s Tavern expanded over the years, according to MacCallum. “At the height of its popularity, a two-story addition joined the main house contain-

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Vintage painting of Stroudwater Broad Tavern. Item # 40332 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

ing a hall, dining room, and bowling alley. Out buildings consisted of a shed, carriage house and immense barn.”

Broad’s son, Silas, operated the tavern until the stages stopped running in 1830. “The elevated bar was dismantled and the house tightly closed for 50 years,” MacCallum noted.

A “Miss Ann Broad” reopened the tavern in June 1880 “for visitation by the public,” and the old building took a new lease on life for some time. “Brica-brac still in the home at the time included a 1766 silver plate belonging to Moses Pearson … a white silk banner presented by the ladies of Stroudwater to the Stroudwater Light Infantry in 1805, and the original silver bells used to summon waiters,” MacCullum wrote.

The “tree platform” was the site of “card games [that] went on until early hours,” he noted.

MacCullum related the tale of a leg(continued on page 42)

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(continued from page 41) endary card game that apparently occurred sometime in 1881 or 1882. “One Saturday night, a player mischievously suggested setting aside winnings made during the hours of the Sabbath and presenting the ‘tainted money’ to Parson Caleb Bradley, who lived nearby,” he wrote.

“The group thumped on the parson’s door at 4 a.m. and explained to the preacher that inasmuch as the money was won gambling, he should please accept it,” MacCullum wrote.

After giving their winnings to Bradley, the card players “departed in haste to escape his wrath,” MacCallum noted. “But the parson shouted, ‘Why didn’t you play longer, boys? The devil’s money may buy as many Bibles as God’s money.”

Mentioned in the Portland City Guide, the tavern survived for a while, but as the automobile supplanted the horse-drawn carriage in the early 20th

century, business gradually declined.

The tavern later became a private residence with a 143 Westbrook Street address.

After World War II, Portland authorities decided to expand the Portland-Westbrook Municipal Airport. In time, airlines could connect the city with other destinations; a larger airport with new aviation services could attract business and boost the local economy.

Enlarging the airport meant buying additional property, including the old two-story Broad’s Tavern. It would “be demolished … to clear aerial approaches to the Municipal Airport and provide additional plane and automobile parking space,” MacCullum wrote.

So down came the 165-year-old tavern building in 1947; Broad’s Tavern lives on only in photos and paintings.

The Lafayette Elm has outlasted the tavern. After a bad storm knocked down the tree in 1882, neighbors cut up

the fallen elm for wood. Among those saving a section was Nahum Littlefield, a chief engineer of the Portland Fire Department in the 1880s and a Portland-area ship carver from 1850 to the 1880s.

He transformed the wood into an elegantly carved, 62-inch high chair that honors Lafayette’s visit to Maine. The chair is displayed at the Portland Fire Museum at 157 Spring Street in Portland.

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Scarlet Mastodon Highlighted A Parade In Rural Gorham ...and chewed its way through a pasture

by Brian Swartz

C

atching the attention of local farmers and the press, a Rube Goldberg machine resembling an Ice Age pachyderm rumbled through rural Gorham one July afternoon in 1948.

Agriculture was still big business in Cumberland and York counties in that post-war era. Gorham farmer Roland Sanborn had approved a request from the Westbrook Division, Maine Potato Growers Inc., to try out a new-fangled “forage clipper” on Sanborn’s pastures along the Fort Hill Road (Route 114).

So on Friday, July 2, “a strange pa-

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Leading the convoy “was a yellow tractor drawing a mowing machine with a 6-foot cutter-bar,” Lovering wrote. “Next was a curious metal mastodon (an Ice Age elephant) glistening in scarlet paint, its square neck a dozen feet in the air and a two-yard canvas spout dangling from its box-like head.”

Lovering’s lurid description cast the forage clipper as an ungainly machine that, based on photos accompanying the newspaper article, more closely resembled a brontosaurus than an elephant of any species.

Rounding out the “strange parade” were several cars and a truck driven by Darius Joy Jr., who managed MPG’s Westbrook Division. The truck “carried children of the Sanborn family and their playmates from neighboring farms,” Lovering wrote.

Also accompanying the parade were Cumberland County Extension Agent (continued on page 44)

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(continued from page 43) W. Sherman Rowe; James Golden, the Cumberland County 4-H agent; and Franklin Scribner, assistant manager of MPG’s “Westbrook plant,” according to Lovering.

Everyone planned to watch the forage clipper conduct its first field trials in Cumberland County. “Propelled by its own power plant, the machine will cut a field of grass or corn, snip the vegetation for the silo into pieces from about 3/8ths of an inch long up to three or four inches, and discharge the mass into a truck backing into its wake, or into a trailer hauled by the harvesting device,” Lovering explained.

Then he described the forage clipper’s Rube Goldberg contortions: “The essential elements of the outfit are geared into a combination of mechanical parts resembling the active side of the familiar farm mowing machine, the paddlewheel in miniature of a Mississippi River stern-wheeler, an outsize

lawnmower and an escalator.”

Goldberg could not have sketched a better forage clipper himself.

“The parade” first “stopped on a down grade a mile from the Sanborn farm buildings,” Lovering reported. “A lush field of grass was explored,” but water “draining down from the crown of the field into the roadside ditch” prevented the 3,200-pound forage clipper from accessing the pasture.

So “a third of a mile further on toward Sebago Lake, at the top of a rise,” the parade participants turned into a better-drained “cow pasture” and corn field. The harvesting equipment rumbled into the pasture; “the remainder of the rural entourage parked in the pasture and the passengers walked,” he wrote.

“Two popping tractors” initially spooked the dairy cows grazing in the pasture, “but the animals soon gained bovine composure,” ambled over to

sniff the mechanized equipment, and then wandered away “into a valley,” Lovering reported.

He eloquently captured the essence of that picture-perfect Maine summer day. “The growth was two feet high” in the pasture, he observed. A tractor made two passes around the pasture’s perimeter with the 6-foot cutter bar and left “a fragrant trail of grass, daisies, buttercups and Indian paintbrush for the forage clipper,” Lovering wrote.

Owen Hagerman, an MPG machinist, settled at the forage clipper’s controls. He “set his four-foot cutter bar into the wall of standing grass … and let in the clutch,” Lovering reported.

“The farm truck backed along behind under the canvas delivery spout.”

For the next few hours the forage clipper worked around the pasture while slicing and dicing grass to different lengths. “The grass passed through the chopper fast,” Lovering described

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the machine’s cutting efficiency. “In not more than three seconds after it was lopped over into the elevator channel it was pouring a green torrent of tiny pieces into the truck. “The trailer was hooked to the forage clipper later for even more efficient results,� he wrote.

Farmers like Roland Sanborn knew that “forage keeps longer in the form of silage than does hay,� Lovering told his readers. “The more moist the crop the longer the clip (length of the cut grass) may be to make good pack and compression in the silo.�

In that July only 34 months removed from the Japanese surrender ending World War II, many Maine farmers still used horse- or mule-drawn harvesting equipment. Tractors were becoming popular, but wartime conversion to military manufacturing had limited the accessibility to new machines.

Now, according to Lovering, farm-

ers realized that “mechanization is said to make for better harvesting, processing and storage, and it saves labor.

Quality of forage� as provided by the brand new forage clipper and similar machinery “makes for better growth, better breeding� of dairy cattle “and higher production of milk, meat and eggs, the experts say.�

Experts and children watched “the scarlet mastodon� chew its way through the Gorham pasture on this fine July afternoon, Lovering wrote. He was impressed.

Modern technology was making traditional “haying� a lot easier.

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

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A History Of Red Fox Hunting In Maine A popular sport in the late 1800s

by John Murray

M

aine has a rich history associated with the red fox. Although the red fox was native to North America, the number of red fox along the eastern seaboard was sparse or nearly nonexistent when the European settlers arrived. As the number of settlers increased, many of the more wealthy and affluent settlers who enjoyed fox hunts in Europe decided to bring the sport of the fox hunt to North America. Red fox were transported by ship and set free in many areas of the east coast, where the population took root and expanded rapidly.

In Maine, red fox hunting with hounds and horses became a popular sport with the wealthy.

During the late 1800s, fox hunting clubs were established in Buckfield and Brunswick, and their memberships included hundreds of eager fox hunters.

These fox hunting clubs were not comprised of typical hunters whose purpose was to put a meal on the table for their hungry family. The fox hunters of these clubs dressed in red jacketed suit coats for the hunt, and in reality it was much more of a social gathering. It was rare for these fox hunters to even see a red

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fox during the hunt, or rarer to have any hope of actually capturing one.

The end result was educating the red fox on tactics to avoid its pursuers.

Red fox became even more challenging to hunt, and their population was rapidly expanding throughout the entire state of Maine. Imported red fox bred with the native red fox and further established a permanent and secure population base. With the passing of time, the membership of the fox hunting clubs diminished as the fox and hound hunters aged.

Initially in Maine, red fox could be

49

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com hunted at any time during the year. Harvest regulations, which included both hunting and trapping seasons, were established in the year 1915. Records of the yearly total number of red fox harvested prior to the year 1976 were estimated to be an approximate average of five thousand red fox per year.

With fertile land, farming was becoming widespread in Maine, and by the end of the 1800s, there were wide tracts of agricultural land in both southern and western Maine.

At that time, it is estimated that over thirty percent of the total acreage of Maine was being utilized as farmland.

For a red fox, this was perfect land to thrive in, as the red fox prefers a mix of open and wooded land. Initially, red fox were present, but less numerous within the vast spruce and fir forests of northern Maine. As extensive logging took place in northern Maine during the late 1800s and early 1900s, much land was cleared, thus transferring the north

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woods land into additional prime red fox habitat.

By the early 1900s, many farms in Maine were being abandoned, which was linked to the reality of the short growing season, the harsh winter climate and the fact that there were predatory animals living in the midst of the farmland. By 1950, the amount of farmland acreage in Maine decreased to nearly twenty percent. Red fox were always regarded with ill feelings by the farmers of Maine, because of the nature of the red fox to consider many farmland animals an easy meal. Red fox were also capable of transferring illness to agricultural and domestic animals. Lacking the time or the expertise to deal with the growing number of red fox within agricultural land, farmers welcomed both hunters and trappers to reduce the red fox population.

Red fox are an intelligent quarry with keen senses, and a challenge to both hunt and capture with a trap. Hav(continued on page 50)

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(continued from page 49) ing learned how to evade hounds and horse riders chasing them through the countryside, red fox quickly recognized danger and developed a knack to avoid it.

Resident Maine trappers evolved tactics to increase success for trapping red fox, but the animal continued to be a challenge to hunt.

The 1900s saw a large influx of sportsmen traveling to Maine, lured by the vast tracts of open land, wilderness, and large numbers of fish and game.

Sporting camps and lodges throughout the state were becoming a popular destination for many people who wanted to experience the bounty of what Maine had to offer. Most angling sportsmen were drawn to the brook trout fishing, and the sportsmen who hunted were interested in the whitetail deer, moose and bear. But, there were some sportsmen, including my grandfather, who came to Maine to pursue the red fox.

My grandfather fox hunted within the York and Cumberland areas.

Sportsmen who arrived in Maine to hunt the red fox had different tactics as compared to the members of the once prominent fox hunting clubs. By the early 1950s, fox hunters were using hand held calls that would mimic the sounds of distress emitted by animals that the red fox regularly preyed upon, including the very common snowshoe hare.

These fox hunters would set up on a stand, or in a concealed hunting blind in prime red fox habitat, and upon activating the hand held call, would lure the curious red fox to them.

There were other fox hunters that would wait until winter had firmly gripped the area, and they would take advantage of the snow cover on the ground.

These fox hunters were the trackers.

With the advantage of a fresh snowfall

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coating the ground, a fresh fox track could be located and followed. Red fox have the tendency to bed, or lay down and rest within thick brush when not actively hunting for prey. Often was the case that the fox hunter would come upon the indentation within the snow where the red fox had been laying. Always alert to the surrounding area for potential threats, the red fox would either hear, smell or see the fox hunter approaching, and would run off in the other direction.

To conserve energy, this was usually not a rapid pace of travel by the fox, who would venture a distance, then veer off to one side of his set travel route, taking a vantage point which was often elevated to see what was in pursuit. The red fox would then remain stationary, either in a sitting or standing position, and let the pursuer walk right past.

Once the pursuer was far enough

51

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

away, the red fox would head in the other direction. The savvy red fox hunter would know the fox would do this and would keenly be searching the high points of ground to the sides as he moved along following the tracks in front of him.

Another tactic that experienced red fox hunters would use was locating a fresh fox track in the snow, then reasoning that a red fox was relatively close by, the hunter would stop and attempt to lure the red fox by using the hand held call.

Possessing a beautiful coat of fur, the red fox has long been an important part of the fur trade in Maine. To this day, the red fox still inhabits the entire state. The current population of the red fox in Maine is estimated to be approximately seventy five thousand.

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Return Of The Puffins A harbinger of coastal Maine’s restoration efforts

by Jeffrey Bradley uffins — auks — are penguin-colored deepwater seabirds that spend a lot of time diving the murky Atlantic for herring and sand eels. But come spring they cluster in enormous colonies, or rookeries, off the rocky coasts of Maine. There they vie for breeding space, calling to mates and chicks with a sonorous honking produced by an oversized parti-colored beak. Islands in the Gulf of Maine teemed with them before overhunting reduced their numbers beyond recovery. But in 1973 the National Audubon Society introduced “Project Puffin” to reestablish these “sea parrots” to their traditional breeding grounds where the small ten-inch birds now rear their

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Living upon the waves has evolved puffins into excellent swimmers. Underwater, they “fly” rapidly and steer with webbed, rudder-like feet. Surprisingly fleet in the air, they can attain

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speeds of 50 miles per hour by flapping their wings 400 times a minute.

Like many seabirds, puffins prefer jagged cliff tops to build their nests or dig feather-lined burrows. Parents take turns incubating a single egg, and those capacious beaks come in handy for endless trips carrying fish to the young.

And if that nasally warning goes unheeded, the birds are quick to mix it up.

Puffin couples may return to the same burrow year after year, but how they do this remains unclear.

Puffins are rare, not endangered, in Maine. Hunters seeking eggs and feathers prized by the millinery trade had reduced nesting pairs to just a few by 1885. The flourishing colonies were

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com gone; by the time restoration efforts began on Eastern Egg Rock, off Pemaquid Point, there was barely a handful of eggs left.

The Gulf of Maine is studded with rocky outcroppings left behind by the glaciers. More familiarly home to the lighthouses, foghorns, clanging bell buoys and flashing beacons that ward off the craft plying these waters, these isolated islets now bear witness to the returning puffins. In fact, some are as interesting as the birds themselves.

Eastern Egg Rock, for instance, offshore of New Harbor, is a treeless, windswept sanctuary. Girt by an imposing granite barbican that protects the nesting puffins, guillemots, terns, murres and eider ducks from gust fronts and buffeting waves, the interior is filled with dense meadows of fescue grass interspersed with raspberry thickets fertilized prodigiously by the birds.

Owned by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Eastern

Egg Rock is managed by the National Audubon Society in a joint cooperative, and is the home of the Adopt-APuffins (yes, you can really adopt one), some now 30 years old.

Speck-sized Jenny Island is visited by a great many bird species despite being little more than a mile from Cundy’s Harbor. During field season hundreds of Bridled, Arctic, and Sooty Terns, along with Sabine’s Gulls, flock among the noisy puffins. This threeacre rock features a blasted, north-facing boulder-strewn beach and a low, shrubby interior. The birds of Jenny Island, which is also owned and managed in a joint venture, suffer predation from Great Horned Owls, Black-crowned Night herons and minks. Closed to the public from April to August, staff arrive from Bethel by inflatable boat, a risky business upon the intemperate waters of Casco Bay. And landing can be unpredictable because of reams of brown-green algae. As with all Audu-

bon-managed islands, the two-person staff “rough it” while monitoring the birds and awaiting provisioning from Bremen.

With no freshwater — a cistern was finally installed following the grumblings of a lightkeeper — little ten- acre ond Island National Wildlife Refuge, lying just west of the entrance to the Kennebec River, does have impressive 60-foot cliffs that drop precipitously to a calmer landing near Georgetown.

There is an interesting assortment of habitats: a sandy beach, grassy meadows, and those steep-sided sea cliffs.

Inland are pasture grass meadows with tangles of raspberries and itchy poison ivy. These days, only an automated light and a doleful foghorn keep the birds company.

Here there is history. Pond Island has long served as a fishing outpost, and even as a gunnery target for the Navy! Fortunately, in 1972 it became part of the Maine Coastal Islands Na(continued on page 54)

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(continued from page 53) tional Wildlife Refuge. In what may be an historic architectural blunder, all the lighthouse station buildings were razed save the old brick tower. Still, the removal of man’s imprint has allowed restoration efforts to flourish. Closed to the public during breeding season, the island provides a beautiful sandy beach for landing, which the ever-swirling currents can make tenuous. Besides the puffins, Roseate Terns, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher and Black Skimmers nest here.

Remote Seal Island, another National Wildlife Refuge, is bigger than most at 65 acres; yet, sitting 23 miles offshore of Rockland in outer Penobscot Bay, the island is only a mile long by 200 yards wide. Here, too, spectacular sea cliffs dominate, with the northwestern glacis falling dizzily through a series of ridges to two cobble-filled coves, or “bights.” Seaside, unyielding granite characterizes the high terrain, permitting only low-lying, clingy scrub. In the

defiles and open meadows grows a riot of wild perennials that bend with the high summer breeze. Here you will find no trees, only puffins, razorbills, and a colony of terns, one of Maine’s largest.

The trip from Vinalhaven can take an hour through the hazardous chop.

Essentials are ferried ashore by dory to a landing shingle among irregular cobbles covered with slippery seaweed.

It’s best to land at high tide. Seal Island accommodations may be considered luxurious by Audubon field standards: there are personal tents, a cabin kitchen that serves seven, doubling as a dining hall-office; a dorm-sized refrigerator, a composting toilet — even an outdoor solar shower!

Restoration efforts have been successful mostly because puffins are easily fooled. Although stuffed decoys and mirror boxes have induced a population increase, little was known of their time spent at sea. Enter “Cabot,” a puffin fitted with a sophisticated geo

locater leg band. Not content with the environs of Seal Island in the Gulf of Maine, the plucky bird headed north to Nova Scotia by following the continental shelf before turning south as far as Bermuda. Not bad for a chunky little guy with short wings and a weird beak! (Cabot had to be tricked first into a puffin trap before that precious information could be retrieved.) Besides puffins, the island attracts all manner of birdlife. Over 225 species have been recorded recently like Black Guillemots, Leach’s Stormy-petrels, Great Blackbacked Cormorants — those most dinosaur-looking birds — and Common Murres. Even Maine rarities such as the Yellow-nosed Albatross, Red-billed Tropicbird, Ash-throated Flycatcher and Prothonotary Warbler can appear.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to the National Audubon Society’s “Project Puffin’! (http://projectpuffin.audubon. org/)

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Bristol’s Marcus Hanna

by James Nalley

A lifesaving hero

O

n January 27, 1885, the schooner Australia left its port in Boothbay for a relatively short trip to Boston, Massachusetts. After midnight, a strong gale and snowstorm had come in and the three-man vessel was driven into the rocks at Cape Elizabeth by the next morning. After losing the captain as the rough seas poured over the deck, the remaining two crew members clung onto the rigging in a desperate attempt to survive. Upon word of the wreck by his wife, lighthouse keeper Marcus Hanna rushed down to the shore to save the men. For his actions, he received the U.S. Coast Guard’s highest honor and within the decade, he had received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his

U.S. Civil War actions in 1863, which made him the only person in history to earn both honors.

Marcus Hanna was born in Bristol, Maine, on November 3, 1842. As the son of the lighthouse keeper of Franklin Island Light, Hanna was no stranger to the sea and the importance of these

beacons. By the age of 10, Hanna had become a sailor of his own, and when other young men were finishing up high school, he had risen to the rank of ship’s steward. After the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, Hanna naturally enlisted in the U.S. Navy for one year after which he spent the remainder of the war serving in a number of volunteer regiments. In 1863, while serving as a sergeant with the 50th Massachusetts Infantry, he saw heavy action at Port Hudson, Louisiana. On July 4, after long hours of fighting from rifle pits, Hanna’s comrades were struggling from dehydration. Hanna voluntarily exposed himself to heavy enemy fire in order to bring them buckets of

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com water. Although he was awarded approximately three decades later, Hanna received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery and selfless act.

In 1869 Hanna returned to Maine where he was appointed keeper of Pemaquid Point Light in Bristol, and four years later he was transferred to Cape Elizabeth Light to assume his role as head lightkeeper. Life at the light was relatively uneventful until January 28, 1885. The evening before, in Boothbay Harbor, the schooner Australia left port carrying fish and guano for its final destination in Boston. The three-man crew, consisting of J.W. Lewis, Irving Pierce, and William Kellar were on board. According to the official U.S. Coast Guard citation, “A furious gale and snowstorm set in. After losing some of her sails, she attempted to reach Portland Harbor.

Making the land to the leeward, she was driven onto the rocks at Cape Elizabeth, near the fog signal. She struck soon after 8 a.m. on the 28th.”

As the violent seas washed over the deck of the vessel, the captain lost his footing and was thrown overboard. He was not found and presumed drowned.

With temperatures at minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit, the two remaining men hung on to the frozen rigging even as they were continuously drenched by the sea. At that moment, Mrs. Hanna, the lightkeeper’s wife, looked out the window and saw broken masts through the driving snow. Marcus Hanna was in for the evening after being relieved by his assistant Hiram Staples. Upon his wife’s alarm, Hanna called Staples and they rushed down to the fog signal. Just offshore, they spotted the two sailors hanging on to the rigging and screaming for help. As the U.S. Coast Guard report stated, “Hanna knew it was impossible to launch a boat, so he went to the boathouse 300 yards away to find a suitable line. Weighting one end of the line with a piece of metal obtained from the signal house, he climbed down the

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slippery, ice-coated rocks, and attempted to heave the line to the two freezing men…After many unsuccessful efforts to reach the men with the line, which fell short, he was compelled to crawl back onto the level ground to warm his hands and feet. He also freed the stiffened line of its coating of ice.”

Meanwhile, a large wave lifted the vessel and threw it on its side, placing the two men in even more danger. Hanna again descended the rocks and finally managed to reach the vessel with the line. One of the men took the line and tied it around his body as Hanna crawled back onto the bank and shouted for help. Without any assistance, Hanna individually pulled each man out of the freezing waters. By the time the second sailor was pulled ashore, help had finally arrived. The two frostbitten sailors were immediately carried into the fog-signal building where they were stripped of their ice-coated clothing and provided with warm garments. (continued on page 58)

Southern & Coastal Maine Region

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(continued from page 57) Hanna and his wife nursed the two until the roads were opened and communication with the city was restored. According to the U.S. Coast Guard citation, “These men would have shared the fate of the captain, but for the self-sacrificing devotion of the brave keeper is beyond doubt. His noble conduct was held deserving of the highest form of recognition with the power of the Service to bestow — Awarded April 25, 18 85.”

Hanna spent his remaining years in the service and quietly retired. He died on December 12, 1921, and was buried at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery in South Portland. In 1997, the U.S. Coast Guard named a 175-foot coastal buoy tender the USCGC Marcus Hanna (WLM-554). Based in South Portland, the Keeper-class vessel is not far from the site of Hanna’s famed rescue approximately a century earlier.

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Carrabassett Valley’s John G. Norris Maine ski coach brought detente to the ski slopes of China

by Brian Swartz

A

book recently released by Professor John G. Norris of Carrabassett Valley details the détente that took place as the Forbidden Kingdom opened its doors to a professional ski coach and ski instructor from the United States in the 1980s.

Released last September by Penguin Books, Skiing in China is based on the adventures that Norris experienced — and the people that he met — while forming the first Olympic-level ski team to be fielded by the People’s Republic of China.

Skiing came naturally to a young

Norris, whose parents — John M. Norris II and Nancy Norris — married in 1950 and skied at Bald Mountain in Dedham and later at Sugarloaf USA. Starting at age 2, their son “learned to ski in both places” with his father and Horace Chapman, a co-founder of the latter ski resort.

Known as “Johnnie,” Norris became fascinated as a youth with mountain climbing, the Himalayas, and the countries in which those mountains rise. Aware that the People’s Republic of China was closed to Americans, he focused on his studies at Brewer High

School — and on his skiing.

During his last two years at BHS (class of ’71), Norris served as president of the BHS Skiing and Outing Club and competed with the school’s skiing team. In the appropriate school division, he was the state champ in the giant slalom in 1970 and 1971 and the slalom in 1971.

After high school, Norris studied at New England College in Henniker, N.H. “I ski-raced there (at Pat’s Peak) and did very well there,” he recalled.

Among his professors was Dr. Mont(continued on page 60)

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(continued from page 59) ford Sayce, who “was famous for his Chinese and African seminars,” Norris writes in his book’s introduction.

Certified as a professional ski instructor at Squaw Mountain in 1971, Norris earned certification as a professional ski coach in 1973; he holds similar certifications in other countries.

Since then Norris has skied on all seven continents; Antarctica “is quite cold,” he confirmed.

In 1975, Norris started studying political science at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. Hired as a research analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Castle Bulletins, he was taking Mandarin as an elective when the political chill between China and the United States began to warm.

In the next few years, the countries opened embassies in the respective

capitals and exchanged ambassadors.

His work with the Smithsonian brought Norris into contact with officials at the People’s Republic of China embassy in Washington, D.C.; he developed various contacts that soon benefited the dreams of many Chinese skiers.

Norris flew to China for the first time in 1982 after receiving permission to join the International American-Tibetan Expedition for an ascent of 25,246-foot Mount Molamenqen in the Chinese Himalayas. After arriving in Beijing, he met with government officials to negotiate permits and logistics for the expedition.

According to Skiing in China, Norris later visited Tong Hua, which “was China’s first ski area, and I did learn later that there were three or four more others … near the city of Jilin.”

Competitive skiing, at least at the level seen in Europe and North Amer-

ica, was in its infancy in China in that era. The Chinese National Championships in Skiing were scheduled to begin at Tong Hua “in about ten days” with downhill racing, Norris wrote. “We had to prepare a downhill course” by cutting trees and packing the course with snow.

“There was not a moment of rest, for we had to prepare a ten kilometer cross-country course as well,” the book reveals. “We also had to create a 25 to 30- meter ski jump out of logs and sandbags.”

The Chinese government had decided to field athletic teams in the International Olympics (summer and winter), but the country lacked experienced coaches in certain sports, including Alpine skiing. Aware that Norris had extensive coaching experience, Chinese officials asked him to create in a short time a Chinese ski team that could

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compete internationally; he was the first Westerner asked to develop such a team.

Norris met his first Chinese skiers at Tong Hua. “It was easy to divide the skiers who had some ability but who were not physically well trained from those who were very physically well trained but had very little skiing ability,” Norris writes in his book. Talent was gleaned from among the skiers, and the Chinese team later “went to the World Ski Games in Schladming, Austria.”

In time, Chinese officials authorized Norris to travel “to all 28 Chinese provinces” to meet with promising athletes.

“I was the first foreigner allowed into some closed areas in China ever,” Norris recalled in a recent interview.

Fluent in Mandarin (he also speaks Finnish, French, German, and Norwegian), Norris worked hard with Chinese

athletes as they learned to ski competitively. He later took the Chinese ski team to three Winter Olympics, including the 1984 games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia; the 1988 games in Calgary, Alberta; and the 1994 games in Lillehammer, Norway.

One Chinese skier, Wang Gui Zhen, “placed 52nd out of 110 entrants in the giant slalom at Sarajevo,” Norris recently said. “Hers’ was the best finish up to the present day.”

His work brought détente to the Chinese ski slopes, and word spread among the American media that “I was not engaging in ping-pong diplomacy, but skiing diplomacy,” Norris writes in Skiing in China.

Norris has developed close friendships with many Chinese citizens.

“Bestowed a professorship at Chengdu University in Sichuan Province in 1979,” he taught “English, economics,

and business law” there, he indicated during a recent interview. He has also held teaching posts in Finland and Sweden.

Skiing in China is drawn from the diaries that Norris started keeping at least two decades ago. He has developed a strong affinity for China, to which he has traveled 42 times; he made his last trip to China in 2009.

Bloomington, Indiana-based Penguin Books released Skiing in China in September 2013. Available online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Xlibris, and Walden Books, the book has already been translated into German, Italian, Norwegian, and Swedish; Skiing in China will soon be available in Finnish and Mandarin Chinese, according to Norris.

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Freeport’s Josiah Mitchell Shipwrecked sailors owed their survival to their skipper

by Brian Swartz

W

atching from a bobbing longboat as their ship burned brightly atop the Pacific Ocean swells, two Connecticut brothers did not realize they had boarded the one boat with the best chance of reaching safety — and all because they had clambered into the longboat commanded by Captain Josiah Mitchell of Freeport.

A tough, grizzled “old salt” who was respected by his peers, Mitchell watched from the deck of the clipper ship Hornet as the 207-foot vessel cleared New York harbor on Thursday, January 11, 1866. Outbound for San Francisco, the clipper sailed with its holds containing three locomotives,

400 tons of railroad iron, 6,200 boxes of candles, and 2,460 cases (not barrels) of canned kerosene.

Coming aboard as the only passengers on this voyage were brothers Samuel and Henry Ferguson of Connecticut. Then 28, Samuel suffered from tuberculosis; the younger Henry was a sophomore at Trinity College in Hartford.

Eschewing Stamford’s damp climate for the dry air of southern California, Samuel hoped he could live comfortably (and longer) after completing the voyage. Henry sailed along to assist his brother and experience adventure in the Far West.

Constructed at the Westerville &

Mackay shipyard in New York, the Hornet measured 40 feet wide at its stern and drew 22 feet of water. Classified as an “extreme clipper,” the 1,426-ton ship and its wind-billowed sails resembled a small weather system sweeping along the ocean’s horizon.

Owned by New York City-based Chamberlain & Phelps, the Hornet was designed to speedily carry freight and passengers on the lucrative New Yorkto-San Francisco run. The clipper was launched on June 20, 1851.

The Hornet had already completed four round trips to California when Mitchell took command in early January 1866. The clipper flew south across the Atlantic, rounded Cape Horn, and

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com turned north. The Fergusons often dined with Mitchell and, as ship passengers were wont to do, kept diaries.

As the Hornet sailed north off South America at 2.2 degrees north latitude and 112.8 degrees west longitude at 7 a.m., May 3, 1866, First Mate Samuel Hardy and two sailors went below deck to retrieve a barrel containing varnish that Mitchell wanted brought on deck.

Hardy carried a lantern containing a lit candle. He and his men found the varnish barrel; a bit lazy this morning, Hardy decided to open the barrel’s bung and draw some varnish into a can.

Suddenly the candle ignited the vapors building up around the three men. Varnish caught fire inside the can, which Hardy dropped. The varnish pouring from the barrel’s bung caught fire; because no one closed the bung, the liquid varnish carried flames across the hold.

“In a few seconds the fiery torrent had run … under bales of ropes, cases

of candles, barrels of kerosene, all sorts of freight, and tongues of flames were shooting upward through every aperture and crevice in the deck,” Samuel Clemens described the scene in a newspaper article. Then based in Hawaii as a travel correspondent, he would immortalize the fate of Josiah Mitchell and his crew.

“Fire!” stunned sailors shouted as smoke billowed from the hold. Too late, Mitchell ordered the hatches closed to starve the fire of oxygen, but flames “sprang through hatchways, seized upon chairs, table, cordage, anything, everything,” Clemens relayed the memories of frightened men.

With the Hornet burning around him, Mitchell ordered, “Abandon ship!” Crewmen launched the ship’s two quarter boats and one longboat, but not before Mitchell had it loaded with food, spare sails, and water, as well as his navigational instruments.

The ship’s boats now afloat, crew-

men and passengers scrambled overboard as flames consumed the Hornet.

Mitchell took charge of the long boat; Hardy assumed command of one quarter boat, and Second Mate John Parr took charge of the other.

Mitchell and 13 men were in the long boat. Ordering all three boats tied together, he decided to linger near the burning Hornet; despite the smoke rising skyward that Thursday and the embers glowing along the fire-consumed hull that night, no ship spotted the telltale signs of a shipwreck.

The Pacific Ocean claimed the Hornet on Friday. Probably sighing as he watched his command sink, Mitchell decided to steer for Hawaii. Crewmen raised masts and sails on the boats; when no wind filled the sails, men rowed.

Frequently using his navigational instruments to chart a course, Mitchell manned the tiller of the longboat, which led the tethered boats. He was (continued on page 64)

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(continued from page 63) responsible for the safety of 30 men, plus himself; he quickly rationed the food and water.

Day after day passed as the three boats moved across the trackless Pacific. Food slowly vanished; occasional rain squalls provided water that sailors caught with a canvas and drained into containers for future consumption.

Mitchell issued rations at morning, noon, and evening and kept a close watch on his men’s health and attitudes.

Hunger gnawing at thinning bodies was not really quenched by the occasional fish the men caught and split equally among themselves.

Not part of the crew, the Fergusons soon found themselves lumped together with Mitchell as being responsible for the disaster, as far as the crewmen were concerned. The brothers kept writing in their diaries, upon which Clemens would later rely for much material.

On either May 18 or May 19, Mitch-

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ell decided that the three boats should separate to provide the castaways with a greater chance to reach land or find a ship. According to Clemens, Mitchell split the rations and water three ways with Hardy and Parr and, before cutting loose the quarter boats, let young apprentice seaman James “Jimmy” Cox transfer to the longboat.

The boats parted company at 11 a.m.

On across the Pacific Mitchell steered; the Fergusons stayed near him in the boat’s stern, and several sailors started plotting a mutiny in the bow.

Cox learned that sailor Harry Morris wanted to murder Mitchell — and possibly the Fergusons, too. Surreptitiously warned by Cox, the potential victims secreted weapons and watched the bow’s occupants.

On and on the longboat sailed.

Mitchell barely acknowledged his 56th birthday on Tuesday, June 12. Food had all but run out; forced to knaw on cloth-

ing and wood for sustenance, the men suffered intestinal problems that would haunt them in the future.

Then at 11 a.m. on Friday, June 15, a crewmen suddenly cried, “Land ho!”

Mitchell had navigated the longboat 4,300 miles across the Pacific to the “Big Island” of Hawaii.

Assisted by a few native Hawaiians who swam out through the surf and boarded the longboat, Mitchell brought his surviving crew and passengers ashore on a sandy beach at Laupohoehoe. The Hawaiians, who lived at a missionary settlement, nursed the survivors back to health, at least as far as each man could become healthier.

Although physically indisposed, Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. “Mark Twain”) traveled from Oahu to Hawaii and interviewed the 15 survivors. Clemens wrote a lengthy account of Mitchell’s 43-day voyage; first published in the Sacramento Union and then picked up

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com by newspapers across the United States (and soon Europe), the article launched Clemens’ career.

The surviving crewmen reached Honolulu on June 24, Mitchell and the Fergusons on July 4. The two other boats and their occupants vanished.

The Fergusons later caught a ship for California, where Samuel died on October 1. His body was embalmed and shipped to Stamford, Connecticut for burial.

Henry attributed his brother’s death not to tuberculosis, but to the physical damage Samuel had suffered during the voyage to Hawaii. Returning to Hartford and Trinity College, Henry finished his studies and became a clergyman and a Trinity College professor.

Captain Josiah Mitchell sailed home in time to be with his wife when she died on October 31, 1866. He died 10 years later. * Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

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The Launching Of The USS Cummings Elegantly dressed crowd turned out at Bath in 1913

by Brian Swartz

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hen Bath Iron Works launched a destroyer named for a Civil War hero on a pleasant afternoon in late summer 1913, hundreds of well-dressed residents and summer folk gathered to watch.

Stylish summer dresses and suits were de rigeur in Bath as BIW prepared to launch the destroyer USS Cummings on Wednesday, August 6. As “the second of the 1000-ton type of destroyers built in this city,” the USS Cummings was scheduled for a 3:50 p.m. launching, according to a reporter for The Bath Daily News.

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Bath Iron Works would complete the vessel within 24 months or suffer the legal consequences.

Shipyard workers expertly constructed the USS Cummings, powered by two-shaft Parsons marine-steam turbines that burned oil. The ship’s electrical system drew its power from “two 10-kilowatt turbo-generating sets,” the reporter noted, and the ship “has two 24-inch searchlights.”

The sleek destroyer sported “four smoke tunnels” and “two masts about 100 feet high above the keel, supporting wireless aerials, together with the

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The event had certainly attracted public attention. “The weather was perfect and there was an unusually large crowd of spectators present,” he wrote.

“The many summer resorts in this vicinity were represented by happy delegations and it was a memorable occasion for the most of them, being the first launching for many.”

The Navy had contracted with BIW on September 6, 1911 to build the 305foot USS Cummings, designed as a fast-attack warship equipped with four 4-inch cannons and eight torpedo tubes.

For the contracted price of $761,500,

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com usual signaling outfit,” the reporter added more details.

The USS Cummings would carry a crew of five officers and 93 enlisted men, all squeezed into a steel hull that displaced 1,020 tons. The destroyer’s first commanding officer would be Lieutenant Commander Arthur Crenshaw, en route to Bath from his last duty station aboard the USS Nebraska.

A few officers already assigned to the USS Cummings attended her launching; they, along with the other crewmen headed for Bath, would soon take the destroyer out for her sea trials.

Maintaining a long tradition, Navy officials decided to name the new destroyer after a naval hero — and the Civil War provided a plethora of heroes. For the Bath-built warship, Cummings would suffice.

Lieutenant Commander Andrew Boyd Cummings was the executive officer on the USS Richmond when a Union fleet attempted to steam past

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Confederate artillery batteries at Port Hudson, Louisiana on March 14, 1863.

Eyewitnesses claimed that during the battle, Cummings moved constantly about his ship, encouraging the crew and keeping a close eye on the ship’s performance.

Suddenly Cummings lost a leg to a cannonball, and he fell to the main deck from his position near the ship’s wheel.

Evacuated to New Orleans, he died four days later.

So the second ship in a new class of 1,000-ton destroyers would be named for Cummings. To help launch the warship honoring his memory, the Navy turned to Agnes Trevette Barrington Beates, the wife of Dr. Henry Beates Jr. of Philadelphia. Andrew Boyd Cummings was her uncle.

Many people — including a “Naval delegation,” BIW officials, “and many Bath ladies” — stood on the launching platform as the clock ticked toward 3:50 p.m. on August 6, a time select-

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ed to coincide with optimal high tide on the Kennebec River. Moored just downriver was the USS Cassin, the first vessel built in the new destroyer class, and the tugs Pejepscot and Sarah J. Weed, hired to guide the powerless USS Cummings to a BIW berth after her launch.

“Arrayed in a handsome costume of amber Matelasse daintily trimmed, and a black hat,” Agnes Beates “carried a handsome bunch of American beauty roses” as she was escorted to the launching platform by BIW President John S. Hyde, son of Thomas W. Hyde, the shipyard’s founder. Beates was joined on the platform by her husband, their daughter Kathleen, Walter Heyl of Philadelphia, and Ruth Prebey of Brookline, Massachusetts.

The newspaper reporter noticed that “the platform was prettily trimmed with flags and bunting.” A BIW official handed to Agnes Beates a champagne bottle “entwined with red, white and (continued on page 68)

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(continued from page 67) blue silk ribbons.”

At exactly 3:50 p.m., BIW Hull Department Superintendent John McInnes made a signal, and the USS Cummings started to slide down the ways. As the ship moved, Agnes Beates accurately swung the “silver encased bottle of American champagne” against the destroyer’s bow; people cheered as the champagne sprayed the people standing nearest Beates.

As the USS Cassin fired a salute, the USS Cummings “made a beautiful run down the ways, into the river amid the cheers of the crowd, and the whistles along the water front,” the reporter wrote. Crewmen aboard the two tugboats carefully navigated their vessels alongside the destroyer, which was “alongside of the Bath Iron Works wharf” in less than 20 minutes.

Afterwards, Henry and Agnes Beates and their entourage attended an elegant catered reception at John

Hyde’s home on Washington Street in Bath. Meanwhile, many BIW workers swarmed aboard the USS Cummings to finish outfitting the destroyer for her sea trials.

In late August, the USS Cummings steamed between Georgetown and Phippsburg while en route to the Navy’s test course in Penobscot Bay. On Tuesday afternoon, August 26, several officers from the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey scrutinized all operations as the destroyer “made 26 runs at speeds varying from 12 knots to her fastest mile,” a newspaper reporter noted.

“Steering tests at 29-knot speed were made afterward with much success,” he wrote.

Watching with keen interest was Lieutenant Commander Crenshaw, who would not command the USS Cummings until its commissioning.

John Hyde and the BIW vice president,

C.P. Wetherbee, came along for the standardization test, which saw the destroyer recording “her fastest mile … at the rate [of] 31.778 knots.

The USS Cummings averaged 31.547 knots per mile, slightly faster than the USS Cassin averaged during its standardization tests. The results impressed the Board of Inspection and Survey officers.

Commissioned on September 19, 1913, the USS Cummings participated in anti-submarine patrols and convoy duties during World War I. The Navy transferred the destroyer to the Coast Guard in 1924; eight years later the Coast Guard gave back the ship, which the Navy scrapped in 1934.

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The Genealogy Corner

by Charles Francis

W

alk into the home of most anyone involved in tracing their family history, and you will find some form of a carefully noted family tree. The family tree is actually nothing more than a tool. A chart, if you will. Almost all follow a relatively standardized form. Most record birth date, place of birth, marriage date — if applicable — and name of spouse and death date. The links are immediate ancestors and progeny.

The genealogy or family history chart is nothing more, nor anything less, than a pedigree chart. Just as owners of pure bred dogs, horses and the like proudly trace the pedigree of a particular animal, so family historians proudly trace their own pedigree.

Every name on a pedigree chart is the name of a person who lived a life.

That person played a role — significant or insignificant — in history. Most will be unknown, except in a particular family history. Nevertheless, they generate a sense of pride for the individual who is their descendant, the individual who prepared the pedigree chart.

Family historians or genealogists sometimes refer to the sense of pride that many take from their particular lineage as pedigree pride. For some

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Pedigree pride — especially Europeans — this pride manifests itself in heraldry with coats of arms. Europeans routinely display their particular heraldic devices on everything from letterheads to doorways and even their vehicles, including motorcycles. In America, where coats of arms are less in evidence, pedigree pride can be found in autobiographical sketches, obituaries, membership in organizations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and the like.

Recently I ran across an obituary of a southern Maine lady who lived a hundred or so years ago that is a clear case of pedigree pride. The obituary, which was incomplete, containing only bits of family history, was contained in a scrapbook collection of newspaper articles. The lady’s name was Mrs. Marion E. (Prime) Nelson.

The obituary began “The family of Kennard, one of the oldest in the Pine Tree State, and from which Mrs. Marion E. (Prime) Nelson descended, traces its line to Benjamin Kennard as the first member to settle in Maine.”

According to Mrs. Nelson’s obituary, Benjamin Kennard purchased the home of one Dr. Pierpont in Kittery in 1795. Benjamin Kennard, son of the

first Benjamin, then turned the house into a tavern, which, by 1801, had become a “...well-known watering-place for travelers in that section.”

The obituary also contained the following information: In 1805 Benjamin Kennard, the tavern keeper, married Miriam Fernald Leighton of Kittery.

William Leighton Kennard, their son, continued the family business. William married Mary Frost. Their daughter Emily married Oliver Prime, a grocer.

The Primes had a daughter, Marion, the subject of the obituary, who in turn married Fred Nelson. Fred and Marion Nelson are given as living in the Kennard homestead in Eliot.

It is clear from the abbreviated information contained in the obituary that Mrs. Marion E. (Prime) Nelson took great pride in being descended from Benjamin Kennard. Someone also took the time to make sure that some of Mrs. Nelson’s family history was included in her obituary. It is an example of pedigree pride.

The above example is what family history or genealogy is all about. It is identifying individuals for who they are and from what family tree they have stemmed. It is about tracing your family history and discovering facts relating

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The above obituary on Mrs. Nelson is also an example of information that any researcher into their particular family history may run across that can raise more questions than it answers.

There are family names contained in Mrs. Prime’s obituary that could be researched. The name Fernald is one that goes back to the Revolutionary War period and earlier in York County and in southern New Hampshire. There is a Fernald Island in Portsmouth Harbor.

A Fernald gave the island to the United States government for the use of a shipyard. Fernalds are connected to the Wentworths of New Hampshire. The Wentworths included two New Hamp-

shire colonial governors. These facts lead one to wonder just how extensive a pedigree chart Marion E. (Prime) Nelson might have had, if she had one.

In drawing up a pedigree chart one quickly comes to the astounding realization that with each generation one goes back one doubles the previous number. In fact, we have 32 great-greatgreat grandparents and so on. Based on this progression it is no wonder that we all have a right to be proud of our pedigrees. After all, each of these grandparents played some role in the history of their particular time and in the particular place in which they lived. * Other businesses in this area are featured in the color section.

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Southern & Coastal Maine Region

Alden Blethen “Raise hell and sell newspapers”

by Lorraine McConaghy

“

Raise hell and sell newspapers” It’s a long way from Thorndike, Maine to Seattle, Washington, and a long time from 1800 to 2014, but the Blethen family bridges that distance.

In 1810, Job Blethen and his sons moved from Durham out to “the frontier” in Maine’s Waldo County, and built first a crude log cabin and then a substantial farmhouse and barn. The family sheep ranged across the grasslands, and the Blethen men registered their animals’ earmarks with the Thorndike town clerk.

Job Blethen’s great-grandson Alden was born in 1845, one of six children.

Disaster struck when the boy wasonly three years old: his father died suddenly, leaving his widow Abigail Blethen responsible for the farm and the family.

She faced the dry summer and harsh winter, trying to keep the family together in remote Waldo County. Nineteenth century fictional women rose above such difficulties, but Abigail did not – she fled to Boston, leaving her children behind. Such children were called “town paupers,” auctioned off to the lowest bidder who would agree to feed and clothe them – and put them to work. Little Alden Blethen was

“farmed out,” and worked on Waldo County farms for a decade.

In his teens, the clever, bookish boy taught in country schools, and eventually enrolled in the Maine Wesleyan Seminary and Female College, at Kent’s Hill, near Augusta. In 1864, nearly two hundred young men and women attended this private academy, which offered a liberal arts education in a Methodist context. Blethen graduated from Kent’s Hill in 1868 and began to study law, apprenticed to a Portland firm. The legal profession offered an enterprising young man an alternative to the drudgery of farming; later, Alden Blethen reminisced, “in the good old state of Maine, the lawyer was the man who did things.”

In 1869, he married Rose Ann Hunter, of Strong, Maine, and the young couple could not support their growing family on a law apprentice’s pay. Borrowing family money, they leased the Abbott Family School, in Farmington, Alden as principal and Rose as matron.

Farmington was a bustling market town on the Androscoggin Railroad, boasting a cheese factory, a tannery, spool and wagon factories, nearby mica mines and slate quarries. The Abbott Fami-

ly School boarded boys from throughout New England, as well as Uruguay, Spain and Cuba. Advertising in the Farmington Chronicle, Alden Blethen noted that the school’s “location was one of the best in the Union, being entirely isolated from all pernicious influences…” and surrounded by “the beauty of the Sandy River valley.”

Under Blethen’s administration, the Abbott School was a success, boarding fifty boys. By 1872, Alden Blethen had made an impression in Maine as an educator and businessman; he was a young man of great promise. He received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College. He was active in the Odd fellows and in the Republican Party, and headed the subscription drive to outfit the Farmington Cornet Band. Restless and ambitious, Blethen had begun to study law again in the evenings, preparing to sit for the Maine state bar exam.

In December 1873, the Blethen family left Farmington for the big city — Portland, Maine. They moved into their new home on Bramhall Hill, Portland’s most fashionable neighborhood. Blethen publicized his practice as “Counsellor at Law,” posting advertisements in the Portland Press. In

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Sixty-five trains passed through daily, carrying passengers and freight to and from Boston, New York and Montreal, and passenger steamers departed daily for Boston and weekly for Europe. $50 million in cargo crossed Portland’s wharves and warehouses each year. Rebuilt after the great 1866 fire, the city seemed brand-new to its population of 35,000. Blethen’s law office was on Exchange Street, as were Board of Trade offices, the U.S. Superior Court, the Merchants’ Bank and the Printers’ Exchange, where the Argus, Advertiser, and Portland Press were published.

In the language of the day, Alden Blethen was a “warm man.” Active in Portland politics, building his network of professional connections, he continued his membership in the Odd Fellows. Blethen stumped for Republican candidates James Blaine and Thomas Brackett Reed, and occasionally submitted articles to the local newspapers.

But he was at his best in a courtroom, as a trial lawyer appealing to the jury – flamboyant, sarcastic and wheedling at turns. In 1879, the sensational Charles Witham murder case rocked Portland, and offered attorney Alden Blethen his greatest chance for fame.

Dr. Witham was accused by a domestic, Annie Small, of murdering their baby in a botched abortion attempt. She claimed that he had professed love and proposed marriage, but instead forced her to take ergot to induce an abortion.

Further, she claimed, when the infant was born alive, Witham murdered the child and hid its body. She knew the baby was living, she said, because she heard it cry. Accused of fornication and murder, Witham chose Alden Blethen as his defense attorney.

Abortion was a felony. But if the baby had drawn breath to cry, the doctor could be tried for murder. At Blethen’s direction, the tiny body was recovered from the privy and placed in a jar of alcohol. At the time, submersion in alcohol made it impossible to know wheth-

er the baby’s lungs had inflated – did Blethen realize this? Did he advise this preservation to protect his client?

At first, the Portland newspapers’ reporting favored the professional man, describing servant Annie Small as “weak-minded,” while describing Dr. Witham as “carefully dressed and calm, a good looking man with red side whiskers and mustache.” Blethen advised his client to admit to the abortion but deny the murder. Since the evidence was damaged, the case came down to Witham’s word against Annie’s. The jury found Dr. Witham not guilty of murder, and Alden Blethen won a very high profile case, in the Portland courts and press.

But by Portland standards, Charles Witham was a libertine. A parade of witnesses enthralled the court with scandalous testimony about the doctor’s promiscuity. Local newspaper readers were riveted by tales of his seduction of a dozen young women — sometimes more than one at a time — in the bed that he shared with his wife. Annie Small produced a sheaf of his passionate letters. Dr. Witham was condemned by public opinion; his way

of life “revolting to any human being.”

Attorney Blethen won the case, but lost his reputation. He became notorious rather than famous. Soon, he formed a partnership with an attorney in Kansas City, Missouri, and left Portland forever. Throughout his life, he maintained that he’d left Maine because of poor health, requiring the “dry climate” of Kansas City. Perhaps. But at 35, he may have wanted to try his luck in the West, to “grow up with the country.” Blethen soon abandoned his legal career in Missouri, and moved north to Minneapolis, to edit and publish newspapers there. In 1893, he traveled to Seattle and purchased the newspaper that became The Seattle Times, thriving in the Klondike Gold Rush. Alden Blethen’s descendant, Frank Blethen, manages that newspaper today.

This article is excerpted by Lorraine McConaghy, from Sherry Boswell and Lorraine McConaghy, Raise Hell and Sell Newspapers: Alden J. Blethen and the Seattle Times. Washington State University Press, 1996.

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Edward Knight & Co ................................................................4 Jackman Moose River Chamber of Commerce ............................61 Jackson’s Hardware ..........................................................................5 James C. Derby Housewright & Home Inspections .................71 JC Building Products ....................................................................20 Jean’s Moosehead Rentals ............................................................61 Jim Worden Logging, Pulping & Chipping/Excavation .................10 Jimmy’s Shop ‘n Save .....................................................................60 Johnson Funeral Home & Cremation Services ...............................16 J’s Oyster ........................................................................................31 JW Awning Co. .............................................................................63 K.B. 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.....................................................................32 The Inns at Greenleaf Lane .......................................................69 The Lodge at Kennebunk ............................................................17 The Narrows Tavern ......................................................................56 The Paper Patch ............................................................................13 The Park Danforth ........................................................................35 Thurston’s Wicked Good Burgers ..................................................32 Tony’s Donut Shop .........................................................................33 Town & Lake Motel & Waterfront Cottages ...............................58 Treats ...............................................................................................53 Triple K Excavation ..........................................................................62 True North Generator, 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......................................................................................9 Wilson Funeral Home ....................................................................12 Wilson’s Drug Store .........................................................................66 Woodsome Trucking & Logging, Inc. ................................................7 Xtreme Audio ..................................................................................43 Yankee Yardworks ..........................................................................47 York County Federal Credit Union ..................................................18 York Woods Tree & Products..............................................................5

& Coastal Maine Region ~ 2016 Southern & Coastal Maine EditionSouthern ~

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SOUTHERN MAINE’S CASINO 24/7 CASINO ACTION 26

Lewiston/ Auburn

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EXIT 63 Gray

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