Western Lakes & Mountains Region 2012

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Volume 10 | Issue 9 | 2012

Maine’s History Magazine

Western Lakes & Mountains Region

Fresh Trout Cooking over the campfire

Rumford On Fire Story of the Waldo street fire in 1923

Harry Eastman & The Tale Of The Lost Dauphin Strong native created famous hoax

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Western Lakes & Mountians

Inside This Edition

2 3 Apple Trees And Honeybees l Our Maine state insect needs more attention

Charles Francis 6 Hobo Signs l Migratory workers flocked to western Maine

Charles Francis 9 Justice, The Law And Alpheus Felch l Respected lawyer from Fryeburg

Charles Francis 14 My First Experience With Cars l Memories with a Model T

Franklin Irish 15 Charles Hitchcock: Biblical Geologist Important geologist in the 19th century

Charles Francis 17 Reta Shaw l A South Paris Star

Charlotte Mayo 18 Fresh Trout l Cooking over the campfire

Franklin Irish 20 An Enterprising Sixteen-Year-Old l Gilead teen captures 6 bandits

Barbara Adams 21 The World’s Biggest Paper Bag Plant

Rumford Falls factory produced 3 million bags per day

Barbara Adams 23 Rumford On Fire: A 1923 Remembrance l The estimated

damage of the fire was nearly $500,000, a huge sum in those days

Charlotte Mayo 26 Lovewell’s Town l A book review

Denise R. Larson 28 The Deertrees Theatre l Success measured by fine work, not box-office draw

James Nalley 32 Monmouth’s Corn Shop l Built to market the sweetest corn in America

Barbara Adams 35 The Noyes Of Greenwood l Early pioneers made a living from maple orchards

Barbara Adams 38 Wild About Harvey l The creation of the Parker house

Charles Francis 42 Crow Carrion l The Wilton “crow whisperer”

Charles Francis 44 One Hundred And Five YearsOf Russakoff Tradition

A Skowhegan three-generation family business

Terry Ann Lidral 48 Squire James Rangeley l Pioneer settler’s benevolence is still evident today

Kelly Howe 50 Montresor’s Map l Journal exclusions proved catastrophic for Arnold expedition

Ian MacKinnon 54 Route 15 Retail l Tink Billings, the “Yard Sale Man”

John McDonald 56 Elizabeth Arden’s The Maine Chance Farm Belgrade estate catered to the rich & famous

Clarence W. Bennett 60 Lloyd Brett: The General From Dead River Spanish-American war general hailed from Dead River

Charles Francis 63 The Bixbys Of Western Maine l A family of ranchers from Somerset County

Sherwood Anderson 69 The Genealogy Corner l Pedigree collapse

Charles Francis 71 Harry Eastman And The Tale Of The Lost Dauphin Strong native created famous hoax

Charles Francis 75 The Historic Monson Railroad l The little rail that could (1882-1943)

James Nalley

Apple Trees And Honeybees

Maine’s History Magazine

Western Lakes & Mountains Publisher

Jim Burch

Designer & Editor Lynn Hendrickson Liana Merdan

Advertising & Sales Manager Tim Maxfield

Advertising & Sales Barry Buck Tim Churchill Chris Girouard Tim Maxfield Jonathan Sproul

Office Manager

Liana Merdan

Field Representatives George Tatro

Contributing Writers Barbara Adams Sherwood W. Anderson Matthew Jude Barker Clarence Bennett Charles Francis | fundy67@yahoo.ca Kelly Howe

Franklin Irish Denise Larson Terry Ann Lidral Ian MacKinnon Charlotte Mayo John McDonald James Nalley

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 fraternal organizations, shopping centers, libraries, newsstands, grocery and convenience stores, hardware stores, lumber companies, motels, restaurants and other locations throughout this part of Maine.

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our maine state insect needs more attention

by Charles Francis

O

n December 17, 1853, the Sarah Sands, a 1300-ton steamship belonging to the Canadian Navigation Company arrived in Portland Harbor from Liverpool, England. Its arrival marked the beginning of regular steamship service between Maine and Europe. When the Sarah Sands returned to England, it carried, among other things, 1,000 barrels of Maine apples.

Shortly after the departure of the Sarah Sands, the Portland Fruit Company was formed for the specific purpose of exporting Maine apples to Europe. DurIng the first years of the company’s existence, the number of barrels of apples exported to Europe seldom exceeded 2000. By 1900, however, that figure was approaching 1,000,000, with the counties of western

Maine, especially the western mountain region, accounting for a significant percentage of that figure. In fact, as early as 1858, J. I. Libby of the Portland Fruit Company made a point of saying that “The best apple counties in Maine [are] Oxford, Franklin and Kennebec.”

Libby also said that that he considered “apples the safest and most profitable crop a farmer can raise ... “ In including Franklin in his statement, Libby was perhaps a little premature, but only slightly, as the Sandy River Valley would help make the western mountain region one of premier apple producing regions of the northeast. In fact, up until the disastrous winter of 1935, when many of Maine’s apple trees were destroyed by intense cold, Maine was the leading apple producing state in New

England. (Today it is number two.)

When J. I. Libby made his 1858 statement regarding the apple-producing counties of Maine, he also made a number of recommendations to the region’s apple growers. Among other things, they should concentrate on raising Baldwin, King, Newton, Pippin and Golden Russet apples, as they were, in his opinion, the best sellers in Europe.

In doing this, they could increase their profit per barrel from $1.50 to $3.00.

Libby also made recommendations as to how apple growers could improve their crop. These improvements included “more cultivation, trees farther apart, potash or other alkali in more liberal quantities [and] spraying to prevent rust and the ravages of insects.”

Glaringly absent from Mr. Libby’s recContinued on page 4

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Front Cover Photo: Hillcrest tea room & filling station #102875 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org All photos in Discover Maine’s Western Lakes & Mountains edition show Maine as it used to be, and many are from local citizens who love this part of Maine.

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Continued from page 4 ommendations, however, is a reference to pollination. Yet, according to some authorities, pollination is the single factor of greatest importance in apple raising. And pollination is accomplished in just one way, by that most familiar of insects, the honeybee, the creature that has the notable distinction of having been designated the Official Maine State Insect. To put it simply, without the honeybee there would be no apple crop.

There is nothing particularly unique about Maine having the honeybee as the Official Maine State Insect. More states have it as their official state insect than any other. In fact, there are fourteen all together. The Monarch Butterfly is a distant second, with five states claiming it as the state insect or state butterfly.

The way that the honeybee became the Official Maine State Insect is somewhat unique, however. In 1975 a grade school teacher named Robert Towne decided to give his class a lesson in civics by having it propose to the Maine

Vintage engraving from 1850 of a group of agricultural workers gathering apples in the orchard.

Legislature that the honeybee become the state insect. The class was successful in its efforts. Ironically, the main thrust of the elementary school children’s argument was that honeybees were integral in the raising of Maine

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blueberries. (Towne’s class was also instrumental in having the lobster placed on Maine license plates.)

By 1900 estimates placed the number of apple trees in Maine at just over 1,00,000. Over a third of these were in the western mountain region. There was also a Maine State Pomological Society, which had been founded in 1873 and was made up of some 200 apple producers, the bulk of whom lived in the western mountain region. Significantly, neither this organization nor the Maine Department of Agriculture listed any informational publications on the subject of bees and apple blossom pollination in the latter part of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth. Yet, clearly there is a relationship.

Apple blossoms generally come in clusters of five. The first to open is called the king blossom. This is the strongest blossom and should produce the best apple, that is, if it is pollinated properly.

Proper pollination requires several visits by bees carrying pollen. You know

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One of the most fascinating works ever published on the history and evolution of apple growing is the 1993 The Apples of Maine by George Stilphen. It traces the Maine apple back to 1600 in England and France and tells how the first tree was brought here in a barrel. It also has sections dealing with antique apple varieties such as Black Beauty and Tolman, which are virtually unknown today. Even this fascinating and unique approach to Maine history fails to emphasize the role of the honeybee in the development of the economy of the western mountain region of Maine and the state as a whole, however. Perhaps it is time for someone to write a history of Maine from the perspective of the state’s official insect.

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if an apple has been pollinated enough by counting the number of seeds in the apple. An apple with seven to ten seeds is a good healthy apple. Each seed represents a grain of pollen which has been brought to the apple blossom by a bee.

Apples with less seeds will probably be too big and have a mealy or starchy texture and flavor. The apples with the fewest seeds will probably drop to the ground before June is over.

According to The Apple Pest and Management Guide, the best time for an apple blossom to be pollinated is just as it opens. This is why some orchardists will bring in hives of bees just as apple blossoms begin to open.

They may even go so far as to place water barrels or large buckets full of crab apple blossoms to use as a source of cross-pollination in their orchards.

These practices were never mentioned in the publications put out by the Maine State Pomological Society in its early years, much less by J. I. Libby in his advice to Maine apple growers in 1858.

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Hobo Signs|

by Charles Francis

B

ack in the Depression of the 1930s hobos from all over the United States and Canada rode the rails to Maine. They rode on the Maine Central, the Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk. Mostly they came in late summer and early fall, for that was when work was to be found, picking apples, raking blueberries and the like.

One of those Depression era hobos was a fellow named Fred Dubbin.

Fred Dubbin is famous as hobos go.

That’s because he was interviewed on a number of occasions before he passed on by representatives of the print media and for a documentary of the hobo lifestyle.

As to the actual place Fred Dubbin considered home, that is a tossup. Fred moved around so much that it might be best to say his home was the road. Or

Migratory Workers Flocked To Western Maine

it might be better to say his home was not all that far from the parallel lines of steel that carried him from coast to coast. Fred did come to Maine as something of a regular thing, though.

He liked Maine. There was less danger to be found here.

The three aforementioned railroads all have at least one thing in common.

They served as a means to bring hobos to western Maine, to Oxford, Androscoggin and Franklin counties. You could get all around those counties by hopping from main rail line to local rail line in the Depression. That was one of the things Fred Dubbin enjoyed about his sojourns in western Maine: he got to see a good deal of the state. It was a region that was generally viewed as friendly to hobos. While city police tended to make life for the hobo a bit

sticky, small town Maine constables did little beyond making sure hobos toed the straight and narrow.

Folklorists collect hobo tales. There are plenty of hobo tales about Maine.

Maine-born Irving “Fishbones” Stevens acceded to the title “King of the Hobos”in 1997. Stevens rode the rails in the 1930s and wrote two books about his experiences. He invented Irving’s Fly Dope. And he crowned one of his daughters as “Queen of the Hobos.”

While there are a lot of hobo tales from the Depression era, it is harder to find many from the period that is generally regarded as the hobos’ heyday, the 1890s to 1920s. What does linger from that earlier time are records of traditional hobo signs, the symbols that the knights of the road used to tell fellow travelers whether a particular place was

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com to be avoided or if it was a good place to tarry.

For the most part a hobo’s movements were guided by the seasons.

They went where it was warm. After that they looked for areas where there was work of a seasonal nature. Seasonal employment was their preferred meter because it allowed them to move on without having to give the impression that they were looking for something permanent, that they might put down roots. Employers never looked at them as anything more than temporary.

The other thing that motivated the hobo was fear. Hobos were afraid of being beaten. They were afraid of being trapped in a reefer, a refrigerator car. They were afraid of freezing to death. Most of all they were afraid of being turned over to the authorities and put in jail.

One of the ways hobos had of dealing with their fears was story telling.

They told tales of the good places on the road. When Fred Dubbin told his tales of bygone days to interviewers he was recalling stories he told while on the road as to how good a place Maine was to visit.

The other method hobos had of dealing with their fears was to map out places for other hobos, places that were dangerous and places that offered refuge. The mapping took the form of a system of chalk symbols or drawings.

It was a cartographic method of passing on information. The symbols appeared on trees, sidewalks, old tires, fence posts and gates. Most often they were

found on water towers near train stations. Outside of the train station was where the hobo jumped his ride. The first thing a hobo in new territory would do once he left his train was to head for a water tower.

A good number of hobo signs were obvious. Hats were for men. There were top hats for gentlemen and widebrim straw hats for farmers. A stick figure was a women. A smiling cat with six whiskers meant the woman was kind-hearted. For some reason cats were the accepted symbols of hospitality. Five circles arranged to make a paw meant a friendly community or village.

A bird indicated a telephone. A circle with an arrow indicated direction. It the circle had two arrows, it meant skedaddle. The letter “Z’ was used to say present yourself as a veteran. A line of horizontal rectangles with a dot inside each were a warning. For instance, rectangles with a dot followed by a wavy line indicated poisonous water. A large triangle beside three smaller ones was advice to tell a pitiful story. Overlapping circles were intended as a sort of psychic pick-me-up. They meant don’t give up.

Back in 1914 a version of the folksong “The Dying Hobo” was written down by a Maine insurance man named L. A. Madison. Madison never said exactly where he encountered the song, except to say it was in a logging camp.

He submitted the song to a local paper.

The concluding stanzas are as follows:

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I’m going to a better land, Where everything is bright, Where longnecks grow on bushes, And you sleep out every night; Where you do not have to work at all, Nor even change your socks, And little steams of alcohol Come tinkling down the rocks.

The theme of “The Dying Hobo” is the same of that found in the hobo folksong anthem. It is the utopian dream of living atop “The Big Rock Candy Mountain.” There, handouts grow on bushes and bulldogs have rubber teeth.

And again alcohol comes “a’tinkling” down the rocks.

One might assume from the above folksong references that hobos were all lazy, good-for-nothing drunks. Actually there was a social structure among those who are sometimes lumped together as hobos, tramps and bums. The common distinction among the three, which is made by those who study the groupings, is strikingly hierarchical. A hobo is a migratory worker; a tramp, a migratory non-worker and a bum a stationary non-worker. Fred Dubbin saw the distinctions in a slightly different light. Hobos worked and wandered, tramps dreamed and wandered and bums drank and wandered. Perhaps the first best explains why Fred Dubbin liked western Maine. He came here a wanderer and found work in the fields and orchards. Then he left to wander again with a bit of money in his pocket.

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Justice, The Law And Alpheus Felch respected lawyer from fryeburg

by Charles Francis

D

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etermined to pursue legal careers, two young college graduates took positions as clerks in the law offices of Bradley and Barrows in Fryeburg in 1827. One was Stephen Stark, a Dartmouth graduate. The other was Alpheus Felch, a Bowdoin graduate.

Stephen Stark came from a wellto-do Conway, New Hampshire family. Alpheus Felch had been orphaned at age three and brought up by ageing grandparents for whom luxuries of any kind were an extreme rarity. Stark and Felch both graduated from Fryeburg Academy the same year. They both studied under the Reverend Amos Cook, a Congregational minister, historian and teacher noted for his strong sense of ethics and appreciation of moral and natural law.

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Prior to enrolling at Fryeburg Academy, Alpheus Felch attended Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He dropped out to teach because of financial necessity. The aforementioned disparities in their backgrounds aside, Alpheus Felch and Stephen Stark were not all that dissimilar. For one thing, both counted Revolutionary War heroes in their family tree. Stephen Stark was a nephew of General John Stark. Alpheus Felch’s grandfather Abijah Felch distinguished himself as a Minuteman.

Stark and Felch had at least one other characteristic in common − they were highly ethical individuals. The latter similarity may be traced to their being tutored by the Reverend Cook.

Stephen Stark and Alpheus Felch would go on to life-long careers in the law. Of the two, Felch, would be the more notable. Stark would spend the majority of his life as a practicing attorney in Waterville and serve as a Maine State Representative and Senator. Felch would begin his career in Houlton. He, however, would go on to be Governor of Michigan and a U.S. Senator. In addition, Felch would head up one of the most contentious land claims settlements in American history, the claims that came about as a result of the annexation by the U.S. of much of the southwest from Mexico.

For all intents it would seem the Reverend Amos Cook taught his pupils a theory of natural law that centered on two key propositions. The first is that humans have a natural tendency to pursue happiness. The second is that humans have a similar natural tendency to pursue justice. The natural appetite to pursue justice is a tendency to obey moral law no matter what the consequences may be for our own welfare.

That appetite for justice may be illustrated as follows.

In denying that humans seek happiness in all their choices, the individual is maintaining that their own happiness is not the only possible aim in life. An individual may map out his or her life in the service of someone else’s happiness, or for the furtherance of some cause unlikely to be realized in his or her lifetime. For example, a daughter may forgo the prospect of marriage or career to nurse a bedridden parent. In a case like this it is unconvincing to say that such people are seeking their own happiness in so far as they are doing what they want to do. Public servants, teachers and the clergy may serve as more common examples of those following the natural tendency to pursue justice. Alpheus Felch would seem an admirable example of an individual Continued on page 11

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Continued from page 9 it is not enforceable in court. Alpheus who devoted his life to the public weal. Felch’s conception of natural law can That devotion, however, was not the be seen most notably in his career as basis for his own particular version of Michigan bank commissioner, as U.S. natural law.

Public Lands Commission Chairman in Natural law as Alpheus Felch came California and as a professor of law at to see it was likely influenced by the the University of Michigan.

American Revolution and can therefore The life of Alpheus Felch may be be traced to his grandfather’s part in that summed up with the following few conflict. Felch came to distinguish be- succinct points. He was born in Limertween two classes of rights: those that ick, Maine on September 23, 1804. He could be legitimately renounced (such died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on June as the right to private property) and 13, 1896. Felch’s career as a lawyer those that are inalienable (such as the and politician crisscrossed the United right to life). Property rights are estab- States, although the majority of his life lished by human law; they are enforce- was devoted to service in his adopted able in court. Property rights are own- state of Michigan. ership rights. The right to life is a moral Alpheus Felch was admitted to the right. Individuals have moral rights that Maine bar in 1830, and almost immehave nothing to do with ownership. An diately was commissioned to recover example here would be a host allowing a law library in Houlton, Maine. He his guests at table the use of his food remained there in the practice of law and drink. Use in this sense does not until 1833, when he undertook a jourconfer ownership. Individuals have a ney to the South for reasons of health. moral right to the use of necessities of A combination of factors, including life but because this is a moral right, the contraction of cholera, led Felch to ❦ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

Michigan, where he made Ann Arbor his permanent home.

Alpheus Felch’s first political position was that of a county representative in the State legislature, 1835-1837. He then served as State Bank Commissioner in 1838 and 1839. In the latter position he is credited with exposing much of the corruption associated with “wild cat” banking. In 1842 Felch was made Auditor General of the state, but was appointed to the State Supreme Court only a few weeks later, upon the resignation of Judge William A. Fletcher.

Felch served in this position until 1845, when he was elected governor.

Alpheus Felch served as governor of Michigan from January 5, 1846, to March 3, 1847, when he resigned this office upon his election to the United States Senate. Felch served in the Senate from March 4, 1847, to March 3, 1853. He was an active member on the U.S. Committee on Public Lands, and during his final three years in office was its Chairman.

Continued on page 12

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Continued from page 11 In 1853 Felch was appointed chairman of a public commission to settle land claims in California. The Public Land Commission, a former agency of the United States government, was created following the California gold rush to determine the validity of old Mexican and Spanish land grants in California. Grantees were to present evidence supporting their land titles within a two-year period. If they did not, the property would automatically pass into the public domain. It should be noted the practice was contrary to the treaty that ended the war with Mexico whereby California passed to the United States.

As a general statement historians commend Alpheus Felch’s role as Chairman of the Public Lands Commission. They point to the fact Felch was largely responsible for eventually confirming 604 of the 813 claims received. One of the more significant sets of claims was filed on behalf of the

Alpheus Felch is looked upon as one of the most significant figures in the early and formative years of Maine.

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Roman Catholic Church. The church sought the return of all former mission lands in California. Ownership of land occupied by the original mission buildings, cemeteries, and gardens was subsequently conveyed to the Church.

Unfortunately, however, the cost of litigation eventually forced most claimants to lose their property.

In June of 1856, with the commission’s work complete, Felch returned to Ann Arbor and the practice of law.

In the spring of 1879 he was appointed Tappan law professor at the University of Michigan, a position from which he resigned in 1883. Felch remained an active figure in his later years, serving as president of the Michigan State Historical Society from 1888 to 1894. He died in 1896. Today he is looked upon as one of the most significant figures in the early and formative years of the state. It is a position that owes much to Alpheus Felch’s particular interpretation of the law. ❦ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

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My First Experience With Cars

Charles Hitchcock: Biblical Geologist

by Franklin Irish

I

Memories With A Model T

My first ride in a car (Model T) was when I was 5 years old.

I think there was a dealer in Bridgton who sold them on the train down on Fore Street on a siding. You would unload and start off yourself. My uncle, Fred March, was driving for Cobb’s Camps in Denmark, so Dad got him to ride in on the train to get the car.

He paid for it, filled the gas tank, put in oil and water, cranked it up and drove home with it. I can remember what a homecoming that was. We all got in and rode around the field. Then Dad tried it out. He never did learn to back up, and pretty nearly broke an arm cranking it.

He took the family, two sisters, my mother and I. We got over to Madison, New Hampshire and were going up a small hill when an axle broke. We went back, and, of course, he couldn’t stay in the road. We had the top down and folded up behind the rear seat. It had hardwood bows.

The rear wheels dropped over the bank and the top and back seat folded around a 10” oak tree. We stopped right there, all scared to death. Model T’s had the brake on the transmission so we were freewheeling. Dad got out and walked ahead to the post office about a quarter of a mile. The postmaster was crippled so he got a neighbor to drive his team.

He hooked on, pulled the car up over the bank and then let it roll back, which didn’t do it much good. The next pull they kept going and got the car down to the post office. Then the postmaster took us home in his new Moon.

Dad got a local mechanic who had a helper. He got an

axle driven over and put it in for $10. Another fellow got in the back seat and put his feet on the bend and, lo and behold, snapped it right back, but the bows had to be replaced.

A carpenter did that job. It was quite a while before Dad trusted the car again.

He had me driving when I had to sit in his lap to reach the pedals. I was doing all the driving at 14. I got my license at 15 and Dad didn’t drive much after that. He bought a 1914 sedan and gave me the old 1914. If I had kept it whole, it would have paid for one year in college. But no, I stripped off the body, made a rather clumsy- looking wooden body just the width of the frame with no mudguard. I did my courting in that and later I made a metal body. That old ‘14 had a high compression head and other Model T’s were left in my dust. Also three-speed cars were left on the hills. I finally retired the old girl and made one of the best saw rigs I ever saw or used. About that time 1 got a chainsaw and cut my wood up in the woods.

To finish my story, while I was gone on a fishing trip, my youngest son and another boy took the engine out and put it in an old chassis the other boy had. When I used it for belt power I took out the low band, so they had to start in high. I guess they pushed it down the hill. They were on the rims in the old jalopy and got it running. They rode until the wheels went to pieces. I had a Model T homemade tractor at the time on which I had cracked the transmission case. I sold all my Model T parts to a collector, and that ended that story.

important geologist in the

by Charles Francis

n 1861 geology professor Charles Hitchcock of Dartmouth College found a five-pound mass of raw tin ore not far from Mount Mica in Paris.

The discovery quite excited Professor Hitchcock, as he thought such a sizable ore mass was an indication of major tin deposits in the region, deposits that would prove to be of such extent as to be in paying quantities.

At the time of the discovery of the lump of tin Professor Hitchcock was working on a comprehensive geological report for the Maine Board of Agriculture. Hitchcock and Ezekiel Holmes, a medical doctor as well as sometime Maine State Senator and publisher, had been hired to complete an earlier geology study done by Dr. Charles Jackson in 1836. While Jackson had compiled a report on the entire state, its major

19th century

thrust had been the state’s public lands. kiel Holmes, the physician, that did so Much of the work of Hitchcock and much to lay the foundations for the earHolmes was intended to expand on the ly mineral development of Maine, most early survey, especially in western and notably the slate of the central part of central Maine. the state and the mica and tourmaline Professor Hitchcock and Dr. Holmes of Oxford County. Charles Hitchcock’s produced reports in 1861 and 1862 1861 and 1862 surveys in Maine also for the Maine Board of Agriculture. helped further the development of a Among other things the reports identi- popular theory in the field of geology fied the broad band of slate that extend- as it existed in the nineteenth century, a ed eastward from Caratunk to Brown- theory that some have called “Biblical ville and beyond. This was where some Geology.” This theory played a part in of the finest roofing slate in the United the creation of Hitchcock’s Geological States would come from in later years. Map of Maine, 1885.

Professor Charles Hitchcock was Hitchcock was, of course, wrong about major deposits of tin existing in the Ox- one of the most prominent figures in the field of geology in the mid to late ford County region.

Charles Hitchcock was one of the 1800’s. His Geologic Map of Maine, most important geologists in the mid 1885 speaks to his overall expertise. Inpart of the nineteenth century. It was directly it also speaks to the now denihis work much more than that of EzeContinued on page 16 ❦ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

BRC Carpentry Inc. Established 1982 Benjamin Clough, Owner

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Continued from page 15 grated theories associated with Biblical Geology.

Professor Hitchcock’s 1885 map of Maine is one of the most advanced of the period. Among other things it attempts to place the geology of Maine into historic perspective. As the 1885 map was done at a time when the eons of old forces that act upon the face of the earth were just beginning to be investigated and understood, it was necessary for Hitchcock to draw on his own understanding and background in the development of the map. In order to appreciate what this entails it is necessary to explore where Charles Hitchcock came from and what his early training involved.

In the mid-1800s Charles Hitchcock was the preeminent authority on the geology of northern New England.

In addition to his academic position at Dartmouth College and his work as Maine State geologist, Hitchcock was Vermont and New Hampshire state ge-

ologist. He was also a proponent of the theory that science in general and geology in particular − the theory of Biblical Geology − far from conflicting with religion, actually proves it.

Charles Hitchcock was the son of Edward Hitchcock, Amherst College’s eminent and groundbreaking professor of geology and the founder of the theory that some refer to as Biblical Geology.

The elder Hitchcock conducted the first geological survey of the state of Massachusetts. This survey paid special attention to the fossil dinosaur footprints that appear in profusion in the shale of the Connecticut Valley of western Massachusetts. A Calvinist minister as well as a scientist, Edward Hitchcock saw changes in the makeup of the earth’s surface as a product of intense pressures brought about by shortterm forces of glaciation and flooding or “catastrophe” rather than their longterm operation. In other words, the earth was a recent creation as indicated in the Biblical story of Genesis.

Charles Hitchcock drew up his 1885 map of Maine from the perspectives of his father’s theory. This is especially notable in his mapping of western and southwestern Maine where Hitchcock identified beds of metamorphic rock and magma that he saw as the result of a “catastrophic” short term ice age.

In other words, sedimentary rock and magma had been shaped by the weight of short-lived glaciers.

Charles Hitchcock’s theories as they relate to Biblical Geology are now a thing of the past. Geologists now recognize that ice ages lasted for extensive periods of time. Likewise, Hitchcock’s terms for the strata of western Maine, Montalban and Laurentian, now mean little if anything to modern-day geologists. Nevertheless, the work of Charles Hitchcock and to a lesser extent Ezekiel Holmes played an important part in the development of western Maine, as companies like Consolidated Mica and others moved in to Oxford County and adjacent mineral-rich areas.

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Reta Shaw|

a south paris star

by Charlotte Mayo

S

mall town actress Reta Shaw was born in South Paris, Maine on Friday 13, 1912. If one was superstitious you’d think the worst would come to this little baby girl. Reta was brought up on Pine Street in South Paris, Maine with one sibling, a sister Marguerite.

Reta Shaw was a natural-born talent, the daughter of Howard and Edna Shaw.

Howard had many talents, playing piano, banjo, clarinet, saxophone, xylophone, and drums. Mr. Shaw was well-known for his Shaw Orchestra which Reta was a member of in the roaring 20’s. The Shaw Orchestra entertained for twenty-five years, then Howard went on to radio broadcasting and worked for the railroad. At the time of his death, age 62, 1945, he was preparing his Sunday papers for delivery in his garage in South Paris, Maine.

During her young school days and into high school Reta acted in many school plays and went on to appear at the Riverside Theater in Bridgton, Maine.

Reta was a graduate of Leland Powers School of Theater in Boston, and during World War II she toured with the Red Cross Club Mobile Unit in the European Theater entertaining the troops.

She debuted in the play It Takes Two, which unfortunately turned out to be a dud.

However, she went on to entertain in other musicals playing character roles

in Annie Get Your Gun and Gentle- ton Maclane. She also guest starred in men Prefer Blondes. Gentlemen Prefer The Lloyd Bridges Show.

Reta appeared in the series BeBlondes ran for two years in the Ziegfeld Theater in New York. Shaw worked witched and as Miss Gormley in The with Carol Channing on this play. The Brian Keith Show.

She also played an escaped convict, first on-the-road performance of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes took place in the Big Maud Tyler on The Andy Griffith Show titled Convicts at Large. She also Palace Theater in Chicago.

In the Pajama Game, Reta Shaw played another character Eleanora Poulhad created the character of Mabel in tice, the educated voice teacher of the 1954. She reprised the role in the film legendary Barney Fife (Don Knotts).

Perhaps her most famous role is version.

She was also one of the few original Martha the housekeeper in the televicast members of Picnic to be invited to sion series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir from 1968-1970. appear in the 1956 film version.

Her last film was the original version Most baby boomers recognize Shaw for her roles in Mary Poppins, star- of Escape to Witch Mountain in 1975.

Shaw played a strong, stern boomring Julie Andrews, Pollyanna as the housekeeper (starring a very young ing-voiced woman in many of her Haley Mills), Meet Me in St. Louis and roles. However, apparent in interview The Ghost and Mr. Chicken with Don materials was the fact that she was a Knotts. Her television appearances in- quiet and an appreciative person when clude Floa Macauley on The Ann So- it came to her everyday life with friends thern Show as the overbearing wife of and family.

It’s not known when Reta moved gentlemanly hotel owner Jason Macauto California or when she married Mr. ley played by Ernest Truex. (1958-59) In 1960-61 she played the house- William Forester.

Reta Shaw Forester died of emphykeeper Thelma to Tab Hunter’s character Paul Morgan in NBC’s The Tab sema in Encino, California at the age of 69, 1981. She was laid to rest in the Hunter Show.

In 61-62 she once again played a Columbarium of Remembrance at Forhousekeeper in Ichabod and Me, starring est Lawn Hollywood Hills Cemetery.

Information for this piece was gathRobert Sterling and George Chandler.

1962 Reta appeared in the NBC ered in collaboration with the Paris Cape western series The Outlaws with Bar- Historical Society, South Paris Maine. ❦ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

Bolster Monumental Works David J. Pratt, Proprietor

Monuments & Markers Cemetery Lettering Cleaning Custom Etchings Since 1877

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RisingcafeSunbakery &

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Fresh Trout |cooking over the campfire

by Franklin Irish

P

erhaps the trout dinner I had at the old sluice remains in my memory as the best trout meal I ever had. This happened on the Dead Cambridge River with Bill Bachelder, Gordon Irish, Albion Douglass and myself. Bill says (after we had carried over the dam), “If you fellows could catch a few trout, I’ll get dinner.” Well, Bill had a dish of boiled potatoes with him, so he began peeling and slicing. (This, my friends, was real home fries.) Somebody got a gas-stove going and Bill dug

out a couple of 12-inch fry pans and started the potatoes.

Albion and I started fishing below the sluice and the trout started to hit.

Gordon pulled out his knife and started cleaning. As soon as he got a couple ready, Bill started cooking. He had one pan all ready with bacon fat sizzling.

He rolled the trout in cornmeal and put them in. They were so fresh they rolled over in the fat.

These were 8 to 10 inch trout, so we stopped fishing after we had caught enough for dinner. Bill hollered, “Come and get it!”

We gathered up our cups and plates.

Bill boiled coffee along with everything else. He dished out the trout cooked like no one else ever duplicated in my memory. Out came the home fries and we ate so much we could hardly walk.

Boy, was that good!

Bless you, old Bill.

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

Main Street, Norway Maine Item #101984 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

Ebay Trading Assistant Packing • Shipping Mailbox Rental • Fax Service Copies • Office Supplies • Much More!

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Dock at Shepard’s Camps, Norway Maine Item #104882 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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An Enterprising Sixteen-Year-Old

The World’s Biggest Paper Bag Plant

W

I

gilead teen captures

by Barbara Adams

6 bandits

hen the Grand Trunk Railway was first run through from Montreal to Portland, the first train was a fast express which contained a large amount of money to pay the contractor and builders. When it reached Gilead, just above the Moses Mason place, it ran into logs on the track, and the train derailed. The $100,000 the train was taking was gone, and it was thought six men were the robbers, and that they had escaped into the woods. The townspeople were upset. They sent for officers, and a reward of $1000 was offered for the robbers’ capture. The officers thought they had gone to either Canada or Portland, where they could take a boat to some out-of-the way place, so they watched for them there.

Francis Brown of Gilead was a boy of sixteen then. His parents were poor, and $1000 looked tempting. He thought of the great help it would be to his family if he could get the reward. He did not know how he would do it, but he thought the robbers would remain hidden somewhere in the woods for a while, until they thought the chance of capture would be less.

He was a grandfather in the 1900s when he related this story. “One day,” he said, “I took my rifle and started

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for the woods. There was a large cave back under Caribou Mountain which I always thought would be an excellent place to hide in, and it occurred to me that maybe the robbers would know where it was and hide there. I went up about noon. All was quiet but I thought I would stay and keep watch awhile.

So I hid behind a rock just opposite the mouth of the cave. About three o’clock I heard something in the bushes and very soon heard voices.

Six rough-looking men armed with rifles and with packs on their backs soon appeared.

“Six rough-looking men armed with rifles and with packs on their backs soon appeared. I listened and heard them tell how they wrecked the train, how much money there was, and what was each man’s share. Then they decided to stay overnight in the cave, and the next morning to separate and go in different directions. While I was thinking what I could do to capture them, I discovered that the rock behind which I was hiding could be moved and be rolled directly

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over the mouth of the cave. With great care not to make any noise, I dug the dirt at the front of the rock then tried to roll it down. But it resisted all my efforts to move it.

“So I took my jack knife and cut a small beech which I used as a lever.

With that I rolled the rock and it covered the mouth of the cave completely. I knew they could not move the stone, so I started home to get help in capturing them. As soon as I got there I told my father, and he said they would get out, but I knew they wouldn’t.”

Francis then got on a horse and started for Bethel to get the sheriff. But he stopped at a lawyer’s first to be sure he could get the reward himself.

“It was too late to think of going up there that night,” he said, “but the next morning the sheriff, with a posse of twelve men, came and we went to the cave. We told the men they were prisoners and it would be better for them to give up peacefully. They finally agreed to come out and surrender. So with bars which we had brought from home we removed the rock from the entrance, and the men were captured, money and all. They were then taken to Paris where they were sentenced to imprisonment. I got the reward alright, and a great help the money was to us.”

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rumford falls factory produced

by Barbara Adams

t was not generally known in the early 1900s that a manufacturing plant in Rumford Falls had developed from a modest beginning four years earlier, to a company producing 20,000,000 paper bags and tons of wrapping paper per day. It had no rival in the world in production or quality of its goods. From the onset expansion was also planned to meet the expected demand for its products. It was under the management of General Superintendent Theo Hawley, forty years of age.

As a young man, Hawley was an office boy at the National Rubber Company in Bristol, Rhode Island, where his father had previously served as superintendent. Young Hawley displayed a talent in the operation of the printing presses there, and went on to a job at a printing company in New York where he became foreman, and attracted the attention of President Herman Elsas of Elsas Paper Company. The Elsas Paper Company merged with the Continental Paper Company and transferred its plant to Rumford Falls. Hawley was put in charge of the operation, where he had absolute supervision and control.

Here he also built what was regarded as the finest private residence in the town, and joined several organizations and the Board of Trade. He earned the

3 million bags per day

respect of the business community, as well as that of the future 500 employees of the business.

The company started in a location formerly owned by the International Paper Company as a finishing room which measured 40x80 feet. Its early production was 600,000 bags per day, and there were 40 or 50 employees of both sexes. The girls were not allowed to start or stop the machinery, but took the goods from the machines and folded and finished them for delivery. Hawley anticipated the tremendous growth of the business, and searched for a more suitable building. Within a few weeks sheds were built, covered with tar paper, and were eventually reinforced with a suitable roof and enclosed.

Within two months the production increased to 3,000,000 bags per day.

All grades were made, particularly the flat, square, satchel bottom variety, which became known in the trade as the A.B.C. bag. The company controlled all patents used in the production of the goods, and manufactured every kind of bag used by wholesale grocers and traders. The payroll in 1903 was $4,000 per week. The company paid more than any similar operation in the country. The company consumed 100 tons of paper for the manufacture of the

bags alone. It manufactured all kinds of printed and plain wrapping paper and shipped its good all over the country.

Trade to Canada was constantly developed. Four car loads of bags and paper were sent to New York City daily.

Construction was underway for a new building, which would be an annex to the main building and contain 100 machines used exclusively for the manufacture of the A.B.C. bags. Plans were also underway for the construction of yet another building. The International Paper Company supplied the material for the bags and wrapping paper by means of a trolley system connecting the two concerns.

In 1903 it was said of the company, “It is a model establishment in its every department, and it has contributed potently to the reputation, growth, and development of the town, and will continue upon a new era of prosperity in this coming year in which the community promises to show a municipal mantle and take a proud place in the galaxy of twenty-one cities in the grand old Pine Tree State.”

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

Douglas BennetT & Son Over 25 Years of Service

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Rumford On Fire | A 1923 Remembrance 1923. The estimated damage of the fire was nearly $500,000, a huge sum in those days. story of the waldo street fire in

by Charlotte Mayo

Toll Bridge, Mexico Maine.

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Ask about the Waldo Street Fire in Rumford and someone will have a story.It was one of the largest in the history of the town.

The fire burned many homes and businesses while others remained unscathed.

There is a wide variation of stories on how it started on that August day of 1923. There had been some rainy days.

Most believe that a group of touring actors had hung their clothes to dry near a wood stove which then caught the curtains on fire.

To battle this blaze the town just wasn’t equipped so they had to call in Lewiston, which their truck was sent by special train.

Total damage done by this fire was estimated at nearly $500,000.

On February 20, 1993 I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Alma Pepin of 517 Waldo Street, a survivor of the Waldo St. fire. Mrs. Pepin at that time was 93 years young.

Alma came to Rumford from Canada as a young girl of seventeen, and she met Paul Pepin, who also had come from Canada. They were married in May of 1923. They settled in an apartment at 237 Waldo Street.

Paul was working at the Oxford Pa-

per Mill and Alma was working in the printing shop of the Diamond Match Company in Peru printing the lettering on the bags. She received nine dollars a week. Just before the strike at the bag mill she was making twenty one dollars a week.

Alma stated, “On that August day of 1923 a friend and I were just returning from raspberry picking when we saw smoke coming from a second story window of the Majestic Theatre building.”

Alma continued, “Paul arrived home and told me to pack as many clothes as I could. He feared that we might lose everything. I packed, and my mother brought a truck and picked up as much of our belongings as possible. All you could see was fire, fire everywhere.

Mrs. Pepin’s neighbors at that time were Mrs. Blanchard, Mrs. Dupris, Mrs. Doirion and Mr.Lecour.

One of the buildings that burned belonged to Mr. Henri Borsseau. He owned a drug store which was located on Alma’s side of the street. Mr. Borsseau also owned a two-and-a- half story building plus a rent. His total loss from the fire was estimated at $14,000.

The fire stopped at Alma’s apartment building. “We had a lot of water damage. There was almost a foot of

water on my kitchen floor. Everything was floating around.”

After the fire stopped on Waldo Street it jumped to Hancock Street where one block was burned.

At the time of the fire Alma states, “I was two months pregnant with twins.

They were born in January of 1924.”

After the fire one of the store owners offered Paul anything he could salvage from the damage. He found many scraps of cloth that were in excellent condition. I used the flannel to make diapers for the twins.”

When asked if she ever attended the Majestic Theater, Alma responded, “You could get in for twelve cents to see a movie. If you had a dime they would also let you in. The movies I remember were silent cowboy movies.

There was also an organ in the theatre that someone used to play.

The apartment where Alma lived during the great Waldo Street fire is the LaParesseux (Snowshoe) Club today.

Alma Pepin passed away at the age of 96 at the Rumford Community Home where she had been a patient for a short three months.

She was born on July 13, 1899 in Continued on page 24 ❦ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

Western Lakes & Mountians

24

Continued from page 23 Bouctouche, New Brunswick. Her parents were Arcade and Anegline LeBlanc Hebert. She moved to Rumford in 1917 and was a communicant of St. Athanasius-St. John Church and was a member of the Ladies of Ste. Anne for 10 years. She had been employed in the printing room of the Diamond Match Co. in West Peru.

Her sons were Joseph Leonel Pepin of Auburn, Gerard and Roger Pepin both of Rumford, Paul Pepin Jr. of Newport, and three daughters, Mrs. Wendell (Bertha) Moerson of Wheaton, Maryland. Mrs. Maurice (Pauline) Gogan of Mexico and Anita Goudreau of Montreal, Quebec.

Two brothers, Gerard Hebert of Mexico and Arthur Hebert of Plattsburg, New York, three sisters, Aline Patrie and Germaine Whittemore both of Rumford and Mrs. Harold (Rita) Walker of Carthage, 22 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and seven

great-great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by a brother, Joseph Hebert.

I didn’t get to meet Helen. However she sent me a letter in answer to my call for any personal information on the Waldo Street Fire.

Mrs. Keyo wrote: I am eighty-one years old and have written a book called “Remembrance.” In it I did a chapter about the Waldo Street Fire.”

Our family the Upton’s lived on Byron Street in Rumford across from Mr. and Mrs. Canton.

Mother was away working at the Rumford Post Office. My dad was working the three to eleven shift at Oxford Paper Mill in Rumford. My brother Edward and I were home alone.

Mr. Canton watered our house down as well as others, as flaming material was falling all about.

When mother tried to come

home she had to go by way of Franklin Street and Lincoln Avenue, as most streets were roped off. No one slept that night.

The next morning it was nothing but cellars and ashes.

Years later when I was married, my husband Francais Keyo told me the day of the fire his parents were at the family cottage at Roxbury Point. The boys, Francais and Howard had stayed home.

When they heard about the fire they left home, doors unlocked.

Later that evening their parents arrived home to find their sons gone and the doors still unlocked.

Francais told me that they received a very stern lecture from their parents.

Our family had moved from the Majestic Theatre building only two weeks before the fire.

I was around ten or eleven at the time of the fire.

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

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

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Lovewell’s Town|

a book review

by Denise R. Larson

Author Robert C. Williams, who holds a doctorate from Harvard University and has written several volumes on history, takes on the story of his adopted town of Lovell, where his grandfather had a summer camp on Kezar Lake, and tells it ably in Lovewell’s Town: Lovell, Maine. From Howling Wilderness to Vacationland in Trust.

As a typical historian who can’t travel to a place nor, especially, live in it without being curious about its past and its inhabitants, Williams starts out on his journey of discovery with Captain John Lovewell’s “Great Fight” at Pequawket, now Fryeburg, in 1725. In recounting his findings, Williams tells all, including the fact that the battle took place on May 9, a Sunday, but the report given to the authorities gave the date of May 8, a Saturday, so that no one would think less of the participating Harvard divinity student who took the first Indian scalp of the day and collected the bounty of 100 English pounds – something that might be frowned upon during a time when even chopping wood on Sunday for heat and cooking was condemned.

Not a formal history of Lovell nor a biography of leading families, Lovewell’s Town is part reporting, part gossip, and all well researched. Early settlers such as Andrews, Chandler, Fox, Kimball, McAlaster, Stearns, and Walker are fea-

tured, but so are Squando, Molly Ockett, and the stories of Native Americans who cleared wide expanses of land to meadow and cornfield yet were dismissed by English authorities as not having worked the land and thus forfeited any claim to it.

Lovewell’s Town is divided into chronological chapters that are then subdivided into topics such as canals, timber, slavery, the Civil War, railroads, camps, ice making, and conservation. These subchapters read like letters that someone at home would write to an absent friend or family member. The informal typeface that was selected for Lovewell’s Town reinforces the feeling of the book’s being a personal account of what’s happening in Lovell.

Lovewell’s Town is the story of a “linear village” along the Scoggin Trail between the Saco and Androscoggin rivers, its kernel, its bloom, and its subsequent division, like a favorite perennial in grandmother’s garden. And like a favorite flower, Lovell continues to bring pleasure to its inhabitants and visitors alike.

Lovewell’s Town: Lovell, Maine. From Howling Wilderness to Vacationland in Trust by Robert C. Williams, ISBN: 978-0-9722839-4-6, $26.67; Just Write Books, www.jstwrite.com

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The Deertrees Theatre

success measured by fine work, not box-office draw

by James Nalley

O

n the evening of Aug. 15, 1936, a bottle of Champagne was smashed against the proscenium in a small 300-seat theatre in the town of Harrison, Maine. The festive evening was capped with a beautiful reading of Cyrano de Bergerac by classical actor Walter Hampden. Sitting in the audience was Enrica Clay Dillon, who for three long years watched her “dream-child” transform from an isolated deer run into a near-perfect theatre nestled in the hills of Southern Maine’s Lake Region. So near-perfect were the acoustics that some performers have been known to open their programs by dropping a pin onto the stage, which could be heard by every member of the audience. With the initial goal of only nurturing artistic development, Dillon

did much more than that. Within three years after its opening, the theatre had become one of the most enchanting venues in the state with sponsorship from names such as Humphrey Bogart, Rudy Vallee, and Helen Hayes.

Although Freda Behrens, a close friend of Dillon, claimed that the original idea of creating the theatre evolved from a discussion in the kitchen in 1933, it was probably conceived much earlier. In fact, Dillon had frequented Harrison since 1916, when she served as a vocal coach for singer Marie Sundelius, who would eventually become a star at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. The tranquil beauty of the area affected Dillon greatly, and she eventually purchased a house on Dawes Hill, which is where the theatre stands today. But Dillon was more than just a “coach.” She had an impressive resume

that included more than 25 years of directing and production experience with well-known companies such as the National Opera Company in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Opera Society, and the New York Opera Guild. According to the history of Deertrees Theatre, “Each summer, she would bring her students from New York to Harrison, and

29

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com when her summer school productions grew too large for her porch, she built a theatre.”

With an initial plan in mind, Dillon utilized her connections and enlisted the help of New York architect Harrison Wiseman. His building design consisted of a pitched floor that could be detached to provide extra seating if necessary. It also included a 30-member orchestra pit, stage dimensions identical to the Metropolitan Opera House, and the best theatre equipment of any venue outside of New York City.

In addition, rose hemlock was taken from the property, which was beautifully hand carved to form all of the beams, doors, trim, and light fixtures.

Of course, all of this cost a substantial sum of $60,000, which Dillon had carefully and quietly received through her network of “anonymous” underwriters, friends and family.

After the successful opening night, the first season offered two more productions − a musical evening by Elea-

nor Steele and Hal Clovis on Aug. 20, followed by a season-closing song and dance performance more than a week later on Aug. 29. The following 1937 season included four plays and a musical comedy with a well-known cast of professional actors, which established Deertrees as a competitive addition to other theatres in the region. But in 1938, as the highly anticipated summer season approached, the theatre mysteriously remained closed. In a letter published in the Bridgton News on Aug. 5, 1938, Dillon wrote: Deertrees Theatre was not built in the first place with the idea of being a competitive organization to other theatres, but (was) a laboratory and experimental theatre where problems could be worked out in perfect surroundings.

I needed to have both quiet and and time to think out a more practical plan that would overcome the difficulties (while keeping) the performances at a high standard.

But by the 1939 season, Bela Blau,

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an enthusiastic Hungarian theater producer, arrived at Deertrees and everything had changed. That summer, the former “experimental theatre” was expanded into a fullfledged, nine-week drama festival complete with Broadway casts traveling direct from New York for new performances every week. The impressive roster included legendary names such as Ethyl Barrymore, Edward Horton, and Rudy Vallee, who performed his first dramatic role. The 1940 season was even more exciting with eight performances a week that included two matinees. Although future plans required some type of financial following, Blau had printed a humble announcement in the final playbill in 1940: “You know why I do not want audiences on a subscription basis, for I have repeatedly urged you not to come ... in the name of ‘art’ or ... duty. A well-presented play will find its audience, and a production that does not deserve support will not and should Continued on page 30

Western Lakes & Mountians

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Continued from page 29 not receive it. I will say no more.” Two months later, as Blau sat in a doctor’s office complaining of chest pains, he died from a massive heart attack on Oct. 21, 1940 at the age of only 44.

As stated in the history of Deertrees Theatre, “Following the tragic death of Bela Blau, Enrica Clay Dillon regrouped by returning to her first love, opera. Her solution was to open an opera training school and inaugurate The Deertrees Opera Company.” For the next two seasons, beautiful strains of opera from composers such as Puccini echoed through the theatre’s rafters as the company utilized every aspect of the venue’s design to accentuate the beauty and drama of the productions.

But by the end of the 1942 summer season, the United States had become fully involved in World War II and on Aug. 31, Deertrees presented a Red Cross/U.S.O Benefit concert and closed its doors for the next three years during those uncertain times.

After the war ended in 1945 and Americans had settled back into some sense of moving forward in their lives, Dillon re-opened the Deertrees Theatre in the summer of 1946. Billed as the rejuvenated “Summer Festival of Opera and Drama,” she produced a weekly program of plays, operas, and musical programs. Unfortunately, by mid-summer, Dillon’s health had posed a problem and she was forced to discontinue her involvement in the program. On Oct. 9, 1946, she died at the age of 72 and the stage remained dark for a period of three years.

For the next four decades, the Deertrees had closed and re-opened so many times that it was unofficially called the “Theater of Twilights.” As stated by director Robert Morehead in an Aug. 1970 interview in the Portland Telegram, If something doesn’t happen I don’t know if we’ll open next year ...

This place has had so many twilights; what it needs is a few more sunrises.”

This statement couldn’t have been

more true with an exhausting list of new “directions” and plans that included serving as a local-resident summer stock company in the late 1940s, a leased facility for various concerts up to 1965, a summer training institute for the students at Emerson College until 1969, and the home of both an opera company as well as an experimental theatre in the 1970s. In 1979 after years of financial struggle, the theatre foreclosed and its deed was turned over to the Town of Harrison. In the 1980s, it slowly fell into serious disrepair, and Dillon’s former “dream” began fading into history.

Fortunately, a group of citizens, led

by Dr. Allan Mills, planned to revive the theatre back into its former glory despite the·overwhelming challenges.

As stated in the history of Deertrees, “At first, performances were staged on the theatre’s front porch as the building was considered unsafe for occupancy, but by the early 1990s restoration allowed the original stage to be used

31

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com again.” In 1999, the non-profit Deertrees Foundation received the deed to the theatre from the Town of Harrison and its future once again looked bright. Today, the idealism that opened the original Deertrees Theatre remains alive and the theatre is home to a handful of reputable programs such as the Sebago-Long Lake Chamber Music Festival, the Deertrees Theatre Festival and the Lake Region Community Theatre, which produces a combined total of approximately 50 productions during the summer season of June through September. Perhaps it was best said by Enrica Dillon in her program notes on opening night back in 1936: It would be so easy to commercialize the entire venture. It would be so easy to devote our efforts to productions that spell continuous box-office success. Such success is essential, but to my mind chiefly as a means to an end: Deertrees Theatre must stand for the beautiful, the truly real, for fine work and for unwavering ideals.

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Monmouth’s Corn Shop built to market the sweetest corn in america

by Barbara Adams

I

n 1900 a canning business called ‘The Corn Shop,’ was opened in Monmouth on the shore of Cochnewagen Lake, alongside tracks of the Maine Central Railroad. The location provided the necessary access to water for cooking the corn, as well as transportation for the finished product. The land was purchased by J. H. Cuskley and E.A. Soule from the Congregational Society. Simon Clough was awarded the contract for pouring the foundation and erecting the main building and husking sheds. He was well-known, having served for a number of years as both a railway postal clerk and postmaster in Monmouth Center.

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foundation, and the main building was 100 feet long, 40 feet wide, and two stories high. The 20-by-30 foot cook room was built alongside the main building, and a 12-by-25 foot boiler room was added to the end of the washing room. On either side of the washing room were two large platforms necessary for the operation. The husking shed was 80 feet long and divided into 8 stalls, measuring 10 by 22 feet. The shop was equipped with eight retorts, a 70 horsepower boiler, and a 10 horsepower engine. Frank Murdock, a machinist from Norway, was hired to set up the new machinery. He did such a fine job it was said, “When the power was turned on not a pulley or belt had

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retary of the company, and had a lot of experience in the packing business.

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Farmers planted 200 acres of corn even before the building was completed. The final output in 1901 was over 400,000 cans of corn and 12,000 cans of succotash. During the packing season, 75 people were employed — thirty-five working in the shop, and forty outside.

Fifteen girls were also employed in shucking.

Previous to the packing, the picked corn had already been sold to wholesale outlets in New York, St. Louis, and other points around the country.

Maine corn was acknowledged as being superior to that of all other states, and brought a higher price. It was much in demand. J.H. Cuskley had been in the packing business since he was a teenager, and said the land was “particularly well-adapted to growing corn,” and the corn “was of an unusually extra quality.” Further, in all his experience, he’d never seen such sweet corn.

His son, G.A. Cuskley, was the sec-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

The Noyes Of Greenwood early pioneers made a living from maple orchards

by Barbara Adams

I

t was in the sturdy pioneer days of New England when Augustus Noyes (1826- 1898) selected the Noyes Mountain in Greenwood, overlooking Pennesseewassee Lake, for a homestead. He built his house high on the sides of the old mountain with an orchard on all sides, and a grape arbor in front. Directly in front of the house and below the road, stood the sap house, and a large barn was farther down the road.

The name “Gus,” as Augustus was affectionately called, had become a household name in Maine. In the early days of pioneer railroading he was one of the first conductors on the passenger train run by the Grand Trunk Railway from South Paris to Portland. He was a famous character, and was given the

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most trusted positions on the railroad, for officials had confidence in him.

He was a friend to everyone, and was known for his wit.

The Noyes orchard was a very large one, and there were thousands of rock maple trees from which hung two, and sometimes three buckets. Old-fashioned sleds with foot-wide wooden runners were used for gathering the sap, with patient oxen standing by. In the early days, wooden buckets and handmade cedar spiles were used. That was a problem, for the bucket had to be placed on the ground, and the spile could not be far above it as the wind would blow the sap to one side and it would be wasted. In later years, metal spiles were used, and tin buckets hung

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There was also a change for the better in the sap house. There was a large evaporator, and barrels of sap were hoisted to the top of the building, and emptied into a tank from which the sap ran through a self-regulating faucet. Cold sap was continually going in, and syrup coming out the other end.

The great fire in the sap house was never allowed to go out, and preparing the wood for the stove was a big job.

Due to innovations and the scope of its operation, the sugar orchard of Noyes Mountain was famous in its day.

It was John Noyes (1793-1872), father of Augustus, who had first settled in Greenwood with his wife Hannah Continued on page 36

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Continued from page 35 (Young) (1797-1865). They braved the extreme hardships of the early settlers, including the scarcity of food, and the solitude of a wild, dense forest which abounded with moose and caribou. They had a log cabin, and it wasn’t until the second generation that the forest was cleared. They had seven children: Augustus, Isaac, Harriet, Jane, Hannah (who died at an early age), Henry, and Fairfield. Fairfield, who was the youngest of the family, answered Lincoln’s call to the South in the Civil War, but was stricken with fever and died at Baltimore, Maryland.

With the exception of Isaac, all the sons meritoriously served in the War. The children of Augustus and his spouse Augusta (Cordwell) were Charles DeForest. Noyes, consulting engineer of the Hartford Steam Boiler Company in Boston; Levi Noyes, car inspector for the Grand Trunk Railway in Gorham, New Hampshire; John F. Noyes, who lived at the old homestead in Greenwood;

George Noyes, engineer on the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad; Ernest Noyes, fireman on the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad; and three daughters Harriet Packard, Marcia Millett, and Abbie Heath, who all resided in Norway. The death of George Noyes in 1905 was the first break in the Noyes family which had been so closely connected with New England railroading. He had married Alice Carpenter, who died in 1898. Three children survived him — Leon, Herbert, and Florence.

As of the early 1900s Noyes Mountain had never left the Noyes family. The Augustus Noyes’ farm, comprised of over 300 acres, was owned then by John F. Noyes. Isaac Noyes owned the farm on the south side of the mountain, and it also was comprised of over 300 acres.

Many remembered Augustus Noyes sitting on the south porch, and smoking his evening pipe. His clay pipe remained in the sap house just as he left it, before he was laid to rest in the valley, in the shadow of the mountain peak.

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Wild About Harvey

the creation of the parker house

by Charles Francis Parker House Rolls are described as

I

magine eating dinner at the swankiest restaurant in the country. You are seated amongst the wealthy and the famous, celebrities. Suddenly one of them breaks into song: “Parker rolls, Parker rolls, how I love you.” Diners pause, smile and break into applause. It is an understandable response. The singer is none other than Jacques Offenbach, composer of Tales of Hoffman and Orpheus in the Underworld, the operetta that includes the famous “Can Can.” The above little vignette says something as to how popular Parker House Rolls were and are. Given that Offenbach sang his little ditty in 1876, the famous rolls have been around for a long time. Just how popular is the roll?

Well, it’s a tossup as to whether they or the place in which they were first baked is the better known.

the creation of a German Parker House chef named Ward. 1870 or thereabouts is given as the date of their creation.

Parker House Rolls are soft, without crust. They are characterized by a distinctive fold. At first they were a speciality of the Parker House. Then the hotel began marketing them. The recipe stayed a secret, though. That is until 1933 when Eleanor Roosevelt wrangled it out of Parker House. You can’t turn down a First Lady’s request. Today they are imitated most everywhere.

Martha Stewart has a recipe for them.

The Parker House, Boston’s and perhaps America’s most famous hotel and restaurant, first bore the simpler name of Parker’s. Parker’s was the fruit of genius. The mind that came up with the idea for the prototype American luxury hotel and restaurant was a Maine man,

Harvey Parker of Temple.

During Harvey Parker’s lifetime, the great frequented his hotel and restaurant. Besides Offenbach, such notables as Charles Dickens, Sarah Bernhardt, and U. S. Grant stayed there. Literary luminaries like Longfellow, Hawthorne and Emerson met there for regular Saturday discussions. Edwin Booth, famous actor, stayed there. So too did his infamous brother, John Wilkes Booth. The latter was at the Parker House just eight days before he shot President Lincoln.

Parker’s, the Parker House, was unique in America at the time of its opening in 1854. What made it an American one-of-a-kind back then was that it operated on the European Plan. This meant the room bill and the restaurant and bar bill were separate. There was no single advertised charge for bed and board.

Harvey Parker’s decision to run his johnny

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hotel and restaurant on the European Plan was a canny, money-making move. Using the term appealed to sophisticates of the day, cosmopolitans or those who thought of themselves as such. With separate bills for room and board Parker made more that if simply charging a single amount. Restaurant tabs, given some of the extravagant cuisine offered at the Parker House, easily outstripped the charges for a room. Plus the restaurant pulled in a lot of customers only interested in dining.

There are myths and legends about the Parker House. Boston Cream Pie may have originated at the Parker House.

The word scrod, as in Baked Boston Scrod, may have first been used there.

The Parker House popularized Boston Baked Beans. These tales and others all stem from the time of Harvey Parker.

Just as there are legends about the Parker House, so there are tales about its founder. Take the tale of Parker’s arrival in Boston and his first job.

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boy Harvey Parker boarded the Boston bound packet in Portland Harbor, he had but a dollar in his pocket. At least that’s how the story goes. Finding a job was, then, his immediate need once he stepped ashore in Boston, a city he knew nothing of and where he knew no one.

Parker’s first employment was as the caretaker of a horse and cow. He got eight dollars a month for this. (One wonders what he did with the rest of his time, or were the two beasts uncommonly demanding in their needs?)

His next job was that of coachman for a wealthy Watertown woman.

It seems that Parker’s Watertown employee went into Boston on a regular basis. In town, Parker ate his meals at a Court Square cellar cafe. Parker must have liked the place. In 1832, he bought it for $432. Cellar that it was, the new owner upgraded the establishment by calling it Parker’s Restaurant.

Parker’s Restaurant garnered a reputation for excellent food and prompt service. The reputation brought in an

ever-expanding clientele comprised of mid-level businessmen, lawyers, and aspiring literary types. Sometime between 1845 and 1847, Parker took on a partner, John Mills. By 1854, the two were doing well enough to embark on the grand endeavor that would become the Parker House.

The story of Harvey Parker’s arrival in Boston and his subsequent rise to success there sound like something out of Horatio Alger. How much is the truth and how much is fiction? One can but wonder. There are, however, ways to access it. One need but look to Parker’s roots and family connections.

Harvey Parker was born in Temple in 1805. Temple isn’t the only Maine town claiming to be the great hotelier’s hometown, though. Paris (in Maine) lore states he spent most of his youth there.

Harvey Parker’s parents were Pierpont and Ann (Drury) Parker. Both parents were from Westborough, Massachusetts. Ann died in Temple. The date Continued on page 41

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Continued from page 39 is conflicted but it was while Harvey Parker was still a youngster. In 1817 Pierpont Parker married a widow, Sophia (Howe) Burnham of Andover. The marriage took place in Andover. The couple made Temple their home for a number of years after marrying. There is no clear indication when they left.

Sophia Howe Burnham Parker had Howe family connections in Paris. She also Howe connections in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The former may account for the Parkers moving to Paris. Quite clearly, Harvey Parker was not without resources when he arrived in Boston. He had both Parker and Drury relatives. Both families were large.

And there was his stepmother’s family.

The cafe Harvey Parker bought out belonged to John Hunt. It went by the name Hunt’s. Parker was working there when he bought out the owner.

Parker’s − later the Parker House − opened in 1854. It was five stories tall. A Boston tour book from that pe-

riod describes it as “an immense establishment of marble.” One of the more unique aspects of Parker’s was its name. Other establishments went by names like the American House, the Shawmut, the Adams, and the Revere House, names of historic significance.

The latter establishments can best be described as genteel. Parker’s can only be said to have been more-so.

Harvey Parker died at age eighty.

He had been in the restaurant and hotel

business for some fifty years.

Harvey Parker was brought up a Temple farm boy. The Temple he grew up in was the tiniest of western Maine frontier villages. The Temple farm boy grew up to be “the” arbiter of good taste as far as American restaurants and hotels are concerned. Today Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has a Harvey D. Parker Collection. It is funded by the $100,000 the Temple farm boy left the museum.

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Crow Carrion

the wilton “crow whisperer”

by Charles Francis

B

ack in the early and mid-1980s Wilton native Bernd Heinrich deposited something like eight tons of raw meat in the woods of western Maine, specifically in the Alder Brook area in the foothills of the White Mountains. The motivation for this strange pursuit had to do with feeding crows.

I first heard about Heinrich at a road race. By road race I mean a foot race, running. I think it was Fred Judkins who mentioned Heinrich. Judkins and Heinrich had been teammates on the University of Maine cross country team back in the 1960s. I knew Fred as a fellow runner. In fact, when Fred put together a team to compete in the University of Maine intramural cross country

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competition in the fall of 1976, I was a grad student at the time – he recruited me a member of the team.

The reason why Fred Judkins or some other runner happened to mention Bernd Heinrich had to do with crows. The 10-K we had just competed in had been graced with a unique audience. The audience had been seated on a power line. In all, it consisted of something like 150 to 200 raucous crows. Several runners were comment-

ing on the fact when it was mentioned that Bernd Heinrich could explain the phenomena.

Bernd Heinrich is an expert on crows.

He holds a Ph.D. in biology. A professor at the University of Vermont, he is the author of a number of books relating to avian studies, including Ravens in Winter. He is also author of A Year in the Maine Woods. He writes often about the world he observes around his cabin in the woods of western Maine.

Incidentally, most serious Maine runners are familiar with Heinrich.

The reason why Maine runners know Heinrich – the same reason why it was not out of context to mettion his name at a road race – is that Heinrich holds two world running records. Heinrich is an ultra marathoner. Ultra marathons are those races that extend beyond the twenty-six mile plus distance of the marathon.

The reason why the participants of the 10-K were commenting on the audience of crow race spectators had to do

43

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com with their verbosity. They were noisy!

So noisy that they seemed to be cheering the road racers on as they passed by!

It was the same kind of vociferousness that Bernd Heinrich has observed in a greedy crowd of crows that have gathered to feast on a dead animal carcass.

In fact, it was Heinrich’s encounter of a group of noisy ravens around a moose carcass that motivated him to deposit tons of road kill and slaughterhouse leavings in the woods of western Maine.

The list of crow delicacies Heinrich deposited in the Maine woods over a four year period is impressive.

It is something over 130 piles of meat − three whole deer that had gone to their maker thanks to encounters with vehicles, five moose, three cows, innumerable calves and a few goats. To prevent predators like coyotes from desecrating the crow’s banquet, Heinrich urinated on the piles of meat. Then he hid behind trees, up in trees, in blinds and in brush to observe crow activity. In all, he put in over 1500 hours of observation.

One of Heinrich’s observations relates directly to the noisy crows we runners encountered during our 10-K. Noisy crows and ravens are young.

Just like human teenagers wandering aimlessly in search of something to do, young crows make a racket. They push, shove and generally draw attention to themselves. Adult crows, pairs that have established their territory, tend to be more sedate, quiet.

When a young crow showed up on his own to partake of Heinrich’s carrion feast, the adult pair with the established territory would drive off the interloper. They gave up this practice when a group of rowdy youngsters arrived on the scene. The youngsters were like gangs of adolescent urban thugs wearing their colors. The sedate adults wanted nothing to do with them.

Intriguingly, Heinrich determined the thugs did not assemble by chance.

The gangs actively recruited. The gangs recruited additional members with particular high-pitched squawks.

The squawks attracted other youngsters to feed. It was party time!

Carrion is not the only thing that attracts members of the crow clan, genus Corvus. Once, when I was camping at Mt. Blue State Park, I watched a crow come to ground with something white in its beak. He dropped the object and then pecked around in some leaves and pine needles, unearthing what I took to be a carefully concealed cache of cherished items. The crow picked up each object in turn and then went on to another. I enjoyed what I took to be his obvious pleasure in cherishing his treasure trove.

When the crow flew away after carefully covering his stash, I went over to investigate. There were bits of camping bric-a-brac, white pebbles, metal bits and a shiny sliver of broken mirror. The next day I noted the crow’s cache was gone. He must have discovered my intrusion.

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One Hundred And Five Years Of Russakoff Tradition a skowhegan three-generation family business

by Terry Ann Lidral

A

ndrew and Donna Russakoff are third generation proprietors of Russakoff Jewelers in Skowhegan. Located at 100 Water Street, it is the oldest continuously owned and operated jewelry store in the state of Maine. Andrew is carrying on the tradition of a business his grandfather, Susman Russakoff, a Russian Jewish immigrant, began in 1907.

Susman Russakoff was born in 1884 not far from Kiev, Russia in Starodub, Chernigov Gubernia, commonly known as White Russia. Susman, like the other Jews living there, was constantly in fear for his life. Jewish families were brutally targeted by soldiers, and many

escaped by means of an underground network much like the Underground Railway American slaves used to flee from The South. As a boy, Susman learned clock and pocket watch repair and heard stories about a place called America, the land of wealth and opportunity. When he had saved enough money, he made the journey through a chain of safe houses out of Russia. He traveled at night, avoiding detection by informants and soldiers, arriving safely in Britain where he bought passage on a boat to Fall River, Massachusetts.

From Massachusetts, Susman made his way to New York City to join other Russian Jewish immigrants already living there.

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Being skilled in watch repair, Susman found a man willing to give him an apprenticeship as a watch repairman.

Susman had left his future bride, Manya Simkin, behind in Europe. She had escaped to the safety of France with members of her family, where she waited for him to send for her. When Susman had earned enough money, he brought Manya to New York City and they married.

The business where he was apprenticed repaired a large number of watches sent from Maine, and Susman came to the conclusion there was a need for a skilled repairman in that state. In 1907 Manya gave birth to their first son. Susman decided to move his family to Maine and start his own watch repair business. He

had found that land was relatively inexpensive in Skowhegan, and chose the town for his family’s new home.

Russakoff Jewelers was established in Skowhegan in 1907. It was located in a building, now long gone, on the banks of the Kennebec River. Susman started his business as a watchmaker.

Over the years, Susman and Manya had six more children. As the family increased and the country was hit with the Great Depression, Susman expanded the business to include a mixed bag of inventory. He was a firm believer that his children should be given a strong academic and arts education. All seven of his children became well-educated, and all of them were involved in music throughout their lives.

Susman was also a land entrepreneur. Besides his jewelry store, he owned The Hotel Oxford in downtown Skowhegan. The hotel was on the second and third floors of the building.

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worths. In the late 1950s, Woolworth’s wanted a more modern appearance, and offered to sign a long term lease if the old building was demolished and a new one built. The project was completed and that lease was in effect until Woolworth’s closed its doors in 1997.

A granite block remains where it was set into the building, inscribed with the name Russakoff.

Manya always worried about the family she’d left in Europe. After the Second World War broke out, she became increasingly anxious about the lack of contact and return correspondence from her family members. In 1947 Manya died of what her son Archie blamed on the effects of sorrow surrounding the uncertainty of what had happened to her loved ones.

Susman was joined by his son, Isaac Arthur, known as Archie, in the 1940s, making Russakoff Jewelers a second generation business. An accomplished trumpet player, Archie attended a sum-

mer Juilliard program after high school, and then headed to Tufts University and a degree in music. But he fell into ill health and was unable to finish college.

After a stint with the National Guard in the early years of World War II, Archie became a jeweler in the family store in Skowhegan. He learned a great deal about the business from his father. He also took a number of classes to elevate his level of skill. But Archie didn’t give up music. He was a founding member of the Skowhegan Brass Quintet, and he played regularly with the legendary Al Corey Big Band. Archie met his wife, Phillis, when he was purchasing diamonds from David Morse, a Boston diamond wholesaler. Phillis, who was working at David Morse, left her job in Boston and moved to Skowhegan to become part of the Russakoff family. Archie and Phillis spent the first two years of their marriage living in an apartment on the second floor of Continued on page 46

Western Lakes & Mountians

46

Continued from page 45 The Hotel Oxford.

In the 1950s Russakoff Jewelers launched into other areas. They sold typewriters, small appliances and radios. Archie became a licensed hearing aid dealer, one of the first in the state of Maine. Susman worked along with his son up to the day he died in 1966.

He actually died in his son’s arms in the middle of the store after he collapsed while working.

Archie and Phillis had three children, the youngest being Andrew. Phillis worked as a team with her husband, continuing on in the business after Archie died in1993 until she passed away in 2010.

Andrew joined the business in 1983.

He, like his father, was a musician, but Andrew graduated from Plymouth State College with a degree in music before returning to Skowhegan to become a jeweler. Andrew worked with his father, learning the trade and

gaining knowledge of the business. In 1985 Andrew married Donna, who has become his partner in carrying on the third generation business and the proud tradition of customer service begun by Susman in 1907.

The same year Andrew married Donna, in 1985, the building next to Russakoff Jewelers, Cranes Department Store, burned. The building housing the jewelry store was saved, but because of smoke and water damage, the business was forced into temporary housing while the store underwent extensive repairs and remodeling. Russakoff Jewelers reopened five months later in its renovated quarters.

For Andrew, being a jeweler is a matter of trust. The Russakoff name has always stood for honesty, integrity and quality. He takes the responsibility of carrying on that legacy very seriously. The store handles people’s keepsakes, their heirlooms and their irreplaceable items. There are customers’

47

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

children, second generation customers, purchasing wedding rings and keepsakes, setting their own traditions. Andrew and Donna believe in giving back to the community that has supported the Russakoff family for one hundred five years. They are both involved with various community and civic organizations. They donate to schools and non-profit groups throughout the area and the family has established memorial scholarships in the names of both of Andrew’s parents. To Andrew and Donna, it’s all about treating their customers like family, making it truly a family business.

Andrew and Donna have two grown children, Leah and Amy. Like his father, Andrew has remained active in music, performing in the Skowhegan area and teaching percussion students at Skowhegan High School. Leah and Amy share the family’s passion for music. Leah is a singer and Amy plays flute.

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Squire James Rangeley

pioneer settler’s benevolence is still evident today

by Kelly Howe

R

angeley, Maine has a noble history, filled the compassion and generosity of one man who had a dream of coming to America to make a new life for himself and his family.

The State of Maine was incorporated as a state in 1820. Within a short time, settlements began to form. In 1825 Squire James Rangeley came ashore from a ship that carried him from Yorkshire, England. Accompanying him were his wife, two sons, John and James, and his two daughters. The oldest daughter’s name was Sarah. However, for whatever reason, history does not indicate what the second daughter’s name was. Squire Rangeley first established his residence in Portland Maine. However that soon changed when he found the land that was to become Rangeley.

The settlement of Rangeley was

originally a part of Oxford County.

However, after much debate, it was not long before it was realized that it was in Franklin County in 1837.

The settlement of Rangeley was not easy to reach, as the only road was a small one-horse-at-a-time trail. However, this is where the Squire wished to be. It was quiet in the country and it overlooked an incredible lake that was perfect for fishing.

After choosing his land, Squire Rangeley realized that he was not alone, that there were several squatter families living on his land. However, being recognized as a fair man, he offered the squatters the land that they were living on in exchange for their assistance in building his residence. It was an offer that each of the squatters accepted.

Squire Rangeley did not charge the men for the land − he felt that they earned

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it by their labor on his family home.

The Rangeley home was built upon a high hill that overlooked what was to be called Rangeley Lake. It was an incredible view of the lake from the balcony that spanned the entire length of their home. The home itself was a cross between a mansion and a manor estate that you would find in England.

In 1827 Squire Rangeley suffered a tragic loss that affected him for the rest of his life. His beloved daughter Sarah, 19 at the time, died on Christmas day.

The Squire, being a religious man, suffered even more when he realized that he had no choice but to bury his daughter in the center meetinghouse cemetery. At the time, the only church was still in the process of being built, and there were no church-blessed cemeteries in Rangeley.

Squire Rangeley was as kind as he was prosperous. He saw to every need

49

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com of the growing settlement. Rangeley had not yet even become a village, and its only settlers were spread out in all directions. Still, Squire Rangeley recognized how the farmers struggled to bring their harvested grain to be ground into flour in the nearest town, which was twenty-six miles away in one direction.

He struggled for a way to ease their burden, and in 1833, Squire Rangeley obtained two streams on which he built the first gristmill in Rangeley. The farmers no longer had to travel long distances to have their grain ground into flour. This also led to an influx of new residents.

The grain gristmill was only the first of many different mills to be built in this time, and the settlement was growing by leaps and bounds. Soon there was a lumber mill, and later a trading post and even a blacksmith shop.

Around this time, there were still native American Indians occupying land along with the settlers. There was no animosity on either side; in the town of Rangeley everyone helped each other. The Indians would show the settlers

how to make baskets and how to fish in the great lake.

In 1840 the Squire applied for a township application. To be acknowledged as a township, though, he was told that he had to have at least thirty separate families settled on the land. After many different attempts, he was able to file with thirty-nine families, and the township of Rangeley was established.

1841 brought about great changes for both the Squire and the settlement of Rangeley. At the urging of his wife, the Squire and his family left the settlement of Rangeley. There is some historical debate as to the reason. There are some historians who believe that the Squire was bitter over the death of his daughter Sarah. It was his belief that had there been adequate medical care his daughter would have survived.

The home that Squire Rangeley loved so much was sold to Daniel Burnham. Historical records indicate that the home was sold many times over the years and that the only person who had lived in it for any length of time was

Squire Rangeley and his family. The Rangeley mansion was divided up and sold over the years, however there are still parts of it that are standing and are occupied today.

Although the Squire moved back to Portland, he never lost interest in the settlement; he would not abandon the settlement that was named after him.

He recognized that the road that led to Rangeley was not very dependable. It was not accessible in the winter and often washed out in the rainy season.

So, using money from his own pocket, he had a new road built to reach the settlement. It was believed to have cost thirty thousand dollars. Historians differ as to the name of the road, whether it was named Beech Road for the beech trees that lined it or Beach Road after the family that lived along side of it.

The contributions that Squire James Rangeley made to the settlement of Rangeley were many and given often.

The Squire continued to take an interest in the settlement until his death.

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Montresor’s Map |

by Ian MacKinnon

A

fter exploring the upper Kennebec River and charting Moosehead Lake’s western shore in summer 1761, Captain John Montresor left a written legacy that would almost destroy the Arnold Expedition in autumn 1775.

Born in Gibraltar in April 1736, Montresor was a Royal Army engineer sent to explore a possible overland route from Quebec City to Maine in 1761. Major General James Wolfe and his cliff-scaling British troops had captured Quebec City only 21 months earlier. Accompanying that expedition, Montresor had drawn Wolfe’s portrait before the general fell during fighting on the Plains of Abraham.

Montresor remained on duty at Quebec City when British soldiers garri-

journal exclusions proved catastrophic for arnold expedition

soned it. General James Murray became Quebec Province’s military governor in October 1760. Intrigued by persistent reports about a Chaudiere River-Kennebec River passage from Quebec City to the Maine coast, Murray told Montresor to find and chart this waterway.

The two men evidently disliked each other, which explains why Murray kept Montresor away from Quebec City as much as possible. Montresor allegedly described Murray as “a mad man” (likely after completing the Kennebec River scout), and quarrels that later arose between Montresor and other British engineers suggest that Montresor possessed a touchy personality.

But Montresor exhibited a tough physique that, combined with his engineering skills, made him Murray’s

ideal candidate to explore northwestern Maine. Montresor selected 12 similar rugged men, including Indians and a few Quebecois scouts, loaded them and their gear and food into canoes, and paddled upriver on the Chaudiere on Sunday, June 14, 1761.

The expedition soon encountered trouble; a fast-burning forest fire destroyed Montresor’s beached canoes on the Chaudiere River, and only patient negotiations helped him obtain replacement canoes from local Indians. Departing the Chaudiere and its attendant Quebecois settlements, the expedition portaged between Portage Lake in Quebec Province and Penobscot Lake in the District of Maine.

Located in northern Somerset County, Penobscot Lake lies above the Pe-

51

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com nobscot River’s South Branch, which Montresor and his men reached via Cheney Pond and Penobscot Brook.

They paddled along the Penobscot River, passed “behind” today’s Pittston Farm, and followed the Penobscot’s West Branch along the section later flooded by Seboomook Dam. Finding a stream that flowed into the Penobscot River from the south, the Montresor Expedition “advanced … very slowly, clearing away the bushes which choked up the brook,” Montresor wrote in his journal. “After having gone further, we came to a small lake,” and “we had no sooner landed than our guides found out the carrying place,” calculated to measure three miles from northwest to southeast.

After following this portage, the explorers “put our canoes” into “a small river” later named Carry Brook.

Paddling about a half mile, they reach Moosehead Lake, known by Montresor as “the great lake Orignal” (a French

word for “moose”).

Venturing south to where he could see mountains − likely Big Spencer and Little Spencer − to the east, Montresor led his expedition past the Moose River and Mount Kineo. On July 1, the explorers reached “a very narrow point of land [that] runs about four hundred yards into the lake” (today’s Sand Bar Point) after “we [had] already passed one discharge of the lake” that “after a winding course through the woods, joins the Arransoak” River downstream “and is navigable in the spring only.”

This statement refers to Moosehead Lake’s West Outlet joining the Kennebec River at Indian Pond in modern Sapling Township.

Remaining near the western shore, the explorers soon “perceived a motion or gentle descent in the waters of the lake, which informed us of our approach” to Moosehead Lake’s East Outlet,” Montresor wrote. The fast-flowing Kennebec, measuring “about 150 yards

wide,” swept the canoes downstream into rapids and a river channel “narrow, deep and full of rocks,” he noted.

One canoe overturned, “all the rest filled with water,” and “with much difficulty we gained the shore,” Montresor described the disaster that almost destroyed his expedition at the Kennebec’s head waters. The explorers camped for the night to repair their canoes, light fires, and dry out their provisions.

With the Moosehead Lake Region forests considered so valuable today, Montresor seems ignorant about tree values as he noted “the woods filled with spruce, cedars, etc., certain marks of a country good for nothing.” He did not linger to explore the Kennebec River woodlands; the next morning, “the great dexterity of the Indians” brought the explorers to Indian Pond, “under the mountain Ongueachonta” (now known as Big Moose Mountain).

Continued on page 52

Western Lakes & Mountians

52

Continued from page 51

River scene from Quebec Road above Bingham Maine.

Item #104252 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

After reaching more rapids downstream from Indian Pond, the explorers portaged “through the woods” and then paddled along a stream crisscrossed by beaver dams. Attacked by voracious mosquitoes on July 3, they camped that night and then portaged to the Kennebec River on July 4.

Launching their canoes, the explorers paddled about nine miles until “we came to the north branch” (actually the Dead River), maneuvered past The Forks − today’s western Maine whitewater rafting capital − and turned downstream where “the course of the river is southerly,” Montresor wrote.

Penning a description that would make The Forks Area Chamber of Commerce proud, Montresor reported on July 5 that “the country is now open and very beautiful,” containing “large and noble trees” and “a great many bears moose, deer, wolves, etc., several of which we killed.” He noted the salmon

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com and trout thriving in the Kennebec River and described Caratunk Falls in Solon.

The expedition portaged the falls at today’s Madison and Skowhegan on July 6. The next day, Montresor and his men paddled downriver “about three leagues with much difficulty” and “came to Ticonic Falls, which are immediately above Fort Halifax. We left our canoes above the falls and went into the fort.”

From Fort Halifax, the Montresor Expedition proceeded upriver “through the excessive heat and dryness of the season,” Montresor wrote on July 12.

Traveling upriver past today’s Bingham and Moscow on July 13, the explorers abandoned the Kennebec River to follow the Abenaki portage that bypassed the Dead River’s treacherous lower section.

This route led Montresor and his men through almost trackless woodlands and across the Carry Ponds − East, Middle, and West − to the upper Dead River,

which they reached on July 15. Three days later they reached Chain of Ponds; on July 19, after portaging their canoes and supplies across the hilly terrain that would delineate the Maine-Quebec border, they reached a north-flowing stream and “entered the lake Megantic after dark,” Montresor wrote.

He would soon reach Quebec City and file an official report with General Murray. This report would include a detailed map appropriately titled “A Map of the Sources of the Chaudiere, Penobscot, and Kennebec Rivers.” The map indicated the sites and dates where Montresor’s expedition camped.

Fourteen years later, George Washington and Benedict Arnold referred to John Montresor’s map and journal while planning an overland expedition to capture British-held Quebec City.

Unfortunately, Washington and Arnold possessed a redacted Montresor journal that seldom indicated distances and omitted altogether some swamps and

particularly rugged terrain.

Relying on Montresor’s map and journal, the 34-year-old Arnold figured he could transport 1,100 men and their supplies by bateaux from Fort Halifax to the St. Lawrence River within a few weeks. History records what happened as the Arnold Expedition encountered British-redacted mileage, torrential October 1775 rains, cold autumn temperatures, and a mountainous northwestern Maine.

If he had known that his censored journal and detailed map would lure an American expedition to the edge of destruction, Captain John Montresor would have cheered. Participating in future battles against American troops in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, he would even witness Nathan Hale’s execution. But no military service that Montresor performed for Britain during the Revolutionary War would outshine the map and journal he created in 1761.

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Route 15 Retail

tink billings, the “yard sale man”

by John McDonald

T

Tink was impressed with how fast the washing machine sold. He began wondering what else he had around his place that people driving by on Route 15 were itching to make him an offer on.

The next day he moved a few old wood stoves out of the barn and onto the lawn. One, a Queen Atlantic kitchen stove and the other a monstrous parlor stove that looked like it could hold half-a-cord of wood at a time.

Both stoves had “maintenance issues,” but Tink figured they should be worth something. To give his drive-by customers another option Tink dragged out the old kerosene space heater he and Thelma warmed their house with before they got the fancy new fuel-efficient furnace. All three items were gone within 48 hours.

It wasn’t long before people were stopping by Tink’s not only to buy but also to try to sell him things. Less than a week after Tink started his front yard Route 15 retail enterprise, a man pulled into the driveway with a complete six-piece bedroom set. He had the frame, head and footboards and night-stands in the back of his pickup and he was ready to deal. After a little friendly dickering the two agreed on a sale price, and the bedroom set was

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added to the growing assortment of items in Tink’s front yard.

When word got around that Tink was buying and selling from his front yard, his place became a beehive of retail and wholesale activity. People were coming from as far away as Jackman to buy or sell something to the Yard Sale Man - Tink Billings.

To increase his inventory Tink began going to yard sales to pick up an item or two for resale on his lawn. Folks who claim to know about such things say at one point Tink had one of the largest

retail lawn operations north of Boston, or at least Bangor. Tink’s operation eventually included rows of old cars and boats and skidoos and snowmobiles and appliances and furniture and wood stoves − all priced to move. If asked if a particular item still “worked” Tink had a standard reply - The fella who sold it to me said it worked – he’d say - but I haven’t tried it.

Eventually, as old age caught up with him, Tink began to slow down, and his retail operation slowed down along with him. The way I heard it, Tink and Thelma took ill around the same time one winter and died within a month of each other. There were no heirs, so the town eventually took the property. They say it was years before town officials were able to unload all of Tink’s leftover lawn merchandise.

It just proved − to anyone who needed proof − that no one could sell stuff off a lawn on Route 15 like the Yard Sale Man − Tink Billings.

W.H. Galusha residence, Greenville Maine.

Item #106702 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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ink Billings owned a place on Route 15 just a ways outside Greenville. According to one of the Tink Billings stories, his life changed for good the day he and his wife Thelma decided to get a new clothes washer.

It wasn’t that the old Sears washer had died, it was just that - like the two of them - the old machine wasn’t getting any younger and - like them it was bound to croak sooner or later.

Since they’d recently made the last payment on the new highly-efficient furnace, they had a monthly payment to spare. So they went nuts and got themselves a new washer.

When the new washer was finally delivered and installed, Tink decided to set the old machine out on the front lawn with a “for sale” sign on it and just wait to see what would happen.

Tink couldn’t believe it but before Thelma started supper the washing machine had been sold and hauled away.

Of course, there was a little dickering over the price - as is customary in such transactions - but in the end Tink got within a few dollars of what he wanted, since he had priced the machine a tad higher than what he thought the thing was worth.

YARD SA L E !

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Elizabeth Arden’s The Maine Chance Farm

belgrade estate catered to the rich & famous

by Clarence W. Bennett Maurice. There was also a garage ocated in Maine on route 41, housing “Woody,” a station wagpassing through Mt. Vernon, on for transporting guests. There Rome, and one edge of Long was an ice-house – ice was cut in Pond in the Belgrade Lakes region, winter months in Alden Cove and there is a stretch of road named stored for summer use. There was Elizabeth Arden Road. For a few a greenhouse with frames to start miles travelers passing through in flowers and vegetables. There were the 1930s – 60s were on Elizabeth also gardens for growing fresh vegArden’s Maine Chance Farm. etables, berries, and fruits and a sepThe property included lengthy arate section for chickens providing frontage on Long Pond, a main eggs and poultry. house with immaculately kept red There also was a boathouse with and white triangle flower beds, red- two wooden power boats for guest white-blue sunken rose gardens, rides and to meet pontoon plane ara children’s horse carousel, tennis rivals of guests, etc. Treatment houscourts, aspen, window boxes, at- es – equipped for massages, wax, tached cottages, and a chef named mud, and exercise – were available.

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The extensive facitities also included docks, changing houses, beaches, the Marberry House and music room, and a laundry building.

The estate property comprised two main sections. The eastern section has been described above. The farm with animals – pigs, about 24 milking cows, and horses − was in the west, closer to Mt. Vernon village. That area also included other commercial sources such as lumber and logging.

What was life like at the spa for the paying guests? The natural beauty of the area leant itself to a

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Elizabeth Arden’s fondness for horses was rewarded with a Kentucky Derby winner, putting her on a cover of Time Magazine.

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Western Lakes & Mountians

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Continued from page 56

setting for a very posh health farm with guaranteed privacy, and drew the rich and famous from afar.

Mamie Eisenhower, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, Clare Booth Luce, and countless others would come to wear shapeless tunics to exercise in, and ate from a spartan menu consisting of the likes of grapefruit, boiled calves liver, and clear broth. They would exercise on and off machines, do aerobic dances and yoga routines. Among luxurious pink surroundings they had facial massages, body massages, paraffin coatings from head to toe, scalp treatments, mud packs, manicures, pedicures, etc., all the while featuring special Elizabeth Arden cosmetics and, or, creams. By the end of it all one guest commented that upon leaving after her stay she

Elizabeth Arden introduced “makeovers” to the masses and instructed New York socialites on Parisian eye makeup looks.

went to bed for four days.

Most got what they came there for. To relax and lose weight. It was rumored some were drying out. A few cheaters even gained weight.

Guests lost an average of six pounds per week. For that, they would have paid $40 to $80 per pound in the 1930s. Guests paid between $250 and $500 for a week during the Depression years.

Why Mt. Vernon, Maine? A close friend, Elisabeth Marberry, had invited Elizabeth Arden to a weekend at her summer home on Long Pond in the Belgrade region near Mt. Vernon. The reader might not know Marberry’s name, but in the early 20th century she was powerful in political and artistic circles, having been the American agent for many prominent figures. At one of her famous Sunday teas in New York City

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one might find George Gershwin, Toscanini, Edward III, AI Smith, Groucho Marx, Eleanor Roosevelt, etc. Well, Elizabeth Arden was so hooked on Marberry’s place she bought the property next door and built a large private home for herself. That home later became the main lodge for The Maine Chance Farm. After Marberry’s death, Arden bought the Marberry property and turned her combined properties, eventually becoming 1200 acres of estate and farmland running close to Mt. Vernon village, into a health farm − The Maine Chance Farm (known among some locals as the ‘fat farm’.)

In the end Elizabeth Arden developed three properties. The second was opened in the late 1940s near Phoenix, Arizona which operated when The Maine Chance Farm

closed for the winter. The third was a large racing stable near Lexington, Kentucky. Her fondness for horses was rewarded with a Kentucky Derby winner putting her on a cover of Time Magazine.

The woman, Elizabeth Arden, was born Florence Nightingale Graham of Canadian farm parents on December 31,1878. She chose the name Elizabeth Arden for professional reasons. Apparently, Florence Graham remembered having read Tennyson’s Enoch Arden in school and liked the sound of Elizabeth Arden. At times both names were used. Even after the names were merged there were times the Florence Graham part was said to look on in awe at the exploits of the other as she traveled about Europe gathering new and miraculous beauty secrets that her capable manager

would pass on to her ever-waiting clients. It should also be noted that with her friends she used the name Elizabeth Graham.

Clearly this was a highly intelligent woman with extraordinary drive. Her overall goal was to become rich by making other women pay to become beautiful. That she was able to rise from the farm and build a cosmetic empire, while headquartered in New York City and mixing with royalty and world figures, would be impressive in any era. But to have done all this, when she did, in a highly competitive mans’ world, truly raised the bar.

Elizabeth Arden never really slowed down, mentally or in pace.

In fact, when she died in 1966 at age 88, one of her employees was prompted to say, “But it is so unlike her.”

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Lloyd Brett: The General From Dead River spanish-american war general hailed from dead river

by Charles Francis

W

hich Maine general is the most deserving of acclaim?

Perhaps it would be better to ask: which Maine general accomplished the most? Either question must − by its very nature − warrant careful consideration. Then again, perhaps the questions are nothing more than a matter for military history buffs to discuss and argue.

Maine has produced many notable military men. As far as generals are concerned there are Joshua Chamberlain and Oliver Otis Howard to name but two. And, of course, there is Benjamin Lincoln. Though not born in Maine, his credentials as a Mainer are impeccable. But how about Lloyd Milton Brett?

Joshua Chamberlain will always be

associated with Brunswick, where he lived much of his later life and served as president of Bowdoin College, and his birthplace Brewer. Oliver Otis Howard was a Leeds man. Benjamin Lincoln’s Maine connection is Dennysville. He was a proprietor of the township and his home there is an historic landmark. Chamberlain, Howard and Lincoln are each recognized in their respective communities as hometown heroes. Lloyd Brett was from the Dead River region. Seldom, though, is Brett connected to the locale of his birth.

Civil War general Joshua Chamberlain will forever be associated with the Battle of Little Round Top. He was a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Chamberlain formally received

the surrender of Robert E. Lee. During the Battle of Chattanooga Oliver Otis Howard’s corps were largely responsible for the capture of Missionary Ridge.

Howard was also a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Benjamin Lincoln did not receive a Medal of Honor. They did not exist when he was in service. Lincoln did, however, receive the sword of Cornwallis when the British general surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown. Lloyd Brett was a recipient of the Army Distinguished Service Medal. The medal is awarded for exceptionally meritorious service conducted while engaged in a duty of great responsibility. General Brett received the medal for services in the Dannevoux sector on the western front during

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World War I. Brett was also a recipient which General Brett made his extraorBretts were among the early settlers of the Congressional Medal of Honor. dinary contributions as a general staff of Paris in Oxford County and FarmLloyd Brett’s military career is officer so as to become a recipient of ington in Franklin. Rufus Brett came to well-documented. This is not surpris- the Army Distinguished Service Med- Farmington from Bridgewater, Massaing given that he was a West Point al. It should be noted that “exceptional chusetts shortly after the Revolution. graduate and that his career extended performance of normal duty is not con- The Bretts were Mayflower desceninto the twentieth century. There are sidered sufficient grounds for awarding dants. They traced their line to Seth oddities however. There is no biogra- the medal.”

Brett of Bridgewater and Sarah Alden, phy of Brett. Many military figures of daughter of John Alden and Priscilla lesser stature have been written of exMullins. The tale of the latter was made tensively. Nor does Brett’s name apfamous by Longfellow in The Courtpear on any of the numerous Hall of ship of Miles Standish. John Alden Fame listings Mainers seem to forever was one of the early Pilgrim traders at be drawing up to recognize prominent Cushnoc on the Kennebec. natives and residents.

Lloyd Brett entered West Point in Lloyd Brett commanded the 160th 1875. His appointment to the military Infantry Brigade on the western front. academy is recorded as being from The 160th took part in the fighting at Massachusetts. The Brett family were St. Mihiel and the Meuse crossing in living in Malden. Brett graduated 34th the Dannevoux sector. The campaign in his class in 1879 and was commisis notable for the use of chemical (gas) sioned a 2nd lieutenant in the cavalry. offensive weapons by the Germans.

His Congressional Medal of Honor acAllied records of the Dannevoux sections came barely a year later on April tor emphasis the incredulity expressed 1, 1880. by allied general staff officers that so Lloyd Brett’s introduction to active many men could be killed by gas. A duty was a baptism of fire. Brett was typical description of this time periassigned to the 2nd US Cavalry and od on the front reads “...the tired and was stationed in Montana. It was the Lloyd Milton Brett often gassed troops that crossed the period of the Indian Wars. The action (Feb 22, 1856 – Sept 23, 1927) Meuse were so... disorganized... that of April 1, 1880 occurred at O’Fallons they were in no condition to make that Creek. advance against withering fire across The O’Fallons Creek battle was Lloyd Brett’s service record gives fought against Ogallala Sioux. The open country....” On October 10, 1918, there were 1302 gas casualties. October Dead River as the place of his birth and Ogallala had stolen some thirty ponies 13 had 1,117; the 14th 3981; the 15th, 1856 as the year. The generality of the belong to 2nd Cavalry scouts. Brett’s 6690 and the 17th, 2573. Driving the statement suggests Brett was born in an company, under the command of Germans across the Meuse was what unorganized township, lands that attract- Captain Eli Huggins, went in pursuit. set the stage for the Armistice of No- ed hardy pioneers, and, indeed, those O’Fallons Creek was a major Sioux vember 11. This then was the action in bearing the Brett name were pioneers.

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Continued from page 61 stronghold. The cavalry company succeeded in retrieving all the ponies by dint of persistent fighting. Brett personally cut out the pony herd. His Medal of Honor citation reads for “most distinguished gallantry in action against hostile Indians.” Captain Huggins was also awarded the Medal of Honor for his conduct in the confrontation.

Brett served in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. He was captain of Company C, 2nd Cavalry. Ironically, like Benjamin Lincoln and Joshua Chamberlain, Brett took part in the surrender that marked the end of the conflict. Brett and a detachment under his command served as the personal escort to Major General William Schafter at the capitulation of the Spanish at the Surrender Tree in Santiago de Cuba.

Previously, Brett had been a part of the same force that attacked San Juan Hill.

This is the battle that catapulted Teddy Roosevelt to national attention.

In 1910 Brett became the last military superintendent of Yellowstone National Park. He was a major at the time of the appointment. He was subsequently promoted to colonel. His regiment was the 1st Cavalry. Even as late as the first decade of the twentieth century, Yellowstone was deemed liable to Indian attack. The primary purpose of the 1st Cavalry at Yellowstone was protecting the park. While Brett believed military presence was necessary at Yellowstone in 1910, he also played a role in furthering the transition to civilian supervision, believing that civilian authority would have more “staying power” in the long run. Brett was arguing for permanency of administration rather than a rotating military presence.

Brett served at Yellowstone from 1910 to 1916. He was then assigned command of the 160th Infantry Brigade at Camp Lee, Virginia. Brett’s overseas duty in World War I ran from May 1918 to June 1919.

Is Lloyd Milton Brett, the general from Dead River, of a stature equal to or approaching that of a Joshua Chamberlain or an Adlebert Ames or other great Maine military figures? The answer to that may be viewed as subjective. But then, isn’t everything subjective in the whole?

General Lloyd Milton Brett died September 23, 1927. He is interred in Arlington National Cemetery.

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Lloyd Milton Brett, headstone Arlington National Cemetery

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The Bixbys Of Western Maine a family of ranchers from somerset county

by Sherwood Anderson sity’s botany program. All these properties belonged to the children he Land of Rest Cemetery on and grandchildren of the Anson and Father Rasle Road in Nor- Norridgewock Bixbys.

Solomon Bixby was founder of ridgewock, Somerset County, is the burial place of Deacon Solo- the Norridgewock clan. He owned mon Bixby and his wife Lucy Tay- one of the best and most productive lor. Their son Simon Bixby and his farms in Anson, Somerset County. wife Deborah Norton Flint are bur- General Benedict Arnold made his ied there as well. Not many of their quarters with Bixby for a night in descendants are left in Maine, but October 1775 on his way up the Kenthe name is well-known in southern nebec with 1100 men in a failed attempt to take Quebec City. Solomon California.

The Bixby’s Rancho los Cerritos himself served in a militia company (the hills) is a museum and Nation- in the American Revolution, marchal Historic Landmark. Rancho los ing in 1780. In July 1792 Solomon Alamitos (the cottonwoods), is also moved to Norridgewock, where in a public museum. Bixby Park, orig- 1797 he was one of 24 who orgainally part of Rancho los Alamitos nized its Congregational Church. and once covered by herds of sheep, He became a Deacon and remained was donated by the Bixby family a pillar until he died in 1835.

Deacon Solomon’s wife Lucy to the City of Long Beach in 1903.

Taylor Bixby, mother of their twelve The Bixby’s Rancho San Justo is a retreat house for the Franciscan Or- children, drowned in the Kennebec. der. The Rancho Santa Ana Botanic She was 58 years of age. One relaGarden of 200 acres was established tive wrote, “The death of Lucy Tayand endowed by Susanna Bixby lor was an accident, not suicide as Bryant, granddaughter of Simon some have thought. She was trying and Deborah Bixby. It is dedicated to get round a brush fence that went to the research, study and appreci- down to the water’s edge. One of ation of native California flora, and her shoes stuck in the mud. It was is the home of Claremont Univer- three weeks before she was found.

T

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The body had passed over the rips, lodged against a stone. Nathan Parlin was out fishing and found it.

Just before the funeral the sodden remains were wrapped in a web of linen taken from the loom. But the casket remained on the brook bank until it was borne to the cemetery.

Parson Josiah Peet of Norridgewock preached from the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, ‘What I do now ye know not, but ye shall know hereafter.’ The Taylors were “thrifty, wellto-do people. One should judge so by the nice things Lucy Taylor brought with her when she married Deacon Solomon Bixby.”

Rev. Josiah Peet was called, “Pastor of Norridgewock and spiritual Patriarch of the county of Somerset.” What he said at Lucy Bixby’s funeral is not known, but in a published sermon he wrote: “God of our salvation! May we of this dieing assembly, and they who shall come after us, be so beneficially affected and effectually blessed by thy residence in these earthly courts, that after we shall have passed off, in successive generations, from this stage of action; after earthly temples shall Continued on page 64

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Continued from page 63

be demolished, and the earth itself be dissolved; we may be gathered into thy glorious temple above, prepared to join the bright and blessed hosts of heaven in rendering nobler worship, adoration and praise to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, through endless ages. Amen.”

Simon Bixby, son of Solomon and Lucy, bought a farm in Anson on March 23, 1827. He lived there a bachelor until his marriage to Deborah Norton Flint. His obituary read, “He built a commodious house on the place, which burned in May, 1853. He immediately rebuilt, the new house [which later burned also] being nearly like the one burned, his family living in a nearby schoolhouse and sleeping in the barn meanwhile. The farm, which was a good one, was the family home until both he and his wife passed away. Strict economy and devout Christianity ruled their lives. Hard work enabled them to bring up their family of ten children without incurring debt, even though they were called upon to build two unusually good farm houses during this period. All the children had more or less exceptional school privileges, and most of them became successful teachers. Mr. Bixby conducted a store in the village

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and taught singing school one winter, being able to carry any part.

Her “State of Maine Teacher’s School Register for 1873-4,” when she was 36, indicates she taught in the Town of Industry, Franklin County, signed her name Lute E. Bixby, earned $5.50 a week, had an average of 23 scholars, and taught reading, spelling, penmanship, arithmetic, grammar, geography, composition, history and algebra.

Her scholars ranged in age from 6 to 16. Lucy, an active Congregationalist all her life, transferred her membership from Anson to the New Vineyard Congregational Church after her marriage to Orrin S. Turner. Her husband’s father, Rev. David Turner, had helped organize that Church in 1828, and remained its pastor 29 years.

There were others from Anson, Madison, Norridgewock and Skowhegan who went to California after the 1849 gold rush − more Bixbys, but also Westons, Flints and Hathaways. This migration was sparked in part by the return to Maine in 1853 of the three single young men, among the first to return “home” from the California gold fields, and objects of great interest to all the neighbors round about. Thomas Flint, 29, his brother Benjamin Flint, 26, and their cousin Llewel-

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two and one-half miles away for a number of years, but sold both building and goods after his house was burned. He was a constant church attendant, acting as leader of the church choir in his younger days, and took an active interest in public affairs, serving several terms in responsible town offices.”

Of the ten children of Simon and Deborah, all but one was born in Anson, Maine, four went to California, which became their permanent home. The four were Augustus Simon Bixby, Thomas Flint Bixby, Eulalia Perham Bixby and John William Bixby.

Lucy Elizabeth Bixby, one of the ten children, was my mother’s grandmother. At sixteen she began teaching at North Anson with forty pupils, several older than she. The term was eight weeks, wages $1.50 per week. Later she taught over sixty terms of school in the towns near her home and also in Aroostook and Eastern Maine. Many times she ‘boarded ‘round’ as was then the custom, often helping with the family work in case of sickness. Miss Bixby had the natural ability and love for her chosen work − thorough, conscientious, a fine disciplinarian and especially efficient in mathematics, grammar and orthography. She was interested in music

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lyn Bixby, 28, had come back home, each with a specially made buckskin jacket carrying thirty-five hundred dollars in gold, twenty dollars to the ounce. They cashed out the gold slugs and coins at the Philadelphia mint on their way to Maine. They had accumulated the yellow metal, not digging for it, but by selling agricultural and ranching products in the mining fields. They remained in Anson about five weeks. “We talked until our vocal chords could stand the strain no longer and we were glad to start west.”

The three returned to California, as was their plan from the beginning. From Anson and Norridgewock they went to Boston, then took the week - long railroad trip to its terminus at Terra Haute, Indiana, where they bought sheep.

Continued on page 66

Coburn Mansion, Skowhegan Maine Item #102462 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Continued from page 65

From there they went by horseback and foot over rough and dusty trails all the way to the Pacific, sometimes for days without water for the livestock. Their caravan included “1,880 sheep, eleven yoke of oxen, two cows, four horses, two wagons with camping gear, four men, three dogs and themselves.” It took eight months before settling at Rancho San Justo in San Benito County.

They were among the first to bring American sheep to California.

Benjamin Flint returned to Maine to marry Caroline “Caddy” Getchell of Anson, his old hometown, and brother Thomas Flint came back to marry Mary Mitchell in Woodstock, Vermont. Llewellyn Bixby married Sarah Hathaway of Skowhegan, and after her death her sister Mary,

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daughters of Rev. George W. Hathaway. All these lived the rest of their lives in California. They were not the only relatives from Maine – Llewellyn Bixby, with the aid of cousin Frank Weston, once recounted 125 first cousins, no seconds, and hoped he had missed none.

In 1866 the three bought Rancho los Cerritos, 27,000 acres for $20,000 in gold from a Mexican citizen whose cattle had been wiped out in the disastrous drought of 1862 – 1864. Many large holdings in Southern California had to sell out. The three Mainers, with the help of Jotham Bixby and others, acquired the Rancho los Alamitos cattle range in 1883.

Jotham Bixby sold 10,000 acres of the Alamitos in 1887 to developers for what would become the city

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of Long Beach. This was before the age of diversity, for the developers routinely prohibited sale or lease of homes to “any person of African or Asiatic descent or to any person not of the white or Caucasian race.” In the 1930s the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce advertised that the “town is singularly fortunate in having such a small portion of non-English speaking races.”

The Bixbys erected Cerritos Hall, the only public building in Long Beach at that time. In 1888 it became the home of the First Congregational Church. The church was begun when Rev. George W. Hathaway came to live in California. Five of his six daughters were already in California, four having married Bixbys. It was he who preached the first sermon at this fledgling church

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of twelve members. Hathaway, from Skowhegan, had been Chaplain with the Nineteenth Maine during the Civil War, served several terms in the legislature in Augusta, and for a generation was pastor of the parish church in Skowhegan (then called Bloomfield). He lived in California the last fourteen years of his life.

Jotham and Margaret Hathaway Bixby (George W. Hathaway’s daughter) gave $25,000 toward construction of the church. The building, still in use, seats a thousand people, having mahogany furnishings, three rose windows and other stained glass. At the dedication service Mrs. Jotham Bixby said it was “designed for worship but built for service.”

My mother’s grandmother, Lucy Elizabeth Bixby, one of the ten chil-

dren of Simon and Deborah Bixby, married Orrin S. Turner, the New Vineyard chair manufacturer, at the old homestead in Anson in 1875. In the same ceremony Lucy’s younger sister Electa Weston Bixby married Charles A. Boston. Rev. Mr. Hathaway came up from Skowhegan to perform the double wedding. We still have Lucy’s taffeta wedding gown.

Lucy Bixby was thirty-eight at her marriage, Orrin a widower with two sons and two daughters, her instant family. Three of his four married but none have descendants living. Lucy was forty when she gave birth in New Vineyard to their only child Frances Rebecca Turner, and through “Frankie” came twenty direct descendants, sixteen living.

None ever lived in California, and

none bear the Bixby name. There was a California connection when Lucy in 1924 received one share of her brother Thomas Flint Bixby’s remaining Los Angeles estate of $11,600. The name Lucy, though, found among her ancestors, is carried forward in three of her descendants named Lucie.

The California Bixbys never forgot their origin in Maine, and numbers returned for visits. These everyday people of Maine, by adventure, toil, imagination, inspiration and devotion, have become, across a great continent, a blessing for children they never knew, and a pattern of faithful living for generations yet to be. ❦ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

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The Genealogy Corner|pedigree collapse

by Charles Francis

Bridge Street, Skowhegan Maine Item #103176 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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over distances of hundreds of miles.

The term “erratic” is commonly used to refer to erratic blocks, which Sir Archibald Geikie describes in his “Textbook of Geology” as: “large masses of rock, often as big as a house, which have been transported by glacier-ice, and have been lodged in prominent positions in the glacier valleys or have been scattered over hills and plains.”

Erratics can range in size from small pebbles to massive boulders, and are always found in areas that were once consumed by glacial ice. The typical characteristic is that they look completely out of place with their surroundings.

One of the largest known examples in the northern hemisphere is the appropriately named Big Rock in Alberta, Canada weighing in at 16,500 tons. Other great examples are Doane Rock, the largest exposed boulder in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Madison Boulder,

ust outside the town of Phillips in Western Maine, there is a path that extends west from a trailhead on Wheeler Hill Road for approximately 1/3 of a mile. As you proceed down this path enjoying everything that nature has to offer, your eyes are suddenly drawn to a large grey boulder that seems to appear out of nowhere. Completely out of place with the surrounding environment, this monstrosity suddenly reminds us of nature’s incredible force as we stare at what Dennis Atkinson, president of the Phillips Historical Society, says is “supposedly the biggest boulder… in the eastern United States.”

This boulder is also known as Daggett Rock, Maine’s largest glacial erratic.

A glacial erratic is a fragment of rock that differs from the type of rock native to the area in which it sits. Carried by glacial ice, the journeys are sometimes ❦ Other businesses from this area are featured in the color section.

a 5,000 ton glacial erratic the size of a small house in Madison, New Hampshire. Relatively smaller ones are spread across portions of Central Park, New York, where they sit unnoticed by the general public. But the travels of these boulders are not limited to the North.

Charles Darwin published extensively on geologic phenomena, including the distribution of erratic boulders. In his accounts written during the voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle, Darwin observed “a number of large erratic boulders of notable size south of the Strait of Magellan, Tierra del Fuego,” and attributed them to ice rafting from Antarctica.

Recent research suggests that they were more likely the result of glacial ice flows that carried the boulders to their current locations, according to a G.S.A. Today report in December, 2009.

According to the Maine Geological Survey, Daggett Rock is estimated Continued on page 70

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Continued from page 69 as “approximately 8,000 tons, 80 feet long, 30 feet wide and 25 feet high.”

Sometimes referred to as Daggett’s Rock, it has been a popular tourist attraction since the 1880s, and has recently become a popular point for Bouldering, which is a style of rock climbing where large natural boulders are climbed without a rope and limited to very short climbs. New England Bouldering says, “Daggett offers some truly beautiful features to climb. Prominent cracks, slabs, and faces are all available, and most will take you over 20 feet off the ground.”

To many visitors, Daggett Rock resembles a huge granite egg that has broken into three pieces. An intriguing legend exists regarding how the boulder was split into these pieces. About two hundred years ago a woodsman named Daggett found the rock during a violent thunderstorm. Daggett, inebriated and upset by the storm, climbed onto the rock. Cursing and flailing his arms defi-

antly toward the sky, he took the Lord’s name in vain and screamed that he could not be struck down. Immediately, a gigantic lightning bolt struck Daggett, instantly killed him and cracked the rock into the three fragments that we know of today. The reality is far less dramatic, with the rock most likely splitting apart while being deposited by the massive glacier that put it there long ago.

No matter what story you believe, the power of the original glacier that transported the boulder must be appreciated.

The force of nature is even more incredible after determining the source of the boulder. Geologists identify erratics by studying the rocks surrounding the position of the erratic and the composition of the erratic itself. The Daggett boulder is made of granite with some feldspar crystals more than one inch long. According to Mary Newall and David Gibson of the University of Maine at Farmington, the granite may be derived “from the Redington pluton 20 kilometers to the northwest in the Saddleback Mountain

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area, and the Lexington Pluton 60 kilometers to the north.” A pluton in geology is a body of igneous rock, called a plutonic rock, which is formed beneath the surface of the Earth by the slow cooling and hardening of magma. “The combinations of petrographic and geochemical similarities are consistent with the striation data, indicating that Daggett’s rock originated 20 kilometers to the WNW in the Saddleback Mountain range,” says Newall.

Glacial erratics have become a significant aid in the study of Earth’s past.

Since they are transported by glaciers, they are one of many indicators which mark the path of prehistoric glacier movements. Their origin helps scientists focus not only on the source of the rock but also on the confirmation of the former ice flow routes. But for us non-scientists, Daggett Rock reminds us of Nature’s slow and delicate hand.

Unlike an artist who works with steel and clay, the slow shifting Earth creates these works of art only by time.

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Harry Eastman And The Tale of the Lost Dauphin strong native created famous hoax

by Charles Francis e love stories of princes tales have almost as much appeal as and princesses, especial- the true ones. Is it perhaps because ly if either is in dire peril. we all have a deep down secret that Did Anastasia survive the massacre our parents aren’t really our parents, that took the Czar of All the Russias that we are of royal blood, illicitly and his family? All evidence to the taken from our golden cradles at contrary, there are still those who birth? There are psychologists who still believe she did. Did King John present this less-than-unconscious actually have his nephew assassinat- belief as being an all-too common ed so that he could assume the throne syndrome.

Right in line with the above sceof England at the death of his brother Richard? Why is Diana, the Princess narios is the story of the Lost Dauof Wales, more popular today than phin. The Lost Dauphin was said to be the child of Louis XVI and Marie when she was alive?

Then there are tales of fiction- Antoinette. What could possibly be al princes and princesses. Mark more romantic? That the child of the Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper French King and Queen who lost comes to mind here. So does The their heads during the French RevPrincess and the Pea. These fictional olution survived to grow to adult-

W

hood and quite possibly in America, the land of the free.

Back in its July issue of 1849 The United States Magazine and Democratic Review carried a story that the heir to the throne of France, the Dauphin, was alive and well and living in Wisconsin. Less than four years later, in February of 1853, Putnam’s Magazine published a similar story.

It was called “Have We a Bourbon Among Us?” The author was a minister, a man of the cloth named J. H. Hanson. Who could doubt the word of a man of God? The Dauphin was said to be a man named Eleazer Williams. In fact, Williams asserted to the truth

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Continued from page 71

of the tale himself, that he was Louis-Charles, Prince Royal of France.

Was there the least grain of truth to the claim? Louis-Charles’ conventional death date is given as 1795.

Yet, 200 and more years later there were those who gave credence to the claims of Eleazer Williams.

The tale of the Lost Dauphin has a Maine twist. That twist leads to the town of Strong and to two and possibly three of the sons of Samuel and Jane Eastman. In fact, Harry Eastman, one of the couple’s sons, admitted to having more than a bit of insider information regarding the tale of the Lost Dauphin. Two of Harry’s brothers, Ben and William, knew more than the general populace did about the tale, too.

The story of Eleazer Williams and the Lost Dauphin would seem to be

centered in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Harry Eastman was a lawyer. He made his home in Green Bay after heading west from Strong. He headed west with his brother Ben. Ben moved a bit further on from Green Bay, to the town of Platteville, where he, too, practiced law. As for the third brother, William Eastman established himself in Boston. He, like, his brothers, practiced law. In addition, he was a land speculator with interests in Wisconsin.

Both Harry and William Eastman represented Amos Lawrence on a number of occasions. Lawrence was as rich as Croesus, a wheeler-dealer who eventually used his fortune to found Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. At one point Eleazer Williams accused Amos Lawrence of defrauding him of 5000 acres. Whatever the truth to

this, Harry Eastman served as Lawrence’s land agent for the acreage.

The Eastman brothers were three of twelve children. Samuel Eastman, the father, was well connected, as was his father Benjamin, one of the early settlers of Strong. The Eastmans numbered among their close acquaintances Hannibal Hamlin and James G. Blaine. The brothers that are the subject of this piece left Strong as young men in the 1830s. Brothers Ben and Harry arrived in Wisconsin in 1840. William had established himself in Boston a few years before that.

Harry Eastman is the key figure in the story of the Lost Dauphin. He made it up! Late in life, he admitted to the fact before the Wisconsin Historical Society. Harry Eastman said he made up the story in 1847.

Consider that date in relation to the

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kept quiet about the tale of the Lost Dauphin for so long. After all, who would vote for a teller of tall tales?

So how do the above facts relate to Eleazer Williams? Well, it seems that Harry Eastman gave his story about the Lost Dauphin to Williams.

Williams was rather at loose ends after Amos Lawrence took over his 5000 acres. So much so, in fact, that he decided to act out the tale with himself in the key role. There is a further twist to this story.

In 1841 the son of Louis Phillip, the King of France, visited Wisconsin. This was Prince de Joinville.

The Prince was a Bourbon. It seems that at this time Eleazer Williams ‘discovered’ he bore a conspicuous resemblance to the Prince.

Eleazer Williams died in 1858.

The tale of the Lost Dauphin did not die with him, though. Nor did the

publication dates in the national magazines mentioned above. Then consider the durability of the tale down to the present day. The whole thing is a good example of how urban legends come to be.

Now who exactly was Harry Eastman and how could he have remained quiet about the tale of the Lost Dauphin as long as he did? Harry Eastman had political ambitions. Ben Eastman did, too.

In fact, Ben got himself elected to Congress twice. Harry ran for the Wisconsin State Senate and lost. In 1856 he got himself elected Mayor of Green Bay. When the Civil War came along Harry was Lt. Colonel of the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry. After the war he continued to try for elected office. He was unsuccessful, though. The fact that he had political aspirations just may explain why he

tale die with Harry Eastman’s admission that he was its creator.

In 1937 MGM produced a feature on Williams called The King Without a Crown. It premiered in Green Bay. In 2000 attempts were made to determine if Louis-Charles, son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, actually died in 1795. DNA samples of his purported remains and those of the Bourbon family were analyzed and compared. Results were inconclusive. And there the tale rests.

There is an addendum, however.

Wisconsin has a Lost Dauphin State Park. It is not all that far from where Harry Eastman used to hunt and fish and where Eleazer Williams once lived. One can but wonder if this was where the two walked and talked when the story of the Lost Dauphin became an urban legend.

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The Historic Monson Railroad The little railroad that could (1882-1943)

by James Nalley

I

Kingfield Post Office, Kingfield Maine Item #101162 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

n the second half of the 19th century, the underlying slate in the town of Monson, Maine, included an incredibly low mineral content that was best suited for a wide range of products that included everything from bathtubs and chalkboards to headstones and electric switchboards. Due to the amount of revenue that could be created from this versatile material, quarrying began in the 1860s and finishing operations occurred in the 1870s.

Unfortunately, the slate was also incredibly heavy and it was difficult to transport, especially during the varying weather conditions that Maine was normally used to. So in order to avoid the slush and mud of the roads, the two-foot, narrow-gauge Monson and Athens Railroad Company was established on Nov. 1, 1882. This six-mile line was never modernized and even until its end in 1943, it still utilized outdated stub switches and link-and-pin couplers that made it a unique and vital addition to the burgeoning slate business.

Known as the “2-by-6,” due to the track’s two-foot width, and six-

mile length, it primarily served the number of slate mines and transported the quarried mineral to the finishing factories in Monson. Its beginning was rather simple. After the Bangor and Piscataquis Railroad actually bypassed the town of Monson by just six miles, the Monson Railroad was built to fill this gap and the 30-pound rails were set in the summer of 1883. According to the book, “The Kennebec Central and Monson Railroads,” by Peter Barney:

Initial equipment consisted of two wood-burning locomotives (from Hinkley Locomotives), two boxcars, 14 flat cars, and a combination from the Laconia Car Company.

The main line was promptly extended

five-percent grade to the Monson Slate Company approximately one mile beyond the Monson village depot. A car shed for the combination and a two-stall engine house were built near the depot with a passing siding and a turntable.

This turntable, although most convenient for standard-gauge railroads, proved to be less appreciated

by Monson’s train crews. As stated in the book “Two Feet to the Quarries: The Monson Railroad” by Robert Jones, “The Monson train crews found it much more convenient to actually run the locomotive in reverse for six miles than to wrestle it around on the turntables.”

By the mid-1880s, the Monson line thrived and it included four Continued on page 76

General View of Part of Maynard’s Camps, Rockwood Maine Item #102228 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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Continued from page 75

scheduled roundtrips per day that met the standard-gauge trains and transferred its slate cargo. In 1885 the name “Athens” was dropped from the title, and according to “The Monson Railroad” by Roger Whitney, the railroad requested that “legislative authorization to extend the main line 16 miles south from Monson Junction for connection with the standard-gauge Sebasticook and Moosehead Railroad.” Unfortunately, even after the approval was granted, funding was never provided and things remained status quo.

It was not until 1904, after the Bangor and Arrostook Railroad noticed the additional traffic to the Monson area that a new freight transfer siding was built at Monson Junction.

Meanwhile, the line continued to

thrive and some changes were made that included the conversion of both locomotives to burn coal (instead of wood), and the addition of a coal transfer shed and wooden shed used to store the coal itself.

By 1910, the Monson Slate Company acquired the railroad and an additional two miles of track were built to connect the junction with Eighteen Quarry and Forest Quarry at Monson Pond. In addition, a combination car also carried paying passengers even though it competed against automobile service based in Monson at the same time. Meanwhile, both of the locomotives were showing signs of overuse and age.

According to Robert Jones, “The Hinkley locomotives had serious boiler leaks, cracked cylinders, and

broken frames, but they soldiered along until a new Vulcan locomotive arrived on Feb. 20, 1913…The railroad (eventually) purchased a couple of hand car trailers that could carry broken slate scraps from the quarries for use as ballast along the line. Within a few years, the Monson Railroad became the only railroad in Maine with a completely rock-ballasted main line.” Unfortunately, after the new locomotive’s arrival, Locomotive #2 never ran again, #1 was rarely used, and they both slowly became a thing of the past.

After regulations were established by the United States Railroad Administration in 1917, features of the Monson Railroad failed to meet the federal safety standards. But ap-

parently, these standards were not checked and the railroad continued using features such as link-and-pin couplers for another two decades.

To make matters worse in regard to safety, a series of small derailments had broken the headlights on the locomotives and therefore they ran on the lines without any. In 1918, another Vulcan locomotive was purchased, which put an official end to the Hinkley Locomotive #1. Afterwards, Locomotive #2 was basically stripped for its spare parts but kept functional for use as a snowplow.

On Nov. 3, 1919, the Monson engine house caught fire and burned to the ground. Inside of it were Vulcan Locomotives #3 and #4, and the Hinkley Locomotive #1, which was completely destroyed. By the fol-

lowing summer, both locomotives were repaired and running. But this would be the beginning of the end for this “little railroad that could.”

By 1922, service was reduced by half and the Monson Pond quarry extension was abandoned. Just 10 years later, the track crew was laid off and Locomotive #3 was the only operable engine. By November 1943, passenger service had been completely discontinued and the Monson Slate Company had utilized a heavy-duty truck for transport. The railroad was completely dismantled and the former engine house had simply become the garage for the truck.

Strangely enough, in 1946, Locomotives #3 and #4 were discovered rusting away in an equipment yard

in Rochester, New York. The two steam engines were then shipped back for restoration and tourist service at the historic Edaville Railroad in South Carver, Massachusetts. Today, the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum located in Portland, Maine, contains a large collection of rolling stock from many of Maine’s former two-foot gauge railroads.

Among its collection are Locomotives #3 and #4 from the Monson Railroad. The museum is located at 58 Fore Street and during its hours of operation, it provides train rides on the hour.

Continued on page 78

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Continued from page 77 Business

Monson Railroad Locomotive #4 The Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Co. & Museum host an annual Steam Weekend. The event features trains pulled by historic Monson Railroad Locomotive #4 which was built in 1918. The weekend event allows visitors to talk with the train crew about the history and operation of equipment, and offer an up-close look at a historic steam locomotive. The museum features train-themed activities for children throughout the day.

For a more hands-on experience, visitors can reserve a spot in the guest engineer program which offers one-on-one training and a ride in the cab during select dates throughout the season.

Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Company & Museum • 58 Fore Street • Portland, ME 04101 ❦ Other businesses (207)828-0814 • info@mainenarrowgauge.org • www.mainenarrowgauge.org from this area are featured in the color section.

Photo courtesy www.portlandmaine.com/event/steam-weekend

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A.E. Hodson 64 A&M Sanitation Services 36 A&W Paving and Excavating 34 ABT Plumbing, Heating & Cooling 41 AE Robinson 55 All of Creation 43 Alvin Yates Logging Contractor 35 Ambiance Day Spa 17 Andrew Ames Logging 4 Appalacian Inn Trailside / Tom’s Outdoor Adventures 77 Archie’s, Inc. 22 Arkay Pizza 39 At Home Electric 58 Aura Salon & Spa 56 B.C. Heating 16 B&C Collision Center 31 Barbara’s Antiques & Collectibles 69 Bear Brook Marina Camps & Campground 26 Beer Bottle Bob’s Redemption Center 63 Belgrade Performance & Repairs 58 Bellavance Construction Co., Inc. 58 Benchmark Appraisal 19 Beth’s Kitchen Café 10 Betty’s Laundry 16 Blanchet Builders, LLC 67 Bob’s Cash Fuel 68 Bolster Monumental Works 16 Bolster’s Decorating 34 Boomers Restaurant 19 Boy Locksmith 3 BRC Carpentry, Inc. 15 Bridgton Highlands 11 Buddies Meats & Groceries 59 Buy The Fire 33 C. Caprara 13 C. Haggan Jr. Excavation, LLC 73 Campfire Grille 27 Cardinal Printing Company, Inc. 10 Care & Comfort 26 Carrabassett Real Estate 51 Center Theatre 78 Central Maine Community College 3 Central Maine Sandblasting 66 Chloe’s Collections 54 Chris’ Electric 33 Cobb’s Pierce Pond Camps 48 Coldwell Banker/Thomas Agency 13 Collins Electric 76 Collins Enterprises 61 Colonial Valley Motel 40 Computer Improvements 69 County Seat Realty 59 Crystal Spring Farm 15 Cushing Construction 32 D.A. Wilson & Co. 35 D.B. Industries 7 D.F. Hayes Painting 78 D.H. Pinnette 3 D.R. Salisbury Foundations 51 DAC Distributors, Inc. 66 Daisy Mountain Inn 26 Dave’s Sauna 34 Debra Achramowicz CPA 43 Decato Builders 47 Depot Laundry 40 Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers 60 Doore Energy, Inc. 54 Douglas Bennett & Son 36 Douin’s Market 41 Dunkin Donuts 68 Dunn & Pakulski 67 Dyer Septic Service 29 E.J. Carrier, Inc. 73 E.W. Moore & Son Pharmacy 73 E&L Logging & Excavation 36 East Road Electric 53 Edmunds Market 71

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Ellis Pond Variety & Cabins 72 Evergreen Self Storage 65 Family Pet Connection & Grooming 68 Farmington Fair 59 Farmington Farmers Union 59 Farmington Save-A-Lot 61 Farmington Travel 60 Fast Eddies 31 Fayette Country Store 63 Finish Line Construction 47 Firefly Boutique 29 Fireside Inn & Suites 43 Five Fields Farm 12 Flagstaff Area Business Association 50 Flagstaff Fuel / J.L. Brochu 72 Flint Construction 77 Floormaster North 45 Franklin Savings Bank 9 Franklin-Somerset FCU 6 Fraternal Order of Eagles 24 Fryeburg Fair 30 Fryeburg Glass 10 G3 Firearms 12 Gibson’s Orchard 35 Glen Luce Logging, Inc 31 Goin Postal 18 Graf Mechanical 69 Group Adams Propane Services 56 Gymnastics Plus 33 Hairbuilders 42 Hall Farms Maple Products 20 Hammond Lumber Co. 27 Hanson Landworks 77 Harris Drug Store 53 Harris Real Estate 40 Harvest Gold Gallery 26 Healthreach 5 Hebron Gallery 53 Highland Lake Resort 28 Hight Chevrolet Pontiac 62 Hillside Homes, LLC 37 Hodgdon Well Drilling, Inc. 8 Holly & Doug’s Country Diner 47 Houle’s 43 Houston-Brooks Auctioneers 6 Howie’s Welding & Fabrication 57 Hungry Hollow Country Store 4 Hydraulic Hose & Assembly 9 Insulation Solutions 44 J. White Gunsmithing 76 J.T. Reid’s Gun Shop 4 JT’s Finest Kind Saw 70 Jackman Auto Parts 75 Jackman Power Sports 52 Jake’s Garage 24 James A. Wrigley Well Drilling 7 Jason Stevens Excavation 58 Java Joe’s/Carrabasset Coffee 50 Jay’s Towing 76 JD’s Home Improvements 38 Jean Castonguay Excavating 37 Jean’s Moosehead Rentals 52 Jimmy’s Market 73 Johnny Castonguay Logging 38 Johnson Foundations 3 Jordan Lumber Co. 72 JT’s Finest Kind Saw 70 Judy’s Variety 24 Katie Q. Convenience, LLC 68 Kelly Jordan Excavation 77 Ken & Thom’s Floor Covering, Inc. 19 Kitchen Solutions 6 KMD Auto Repair 69 KW Blackwell 69 Kyes Motel 67 L.E. Taylor & Sons 8 L.N. Violette Co., Inc. 65 Ladd Logging 39 Laney’s Pit Stop 66

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Larsen’s Electric 24 Lavallee’s Garage 73 Law Office of Brian D. Condon, Jr. ESQ 31 Lawrence Murch, O.D. 32 Leland’s Masonry 32 Long Pond Camps 75 Lovewell Logging 37 Luce’s Maine Grown Meats 47 Maine Drywall Systems 50 Maine Guide Snowshoes/ Pine Grove Lodge 51 Maine Historical Society 5 Maine Lakes Brew Fest 29 Maine Mountain Soap & Candle, Inc. 76 Maine Veterans’ Homes 34 Mainely Puppies 33 Major’s Heating Services 15 Mama Bear’s Den 52 Martin’s Service & Sales 48 Maynard’s In Maine 53 McAllister Accounting & Tax Services 57 Memco Supply 57 Merle Lloyd & Sons 70 Mexico Chicken Coop 22 Mike Wainer Plumbing & Heating 39 Mineral Collector 35 Moonshadow Farm 45 Moosehead Rubbish & Recycling 76 Moosehead Sled Repair & Rental, LLC 53 Moosehead Trail Home & Hearth 54 Moose River Campground & Cabins 52 Morrell’s Hardware 76 Morrison Motors, Inc. 21 Morrow’s Garage 44 Morse Concrete Foundations & Floors 10 Mosher’s Seafood 40 Motor Supply Co. 4 Mount Blue Motel 39 Naples Packing Co., Inc. 23 Newman Self Storage 56 Nicky’s Hair Salon 30 North Country Power Sports 42 Northeast Gems 30 Northeast Laboratory Services 5 Northern Mountains Real Estate 75 Northwoods Builders 71 Oquossoc Marine 49 Otis Federal Credit Union 57 Oxford Federal Credit Union 27 P&A Mechanics 33 Packard Appraisal, Inc. 27 Parker’s Small Engine Repair 44 Pat’s Pizza 20 Penobscot Marine Museum 25 Peppers Garden & Grill 13 Personal Touch Home Care, Inc. 6 Pete’s Hardware 49 Pete’s Roast Beef 13 Phil Carter’s Garage 8 Pine Tree Home Health Care 5 Pine Tree Orthopedic Lab 38 Pins & Needles 40 Polly’s Variety 16 Poor Bob’s U-Store-It 42 Poulin-Turner Union Hall 69 Prime Financial 44 Puiia Lumber Co. 22 Quickstream Construction 10 R.E. Lowell Lumber, Inc. 32 R.F. Automotive Repair 66 Ralph Libby Chain Saws 15 Randy’s Full Service Auto Repair Center 46 Rangeley Auto Supply 49 Rangeley Equipment Repair 71 Rapid Ralph & Son Concrete 35 RDM Electric 60 Re-Books 8 Record Building Supply, Inc. 15

Business

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Red Maple Inn 54 Redington-Fairview General Hospital 46 Rick’s Garage 47 Riggs Construction Inc. 36 Rising Sun Café and Bakery 17 River Valley Grill 22 Riverside Kwik Stop 57 Riverside Realty 22 Robert W. Libby & Sons, Inc. 5 Roland H. Tyler 21 Ron’s Market 60 Rooster’s Roadhouse 20 Rowe Auto Body 48 Rufus Porter Museum 28 Rumford Hospital 24 Russakoff Jewelers 45 Russell’s Lakeside Rentals 71 S.S. Milton 35 Sackett & Brake Survey, Inc. 68 Sandy River Cash Fuel 71 Sandy River Farms 40 Scotty’s Lobster Pound / Tall Tales Tavern 49 Senior Caregiver Anne Lane 44 Shamrock Stoneworks 32 Shelly’s Hometown Market 42 Shiretown Insurance Agency 41 Skoolhouse Variety 37 Skowhegan Electric Motor Inc. 47 Smitty’s Tree Work 37 Solon Corner Market 51 Solon Superette 51 Sonny’s Museum Back Cover Spillover Motel 50 Stetson’s Auto Service 16 Steve Conley Builders 66 Stevens Forest Products 58 Stone Ridge Stables 77 Strong Hardware & Building Supply 70 Sun Auto & Salvage 70 Sunrise Ridge Guide Services & Sporting Camps 52 Tall Pines Trucking 36 Taste of Eden Vegan Café 18 Taylor’s Drug Store 47 The Almost New Boutique 63 The Bankery & Skowhegan Flueriste 65 The Berry Patch Greenhouse 78 The Canaan Motel 45 The Colour Boutique 17 The Irregular 50 The Kel-Mat Cafe 46 The Lost Gull 28 The Poland Corporation 23 The Roost 41 The Smilin Moose 34 The Solon Hotel 72 The Sterling Inn 52 Tindall’s Country Store 48 Town & Lake Motel & Cottages 48 Town of Mexico 22 Tranten’s Family Market 72 Tri-Town Towing & Recovery 64 Village Market 64 Webster’s Mini Excavation 56 Western Auto 56 Western Maine Pharmacy, Inc. 50 Wilson Excavating, Inc. 19 Wingers Electric 16 Winslow Aluminum 65 Wood-Mizer of Maine 57 Woodlawn Rehab & Nursing Center 46 Wood’s Lawn Company 33 York’s Market 70

Charlamaene’s Bar