Western maine 2016

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Volume 25 | Issue 4 | 2016

Maine’s History Magazine

15,000 Circulation

Western Maine

The Life Of A Western Maine Logger It was a dangerous lifestyle in the early 1900s

Winthrop’s Daniel Allen

Soldier waited 38 years for his country’s recognition

Bryant Pond Loses Its Switchboard The last hand-crank telephones in the United States

~ Celebrating 25 Years! ~ www.DiscoverMaineMagazine.com facebook.com/discovermaine

Western Maine

Inside This Edition

2 3

It Makes No Never Mind James Nalley

5

The Life Of A Western Maine Logger It was a dangerous lifestyle in the early 1900s John Murray

10 When The Shoe’s On The Other Foot L-A’s Franco-Americans and the Great Shoe Strike of 1937

Jeffrey Bradley 14 Lisbon Forest Fire Squelched In 1900 Firefighters relied on a “Famous Old Hand Tub”

Brian Swartz 18 Remembering World War I Class of 1919 observes the end of the first world war

Rosanne Peeling 22 West Gardiner’s John F. Stevens Engineer extraordinaire

Margaret Peacock

Maine’s History Magazine

Western Maine Publisher & Editor Jim Burch

Layout & Design Liana Merdan

25 Danville’s Eben Jordan The rise of Jordan Marsh

Charles Francis

Advertising & Sales Manager

29 Winthrop’s Daniel Allen Soldier waited 38 years for his country’s recognition

Brian Swartz

Advertising & Sales

33 The Song Of The Factory Girl

Songs of the Depression

Charles Francis

Tim Maxfield Julian Bither Dennis Burch Tim Maxfield Zackary Rouda

35 An Early History Of Newfield Apples played an important role C.J. Pike

Office Manager

38 Brownfield’s Daniel Bean A Civil War hero remembered

Bob Bennett

Field Representatives

41 H arry Lyon And The Southern Cross South Paris native made an historic flight

Charles Francis 46 Greenwood’s Nellie Verrill She blazed a newspaper trail in Nevada

Brian Swartz 49 Bathtub Of Tears The tragic case of the Fisher family Dave Bumpus 52 The Genealogy Corner What our grandparents did for a living

Charles Francis 58 A Day In The Life Of Mexico High Pintos were spellbound

David E. Peakes 59 Kingfield’s Freelan Oscar Stanley

Climbing Mt. Washington in a Locomobile

Brian Swartz 64 From North Anson To California On Conestoga Wagons

Confrontation with indians was near-deadly

Sherwood W. Anderson 69 William H. “Bill” Burgess

Minot’s maker of fishing flies, spinners, and spoons

William B. Krohn 73 Bryant Pond Loses Its Switchboard

The last hand-crank telephones in the United States

James Nalley 75 Jay’s Samuel Small

The laziest man in town

Charles Francis 78 Wheeler’s Band Of Farmington

Reorganized by Conductor Miner in 1926

Brian Swartz

81 The 1930 Rumford Winter Carnival

Exciting skiing competition wowed the crowd

Brian Swartz 84 Ghost Buck

An excerpt

Dean Bennett 87 Fathers And Sons

Memorable hunting trips in the North Woods

Dale Murray

Liana Merdan George Tatro

_____________________________ Contributing Writers Sherwood W. Anderson Bob Bennett Dean Bennett Jeffrey Bradley Dave Bumpus Charles Francis William B. Krohn Dale Murray

John Murray James Nalley Margaret Peacock David E. Peakes Rosanne Peeling C.J. Pike Brian Swartz

Published Annually by CreMark, Inc. 10 Exchange Street, Suite 208 Portland, Maine 04101 Ph (207) 874-7720 info@discovermainemagazine.com www.discovermainemagazine.com Discover Maine Magazine is distributed to town offices, chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations, barber shops, beauty salons, newsstands, grocery and convenience stores, hardware stores, lumber companies, motels, restaurants and other locations throughout this part of Maine.

NO PART of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from CreMark, Inc. | Copyright © 2016 CreMark, Inc.

SUBSCRIPTION FORMS ON PAGES 77 & 90

Front Cover Photo:

Early view of post office in So. Bridgton, Item # LB2007.1.102490 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org All photos in Discover Maine’s Western Maine edition show Maine as it used to be, and many are from local citizens who love this part of Maine.

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

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

It Makes No Never Mind

by James Nalley

W

hen it comes to singers/songwriters from the 1950s through the 1980s, one cannot help notice that many of these iconic figures met an untimely death in plane crashes. The names that immediately come to mind include: Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Jim Croce, etc. However, one name that usually misses the short list is Jud Strunk.

Strunk had several hits during the 1970s, one of which was “A Daisy a Day” in 1973, which reached the Billboard Top 20 in BOTH the pop and country categories. This gentle ballad describes a loving relationship in which a young man gives his wife one daisy each day as a sign of their love. As they grow old together, she passes on. However, her widower husband continues to make daily visits to her grave, where he quietly leaves a daisy. Due to the song’s success, Strunk appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and became a regular on the television show, Laugh-In. Over time, Strunk became a local legend in western Maine, and on Laugh-In, it was not uncommon (in his attempt to fool the contestants) to mention

that a fictitious sporting event was being held “direct from Farmington, Maine.” But perhaps he was best known around western Maine’s ski country, where he performed and “raised hell,” according to his friends.

Anyway, on October 5, 1981, Strunk and Dick Ayotte, a local businessman, took off from Carrabassett Valley Airport in a recently purchased 1941 Fairchild M62-A aircraft. Immediately after takeoff, Strunk suffered a heart attack and both men were instantly killed when the plane crashed into the woods. Strunk was only 45 years old.

According to the Chicago Tribune, just before his death, Strunk and his son Joel embarked on an 8,000-mile road trip that took them all over the country. Approximately three weeks after returning to Maine, Strunk died in the plane crash. Joel and his two brothers, Rory and Jeff, were inspired by their father’s poem titled, Bury Me On the Wind. So, Rory and Joel loaded the Volkswagen Thing, the same one used on the cross-country journey, and scattered their father’s ashes as they retraced their route.

According to Rory, “He loved the wind, he loved flying, and we thought that scattering

his ashes in the wind during the trip was the most appropriate way of saying goodbye.”

Well, on this touching note, let me close with the following musician-inspired joke: At the Pearly Gates, a Texan walks up, after which St. Peters asks, “Please tell me, what have you done in life?” The Texan replies, “Well, I struck oil and became really rich.

But I didn’t sit on my laurels. I divided all of the money among my family in my will.

Now, they are set for three or four generations!” St. Peter says, “That’s quite impressive! Come on in!” After listening to this conservation, the second man in line approaches and says, “I struck it rich in the stock market, but I didn’t selfishly provide for my own family. I also donated three million dollars to the Save the Children Foundation.” St. Peter says, “Wonderful! Come on in.” Then, the third man in line says embarrassingly, “Well, I only made five thousand dollars in my entire lifetime, I never married, and I had to spend it all in order to survive on my own.” St. Peter says, “My Heavens! What instrument did you play?”

Celebrate with these Maine communities this year!

Discover Maine Magazine would like to recognize the following communities that are part of this regional edition which are celebrating anniversaries this year:

Casco: 175 Years!

Moscow: 200 Years!

Kingfield: 200 Years!

Readfield: 225 Years!

Weld: 200 Years

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The Life Of A Western Maine Logger It was a dangerous lifestyle in the early 1900s

by John Murray

T

he early 1900s was a time of dramatic growth and expansion for the United States. Many homes and businesses were being constructed and quality building lumber was in great need. With western Maine being heavily forested, logging companies quickly realized the valuable resource within their reach and began full scale logging to harvest this deep woods timber. Base camps were quickly built in prime logging areas and men were hired to perform the difficult and often dangerous tasks of cutting and transporting timber.

Men heard the call for employment opportunities and came from near and far to acquire the job of a backwoods logger. Many of these men came into

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the logging industry with absolutely no experience at all with logging, or the reality of being subjected to the harsh weather conditions that western Maine would offer them. Prior logging experience was often overlooked by the logging companies, and hiring practices were based upon the ability of possessing above average physical strength to deal with the brutally difficult working conditions.

To say that the working conditions were brutal was not an exaggeration.

Having logged the backwoods of Maine since the 1800s, logging companies had found by trial and error that the best time to cut timber was during the winter months. The ground was frozen and the dense snowpack helped with

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the difficult task of moving the cut logs to transportation hubs. Unquestionably, horses could pull logs far easier as the logs skidded across the frozen snow and ice. Loggers had to deal with the unforgiving winters of western Maine.

Deep snow and temperatures that were often below zero created a harsh working environment.

Probably the most coveted job at the logging operation was the camp cook.

Unlike the loggers who would only be employed during the late fall, winter and early spring months, the job of the camp cook was year round. While the camp cook was not subjected to the same difficult outside working conditions as the loggers, the cook’s job was very important. The cook needed (continued on page 7)

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Logging drive on the Androscoggin River, preparing to send the logs downriver.

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com (continued from page 5)

to feed a large group of hungry men throughout the logging season. If these men were not properly fed, production would decline and profits would be lost. Most logging camps would provide two meals a day. With the cold working conditions, these two meals, breakfast and dinner, were comprised of hot and hardy foods. A good camp cook was an asset to the logging company and would earn a modest but decent salary.

Along with cooking meals, the camp cook was responsible for acquiring all of the required food for the logging season. The logging company would provide the cook with the necessary funds to purchase bulk food items such as flour, salt and other required necessities, and the cook had the job of transporting these food items with a horse and wagon over many miles of rough logging roads. Meat was rarely purchased, as the surrounding woods and waters would provide plenty of this

source of food. During the summer and early fall, the cook had a more leisurely life, and would spend time fishing and hunting, creating a stockpile of food to last throughout the logging season.

Firewood was also stockpiled for cooking and heating. Summer and early fall may have provided a more leisurely lifestyle for the cook, but a sense of urgency was also lingering as summer ended and fall began.

Lacking the modern logging equipment of today, the working day of the western Maine logger in the early 1900s was fraught with hazards. Exposure to the freezing elements was a daily hardship for every member of the crew, and the subpar clothing and footwear of the time did not provide adequate comfort. Some loggers kept journals during the winter months, and reading some of the passages of these journals reflected how the loggers felt about the winter cold. One logger described the unending chill of a Maine

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winter. “I wake up cold, battle the cold all during the work day, and go to bed cold. My worst nightmares never produced the sheer reality of dealing with the constant cold. I long for the warming sun of spring, and sometimes I fear that it will never arrive.”

Cutting the trees was an arduous physical task, and was accomplished with axes and two man saws. Many loggers were injured or fatally wounded if a cut tree fell to the ground in the wrong direction, and this is where the term “Widow Maker” was created within the logging industry. When a tree toppled down upon a logger, his wife would become a widow. It was almost unheard of to not have multiple fatalities during the logging season as trees were cut and felled. Injuries consisting of crushed human limbs were a regular occurrence. But, as one longtime logger described it, the cutting and falling of the trees was the easy part.

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Moving and transporting the cut timber within the forest was a challenging and often deadly task. The ancient forests of western Maine had huge trees during this era. The weight of these cut logs weighed many tons and could not be moved by men, so other options had to be improvised to move these giant logs. When cutting and felling trees on the sides of mountain slopes, it was common practice to roll these giant logs down the mountain to the bottom. If a log got out of control during the beginning of the rolling process or communication was in error between loggers, a human fatality or terrible injury was often the result. Many loggers feared injuries more than death. With medical help literally being days away, an injured logger would often die an agonizing death as he was being transported out of the woods.

For transported logs within the woods, it was common practice to utilize the aid of draft horses to pull the

cut logs. A single draft horse had the strength of a dozen men, and teams of draft horses were often used to pull logs along constructed logging roads.

The term of logging road is a poor description of the condition of the road, as it was not really a road, but actually a trail through the woods and along the sides of mountains. Strong chains were attached to the cut logs and they were pulled by the strong draft horses. To aid in the pulling process, it was common practice to throw water on the compacted snow of the logging roads. This water would freeze the surface to solid ice, and enabled the logs to slide more easily along the surface.

This ice-covered surface would often create a hazard for both the draft horses and the person leading the team of horses. If a log began to slide too fast on the ice-covered surface, the sliding log would overtake the team, and either knock them over like bowling pins, or roll right over the top of the team.

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If an ample waterway was close to the logging operation, all of the cut timber would be transported to a storing area on the bank of a river or large stream. Sometimes the logs would be stored on the banks of a lake if a river or stream flowed out of it. In western Maine, the Androscoggin River near the towns of Jay and Livermore Falls was a major logging river. With a swift current and downward grade, the Androscoggin River was perfect for transporting timber. When the cold grip of winter began to loosen and the snowpack started to melt with the approaching spring season, the cut logs would be pushed into the swelled water of the river basin and the logs would be floated downstream, aided by the moving water. Nature could not efficiently perform this transportation task by itself, so it was common for a group of men to stand on the floating logs when they were initially within the water to help guide these logs along in the proper

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com direction with long poles. Other men would get into rowboats and follow the progression of the logs downriver.

These events were called river drives and were inherently dangerous operations. Many men lost their life during these river drives. To this day, there are unmarked graves of men buried by the shore of many of these waterways which were used for river drives.

There is a story of two brothers of Irish descent who had the Murphy namesake. The brothers were a few years apart in age and had that unseparated bond that some brothers have.

Both brothers were hired by the logging company at the beginning of the season and worked side by side throughout the winter months. Hard workers, with a good jovial nature and a constant smile on their faces, the brothers quickly earned the respect and friendship of the logging foreman and coworkers. The older sibling, who was considerably larger in stature, constantly looked out

for the wellbeing of his younger brother. Both brothers got through the logging season without a scratch and were looking forward to some well-deserved rest at the conclusion of the river drive.

As the story is told, the younger brother was stepping from log to log on the surface of the river, then without warning, lost his footing and slipped into the fast-moving icy water. Quickly, the young brother was dragged underwater by the strong river current.

The older sibling, who was on the shore at the time, witnessed the horrific turn of events. The older brother and two other loggers sprang into action and jumped into a nearby rowboat, rowing like possessed madmen downriver to where the brother was pulled under the water. After a prolonged period of probing the depths of the water with long poles in an attempt to locate the brother, the older sibling broke down into a hysterical fit, and the other two men had all they could do to stop him

from diving into the icy water. Ultimately, the body of the drowned younger brother was located downriver three days later, which forever haunted his sibling. The surviving Murphy brother showed up at the logging camp the next year, a hollow shell of his former self, and barely spoke to no one.

The history of the logging industry in Maine played an important part in aiding the growth of the United States.

Our nation owes a forever debt of gratitude to these hardy souls that continue to log within the great state of Maine.

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When The Shoe’s On The Other Foot L-A’s Franco-Americans and the Great Shoe Strike of 1937

by Jeffrey Bradley

T

he bridge to Lewiston, built in 1823, the production of shoes using the factory method, introduced in 1835, and the arrival of the Atlantic and St Lawrence Railroad in 1848, put into place Auburn’s infrastructure as a major manufacturing center. Nearby the turbulent Androscoggin, the factories that sprang up on both sides of the river churned out a dizzying array of wool and cotton fabrics.

But by the 1880s, shoe manufacturing was king. Befitting its burgeoning status as Maine’s shoe-making nexus, Auburn commissioned a fantastic city seal to convey its new-found wealth: a logo featuring a central spindle with six radiating arms affixed with a different

style of shoe at each apex, and set on a stressed leather background embossed with the legend vestigia nulla retrorsum — “no steps back”— a rather appropriate motto for this town’s prosperity.

As an example, the world in 1917, oddly enough, was mad for white canvas shoes — an early kind of a sneaker —

which, not coincidentally, was a mainstay product of the mills of Auburn. But a steep decline that followed World War II forced many factories to shutter their doors for good by the 1960s.

The majority of the shoe workers were French-Canadians from Quebec and New Brunswick. Even today, with the region undergoing renovation, the place still retains a distinctive savoir faire.

Those that came did not necessarily plan to stay. Circumstance, however, including unsteady stretches of work, dictated a longer-term approach. But these “outsider” immigrants had a particularly tenacious hold on their language and culture, more so than most. In conse-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com quence, isolated and ostracized, they formed enclaves called Petits Canadas, “Little Canada” communities of mostly French-speaking Catholics. Lewiston’s was literally physically cut off by the Androscoggin and a network of canals.

The way they perceived themselves changed over time, morphing from being “Canadians” to “Franco-Americans” and finally, simply, “Americans.”

Yet all the while they were under tremendous pressure to adopt Mainer ways.

As good Catholics, they produced prodigious families — sometimes up to a dozen children! Before welfare states and government “safety-nets,” the Catholic Church filled a void for needy families. In the enclaves, French Canadian priests in Church-run parish schools taught lessons to culturally French children in their native language, while other French-speaking Catholic organizations ministered to the poor. The Sisters of Charity of St.

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Hyacinth ran two “orphanages,” St. Joseph’s and the Healey Asylum, boarding houses, really, to provide services for the truly destitute.

Rising Nativism in Maine during the early 20th century brought new demands for assimilation. By law, spoken French was prohibited in public schools until the mid-1950s. Factories advertising jobs stressed that “no French need apply,” and an accent alone was enough to end an interview.

Gradually, the Francos started to adapt.

Parents began encouraging speaking English as a means for children getting ahead, while radio and TV hastened the process by providing an alternative culture to emulate. Changing sexual mores reduced poverty, making having smaller families acceptable, and child labor laws and compulsory schooling put an end to the practice of children following their parents onto the factory floor.

Even the interstate system, built in the 50s and 60s, helped dismantle the old

neighborhoods by providing easy mobility. Soon French-Canadians were following the traditional immigrant path by moving away. The closing of the mills and the waning influence of the Catholic Church also helped scatter the residents of the little communities to the winds. Fortunately, institutions like the Franco-American Collection of the University of Southern Maine, and the Franco-American Heritage Center, have stepped forward to keep the legacy alive.

All of which came together in a perfect storm of dissent called the Great Shoe Strike of 1937. One of Maine’s largest labor disputes — let’s call it the really big shoe-down — involved the Lewiston-Auburn mills when disgruntled workers walked off the job. The snafu erupted because worker demands for higher pay, a shorter workweek and better working conditions were dismissed out of hand by the owners. This sent the Secretary to the Committee for (continued on page 12)

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Industrial Organization (CIO) of New England, the improbably named Powers Hapgood, scurrying feverishly onto the scene to personally take charge of the protest. But this would-be agitator ran afoul of a Maine Supreme Court injunction forbidding the strike and, for defying the writ, the hapless Hapgood landed himself behind bars for the next several months.

A 10% wage hike inducement the owners slyly offered to return to the job was dismissed by the workers who, by this time, were having none of it.

Events turned ugly on April 27 when 5,000 workers attempting a “labor march” across the South Bridge to Lewiston — today’s Bernard Lown Peace Bridge — found their way blocked by a wall of police. Fisticuffs came quickly enough, with a good deal of the striking ladies reportedly in the thick of the melee. Then, with the Lewiston Evening Journal headline screaming ‘Red

Wednesday!,’ a furious Governor Lewis Barrows sent in the troops to quell the disturbance. In the end, of course, things went as these things usually go, that is, against the factory workers.

Labor historian Charles Scontras wrote bitterly that the strike, “… prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to state that ‘Maine is at least 100 years behind the times in labor laws.”

Professor Robert Branham made a documentary in 1992 called “Roughing the Uppers: the Great Shoe Strike of 1937,” and a mural of Maine’s labor cavalcade — it depicted the infamous shoe strike — was taken down from the Department of Labor in 2011 to a great deal of uproar.

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

ING DARL

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G

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Featuring Quality Antiques and Collectibles

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Located on Routes 126 & 9 in Sabattus

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207-576-2585

Auburn, ME www.trustthisbiz.com/darling_sons_roofing

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13

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Early view of Farwell Street in Lisbon. Item # LB2007.1.107764 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

MAINE PELLET SALES LLC “We Sell High Heat & Low Ash Pellets”

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740 Minot Ave. • Auburn • 783-2981

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Western Maine

14

Lisbon Forest Fire Squelched In 1900 Firefighters relied on a “Famous Old Hand Tub”

by Brian Swartz

A

fast response by Lisbon firefighters squelched a forest fire threatening the town in spring

1900.

Mainers never know what weather an April will bring; in 2010, summer seemed to arrive early as temperatures frequently reached the 60s and 70s and flowers and fruit trees bloomed early that April. Yet April 2014 brought lingering cold and rain and delayed the start of spring across the northeastern United States.

The weather proved dry and relatively warm in southern Androscoggin County in late April 1900. Wintertime tree-cutting had left slash piled all around Lisbon, especially in the Pine Woods District near modern Route 196.

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While outdoors around 2 p.m., Sunday, April 29, Lisbon resident John Atwood suddenly noticed smoke rising from woods near Winter Street, which runs from Park Street to Pinewoods Road. Trees had been cut in a pine grove off Winter Street a year earlier; the stacked limbs had dried for months, and as a Lewiston Daily Sun reporter later learned, “the fire had just started in “a ‘cut down’ of brush and wood that was as dry as tinder.”

Atwood realized that no natural fire break — especially a greening lawn or field — stood near the strengthening fire. He and adjacent landowners contacted Lisbon Fire Warden E.T. Smith; before the Lisbon fire department even received an alarm, the spring breeze

blew life into the Pine Woods fire.

Volunteer firefighters converged on the Lisbon fire station and harnessed the horses to a “famous old hand tub” named “The Torrent,” wrote the Daily Sun reporter. Local firefighters appreciated the rudimentary fire engine’s water-pumping capability, which the Pine Woods fire would test in full.

“In a very short time” the handcranked fire engine, “manipulated by as ever strong a company of men as ever touched its brakes,” was on scene at the fire, according to the reporter. Spreading 1,000 feet of hose, “the men took hold of the work with a determination … and the old tub was squirting water in her old-time way.”

Despite the water dousing its pe-

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15

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com riphery, the forest fire had other plans.

The flames swept “through the dry pine boughs in a manner that can be better imagined than told,” the reporter noticed. Pumped water “seemed to effect the progress of the flames little.”

Smith and an assistant, Eli Alexander, had ventured deeper into the whitepine forest to scout the fire. Suddenly the wind swirled multi-directionally, and Alexander and Smith “were surrounded by the flames.” Apparently “all means of retreat” were gone, according to the reporter; then, spying “a small opening which was being quickly closed up by the fire,” the two men ran into the flames.

“They were greatly handicapped in their retreat” by dead brush piled everywhere on the forest floor. Alexander and Smith waded a brook “not a second too soon.” Just as they climbed the brook’s far bank, flames scoured shut the opening through which the men had fled.

By now some 150 men battled the

forest fire, and at least 200 Lisbon residents gawked from a safe distance.

Besides the water pumped by “The Torrent,” firefighters used every possible weapon in their arsenal — wet blankets, shovels, hoes, anything that could toss upturned dirt onto the flames — to stem the spreading fire. A farmer even harnessed four horses to a plow and started “ploughing the ground which lay between the fire and several houses to prevent their destruction,” according to the Daily Sun reporter.

Firefighters soon realized the forest fire was winning in the woods, so “the attention of the fire laddies was turned to saving the surrounding buildings [,] which were greatly endangered,” the reporter noted. A veteran firefighter, Smith directed his men like a general deploying his troops to win a war.

And “win” is just what the Lisbon firefighters did. They stopped the fire just feet from the house owned by Fred Mercier and saved several other houses from being burned.

In the pine woods, “the fire had swept clean everything on the [original] lot,” the reporter noticed. Seeking additional fuel, the flames crossed the property line to attack a large pine grove owned by Nathaniel Sleeper.

The reporter watched “how the blaze would crawl up the trunks of the large pine trees to a distance of 40 or 50 feet, presenting a spectacle seldom witnessed in this section of the country.” In serious understatement he commented that “there was a stiff breeze at the time which tended to stimulate the flames.”

The wind lifted plumed white smoke high above the Androscoggin River. “The fire was seen for miles around,” according to the reporter, “and car loads of people from Lewiston, Auburn, Lisbon Falls, Brunswick, and other surrounding places” rolled into Lisbon. Most sightseers watched the fire; “anxious to give assistance to the Lisbon people,” other out-of-towners

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(continued on page 16)

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Western Maine

16 (continued from page 15)

“offered their services.”

The forest fire burned across 50 acres and destroyed valuable cordwood — including more than 40 cords belonging to T.J. Potty — before firefighters finally brought the fire under control around 5 p.m. Much of the destroyed forest had been “covered with a fine pine growth,” the reporter observed.

While the fire “was not so destructive as was feared it would be,” he admitted that “it was bad enough.” When the fire came under control at last, “there was a feeling of relief on the part of not only the firefighters, but the residents living on Winter Street.”

The collective sigh of relief was probably heard as far away as Bath and Freeport.

Smith never figured out how the fire started; the Daily Sun reporter speculated that someone had dropped a cigar stub or a match while “Mayflowering in that vicinity.”

After walking the burned-over ter-

rain, Smith spoke with the reporter that evening. During his “good many years” as the town fire warden, Smith “had occasion to fight a number of hot fires,” but Sunday’s took the cake.

“The hottest blaze I ever encountered,” the forest fire would have destroyed the nearby Winter Street houses

“if the wind had not ceased to blow late in the afternoon,” Smith commented.

“The fire was bad enough, but we feel thankful that it was no worse.”

Fortunately, no one was injured during the April 1900 forest fire. * Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

ROTTARI ELECTRIC

Wilson Funeral Home

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Buxton, ME Serving Southern Maine & NH

17

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

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

Open Wed-Sat 7a-2p Sun 7a-12p (Breakfast only)

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Western Maine

18

Remembering World War I Class of 1919 observes the end of the first world war

by Rosanne Peeling

T

would have to enter it. However, we did because our help was needed and as a result it made a distinct and lasting difference. Elwin stated how our soldiers turned the tide of the German advance at Chateau Thierry, Soissons as well as at other points during the war.

Elwin went on to mention how every citizen needed to make sacrifices that were imposed upon them by the government, such as limiting the consumption of sugar and flour. This, in turn, informed citizens they could be forced to do something that affected their freedom in order to accomplish the greater purpose for which those sacrifices were made. However, by doing so, it helped those we intended and

it brought us closer together as a nation.

Elwin ended his article with words expressing how proud he was to be an American: Our people have been united on a great issue. They have given freely of their energy and their blood for a great cause. We have felt our own power; we have glorified in our own strength; we have developed a glorious type of heroism and of patriotism; and you and I and every other citizen have the right to feel personal pride and glory in our birthright as citizens of the greatest nation in the world.

Another senior student wrote an essay for the yearbook pertaining to World War I. Cecile Sanborn titled hers Some

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W

he 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I was observed in newspapers, on television, and on the Internet two years ago.

In 1919, when only one of those media existed, Parsonsfield Seminary’s graduating class published their yearbook and some of the seniors chose to write about that century’s First World War which ended in 1918.

One of the essays was titled What America Has Learned From The War. Elwin Towne talked about how at the beginning of the war, citizens of the United States didn’t realize the significance of the Great War in which it had become involved. There were even some who didn’t think our nation

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moultonlumber.com

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19

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Probable Effects Of The War Upon The American Citizens. She wrote about the behind-the-scenes efforts of the American people to help their soldiers win the war. The majority of this assistance was granted through the act of the conservation of everyday items. Women attended classes teaching them how to preserve and can fruits and vegetables.

Men were inundated with ads regarding the first liberty loan in which they were told that true Americans were expected to invest as much of their savings as possible in government bonds to help their country afford the expenses of the greatest war in history.

In the spring of 1917 as well the spring of 1918 almost every home in the United States had its own garden often referred to as a Victory Garden.

Families’ meals were changed by substituting fish for meat twice a week so that soldiers could have more meat in their meals. Fewer luxuries were bought and even heat was gone with-

Hearing Aids, Repairs & Accessories Allison Wolfe

out to aid those serving overseas. Even after the war had been won, measures of conservation were still necessary in order to help the nation recover more quickly.

Cecile also wrote about the danger imposed upon American citizens by the German Spy System. She explained that the Kaiser’s agents were doing their utmost to undermine the foundation of our county. His spies were clever and it took the secret service derived of the most able-minded and well-educated individuals to minimize their efforts and overcome their threat to destroy.

Cecile’s closing words reflected upon the life-changing effects of the war with optimism: Daily our soldiers are returning from foreign lands. They have learned to know new countries, to understand new people, and to use new customs.

The nations of the world today have probably a greater knowledge of each

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other than they have ever had before.

This reciprocity ought to act as a cement to bind together more firmly the members of the League of Nations.

Not only did the Class of 1919 observe the end of World War I through essays, they participated in festivities that one of them wrote about in their yearbook: When the news reached Parsonsfield Seminary on November 12, 1918 that the Armistice had been signed, all studying and lessons ceased.

Plans were made for a parade. Four girls carried a large American flag. All kinds of old tin pans that could be found were used to convey to the residents of the town the fact that we knew how to make noise. Two girls carried an effigy of the Kaiser.

The students marched down the road in the evening in column of twos, with a drummer at the head, a chorus following. Colored lights along the (continued on page 20)

n i s r h o C

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Western Maine

20 (continued from page 19)

way assisted in the gaiety of the occasion. The singing of national airs in the village square was a fine ending to the parade. An unusually big bonfire which burned for an hour on the campus was also a splendid feature of this celebration.

The Class of 1919, including my grandmother, and many other classes graduated from this beloved institution, as more thoughtful and articulate individuals. Although no longer functioning in the same capacity, the school that educated students from 1832 to 1949 remains a preserved campus and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is still beloved and now cared for by the Friends of Par Sem who hold fundraisers and host functions in order to keep it a valuable presence for the enjoyment of those who appreciate history.

Auditorium used by the Maine Chautauqua Union in Fryeburg, ca. 1895. Item # 5429 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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

WILLYN

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21

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

take history to heart,

own it!

Check out our historic photography collection for photos of your town, your street, your family, and more.

Go to www.penobscotmarinemuseum. org/photography or email images@pmm-maine.org An historic photograph is a perfect gift.

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Route one

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Western Maine

22

West Gardiner’s John F. Stevens Engineer extraordinaire

by Margaret Peacock

H

e’s been called a hero. He’s been honored by Presidents and Kings. He was awarded a slew of medals, including the most auspicious John Fritz Gold. Monuments have been raised to praise him, he was known as the Engineer Extraordinaire, and you might say he helped change the world.

His name is John Stevens. He was born and brought up in West Gardiner.

His father, John, did the hard work of a farmer and served in town government.

His mother, Harriet French Stevens, was busy with the chores of a working farm and raising children. You might even picture her making young John’s lunches and sending him off to school

up where the Benson Road meets the Hallowell-Litchfield Road. People in town knew him as a boy who was “chock full of energy.”

John lived in West Gardiner until he was seventeen, then he was off to Farmington Normal School. In two years he was teaching, but his penchant for math and quest for adventure sent him to Minnesota, where he worked for his uncle out of the City Engineer’s office. Studying engineering books at night prompted him to say he was “largely self-taught.” He grew to be a tall, broad-shouldered, hard-driving man. Working at every level of railroad engineering throughout the west gave him hands-on experience and lat-

er gained him a reputation as a master in his field, and his nick-name — John “Big Smoke” Stevens. His nickname could have been linked with the puffing of a train’s smokestack, but it’s been said that he chain-smoked cigars; a more likely source.” None the less, it was his self-described “bull-dog tenacity of purpose” that moved him into hero status.

He was thirty-six when Great Northern Railway asked him to find a northern route through the Continental Divide.

In December of 1889, “the bitter cold turned his Indian guide back, but John continued on to find what is known as the Marias Pass.” He had been “marooned in blizzards, attacked by Apach-

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23

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com es and even treed by wolves,” but he had found the key passage through the Rocky Mountains. He went on to supervise the laying of 1,000 miles of track.

That drive and engineering genius put him at the helm of some of the world’s most remarkable projects, including the Panama Canal.

After the failed attempt by the French, U.S. involvement in the Panama Canal was to be an “assertive show of power at the dawn of the new century,” but when Stevens took over on July 26, 1905, through an appointment under Teddy Roosevelt, the project was in chaos and the fear of yellow fever was running toward hysteria. Stevens confided to the president, “Affairs are in a devil of a mess.” Neither the French nor Stevens’ predecessor, John Wallace, had understood that disease needed to be eradicated, and the infrastructure had to be built up before any work on the canal could begin.

Within a week, Stevens had ordered

a complete halt to all excavation work in the Culebra Cut. Steam shovel engineers and crane men were sent back to the United States. “The digging is the least thing of all,” he asserted.

Work would not resume until he had a healthy, well-fed, well-housed, wellequipped, well-organized work force.

He took a personal interest in the sick, hungry, dispirited workers. The first thing Stevens did was order a food car for the workers in order to feed them on the job. He also refused the palatial housing offered to him and lived in a small bungalow with a corrugated roof. “In overalls and a slouch hat…. his abrupt but liberal way in delegating responsibility brought out the best in a man.” “There are only three diseases on the Isthmus: Yellow Fever, Malaria, and cold feet. The worst is cold feet.

That’s what’s ailing you.”

The largest concentrated health campaign the world had yet known would begin. Dr. William Gorgas, who

had been heading the drive against yellow fever, malaria and other diseases, was finally going to have whatever men and supplies he needed. His former yearly budget of $50,000 would pale in comparison to the weight Stevens put behind the fight. With the new budget, $90,000 would be designated to wire screening alone. Gorgas spoke of Stevens as a hero when he said, “The moral effect of so high an official taking such a stand at this period… was very great…. And it is hard to estimate how much sanitation on the Isthmus owes to this gentleman for its subsequent success.” Panama City and Colớn were cleaned up and paved. Entire communities were planned and built from the ground up for a labor force that would triple in the six months after Stevens took over.

By the end of 1906, there were nearly twenty-four thousand men at work under Stevens’ exceptional ad(continued on page 24)

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Western Maine

24 (continued from page 23)

ministrative skills. His railroad system not only moved the dirt but became a lifeline along which men, food, and supplies moved efficiently. Because of it, the workforce had good housing and enjoyed fresh food. A bakery was built capable of producing forty thousand loaves of bread a day! Even more impressive, fifty to sixty steam shovels were at work in the Culebra Cut, with five hundred trainloads of soil a day being hauled to the dumps. In fact, “If all the material from the canal [had been] placed in one solid shaft with a base the dimension of a city block, it would tower nearly nineteen miles in the air.”

Stevens’ “two fisted, independent spirit” had been exactly what was needed for the project. However, he had to use more subtle tactics in 1906, when he fought for the lock canal plan that he helped devise, which when built could only be described as an epic engineering feat. But the plan had to be promoted and congress had to sanction

it. Stevens had no patience with congressmen, and for someone who never complained of the scorching heat in Panama, he would remember for the rest of his life how “for two blistering hot days” he “withstood the severest” questioning from the proponents of the sea level canal plan in the House. He used persuasion, collected data, prepared a map for display and wrote part of a major speech to be presented to the Senate. The Senate voted 36 to 31 for the lock canal plan and within only twenty-four hours, work began on the lock canal plan in Panama. Stevens had left specific instructions in expectation of the decision. He had been heard to say in Washington, “Well, I’m a positive man.”

All major decisions for the infrastructure of the canal were made by Stevens and built under his direction.

Although he did not remain to complete the canal, his original agreement was to stay on the job until he could

predict success or failure. Said Stevens, “I fulfilled my promise ... to the letter.”

When he left Panama in April of 1907, one of the largest crowds ever seen on the Isthmus gathered to see him off.

Stevens was amazed by the outpouring of affection as everyone cheered, waved, and sang “Auld Lang Syne.”

George Goethals, who took over the reins at Panama in early 1907, lauds Stevens as “one of the greatest engineers who ever lived.” In his own words, Stevens described his achievement: “a well-planned and well-built machine... which apart perhaps from a squeak or two would run perfectly.”

After Stevens left Panama, he continued his work on railroads, both in the U.S. and abroad. In 1917, he was selected by Woodrow Wilson to head the American Advisory Committee of Railway Experts to Russia charged with improving the Trans-Siberian and Chinese Eastern Railways. In 1919, he became president of the Inter-Allied Technical Board of Manchuria, heading the administration and operation of the Chinese Eastern and Siberian railways.

Much of the information in this article was borrowed from the book, The Pathway to the Seas, by famed author, David McCullough, and these websites, www.pbs.org., www.czbrats.com and www.library. georgetown.edu.

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Danville’s Eben Jordan

by Charles Francis

J

The rise of Jordan Marsh

ordan Hall is famous as one of the most acoustically perfect music halls in the world. Great musicians like pianist Arturo Rubinstein and conductor Gunthur Schuller have lauded it.

The hall and the school it is a part of, the New England Conservatory, have been Boston landmarks for well over a century. So, too, has the Jordan Marsh Company, even though it is now a part of the Macy chain.

The Jordans of Jordan, Marsh & Company as well as Jordan Hall were Eben Jordan, senior and junior. The elder Eben Jordan was a Maine man from Danville. He was responsible for much of the success of Jordan Marsh, Boston’s first great department store, and was the driving force behind the

founding of the Boston Globe. Jordan money was also responsible for the construction of Jordan Hall. The New England Conservatory owes much of its early success to the largesse of the Jordan family. So, too, does Jordan Hospital and to a lesser extent Pilgrim Hall Museum, “America’s museum of Pilgrim possessions,” in Chiltonville, Massachusetts. In fact, it is possible that none of these venerable institutions would be in existence had it not been for Eben Jordan, who made his way from Danville, Maine to Boston in 1836 at the age of fourteen with a mere $1.50 to his name.

The saga of Eben Jordan is another of those rags-to-riches stories of the hard-working Yankees who built a

financial empire with little more than common sense, a will to succeed and more than a bit of sheer ruthlessness.

Simply put, Eben Jordan established the Jordan name and fortune by cornering the retail market in Boston by underselling his rivals and putting them out of business. Of course, he also had more than a modicum of luck on his side.

Eben Dyer Jordan was born in Danville on October 12, 1822. His parents were Benjamin and Lydia (Wright) Jordan. The elder Jordan had been born in Danville, while his wife was from Billerica, Massachusetts. Like most frontier families of the day the Jordans lived a hardscrabble existence at time, (continued on page 26)

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barely able to put food on the table.

Eben Jordan would later say his father died working himself to death.

Benjamin Jordan died when his son Eben was four years old. Because Lydia Jordan has lost her heath working as hard as her husband, the Jordan children were taken in by the family, friends and neighbors. Eben was raised by relatives named Dyer. By all accounts the Dyers were a caring family, seeing to it that Eben continued his schooling until he was fourteen, an uncommon practice at a time when most youngsters were needed to help support the family from as early an age as possible.

The first job Eben Jordan found in Massachusetts was working on a farm on the outskirts of Boston for the princely sum of $4.00 a month. When he was sixteen he moved to the North End, which in the 1830s was Boston’s garment district. Here, after working a succession of part-time jobs, including

that of runner delivering raw goods to women who sewed piecework in their homes, he found work in a dry goods store as a stock boy. From that time on, Jordan’s rise to riches reads like something out of Horatio Alger.

From 1838 to 1840 Jordan worked for a number of store owners, each of whom gave him more responsibilities so that he quickly learned the ins and outs of retail merchandising. Then he was made the manager of a store with an option to purchase. By the time he was twenty, Jordan was turning a year’s profit of $100,000. However, rather than sitting on his laurels, he sold out and secured a position as a buyer for an import firm in order to gain knowledge of foreign markets. Then, when he was twenty-two he formed a partnership with Benjamin Marsh. Together the two created Jordan, Marsh & Company.

They key to the success of Jordan

Marsh was undercutting competitors’ prices. The duo of Jordan and Marsh accomplished this by negotiating longterm contracts with European textile suppliers. Eben Jordan spent much of the early years of the company’s history in England, France and Italy as a buyer. His innovation at this time was to guarantee that Jordan Marsh would continue to buy material at a set price over a number of years even if the bottom fell out of the market. Of course, if prices went up he would still purchase at the lower price. Today we would call this dollar cost averaging. It was a scheme that worked, and it enabled Jordan Marsh to continually undersell the competition and in many cases put them out of business.

While Eben Jordan was most definitely a competitive businessman, he also had a reputation as a philanthropist. At the start of the War Between the States, he announced that any Jor-

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Opera House and the Majestic Theater.

It was the younger Jordan who was the prime supporter of Jordan Hall. Both Jordans were avid fishermen. They frequented the Chiltonville area south of Boston where a great estate known as The Forges was located. Beginning in the 1890s the younger Jordan began purchasing sections of the estate until he had acquired it in its entirety. He then began restoring and expanding it.

He also contributed funds for the construction of Jordan Hospital in Chiltonville. Today a portion of The Forges is part of Pilgrim Hall Museum.

The name Jordan has been associated with Boston since the Civil War. It has meant stores, the arts and philanthropy. However, the name has its roots in Danville, Maine, an association the residents of this part of Auburn can look to with pride.

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dan Marsh employee who enlisted in the Union Army would continue to receive his regular salary. In the early 1870s when massive fires gutted much of the commercial district of downtown Boston, Jordan set up a fund to aid the families of firemen and others who had been killed or injured fighting the conflagrations. His greatest philanthropic contributions and those of his family would come later, however.

Another of Eben Jordan’s business endeavors resulted in the Boston Globe. In 1872 Jordan interested six other Boston businessmen in putting up $150,000 to establish a newspaper, the Globe. Today the Globe is part of the New York Times chain, but for well over 100 years it was the paper that meant Boston.

Jordan and later his son Eben Jordan Jr. contributed funds for the establishment and ongoing expansion of the New England Conservatory, the Boston

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The Maine Central Railroad station in Auburn, ca. 1883. Item # 6413 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Winthrop’s Daniel Allen Soldier waited 38 years for his country’s recognition

by Brian Swartz

T

he longevity in his family’s genes helped Daniel Allen of Winthrop live long enough to receive his reward for saving his country.

Four New England colonies — not yet states — rebelled against King George III and Great Britain in spring 1775. Massachusetts governed the District of Maine, New Hampshire the rugged hills that would become Vermont; New Englanders joined the Continental army, and among them came Daniel Allen.

On January 2, 1777, he enlisted for three years and joined a company commanded by Captain Isaiah Stetson. Allen immediately “received a furlough for twenty-four days and received part

of my bounty when I returned, which was before my furlough was out,” he wrote years later.

Promising Allen “a suit of clothes” when he reported to Boston in late January, army officers then deducted “four pounds, ten shillings” from the bounty to pay “for my gun and equipment,” he wrote. Just after Allen rejoined Stetson’s company, however, Stetson received orders to march his men to Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. Issued only a blanket, Allen never saw the promised clothing, and when he reached the fort on February 17, “my clothes were worn out.”

Only six weeks after joining the army, Daniel Allen encountered the

supply problem that dogged General George Washington and his soldiers throughout the Revolution. Incompetence in Congress (which closely managed the war effort) and the refusal of many farmers to be paid in paper money hindered quartermasters in supplying soldiers with clothing and food.

The horrors of Valley Forge lay ahead; the cold and snow at Ticonderoga affected Allen now.

Unable to obtain new clothing, he reported for duty “twice and sometimes three times in a week for five or six months without a shoe to my feet and scarcely clothes enough to cover my nakedness,” he recalled.

Allen tied “my blanket around me to (continued on page 30)

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keep from freezing to death.” Chills set in; “I was taken with pleurisy fever,” he wrote.

The Ticonderoga garrison lacked a hospital and medical supplies. The ill Allen shook and shivered in the crude hut built by him and his comrades. Assigned to guard the vital fort, which protected the northern approaches to Albany and the Hudson Valley, the Massachusetts soldiers received no pay that winter and spring.

Food proved scarce, too. To buy over-priced food and personal items from a sutler, Allen pawned “my silver shoe buckles, knee buckles, sleeve buttons, stock buckle and brooch.”

Warm weather brought little relief.

Allen was received four months’ pay that June; lacking a safe place to hide the coins, he placed them in a storage chest owned by a major. Then British General John Burgoyne and his army advanced “up” Lake Champlain that

summer; abandoning Ticonderoga, Continental troops retreated overland to the Hudson River — and the major’s chest (and Allen’s pay) disappeared during that retreat.

The army transferred Allen to a ranger company that skirmished with Burgoyne’s Canadian and Indian scouts. The rangers stayed outdoors in all types of weather; often forced to camp “with my clothes wet,” Allen fell seriously ill; this time the army sent him to a hospital to recover.

Rejoining his regiment at Albany after Burgoyne’s surrender, Allen marched to Valley Forge late in 1777.

During that horrible winter he contracted smallpox, survived when other soldiers died, and fought at Monmouth, New Jersey in the stifling heat of June 28, 1778.

That battle established Allen’s bonafides as a combat veteran. About 11 a.m., “the enemy’s horse (cavalry)

rushed upon us and broke our ranks and killed and made prisoners of a great part of the battalion,” Allen described the fighting.

“From the fatigue of the battle and the excessive heat of the day [,] I was melted and not able to do duty till the next spring,” he wrote.

So weak that he could not walk by September, Allen was moved to Connecticut, where he ended up “laid on the floor” of a Danbury barn. That night “a violent storm” pounded Danbury, and rainwater dripping through the leaky barn roof left Allen soaked and chilled; aware that his patients suffered, the hospital overseer refused to move them to dry quarters.

That night should have killed Daniel Allen. His head and neck swelled by morning. Allen could see from only one eye. Now feverish, he was finally evacuated “to the General Hospital” and tossed into “an empty bunk.”

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The soldiers assigned as hospital orderlies paid Allen scant attention. Only by struggling could he shift position, and the skin wore “from my shoulders and hips,” he remembered.

Large sores had formed on his head and neck. One on his head broke and drained its pus across his ears. Finally paying attention to their patient, “a jury of doctors [now] thought [it] proper to open” the sore on his throat, Allen recalled.

A “Doctor Eustes” lanced the sore, which “discharged a pint of matter,” said the conscious Allen, who watched the procedure. Although he gradually improved, “I have never enjoyed but a poor state of health since,” he later wrote.

Allen did recover sufficiently to fight at Stony Point, New York on July 16, 1779. He was a good soldier; promoted to corporal in 1777 and sergeant in 1779, Allen stayed in the ranks until

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his discharge on January 2, 1780. He headed for the District of Maine that May. “I returned home [to Winthrop] having suffered everything but death in defense of my country.” Allen concluded his pension application years afterward.

Reflecting on his military service to the future United States, the now aging patriot believed “I had served it to the best of my ability.”

A parsimonious Congress took its time agreeing. Not until May 18, 1818 did Daniel Allen start receiving the pension that was long his due.

And those family genes ensured that Allen would live almost another 30 years after his pension went into effect.

The 93-year-old patriot died at Winthrop on January 5, 1848.

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The Song Of The Factory Girl Songs of the Depression

by Charles Francis

Though to this noisy, tiresome room, At early dawn, I take my way, Where sterner fate has fixed my doom To labor the live-long day Ye proudly great, sigh not for me, For still my thoughts and will are free…

I am not rich nor wish to be For now my love, my acts, are free.

The above lines are part of the Library of Congress’ collection of folk songs that were recorded by Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers in Maine during the Depression.

Specifically they were collected by a team working among mill workers in the Androscoggin Valley. Other older

references to the song, which is usually referred to as the The Song of the Factory Girl, place its origins in the Kennebec Valley. In one case a Winthrop girl by the name of Mary is credited with its composition. Regardless as to its specific origins The Song of the Factory Girl seems to have flourished in the mill towns of the Androscoggin Valley and the surrounding region for much of the 1800s and well into the 1900s.

And it is not surprising that it would be popular there, for with the exception of southern coastal Maine, Androscoggin and Oxford counties had the highest concentration of female mill and factory workers in the state. There is another reason why the song would be pop-

ular among female laborers, however: it serves not only to describe their work day but also to justify their choice of occupation.

Women did not enter the Maine work force in any great numbers until the coming of the cotton and woolen mills which seemed to spring up any place there was a readily available source of water power as well as workers. Before that about the only occupations that were available outside the home for women were those of seamstress and domestic servant.

These latter two occupations were natural outgrowths of the work of the farm wife who numbered among her chores carding, weaving and spinning, (continued on page 34)

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skills which fell under the heading of “domestic manufacturing,” as they produced items for family use in the home.

In like manner the work in the cotton and woolen mill related to these. It was not the farm wife, however, who took a position of seamstress or domestic and later as a mill worker but rather the farmer’s daughter or sister who simply did not want to labor at home for nothing. And that latter circumstance was a source of contention for much of the nineteenth century.

For much of the nineteenth century the practice of young women leaving the home to seek out a paying job was usually looked upon as an act of desperation reserved only for those females who were willing to forgo the embarrassment of becoming a “day-laborer.”

Moreover, in many cases, especially in farm families, it was looked upon as an act of desertion, for young women were expected to help their families with the

full-time household duties. In addition, many social critics of the time such as ministers believed that mill work would compromise a young woman’s domestic education, making her an inferior wife and mother. As one individual wrote to the Maine Farmer, the most widely read newspaper in rural Maine in the mid 1800s, adding “factory girl” to the list of current occupations simply added to the already long list of threats to women in general and the structure of society as a whole.

Farm girls were not the only ones to leave home for the mill, however.

Samuel Clark’s daughter Martha did so much to the distress of her parents.

Martha Clark’s story has been documented in several studies of the social history of southern Maine in the nineteenth century, including Anthropology Toward History: Culture and Work in a Nineteenth Century Maine Town by Richard Howitz. In the late 1840s,

Samuel Clark, who owned tanneries in several Maine towns, ranging from Augusta west, wrote his son Samuel, a doctor in Bangor, that “Martha is going to work in the factory tomorrow. She is tired of doing housework… no other excuse that I know of.”

Samuel Clark and many like him could find no reason other than housework as to why their daughters would leave home for the drudgery of the mill.

That may be part of it, but there are undoubtedly other reasons.

Perhaps the closing lines of “The Song of the Factory” that speak to freedom of thought and will best explain why young women like Martha Clark and countless others left home for the “noisy, tiresome room” of the mill.

They left to be “free.”

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An Early History Of Newfield Apples played an important role

by C.J. Pike

A

pples, apples, apples — the apple industry is thriving in Maine. But, as you bite into a fresh juicy MacIntosh or a crisp Cortland, have you ever considered how the apple industry got started in Maine?

While we don’t think about the fact that apples have been around for more than 300 years in Maine, we just know that a juicy, delicious apple tastes good and is good for us. It has become a staple in our diets, and as the saying goes, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

In Newfield, apples were big business, and had a strong core in the history of the town. The village was thriving back in the early part of the twentieth

century, with products being shipped overseas on a regular basis. Industry was booming and the little village had its place in the international marketplace.

According to historians, family members, locals and other researchers, there were several other manufacturing

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businesses in town that made a decent income exporting their products and providing foreign trade to countries overseas, such as a saw mill, grist mill, shingle mill and wooden products mill.

The Towle family was one of those families involved with foreign trade.

They first settled in the Newfield area in 1870 when they purchased the Captain James Ayer house along the Little Ossipee River on what is now Water Street. Albion K. P. Towle and his wife, Ada Calista, settled in Newfield and raised three children, Frederick William, Albion P., and Ada Jane. In the early 1900s, Albion ran a dried apple business out of the shed that still stands

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on the property. He crated and shipped his products to England.

Apples in those days were dried on large racks with large pieces of coarse muslin covering them. For several days in a row, they would be set outside during the day and brought in at night, until the product was sufficiently dried. In later years, inside dryer racks were invented with several drawers, and placed on top of a coal stove that provided the heat. Housewives dried their apples for household use by slicing them, putting them on a string and hanging that next to the kitchen fire.

Dried apples had many uses, and early settlers were able to store and use them all winter when fresh fruit was scarce.

The history of apples in our country dates way back to the 1700s — perhaps before — but in the early 1800s Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman, became one of the first distributors of apple seeds in the country. He first purchased apple

seeds from a Pennsylvania cider mill and headed west. Although he did not actually spread seeds across the country, as we know the story, he traveled to the Midwest and started nurseries along the way. Under the law at that time,

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homesteads were required to plant 50 apple trees in their first year; hence apples quickly became a staple in settlers’ diets. Johnny sold seeds to the pioneers and helped them grow their own trees.

Heirloom apples — such as the Winesap and Grimes Golden — were too delicate for mass production and were meant for a gourmet appetite. Some heirloom varieties are still around, but can only be found in historic sites, such as Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. Many of these heirloom varieties did not survive, due to extreme weather conditions, especially hurricanes and cold winters; foreign trade at that point then suffered for apple farmers. Market prices declined in the 1950s and foreign trade came to a standstill.

Four of the apple varieties that we know today, survived through the years — the Granny Smith, McIntosh, Cortland, and Delicious.

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In the mid-1950s, cold storage facilities were created and commercial growers could preserve the fruit longer so that the consumer would have fresh apples during the off-season.

At one time, back in the early 1920s, there were more than 35,000 farms producing apples in Maine with over two million trees. However, 50 years later, the number had decreased dramatically, and there were only about 167 farms that had 322,000 or so fruit-producing trees.

In Maine, some of the earliest orchards on record are near Fort Castine in 1688; Old Orchard Beach in 1770, and Buckstown in the early 1800s, but the earliest apples were grown on offshore islands of Maine as early as 1530

by European fishermen.

It is unknown how long the Towles ran the dried apple business in Newfield, but the family held onto the property, even after the 1947 fire destroyed

everything but the shed. Albion P. Towle’s children inherited the property and for many years spent summers in the area. His son, Charles, and his wife Alice lived there in the 1940s with their son, Herbert. His daughter, Ada Melissa Towle Hawkins, and daughter-inlaw, Alice Kitchen Towle, donated the two parcels of land where the family home had been to the Newfield Historical Society in 2002. There is quite a large parcel of land in the two adjoining lots that abut the Methodist Church, the old Newfield fire station, and the Little Ossipee River, with road frontage on Water Street.

I spoke with Elsa Hawkins, the great great granddaughter of Albion K.P. Towle, who said that “the main house burned in the 1947 fire, but the shed survived.” And, as far as she knows, the Newfield Historical Society has no current plans for the building. “They have hosted some programs there, with tours

of the property and inside the building, where some of the old apple drying equipment is still stored.”

Hawkins said that she would like to see the property cleaned up by volunteers, and then preserved as a park.

Locals have suggested that a plaque be mounted in the area, stating the history, and who ran the business; and maybe even some benches for people to sit and reflect.

The building is located in a beautiful spot, along the Little Ossipee River, where visitors can hike down to the river, enjoy a picnic, and soak up some of Newfield’s history.

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Brownfield’s Daniel Bean A Civil War hero remembered

by Bob Bennett

W

ars bring death and destruction — there’s no way around it. The American Civil War resulted in this mayhem to an extent not exceeded by all of the country’s other conflicts combined. And in many towns, north and south, the dead of that war, and all of the others, are remembered by monuments and memorials. Some are simply tablets of stone or bronze. Others are obelisks, crosses or other structures. There are also many statues replicating soldiers of various generations. Most of these are non-specific in that they are generic in appearance. A few, however, are actual likenesses of individual soldiers.

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Such is the case of the war memorial in Brownfield, in Oxford County near the New Hampshire border. The figure that graces this monument is a representation of one of the town’s civil war victims, Daniel Bean of the 11th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

Daniel Augustine Bean was born on May 20, 1846. His father, Sylvanus, was a graduate of Norwich University and had served in the military during the socalled Aroostook War of 1839. While little or no actual fighting occurred, this “conflict” ultimately helped determine the northern border of Maine, and the United States, with Canada. The elder Bean was well regarded in his town and

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com region and when the Civil War erupted, he set about recruiting volunteers.

These included his fifteen-year old son Daniel, who was mustered into service on November 2, 1861. A word about Daniel’s age at enlistment is appropriate here.

Normally, during the War Between the States, young men could not become soldiers until they were 18. And, since lying about one’s age would not have been acceptable, those who wanted to circumvent the requirements sometimes found a way. As Bruce Catton wrote on pg. 166 of one of his monumental histories of the war, Mr. Lincoln’s Army, “Underage boys would write ‘18’ on a slip of paper and put it inside a shoe. Then, when asked if they weren’t pretty young, they could truthfully say, ‘I’m over 18.’ “Whether young Daniel resorted to this ruse is unknown. In any case, he joined up with twenty or so compatriots and went off to war.

Daniel and his fellow enlistees ul-

timately joined Company A of the 11th Maine Regiment. The regiment saw action in a number of fights, and Daniel was wounded at the Battle of Fair Oaks, during the ill-fated Virginia Peninsula campaign, on May 31, 1862. During his recovery, he was detailed to the Quartermaster Department, where his father, now Major Bean, was serving. He rejoined the 11th Maine in May, 1864 when the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, Gen. Ulysses Grant, began his arduous march on the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia.

As many readers know, losses during the Civil War were horrendous.

Battle casualties were actually topped by deaths from disease, and the 11th Maine was no exception to those statistics. Although the figures available in the regimental history, visible at the Maine State Archives in Augusta, are somewhat confusing, the 11th is stated to have suffered hundreds of men wounded, killed and died from illness, and to have lost men in combat on 37

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separate days. On June 2, 1864 at the Battle of Bermuda Hundred, Private Daniel Bean joined that number.

In this battle, Company A of the 11th Maine was initially held in reserve on the regiment’s left flank. As the fighting surged back and forth, the company was ordered into action to protect other companies as Confederate troops advanced. During the skirmishing that ensued, Daniel suffered a serious bullet wound through both thighs. Bear in mind here that the typical “minie ball” projectile of this war was of .58 caliber or more than one half inch in diameter. Pvt. Bean was carried off the field and taken to Hampton Military Hospital at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Here, he died from his injuries on June 6, 1864.

He was buried in a Virginia cemetery.

A good friend of Bean’s, Elias P. Morton, also of Brownfield, was injured at Bermuda Hundred as well. He survived and served out the rest of the war, ultimately promoted to the rank of Ser-

geant Major. And with the war concluded, men came home and over time remembrances began to take form.

It was not until the 20th Century that Brownfield put up a monument.

Previously, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) post in Brownfield had been named in honor of Daniel Bean.

In 1911 Elias Morton and the town commissioned and paid for artist John A. Wilson of Massachusetts to produce a sculpture in recognition of Daniel and the village’s other veterans. The bronze sculpture that was created is unique in several ways.

As stated earlier, the Brownfield memorial is believed to be the only such structure to bear the likeness of an actual Mainer. In addition, the figure is not carrying a weapon. He stands looking into the distance with his right hand raised, his left hand at his side holding his Kepi cap; it seems like he may be taking his oath of enlistment with no sense of what the future holds. The stat-

ue was unveiled by Daniel Bean’s two sisters, Eliza Spring and Jennie Leighton, on September 26, 1911. A band, possibly the Brownfield Brass Band, of which my grandfather was a member, played the Star Spangled Banner as the statue became visible. On a plaque inserted into the stone base are inscribed the words: Brownfield, To Her Sons Who Upheld The Flag, 1861-1865 To one side is another plaque with the names of all the town’s veterans, including my dad, Gordon Bennett.

And so, the story of Daniel Bean is preserved in his hometown. His story is, sadly, so similar to thousands of other young Americans, and yet it is inspiring at the same time. So, as you stand at a Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day service or watch a parade on those days, or simply walk through the center of town where your local soldiers’ monument is located, keep in mind the sacrifices that these artifacts represent.

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Harry Lyon And The Southern Cross South Paris native made an historic flight

by Charles Francis

O

n May 28, 1928 the Southern Cross took off from Oakland, California. Just over eightythree hours later it landed in Brisbane, Australia. The flight was history making. It was the first trans-Pacific flight!

And its success owes more than a little to a Maine man, Harry Lyon of Paris Hill.

Harry Lyon’s name should be a well-known one in Maine. Somehow it isn’t. Maine has lots of connections to the early history of aviation. They are written of often. Many Maine towns brag about Charles Lindbergh having been there. The same is true of Amelia Earhart. Trans Am had an early start in Maine; the company’s president, Juan Trippe, was once a familiar figure here.

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The list goes on, its subjects and their Maine connections being investigated time and again. Somehow though, Harry Lyon, a native Mainer and aviation pioneer, is largely ignored.

Maybe one of the reasons Harry Lyon’s name is not all that well-known has to do with the Southern Cross itself.

The plane and its record-breaking flight are more associated with Australia than the United States. The plane was Australian owned and its commander was Australian. At the time of the flight the

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United States and Australia were rivals in the race to cross the Pacific first.

Then there is Harry Lyon himself.

Harry Lyon was not an airplane pilot, though it could be said the Southern Cross made a successful Pacific crossing because of him. Harry Lyon was a navigator. Lyon guided the Southern Cross on its eighty-three hour plus open ocean flight. He brought it safely to Hawaii, and to Fiji, and to Australia. In short, Harry Lyon was an exceptional navigator. This may have something to do with the fact that though he flunked out of the U. S. Naval Academy, his best grades while there were in navigation. That’s what some stories of him say, anyway.

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The fact that Harry Lyon flunked out of Annapolis doesn’t make him the odd-man-out of the Southern Cross’s trans-Pacific flight. The whole enterprise had its quirks from the get-go.

In keeping with the theme of a rivalry between the U. S. and Australia over crossing the Pacific first there should have been an all-Australian crew. Instead there were two Australians and two Americans. Heading up the crew was Aussie Charles Kingsford-Smith.

The co-pilot was Charles Ulm, another Aussie. The other American was radio operator James Warner.

Stories about each of the four-man crew vary. Kingsford-Smith, he went

by Smitty, supposedly had been banned from long distance airplane racing due to lack of experience. Ulm probably lied about his age to get into the Australian Imperial Force in World War I. Recent findings suggest Warner may have tried to get Lyon to back off from the

Southern Cross flight because he didn’t want another American along to hog the glory. (It was Warner’s radio reports that made the whole world aware of the flight and how it was progressing.) As for Harry Lyon, he either had no flying experience or else the little he did have was as a brief stint as a passenger.

Then there is the Southern Cross. It had crashed once. Learning of this in Australia, Harry Lyon refused to fly in her again. At least, that’s what’s reported in some sources. This brings us back to Harry Lyon and just who he was.

There are some fascinating stories of Harry Lyon before he signed on with the Southern Cross. One has him as a gun-runner during the Mexican Revolution. The United States Shipping Board may have had something to do with this. (An early version of a clandestine CIA operation.) If Lyon wasn’t a gun-runner, he may have been

a rum-runner. When he was arrested in Manzanilli, Mexico, the rebels who arrested him drank up the liquor his ship was carrying.

Harry Lyon’s full name was Henry Ware Lyon, Jr.. He was the son of Rear Admiral Henry W. Lyon. The elder Lyon had a notable military career, serving with distinction in the Caribbean during the Spanish-American War. This says something as to how Harry came to go to Annapolis. Harry also spent a year at Dartmouth. Harry’s secondary education was at military school in Pennsylvania and at Hebron Academy. His hands-on work experience was as a mate on merchant vessels and as a captain of tramp steamers, mainly on the Pacific coast. He was testifying as a witness in a rum-running case in San Francisco when the opportunity to join up with the Southern Cross was presented. This brings us to the actual flight.

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The Southern Cross was a Fokker F. VIIb/3m trimotor monoplane. It had been built for polar exploration. After its crash, which occurred in Alaska, it had been deemed too big for its original purpose. Kingsford-Smith then bought the plane stripped and had it refurbished. The refit included installing four wing tanks which gave the plane a fuel capacity of 1300 gallons. Considering the distance the Southern Cross flew, about 7,250 miles, Smitty did a good job.

There were three major legs to the trans-Pacific flight — 2400 miles, 3200 miles and 1800 miles plus a final shorter flight. The first leg, from Oakland to Honolulu was uneventful.

It took twenty-seven hours, twenty-five minutes. The second leg to Fiji was just the opposite. Fuel, not time, was the issue. The plan ran into a massive low with rain and wind. Flying low meant head-wind. Flying high over the storm

expended almost as much fuel as flying into the wind. The Southern Cross made Fiji with four hours of fuel left.

This says something as to the quality of flying — it was exceptional. The shortest leg of the Pacific crossing was no better than the longest — it was storms and winds with no let-up.

The Southern Cross landed in Brisbane. It then made a short flight to Sidney.

It was at the end of the flight, while sitting in an airdrome in Australia, that Harry Lyon saw the Southern Cross for what the plane was. As this tale goes, Harry happened to walk around the plane to discover “one section was held together with bamboo and bailing wire.” That’s why he wouldn’t fly in her again.

When Harry returned to Paris Hill in August of 1928, he was treated to a hero’s welcome.

In 1958, Quantas Airlines flew Harry and his wife to Sydney for the thirtieth anniversary of the flight.

Harry Lyon died May 30, 1963.

Thirty-five years earlier he had been flying over the Pacific.

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46

Greenwood’s Nellie Verrill

by Brian Swartz

She blazed a newspaper trail in Nevada

B

efore she died at age 100 on June 24, 1945, Nellie Verrill Mighels Davis could look back on her long career as a mother, grandmother, and civic leader.

Yet her decades spent as a newspaper woman cemented her place in Nevada lore.

Born in Greenwood in Oxford County on September 10, 1844, Nellie grew up with two sisters and four brothers, not an unusually large brood among Maine families in the mid-19th century.

Not so typically, her parents died some months apart. Needed at home to care for her younger siblings, Nellie abandoned her plans to attend Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

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She might have spent her life in the Androscoggin Valley, but Henry Rust Mighels intervened.

Fourteen years older than Nellie, Mighels hailed from Norway in Ox-

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ford County. Wounded while serving in the Union army during the Civil War, he (like so many young veterans from Maine) set his post-war sights on the West.

Henry moved to Nevada, which became the 36th state in autumn 1864.

Then (and now) a wild and woolly place, Nevada offered incredible opportunities to fortune-seekers.

Before departing Maine, Henry proposed marriage to Nellie, a kindred spirit unafraid to venture into the unknown. Henry left to seek his fame and fortune. Four years after telling him “yes,” Nellie sailed from New York to Panama, crossed its isthmus to the Pacific coast, and caught a steamship to

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Now publisher and editor of the Carson City Morning Appeal, Henry traveled from Carson City to marry Nellie near the Golden Gate in summer 1866. The happy couple returned to Carson City via Sacramento and Placerville, where the Mighelses caught a stagecoach for Nevada.

Nellie later noted the excitement of riding beside legendary stage driver Henry James “Hank” Monk. Writing in The Land of the Purple Shadow, author Idah Meacham Strobridge described him as “the most daring — the most reckless of drivers; and the luckiest” and “the drollest of all the whimsical characters who made Western staging famous the world over.”

Henry named Nellie associate editor of the Carson Appeal, and she learned journalism and the printing business from the ground up. Her duties ran from piecing together stories to setting type and handling the newspaper’s

business affairs.

Nellie was a good match for her politically ambitious husband. Appointed Nevada state printer in 1868, Henry won election to the state assembly in 1876. After his Republican colleagues made him Assembly Speaker in 1877, Nellie became the first woman reporter to cover the Nevada legislature.

She honed her journalistic skills not in political circles but in church, where Henry insisted that Nellie take notes during the sermons, then work those notes into articles published by the Carson Appeal. Years later Nellie remembered that “we wouldn’t afford to pay a reporter $25 a month, so I did it myself.”

“It wasn’t so hard” recording the sermons fast and furiously, because Henry “had taught me to write down [the] high spots of a speech. By the time the speaker had quit orating (which could be a long time in that era) and had come to another high spot, I would be through

writing the first high spot.

“By that method I managed to do an accurate account of the proceedings,” Nellie said.

Meanwhile, the Mighelses constructed a house in Carson City, where they had three sons and two daughters.

Busy at home and at the newspaper, Nellie gained some admirers in people-short Nevada, where many business and professional men did not look askance at a woman who could match them skill for skill.

Henry lost an election bid for lieutenant governor in 1878; soon he did not feel well, and within a few months he and Nellie learned that he had cancer.

As Henry’s health declined in early 1879, Nellie set type for the Carson Appeal at home while caring for Henry. He finished writing the book Sage Brush Leaves before dying in spring 1879. Nellie buried him in Carson City’s Lone Mountain Cemetery. (continued on page 48)

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Now 35, Nellie ran the newspaper and mothered her young children. She later convinced Samuel Post Davis of the Virginia Chronicle to work as editor of the Carson Appeal. Close proximity in the workplace and a similar passion for newspapering led to love, and Nellie married Samuel on July 4, 1880.

Afterwards she stepped away from the Carson Appeal to manage the cattle ranch on which the Davises settled.

Nellie bore Samuel two daughters, and he treated his stepchildren as if they were his own youngsters.

The transition from the 19th century to the 20th century saw Nellie frequently involved in civic affairs, from establishing an American Red Cross chapter in Carson City in 1899 to joining the socially popular Leisure Hour Club a few years later. When various women’s clubs formed a state federation in the late 1900s, Nellie was elected the federation’s president.

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As for newspapering, she kept her pencil sharp. Henry was away during a major prize fight held at the Race Track Arena in Carson City on March 17, 1897. James Corbett and Robert Fitzsimmons met in the first major boxing match actually filmed in the United States; Fitzsimmons beat Corbett by a technical knockout in the fourteenth round.

Covering the fight, Nellie sold her article to a newspaper in Chicago. Her accomplishment would generate yawns with the reading public today, but of all the reporters covering that fight, Nellie was the only woman among them — — and Carson City legend has it that most other women (there weren’t many) attending the fight were prostitutes.

By then Samuel had expressed his interest in state politics; named the Deputy Nevada Secretary of State in 1895, he won election as state control-

ler in 1898 and 1902, then became a state commissioner in 1907. After he died on March 17, 1918, Nellie buried him one space away from Henry in the Lone Mountain Cemetery.

A long-time member of the respective press associations in California and Nevada, she continued publishing the Carson Appeal for some years. A son, Henry Rust Mighels Jr., served as its editor, and later owned the newspaper from 1927 to 1932. The paper remained in the family’s hands until 1938.

Nellie Verrill Mighels Davis arranged with her family that after her death in June 1945, she would be buried between her two husbands at the Lone Mountain Cemetery.

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Bathtub Of Tears The tragic case of the Fisher family

by Dave Bumpus

T

hey say that history has a way of repeating itself. We fight wars, we go through tough times, we make the same mistakes, often multiple times. We may learn from history, but overall, we repeat these things on a broader scale. It is when you come across a story, where even the minute details are reflective of each other, that it truly becomes engaging, and in the mid-1900s, the towns of Waterville and Fairfield would become the location of one of history’s most horrific repetitive examples.

In March of 1954 Waterville would be cruelly shaken when a married mother of three would have a tragic

mental breakdown, and change her life, and Maine’s history forever.

Constance Mary Fisher was 24 at the time. She was married to Carl Fisher, who was at that time 33. The couple had three children. Richard was the oldest at the age of 6, Daniel was 4, and young Deborah was only 1 year old.

Although it may seem like an ideal, happy family on the outside, things were tense in the Fisher home. Constance had been suffering from severe mood swings for quite some time. She had seen a psychiatrist shortly after she stopped breastfeeding, and he had suggested the family move out of their stressful cabin life. It wasn’t a profound

suggestion, as the family had to chip ice during the winter just to get drinking water.

They took the suggestion, and moved to Waterville, where Constance continued to have ups and downs. It seemed like she bounced between two extremes on a daily basis. Some days she was able to cope, and some days she would just stay in bed, as she became more and more depressed. And on March 8th, while Carl Fisher was at work, she would do the unthinkable.

She first drew a bath, before taking 1-year-old Deborah and placing her in the tub. She then drowned the child.

After that, she wrapped her 1-year-old (continued on page 50)

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in a blanket, and placed her in her crib.

Next, she did the same thing to 4-yearold Daniel. She also wrapped his body in a blanket and laid him down in his bed. Constance then waited for her 6-year-old son Richard to return home from school. When he got there, she told him to get in the tub, where she played with him for a few minutes, before placing her hands on his neck and pushing him under the water. It was later revealed that Richard had struggled so violently that the young mother had to climb on top of him to keep him submerged.

When she was done, she calmly sat down and wrote a note to her husband.

The note red: ‘God told me it was the only way to save them. Maybe you don’t think I love them. I did, oh I did; my heart is breaking. I loved you and I loved them.’

She then drank a bottle of shampoo in an attempt to take her own life. When

Carl Fisher returned home, he discovered his oldest son still in the bathtub, followed by his two other children, and his unconscious wife. He immediately phoned the police, and after a short visit to the hospital, Constance Mary Fisher was arrested for the murder of her only three children.

The trial made national headlines, and was short-lived. Mrs. Fisher was found not guilty by reason of insanity due to her mental illness. She was sent to the state hospital in Augusta to undergo treatment. It was here that she would reveal that she had also heard voices that had told her to kill her children. Doctors would diagnose her several times with everything from schizophrenia to sociopathism, noting that she never expressed any remorse for her actions, and she stated on several occasions that her children were in a better place. It is doubtful that in the five years that she was treated, that she

ever got the help she needed. And the events that followed would only support that theory.

In 1959, with the help of her lawyers and her husband, Constance Mary Fisher was released. Rather than risk the backlash that would likely come from the Waterville community, she moved with her husband to a house that he had built for them in Fairfield Center.

The thing is, the hospital released Constance without providing a follow-up plan for her. She was not prescribed medication. She was not appointed to a psychiatrist. In fact, once they let her go, she was not in any way instructed or obligated to have any communication whatsoever with any mental health institution. It was as if she was released into the exact same conditions that sent her there in the first place.

Nonetheless, the family settled in, doing their best to adjust back into ev-

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eryday life, and Constance quickly became pregnant. It is unclear what the couple’s intent was in having children again. Maybe they wanted to start over.

Maybe the young mother’s need for a family was too great to resist. Whatever the reason may be, they seemed to virtually be rebuilding the exact family they had before the original tragedy. By around 1965, the couple were parents to three more children; Kathleen, who was 6, Michael, who was 4, and little Nathalie who was 9 months old.

Age wise, these were the exact same ages of their previous children, with the exception of Nathalie, who only differed from 1-year-old Deborah (in age) by a mere couple of months. It was almost the exact same scenario in which those terrible events had taken place over a decade ago… including Constance’s mental state. And history was about to repeat itself in the worst way possible.

The mother was once again suffering from mood swings and slightly psychotic episodes, but they were not being recognized by either the health care system or her family. She had been keeping it inside. Her depression had caused her to lose control of the conditions of her household, and the place was a mess of toys and rotting food.

And whatever had been brewing inside Mrs. Fisher was about to come out.

She killed her three newest children in the exact same fashion as before, in the bathtub. Only this time, she drowned the two older children first and left the youngest in the water. She also wrapped the two oldest children in blankets and placed them in their respective beds, leaving the oldest, Katherine, in the bathtub. She then (again) wrote a note to her husband that read: ‘I’m sorry I have to do this. I haven’t done a proper job of raising the children. They will be better off in Heaven.’

The events had played out virtually the same as they had before, and once again, Carl Fisher had returned home from work to find his children dead, and his wife unconscious from a suicide attempt (this one using pills). She would survive, and this time, Constance Mary Fisher was sent to the state hospital for the rest of her life.

But she would not spend the rest of her days there. On October 1st, in 1973, she quietly escaped from the hospital in the middle of the night. She then drowned herself in the Kennebec River, and her body was recovered several days later on the river banks in South Gardiner.

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52

The Genealogy Corner What our grandparents did for a living

by Charles Francis

F

inding out when our great-grandfather was born, when he died and when he married that hometown girl — or wherever it was she came from — is the base of genealogy.

It’s the sort of information we need to fill in the all-important family tree. It’s somewhat interesting, but great-grandpa starts to become alive, starts to become intriguing, when we learn something in depth about him. For example, what he did for a living.

Discovering an ancestor’s occupation actually helps in getting the basics on him or her. In many cases, learning just what great-grandfather or great-grandmother did for a living can expand research along avenues

you hadn’t thought to consider. Perhaps you know great-grandfather or great-grandmother were storekeepers.

You know that but not the name of the store or what sort of merchandise it carried. You do, however, know the name of the town where the store was. This is the sort of information that comes from newspaper articles or town and county tax records where you can garner more information on this particular ancestor. Wesley Oilman of Oakland serves as a wonderful example of what happens when one begins to flesh out a biography.

Wesley Oilman owned a store in Oakland. In fact, he was involved in several merchandising ventures there.

The information is in municipal tax records. Municipal tax records are often overlooked as a source for family history. Oakland town records reveal that Wesley Oilman sold musical instruments. This was in the 1880s and 1890s.

Now Oakland presents certain problems as far as the genealogical record is concerned. For one thing Oakland wasn’t always known by that name.

The name Oakland was adopted in 1883. Before that, Oakland was West Waterville. Before that is was a part of Waterville. These are the sorts of considerations every genealogist becomes attuned to as he or she gets further into (continued on page 54)

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and more familiar with research. The point here is that Wesley Oilman, and Oakland serve as examples of a general type. There are other reasons for considering Wesley Oilman, though. For one thing, Oilman is interesting in his own right. For another he doesn’t fit into the typical pattern for someone living in Oakland, at least what might be perceived as the pattern for the typical Oakland resident.

Oakland is sometimes described as “the key to the seven lakes.” The seven lakes are the Belgrade Lakes region.

Water power drew manufacturing interests to Oakland. This fact might lead one to assume Wesley Oilman would have been involved in manufacturing.

You don’t want to draw assumptions on an ancestor’s occupation just because of the sort of economy a town was based on, though. Just because great-grandfather was from a farming community, don’t assume he was a farmer.

Wesley Oilman started the first music store in town. This was in 1877, when Oakland was West Waterville.

Wesley Oilman was what can only be described as a bandsman. He was leader and director of Oilman’s band of Oakland for eighteen years. He also organized and conducted Gilman’s Band.

A beginning genealogist might ignore information like the above because it doesn’t relate to the all-important family tree. No matter, when you run across information of this nature write it down. Gather any other relevant information you come across.

Look through old family letters, bibles and cards. Check for saved newspaper clippings. Materials such as these are wonderful sources of building a true picture of your ancestor. As time goes on it is biography that is important, not just a simple listing of birth, death, marriage and children.

Wesley Oilman was born in Bel-

grade, Maine, May 20, 1844. His parents were Jacob and Deborah (Ilam) Oilman. He attended Maine Wesleyan Seminary in Kents Hill. The point to stating these facts at this time is to bring in the use of maps. You use maps to plot out the area your ancestor came from. In the case of Wesley Oilman maps show the relationship of Oakland, Belgrade and Kents Hill.

Wesley Oilman came to what would be Oakland about 1860. In July of 1862 he enlisted in the Union Army as a private. To be exact, he enlisted in Co. A of the 20th Maine. With this point the nature and character of Wesley Oilman begins to acquire depth. The 20th Maine is, of course, the most famous of the state’s Union Army regiments, the regiment commanded by Joshua Chamberlain, the regiment some credit with turning the Confederate tide at Gettysburg.

With the 20th Maine, Oilman partic-

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A check with Oakland municipal records shows that Wesley Oilman married twice. He was married in 1870 to Sarah B. Kimball. She died in 1890.

In 1893 he married Alice E. Sturtevant.

No matter whether Wesley Oilman was one’s direct ancestor or uncle several times removed or a distant cousin, having him as a part of one’s family tree becomes meaningful given what he did for a living. It is Wesley Oilman’s various vocations and avocations that bring him to life, make him an individual.

So what do you do to find sources for your ancestor’s occupation? Start by getting his or her death certificate.

Death certificates can be obtained through the county where your ancestor died. They often list the main occupation of the deceased during his or her lifetime. Another source is the funeral home that attended to the individual’s burial. Funeral homes often

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have a good deal of family and personal employment history. The National Archives is another source. It has copies of your ancestor’s military records.

These often include employment history. The important thing is to find out what great-grandpa or great-grandma did for a living. Occupation is the surest guide to individual identity, to bringing someone from the past back to life.

2 | 2016 Volume 25 | Issue

ipated in the battles of Rappahannock Station and Mine Run, and in the Wilderness Campaign of May 5th to September 30th, 1864. He was promoted to corporal. He was severely wounded in the thigh at the battle of Pegram’s Farm in Virginia, September 30th, 1864. Incapacitated for further service, he mustered out of the Army in June of 1865. He then returned to West Waterville.

Following his mustering out and return home, Oilman secured a position with the Dunn Edge Tool Company making scythes. In 1869 he became partner in a hardware store, Bryant and Oilman. Then in 1877, he opened his music store. In keeping with the business, Oilman taught band as well as vocal music. He served as choir master for the Universalist church. A perusal of Oakland town records shows Oilman was a town treasurer and that he served as selectman. He also served as Oak-

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Early view of the Burgess Store and residence in Rumford Center. Item # LB2007.1.102273 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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58

A Day In The Life Of Mexico High

by David E. Peakes

Pintos were spellbound

D

uring the Great Depression of the 1930s the town of Mexico, across the Androscoggin River from Rumford, was able to secure funding to erect a new high school.

My father, Lawrence A. Peakes, was the first principal. He told me of the interesting event that took place one January morning in 1938. The social studies teacher was not available. There were no names on the substitute list. Lawrence called the Rumford Superintendent of Schools, Roy Williams, for a possible teacher. Roy said his list also had no names. Then he said, “but wait a minute. This is college vacation period. There is a young man who just might help out. He is a graduate of Ste-

Stony Brook Recreation Campground

phens High School in Rumford. He put himself through Bates College and he is now studying law at Cornell University.

His father is a tailor here in town. Give him a call. His name is Ed Muskie.”

Ed came over to Mexico High

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School. Lawrence introduced him to his first social studies class and left the room to attend to duties in the school office. Later the bell rang for students to pass to the next class. A traffic jam developed in the hall outside the social studies class room. When Lawrence went to investigate, he found Ed Muskie and his first class engaged in a lively discussion. None of the students had heard or responded to the bell.

Teachers reported to Lawrence at the end of the day that students had continued to discuss the issues Ed Muskie had raised in the social studies class. There even had been requests to leave study hall to go listen to the new teacher.

59

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Kingfield’s Freelan Oscar Stanley Climbing Mt. Washington in a Locomobile

by Brian Swartz

A

brilliant inventor from Kingfield took his wife on a road trip that she would never forget in late August 1899.

Freelan Oscar Stanley and his identical twin, Francis Edgar, grew up in Kingfield, where they soon displayed a propensity for tinkering and inventing.

The brothers are best remembered for the Stanley Steamer, the steam-powered car that they built and perfected while living in Massachusetts in 1897.

Two years later, Freelan decided to tackle Mount Washington, not yet ascended by an automobile. On Saturday, August 26, he and his wife, Flora, climbed into a Stanley Locomobile parked outside their Newtown, Mas-

sachusetts home and started for New Hampshire.

Freelan Stanley had met Flora Jane Record Tileston while working as a high school headmaster in Mechanic Falls. Flora was a teacher, an acceptable job for women facing limited outside-the-home employment opportunities. Freelan married Flora in 1876; she strongly supported the efforts by him and Francis to develop and fine-tune their unique “Steamer” automobiles.

Many tourists exploring the White Mountains in the mid-19th century wanted to reach the summit of 6,288foot Mount Washington, highest peak in the Presidential Range. A bridle path ascended the western side of the moun-

tain, but not until August 8, 1861 did a carriage road open on Washington’s eastern side.

Literally blasted in places along its winding ascent to the summit, the carriage road was built by the Mount Washington Summit Road Company.

Investors figured they could tap the White Mountains’ burgeoning tourist trade. Americans were discovering the great outdoors in the populated Northeast; for a fee of around $2.50, a tourist could board a large wagon drawn by six horses and enjoy a four-hour ride up the Summit Road.

Of course, the trip might be disrupted if a wind gust suddenly blew over a (continued on page 60)

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Western Maine

60 (continued from page 59)

wagon and passengers.

Still owned by the same company, the Summit Road evolved into the 7.6-mile Mt. Washington Auto Road, measuring 16 feet wide and averaging a 12-percent grade. Naturally, the name change did not occur until some time after Freelan and Flora Stanley made their run at Mt. Washington in 1899.

The Stanley Locomobile driven by the Stanleys had a 3-gallon gas tank and a 12-gallon water tank. Spending Wednesday night at Darby Field Cottage at Washington’s base, the Stanleys awakened on Thursday, August 31, a beautiful late summer day.

“Its golden splendor crowned the brow of Mt. Washington, upon which was just a trace of mist hanging like a lock of silver hair,” Flora Stanley described the magnificent view from the cottage.

Enjoying a light breakfast, the Stanleys started west in the Locomobile.

Before heading up the carriage road, Freelan pulled over beside a brook, added water to the car’s tank, and checked the machinery.

“Could our little machine do this task which we had set it?” Flora wondered. “We looked at each other and said nothing, but our silence was eloquent.”

The Stanleys started up the carriage road, which rose about 4,700 feet over its 7.6-mile route. The first mile “was … up a steep and sandy pitch,” Flora noted. Her husband soon realized that he needed to adjust the Locomobile’s configuration to gain better traction on the steep grade and keep the water reaching the boiler. The Stanleys stopped briefly and jacked up the rear wheels; Freelan continued making similar adjustments as the car climbed Mt. Washington.

“We went on, and up, up, still up, the continuous climbing being varied only

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by a steepness so excessive that we felt a sickening anxiety lest each brilliant dash should be our last,” Flora said.

Natural supplies of fresh water were scarce along the carriage road, but at the Halfway House, the Stanleys learned they could find a spring past mile post 5. Distracted by “viewing the wild scenery, and in watching each pulsation of our machine,” they missed the post and the spring.

Freelan stopped the Locomobile before its water tank ran dry. No water was visible nearby; then a teamster appeared aboard a “mountain wagon,” found out what the Stanleys needed, and went for water.

With the Locomobile topped off, the adventurous couple resumed the journey. Not far from the summit, the road assumed a hair-raising 22-percent grade; the steam-powered Locomobile zoomed (by 1899 speeds) up the slope and “came in on the home stretch with (continued on page 62)

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Early view of Main Street in Rangeley. Item # LB2007.1.102159 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Western Maine

62 (continued from page 60)

flying colors,” Flora said.

The Stanleys were expected — if they arrived at all, of course. According to Flora, “excursionists and summit residents were crowded on the north end of the platform and on the roof of the woodshed” to await the car’s arrival.

“When we alighted [,] they rushed down upon us with their cameras and begged us to get into the carriage” and sit on its two-person seat, she remembered.

The Stanleys arrived at 11:35 a.m., in time to enjoy lunch at the Summit House. Their historical drive took 2 hours and 10 minutes (plus time spent jacking the rear wheels and adding water to the tank) and triggered efforts by other drivers to ascend Mt. Washington via the carriage road.

Staying Thursday night at the Summit House, the Stanleys drove down the mountain the next day. Like a modern trucker, Freelan used the Locomobile’s

engine as a brake; “we reversed the engine, played the brake like an organ pedal, just held on [,] and let the thing spin,” Flora recalled.

She had already telegraphed the achievement to the outside world. The Stanley Locomobile had conquered the tallest mountain in the Northeast; Freelan and Francis Stanley hoped the accomplishment would spur sales of their unique vehicle.

Reaching the base of Mt. Washington, Freelan and Flora drove to Kingfield. By the time it stopped for the last time in that town (from which the Stanleys shipped it to Newtown), the Locomobile had run up 775 miles on its “cyclometer,” the forerunner of the odometer.

Discover Maine

Discover Maine Magazine has been brought to you free through the generous support of Maine businesses for the past 25 years, and we extend a special thanks to them.

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

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Photo of the ferry going across the Kennebec River at Bingham taken in June, 1904. Item # 23398 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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Western Maine

64

From North Anson To California On Conestoga Wagons Confrontation with indians was near-deadly

by Sherwood W. Anderson

T

hree men in their twenties left North Anson on the Kennebec River in 1853 and set out to cross the continent to California by rail, horse and foot. They were Dr. Thomas Flint, his brother Benjamin Flint and their cousin Llewellyn Bixby. They traveled by railroad to Terra Haute Indiana, which was as far west as rails were laid.

From there the three went by horse and foot 2,131 miles through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada to Los Angeles on the Pacific, driving the 1,880 sheep they had collected in Illinois, together with eleven yoke of oxen, two cows, four horses, two wagons and complete camping outfit. They also hired four teamsters. Crossing the

near-deadly confrontation.

Dr. Flint recorded the challenge as follows:

Mississippi at Keokuk, they began their long journey.

They had no trouble from Indians until, on July 28, 1853 and 700 miles from the Missouri River, a party of Arapahoes stopped them in a

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65

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com “An old one-eye mean looking cuss of an Indian with a boy of 15 or 16 years came up on horseback and taking positions on each side of me — the boy calling the old one Captain with a motion of a hand towards me as if by way of introduction. The Captain was armed with a flintlock old English musket and the young one with bow and arrows.

The Captain point to my Navy pistol said pop, pop, pop. I nodded in the affirmative. I knew the advantage was on my side with a six shooter and double-barreled gun and percussion caps.

“The young scamp commenced to draw up his bow with an arrow intimidatingly — each time a little stronger until I thought it was high tide it was stopped lest he let fly at me. I was more afraid of the arrow than the musket — therefore mentally decided that if the motion was again made I would shoot him, but made no demonstration or motion to use my revolver whereupon the boy meekly dropped his bow and arrow

down by his side. The old Indian moved a little higher up the hill and holding his musket a few seconds at “present arms” brought it down and put some powder into the pan of the lock. I made some signs to two of my men who were some distance behind with the sheep when the Captain and the boy started to meet them.

“When the wagons arrived I told them to drive to a level and stop for the arrival of the men with the sheep.

Soon after halting an half dozen Indians bounced out of the brush and commenced to pillage the wagons.

“The four teamsters were scared out of their wits and offered no resistance but Johnson’s wife went after their hands with a hatchet when they went to help themselves to things in her wagon.

“I found it was necessary for me to put on airs. So I went to the teamsters and ordered the Indians by signs to put everything back they had taken from the wagons. They were sulky and

one of them, taking an ox yoke bow he had taken by the ends made a motion to strike me with it whereupon I brought my pistol to bear with the intention of shooting when he dropped the bow and every one of them got to the opposite side of their horses. Then I knew that I was master of the situation. Furthermore I knew they were not prepared to fight. If they were, they would not have their squaws and papooses along with them. We waited until the men with the sheep came up to us and got all of us around for it being a warm day the men had put their weapons into the wagons, except Ben and Lewell, who from my signals surmised something was wrong; when my first two Indians approached them they put their pistols under their clothing with just a little of them in sight. The other men did the same with their clothing but had no weapons yet the Indians supposed they had, probably.

“After we were all armed I felt (continued on page 66

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66 (continued from page 65)

better able to manage affairs, though I knew by experience that four of our party could not be depended on in a fight.

“After we got our train in close order we told the boys to start ahead. As they moved the one-eyed Captain said to his Indians in Spanish that they would not let us go until they had the black cow and the sheep that had bells on, and told the boy to go ahead and stop us. The boy started and when nearly ahead we told him in Spanish to come back. As he started to obey the command the old one-eyed Captain called him derisively a boy and said he would stop the train until they had what they wanted. He started and when part way around we leveled our rifles on him and told him to come back; he hesitated a little but came back to where the other Indians were.

“As we were moving on the old Captain got down on one knee and leveled his gun at us which frightened

two of our men, so they ran for shelter, much to the delight of the Indians.

Just at that time a report came that the black cow was missing. Supposing the Indians had slipped out of the brush and cut her out we made a rush for the Indians when they rushed into the brush for shelter. Then it was our turn to laugh as the cow was only a little way off when found browsing. The Indians were greatly surprised when they found we could use the Spanish language. We found that they were a hunting and marauding party of Arapahoes from Texas and there were about 90 young and old.

“We drove some six miles and camped on a round knoll away from brush and gulches with the stock all around us, for our men could see Indians everywhere.

“One of our men gave us a scare on his guard by shooting at what he supposed was an Indian creeping into camp but it proved to be a sheep that

had strayed. It was a good long shot but he hit the mark and killed the sheep.”

“We followed up the Platte River and drove out a few miles on an alkali plain. Supplied some Mormon families with provisions to take them to Salt Lake City, they having been robbed

by Indians. The women said they were prodded with arrows to make them hurry up the cooking for them.”

In California the Maine men made fortunes in wool and real estate. Each went back to claim a Yankee bride (from North Anson and Madison in Maine, the other from Vermont) and took them to California where they made their homes. Many Flints and Bixbys followed them to Long Beach and Los Angeles where their descendents have multiplied, prominent in business, church and politics. Had Dr. Flint’s encounter with the Arapahoes turned bloody who would have known their story?

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Early view of Main Street in Bridgton showing Staley’s Pharmacy. Item # LB2007.1.100303 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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68

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

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69

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William H. “Bill” Burgess Minot’s maker of fishing flies, spinners, and spoons

by William B. Krohn

W

e tend to think that large manufacturers, compared to small shops, provide workers with the best pay. But higher wages in industrial versus cottage businesses are not always the case. For example, according to an article by a reporter from the Lewiston Daily Sun published three days before Christmas 1923, the success of Bill Burgess’s State-O-Maine Fishing Tackle Company was: Due in large part, to the plan of manufacture. The goods have not been made at a price but regardless of price.

Quality comes first. He pays his workers more than most manufacturers and sells for a good price.

So who was Bill Burgess? Where and when did he live? And what exact-

Burgess’ Fly Dope ly did his company make and sell?

William H. “Bill” Burgess was born on 13 May 1886 in Mexico, Maine. His father, Otis William Burgess (1857-1930), worked in nearby Rumford as a track manager for the Portland and Rumford Falls Railroad.

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SONNETTE’S S I B Rt. 26 next to Walmart, behind Scott’s Welding & Storage

(continued on page 70)

John Stetson, Owner

August 21 - Oxford Deep Mud & Hill and Hole

1264 Main St., Oxford, ME

His mother was Emily Farrington Burgess (1857-1926), and the couple raised four children: Lila M. (b. 1878), Ora L. (b. 1881), William H. (b. 1886), and Merwin D. (b. 1894). Bill Burgess was educated to the 8th grade, and as a boy fished the local waters, and hunted nearby forests and fields. While still in his teens, and following in his grandfather’s footsteps, he guided anglers and hunters in the “Lakes Region” (i.e., Rangeley Lakes Region). It was as a guide that Burgess became recognized for making quality fishing flies, which his clients eagerly purchased. As a young man he worked for the International Paper Company. Later on, like his father, he did railroad work, being employed by the Maine Central Rail-

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70 (continued from page 69)

road. Burgess also became a member of the local National Guard Unit, entering a Corporal and leaving a Sergeant.

In 1914, when Burgess was 28 years old and still living with his parents in Rumford, he married Ethel L. Philbrick from Byron, Maine. She was three years his junior, and from the start of their marriage was her husband’s helpmate. She assisted “in making flies and they go tramping and hunting and fishing together.” While residing in Rumford, Burgess enlisted the help of a local pharmacist, Dr. Bowers, to help develop a bug dope based on a recipe from Burgess’ grandfather. The repellent, sold both as a liquid and a paste, sported the label: “E.L.B. Fly Dope for them Dog Gorn Flies.” E. L. B. was, or course, Ethel L. Burgess – who apparently disliked black flies and mosquitoes when out tramping with Bill.

In 1922, Otis W. Burgess retired from the railroad and moved south to

Cover of Burgess catalog Poland, where Otis bought a farm at the “Littlefield place” on the East Poland Road. Bill and Ethel lived with his sister and brother-in-law, occupying the second floor of his sister’s home. It was here, when Bill was 36 years old, where the Burgesses started to commercially

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make fishing flies and spinners for the general public. Later, he established a shop in nearby Minot Corner.

Of the dozen of early Maine fishing lure makers I have studied, Bill Burgess is the only one to have graded many of his products. Burgess sold in

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71

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com three grades, with a modest price increase going from his lowest to highest grade. Burgess defines these grades as follows: BILL’S BEST . . . into which we put all our knowledge and skill, KOMPED BRAND, which is a second choice and the NOCABOUT, which is a darn good … for the money and so far as strength goes there is not much difference.

As an example of price differences, his NOCABOUT flies sold for 25 cents each, the KOMPED flies for 20 cents, and BILL’S BEST sold for 35 cents per fly.

Another claim to fame for Burgess compared to all other early makers of fishing lures in Maine was that he created and produced a greater variety of flies and spinners than anyone else.

The diversity of State-O-Maine Fishing Tackle is documented in a 51-page catalog Burgess had printed around 1935.

The opening comments in this catalog also show that Burgess did not take

himself, nor his business, with complete seriousness: You Fellow: I suppose a Catalog is not complete without a bunch of hot Air for the first page to tell you all about our business and everybody else. Now I am going to pass the most usual Yar0Yar, and say: This little Catalog is only a few suggestions of what we make and if there is anything you don’t see, ask and if we can build it, we will say Yes and if not, the answer will be No. There is twenty-five years of guiding and Tackle making behind this little book and if it is you that counts, give us a try.

The State-O-Maine Fishing Tackle Catalog devotes 12 pages to hooks, 11 pages to flies, 6 pages to Rangeley Spinners (invented in the late 1800s by Henry O. Stanley of Dixfield, Maine), 12 pages to spinners and casting spoons, and 10 pages to other topics. While Burgess made too many types of flies and lures to give all the details here,

it’s worth mentioning that his creative skills especially shined when it came to creating fishing spinners. In addition to the Rangeley Spinner, other spinners made by Burgess included: the Cupsuptic Spinner (like the Rangeley, this lure was also invented by H. O. Stanley), Rangeley Lake Troll, Richardson Lake Spinner, Bill’s Maine Spinner, Bill’s Umbagog, North Twin, Bill’s South-Arm, and the Pennesseewassee.

As for trolling spoons (which have metal shafts and thus are built heavier than spinners), Burgess created Bill’s Combo, Bill’s Salmo, and the StateO-Maine. These later three lures have their names stamped on the copper or brass blades, allowing easy identification. (But look closely, these stampings are light and can be tricky to see).

Burgess sold his tackle from his store in Minot plus through T. B. Davis of Portland, Maine. T. B. Davis sold retail but it was also a large “jobber” who bought tackle from makers like Burgess (continued on page 72)

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and sold whole to local sporting goods and hardware stores. Burgess lays out his sales model on the first page of his Catalog: We have always put up the Big Yell that the Dealer, especially those that don’t buy a year’s supply at a time, should buy s[f]rom the Jobber and the Sportsman should buy from the Local Sporting Goods Dealer, and this is our reason why.

For instance, if I wanted to go fishing To-day, without I stopped to have a Girl tie me up something which of course would be Green and Undried, I’d have to go to some Dealer and buy what was lacking in the Kit, in fact I don’t know of a poorer place to step in to buy what you want, as most of the Junk we make deteriorates with age and we don’t intend to have of this class of goods made up. The Jobber knows what his general needs are and the Dealer knows the Local Dope and

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In 1943, when 59 years old and after approximately 30 years in the tackle making business, Bill went into semi-retirement. He gave up his Minot store but continued making some flies out of his home in Poland. Around 1965, Bill and Ethel moved from the country-side into the town of Mechanic Falls. On 15 January 1967, at age 80, Bill died in a Lewiston hospital after a long illness. Bill Burgess is buried in the Demeritt Cemetery in West Peru, Maine.

Bill Burgess lived a modest, low profile life, and had a writing style that was truly his own. He loved nature, enjoyed fly fishing and bird hunting, and raised both chickens and pheasants. He was innovated and independent, and skilled with a strong work ethic. Burgess took pride in his work,

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marking many of his products with his name. But he never took himself, nor his work, too seriously, often referring to his tackle as “Junk.” Burgess was also a fair-minded person, paying his employees – generally women doing piece-work in their homes — more than they could make in the shoe factories of Auburn and Lewiston. So if you lucky enough to come across a stamped Burgess trolling spoon, a labelled box with one of his spinners, or any of his carded flies, think seriously about what these objects represent — especially in terms of human creativity, imagination, individuality, and skill. It’s these latter traits, the core of who Bill Burgess was, that deserve our attention more than the mere monetary value of his surviving flies, spinners, and spoons.

This article is based on a presentation the author, a retired wildlife scientist, gave to the Minot Historical Society in May 2014. Krohn continues researching Maine’s early fishing lures makers as well other topics related to Maine’s fishing, hunting, and trapping heritages, and can be reached at: wkrohn@maine.edu

73

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Bryant Pond Loses Its Switchboard The last hand-cranked telephones in the United States

by James Nalley

for this antiquated system, despite an unsuccessful campaign to keep it.

According to a 1982 interview with Elden in the Christian Science Monitor, he did not know that, when deciding to retire after 30 years in the telephone business, it would create such a commotion. In fact, “It was only after he quietly sold his company to the neighboring Oxford County Telephone & Telegraph Company (hereafter referred to as “Oxford”) that the townspeople learned that the antique system was to be converted to dial phones.” Once word spread, a petition was posted at the Village Store and an emergency meeting was scheduled. The findings of a quick poll showed that 72% of the

In the early 1980s, when the majority of the United States had switched over to dial phones and the cell phone was in its infancy, someone in the quaint village of Bryant Pond would simply pick up the ear piece, rotate a crank, and generate enough energy to ring a bell and send a current to an operator’s switchboard. Afterward, someone would simply patch the call through after moving and inserting a series of hand plugs. In this case, the switchboard was situated in Barbara and Elden Hathaway’s pine-paneled living room, which was also known as the Bryant Pond Telephone Company.

However, due to the changing technology, this was the beginning of the end

(continued on page 74)

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telephone subscribers wanted to keep the hand-crank system, whereas 10% wanted to transition to the dial system.

The rest were undecided. Regardless of the ongoing debate, a local group of residents (known as the “Don’t Yank the Crank Committee”) vowed to succeed in preserving this icon.

During the unrest, Alice Johnson, president of the aforementioned committee stated, “We have the most advanced telephone system in the United States…What computer can match the human being? The most modern equipment can’t touch what we have here in town.” She also added that, “Say you’re on the phone and there’s an important long distance call for you coming in. The operator breaks in and says ‘Alice, do you want this call now?’…

Or you can say, ‘I’m over at Jake’s.

Would you please forward all my calls here?’” This argument, however, was unconvincing to the Maine Public Util-

ities Commission (PUC), which ruled (2 to 1) that Oxford could go forward with the conversion. In a strange turn of events, what the PUC did not know was that Elden was planning to keep all of the phones and switchboards in order to sell them to interested collectors. The commission subsequently put a hold on any sale of the equipment until it conducted its investigation.

Meanwhile, at the Village Store, a man named George Hooper had begun selling t-shirts and hats with the logo, “Don’t Yank the Crank” emblazoned on them. As of September 1982, he had raised more than $5,000, which was promptly applied to the committee’s growing legal fees. Despite the valiant efforts of the committee and the devoted residents, the movement was ultimately unsuccessful.

On October 11, 1983, approximately 175 phone company workers, local residents, and friends of Elden Hatha-

way gathered at his house to witness the end of an era. According to Elden in the October 12 New York Times article, “All of the girls on the switchboard, maintenance men and so forth, they’re like one of the family…When they all leave, Mother and I are going to have an empty house.”

Then, with a tug on a few wires just minutes after 2 p.m., Robert Jamison, the company’s manager, made the final call through the switchboard to a Portland hospital, after which Elden and two officials from the Bryant Pond Telephone Company converted all of the local telephones to dial service. As the crowd dispersed, Annie Crocket, a life-long resident, simply stated, “We’ll get used to it and make the best of it.”

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75

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Jay’s Samuel Small

by Charles Francis

S

The laziest man in town

amuel Small liked calling himself the laziest man in town. In fact, he was proud of the whole idea, so much so that he worked at the pretense.

And pretense it was. What else could it be as Samuel Small was the only doctor in Jay. This was back in the 1800s, the first half of the nineteenth century.

Samuel Small was a small-town physician. He was the kind of smalltown doctor of whom they say when he was made they broke the mold. That, of course, is a part of the image Dr. Small liked to project. And the doctor liked images. Take his fiction that he was the laziest man in town. It’s a great story. First, however, a word about just what kind of man the doctor was.

The doctor and his wife, Elizabeth, had five children — Harrison, Samuel F., William, Mary Ann and Eliza. The three boys followed in their father’s footsteps as physicians. The girls married well. The boys went to Bowdoin.

Harrison practiced medicine in Pittston, Samuel F. in Temple and William in Livermore. Mary Ann married a successful businessman; Eliza, a minister. If this sounds like the doctor was well off, the truth is just the opposite.

Toward the end of their years together the doctor and Elizabeth often found themselves un reduced circumstances. This was after all the children had grown up and left home. It was because the doctor was never the sort to

demand payment for services rendered of those who would be hard-pressed to pay. That’s the kind of man Samuel Small was. A man who would not press the needy for money owed him even when he was himself in need. Small would have had hundreds of dollars of uncollected bills. Now we return to his fiction of being the laziest man in town.

It’s one of the most famous stories of the doctor.

As the tale goes, Dr. Small happened to meet the physicians serving the neighboring towns of Livermore and Canton, physicians named Bradford and Holland. The three talked about the few calls they were making.

It was a time of general good health in (continued on page 76)

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76 (continued from page 75)

the region. They bragged about how easy their lives were. Dr. Small, of course, bragged that he was the least hard-pressed. The result was a wager.

The three agreed that the first time any of them was seen hurrying to a sick patient he should stand for the bill the next time they all met.

A short time later Dr. Holland saw Dr. Small galloping his horse in the direction of Dixfield. At the next meeting of the three physicians Small was called upon to ante up. His response was it had been so long since he had ridden that he “had no practice for a long time and the old horse had grown frisky and he was too damned lazy to hold him in and so he let him go.”

There was time when Dr. Samuel Small was something of a notorious figure among Maine writers. Both Charles Farrar Browne (AKA Artemis Ward) and Seba Smith, creator of Major Jack Downing, credited him as an

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inspiration on occasion. Given that both Browne and Smith had roots in western Maine, this is not all that surprising. Browne and Ward were in turn inspirations and models for Mark Twain.

One can most definitely see elements of the doctor in Seba Smith’s character Jack Downing. On what the United States would be like in the future the doctor said “I should like to live till I was ninety-five years old, then be headed up in a cask of wine, remain ten thousand years and then wake up and see what the world has come to.”

Samuel Small was a wit. He liked witty sayings, especially when he originated them. He liked being involved in situations where he was the center of attention and if the situation didn’t start out that way, he made sure that’s how it ended up.

During the War of 1812 Small was the medical examiner for draftees. As

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this story goes Gilbert Winslow of Livermore was a draftee, but having some physical disability, he came to see the doctor in hopes of getting exempted. It happened this particular day there were wrestling matches on the common.

That’s where Winslow and the doctor met. William Grose was the champion. When Winslow told Small what he wanted, the doctor said, “Gilbert, put Bill Grose on his back and you shall have the exemption papers.” Grose ended on his back to the cheers of the crowd. Winslow returned home with his exemption.

So just who was Dr. Samuel Small?

One of the intriguing bits of background on Small is that authorities writing around the time Small was practicing medicine or a bit later can’t agree as to just what the doctor’s roots were.

Nor can they agree on his last years.

Benjamin Lawrence in his History of Jay disagrees with Henry Burrage in

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77

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com his Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine on the subject of Doctor Small. Lawrence says “Small came to Jay from New York state about the beginning of the century and settled on Jay Hill.” Burrage traces Small’s roots to Harpswell and the family of Taylor Small. Lawrence says he died in Jay. Burrage says the doctor and Elizabeth were living with son Samuel F. Small in Temple at the time they died.

Samuel Small was the sort of person who liked to have the last word. Even if that last word came at the expense of someone close. Take, for example, this tale of Samuel Small and his son William, the son who practiced medicine in Livermore.

Toward the end of the doctor’s day in Jay, when he and Elizabeth were living on reduced means, William sent a boy with a cow for his parents. The cow was to be left in a lot behind the

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farmhouse as a surprise for the doctor.

A few days later William went to see his parents. He found his father quite excited over the good fortune of finding a cow in the back pasture. After enjoying his father’s good feelings for a time William opined that “Why, father, I sent up the cow.” The doctor’s rejoinder was “The Lord sent it if the devil brought it.”

Samuel Small was one of those old family physicians. He was the kind of local country doctor that know most everyone’s secrets and the skeletons in most every closet, but is closemouthed about everyone’s personal affairs. A fair amount of his work he did for free or close to it. He would have had a kind word for everybody, and would have been sincerely interested in their welfare. He knew everybody, and everybody knew him. Samuel Small was a legend. * Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

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Western Maine

78

Wheeler’s Band Of Farmington Reorganized by Conductor Miner in 1926

by Brian Swartz

W

hen Conductor W.F. Miner raised his baton in a Farmington hall on Monday, February 15, 1926, neither the musicians raising their instruments nor the hushed crowd sitting in the darkness in front of the stage knew what to expect.

Farmington had lacked a community band for some years. Could Miner, a Rhode Island transplant, and the local musicians now launching into their first tune deliver the musical goods?

He and they certainly could, as they proved during the next few hours.

Credited with starting Maine’s first high school band during his tenure at Mattanawcook Academy in Lincoln, Miner had taken a position as the Farmington school supervisor in the mid-

1920s. Music ran in his middle-aged veins. In the early 1900s he had directed a band sponsored by the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company of Bristol, Rhode Island.

Since the 1880s the company had built small steam-powered boats and ships sold all over the world. As did many similar companies in that era, Herreshoff fielded a band with members drawn primarily from the corporate workforce.

When the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, many Herreshoff employees promptly enlisted in the Navy. Recognizing their uniformed musical talent, Navy officials formed a band for the Navy’s Second District and “drafted” the Herreshoff musicians

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A veteran educator, Miner organized various bands in the schools in which he taught, and he played in community bands. Work brought him north to Maine; after spending time in Lincoln, he moved to his new post at Farmington.

Charles Wheeler had organized a community band there in 1872. “For a number of years it was one of the well-known musical organizations of Maine,” the Lewiston Evening Journal reported in early May 1926. As often occurs with an organization overseen by a dynamic leader, the musicians lost interest in Wheeler’s Band after its director’s death, “and the band went out of existence,” according to a Journal

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com reporter.

As the Farmington school supervisor (equivalent to a modern “school superintendent”), Miner had no time or authority to establish and direct a local high school band. But he musically nosed around town and discovered “a very general feeling that Farmington ought to have a band.”

“Certainly, there should be a band,” experienced musicians told Miner.

They offered to join a band if he would start one.

Miner carefully listened to local residents. People had attempted to resurrect Wheeler’s Band in the past; interest briefly waxed, then waned with each effort. According to the reporter, Miner came to the conclusion that “to make use of this name would, in the start, induce some of the old musicians to affiliate with the new band.”

Miner also asked people if the band should play-for-pay or just represent the community. Vocalized opinion heavily favored the latter, so “Miner worked on

this theory” that a community band was the best choice for Farmington.

Word spread quickly that “Wheeler’s Band” was seeking talent, no matter the level of a musician’s experience.

Miner scheduled an initial rehearsal in early January 1926.

Volunteers all, musical enthusiasts responded enthusiastically. “Men and women members came to the rehearsals from a sense of pride and not because of a hope of financial reward,” the reporter said.

“Because they love good music and enjoy helping to make it the men and women who compose the 43 members of the band have joined together for this purpose,” he wrote.

No matter the weather, Miner went ahead with scheduled rehearsals. The joy of making music led the band members “to tramp snow-filled streets, to face blizzard weather in order to attend rehearsals during the past winter,” the Journal reporter noted. “No other

cause can successfully be assigned for the regularity of attendance.”

Miner pushed the band members to excel. “We barely stop long enough for a drink of water during the rehearsals,” a musician told the reporter. “Miner keeps us going all the time.”

“You couldn’t make us rehearse the way we do if we were working on the idea of being paid,” the bandsman said. “It is the thought that we are doing something to help ourselves and the community, which does it, and are benefiting both. No question about that.”

Miner had his music standards.

“Jazz is barred,” the reporter explained.

“It is all right in its place, but there is no room for it with Wheeler’s Band.”

Wheeler’s Band first performed for an enthusiastic crowd on Monday, February 15. Only 37 musicians appeared on stage, but they exceeded the crowd’s expectations; “it seemed impossible that such proficiency in the handling of high class music could have been (continued on page 80)

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[attained] in the [short] period” since the band’s inception, the reporter commented.

Miner and his musicians were not done, not by a long shot. Wheeler’s Band performed its second concert on Tuesday, April 20; the 43 musicians faced a program that “was a difficult one, the proper playing of which would have done credit to any band in the country,” the Journal noted.

The April 20 concert included the “Semper Fidelis March” by John Phillips Sousa, a selection of music from “Traviata,” Donizetti’s “Sextette from Lucia,” a few Strauss waltzes (with the “Blue Danube Waltz” scheduled early in the program), and specific selections that highlighted particular local talent, such as saxophonists, cornet players, a pianist, and even a xylophonist.

Farmington residents could scarcely believe their ears; such music had not been heard in their town for some

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81

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

The 1930 Rumford Winter Carnival Exciting skiing competition wowed the crowd

by Brian Swartz

F

rom a bomb bursting in mid-air to frigid temperatures to a snow squall that almost obliterated northern Oxford County, everyone had a good time at the Seventh Annual Winter Carnival held in Rumford on Monday and Tuesday, February 10-11, 1930.

Set to begin at 9 a.m., Monday, the carnival faced “a bit of gloom and fears for the repetition of 1929” as a snow squall bore down on Rumford at 8 a.m., according to ace reporter Sam E. Conner of the Lewiston Evening Journal.

The rooftops and chimneys of Rumford vanished briefly in whiteout conditions.

Suddenly, around 8:20 a.m., the squall blew away, and “the sun was shining bright and people were crowding to

the carnival grounds for the opening events,” Conner noticed.

The carnival had officially opened the previous evening with a concert staged by a local orchestra at Rumford City Hall. Helping set the mood, Winter Carnival Queen Lillian Flaherty strode into the auditorium. Accompanied by several courtiers, she moved

elegantly along the aisle and walked to her throne, which was set on the main floor beside the stage.

Flaherty, a nursing student in New York City, received “a tumultuous greeting as she ascended the steps to the throne,” Conner noted. Apparently Flaherty was quite pretty — or at least distracting to the veteran reporter, who scribbled that “during the rest of the evening she made a very handsome picture.”

Selection of the carnival queen was serious business. Each year, contestants vied to win election as queen for the following year’s carnival. Flaherty had won the 1930 title in balloting held during the 1929 carnival; four young

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(continued on page 82)

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women now competed in 1930s “red hot campaign” that was “full of pep, snap, go, [and] enthusiasm,” according to Conner.

One candidate’s sister drove to Dixfield on Sunday, February 9; catching “the morning train from Lewiston,” she canvassed “the passengers in behalf of her sister between that point and Rumford,” Conner detailed the politicking surrounding the carnival-queen campaign.

Including the snow squall, Monday’s competition literally got off to a big bang when, representing His Majesty’s government, British Vice Consul J.W. Mulvaney fired off a bomb (that was Conner’s term) to kick off the day’s events.

While triggering the aerial gun launching the bomb, Mulvaney excitedly leaned too close; leaping from the gun, the spark-spitting rocket brushed and knocked off his hat and laid a trail

of powder across his forehead and hair.

Rising precipitously, the rock exploded; the detonation echoed across Rumford, and “immediately … every whistle in town started screeching and for five minutes the din was deafening,” according to Conner.

“Deafening” for everybody but Mulvaney, who probably could not hear very well for a while.

Not that interested in a burned Brit, the crowd rushed off to watch the competitions, including a 6-mile ski race, a boys’ ski relay race, the 440-yard skating dash, the 880-yard skating dash, and snowshoe races ranging from 100 yards to a mile in length.

Schussing against five strong competitors over snow-covered roads, defending Maine state amateur champion Merlin Bickford of the Auburn Ski Club successfully defended his title by winning the 6-mile race in 50 minutes, 43 seconds. John Roderick of Stephens

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High School in Rumford was second at 52-35, and another Rumford lad, Lawrence Gauthier, finished in third place at 53-16.

More than 500 schoolchildren participated in a morning competition split between boys’ and girls’ events. Ranging in age from fourth to seventh grades, teams from different schools went head to head in front of a few thousand fans (including adoring parents).

The athletic competition had a serious component — a Maine interscholastic meet attracting teams from high schools (and private academies) in Augusta, Andover, Auburn, Bangor, Bethel, Canton, Caribou, Farmington, Houlton, Lee, Lisbon, Mexico, Norway, Rangeley, Rumford, South Paris, and Turner. Some competition involved individual athletes from these schools; other competition was team-oriented.

Competing for Edward Little High School of Auburn, Wayne Stevens won

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83

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com the state junior ski-jumping championship by hurtling 99 feet from the jump.

Right behind him was teammate Hudson Parker at 92 feet, and Emil Dorion of Rumford took third place at 89 feet.

Some 3,000 people watched the jumpers, who included 12-year-old Aurele Legere of Rumford; representing the Chisholm Ski Club (but not any high school), he jumped more than 100 feet.

By the conclusion of Monday’s six interscholastic events, the Caribou High team had successfully defended its state title by winning two events and placing third in two others.

Monday evening, athletes and honored guests attended a banquet sponsored by the Rumford Rotary Club and Rumford Lions Club. Although his topic had nothing to do with skiing or snowshoeing, Navy captain and Paris Hill native Harry Lyon held the audience spellbound with his tale of flying across the Pacific Ocean with his plane, the Southern Cross.

The thermometer plunged to 6 below zero Monday night, and people bundled in multiple layers Tuesday as they watched more athletic events, including the New England ski-jumping championships, more men’s and women’s snowshoe races, dog-sled races, and horse races.

While competing in one horse race, Elizabeth French and her steed were suddenly startled when an 8-year-old boy bolted across the track in front of them. French adroitly applied the reins to maneuver her horse out of harm’s way; astonished onlookers estimated the horse missed the boy by inches.

On Tuesday evening, judges announced the results of balloting for the 1931 carnival queen. The top vote-getter was Jeannette Caliendo, who beat out Adele Joanitis. Third place went to Margaret Austin, and when her votes were disqualified after arriving 30 minutes past the deadline, Georgette Giguere took fourth place.

Governor Tudor Gardiner crowned Caliendo before 5,000 onlookers Tuesday evening. Carnival officials escorted Caliendo to Rumford City Hall, where she presided over the carnival’s closing banquet and ceremonies.

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Ghost Buck An excerpt

by Dean Bennett

T

beer flowed — the latter, in one case, perhaps a little too much. My grandmother’s brother Frank fell off the roof and landed straddling a sawhorse. This put him out of commission for a while (in one way, perhaps for life, as he never had any children). The sawing and pounding went on all day, with some respite provided by breaks for refreshment, lunch, and other necessities. At the day’s end, after the din had faded and the dust had settled, a one-room camp stood in the opening. In the next few days, my grandfather and father finished the woodwork; painted the outside dark brown and the window sashes red; located, dug, and rocked up a spring; and built an outhouse, giving

his excerpt comes from the book Ghost Buck, published by Islandport Press. Ghost Buck is a hybrid of memoir, natural history, and politics as Dean recounts his years spent at Camp Sheepskin –– his family hunting camp in the woods of Western Maine. In this excerpt from chapter eleven, get introduced to Camp Sheepskin and fondly recall your own time spent at camps in the Maine woods.

On September 8, 1936, my grandfather and father laid the sills for a camp.

Three days later lumber was delivered, and the next day, September 12, thirty-seven relatives and friends arrived.

Many of the men were carpenters by trade. Hammers rang, saws rasped, and

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85

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com it the euphemistic name “the Widow Jones,” one of several names for a toilet that had originated more than a century earlier. The cost for the camp: less than $100 in materials, and hours and hours of time given in the spirit of friendship and goodwill.

It was named Camp Sheepskin, after the bog one must pass by to reach it, and like birds building a nest in that wetland each spring — a piece of this, a bit of that, adjust here, move there — my family gradually shaped the camp’s living space. The inside was left unfinished, with open studs and matched pine boards, which served as both outside and inside walls. A large, black, cast-iron cook stove with an oven and built-in tank for warming water was set at the front of the camp, which faced the driveway and yard. At the back of the room in each corner, two beds were placed, separated by a partition. Burlap curtains were hung on wooden rods and could be drawn to close off these

Photo from chapter 11 of Ghost Buck

quasi-bedrooms from the front of the camp, for privacy.

Between these sleeping areas and the stove were a kitchen table, chairs, a bureau, kerosene lamps, a cast-iron sink, and shelves for dishes, cooking utensils, and pails of water. A woodbox sat against the wall between the stove and door. Later, a second floor was laid over the room, creating an attic and additional sleeping space. A ladder beside the front door went up through a trapdoor. The first floor also had a little table by the back wall, on which was placed a book containing three hundred numbered pages, bound between black covers, with the words inscribed in gold on its maroon spine. This was the camp register, which has now grown to three volumes, where one can find a record of every visit made to the camp since the day the sills were laid.

I was one-year-old when the camp was built, having been born in May of 1935 in my Bennett grand(continued on page 86)

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parents’ home where my mother and father had been staying. My parents gave me the middle name of Birchard, after Rutherford Birchard Hayes, thus extending my family’s connection with Mrs. Hayes to me. From that day of the camp raising, I was present at nearly all of the hundreds of visits made by my family during the years I was growing up. Every Friday night, after my father and grandmother got home from work at the E. L. Tebbetts Spool Company mill, we would crank up my grandfather’s Model T Ford (later, the 1930 Chevrolet coupe), cram ourselves into it, along with clothes, food, and everything we would need for whatever we were going to do that weekend, and rattle our way to camp. My mother told me years later how much she looked forward to those weekends, and how she hated to see them end and have to come home on Sunday evening.

A major attraction of the camp

to us was its remote woodland setting.

When the camp was built, much of the surrounding land was also forested, or on the way to being so. Elton Dunham was still farming nearby, but other farms in the Rowe Hill – Shadagee area were disappearing. Stone walls were beginning to enclose patches of forest rather than fields and pastures for cattle and livestock, and their usefulness would eventually rely on the quiet pursuits of those interested in history and art.

This change in the land surrounding the camp — with its old apple orchards, old fields, and patches of grassy areas, interspersed by small cuttings, cedar swamps, and a diversity of other ecosystems — created a habitat favorable to deer. The land took on a patchwork character, which, in fact, extended far beyond the borders of camp and this hilly country of western Maine.

Between 1920 and 1960, almost 18,000

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farms were lost in Maine, leaving the remnants of decaying buildings, collapsing fences, and rusting machinery scattered over more than 3,000 square miles of deer habitat in the state, an area equal to the size of Maine’s easternmost region, Washington County.

These qualities of the land and its quiet peacefulness drew my family back to the camp almost every weekend for years, and still does in November for deer hunting season. * Other businesses in this area are featured in the color section.

87

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Fathers And Sons Memorable hunting trips in the North Woods

T

by Dale Murray

he other night I found myself flipping through the pictures of this year’s father and son bird hunting trip. It was the thirteenth successive trip into the North Maine Woods for Matt and me. As usual, we saw lots of partridge and bagged a fair share of them. However, this hunt was far different because my ten-year-old grandson, Ryan, joined us. Last year he came along as an observer to get a feel for why his father and I love the sport so much. This time he came as a hunter.

That was particularly important to me because I had waited ten long years for him to bag his first bird. To my utter delight, he did just that, becoming the

fourth generation of our family to do so.

His dad and I shared knowing glances that morning as Ryan smiled and held the bird up by its feet for a photo. As I

pondered the various meanings implicit in that picture, my mind flashed back twenty-nine years to Matt’s first hunt.

That one, however, did not turn out so well. In fact, it almost ended his love of the sport before it had truly begun.

In my efforts to pass down the family hunting tradition to Matt, I went too far. The line between his needs and mine blurred. Like most fathers I felt a need to train my son in the manly ways of life, and hunting trips rank right up there as classrooms for boys growing up in northern Maine. Several purposes motivated me as I guided Matt.

First, it is incumbent on fathers to immerse their boys into the family’s deep

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woods heritage. My dad taught me, his dad him and so on. Sons ought to know from whence they came. They ought to understand the soul of the family. Secondly, fathers live vicariously through their boys, and they reassess the course of their own lives, wondering if they were as good as the sons are. And, finally, they teach their boys about the woods as an act calculated to keep them near home so they can continue to share the woods together. Regardless of motives, wonderful experiences result for both.

I had certainly prepared Matt for his big day. A lot of forethought and effort went into training him before I allowed him to shoot at any critters. His first lessons started at a young age, long before he even touched a gun. I took him on his first hunt when he was five years old. In those early years, he learned what partridges look like in three common settings: pecking pebbles on the logging roads, sunning themselves on the roadside banks, and roosting in the trees late in the day. Matt excelled at detecting them and yearned for the day when he would be more than just a spotter for me. His gun training began with a .22 when he was seven. The abundant gravel pits in the area served as de facto gun ranges, and in them we devoted many hours to safety and proficiency. He enjoyed target shooting, and knowing he was pretty good at it, itched more and more to shoot at some-

thing other than bulls eyes and soda cans. Another lesson Matt truly enjoyed in those days was following me when a bird got into the woods before I could shoot it. Those were the times when he learned to use his ears to detect the general location of a bird before he could even see it. To this day he loves that part of the hunt the most because it requires so much patience. Finally, he learned to drive the pickup. Not only is this a life skill, but it also keeps a boy’s attention on long, sometimes fruitless, hunts. Those lessons began with him steering from my lap and ended when I was confident enough to search the banks as he navigated the potholes and blow downs. I took mental notes as I guided Matt through these critical lessons, always looking for signs that he was catching on. I praised him when he was the first to spot a bird. I proudly watched him develop into a safe shooter, the result of reciting and practicing the rules over and over. I delighted in his careful driving. And through the years, as he became more and more capable, a mutual respect and love evolved for the woods, and for each other.

Finally, he turned ten and was a legal hunter. Now he could shoot his own birds instead of simply retrieving mine.

I don’t know which of us was more excited that opening day. We started the day before sunup like we had so many other times, but this morning Matt was

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different. No matter how he pretended it was just another hunt, his actions proved otherwise. Usually a quiet and patient boy, he babbled on and on about how the day would go, and he urged me to hurry as I packed our lunch. I was also anxious to get going so we could be deep into partridge country above Kokadjo by first light. As we set out, he was very focused. I, however, viewed the day on several levels. Sure, I hoped he’d get his first bird so he could strut with his friends. But, I also hoped to initiate him into the legacies of Murray men. And, I hoped he’d validate my training and, thereby, me. In retrospect, it is obvious that I had needs that rivaled, even exceeded, Matt’s.

To this point Matt had not fired at an animal. At least one of us thought that was significant. I had witnessed four of Matt’s friends shoot their first birds, and now it was his turn. For weeks little else had mattered to him as he conjured up images of his first real hunt, even suggesting that he’d limit out. By the time we hit the gravel just north of Kokadjo, he had regained his composure and began to carefully scan the banks along the side of the road.

I inched the truck along more slowly than usual to give him every edge.

There was no way a bird could evade our search. Throughout the morning, we eagerly scoured our favorite haunts, sharing the driving duties. We didn’t see a single animal. No coyotes. No

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deer. No moose. Not even a chipmunk crossed our path. That wasn’t a problem for me as I can hunt all day and rarely be discouraged by a lack of action. I don’t complain until dark. As my father had told me, and as I had passed on to Matt, “Keep lookin’. Ya never know.” Young as he was, I thought he had acquitted himself very well over the first half of the day, but towards lunchtime his enthusiasm waned, and he began fidgeting. Confident that all he needed was a little breather, I pulled into a gravel pit for a bite to eat.

Lunchtime was prime time for Matt because he knew he’d target shoot after a quick snack. He was so non-nonchalant, so cool about it all. Even at ten the boy knew not to be too obvious in his enthusiasm. He was learning his grandfather’s lessons well, and I took silent pride in that. He played his role and I played mine. He ravaged his meal and washed it down with a Mountain Dew. I made short work of my sandwich, too, and when I finished, we reviewed gun safety lessons. Again. He was patient.

We had been over and over this part. He knew the routine. As he loaded the gun, I popped another target and watched surreptitiously, allowing him to think he was independent of me. Matt shot, and he shot, and he shot some more.

His love for the sport reflected in his eyes as he beamed at the bullet holes in the cans. I let him shoot until I thought he was ready to hunt again. Then we

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repacked and headed off for the afternoon’s efforts. Again quoting my dad, I said, “We’ll get ‘em now, Bud. We just gave ‘em a break this morning.”

I wondered how many generations of Murray dads had encouraged their boys with similar words.

The afternoon proved no more fruitful than the morning. The birds simply were not there. Outwardly, I continued to play my part, searching diligently and voicing an optimism I did not really feel. Matt didn’t even pretend to hunt. Boredom had worn him down. If there had been a bird on his side of the road, we’d never have known. He tuned the radio and he finished our food. He shuffled his shotgun shells from one hand to the other. Mostly he complained about how unfair it was that no partridges had shown themselves on this of all hunts.

I missed my cue. I should have turned for home, but I didn’t. I thought like a man instead of as a father. Sunset was a long way off, and a bird hunt is never over until you limit out or until it’s too dark to see what you’re shooting.

Determined to find a bird for the boy, I pushed on, inwardly cussing and growing even more impatient than Matt. He didn’t know that. He wasn’t supposed to know what I really felt. He was supposed to learn how to enjoy a hunt.

Suddenly, I saw something on the side of the road ahead. I pointed it out to Matt, and he instantly, instinctively,

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became a hunter. We became one, both intent only on the kill. As we drew closer, I saw that it was a rabbit. Though I had seen my cousin make a nice clean shot on one, I had never killed one myself. I stopped the truck and told Matt to creep up and shoot it. He slipped out onto the gravel, loaded his gun, and stepped off up the road. I savored the moment, trailing close behind. As he neared his prey, Matt half turned, never taking his eye off his target, and asked if he was close enough. I assured him that he was and watched proudly as he raised his gun. I had trained my son like my father had me. He was ready, and I would be witness as he stepped closer to manhood while extending the family heritage to another generation.

Matt fired. The rabbit wailed. Eerily, it screamed just like a newborn baby.

Wide-eyed, Matt turned to me for guidance, but this scenario had not been part of my lessons either. I knew, however, that I had to silence that shrieking. As the rabbit crawled into the underbrush, I reached for Matt’s gun and told him to stay put. I didn’t want him to see what was about to take place. I moved up to where the rabbit hid, still crying, and crouched down on my hands and knees to locate it. The screeching intensified as I struggled to find a decent angle from which to shoot. When I thought I had things right, lying prone, I fired.

The yowling continued. I had either (continued on page 90)

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wounded it again or missed it altogether. My thoughts turned to Matt because I was sure he was thinking of it as a poor baby bunny by then. My heart fell to the pit of my stomach. I knew to the depths of my soul that I had ruined years of training. I relocated the rabbit and fired again. The crying stopped.

I left the rabbit in the bushes, not sure that even I wanted to see the remains, and went back to Matt to get a feel for what was going through his mind. I feared what he was feeling.

He didn’t help. Stoically, he kept his thoughts to himself modeling himself too well after his father, and his grandfather. All I really knew was that in a matter of a few greedy minutes, I had spoiled the purpose, the very spirit, of the day. Humbled, I called it quits. We climbed silently back into the truck.

Matt drove. We reached the pavement long before sunset.

I really wish I could say that my efforts made my grandson’s first hunt

so much better than his dad’s. But, I can’t. For the two and a half days that we hunted, Ryan’s father was the guide and teacher. He monitored safety. He attuned the boy’s ear to the rustling leaves and the guttural clucks. He reminded Ryan to aim for the head so as not to ruin the breasts that we’d cook for supper. Mostly I chauffeured them from one location to another and snapped pictures of the boy who was, for the most part, oblivious of me. But all of that is okay. It was, after all, a father and son thing.

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Directory of Advertisors

Business

Page

18 Below Raw Bar, Grill, Lounge ...................................................................................................50 45th Parallel Wood Fired Grill .........................................................................................................61 A.C. Auto Sales ..................................................................................................................................5 ABC Pool and Spa Center .................................................................................................................11 Above and Beyond, LLC .....................................................................................................................23 Absolut Services Inc. Excavation & Septic Systems ......................................................................85 Absolut Services Inc. Repair Shop ...............................................................................................85 Acton Fair .......................................................................................................................................18 Advantage Insurance .......................................................................................................................57 Affordable Fire Protection ...............................................................................................................29 AJ’s Everything ...............................................................................................................................72 Alan’s Automotive Incorporated ......................................................................................................35 Alfond Youth Center ......................................................................................................................49 Al’s Irrigation ..................................................................................................................................30 Altus Construction ...........................................................................................................................44 Amazing Chase Sebago.com ...............................................................................................................16 Andrew Ames Logging ......................................................................................................................5 Androscoggin Bank .......................................................................................................................24 Apple Valley Golfers Club ...............................................................................................................23 Archie’s Inc. Rubbish Removal .......................................................................................................80 Arkie Rogers Septic Tank Service ..................................................................................................32 At Home Electric ..........................................................................................................................49 Auburn-Lewiston Driver Education ..................................................................................................13 Auburn-Lewiston Motorcycle Rider Education ................................................................................13 Augusta-West Lakeside Resort & Kampground ...............................................................................29 B&F Fresh Vegetables .....................................................................................................................51 B&J and Daughters Lawncare & Landscaping .................................................................................62 Back Road Auto Repair ..................................................................................................................77 Barker Tree Service & Logging ......................................................................................................45 Belgrade Lakes Marine & Storage, Inc. ........................................................................................51 Belgrade Performance & Repairs ...................................................................................................78 Benchmark Appraisal .....................................................................................................................43 Bert’s Awesome Stuff .....................................................................................................................12 Bessey Insurance ..............................................................................................................................57 Bethel Area Chamber of Commerce .............................................................................................72 Betty’s Laundry .............................................................................................................................42 Big Dawg Concrete ........................................................................................................................46 Bill’s Auto Transport ........................................................................................................................30 Bissonnette’s Plumbing & Heating ..................................................................................................69 Bitter Sweet Barn ..........................................................................................................................68 Blanchet Builders, LLC .................................................................................................................66 Blanchette Moving & Storage Co. ....................................................................................................8 Blue Door Primitive Peddler ............................................................................................................17 Bob’s Cash Fuel ................................................................................................................................87 Bolt Fabrics ......................................................................................................................................36 Boomers Restaurant & Saloon .........................................................................................................71 Boonies Country Store .....................................................................................................................18 Boos Heating Company ..................................................................................................................40 Boothby Perry LLC Attorneys at Law ................................................................................................44 Bowley Brook .................................................................................................................................55 Boynton’s Greenhouse .....................................................................................................................65 Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Waterville .....................................................................................49 Breau’s Too ......................................................................................................................................74 Brian’s Brake & Muffler ..................................................................................................................34 Bridgton Hospital ...........................................................................................................................38 Bridgton Urgent Care .....................................................................................................................38 Brill Lumber Company, Inc. ............................................................................................................37 Brown Bear Carpentry ...................................................................................................................57 Brownie’s Auto Service ...................................................................................................................88 Brown’s Construction ......................................................................................................................73 Caleb C. Chessie Excavation ........................................................................................................35 Cancun Mexican Restaurant ..........................................................................................................51 Carpentry & Odd Jobs ..................................................................................................................82 Casco Village Variety ......................................................................................................................40 Central Maine Community College ..................................................................................................3 Central Maine Property Management, Inc. ...................................................................................11 Central Maine Sandblasting ............................................................................................................93 Cheney Jewelers .............................................................................................................................29 Chim Chiminey Chimney Sweep ....................................................................................................15 Chris’ Electric .................................................................................................................................41 CJ’s Appliances ...............................................................................................................................78 Cliff Gray Cremation / Funeral Services, LLC .....................................................................................73 Cobbossee Motel ...........................................................................................................................29 Cole Harrison Insurance ..................................................................................................................59 Conlogue’s Building & Property Management ...............................................................................54 Cooper Farms .................................................................................................................................46 Cornish Ace Hardware ......................................................................................................................19 Cozi Corner Cafe ...........................................................................................................................17 Creaser Jewelers .............................................................................................................................42 Crooked River Resources ...................................................................................................................44 Cushing Construction .......................................................................................................................48 D&R Paving & Sealcoating ............................................................................................................17 D. Roy & Son Fencing, LLC ............................................................................................................24 D.A. Wilson & Co. Excavation .........................................................................................................46 D.H. Pinnette & Sons, Inc. ............................................................................................................6 Daggett’s Garage .............................................................................................................................79 Damboise Garage .............................................................................................................................77 Dan N’ Dad’s Plumbing .................................................................................................................71 Darling & Sons Roofing .................................................................................................................12 Davis Concrete ..................................................................................................................................72 Den’s Automotive Services, Inc. .....................................................................................................20 Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers ...........................................................................................78 DeWolfe & Wood ...........................................................................................................................33 Dick’s Auto Body & Collision Center ............................................................................................46 Dionne & Son Builders ...................................................................................................................66 Don’s No Preference Towing ..........................................................................................................27 Douglass Construction, Inc. ............................................................................................................38 Dunn & Pakulski Optometrists ..........................................................................................................92 Dutch Treat .....................................................................................................................................55 Dyer Septic Service ........................................................................................................................45 E.W. Moore & Son Pharmacy ............................................................................................................86 East Grand Fence ...........................................................................................................................74 Echo Lake Lodge & Cottages ...........................................................................................................48 Ed Hodsdon Masonry ......................................................................................................................14 Edge Automotive ...........................................................................................................................57 Edge of Maine Frame & Gallery ....................................................................................................37 Edmund’s Market ...........................................................................................................................83 Ed’s Grove Discount Warehouse .......................................................................................................33 Ellis Variety .....................................................................................................................................79 End of the Rainbow Alternatives .................................................................................................53 Evergreens Campground & Restaurant .............................................................................................8 Fairfield Antiques Mall .....................................................................................................................4 Family Pet Connection & Grooming ...............................................................................................93 Farmington Farmers Union ..............................................................................................................78 Farmington Ford ...............................................................................................................................55 Fast Eddie’s .....................................................................................................................................14 Fayette Country Store & Old Mill Stream Ice Cream Shoppe ..............................................................75 Final Touch Painting & Carpentry .................................................................................................49 Fine Line Paving and Grading .......................................................................................................64 Finelines Auto Body .........................................................................................................................67 Finish Line Construction ..................................................................................................................64 Finishing Touches Remodeling .......................................................................................................76 Firefly Boutique ................................................................................................................................39 Fireside Stove Shop & Fireplace Center .............................................................................................26 Floormaster North .........................................................................................................................66 Four Winds Too Lobster Co. & Redemption .................................................................................47 Franco Center .................................................................................................................................24 Franklin County Chamber of Commerce ...........................................................................................79 Franklin Memorial Hospital .............................................................................................................56 Franklin Savings Bank .................................................................................................................10 Franklin-Somerset Federal Credit Union .........................................................................................7 Frederick Heating ...........................................................................................................................88 Freeman Ridge Forestry...................................................................................................................83 Fryeburg Glass ................................................................................................................................20 G&G Cash Fuels ............................................................................................................................28 Gateway Marina .............................................................................................................................45 Gendron’s Seafood .......................................................................................................................12 Generators of Maine .....................................................................................................................52 Goerge’s Banana Stand ....................................................................................................................93 Georgio’s Pizza & Donut Shop ........................................................................................................13 Gingerbread Farm Perennials .........................................................................................................48 Glen Luce Logging, Inc. ....................................................................................................................47

Business

Page

Gosselin Mechanical Services .................................................................................................13 Granville Wooster Painting ....................................................................................................34 Gray Family Vision Center .....................................................................................................31 Greater Bridgton Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce ...................................................67 GregoryS.MayerProfessionalCarpenter .....................................................................................31 Gregory’s Disposall ................................................................................................................77 Gridiron Restaurant & Sports Pub ..........................................................................................22 Griswold’s Country Store & Diner .........................................................................................64 Hair By Tim .............................................................................................................................82 Hall Implement Co. .............................................................................................................32 Hammond Lumber Company ..............................................................................................52 Hardy’s Motorsports ..............................................................................................................91 Harris Drug Store ..................................................................................................................62 HealthReach Community Health Centers..................................................................................4 Heart & Hand Inc. ..................................................................................................................37 Heritage House .....................................................................................................................89 High Tide Low Tide Seafood ................................................................................................65 Highland Farms Logging, LLC .............................................................................................20 Hight Dealerships ...................................................................................................................9 Hillman’s Bakery ....................................................................................................................77 Hodgdon Well Drilling, Inc. ....................................................................................................5 Homecare For Maine ............................................................................................................22 Homestead Realty ................................................................................................................29 Houston-Brooks Auctioneers .................................................................................................10 Hughes Air Conditioning & Refrigeration, Inc. ................................................................39 Hungry Hollow Country Store ..............................................................................................6 Hydraulic Hose & Assembly ...................................................................................................4 Image Auto Body ................................................................................................................87 Inside Out Painters .................................................................................................................13 J&J Haines Excavation, Inc. ................................................................................................82 J.C.F. Odds & Ends ............................................................................................................72 J.D. Potter Construction .........................................................................................................33 J.P. Carroll Fuel Co. ...........................................................................................................35 J.T. Reid’s Gun Shop ................................................................................................................5 J.T’s Finest Kind Saw ...............................................................................................................63 Jake White Logging ..............................................................................................................35 Jake’s Garage ........................................................................................................................58 Jay Verrill Masonry ................................................................................................................15 Jean Castonguay Excavating ...................................................................................................49 Jean’s Moosehead Rentals .....................................................................................................85 Jimmy’s Shop ‘N Save .........................................................................................................87 JMH Excavation ....................................................................................................................40 John H. Burnell, Excavation ...............................................................................................34 Johnny Castonguay Logging & Trucking ................................................................................48 Jordan Lumber Company ....................................................................................................84 Joseph’s Market .....................................................................................................................76 Judy’s Variety ......................................................................................................................82 JW Awning Co. ......................................................................................................................15 K&J Heating Inc. ...................................................................................................................30 Kash for Kans Recycling, LLC ...............................................................................................17 Ken & Thom’s Floor Covering, Inc. ...................................................................................70 Kennebec Metal Recycling ...................................................................................................92 Keystone Masonry Inc. ..........................................................................................................70 Kiesman Drywall Inc. .........................................................................................................37 Knowles Lumber Company ...................................................................................................14 Kramers Inc. ..........................................................................................................................53 Kyle Mann Tree Work .............................................................................................................43 L&L Day Firewood...................................................................................................................68 L.E. Taylor & Sons ..................................................................................................................7 L.P. Poirier & Son Inc., Excavation ....................................................................................26 L/A Luxury Limousine .......................................................................................................10 Lake Region Auto Supply ....................................................................................................38 Landscape Design Concepts ..................................................................................................40 Laney’s Pit Stop .....................................................................................................................66 Langlois’ Auto Body & Auto Sales .....................................................................................24 Larsen’s Electric .....................................................................................................................80 Larsen’s Jewelry ...................................................................................................................76 Lavallee’s Garage ..................................................................................................................86 Len Poulin Excavation, Inc. ................................................................................................76 Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce .....................................................27 Liberte Auto Sales & Service ...........................................................................................23 Lisbon Community Federal Credit Union .............................................................................28 Logan Home Builders ............................................................................................................36 Long Green Variety ..............................................................................................................74 Lovewell Hearing ..................................................................................................................19 LT Floors ...............................................................................................................................26 Luce’s Maine-Grown Meats ....................................................................................................63 M.A. Mathews Co. ...............................................................................................................52 Madison Automotive & Recreation ......................................................................................89 Madison Business Alliance ....................................................................................................64 Maine Earthworx ..................................................................................................................39 Maine Forest Service ...............................................................................................................90 Maine Gro Compost ...............................................................................................................22 Maine Historical Society ..........................................................................................................6 Maine Line Plumbing & Heating .........................................................................................73 Maine-ly Foam .....................................................................................................................37 Maine Mineral Adventures ...................................................................................................45 Maine Motel & Cabins .........................................................................................................25 Maine Pellet Sales LLC ...........................................................................................................13 Maine Roof Solutions .............................................................................................................54 Maine Veterans’ Homes .........................................................................................................41 Maine Warden Service ............................................................................................................93 Major’s Heating, LLC ..........................................................................................................70 Mama Bear’s Den .................................................................................................................62 Matheson Tri Gas ...................................................................................................................26 Maurice Restaurant ...............................................................................................................42 McAllister Accounting & Tax Services .............................................................................75 McGrath Mechanical Services ...............................................................................................20 McMahon’s Water Services ...................................................................................................33 McNaughton Construction .....................................................................................................51 MEI Excavation .....................................................................................................................43 Mel’s Raspberry Patch .........................................................................................................34 Memco Supply .......................................................................................................................75 Memorial Guard LLC .............................................................................................................47 Merle Lloyd & Sons Earthwork Contractors ......................................................................87 Merrill Road Self Storage .....................................................................................................24 Mexico Trading Post ............................................................................................................80 Mike Carey Carpentry .............................................................................................................88 Mike Wainer Plumbing & Heating .........................................................................................52 Mills Market .........................................................................................................................82 Mobile Truck & Equipment .................................................................................................16 Monmouth Federal Credit Union ...................................................................................29 Moose River Campground & Cabins ......................................................................................86 Morrell’s Septic Tank Service & Excavating .........................................................................67 Morrow’s Garage, Auto Body & Sales ................................................................................52 Mother India .........................................................................................................................23 Motor Supply Co. ...................................................................................................................8 Moulton Lumber Co. ...............................................................................................................18 Mt. Blue Drug .....................................................................................................................55 Naples Marina ......................................................................................................................39 Naples Packing Co., Inc. .........................................................................................................80 New Portland Lions Agricultural Fair ................................................................................83 Norseman Motel ....................................................................................................................72 Northeast Laboratory Services ................................................................................................7 Northwood Builders ..............................................................................................................7 Norway/Paris Soft Serve ......................................................................................................70 Not-A-Con Home Improvements ........................................................................................74 Oberg Insurance & Real Estate Agency ..............................................................................67 Oquossoc Marine ..................................................................................................................62 Otis Federal Credit Union .....................................................................................................75 Ouellette & Associates, P.A. .................................................................................................22 Our Village Market ...............................................................................................................85 Oxford Casino ............................................................................................................backcover Oxford Federal Credit Union .................................................................................................57 Oxford Hills Chamber of Commerce ....................................................................................69 Oxford Hills Taxi ...................................................................................................................43 Oxford Mud Run ....................................................................................................................69 P&C Automotive, Inc. ..........................................................................................................16 P.Y. Estes & Son, Inc. .............................................................................................................36 Packard Appraisal, Inc. .........................................................................................................39 Parris House Wool Works ....................................................................................................41 Pat’s Pizza Auburn ...............................................................................................................28 Pat’s Pizza of Windham .........................................................................................................32

Business

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Page

Penobscot Marine Museum ....................................................................................................21 Perkins Management ............................................................................................................49 Phil Carter’s Garage ..............................................................................................................76 Phillips Towing & Auto Repair ............................................................................................59 Pine Tree Home Health Care Inc. ...........................................................................................30 Pine Tree Paving ....................................................................................................................70 Pitcher Perfect Tire Service ..................................................................................................53 Poland Mining Camps ............................................................................................................30 Premier Groundscapes ...........................................................................................................28 Pressure Pro ...........................................................................................................................27 Prestige Pools ........................................................................................................................28 Prime Financial Inc. ...............................................................................................................49 Provencher’s ..........................................................................................................................11 R.E. Lowell Lumber Inc. .......................................................................................................46 R.F. Automotive Repair ........................................................................................................92 R.S. Pidacks Inc. .......................................................................................................................6 R.W. Day Logging .................................................................................................................19 R.W. Merrill Electrical Contractor, Inc. ...............................................................................44 Ralph Libby Chain Saws ......................................................................................................46 Range Pond Campground ....................................................................................................15 Rangeley Building & Remodeling ......................................................................................60 Rangeley Electric ..................................................................................................................61 Rangeley Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce ....................................................................60 Rangeley Saddleback Inn ....................................................................................................61 Ray Corporation ....................................................................................................................11 Record Building Supply, Inc. ................................................................................................68 Red Mill Lumber ..................................................................................................................40 Redington-Fairview General Hospital ...................................................................................65 Reliable Landscaping .............................................................................................................37 Remco Radiator & Auto Care ....................................................................................28 Remodel, Renovate, Repair ...................................................................................................80 Ricker Hill Orchards ..............................................................................................................47 Rick’s Garage .........................................................................................................................63 Ripley & Fletcher Ford ..........................................................................................................42 Rising Sun Cafe & Bakery ..................................................................................................43 River Valley Chamber of Commerce ....................................................................................81 River Valley Grill ...................................................................................................................82 Riverbend Campground .......................................................................................................14 River’s Edge Masonry & More ................................................................................................63 Riverside Realty ....................................................................................................................81 Robert W. Libby & Sons, Inc. ...............................................................................................4 Rod’s Cycle & RV .................................................................................................................65 Rolfe Corporation .................................................................................................................38 Romah Motor Inn .................................................................................................................39 Ron’s Transmissions ...............................................................................................................15 Rooster’s Roadhouse ............................................................................................................73 Rottari Electric ......................................................................................................................16 Roy’s Motor Sports .............................................................................................................34 Russell & Sons Towing ........................................................................................................43 S.A. McLean, Inc. ................................................................................................................35 Sabattus Antique Mall .........................................................................................................12 Sackett & Brake Survey, Inc. ..............................................................................................93 Sally Mountain Cabins .........................................................................................................86 Sam-O-Set 4 Seasons ............................................................................................................61 Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes Railroad ..............................................................................58 Sandy River Farm Market ....................................................................................................55 Sandy River Golf Course & Driving Range .............................................................................79 Scribners Mill & Homestead ...............................................................................................44 Sebago Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce ......................................................................16 Seth McCoy’s Excavating .......................................................................................................17 Simplicity Full Service Salon .............................................................................................81 Siragusa Builders .................................................................................................................14 Skowhegan Electric Motor Inc. ............................................................................................79 Smile Again Dentures, Inc. ........................................................................................23 Smith Firewood ......................................................................................................................69 Solon Superette .....................................................................................................................62 Sound Effects ........................................................................................................................12 Spanky’s Speed Shop ..........................................................................................................19 Spencer Group Paving, LLC ....................................................................................................47 Spillover Motel ......................................................................................................................60 Spruce Mountain Pharmacy ...............................................................................................75 St. Peter’s Cemetery ...............................................................................................................10 Stacy’s Service Center ...........................................................................................................67 Sterling Electric ....................................................................................................................55 Stetson’s Auto Service .........................................................................................................69 Stevens Electric & Pump Service Inc. ...................................................................................5 Stony Brook Recreation Campground ...................................................................................58 Stratton Plaza Hotel ...........................................................................................................85 Strong Hardware & Building Supply ...................................................................................83 Sugarloaf Rentals & Cleaning Services .............................................................................59 Summit Roofing ...................................................................................................................60 Sun Auto & Salvage Used Auto Parts ................................................................................91 Super 8 Motel Westbrook ......................................................................................................32 Taste of Eden Vegan Cafe ...................................................................................................71 Taylor & Son Trucking, Firewood & Plowing .........................................................................87 Taylor’s Drug Store ................................................................................................................64 The Front Porch Cafe ...........................................................................................................79 The General Country Store ....................................................................................................84 The Irregular .........................................................................................................................59 The Kingfield Woodsman Restaurant ..................................................................................59 The Korner Store & Deli .....................................................................................................53 The Little Red Hen Diner & Bakery .....................................................................................57 The Looney Moose Cafe .......................................................................................................84 The Lost Gull .........................................................................................................................40 The Maine Bookhouse ..........................................................................................................41 The Midway Country Lodging ...............................................................................................36 The Peppermill Restaurant ...................................................................................... m W

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~ 2016 Western Maine Edition ~

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Western Maine

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