2018 Western Lakes & Mountains Region

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Maine’s History Magazine Volume 27 | Issue 7 | 2018

15,000 Circulation

Western Lakes & Mountains Region

Jazz Man Johnny Williams Waterville drummer makes it to Hollywood

A Novel Adventure With A Moose Those crazy Rangeley guides

The Jam On Gerry’s Rock

Lumber camp ballads of the early 1900s

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Western Lakes & Mountains Region

Inside This Edition

2 3

I t Makes No Never Mind James Nalley

4

A Novel Adventure With A Moose Those crazy Rangeley guides Steve Pinkham

8

The Jam On Gerry’s Rock Lumber camp ballads of the early 1900s Charles Francis

12 Skiing In Finland Carrabassett native hobnobbed with Vladimir Putin

Brian Swartz

Maine’s History Magazine

Western Lakes & Mountains Region

Publisher & Editor Jim Burch

Layout & Design Liana Merdan

19 The Historic Rangeley Inn It has accommodated visitors for many years

Brian Swartz

Advertising & Sales Manager

20 Trout For The Table When times are tough, Mainers work for their food

John Murray

Advertising & Sales

25 Foxcroft’s Eliab Buck Dixie congressman and Japanese ambassador

Brian Swartz 30 Skowhegan’s Daniel Dole Hawaiian missionary

Brian Swartz 33 Jazz Man Johnny Williams

Waterville drummer makes it to Hollywood

Charles Francis 36 The Farmington State Normal School Higher education arrives in Maine Jeffrey Bradley 42 Greene’s Aaron Daggett The Civil War’s last surviving Union general

James Nalley 48 N orway’s Lt. Robert Emerson Finally laid to rest in Maine

James Nalley 50 Bridgton Fairgrounds Now the site of Bridgton Hospital

Franklin Irish 53 Sebago’s Evans Fitch He epitomized Maine’s bluegrass artists Brian Swartz 57 The Waterville Merchants Steamboat Company City of Waterville stern-wheeler launched in 1890

Willard B. Arnold III (courtesy of the Waterville Historical Society) 61 Livermore’s Timothy O. Howe Local son gains fame on the national level

Charles Francis 64 The Raising Of Auburn

The 1854 incorporation of Androscoggin County

Derek Brou 67 The Hannibal Hamlin Memorial Stone

1909 ceremony in Paris unveiled the memorial

Brian Swartz

Tim Maxfield Jennifer Bakst Dennis Burch Tim Maxfield Zack Rouda

Field Representative Jim Caron

Office Manager

Liana Merdan

Contributing Writers Jeffrey Bradley Charles Francis | fundy67@yahoo.ca John Murray James Nalley Steve Pinkham 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 © 2018, CreMark, Inc.

SUBSCRIPTION FORM ON PAGE 70

Front Cover Photo:

Girls canoeing at Camp Abena in Belgrade, Item # 7776 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com All photos in Discover Maine’s Western Lakes & Mountains Region edition show Maine as it used to be, and many are from local citizens who love this part of Maine.

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

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

It Makes No Never Mind

by James Nalley

T

he majority of Americans, sometimes without even realizing it, have driven on at least one “National Scenic Byway.”

Established in 1991 by the U.S. Congress, this program aims to “preserve and enhance the nation’s scenic, but often less-traveled roads.”

There are currently 125 byways throughout the country, with additional designations such as “America’s Byways.” In order to receive such a designation, the highway must meet at least one of six qualities: scenic, natural, historic, cultural, archaeological, and/or recreational.

According to “America’s Scenic Byways,” the state of Maine has 12 scenic byways with three in western Maine alone. First, there is the 60-mile Pequawket Trail Scenic Byway (Route 113), which runs parallel to the Saco River between Standish and Fryeburg. It includes excellent views of the White Mountain National Forest, travels through historic sites (e.g., the Hemlock Covered Bridge, the Hiram Rail Museum, and the Fryeburg Museum), and provides multiple points for swimming, fishing, and kayaking. Second, there is the 21-mile Grafton Notch Scenic Byway that begins in Newry and travels along Route 26 to Grafton Notch State Park. Along this two-lane highway there are historic farmhouses and a reminder of what it was once like before the industrial age. Finally, there is the 35-mile Rangeley Lakes Scenic Byway,

perhaps one of the most well-known byways in Maine. From Rangeley Lake, travelers can drive along Route 17 to the “Height of Land,” where the land drops off and not only offers a westerly view of the 25-square-mile Mooselookmeguntic Lake, but also a glimpse of the Maine mountains that cross into New Hampshire. Other important aspects of this particular byway include its proximity to the Appalachian Trail (which crosses both Routes 4 and 17), the Swift River (one of the most protected in the state), the Rangeley Historical Society, the Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum, and the Wilhelm Reich Museum. One of the perks of all three byways is that there are no tolls.

On this note, let me close with the following road-trip-related jest: On a beautiful afternoon, a middle-aged man decides to take a drive down the highway and relax by the lake. On his drive, he sees a man dressed from head to toe in red standing on the side of the road and gesturing him to stop. The driver stops and asks, “How can I help you?” Then, the man in red says, “Hi, I am the red JERK of the highway. Give me something to eat.” Smiling at the strangeness of the event, the driver hands the man a sandwich and drives away. Approximately 10 minutes later, the driver sees another man on the side of the road, who is dressed from head to toe in yellow. After gesturing for him to stop, the driver, a bit annoyed, rolls down the window and asks, “What can I do for you?” Then, the man in yellow says, “Hi, I am the yellow JERK

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of the highway. Give me something to drink.”

Begrudgingly, the driver hands the man a can of Coke and speeds away. At that moment, he decides to go faster and not stop. Then, to his frustration, he sees another man on the side of the road. This time, the man is dressed from head to toe in blue and he gestures him to stop.

Reluctantly, the driver stops, rolls down his window, and yells, “Let me guess, you’re the blue JERK of the highway! What the heck do you want?” Then, the man in blue says, “License and registration please.”

Western Lakes & Mountains Region

4

A Novel Adventure With A Moose Those crazy Rangeley guides

by Steve Pinkham

C

harles A. J. Farrar of Hyde Park, Massachussetts, first went to Rangeley in the early 1870s on annual fishing trips and soon built and operated the first steamboat on the Richardson Lakes. He published his Illustrated Guide Book to Rangeley in 1876, revising it almost annually until his 14th edition in 1890, three years before his death.

Including a new sportsmen’s map, the new edition updated the increasing access routes, steamboats operating on each lake, and the increasing number of camps and hotels that were being constructed annually. His second edition included this story of an incident

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on Mooselukmeguntic Lake.

David Toothaker Haines guided at Rangeley from 1870 right up to his death in 1917, while his fellow guide, John Haley, Jr. who came from a family of guides, worked at that profession for a few years, then as a carpenter and later as a merchant at Rangeley until his death in 1897 at the age of 66 years.

Fred Barker, the third guide in the story, came to the lakes from Andover, and spent several years on the Upper Magalloway with John Danforth, another early guide and proprietor, which he chronicled in Hunting and Trapping on the Upper Magalloway

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Then he operated a steamer and built and operated several camps and hotels on Mooselukmeguntic Lake – Camp Bemis, The Birches and The Barker, which he described more fully in his autobiography, Lake and Forest as I Have Known Them (1902) “On the 23rd of May 1877, Weston Lewis and his son, Weston K. Lewis, of Boston, were trolling for trout in the Rangeley Lakes in separate boats, with David T. Haines and John Haley as guides. Mr. Lewis had Haines, and both boats were at the upper end of the lake. Mr. Lewis was having good luck,

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com and had just had a strike, when Haines, who was leisurely rowing, inquired, “What’s that?” Mr. Lewis turned and saw a large animal swimming in the water, some eighty rods away.

“Then Haines cried out, “It’s a moose! a Moose!” let’s head him off!”

No sooner said than this powerful oarsman bent to his strokes, and the boat leaped through the water. Mr. Lewis hauled in his line, hand over hand, and away they went, crying out to his son in the other boat, “Moose! Moose!”

“On rounding the point of an intervening island, they arrived just in time to intercept a large buck moose, who appeared puzzled and surprised to find the boat a few rods ahead in his course, and by hallooing and shouting, was led to turn about in the opposite direction.

Seeing this, Haines proposed to drive him to camp. Rowing his boat within a few feet of the animal, the intensely exciting race began. Haley soon appeared, and the two boats, one on ei-

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ther side, kept up the race. The moose swam rapidly and made for Birch Point Island. Nothing could be done to prevent his landing, and with a bound he departed into the forest.

“We will catch him on the other side,” suggested Haines, breathing hard between his long strokes, and both boats shot around the island in opposite directions, but found Mr. Moose already in the water and swimming away for Birch Island, a mile distant. The chase for this mile found the pursuers full of excitement, shouting and laughing, and enjoying the rare sport.

“The mile was soon made, and again the moose landed and plunged into the forest; again, the boats were pulled, as if for life, skirting the island, and arrived on the other side just in season to see the moose leap some thirty feet into the lake, and again the pursuit was renewed. Soon after, they were overtaken by a boat containing Messrs. Chase and Sullivan of Haverhill, Massachus-

setts, with Fred G. Barker as guide.

Now Barker and Haines took one boat to themselves, and both being experienced trappers, the fun increased.

“Someone called out, “Lasso him.”

No sooner suggested than taking the anchor line and making a lasso, Haines at the oars and Barker at the bow, they moved the boat up onto the very haunches of the moose, and Barker threw first over one then the other horn the rope, and securely fastened it, they let him out for fifty feet, and the excitement reached the climax. A second boat was fastened to the first, and the two boats were towed by the moose nearly to the camp of the Hon. William P. Frye, member of Congress from Maine. Here, as the animal showed signs of great fatigue and distress, and fearing he might die, he was turned to the shore, and landed after a swim of about five miles.

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(cont. from page 5) tree for some three hours, he was cut loose by Haines, and left at rapid speed in the direction of Canada, where we presume he will warn all his family and friends never again to run the risk of a like experience by bathing in these lakes. It was a day never to be forgotten by those who participated, and it will no doubt be many years before such a sight will be again seen on these or any other lakes.

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The Jam On Gerry’s Rock Lumber camp ballads of the early 1900s

by Charles Francis

T

he late 1800s and early 1900s were the heyday of the deep woods lumber camp. Lumber camps were unique places with their own traditions and particular ways of doing things. One such tradition was the singing of ballads. Evenings, especially Saturday evenings, jacks lounging about in the bunkhouse sang. Most of the songs they sang had a common theme, the jack’s daily encounter with danger. The Jam on Gerry’s Rock is one such song. In The Jam on Gerry’s Rock, a river driver is killed when a log drive breaks loose.

The Jam on Gerry’s Rock is without question the most popular lumberjack song. It has been heard as far north as

Newfoundland and at least as far west as Michigan. By heard, I mean it has been collected. Intriguingly, most every locality where it has been or is still sung thinks of it as its own. One of the reasons for this is that the place names in the song are altered to suit a particular locality.

There is, however, a good deal of evidence that The Jam on Gerry’s Rock originated in Maine. And it seems more than likely it tells the story of a disaster on a western Maine river. There are, of course, those in Maine who would argue the point. A bit further afield, there are those who think the song got its start in New Brunswick. Then, too, there are those who think New Hamp-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com shire or Vermont.

Part of the problem with identifying the locality of The Jam on Gerry’s Rock has to do with Gerry’s Rock. It seems that nobody can identify the landmark for sure. Either that or there is more than one candidate. Or else Gerry’s Rock no longer exists.

The Jam on Gerry’s Rock was once known by heart to every river driving man who worked the Androscoggin, whether it be where the river whose name roughly translates as “where the alewives are cured” enters Maine at the border with New Hampshire at Gilead or where it flows by Bethel, Rumford and down to Lewiston and Auburn and beyond to the Kennebec and thence to the sea.

We know Androscoggin jacks knew The Jam on Gerry’s Rock because collectors like Fanny Hardy Eckstrom, Helen Hartness Flanders, Phillips Barry, Louise Manny and others have either alluded to the fact or stated it out-

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right. This doesn’t mean Gerry’s Rock was on the Androscoggin, though.

There are those who believe the rock to have been on the Dead River. The West Branch of the Penobscot is also a candidate. And there are others. But they seem less likely. I don’t mean that the song wasn’t sung elsewhere, but that Gerry’s Rock wasn’t or isn’t there. The Jam on Gerry’s Rock is a river drivers’ song. It was sung wherever there were river drivers.

The Jam on Gerry’s Rock is the best known of all lumbering songs, though it might not be if not for the scholarly efforts of a Gilead-born folklorist named Louise Manny. Though born in Maine, Manny is best known for collecting New Brunswick folk songs. She included The Jam on Gerry’s Rock in her book Songs of the Miramichi. Manny talks of children singing the song in New Brunswick schools, suggesting, at the same time, that she sang it herself in Gilead before moving away.

Helen Hartness Flanders, Vermont’s “Green Mountain Songcatcher” heard the song. Flanders collected in New Hampshire near the Maine border as well as in her home state. A collector from the Northeast Folklore Archives at the University of Maine at Orono heard the song from Newell Beam.

Beam worked at Machias River. His source was a jack who worked the West Branch of the Penobscot. That source said Gerry’s Rock was dynamited. The source also said he found Jack Munroe’s grave with the initials “J.M.,” a wonderful anecdote.

The Jam on Gerry’s Rock tells the story of the death of a shanty-boy.

Shanty-boy and lumberjack are almost synonyms. Depending on the particular version of the song the shanty-boy’s name is Monroe or Munroe. Also, depending on the version, Jack and his sweetheart are buried side by side or Jack’s grave is a lonely one. In the (cont. on page 10)

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(cont. from page 9) same vein, Jack is either American or Canadian. The shanty boy’s nationality seems to be a matter of the singer’s choice.

Monroe was a river driving foreman. He and six of his fellow drivers assailed a log jam, the feared nightmare and greatest challenge faced by drivers.

Needless to say, Monroe and his six men all lost their lives.

Newell Beam sang the last stanza with the following words: Now come all of you bold shanty boys and I’ll have you call and see, Those two green mounds by the river side where grows the hemlock tree, Those two green mounds by the river side is where two lovers lay low, They’re the handsome Clara Vernon, and her true love, Jack Monroe.

Louise Manny’s final stanza of the song goes as follows: They buried him with sorrow deep, ‘twas on the first of May. Come all of you bold shanty-boys

and for your comrades pray.

Engraved upon a hemlock tree, that by the grave did grow Was the date and place of drowning of the shanty-boy Monroe.

From the above it is clear that The Jam on Gerry’s Rock, like all ballads, changes. It was and may still be a work in progress. One thing that doesn’t change is its mood. It’s sad.

A good many ballads record brutal facts. The brutality is often motiveless.

Nature is motiveless: nature is fate.

How are natural tragedies to be dealt with if you are a simple working man, a lumberjack?

Ballads are popular because they have an element of truth. There is in every ballad which has been passed on over the decades a modicum of truth.

This truth, though not necessarily historical or factual, is often mental. It has to do with particular mental attitudes, attitudes that are adopted by those who live with or are exposed to tragedy.

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Skiing In Finland Carrabassett native hobnobbed with Vladimir Putin

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That’s because in February 2002, Norris taught Putin to ski at the Ruka Ski Station in northern Finland.

The son of Nancy Norris and the Honorable John M. Norris, who “was involved in politics for 60 years,” Norris graduated from Brewer High School and earned a bachelor’s degree at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire.

He then attended the Johns Hopkins University in its School of Advanced International Studies and graduated in 1977 with a master’s degree in land-use geography and international affairs, a degree “which I have used a great deal over the years, all over the globe.”

School vacation week in Finland

was under way when Norris was summoned to the Ruka Ski Station “from Kuusamo town” on February 18, 2002.

The air temperature was -40 degrees Fahrenheit, Norris reported to his supervisor, Jorma Jesse Immonen, who “asked if I spoke Russian.”

“Nimnoga (a little),” Norris replied.

He noticed standing elsewhere in the office “three gentlemen in black full-length coats and black Cossack hats.” Turning to Norris, Immonen said, “Please, allow me to introduce your clients for the next 10 days: Comrade Azarov, bodyguard; Comrade Pluchenza, finance minister; and the Honorable Vladimir V. Putin,” the president of the

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13

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Russian Federation.

Making introductions and shaking hands, the four men headed out the door for Putin’s condo. “Good luck, Immonen said to Norris.

After the Russians “changed into their ski gear, we put on our jackets and ventured forth to the T-bar ski lift,” Norris said.

He described Ruka Ski Station as “a drumlin, not really a mountain in the true sense, with barely 900 feet of vertical drop, yet certain steep runs are available.”

Norris and Putin sat together on the T-bar. “He’s a real go-getter and was eager to start skiing,” Norris said. The men “chatted of skiing and family” in fluent French, learned by Putin during his studies at the Sorbonne and by Norris growing up “in western Maine, where a healthy French-Canadian contingent lives.”

Putin speaks English, “but is more comfortable in French,” Norris ob-

served.

Once off the ski lift, Putin wanted “to ski a Black Diamond expert trail.

I suggested an easier Blue Piste for he and his colleagues to warm up” while Norris checked “out their ski abilities.”

His decision provided “a wise choice.”

With Norris advising them about proper body stance, the Russians made four runs on the Blue Piste trail. “They tried hard” although “it was cold, and they were cold.” Not even the proper clothing they wore could “fend off the brutal chill,” so the four men headed to a nearby wild game restaurant.

After eating, Norris and Putin “went out for five more runs.” Azarov and Pluchenza “retired for an afternoon nap,” Norris said. “They weren’t really having a good time, not being avid skiers,” and the men “were blue with the cold.”

Putin “was loving it, though we skied on intermediate Blue trails playing follow the leader. The light began

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to get flat as the afternoon shadows lengthened, and it was time to quit” for the day.”

Norris discovered the next morning that “Putin likes to be in charge.” Ten minutes late for their scheduled 8:15 a.m. start time, Norris saw that Putin “was already at the T-bar lifting, waiting alone.”

His ski boots unbuckled, “I ran” to the lift “and breathlessly apologized as I stepped into my ski bindings.”

“Don’t be late again,” Putin said “in an ominous tone in perfect English.”

Norris explained that he was late because he had dropped his daughter “at her grandparents and that she comes first.” Putin “understood and agreed, as he has two daughters.”

Despite the bitter cold, the two men “skied many runs, and he tried to improve.” Joined by Putin’s two companions after lunch, the men “skied on easier trails,” and Norris continued helping (cont. on page 14)

Western Lakes & Mountains Region

14

(cont. from page 13) his clients improve their stance.

“By 3:30 p.m. all were fatigued,” and the “sauna, steam, hot tub, and pool beckoned for muscle and mental relaxation,” Norris said.

He continued training Putin and his comrades through February 28. “For Vladimir and me, much of our time spent talking was on the ski lift, T-bar, or chairlift, just the two of us. We never discussed politics, but family and sports and travel were always at the forefront for topics.”

Norris learned that Putin’s “paternal grandfather, Spiridon Putin, was the personal chef for Tsar Nicholas II and after his assassination, chef for Lenin and Stalin. Through his grandfather” Putin “gained a love of gourmet food and an insight into the workings of power.”

When bodyguard Azarov “fell down and broke his ankle” a few days into the training, “I was told by Vladimir

that I not only was his ski instructor and coach, but his bodyguard as well,” Norris recalled.

“And so the days continued,” he said. “Before our time came to an end,” Putin “was skiing comfortably on expert Black Diamond trails.

“He is a competitive person, but mostly competes with himself,” Norris said.

With the 10 days over, he and Putin went their separate ways. “I’m the only one in the world who has worked privately with him one on one, as an American,” Norris said.

He invited Putin “to come to Maine about five years ago, but he couldn’t make it.” Perhaps Putin and Trump will accept Norris’s invitation to ski together in Carrabassett Valley sometime; if so, the world could become a better place. * Other businesses from this area area featured in the color section.

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Early view of Maple Street in Skowhegan. Item # LB2007.1.103165 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Western Lakes & Mountains Region

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View of Main Street in Bethel, ca. 1935. Item # 6587 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Western Lakes & Mountains Region

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Early view of Bridge Street in Mexico. Item #LB2007.1.109749 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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The Historic Rangeley Inn

Accommodating visitors for many years

by Brian Swartz

A

century ago, around a dozen large hotels accommodated the sportsmen and -women flocking to Rangeley, “and The Rangeley Inn is now the last of them,” says owner and manager Travis Ferland.

“This beautiful, charming building has its own unique style that blends the elegance and opulence of the early 1900s with the rusticity of Maine’s lakes and mountains,” Travis says. “It’s a uniquely Maine building” that traces its roots to late 1876, when attorney J.A. Burke constructed a new hotel that overlooked Haley Pond from a site on the east side of Main Street in Rangeley.

Leasing the property from Burke, Eben Hinkley officially opened the Rangeley Lake House on Tuesday, March 20, 1877. “At that time there were not a lot of trees, and from this site you would have had a great view of Rangeley Lake,” Travis says.

A subsequent owner, The Rangeley

Lakes Hotel Company, moved the hotel’s central section in two pieces across Main Street to Marble Point on Rangeley Lake in October 1895. The hotel became The Rangeley Lake House.

Twelve years later, the Rangeley Tavern Corporation started constructing a tavern where the Lake House had stood above Haley Pond. The Rangeley Tavern officially opened in May 1909, and A.G. Cookson was the first manager.

Times changed, and so did the tavern, bought by Nathan Ellis in 1914 and expanded four years later when he attached the nearby 1900 Frazar Inn to the tavern as its north wing. The tavern became The Rangeley Inn in 1947.

Well experienced in the hospitality industry, Travis bought the inn at auction in summer 2013 and immediately started remodeling and updating the facility. “All the rooms have been renovated, and we have created some suites,” he says. “The waterfront rooms

now all have private decks and look out to the water.”

A century ago, people flocked to Rangeley for the hunting and fishing.

Those same activities still lure people to the Rangeley Lakes Region, but today visitors from the United States and around the world also come to look for moose, leaf peep, snowmobile, bird watch, hike in the great outdoors, and just get away from it all.

“Folks ask us about all the things to do“ in the Rangeley Lakes Region, and “then they get here, and I think a lot of them enjoy just relaxing,” Travis says.

Guests can explore Haley Pond with the inn’s kayaks and canoe, and the tavern, “the most historic part of the building,” is open seven days a week, Travis says.

From the inn’s location at 2443 Main Street, many Rangeley amenities are only a short walk away — just as they were 100 years ago.

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Western Lakes & Mountains Region

20

Trout For The Table When times are tough, Mainers work for their food

by John Murray

C

hildren grow up fast when life requires it. The lives of many children would be forever altered in Rangeley during World War II. In the middle of the cold winter of 1942, my thirteen-year-old second uncle Jimmy was promoted to the male head of the household when his father left Rangeley. After Jimmy’s dad departed Rangeley, the winter seemed even colder. His father had enlisted into the military shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and by the time the spring of 1942 arrived, even the bird’s morning songs appeared to have a more somber tone.

The entire township of Rangeley was also altered after the United States became involved in the global conflict.

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Before the war, Rangeley was a favored destination hub for many vacationers who wanted to escape the crowded cities. The grand hotels in the area that were once filled to capacity with gleeful visitors now stood empty. Without the economic boost that the vacationers provided to the area, Rangeley was immersed into an unfamiliar predicament.

The implementation of food rationing in the spring of 1942 further solidified a difficult situation for the residents of Rangeley.

Jimmy’s grandmother stood firmly as the backbone of the family. Despite losing her husband in a logging accident during the previous spring, grandmother always retained her inner strength to maintain a positive at-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com titude. This attitude seemed to shine ever brighter when a challenge had to be met. Her family survived the potato famine in Ireland, a prolonged period of disease and mass starvation that resulted in a death toll of more than a million people. Grandmother had experienced hunger prior to the spring of 1942, and would not let hunger impact her family in Rangeley.

Grandmother’s property was surrounded by apple trees that would be heavy with fruit by the end of the summer. Her large garden was filled with potatoes, carrots and other vegetables.

Wild blueberries, grapes, asparagus, cattail shoots and burdock roots were often ignored by many people, but she knew the locations of all the naturally growing wild fruit and vegetables in the entire area. Maple trees were tapped for the sweet maple syrup. Grandmother also knew that Jimmy was a natural fisherman. Her son, Jimmy’s father, had begun to teach him how to

fish when he was three years old. At thirteen years of age, Jimmy had acquired ten years of fishing expertise, and his grandmother knew he had the skills to succeed.

There was a strong kinship between Jimmy and his grandmother, and this kinship instilled a confidence in Jimmy to help him succeed in the male head of household role after his father departed. Grandmother’s words of positive reinforcement would forever echo in Jimmy’s ears. “The waters of Maine are filled with fish. You know how to catch these fish. By doing so, you will place food upon the table, and your family will survive.”

At thirteen years of age, Jimmy had developed perfection with the fly rod.

A fly rod was affectionately called the long rod by his father, and Jimmy was more than capable of gracefully casting this efficient fishing rod. The trout of Maine were wary and cunning, yet Jimmy could tempt the resident stream

trout with hand-tied creations of fur and feathers that mimicked stream-born insects that fluttered on the water’s surface. By far, fly fishing was Jimmy’s favorite sport, as it was a time-honored way to capture trout, and Jimmy had great satisfaction with constructing his own gracefully tied fishing flies. But fly fishing wasn’t totally effective when adverse weather conditions were the norm. Jimmy’s family was relying on his fishing success, so Jimmy would readily incorporate other fishing tactics to capture trout.

When the streams in Rangeley were filled with cold high water in the early spring after winter’s snow melt, the trout would hunker down on the bottom of the stream. Not wanting to fight the swift flowing current to conserve energy, the stream trout would seek out the refuge of deep pools, as the current would be considerably slower at the bottom of these pools. Combined (cont. on page 22)

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Western Lakes & Mountains Region

22

(cont. from page 21) with the element of frigid water temperatures, these trout would stubbornly sulk on the bottom of deep pools.

These early season trout were the most difficult fish to capture, and tactics had to be modified to accomplish the feat.

Using bait that was fished deep would get the attention of these difficult trout.

As such, bait fishing was another part of Jimmy’s fishing arsenal, and the procurement of bait was another aspect of fishing.

Unlike the construction of hand-tied fishing flies that were used when fly fishing, fishing bait couldn’t be manufactured. Fishing bait had to be sought and acquired. In the fall of the year, the trees of the forest would ultimately drop their leaves to the ground below. It was common practice to rake and collect these numerous leaves, then deposit a thick layer of leaves over the soil in the backyard garden. This thick layer of leaves would be shoveled and turned under the soil in the spring, and

provide additional rich nutrients in the soil. The cold Maine winters would typically freeze the ground solid, but the layer of leaves on top of the garden soil would provide a blanket of insulation, and more importantly for the bait fisherman – an ample supply of fishing bait.

Knowledgeable bait fishermen like Jimmy would shovel off a section of the leaves covering the garden, and

then find numerous earthworms in the unfrozen soil of early spring. These squiggly fat earthworms were excellent bait for the stream trout, and a supply would be collected for the fishing trip.

If the earthworm supply was exhausted while at the stream, Jimmy would often turn over streamside rocks to acquire grubs and additional worms. Jimmy learned that grubs would suffice as an effective fishing bait, but earthworms were much more effective.

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23

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Maine’s trout seem to possess another sense that enables the fish to almost magically detect a fishermen as he approaches the water. Maine fishermen call this the seventh sense, and most believe it to be true, and not a myth. In fact, humans possess five senses, and trout have been scientifically determined to have six senses. This verified unique sixth sense allows the trout to detect water vibrations through internal cells located along a lateral line along the side of the fish. As for the suspected seventh sense — Jimmy believed in this seventh sense, and would often hold his breath as he sneaked up to the stream in a slow moving, low crouched stance, as to not alert the wary trout of his unwanted presence. The savvy Maine fisherman must mentally create a wall of invisibility to hide behind while pursuing the cagey trout, and Jimmy would perform this mental task on every fishing trip.

While at the stream, Jimmy would

be extra cautious that the sun was not upon him at the wrong angle, as to not place his shadow upon the water, alerting the wary trout to his presence.

Noise was kept to a minimum. There was no stomping around the streambank, and splashing the water while wading was avoided so the trout could not detect these water vibrations via its sixth sense. Each cast was skillfully directed towards the most promising sections. It was Jimmy’s goal to probe every single inch of water that was suspected to be harboring a concealed trout. Jimmy realized that confidence in your ability was an important factor to capture Maine trout, and he always stayed positive as he waited for the tug of a trout on the end of the line.

During the time America was at war, Jimmy would provide many ample meals of fresh caught trout for his family’s table. On exceptionally good fishing days, he would share the plenti-

ful catch with other residents of Rangeley who were in need. Maine folk are proud and self-sufficient, and will look out for their neighbor’s well-being.

When the war ended in 1945, Jimmy’s father would return home to the welcome arms of his family. He was fortunate, because many fathers paid the ultimate sacrifice and would never return home. Time passed, and the world would settle into a more peaceful slumber, and the township of Rangeley ultimately returned to normal.

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Western Lakes & Mountains Region

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Early view of Squaw Mountain Inn in Greenville. Item # LB2008.19.116197 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.com

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25

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Foxcroft’s Eliab Buck Dixie congressman and Japanese ambassador

by Brian Swartz

A

t an age when most men would be relaxing beside a blazing fire, 70-year-old Alfred Eliab Buck went duck hunting with Mutsuhito, also known as Emperor Meiji of Japan.

Buck had certainly come a long ways from his humble beginnings in Foxcroft.

Born there to Benjamin and Elmira Buck on February 7, 1832, Buck belonged to the generation of Mainers whose lives would be shaped by the Civil War. After graduating from Foxcroft Academy, he studied at Waterville (now Colby) College, Class of 1959, taught a year in Hallowell, and became a high-school principal in Lewiston.

Then Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter, and many young Maine men felt the pressure to do something to defend their country. By late summer 1861, Buck resigned his position at Lewiston and started recruiting men for the 13th Maine Infantry Regiment.

He rounded up enough recruits to see them formed into Company C and himself named its captain in mid-October.

The 13th Maine Infantry mustered into the U.S. Army in December 1861, then spent that hellishly cold and snowy winter in a rudimentary camp at Augusta. Not until February 1862 did the regiment take a train to Boston and catch a ship for the Deep South.

For the talented 28-year-old captain

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from Foxcroft, there was no turning back when he discovered the sunshine and warmth of a Gulf Coast winter.

Two “official” wars into America’s future, other Maine parents would worry about their military sons, “How Ya Gonna Keep ’em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree.” For Buck’s parents back home in Foxcroft, there was no way to lure Alfred Eliab back to the farm after he stepped ashore on Sand Island in the Gulf of Mexico.

A warm, wind-swept, and bug-infested island off the Mississippi coast, Sand Island was the staging area for Union soldiers headed to capture New Orleans. The Navy handily did so (cont. on page 26)

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(cont. from page 25) in April 1862, so Buck and the 13th Maine Infantry bounced around Louisiana before arriving in the Big Easy that December.

Buck found military life and the Louisiana climate to his liking. Mingling easily with local blacks, he jumped two grades in rank by becoming lieutenant colonel of the 20th Louisiana Corps d’Afrique (a locally raised black regiment) in August 1863. This unit became the 91st U.S. Colored Troops.

Taking time to marry Ellen Baker of Hallowell in 1864, Buck then joined the 51st USCT. The regiment primarily garrisoned different Louisiana posts, and Buck explored Union-held territory when he could.

The more he saw of the Deep South, the more he liked it.

Buck’s claim to military fame occurred when the 51st USCT participated in the early spring 1865 campaign to capture Fort Blakeley on the north-

east shore of Mobile Bay. Brevetted a colonel for his actions during the fort’s siege and capture, Buck accompanied his regiment on Reconstruction duties in western Louisiana after the war ended.

Buck and the 51st USCT mustered out in mid-June 1866. Like so many other Maine veterans, Alfred Eliab Buck decided to stay way down south in Dixie. He tried his hand at business by settling in Mobile, operating an iron smelter, and manufacturing turpentine.

A fire destroyed the latter business in 1867; then a new career opened for Buck when he was named the clerk of the Mobile County Circuit Court by Major General John Pope that same year.

Alabama was then under Army control. Buck went to the 1867 Alabama Constitutional Convention as a Republican delegate and helped write the constitution that, when accepted by

Congress, restored Alabama as a full American state.

Buck won election as Republican to the 41st Congress, taking his seat as an “Alabamian” in March 1869. He declined to seek re-election.

Even as ex-Confederates shoved Reconstruction aside, Buck remained a Republican. Named the Mobile City Council president in 1873, he relocated to Atlanta a year later and served as a federal court clerk and later as a United States marshal.

Remaining active in politics, Buck led the Republican Party in Georgia in 1896. As chairman of the Republican State Convention held that April, he committed a political faux pas that led to protests, a walkout, and all sorts of other excitement.

His reputation now battered but not shattered, Buck went to the national convention later that year and helped nominate William McKinley, another

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Civil War veteran.

Once in office, McKinley remembered the outspoken Mainer-turned-Southerner who had supported him. Named the “envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary” (a step down from ambassador) to Japan on July 3, 1898, Alfred Eliab Buck sailed for Japan and looked forward to new adventures in the Far East.

He represented American interests before the Japanese until December 4, 1902, when he died of a heart attack while accompanying Emperor Meiji and his imperial entourage on a duck hunt outside Tokyo. The embalmed body of Alfred Eliab Buck was shipped home to the United States for burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

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Skowhegan’s Daniel Dole

by Brian Swartz

Hawaiian missionary

N

ot associated with pineapples himself (although a relative would be), Daniel Dole of Skowhegan left an enduring legacy during his 37 years as a Christian missionary in the Hawaiian Islands.

Skowhegan was actually called Bloomfield, and Maine was still a district of Massachusetts when Elizabeth Haskell Dole bore her husband, the charmingly named Wigglesworth, a son on September 9, 1808. Named Daniel, the boy grew up in a deeply religious home in that area of future Skowhegan called Bloomfield in the early 19th century. He later studied at Bowdoin College, graduating from there in 1836.

An 1839 graduate of the Bangor Theological Seminary, Dole returned

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to Bloomfield. Ordained a minister, he married Emily Hoyt Ballard of Gardiner on October 2, 1840.

The marriage was long planned. A ship captain’s daughter and by the late 1830s a teacher at a women’s seminary in Norridgewock, Emily already intended to become a missionary when Dole proposed in 1837.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had years earlier established mission stations in the Sandwich Islands, as the Hawaiian Island were then called, and had opened schools for Hawaiian children.

Taught primarily by Hawaiian teachers, the native children seldom shared their classrooms with missionaries’ children.

Some American missionaries feared

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the Hawaiians’ “beliefs that values and practices might seduce and corrupt” the foreign [i.e., white] children, Paul T. Burtin noted in his 2006 Imperial Maine and Hawai’i. Hoping to avoid such cultural interaction, the Hawaiian-based missionaries opted to build a school for their children at Punahou, located near Honolulu.

The Doles sailed with the so-called “Ninth Company” of missionaries dispatched to Hawaii by the Foreign Missions. Three other couples — Reverend Elias and Ellen Bond, Reverend John and Mary Paris, and William and Mary Rice — sailed with the Doles aboard the Gloucester, which left Boston on November 14, 1840.

The Bonds also hailed from Maine.

Elias Bond was born in Hallowell and, like Daniel Dole, educated at Bowdoin College and the Bangor Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1840. A Portland native, Ellen Bond married Elias only two months before

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leaving for Hawaii.

The 188-day passage to Hawaii proved eventful. Sailing into “a ferocious storm” not long after leaving Boston, the Gloucester heeled 45 degrees to one side, and “the desperate crew frantically hurled forty to fifty tons of topside cargo” overboard to righten the ship, Burtin noted.

Detained twice at South American ports, the Gloucester reached Honolulu on May 21, 1841, and the Ninth Company split asunder. Elias and Ellen Bond moved to Kohala on the northwestern section of Hawaii.

Daniel and Emily Dole moved with their 1-year-old son George Hathaway Dole to Punahou, where the construction lagged on the missionary children’s school. Assigned as teachers — and with Daniel also serving as principal — the Doles experienced problems with local Hawaiians and wondered when the school would be completed.

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to Maine Yankees was visible in Daniel Dole during this period. Death had lately claimed Emily’s mother and brother, and the mourning Emily realized that while “my husband was absent when I had the news,” he “has never mentioned the subject to me since.”

“I weep and grieve in loneliness,” she told a friend. Daniel “cannot realize how my sorrows drink up my spirit and unfit me for what is before me.”

Unfortunately, Daniel Dole would not have sufficient time to demonstrate sympathy for his wife. The Punahou School finally opened on July 11, 1842, and “the curriculum … combined the elements of a classical education with a strong emphasis on manual labor,” Paul Burtin wrote. Boys hoed and weeded the gardens, and the girls learned the domestic arts from Emily Dole and Marcia Smith, the two women teachers associated with the school.

Emily died on April 27, 1844 after (cont. on page 32)

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(cont. from page 31) giving birth to a son, Sanford Ballard Dole, who as an adult would play a major role in Hawaii’s conversion from independent kingdom to American territory. Stunned at his loss, Daniel Dole grieved in letters written immediately afterwards; “far from family in Maine … he was virtually overwhelmed with grief and loss,” Burton noted.

Dole “was able to take solace from his faith, believing that Emily had gone on to her reward … but he literally staggered as he tried to go on with his life,” Burton observed.

Dole waited a respectable two years before marrying the widow Charlotte Knapp in 1846. Both worked diligently at the Punahou School through its 1853 transition to Oahu College, but the Doles left “at best, an ambiguous legacy” at Punahou, according to Burtin.

Apparently pressured by the school’s directors, Dole resigned from Punahou in 1854. He and Charlotte relocated

with Dole’s sons to Koloa on Kauai in 1855 and opened a boarding school for foreign-born children. Serving as the school’s principal, Daniel Dole found that “his fondness for classical study led him to prepare students” to attend colleges in the United States, noted the 1882 History of Bowdoin College.

Because he did not learn the Hawaiian language, Dole could not teach the non-English-speaking natives, and his school competed for white students with similar schools elsewhere in the islands. Heart-broken after Charlotte’s death in 1874, Dole visited Maine soon afterwards and attended a Bowdoin College commencement at which he was warmly received.

Returning to Hawaii, he lived with his son George at Kapaʻa on Kauai.

Dole died there on August 26, 1878, and his sons buried him in a cemetery at Lihue. Afterwards a friend recalled him as “a pure-minded, thoughtful,

scholarly, Christian missionary, whom we truly loved and who enjoyed the esteem of all missionary associates and the respect of the public.”

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Jazz Man Johnny Williams Waterville drummer makes it to Hollywood

by Charles Francis re you a jazz aficionado? A fan of really hot jazz, of Dixieland or toe-tapping big band swing?

Then maybe you know the name Johnny Williams. He made quite a reputation for himself in the late 1930s as a member of the six-person band, the Raymond Scott Quintette. The band’s name should right away tell you it was a quirky group. Raymond Scott once said he opted to call his group a quintette because sextet was risqué.

Johnny Williams was a drummer.

He was the center piece, the driving force, of the Raymond Scott Quintette.

He was the go-to guy; the band member whose drum solos made the quintette more than just another band from New

A

York.

The Raymond Scott Quintette was an amazingly successful group. It got offers to appear in Hollywood movies and for a brief time made it big in Los Angeles dance halls and concert stages. The Quintette made recordings that scored on mainstream music charts of Billboard and got air on all the popular radio stations of the day. One of their biggest hits was Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals. Williams has a nice solo riff on the 78. Raymond Scott almost always made sure studio cuts included a Williams solo. Benny Goodman did the same thing with Gene Krupa, and Johnny Williams was in Krupa’s class.

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It’s too bad the Raymond Scott Quintette never had the opportunity to make a long playing record. There is a Scott number that is just as memorable as Goodman’s Sing, Sing, Sing. That number is War Dance for Wooden Indians. When the Quintette performed in public Williams took off on solos for as long as five minutes. And his percussion repertoire wasn’t all that traditional. Williams used wood blocks and cow bells. He was a consummate showman. He twirled his sticks, rattled off machine gun-like rim shots and carried on like a crazy man on the Tom Tom. Johnny Williams was a Waterville boy. He was born there in 1908. He’s (cont. on page 34)

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(cont. from page 33) one of the very few Maine-born jazz men of the first half of the twentieth century to make it in the Big Apple.

Williams was also the progenitor of several more noted musicians. His son and grandsons to be exact.

Johnny Williams was born John Towner Williams. His very famous son bears the same name. This is the John Williams who composed the music for movies like Jaws, Star Wars and Jurassic Park and who served as conductor of the Boston Pops. Grandson Mark Towner Williams is a drummer like his grandfather. He has played with groups like Air Supply and Crosby, Stills and Nash. He is a singer and has fronted groups like Lionel’s Dad and produced records. Grandson Joseph Williams was lead singer with the group Toto and has served as the singing voice of movie characters like Disney’s Simba in The Lion King. He is also a composer, having done the sound tracks for

shows like the CBS miniseries Category 7: The End of the World.

Johnny Williams grew up in Maine at a time when some very good local dance bands as well as big name imports from Boston and New York City were playing almost every weekend.

While the biggest draw was the pier at Old Orchard Beach, larger Maine communities like Waterville had its dance spots too. One of the biggest Waterville draws was Henry Sprince’s Banjo-Sax Orchestra out of Lewiston. Sprince was one of Williams’ early influences.

He was best known for his particular style of syncopated Dixieland.

Henry Sprince was not a professional musician but a gifted amateur. He probably could have made a living and a good one as a full-time band teacher but he was a physician. Johnny Williams, however, was both gifted and a professional.

Williams’ first big break came when

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he was hired as a regular with the CBS Radio Orchestra in the early ‘30s. This was in New York City where the network had its flagship station. Raymond Scott played the piano for the CBS house band.

Raymond Scott formed his quintette in 1936 by drawing from the CBS orchestra. Once the group mastered a repertoire of significant length and complexity, Scott signed a recording contract with Duke Ellington’s manager. That was in 1937.

Raymond Scott had a definite plan in mind when he formed the Quintette.

That’s why he demanded rehearsal after rehearsal until the group was letter perfect. Even so, the Quintette wouldn’t have been the overnight success it was had it not been for Johnny Williams and his animated interpretations of Scott’s comic compositions.

What Raymond Scott intended with his Quintette was to revitalize the music

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of the swing band era. Swing bands fell on hard times during the Depression.

Their innate size meant that they cost a lot of money to keep up. Only the very successful like a Goodman or an Ellington were able to meet the financial challenge. Raymond Scott’s goal was to make money: first by downsizing and aiming at the record buying public, and then by playing concert halls rather than dance halls. This meant the Quintette’s music was of a shortened variety, contracted for recording rather than for public performance. Johnny Williams once said he disliked Scott compositions because they didn’t allow for improvisation. According to Williams their saving grace was the fact they were highly “lucrative.”

The Raymond Scott Quintette not only made Johnny Williams well off, it made him famous and catapulted him to stardom. It was a fame that Williams – unlike Gene Krupa, who essentially

sabotaged his own career with alcohol and drugs – was able to handle.

In 1937 the Scott band went to Hollywood to work in the movies. The band provided some or all of the music for films like the Shirley Temple vehicles Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Just Around the Corner. You can see Williams in some of the movies the Quintette worked on and hear him on the soundtracks of others.

1939 marked the end of the Raymond Scott Quintette, at least for Johnny Williams. He returned to New York to work for CBS. He was a semi regular with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Vincent Lopez and others, and had a long association with Kate Smith.

He was a regular on Your Hit Parade.

When the latter show moved to the West Coast, Williams went with it.

This led to his working for Columbia Pictures on such films as Picnic, On the Waterfront and From Here to Eternity.

Because of his stature in the world of drumming, Williams was hired by the Leedy Drum Company (a division of Conn) to serve as a spokesman. Williams also made a few recordings with groups of his own. They are traditional Dixieland fare, and speak to Williams’ earliest influences.

Perhaps the most apt way of describing Johnny Williams would be to say he was an innovator. Today we think nothing of it when a drummer executes a few rim shots. The same is true when he taps on a cowbell or other alternative percussive instrument. It was Johnny Williams who introduced these novelties to the world of mainstream music.

Johnny Williams cast a long shadow. That shadow would appear to be lengthening as his grandsons carry on his name as well as the name of their extremely famous father.

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The Farmington State Normal School Higher education arrives in Maine

by Jeffrey Bradley

A

‘normal school’ is an obsolete term for describing an institution that trains teachers under the auspices of the state — a standardizing process more than a foray against abnormality. Rapid success following the opening of the first in 1839 moved the Maine Board of Education to issue this fervent appeal — Resolved: That the interests of our common schools, and the teachers having them in charge, not only require the fostering care of the State, but most imperatively demand the immediate establishment of that long-neglected source of improve-

ment, a State Normal School... resulting in the Western Maine State Normal School, officially later the Farmington State Normal School, or FSNS, being enacted in October of 1863. “Higher ed” in the Pine Tree State had finally arrived.

The school rapidly set up shop in a Georgian-Federalist-Victorian Revivalist-style kind of a building on the corner of Main and Academy Streets. A larger version replaced this small but imposing structure in the 1890s. In recognizing the Merrill family’s contributions to the early school, the main administra-

tive hub was named Merrill Hall.

FSNS’s institutional success can be largely attributed to three outstanding principals and some very indomitable women instructors.

Principal CC Rounds, serving from 1868 to 1883, was instrumental in establishing the Model School as a core component of the training afforded the student-teachers to practice under the supervision of experienced faculty.

By 1901, this included schooling the town’s children. An old sepia photograph depicts Principal Rounds as the very essence of a Dickensian peda-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com gogue with long whisk in hand striding the aisles to better encourage the more wayward pupils to attend their lessons.

There’s no doubt that teaching methods back then were much stricter.

Principal George Purington served from 1883 to 1909. An advocate for obtaining a broad education, he worked tirelessly in establishing friendly relations with the town. Civic engagement was key to educational success, he believed, and he led by example. An active member in the local grange, the fire department, Old South Church choir, the Farmington Public Library Association, the Christian Civic League — even the Knights Templars of Maine — a faded photograph shows him in full Grand Commander regalia replete with gold-braided trim and topped by a Horatio Hornblower hat with a plume.

No arguing with that depiction of moral rectitude. He approved, too, of school traditions like motto learning, morning assembly and daily chapel for building

character.

The ever-busy principal also taught psychology, didactics, civil government, agriculture and music. He oversaw improvements to the facilities such as enlarging Merrill Hall to include the Model School, an assembly room, and a gymnasium put down in the basement.

A physical culture buff, Purington encouraged student participation in extra-curricular activities such as the outdoors in keeping with his concept that education’s primary purpose was physical, intellectual, and moral development. Enriching student lives became a large part of attracting enrollment, and when a new dormitory opened in 1914 it was named for him.

Many of his teaching precepts remain in force today.

Purington’s successor, Wilbert G. “Pa” Mallett, who served between 1909 and 1940, held similar views concerning civic engagement, healthy living, and teacher-training strategies.

--------

645-3088 --------

The Model School’s reputation continued to grow under his leadership as did enrollment. His pushed to integrate the town’s school with the Model School, an idea that came to fruition with the opening of a combination facility in 1932 named, appropriately enough, the WG Mallett School.

Perhaps his greatest achievement was in steering the Normal School through the manpower shortages of World War I. And, post-hostilities, he successfully increased the enrollment, built a second dormitory, constructed a new gymnasium, and modernized the library.

His other improvements included adding a sorority and a fraternity, expanding sports opportunities, instituting a functioning student government, publishing a regular campus newspaper, and establishing the annual yearbook.

Miss Lillian Lincoln served as the principal of the Model School for 30 (cont. on page 38)

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(cont. from page 37) years and greatly influenced the curriculum. Her flexible teaching style combined practical problem-solving with experiences outside the classroom.

An early photograph displays her as a firm-mouthed knuckle rapper in steelyrimmed glasses that clearly stood for no nonsense, while a later depiction shows a more kindly and affable instructress no doubt dearly beloved by her students. Lincoln Auditorium was named in her honor. The popular Miss Carolyn Stone, in her 40-year stint with the school, taught physical and health education and was involved with student activities such as supervising a Camp Fire group, serving as the unofficial school nurse, and giving social etiquette guidance in her role as Dean of Women. Her physical training classes included physiology and calisthenics, and she coached the girls’ basketball team. A remarkable 1905 photo shows her and her band of student lady players

in billowy floor-length Victorian garb all set to play with basketball in hand.

The team must have looked odd by today’s standards, driving up and down the court in those flouncy dresses. Miss Virginia Porter, although not a FSNS graduate, also contributed mightily in her 32-year career — she taught literature, composition, grammar and penmanship, even geography, and founded the Modern Authors Club, which discussed short stories, plays and poetry.

Same ideals but a different impetus.

As men went off to war in the 1940s the training methods had to adapt. The cadet teaching program, for instance, had students teaching in the rural schools where manpower shortages were most acute. They participated in local food drives, Red Cross war-relief initiatives, and supported fund-raising efforts at home and abroad.

By the 1950s, old traditions had given way to new directions. The school’s

name was changed to the Farmington State Teachers College before becoming, in 1971, the University of Maine at Farmington. With its mission of providing a foundational liberal arts education staying intact, things have remained “normal” now in Farmington for quite a while.

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View of the Androscoggin River in Livermore Falls. Item #LB2007.1.101243 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Greene’s Aaron Daggett The Civil War’s last surviving Union general

by James Nalley

O

n June 14, 1937, a 100-year old man, born in Greene and educated in Lewiston, Maine, received a personal letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt that read: “Your long service, beginning as a volunteer in 1861, has been distinguished by repeated acts of gallantry, which have won for you well-deserved recognition as a brave soldier and fearless leader.

You were not content to be a mere spectator during this hundred-year span.

You not only saw history made but you, yourself, helped make it.” On May 14 of the following year, just short of his 101st birthday, the last surviving Union general peacefully died at his home in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.

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part of the Puritan migration between 1620 and 1640. In 1860 Daggett attended Maine State Seminary (currently Bates College) in Lewiston with plans to complete his liberal arts education.

However, with the outbreak of the Civil War in April of the following year, Daggett promptly enlisted as a private in the 5th Maine Volunteers. Like many other young, educated men on the battlefront, Daggett was quickly noticed by his superiors. For example, he enlisted on April 27, 1861 and within four days he was appointed as a second lieutenant.

By the end of the first month, he was promoted to first lieutenant. Then, after his command at the first Bull Run battle, he was promoted to captain on August

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com 14, 1861. According to the book Buffalo Soldiers by T.G. Steward, “Captain Daggett proved a faithful and gallant soldier. He was promoted to major on January 8, 1863 and commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the 5th Regiment of the U.S. Veteran Volunteers on January 18, 1863, and was brevetted a brigadier general on March 13, 1865.”

Of course, such a smooth transition up the ranks was not easy, since Daggett actively fought and led his troops in the battles at West Point, Gaines Mill, Golding’s Farm, White Oak Swamp, First Bull Run, Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Rappahannock Station, and Fredericksburg, to name a few. As stated by Steward, “In the assault at Rappahannock Station, Colonel Daggett’s regiment captured over five hundred prisoners. In the assault at Spotsylvania Court House, his regiment lost six out of seven captains, the seventh being killed in a skirmish that lasted from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. On

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all of these occasions, Colonel Daggett fought with distinguished bravery.”

Eventually, Daggett went on to fight in the so-called Indian Wars, where he received a Purple Heart, and the Spanish-American War in China and the Philippines, in which he received another Purple Heart and a Gold Star.

Aside from these accomplishments, it is important to note that Daggett was known to truly believe in the abolition of slavery. In fact, he fought alongside African-American soldiers with the 5th Maine Volunteers and commanded the 25th Infantry at the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba. Although much of the praise of this bloody battle was given to the Rough Riders and its commander, Theodore Roosevelt, the American press generally overlooked the fact that the African-American 25th Infantry, also known as the “Buffalo Soldiers,” was actually involved in most of the heaviest fighting. According to

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the following report filed by Daggett: “1. I was ordered to put two companies in the firing line and on my own judgment, I ordered a company, as flankers, to that part of the line; 2. As soon as the line had rested and become steadied at its first halt, I ordered it to advance, even though it broke away from the rest of the brigade; 3. As this exposed the left to a galling and dangerous fire, I ordered a company to re-enforce that part of the line; 4. Since the left being exposed by this advance of the line beyond the rest of the brigade, it was proper and necessary to re-enforce it by two companies; 5. The advance beyond the rest of the brigade was a bold and dangerous movement, but the result justified the act. Had it failed I would have been held responsible; and 6. The 25th Infantry caused the surrender of the stone fort. I desire to repeat that it is with great reluctance that I make so much of this report as relates to myself, (cont. on page 44) TA K

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(cont. from page 43) and nothing but a sense of duty would impel me to do it. Very respectfully, A.S. DAGGETT, Lieutenant-Colonel, Twenty-fifth Infantry, Commanding.”

On that day alone, Daggett lost eight officers and enlisted men, with more than 30 more wounded.

It is particularly touching to read Daggett’s following remarks of a particular African-American soldier: “But in the midst of the joy of going home, we mourn the loss of those we leave behind. The genial, generous-hearted McCorkle fell at his post of duty, bravely directing his men in the advance on the stone fort. He died as a soldier dies and he was beloved by all who knew him.

The officers of the regiment will wear the prescribed badge of mourning for Lieutenant McCorkle for thirty days.

Being of a race, which only thirty-five years ago emerged through a long and bloody war from a condition of servi-

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tude, they, in turn, engaged in a war that was officially announced to be in the interest of humanity and gave all they had — their lives — so that the oppressed might be free.”

In 1900, just two years after writing the a-forementioned report, Daggett became a Brigadier General in the Regular Army and retired the following year in Auburn. He died 37 years later at his home in West Roxbury, Massachusetts on May 14, 1938 and was buried with military honors at Old Valley Cemetery in Greene, Maine. With his passing, there were no more surviving Union generals of the Civil War.

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Early view of the Maine Central Railroad station in Greene. Item # LB2010.9.123050 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum. org

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Early view of the post office in Jay. Item #LB2007.1.107732 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Western Lakes & Mountains Region

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Norway’s Lt. Robert Emerson Finally laid to rest in Maine

by James Nalley

O

n June 21, 2011, approximately 66 years after the end of World War II, the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced that the remains of five U.S. servicemen missing in action were identified and returned to their families for burial with full military honors. The servicemen included: 1st Lt. Leonard Orcutt from Alameda, California (Pilot); 2nd Lt. Harry Bedard from Minneapolis, Minnesota (Navigator); Tech. Sgt. Louis Miller from Philadelphia, Pennyslvania (Radio Operator); Sgt. Willis Ehrhardt from Ventura, California (Gunner); Staff Sgt. George Winkler from Huntington, West Virginia (Engineer); and 25-year-old 2nd Lt.

Robert Emerson from Norway, Maine (Co-Pilot).

On the morning of April 3, 1945, Capt. Orcutt, 2nd Lt. Emerson, and their crew took off in a B-25J Mitchell bomber from Palawan Field in the Philippines for what was to be a routine support mission. However, the pilot of another aircraft in the squadron reported that Orcutt’s plane had stalled and crashed into a swamp roughly one mile northeast of the village of Consolacion.

There were no survivors.

Robert (“Bob”) Emerson was born in Norway, Maine on November 13, 1919. An outstanding track and field athlete as well as a skilled basketball player, Emerson graduated from Nor-

way High School in 1937. Instead of attending college, he worked at the Norway National Bank until he decided to enlist in the U.S. Army in January 1942. He subsequently attended preflight training at Maxwell Field in Alabama, flight training at Carlstrom Field in Florida, and advanced flight training in Mississippi. On January 14, 1943, Emerson received his pilot wings and was commissioned as a 2nd Lt. in the U.S. Army Air Force. Eventually, he was sent to the Pacific Campaign as a co-pilot of a B-25 Mitchell.

According to the DPMO, the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service (GRS) “recovered additional remains from the crash site and buried them as

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com ‘unknowns’ in Leyte, Philippines. Later that year, they were exhumed and transferred to Manila for possible identification.” In 1949, a military review board declared that the remains belonged to Orcutt’s crew and re-buried them at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri. Approximately two years later, the GRS returned to the crash site and recovered additional remains, after which the case was reopened. It was also recommended that the remains at Jefferson Barracks be “disinterred for individual identification.” However, all of the remains were examined with “no resulting identification” and subsequently re-buried at the same location.

In 2001, upon learning of the recovery of additional remains in the early 1950s, a sister of Staff Sgt. Winkler contacted the U.S. Army. In 2008, the U.S. Army disinterred the group’s remains at Jefferson Barracks and transported them to the Joint POW/MIA

Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii for further examination. As stated by the DPMO, “among the forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, the scientists from the JPAC used dental comparison and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used mitochondrial DNA, which matched that of the relatives of the aircrew and helped identify the airmen.”

On July 10, 2011, roughly 66 years after the crash of the bomber in the Philippines, the remains of Emerson were finally laid to rest at Pine Grove Cemetery in Paris, Maine. As stated in the Sun Journal article by Terry Karkos, “In an emotional service at Pine Grove Cemetery, Emerson was honored with a 21-gun salute and a flyover by an Air National Guard KC-135 tanker with the 101st Air Refueling Wing in Bangor.”

At the ceremony, Rev. Michael Ring read a letter that Emerson had written to his sister approximately two weeks before the crash, “telling her to buy

flowers for their mother for Mother’s Day and that he would reimburse her when he returned home in the summer of 1946.” He never had the opportunity to do so.

As for the rest of the crew, Orcutt was re-buried at Saint Mary’s Cemetery Oakland in California; Bedard was re-buried at New Saint John the Baptist Cemetery in Dayton, Minnesota; and Ehrhardt was re-buried at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park in Ventura, California.

Miller and Winkler were both re-buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

It is important to note that, among the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 gave their lives. However, after the war, the U.S. government was unable to recover and identify approximately 79,000 Americans. As of 2018, there are more than 73,000 unaccounted for from the war.

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50

Bridgton Fairgrounds Now the site of Bridgton Hospital

by Franklin Irish

I

hope there are still a few of us who remember the old fair. One thing I do remember is that they had an open race for saddle horses. I had my old horse but I had no way to haul him up to Bridgton. A ten-mile trip each way and a race was asking too much of him, though I’m sure he could have won easily. They had trotters then, and racing on the old track was pretty good.

I can’t remember whether or not betting was legal, but it doesn’t really matter.

You know a few bets were put down anyway.

They had a good-sized grandstand, and they used to have quite a large exhibition hall, exhibiting garden vegetables, sewing and knitting, rug making

and cooking. There were some animals, but not too many, since there was no barn for them. There was a midway with a Merry-Go-Round and perhaps a Ferris wheel. I still can’t see why this fair was closed. As I recall they had good crowds even then.

That was before the big Depression.

When that came along, the President started the old CCC camps, and Bridg-

ton was singled out for one. The old fair grounds seemed like a good place to build it. Though my memory is failing a little, I seem to remember that there were four long barracks. Maybe one was actually a cooking shed. I also seem to remember that one man who was there was our local barber, Leroy Marston. He liked Bridgton so well he stayed on and started barbering with old Perley DeWitt.

Of course after the CCC camp closed, the area was idle for many years, and, finally Northern Cumberland Memorial Hospital (now Bridgton Hospital) was built there. I suppose that if the old fairgrounds had to go, I can’t think of a better use for the land.

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View of the public library in North Bridgton. Item # LB2007.1.101802 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Western Lakes & Mountains Region

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Early view of the high school building in Cornish. Item # LB2007.1.105086 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Sebago’s Evans Fitch He epitomized Maine’s Bluegrass Artists

by Brian Swartz

I

nsurance 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 frequently kicking the piano.

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 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 was on broadcast 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 (cont. on page 54)

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(cont. from page 53) 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) 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.

Evans appeared with such bands as the Country Rhythm Kings, The Countrysiders, 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

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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.

“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

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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 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 Festival 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

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the band, which in October 1994 had garnered two prestigious American Eagle Awards at the Country Music Associations of America convention, held in Las Vegas.

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’ 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.

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Barbara Fitch still attends several pickin’ parties each year. She enjoys listening as bluegrass musicians coalesce 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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The Waterville Merchants Steamboat Company City of Waterville stern-wheeler launched in 1890

by Willard B. Arnold III (Courtesy of the Waterville Historical Society)

T

he following story is taken from the Waterville Morning Sentinel of June 18, 1937. (With revi-

sions) The spirit of adventure was far from lacking on a warm July afternoon in 1890 when 40 stockholders of the Waterville Merchants Steamboat Company launched the City of Waterville in the Penobscot River at Brewer, bound for her home port.

The buxom stern-wheeler, destined to open freight navigation in the upper reaches of the Kennebec River, was

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heading to sea on its maiden voyage.

Captain Brewer was to take her to Bath, and from then on, she was to be piloted by a famous Kennebec River log driver and brought to her home port in the Elm City where a monstrous celebration was to welcome her and her crew.

The Elm City stern-wheeler, a keelless flat bottomed craft, would today receive a rating no higher than a skow.

Before its inception of the Zack, the Balloon and the Riverside had operated for brief periods. An explosion had ended the career of the Balloon while the Riverside was run high and dry at the Waterville dock and after the iron had been salvaged she was left to de-

teriorate.

The last steamer to buck the river was conceived shortly before 1890 by Williams T. Haines, then an attorney in Waterville and a former Governor of Maine. He was the originator of the plan to open navigation between Waterville and Hallowell to secure better and cheaper freight service for the city and Central Maine communities.

His plan called for operation of a steamer on round trips daily. Stock in the company was issued to about 100 individuals and then construction of the stern-wheeler was authorized. The Waterville Merchants Steamboat Company was organized with sufficient funds (cont. on page 58)

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(cont. from page 57) to operate and the group negotiated for construction of a model craft, destined to carry freight only.

The model offered by Captain Brewer proved acceptable to the local organization and construction of the steamer was started on the Penobscot in the town of Brewer. The boat was 90 feet long with a 20 foot beam. She had no keel, the bottom was flat and she was powered by the most up to date steam engine of the era.

After news was received that the steamer was ready to be launched, the stockholders agreed that it would be a wise movement to have the sponsors of the craft sail her down the Penobscot into the Kennebec. They believed this would bring out excellent publicity. And so the party was organized. It consisted of about 40 of the prominent stockholders. Meeting at Bangor on a warm July night, the group held its first celebration. They selected Erastus War-

ren of Winslow, a former log driver on the Kennebec as captain of the steamer, despite the fact that his knowledge was limited to keeping upright on a pine log as it shot down the river rapids.

Although a number of prominent prohibitionists of the era were included in the party, none complained concerning the cargo of refreshments that went on board the craft the following morning. It was two o’clock in the afternoon before the boat set sail, her engine heaving into the coming tide.

Captain Brewer, who knew the Penobscot well, manned the crew as the steamer churned toward the sea. The first jaunt was to Rockland, and at 9 p.m. the City of Waterville arrived in that port, shrouded in the mist and fog.

It had been a pleasant day for her passengers, all of whom by that time were unanimous in approving the event.

True, the stern-wheeler was drawing more water than had been anticipated

and once, when she attempted to hail another ship, water spouted through her whistle and the expected blast fizzled into a dud. Pumps were manned and the situation was temporarily remedied.

Early the following morning the steamer set out for Bath. With some of baptismal crew wearing tall hats, Prince Albert coats and sporting life preservers, the adventurers were cheered as they left the Rockland port. Fortune was smiling upon them, for not a breeze was stirring as the steamer churned around the rugged coastline. The craft made good headway through the day and at 7 p.m. she arrived at Bath, where another celebration had been arranged.

That night the entire party went to the Sagadahoc House to attend the wedding reception given to a young couple from the elite element of the community. Up to that point the trip had been a tremendous success and everyone was looking forward to the final day’s jour-

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ney to Waterville. Unfortunately, however, the unexpected transpired during the next 48 hours.

Despite heavy fog the steamer left Bath the following morning. Merrymeeting Bay was the scene of the first mishap. Cruising aimlessly in the Bay due to the dense fog the steamer suddenly buckled and came to a stop. It had run onto a ledge. Despite the predicament the party remained on board, and as the mist burned under a rising sun, the river bank became visible.

Sighting a farmer working in his field, Captain Warren hailed him. The farmer ran to the bank with upraised hands and shouted “get the hell out of there, it’s full of rocks.” The captain was already aware of the fact, as the clearing fog revealed that the steamer was high and dry. After considerable difficulty, he managed to get the boat into the main channel and continued the trip.

When the vessel arrived in Augusta around noontime, there was a monstrous welcome by officials and townspeople.

After that, the passengers anxiously departed for Waterville and home, but the boat ran onto a gravel reef just under the railroad bridge at Augusta. There it sat until the following morning. With the aid of river drivers and horses, the vessel managed to free itself and once again headed for the river locks on the east side near the mill.

By general agreement Captain Warren was removed and Justice Warren C. Philbrook was elevated to that post.

Warren had twice run the boat askew, and while mutiny was not threatened, it was felt that a change was needed. Until that time the steamer had not encountered any fast water, but as it proceeded through the locks, the judgement of the new captain was taxed to full capacity.

Lack of a keel became a serious matter as the craft fought the current just

above the dam. The stockholders held their breath as they began doubting that they had made a good “swap” in the skipper’s post.

The steamer started to move sideways, heading for the dam, but with full steam ahead ordered by her new skipper, she finally pitched upstream and avoided a plunge which might have ended in tragedy.

Having received news of the steamer’s position, Waterville citizens prepared a royal welcome for her crew.

There were two docks at the time. The original was located near Ticonic Falls on the west bank. The landing place for the new steamer had been erected downriver about a mile and stood at a point called Pooler’s Point, opposite the confluence of the Kennebec and Sebasticook Rivers. As the City of Waterville was sighted coming up the river, the band broke into welcoming strains, (cont. on page 60)

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(cont. from page 59) and cheers rose. Anticipating the rousing ovation, the stockholders readied themselves for the climax.

But just as the steamer started to turn from the Winslow bank heading for the landing, she ran onto a ledge.

The craft was lodged for an indefinite period, opposite the Winslow Congregational Church on Lithgow Street, and the weary stockholders, tired and somewhat disgusted by this time, welcomed the opportunity to be taken ashore by rowboats.

Years later passengers agreed that they were more than repaid for their investments by that trip. One individual asserted that never before had he experienced such an event, and never anything like it since.

As for the anti-climax of the Waterville Merchants Steamboat Company, records show that it did operate for a brief period between Waterville and Hallowell, carrying bar iron and heavy

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freight. The steamer never actually attained her goal, however, and after being managed by Captain Bradford Mitchell for a while, it was sold to a Virginia firm and moved to that state.

This article is courtesy of the Waterville Historical Society, and was written by Willard B. Arnold III, its President, in 1998.

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Livermore’s Timothy O. Howe Local son gains fame on the national level

by Charles Francis

I

n the early summer of 1880, a Census Bureau worker stopped at the home of Timothy Howe in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The worker ran through his list of questions collecting such information as to where Howe was born, the number of people in the household and so on, until he came to occupation.

Up to that point, all of Howe’s answers had been quite commonplace. For the question as to occupation, however, the answer was more than a little out of the ordinary. It was a simple one word answer: Republican.

1880 was the first in thirty years that Timothy O. Howe had not held some

elected or appointed office. Moreover, except for the very first years of his adult life, Howe had always been a Republican. In fact, he had been one of the founding fathers of the party when it held its organizational meetings in Ripon, Wisconsin. There, he and former childhood playmate Elihu Washburn of Illinois assumed leadership roles in formulating the party’s antislavery platform.

Today, Timothy O. Howe is an almost-forgotten figure in the history of the United States. Yet there was a time when his name was one of the most prominent in the country. He was a po-

litical writer of note, as well as a United States Senator. He served as Postmaster General at a time when the Postal Service was struggling to establish reliable service to the ever-expanding western frontier. However, his greatest service to the country may have been adding to the facilities of the Library of Congress when that institution was just beginning to fulfill its promise as the world’s largest library.

Timothy Otis Howe was born in Livermore on February 24, 1816. The Howe family was one of the most notable American families of the mid-nineteenth century. Samuel Gridley Howe (cont. on page 62)

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(cont. from page 61) was noted for his work with the deaf.

He trained Annie Sullivan, who worked with Helen Keller. Samuel Gridley Howe’s wife, Julia Ward Howe, wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Elias Howe was the foremost inventor of the period, producing, among other things, the sewing machine and the famous Howe truss bridge.

Timothy Howe’s closest friend when he was growing up was Elihu Washburn of Livermore’s famous Washburn family. The two, who were born in the same year, grew up attending Livermore schools together and then going on to Maine Wesleyan Seminary (now Kents Hill Academy) in Readfield.

After completing his studies at Maine Wesleyan, Howe prepared for the Maine Bar in the offices of Judge Edward Fuller of Readfield. In 1839 he opened his own practice in the town.

The next year he was elected to the Maine House of Representatives, and

in 1841 he married a local girl named Linda Haines.

In 1845 Howe joined the ever-increasing stream of Mainers pulling up stakes to head west by moving to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he, again, hung up his attorney’s shingle. At this time Wisconsin was a hotbed of political turmoil. For one thing, it was a brand new state where the old political parties had never really established themselves.

For another, it was being swept by the forces of abolition. In 1850 Howe was appointed a circuit court judge, and in 1851 to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

In 1853 Howe resigned from the Wisconsin bench to throw himself into politics. He and Elihu Washburn, who was now a force in Illinois politics, joined forces at the Ripon meetings of the spring of 1854 when the Republican Party was founded. Modern historians identify the two Mainers as being

among the most influential delegates at Ripon.

In 1860 Howe was elected to the first three terms in the United States Senate. Probably the low point of Howe’s Senate career came when he served as a commissioner for the purchase of the Black Hills from the Indians. The act which included holding Indians in internment camps guarded by the Army and ultimately led to the Battle of Wounded Knee is viewed as one of the most egregious acts of the United States government vis-à-vis Native Americans.

The high point of Howe’s Senate career came about because of his ten-year term of service on the Committee of the Library. During that time, the Library of Congress was provided the funds to increase its facilities on Madison and Adams Avenues threefold. This led to the foundation of the world’s largest library as it exists today.

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Timothy Howe was defeated in a fourth bid for the Senate in 1879. He was in semi-retirement at his Green Bay home, writing articles for various newspapers and magazines like The North American Review, when he listed his occupation as Republican for the 1880 census. Today, several of the articles Howe wrote at this time have been reprinted by Cornell University. They range in subject from the future of the Republican Party to prison reform.

In 1881 President Chester A. Arthur appointed Timothy Howe to the office of Postmaster General. At the time, the Postal Service was facing the daunting task of establishing routes to isolated prairie communities and across the Rocky Mountains. Howe, whose health was always precarious, contracted what was probably pneumonia on a tour of western mail routes, and died on March 23, 1883.

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ONLINE.MOBILE.LOANS SAVINGS.CHECKING AND SO MUCH MORE SERVING THE FINANCIAL NEEDS OF ANDROSCOGGIN COUNTY SINCE 1938 555 Sabattus St., Lewiston | 831 Minot Ave., Auburn 207-783-2071 www.mainefamilyfcu.com

Western Lakes & Mountains Region

64

The Raising Of Auburn The 1854 incorporation of Androscoggin County

by Derek Brou

T

hey traveled up to the Kennebec towards the Great Falls; 70 men armed with muskets and bayonets. Major Church felt a tightening of his stomach with each mile of advance. He was experienced with the native population but had never skirmished with them before. A soldier of some experience, he had been sent to re-establish the area for England. There was known to be an Indian fortress near the Falls where the Androscoggin meets the Kennebec, just on the sight of present-day Auburn. Their orders were to engage the natives and to take the fortress. Their scouting was good, the weather was dry, and the men were mostly seasoned veterans and all very

well disciplined, but something made him feel uneasy. These were no passive band; they were the Abenaque, the most arrogant, fierce, and hostile band in all of Maine. It was 1690.

He knew the fortress would be heavily guarded. Since the very beginning of King Philip’s War some sixty-two years before, the Abenaque had immediately attacked the estate and plantation of Thomas Purchase who was the first settler of the area. They killed his cattle, burned his house and grounds, and carried away his personal effects.

The Natives had been consistently sacking and pillaging the settlements in the region ever since. They did not stop with the peace, and by the summer

of 1689, word had reached the colonies that King James II was sending troops to end the scourge. It did not take the natives long to hear of the campaign and to begin the preparations for their defense.

The truth is, the region was not very important to the British at all. They did not have many interests there except some small scale trading with the natives and minor plantations, but the land itself had been deeded to Richard Wharton of Boston, and Mr. Wharton’s friends were fairly influential in London. He had tried for years to clear his title to the land “lying on both sides of the Pejepscot River on the eastern end of the Androscoggin River, on Kenne-

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65

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com bec River and Casco Bay.” The patent had been lost and never recorded for the original owner, Mr. Purchase. Wharton had even tried to mend the titles by purchasing the land from Worumbo and other bands. In the summer of 1689, Wharton was nearly broke; this expedition was his last chance to save his fortune. The deeds, however, meant little or nothing to the people who inhabited this land.

Their ancestors had occupied the area around the Falls for hundreds of years. It was the same story which would be told across the Americas. The Europeans with their culture of written laws, numbers and writs clashed with the Natives who in a very general sense saw the world not as their possession that could be divided up amongst them, each separated from the others’ part, but rather as their possessor who gifts were both bountiful and free for the taking. For generation upon generation, the Abenaque had engaged in

battle for dominance of the land with other Native people in an endless ebb and flow of people and property, not too far removed from European colonialism. Such was their culture long before this present conflict. There was no moral question involved with the looting of property or the killing of settlers or livestock, neither by them nor against them. In their scheme of things, an inhabitant was sometimes required either to push or be pushed off the land.

What was ignoble to the Natives was that these soldiers were not inhabitants.

Scouts had reached the fortress and made their report to Major Church.

It lay on the junction of the two rivers, on high ground that was heavily guarded. Church made very detailed plans and delivered them to his men, cautious of the fierce Abenaque. His caution would prove wise, and the fort was consequently taken with few casualties. His men charged the hill, muskets firing, driving the Natives from

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their defenses. It was reported to the Major that all the survivors were taken, but there didn’t seem to be as many as estimated. Indeed the count was less than half of that reported by the scouts.

Major Church ordered the area to be searched, against the advice of his officers who felt certain no one had got away. A half-hearted search brought nothing. Not convinced and ever careful, Church ordered them to search the river. The Natives were discovered taking refuge behind the falls.

The battle was won, the natives quelled, but the victory came too late for Richard Wharton. In bad health and troubled by the problems in Maine, Wharton died in London that summer, before the battle had commenced. He was penniless.

Androscoggin County was incorporated March 18th, 1854. It was formed in parts taken from four other counties. The towns of Lewiston, Lisbon (cont. on page 66)

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Western Lakes & Mountains Region

66

(cont. from page 65) and Sabattus were taken from Lincoln County; Auburn, Danville, Durham, Minot and Poland taken from Cumberland County; Livermore and Turner from Oxford County; East Livermore, Greene, Leeds, and Wales were taken from Kennebec. Auburn was voted shiretown by popular ballot shortly thereafter.

An so the struggle which eventually formed the town of Auburn benefited neither the Natives who held it for so long, nor Richard Wharton, who died trying to retain its ownership, nor the Major who went back to England, retired and never returned, but gave to the settlers a productive land, a home, and a noble future.

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

Boys playing pool at the rec hall at “The Cape” on Lake Thompson in Oxford, ca. 1960. Item #LB2010.9.122930 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

Locally Owned and Operated Since 1939 A family owned business for 45 years!

www.pranichealing4me.com Groceries ~ Cut to Order Meats Beer ~ Wine ~ Spirits Bakery ~ Homegoods

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DAVIS LAND SURVEYING Stuart Davis - PLS 2208 Licensed Land Surveyor

Contact Emails: stuart@davislandsurveying.net davissurveying@yahoo.com

207-345-9991 │ Cell: 240-9949 www.davislandsurveying.net

64 Old County Rd. • Oxford, ME 04270

Twin Hearts Meditation group every Thursday at 7:30pm

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47 Pleasant St. • Oxford, ME 04270

Record Building Supply, Inc. Quality & Service Since 1996 Complete Line Of Building Materials Featuring Benjamin Moore Paints

(207) 539-4219 623 Main Street, Oxford, ME recordbuildingsupply.com

739-2350 CINDY GURSCHIC - OWNER

179 MAIN ST. • SOUTH PARIS, ME

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The Hannibal Hamlin Memorial Stone 1909 ceremony in Paris unveiled the memorial

by Brian Swartz

I

f Hannibal Hamlin enjoyed birthday parties, he would not have wanted to miss the bash thrown for him in Paris on Friday, August 27, 1909.

Unfortunately he could not attend, but many life-long friends did.

“For months the minds of many people in Maine have had in remembrance the 27th of August and the fact that this year would be the centennial birthday anniversary” of the former vice president, the Farmington Chronicle reported on Wednesday, September 8, 1909.

The closest Maine ever got to occupying the Oval Office, Hamlin had died 18 years earlier, but he was not

207.744.2017

280 Park St. (Rt. 26) • South Paris, ME

forgotten in Paris, where he was born in 1809. That year seemed far away and its era quaint in the early 20th century, but enough people still remembered the living Hamlin that a celebration was definitely in order.

Comprising Union veterans, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion became involved in planning Hamlin’s centennial birthday party after the Loyal Legion Commandery met in May 1909. General Seldon Connor, a Fairfield native who had returned to Maine from Vermont in August 1861 to serve with the 7th Maine Infantry Regiment, had stood at the May meeting and

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“read a paper on Hannibal Hamlin,” the Chronicle set the background.

Connor’s presentation “so stirred the minds and hearts of all those present, that the commandery voted to observe the anniversary of Mr. Hamlin’s birthday, Aug. 27,” according to the Chronicle.

The Loyal Legion Commandery members decided to contact Paris residents and invite them to dedicate “in front of Mr. Hamlin’s old home on Paris Hill” a memorial “in recognition of Mr. Hamlin’s services to the state and nation,” the Farmington newspaper re(cont. on page 68)

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Western Lakes & Mountains Region

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(cont. from page 67) ported.

A high-level delegation from the Commandery traveled to Paris “and conferred with some of the citizens of the town.” After debating the type of memorial that would be appropriate, people agreed on placing a boulder outside the Hamlin homestead.

According to the Chronicle, the Paris residents would “find a suitable boulder (not difficult to do in the Androscoggin Valley) for the memorial.”

The Loyal Legion delegates (including General Charles Hamlin, the vice president’s son) “agreed to provide a suitable bronze tablet and inscription.”

The bronze tablet soon adhered to “a suitable boulder,” and “an enormous throng of people” stood on Paris Hill in early afternoon on Friday, August 27 for the dedication ceremonies, according to the Chronicle.

Every dignitary worth a lick of political future in Maine hied to Paris and

the centennial birthday party. Sworn into office in early January 1909, Governor Bert M. Fernald traveled to Paris from Augusta. Born in Poland in Androscoggin County, he was too young to have served during the Civil War — but the wartime generation had raised Fernald, and he knew he could not afford politically to miss the Hamlin festivities.

Long-time United States Senator Eugene Hale (a Turner native) had a direct connection with the venerable Hamlin. Kicked off the Republican ticket in favor of Andrew Johnson in 1864, Hamlin had returned to Maine.

In fact, he never really strayed too far too long from his home state.

After Hamlin decided to step down from the United States Senate, Hale had won the 1881 election to replace him.

Almost 30 years apart in age, the two men maintained a cordial relationship until the former vice president died in

1891.

Joining Fernald and Hale at the lectern outside the Hamlin homestead on August 27 was John Davis Long, a Buckfield native educated at Harvard Law School. Although he had settled in Massachusetts, Davis was more than welcome in Paris; an active Bay State Republican politician, he had served as Secretary of the Navy in the McKinley Administration.

Also scheduled to speak was Charles S. Hamlin, the future Federal Reserve chairman from Boston.

The festivities opened with “the invited guests” traveling to Paris Town Hall for a delicious dinner, according to the Chronicle. Then the guests and many local residents crowded around the “front of the Baptist church and near the Hamlin homestead” on Paris Hill for “the literary exercises.”

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Henry W. Lyon introduced Joshua L. Chamberlain “as the permanent chairman of the day,” the paper reported.

Haunted by his Petersburg wound, the aging Chamberlain stepped forward and delivered “a brief tribute to the man who was the advisor, counselor and trusted friend of Lincoln, yet never forgetting his fellow townsmen.”

The other speakers followed Chamberlain, Fernald talking “for some length” and Hale sharing “his personal remembrances of Mr. Hamlin and recalling to mind the nobility of his character.” Long “paid an eloquent tribute to Hamlin, the man and the statesman,” and Charles S. Hamlin “gave a very just estimate” of the vice president’s “public services.”

Letters from President William Taft and Vice President James Sherman were read to the crowd, and the Reverend Doctor Henry P. Forbes of St. Lawrence University in New York

presented a poem, Our Boulder, that he had written for the occasion.

The memorial boulder remained shielded from inquisitive eyes by drapery. “Young lady relatives” (likely granddaughters of Hannibal Hamlin) stepped up to draw the drapes, the Chronicle indicated. Among those Hamlin women was 46-year Addison Hamlin, the only daughter of General Charles and Sarah Purington Hamlin of Bangor.

The Hamlin women unveiled the boulder, and a band from the Togus veterans’ hospital in Chelsea struck up “America.”

“A great cheer rose from the multitude,” the reporter wrote.

He walked to the boulder and gazed at the tablet. “Hannibal Hamlin, Born Near This Spot August 27, 1909,” the inscription began before listing Hamlin’s political accomplishments. Perhaps the most moving was that he was

a “Friend and Counselor of Lincoln.”

The Togus band performed in concert for much of the afternoon, and many people lingered in the late summer warmth to admire the memorial boulder and recall the local boy done good all the way from the State House in Augusta to the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

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

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Den’s Automotive Services, Inc.

Land Clearing Selective Cutting Forestry Management

207-752-4771 murdoughlogging@hotmail.com

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207-935-3883 399 Portland Street Fryeburg, Maine 414 densautomotive.com Lakewood Rd, Rt 201 | Madison ME

Western Lakes & Mountains Region

70

View of the Pike Memorial Hall in Cornish. Item #LB2007.1.105099 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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DIRECTORY OF ADVERTISERS BUSINESS

PAGE

A Cut Above Tree Service .............................................................................10 A.E. Robinson Oil Co., Inc. ............................................................................26 A-1 Seamless Gutters ..................................................................................42 ABC Pool & Spa Center .................................................................................64 Above and Beyond, LLC ...............................................................................44 Absolut Services Inc. Excavation & Repair Shop ..........................................12 ADA Fence Company, Inc. .............................................................................25 Advantage Insurance ......................................................................................19 Affordable Well Drilling Inc. / Excavation & Forestry .......................................42 All About U Salon ...........................................................................................45 All American Builders & Restoration, LLC ....................................................17 All Seasons Tree & Landscaping ..................................................................58 Alternative Underground Utilities LLC ............................................................53 Altus Construction LLC ...................................................................................50 Andrew Ames Logging .....................................................................................4 Annette’s Country Skillet Diner ......................................................................52 Archie’s, Inc. Rubbish Removal .......................................................................9 B&M Auto Repair ...........................................................................................64 Barker Tree Service & Logging .......................................................................49 Bay Haven Lobster Pound & Restaurant ........................................................52 Bead Emporium...............................................................................................53 Belgrade Regional Health Center ....................................................................3 Benchmark Appraisal .....................................................................................49 Bessey Insurance ...........................................................................................19 Bethel Family Health Center .............................................................................3 Big Dawg Concrete ........................................................................................17 Bingham Area Health Center ..........................................................................3 Bingham Motor Inn & Sports Complex ..........................................................23 Blanchet Builders, L.L.C. ...............................................................................29 Blanchette Moving & Storage Co. ..................................................................5 Boards Under My Feet ....................................................................................31 Bob’s Cash Fuel .............................................................................................14 Bolster Monumental Works ............................................................................66 Boomers Restaurant & Saloon .......................................................................67 Boos Heating Company .................................................................................50 Borsetti Construction Inc. ................................................................................50 Bowley Brook Maple Syrup & Maple Sugaring Equipment ..............................17 Boy Locksmith ..................................................................................................6 Buen Apetito Mexican Grill .............................................................................34 Central Maine Community College ................................................................48 Central Maine Disposal ..................................................................................32 Central Maine Sandblasting ............................................................................56 Central Tire Co. Inc. .......................................................................................32 Chantal’s Pet Grooming .................................................................................35 Chim Chiminey Chimney Sweep ....................................................................63 Chris’ Electric .................................................................................................48 Chuck Wagon Restaurant ..............................................................................38 CJ’s Appliances .............................................................................................59 Cliff Gray Cremation - Funeral Services LLC .....................................................9 Cole Harrison Insurance .................................................................................21 Collins Enterprises Towing & Repair .............................................................37 Colonial Valley Motel .......................................................................................37 Cooper Farms ................................................................................................17 Cornerstone Plumbing & Heating ....................................................................58 Cornish Denture Center, LLC .........................................................................55 Coulthard’s Pools & Spas ..............................................................................18 Country K9 & Cats ..........................................................................................57 Crooked River Resources ..............................................................................50 C-Roots Salon ...............................................................................................47 Cushing Construction .....................................................................................40 Custom Carvings by Josh Landry ...................................................................29 D.A. Wilson & Co. Excavation ..........................................................................17 Daggett’s Garage ...........................................................................................60 Damboise Garage ..........................................................................................32 Danzig Painting & Home Improvements .........................................................49 Dave’s Appliance ...........................................................................................62 David Barry Flooring ......................................................................................68 Davis Land Surveying ....................................................................................66 Den’s Automotive Services, Inc. ...................................................................69 Designed Living Kitchen Showroom & Home Center ......................................25 Dick’s Auto Body & Collision Center...............................................................41 Dover Hardware .............................................................................................14 E.R. Palmer Lumber Co. ..................................................................................28 E.W. Moore & Son Pharmacy .........................................................................13 East Grand Fence ..........................................................................................62 East Road Electric Inc. ...................................................................................24 Echo Lake Lodge & Cottages..........................................................................39 Ed Hodsdon Masonry, Inc. ............................................................................62 Edmund’s Market ...........................................................................................11 Eric’s Restaurant - Spirits - Banquets .............................................................33 Fairfield Antiques Mall .....................................................................................4 Family Pet Connection & Grooming ...............................................................15 Farmington Fair .............................................................................................60 Farmington Farmers Union .............................................................................60 Farmington Ford .............................................................................................36 Fine Line Gun Shop ........................................................................................65 Fine Line Paving & Grading ............................................................................28 Finelines Auto Body .......................................................................................50 Finley Funeral Home .....................................................................................61 Firefly Boutique ..............................................................................................51 Fireside Stove Shop & Fireplace Center ........................................................45 Five Fields Farm ..............................................................................................5 Flagstaff Area Business Association ...............................................................21 Four Seasons Restaurant ..............................................................................13 Franklin Chrysler .............................................................................................36 Franklin Ford ...................................................................................................36 Franklin Savings Bank ......................................................................................7 Franklin-Somerset Federal Credit Union ..........................................................6 Frederick Heating ...........................................................................................56 Freedom Firearms .........................................................................................30 Fryeburg Fair ..................................................................................................54 Fryeburg Glass ...............................................................................................70 Full Circle Artisan’s Gallery ............................................................................53 Generators of Maine Inc. ...............................................................................35 George’s Banana Stand .................................................................................29 Giberson Funeral Home ................................................................................22 Giroux & Family Masonry, Inc. ........................................................................63

BUSINESS

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Glen Luce Logging, Inc. ..................................................................................41 Glenn Snow Building and Remodeling ...........................................................52 Goin’ Postal ....................................................................................................67 Gray Family Vision Center ...............................................................................46 Greenwood Orchards Farmstand & Bakery .....................................................41 Gridiron Restaurant & Sports Pub ..................................................................43 Grimaldi Concrete Floors & Countertops ........................................................36 H.D.C. Roof N Construction .............................................................................13 Hall & Smith Energy .........................................................................................23 Hammond Lumber Company ...........................................................................35 Hardys Motorsports .........................................................................................56 Harris Drug Store .............................................................................................24 HealthReach Community Health Centers ..........................................................3 Herrick Excavation ..........................................................................................25 Hide and Seek Child Care ................................................................................65 High Tide Low Tide Seafood .............................................................................28 Highland Farms Logging, LLC ..........................................................................70 Hight Family of Dealerships ...............................................................................8 Hodgdon Well Drilling, Inc. .................................................................................8 Home Auto Group ............................................................................................36 Homestead Realty ...........................................................................................40 Houston-Brooks Auctioneers .............................................................................4 Hungry Hollow Country Store ............................................................................6 Hydraulic Hose & Assemblies ...........................................................................5 Ideal Electric Electrical Contractor ..................................................................32 Image Auto Body ............................................................................................15 J&T Masonry ...................................................................................................52 J.D. Logging, Inc. ............................................................................................27 J.E.T.T. 24 Hour Towing & Transport ...............................................................38 J.T. Reid’s Gun Shop .........................................................................................6 J.T.’s Finest Kind Saw ....................................................................................31 Jackman Hardware & Sporting Goods ..............................................................7 Jackman-Moose River Region Chamber of Commerce ..................................13 Jean Castonguay Excavating ...........................................................................40 Jimmy’s Shop ‘N Save .....................................................................................12 Joel Torrey Painting .........................................................................................11 Johnny Castonguay Logging & Trucking ..........................................................38 Johnson Foundations ......................................................................................25 Jordan Lumber Company ...............................................................................20 Jumpers Hill Farm ...........................................................................................68 Kanine Kare ....................................................................................................66 Kimball Insurance, L.L.C. ................................................................................14 Kim’s Garage ...................................................................................................57 Knowles Lumber Company .............................................................................62 Korhonen Land Care & Excavation ...................................................................9 Kramers Inc. ....................................................................................................40 L.R. Nadeau Inc. Excavation ............................................................................42 Lakes Region Power Systems .........................................................................10 Lakewood Continuing Care Center ...................................................................33 Laney’s Pit Stop ...............................................................................................30 Langlois’ Auto Body & Auto Sales ...................................................................43 Larsen’s Electric ..............................................................................................10 Larsen’s Jewelry .............................................................................................58 Lavallee’s Garage ............................................................................................13 Law Office of Brian D. Condon, Jr., Esq. .........................................................39 Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce ..................................44 Lewiston House of Pizza .................................................................................43 Liberte Auto Sales ...........................................................................................45 Linkletter & Sons, Inc. ........................................................................................4 Lisbon Community Federal Credit Union .........................................................42 Logan Home Builders .......................................................................................53 Long Green Variety ..........................................................................................61 Luce’s Meats & Maple ......................................................................................28 Madison Area Health Center .............................................................................3 Maine Family Federal Credit Union ..................................................................63 Maine Forest Service ......................................................................................32 MainesHighpeaks.com .....................................................................................21 Maine Historical Society ...................................................................................7 Maine Made Custom Builders .........................................................................70 Maine Maple Products, Inc. .............................................................................14 Maine Pellet Sales LLC ...................................................................................63 Mainely Puppies .............................................................................................67 Mama Bear’s Den ............................................................................................23 Maurice Restaurant .........................................................................................49 Maynard’s in Maine .........................................................................................24 McAllister Accounting and Tax Services ..........................................................60 McNaughton Construction ...............................................................................41 Memorial Guard LLC .......................................................................................38 Merle Lloyd & Sons Earthwork Contractors ....................................................15 Mike Rose Drywall & Remodeling ....................................................................58 Ming Lee Chinese Restaurant .........................................................................33 Monmouth Federal Credit Union .....................................................................42 Montello Heights Retirement Community .......................................................44 Moosehead Motorsports ..................................................................................24 Moosehead Sled Repair & Rentals, LLC ..........................................................23 Morin & Sons Drywall .......................................................................................64 Motel 6 - Lewiston ............................................................................................45 Mother India ....................................................................................................44 Motor Supply Co. ..............................................................................................3 Moulton Lumber ..............................................................................................55 Mt. Abram Regional Health Center .....................................................................3 Mt. Blue Drug ....................................................................................................35 Mount Blue Motel .............................................................................................37 Murdough Logging & Chipping ........................................................................69 Naples Packing Co. Inc. ...................................................................................10 Niedner’s Floor Finishing ................................................................................61 North Camps ....................................................................................................19 Northeast Laboratory Services ..........................................................................4 Oquossoc Marine ...........................................................................................19 Otis Federal Credit Union ................................................................................61 Our Village Market ..........................................................................................10 Oxford Casino ....................................................................................back cover Oxford Federal Credit Union ...........................................................................18 Oxford Hills Taxi ................................................................................................48 Packard Appraisal, Inc. ..................................................................................50 Paine-Less Automotive Repair ........................................................................34 Paradise Inspection, LLC ..................................................................................8

BUSINESS

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Pat’s Pizza - Auburn ........................................................................................46 Paws-A-While Kennels .....................................................................................68 Pawz & Clawz Petz ........................................................................................69 Penobscot Marine Museum .............................................................................16 Perkins Management ......................................................................................34 Phil Carter’s Garage .........................................................................................57 Pine Tree Orthopedic Lab ................................................................................39 Portable Welding by Ron Mullens ....................................................................27 Pranic Healing .................................................................................................66 Pure Grace Inspirations ....................................................................................69 Quinn Hardware ...............................................................................................15 R&B’s Home Source ......................................................................................27 R.B. Rose Plumbing and Heating .....................................................................57 R.E. Lowell Lumber Inc. ..................................................................................47 R.F. Automotive Repair .................................................................................56 Ralph Libby Chain Saws .................................................................................65 Randy Jones Propane Natural Gas Service ....................................................47 Randy’s Full Service Auto Repair, LLC ............................................................30 Rangeley Building & Remodeling ....................................................................22 Rangeley Building & Remodeling ....................................................................35 Rangeley Electric ............................................................................................20 Rangeley Family Medicine .................................................................................3 Record Building Supply, Inc. ...........................................................................66 Red Mill Lumber ..............................................................................................52 Redington-Fairview General Hospital ..............................................................30 Richard Wing & Son Logging, Inc. ....................................................................55 Rick & Kevin Lewis Building & Remodeling ....................................................68 Rick Haas Home Revival .................................................................................64 Ricker Hill Orchards .........................................................................................42 Rick’s Garage ..................................................................................................29 Rideout’s Seasonal Services ...........................................................................27 Rising Sun Cafe & Bakery ...............................................................................48 Riverside Realty ................................................................................................9 Rob Elliott Excavation & Trucking ....................................................................20 Robert W. Libby & Sons, Inc. .............................................................................5 Rocky Ridge Orchard .....................................................................................43 Rod’s Cycle & RV ..........................................................................................28 Ron’s Market ...................................................................................................59 Ron’s Transmissions ........................................................................................63 Rowell’s Garage Car Wash .............................................................................14 Rowell’s Garage Sales & Service ..................................................................14 Russell & Sons Towing .....................................................................................49 S.A. McLean, Inc. Snow Plowing Equipment ...................................................55 S.T. Builders Maine .........................................................................................8 Sackett & Brake Survey, Inc. ...........................................................................15 Sanders Auto Service ....................................................................................11 Smile Again Dentures, Inc. ..............................................................................43 Solon Corner Market ........................................................................................29 Spence For Hire ...............................................................................................33 Spencer Group Paving, LLC ...........................................................................41 Spillover Motel ................................................................................................22 Steinke & Caruso Dental Care ..........................................................................3 Sterling Electric ................................................................................................38 Strong Area Health Center ...............................................................................3 Strong Hardware & Building Supply ...............................................................11 Studio Six Fine Art ..........................................................................................28 Styling Dog Grooming Boutique ......................................................................64 Sugarloaf Rentals & Cleaning Services .........................................................10 Sunrise Sealcoating .........................................................................................61 T&L Enterprises ..............................................................................................12 Taylor’s Drug Store .........................................................................................27 Terry’s Unique Gifts & More ............................................................................70 The Apple Farm ..............................................................................................33 The Irregular ...................................................................................................20 The Korner Store & Deli ..................................................................................34 The Little Red Hen Diner & Bakery .................................................................19 The Looney Moose Cafe .................................................................................12 The Red Barn Market ......................................................................................15 The Sterling Inn Bed & Breakfast ..................................................................22 The Storekeepers ...........................................................................................65 The SugarBowl Family Entertainment ............................................................21 The Village Donut Shop & Bakery ...................................................................68 Thompson’s Orchard .......................................................................................46 Thompson’s Restaurant .................................................................................22 Tilton’s Market .................................................................................................66 Tim Merrill & Co., Inc. ......................................................................................25 Town of Farmington .........................................................................................36 Town of Mexico .................................................................................................9 Trail’s End Steakhouse & Tavern .....................................................................12 Trailside One Stop ...........................................................................................23 Tranten’s Family Shurfine ...............................................................................21 Trash Guyz ......................................................................................................47 Tree Top Mechanical, LLC ..............................................................................23 Triple D Redemption & Tanning Spa ...............................................................56 Tri-State Steel ..................................................................................................47 Tuck’s Ale House .............................................................................................59 Tuttles Auto Sales ...........................................................................................59 Valley Arbor Care ............................................................................................57 Valley Gas & Oil Company ................................................................................11 Vintage Maine Images.com .................................................................................7 Vivo Country Italian Kitchen & Bar ...................................................................68 Wade Taylor Excavation ..................................................................................31 Wadsworth Woodlands Inc. .............................................................................53 Warren Brothers Construction .........................................................................58 Weber Insurance Group ..................................................................................19 Western Maine Family Health Center ................................................................3 Western Maine Line Inc. .................................................................................17 Western Maine Pharmacy, Inc. ........................................................................20 White’s Land Management .............................................................................18 Whitewater Farm Market .................................................................................58 Whittemore & Sons Outdoor Power Equipment ..............................................31 Wilson Excavating, Inc. ....................................................................................67 Wilson Funeral Home ......................................................................................65 Wiinslow Supply, Inc. .......................................................................................57 Woodlawn Rehab & Nursing Center ................................................................31 Wood-Mizer of Maine .......................................................................................61

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~ 2018 Western Lakes & Mountains Region ~ Region Western Lakes & Mountains

always open,

always fun!

Maine’s home for wicked good fun, with 24/7 casino action and now a brand new hotel and pub!

OxfordCasino.com

Experience round-the-clock casino excitement on our expanded gaming floor, including nearly 1,000 slot machines and 30 table games! With a new hotel featuring over 100 rooms and a new pub-style restaurant offering the best in Maine and New England cuisine, we’re building excitement every day!

Oxford Casino Hotel is just minutes from the Maine Turnpike on Route 26!

Persons under 21 years of age may not enter the gaming area unless licensed as employees. Gambling problem? In Maine, call 2-1-1 or (800) 522-4700 for help.