Western Maine 2015

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Volume 24 | Issue 4 | 2015

Maine’s History Magazine

15,000 Circulation

Western Maine

Folk Foods Of The Western Mountains A Maine tradition

A.B. Stickney

The railroad tycoon from Wilton

The 1927 Lewiston Fair Harness racing action was fast and furious

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Western Maine

Inside This Edition

2 3

It Makes No Never Mind James Nalley

4

Folk Foods Of The Western Mountains A Maine tradition Charles Francis

8

The Genealogy Corner The inheritance of the gifted Charles Francis

Maine’s History Magazine

Western Maine

11 Androscoggin Loggin’ Timber’s wild ride down the river

Jeffrey Bradley

Publisher & Editor

15 The Maine Central’s Railway Czar Leeds native Dana Douglass

Charles Francis

Layout & Design

20 The Cochranite Delusion Religious hydrophobia in the Saco Valley

Charles Francis 27 The 1927 Lewiston Fair Harness racing action was fast and furious

Brian Swartz 30 The 1918 Spanish Flu An epidemic in southern and western Maine

James Nalley 37 Windham’s Chief Polin

The death of a legend

Charles Francis 41 Mayor G. Earl Taylor The biggest little city in Maine and its mayor Rosanne M. Peeling 45 South Paris Beavers Hide and seek frustrated a Maine game warden

Brian Swartz 48 T he Androscoggin Through a geologist’s eyes

Charles Francis 54 The Toughest Mile The Appalachian Trail’s Mahoosuc Notch

Charles Francis 58 Of Fiddleheads And Ferns A Maine gardener’s treasure Charles Francis 64 Summers On A Maine Pond Childhood memories never forgotten

Karen Bessey Pease 68 A Day At The Devonian Beach The first Mainers were multi-leggeds

Jeffrey Bradley 72 The Sidney Algernon Farrar Mystery

A matter of musical roots

Charles Francis 76 The Minister’s Tale

Western Maine’s Sylvester Strickland

Charles Francis 82 A.B. Stickney

The railroad tycoon from Wilton

Charles Francis 85 Edmund Muskie

The man who would be president

Charles Francis 88 James Ezekiel Porter

Strong native met his demise at the Battle of Little Bighorn

Mike Bell 92 The History Trail Guide Of The Moose River Valley

Annie Nielsen (Jackman-Moose River Region Chamber of Commerce) 95 Skowhegan’s Louise Helen Coburn

College student helped found a national sorority

Brian Swartz

Jim Burch

Liana Merdan

Advertising & Sales Manager Tim Maxfield

Advertising & Sales Dennis Burch Ryan Fish Chris Girouard Tim Maxfield Zackary Rouda

Office Manager Liana Merdan

Field Representative George Tatro

Contributing Writers

Mike Bell Jeffrey Bradley Charles Francis | fundy67@yahoo.ca James Nalley Annie Nielsen Karen Bessey Pease Rosanne M. Peeling Brian Swartz Published Annually by CreMark, Inc. 10 Exchange Street, Suite 208 Portland, Maine 04101 Ph (207) 874-7720 info@discovermainemagazine.com www.discovermainemagazine.com Discover Maine Magazine is distributed to town offices, chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations, barber shops, beauty salons, newsstands, grocery and convenience stores, hardware stores, lumber companies, motels, restaurants and other locations throughout this part of Maine.

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SUBSCRIPTION FORM ON PAGE 97

Front Cover Photo: The Bridgton News building ca. 1950. Item #5975 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society All photos in Discover Maine’s Western Maine edition show Maine as it used to be, and many are from local citizens who love this part of Maine.

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

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

It Makes No Never Mind

by James Nalley

I

n regard to the general public and their travels, Maine’s scenic Atlantic coastline seems to steal the limelight from other equally attractive regions of the state. One such region is Western Maine, which includes hundreds of beautiful lakes (ranging from watering holes to the 45-square-mile Sebago Lake) and many of the state’s highest mountains (such as 4,249-foot Sugarloaf Mountain and 4,180foot Old Speck Mountain). In regard to mountains, Mahoosuc Range straddles the border between Maine and neighboring New Hampshire and it is the so-called “light at the end of the tunnel” for diehard trekkers nearing the completion of the entire 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail (AT).

However, as if nature decided to have her last laugh, she presents one of the most difficult obstacles on the entire trail. Known as Mahoosuc Notch, but more affectionately called “The Killer Mile” by AT-thru hikers, this one-mile, glacier-carved stretch includes obstacles such as housesized boulders (that must be climbed under or over), 10-foot drops, and portions where backpacks must be removed to

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slide through the cracks. This section has caused even the highly experienced hikers to literally slow down to a crawl. To make it even worse, tree roots snake in and out of the crevices and even during the hottest days, the temperatures are fairly cold with pockets of snow and ice lurking in the shadows. According to a recent hiker, “the Notch is also a graveyard of Nalgene bottles, trekking poles, and anything else that wasn’t securely attached to or stashed inside one’s pack. It has also been said that coming out of the Notch with your pack still on your back is a sign of honor.” And to think that hiking the trail from south to north is the presumably easier route.

Well, after reading this, if I have piqued your curiosity, then the eastern trailhead is in Grafton Notch State Park, where the AT crosses Maine Highway 26. If not, you will at least know what an AT-hiker is talking about, if you ever happen to have a conversation with one. In the meantime, let me close this edition with the following jest: Two men were hiking the Appalachian Trail and they came upon a large, deep hole. One man picked up a rock and tossed

it into the hole and stood there listening for the rock to hit bottom. There was no sound. He turned to his friend and said, “That’s one deep hole. Let’s throw a bigger rock in there and listen for it to hit bottom.” The men found a larger rock and they picked it up and lugged it into the hole. They listened for some time and never heard a sound. Again, they agreed that it must have been one deep hole and they should throw something even larger into it. One man spotted a railroad tie nearby.

They picked up the tie and after grunting and groaning, they tossed it into the hole.

There was still no sound. But all of a sudden, a goat came running out of the woods, flew past the men, and fell straight into the hole. The men were amazed. Soon after, an old farmer came out of the woods and asked the men if they had seen a goat. One man told the farmer, “I just saw this goat fly out of the woods and fall into this large hole! Was THAT your goat?” The farmer replied, “Naw, it couldn’t have been my goat. My goat was chained to a railroad tie!”

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Folk Foods Of The Western Mountains A Maine Tradition

by Charles Francis

D

id you ever have Maple Raisin Bread? If your roots go back a few generations in the mountains of western Maine, there is a chance you may have. Maple Raisin Bread seems to spring naturally from this region of the state, where every autumn, gold and red maples grace hillsides. Of course, you must have maple syrup to make Maple Raisin Bread, and maple syrup is a Maine tradition, especially a western Maine tradition.

You can’t find real Maple Raisin Bread on store shelves. You can make it, though. You make it just the same way you make any loaf of bread, except that you add ¼ cup maple syrup, ½ cup raisins and a teaspoon of cinnamon to

the maple syrup. The raisins are mixed in with the dough. Then the cinnamon and maple syrup mix are sprinkled on just before the dough is placed in the baking pan.

Maple Raisin Bread is an example of a Folk Food. Folk Foods are recipes that are passed on from one generation to the next by oral tradition. Ethnocuisine and ethnogastronomy are the more technical terms for Folk Foods. Cultural anthropologists use the highfalutin’ designations. Our great grandmothers made Maple Raisin Bread and the like to mark the passage of the seasons or simply as special treats.

Western Maine is rich in Folk Foods.

Part of the reason for this is that there

are a number of distinct and vital folk traditions here. Another reason is that there a number of seasonal crops that in years past lent themselves to the creation of special dishes. Take, for example, venison and porcupine.

A few generations ago people living in the western mountains of the state looked upon venison and porcupine as dietary staples. As time passed, both came to be regarded as food of the poor. Today, however, venison is regarded as a delicacy associated with the fall hunting season, while porcupine is little more than road kill fit for crows.

Did you ever go to a church “ham and scallop” supper? Some might think this means a choice between meat and

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com seafood. In reality, it means the main dish is ham and scalloped potatoes.

This particular church supper was one that marked the harvesting of the first potatoes.

Once upon a time most farms had goats. This meant goat’s milk and cheese made from goat’s milk. The French who settled the western mountains call cheese made from goat’s milk chevre cheese. Today some upscale Maine restaurants serve a special salad every spring made with chevre cheese and garnished with fiddleheads. The restaurants, of course, add all sorts of extras. The basic combination isn’t anything new, though. Fiddlehead gathering has been going on as long as there have been people living where the ferny delicacies can be found each spring. It was the fact that some French settled in rural western Maine that the two, when combined, became a western mountain Folk Food.

The names of certain foods can provide a clue to the ethnic group that originated them. Poule is French.

When the French first came to western Maine from Quebec they used poule to designate a young hen. (Today it usually means any chicken.) A young hen or poule was seldom used for the pot because it was too valuable for laying eggs. Old hens beyond egg-laying days were the ones eaten. Poule or tender young hens were used only for special occasions.

There can also be differences for a particular food name within the same cultural group or among people living in the same region. Dumplings are a good example of this. For most, dumplings are pastry made from dough.

The French word for dumpling is poutin. Poutin, however, can be used for fresh curds, gravy and even fried potatoes. Then there are potato dumplings.

Moreover, dumplings are used in an-

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(continued from page 5) other traditional dish associated with a particular season, “grunt.” “Grunt” is a dish made with poached dumplings and smothered in blueberry sauce. “Grunt” was the dish that marked the days of high summer.

Candlemas Day is an old tradition that has pretty much been replaced by Groundhog Day. Long before Americans looked to that famous Pennsylvania groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, at the beginning of February as a harbinger of future weather patterns, they looked to the skies. An old rhyme goes If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, winter will have another flight, If Candlemas Day be cloud and rain, winter will not come again.

Candlemas Day had its traditional breakfast of pancakes. The French call them galette des roi. If you eat pancakes on Groundhog Day as a family tradition, you hearken back to Candlemas Day tradition. The olden day traditions, however, took a variety of forms.

One had it that each person had to flip their own pancakes. Failure to do so meant bad luck. Another had to do with the cook putting a token or charm in the batter. Whoever got the token would have good luck. The latter tradition relates to putting a coin in birthday cake batter. The person who gets the coin is destined for good luck.

Another old baking tradition has it that the best cakes are made by a pregnant woman. She had to be sure, however, not to throw her egg shells in the fire before putting the cake in the oven.

If she did it surely would not rise. This tradition goes back to the days of the wood stove, something every woman in the western mountains once used.

The remnants of the tradition still exist sans the caveat of putting the egg shells in the fire.

Folk Foods have an important function. Besides being good eating, so long as they are shared, they help keep the past alive.

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The Genealogy Corner

by Charles Francis

The inheritance of the gifted

M

ore and more people are becoming interested in family history (as opposed to genealogy, which usually means the simple construction of a family tree) for social reasons. They want to know whether they can trace back to someone famous.

Once they have determined that they do in fact have someone who accomplished something unique or who possessed unique abilities, they begin looking at themselves or their children to find evidence of the same characteristics. An ancestor was a writer or an athlete or a musician; therefore do I or my children have similar attributes, meaning we or they have the same potential to excel?

We all know family resemblance

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can be inherited — facial features for example. In like manner, we know that certain physical behaviors can be passed on, a predisposition to favor one hand over the other, such as left-handedness. Because of this, we are beginning to pay more attention to the things that occur in our families and what they mean to particular family members.

Science is now telling us that there are certain so-called normal common traits that can be inherited, that are passed on through genes. Common, as used here, means as frequently as one in 500 births. Normal relates to traits ranging from hair color to baldness and the like. Science also says the inheritance of these physical traits is com-

plex. It is just beginning to be studied and therefore understood. These same statements hold true, if not more so, for what are most often referred to as talents — gifts.

We can all come up with the names of famous relatives who have made it in the arts. For example, there are Rosemary Clooney and George Clooney.

They are aunt and nephew. Both have made it in the entertainment industry. Is there a gene for this? Science has yet to say. However, George Clooney has said he is totally lacking in musical talent and the gifts that go along with making one an accomplished musician. We can also name famous father and son athletes and siblings. In baseball, Ken

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr. and the Brett brothers, George and Ken, come to mind.

Science is now indicating there is a genetic predisposition for certain talents or gifts that relate to success in such areas as music and athletics. There are caveats attached to the suggestion, however.

Environmental influence is one, and another is the fact that the research involved is in its earliest beginnings. Sidney Farrar of South Paris serves as a case in point.

Sidney Farrar was born in South Paris in 1859. He was an accomplished musician. He sang and was a soloist with the 10th Maine Regiment Band.

He played major league baseball for Philadelphia’s National League team.

In the latter capacity, Farrar had, as they say, “all the tools.” Sidney Farrar was also the father of opera diva Geraldine Farrar. She was an incredible talent who sang with the likes of Enrico Caruso and was the great infatuation

of none other than maestro Arturo Toscanini.

Science tells us that absolute pitch (also referred to as perfect pitch), the ability to recall specific musical pitches without a reference pitch, may be genetically predisposed. Geraldine Farrar had absolute pitch. Could she have inherited it from her father? Possibly.

Her mother, Henrietta Barnes, was also an accomplished musician. Geraldine Farrar grew up in a home (in Melrose, Massachusetts) where music was important. Among other things, her father was a soloist with the Melrose Band.

Moreover, Geraldine’s daughter, Jane Farrar, had absolute pitch. Jane was a singer, though not as accomplished as her mother. She did make several musicals in Hollywood, including a 1940s version of Phantom of the Opera with Nelson Eddy.

Absolute pitch has been found among music students with a frequency of 10 to 15%. There is a relationship

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between absolute pitch and early musical training or environmental influences, which both Geraldine Farrar and her daughter Jane had. Sidney Farrar had early musical training, too. He began singing with a South Paris church choir as a youngster. Both he and Geraldine sang with Episcopal and Universalist church choirs in Melrose.

There is another gift all three Farrar generations may have inherited. All had musical pitch recognition. Musical pitch bears no correlation to absolute pitch. A study in England concluded that musical pitch recognition is heritable 71%. The opposite trait is being tune or tone deaf.

It would seem that Geraldine Farrar inherited no athletic gifts from her father. That was, however, in a time period when there were few athletic opportunities for women.

Because of the importance of athletics in contemporary society, the search for a relationship of ancestry and ath(continued on page 10)

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(continued from page 9) letic process has intensified with every advance in genetic science. For example, a gene for a protein that binds actin to skeletal muscle has been identified.

Actin is a contractile protein — it is frequent in elite sprinters. Another form of actin has been found in endurance athletes. Unfortunately, this meager beginning has led to conjectures of possible gene doping, an utter fantasy as far as geneticists are concerned.

For those interested in learning more about genes and inheritance Michael Cummings’ 2004 Human Heredity, Principles and Issues is an excellent starting point.

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Androscoggin Loggin’

by Jeffrey Bradley

Timber’s wild ride down the river

T

he “Amos Coglin,” as the old timers might have it, is the third largest river in Maine. Dropping more than a thousand feet over 175 miles, its 3,400-square mile watershed formed during the last of the Ice Ages. Advancing then retreating down the valley, the glaciers left a chain of shallow melt water lakes. Gritty glacial loess and boulders torn from the mountainsides formed a channel the future Androscoggin would shortly fill. Also left behind were the incredibly loamy, fertile intervales of Maine.

In 1869 naturalist Walter Wells pronounced the Androscoggin “a water-power river,” foreseeing the time industry would exploit it. He predicted

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rightly; logging interests would severely task this river. Before the advent of damming, the Androscoggin was navigable by shallow-draft vessel for nearly all its length, despite rapids and waterfalls. Lacking the fords of the Kennebec, the Androscoggin was the wilder of the two, but infinitely more useful in floating logs.

Upriver from Rumford Falls the river is particularly picturesque. Framed by distant lofty summits, vales of drooping elms give rise to sunny uplands browed by dense forests, a scene that for centuries has inveigled poets to aptly express. The southeast slopes drain spring’s runoff in thunderous torrents that cascade down the valley. In

the narrow defiles near Bethel, where the river runs fiercest, the turbines of industry turned. These roily currents also sent massive rafts of timber careening down the river to waiting sawmills. In so ably transporting these drives of logs, the river has been blessed and cursed.

Milling operations sprang up in the towns of Livermore, Leeds, Turner, Greene and Durham around 1800, and by the Civil War millions of board feet a year had been “run down” to Brunswick. (Brunswick straddled the Androscoggin lumber industry the same way Bangor did on the Penobscot.)

In 1851, author John Springer was already noting, in Forest Life and Forest (continued on page 12)

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(continued from page 11) Trees, “the sixty saw-mills, thirty-two of which are at Brunswick and Topsham”, and the region “sufficient” for extensive operations. And soon enough, industries based on logging found the Androscoggin integral to their enterprise. Indeed, in 1875 the S.R. Bearce sawmill, one of several dozen locatedbelow the Great Falls, easily produced 150,000 board feet a day. And by the turn of the century some of the largest paper-producing plants in the world were calling the river home.

Manhandling massive rafts of timber down this unpredictable water course was a risky business, yet during the 1890s their size and scope increased.

With little more than pike poles, “peaveys,” spiked boots and muscle, the river men contended with the countless cantankerous one-ton, 15-foot logs that seemed determined to snarl themselves into an immoveable gobbet. One spectacular jam that occurred outside

Rumford in 1873 was wedged so tightly it could only be broken by blasting.

And in the day before oversight agencies, unstable black powder used for any purpose was bound to lead to the loss of fingers, hands, and lives. More astonishing was the fact that many of these rowdies couldn’t swim, but were ferried about by bateaux!

The key to a log drive lay in preventing jamming. Drivers could skip nimbly over the logs, even roll them under their feet, yet the logs’ sole purpose appeared to be vexing and thwarting things by clustering in stubborn knots, lodging in gangs under the riverbank, and displaying a positive knack for drenching drivers with freezing spray.

It was all a part of the drive. But keeping this chaos moving took diligence, ability, and sometimes reckless daring.

Alert for the roar of approaching rapids, those churning maelstroms that could swallow a log drive whole, the

drivers balanced precariously as their cargo hurtled past the jagged chutes, plunged headlong through the foaming flumes, and around the rocks and over the falls. And until railroads and logging trucks could buck the wilderness, the only surefire way of getting this timber downriver quickly was by means of these howling, madcap log drives. Yet, folklore’s version of the “rugged lumberjack” somehow omits the hardship and deprivation of that desperate drive down the raging river.

“These were the men, whose armed heels smote fire from the rocks, whose peavies jangled a battle-note…” wrote Fanny Hardy Eckstorm in 1904. But in truth, they were very unlikely to benefit beyond bragging rights for all their hazardous work on the long logs.

If getting the logs down the river was an act of adrenaline, then wrangling them into the quiet millponds required a touch of Zen. Sawmills of-

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ten commingled their timber, making presorting and marking the logs before floating expedient. Rock-filled cribs were cobbled downstream and placed in a way to divide and guide the logs on their final leg; occasionally, a sunken crib still pokes above the surface.

Chains tethered to “piers” kept logs inside the lagoon from drifting, and rogue timber was winched in with a windlass.

When enough were corralled, the sluice gates were cranked opened and the logs flowed down a guide stream and into an area where the clanking steam boom awaited to hoist.

By 1870 canals, mills and housing for workers had transformed Lewiston into a timber processing megacenter, and caused the populations of Lisbon Falls and Auburn to soar. Textile and paper mills began to replace the sawmills, enjoining ruinous legal battles over control of the dams and the vital flow of water.

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Some of theses prawling sawmills seemed factories straight out of Dickens, with the giant noisy circular saws, the lathes, spindles and camshafts whirring rhythmically beside clackety rocker arms and hissing pistons, and the looping leather belts slapping incessantly along screechy metallic rollers creating a terrific din. Yet these rickety structures, the Lewiston Steam Mill Company (a “general lumbering business”), for one, were capable by 1883 of milling some 200,000 board feet a day! Perhaps fittingly, this and similar entrepots were destined to burn to the ground.

Many industrialists believed the river was able to repurify itself, but such was not the case, and waste from their mills turned it into a foul, slow-moving seep. Fortunately, and just in time, the Androscoggin became the “poster child” for the Clean Water Act of 1972 against pollution.

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Early view of Lisbon Falls Fibre Co. on the Androscoggin River. Item # LB2007.24.114658 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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The Maine Central’s Railway Czar Leeds native Dana Douglass

by Charles Francis

O

n March 28, 1918, Dana Douglass of the Maine Central Railroad officially turned the steam freighter Moosehead over to the Naval Overseas Transport Service of the U.S. Navy. The Moosehead was the pride of the Maine Central’s ocean going vessels. In 1918 she was barely seven years old. She was a stately craft just under 195 feet.

The Moosehead would undergo a number of changes as a Navy vessel.

They were changes that Dana Douglass probably wouldn’t have approved of no matter how necessary. Under Maine Central management the Moosehead had been a gleaming white. The Navy would, of course, change that. Under

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the Maine Central the Moosehead had been a Queen of the east coast passenger fleet. Under the Navy she became a simple ferry, her classification “ferryboat.” In a sense, it was a humbling if not humiliating change. Without doubt, the most humiliating of the changes involved the name of the proud Maine vessel. The Moosehead became the Porpoise.

The change in status of the Moosehead in 1918 can be chalked up to wartime necessity. It was but one of tens of thousands of ‘necessary changes’ that happened during the Great War. Dana Douglass, the man who turned the Moosehead over to the Navy, was

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the closest thing to the present-day definition of czar that Maine has ever seen. Today we have a “Drug Czar.” It seems that whenever the government has a new plan for bettering our lives or cleaning up some problem, some bureaucrat is tagged by the press with the misnomer “Czar.” During the Great War there were a lot of “Czars,” the most powerful or at least among the most powerful being the railway czars.

Dana Douglass was a railway czar.

Dana Douglass was a federal government appointee. He was the federal manager of the Maine Central Railroad.

The government had no particular designation for the position, nothing that (continued on page 16)

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(continued from page 15) had uppercase letters like Undersecretary or Chief Deputy, though either would have been appropriate. Either would have been appropriate because Douglass answered to just one other person, William McAdoo. McAdoo headed the Railroad Administration.

McAdoo’s title is sometimes given lower case and sometimes upper case, director general or Director General.

It is a title that smacks of power and authority, both of which McAdoo possessed. Dana Douglass had something of the same authority when it came to the Maine Central.

Dana Douglass wasn’t what some might think of as a railroad man. Morris McDonald, the man who was his boss for a goodly portion of his tenure with Maine Central, was. McDonald began his career in railroads by building them.

He was an engineer. Dana Douglass began his career in railroads behind a typewriter and by taking dictation.

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When Douglass was hired by Maine Central his most noteworthy skill was shorthand. Shorthand was a relatively new skill at the time.

Morris McDonald was a long-time president of Maine Central. Yet it was Douglass who was named the railroad’s federal manager. How did this happen?

What does it say about the skills that the Railroad Administration considered important during the Great War? And what does it say about Dana Douglass?

Dana Douglass was a Leeds man.

He was born there in 1877. He had a common school education and that was it. Then, when he was seventeen, Douglass applied for a job with the Maine Central. In school he had taken typing and other business classes. These courses got him his job. Actually the man who hired him didn’t think Douglass was fit for anything else. But Dana Douglass was good at what he did.

Soon he was working as a stenographer

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in the Maine Central’s home office in Portland, in the office of the railroad’s general manager.

Dana Douglass’s particular forte was organization. Over a period of time he familiarized himself with every feature of the Maine Central, from new route plans, to time tables to rates. In short, he knew the workings of the railroad better than its officers. This was why Morris McDonald made him his assistant. This was before McDonald became Maine Central president.

Morris McDonald came to the Maine Central after serving as an engineer and general manager with various railroads in the South. He was Maine Central general superintendent in 1897 and 1898, general manager from 1898 to 1908, and general manager and vice president from 1908 to 1913. The latter year he was elected Maine Central president. He was also president of the Boston and Maine, the parent company

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of the Maine Central.

Dana Douglass became Maine Central general manager when Morris McDonald became president. He was still general manager when the Railroad Administration tagged him to be Maine Central’s federal manager.

The Railroad Administration was created during the Wilson administration because in the years prior to America’s entry into the Great War the country’s railroads were in what has been called “an unprecedented state of confusion.” Simply put, the country’s rail lines couldn’t meet the needs of the country’s industries. Mills were forced to shut down because their products couldn’t be moved. Products couldn’t be moved due to a shortage of railway cars. The Maine Central was in this same state as was its parent company.

In 1914, Morris McDonald asked for a rate hike. The Boston and Maine needed some $27,000,000 to keep run-

ning. McDonald said the increase would keep the line out of receiver’s hands. It did, and Dana Douglass played a part in seeing that it did.

Woodrow Wilson used his Congressional granted powers to establish the Railroad Administration in December of 1917. In doing so, he said “...there are some things which the government can do and private management cannot.”

There is, of course, a certain degree of irony in President Wilson’s statement. The federal railroad managers of the Great War era were, for the most part, the same men that ran the railroads during peacetime. It could not have been otherwise. Who else had the knowledge or expertise to run a railroad? Dana Douglass serves as a case in point. Like many of the other railway “Czars” Douglass came from the second echelon of the railroad hierarchy.

These were men a step beneath that of

company officer, the men who saw to the day-to-day workings of a particular line. What the Railroad Administration did was to place these lower echelon managers in a position where they answered to no one but themselves.

Hence they were “Czars.”

Dana Douglass remained in the position of federal manager of Maine Central until 1920. On March 1 of that year he was recognized by both the railroad and the government for his work.

His wartime accomplishments were described as “a crowning achievement.”

As for the former Moosehead, that vessel never returned to Maine waters.

As the Porpoise she remained a Navy ferry. She drops from the record books in 1931, some might say a victim to the vagaries of war.

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Early view of Babb’s Bridge in South Windham, ca. 1983. Item # LB2005.24.21814 from the Boutilier Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

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The Cochranite Delusion Religious hydrophobia in the Saco Valley

by Charles Francis

T

oward the end of the second decade of the nineteenth century a prophesying whirlwind descended on the lower Saco Valley from across the New Hampshire border. The whirlwind bore the name Jacob Cochran.

Wherever Cochran travelled in York and Cumberland counties conversions followed, conversions intermingled with lovemaking. There was something frightening and grotesque about the Cochran whirlwind.

Jacob Cochran was an evangelist, but an evangelist like none those that succumbed to his message in and around towns like Buxton, Hollis, Scarborough and Saco had ever heard before. Cochran preached a primitive

Christianity that did away with all the polite norms of society. In particular, Cochran preached that the legal marriage bond was a fiction and that God could and would cancel all financial debts. Cochran called upon all who had been united in the bonds of matrimony to be ready to renounce their vows in favor of something called “spiritual wifery.” He said that any who owed money could cite God’s law as a reason for nonpayment of debt.

For Cochran, spiritual wifery was something akin to free love. While superficially resembling polygamy or plural marriage as portrayed in the television show Big Love, spiritual wifery

could best be described as communal marriage. Mates were assigned for short periods of time by leaders of the Society of Free Brethren and Sisters, the name Cochran gave to his particular and peculiar religious sect. As Cochran was the ultimate or supreme head of the Society of Free Brethren and Sisters, this meant he got to choose among the more comely of the “Sisters.” Visitors to homes of Cochran followers noted that Cochran would often disappear for extended periods of time with one or another of the more winsome Sisters.

Jacob Cochran eventually landed in jail on charges related to lewd and lascivious behavior. Well before he did, though, he created something in

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com the Saco Valley and surrounding area that could best be compared to a 1960s “summer of love.”

Jacob Cochran was nondenominational preacher. He appealed to Methodists and Free Will Baptists and whoever else would listen to him. Cochran was an emotional preacher. He was an Enthusiast. Members of his congregation would sing, dance, shout and fall to the ground in ecstasy. Some even had convulsion and foamed at the mouth.

This is how or why Cochranism came to be described as religious hydrophobia.

Anyone who ever saw the movie of the 1969 Woodstock rock festival would recognize a Jacob Cochran service, even given the enormous different in attendance. Woodstock, like a Cochran organized event, was nothing more than a religious camp meeting of the revival tradition. Both evidenced stigmata and ecstatic conversion. In both, individual difference dissolved,

be they the nineteenth century religious differences of the illiterate backwoodsman of the upper Saco Valley or the middle class resident of coastal communities, or the 1960s difference of college-educated scions of wealthy families and school dropouts living a hand-to-mouth existence.

Cochran meetings were characterized by loud singing, by a “swooning away” of those who had risen to the highest of Cochran states. There was a clapping of hands and dancing. A hugging of neighbors. Some followers would fall down, remaining motionless for extended periods of time. Then they would revive, the men uttering deep groans, the women shrieks. Like those at Woodstock, Cochran initiates were united by a sense of free salvation, a salvation to be gained through faith or belief. Both were searching for something basic, something primitive.

And their search was rewarded either by absorbing the rant of Jacob Cochran

or the thunderous musical vibrations emanating from a stage in a farmer’s field in upstate New York. Cochran communicants like those at Woodstock often manifested drunkenness and sexual arousal. Jacob Cochran, like Country Joe and the Fish or Jimi Hendrix, offered a vision, a vision of a new and different and seeming better world.

Jacob Cochran did not descend on the Saco Valley as a conscious founder of a new religion. Cochran can best be said to have come as a fugitive, a fugitive from two failing systems. One system was the old standing order of Calvanism. The other was the political system that had brought prosperous coastal Maine communities to the brink of disaster with a war with Britain.

In his sermons Jacob Cochran portrayed the old Calvinist or Puritan ethic as a great blot separating heaven and earth. It was a massive barricade keeping sinners from the Kingdom of God. (continued on page 22)

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(continued from page 21) In using this approach Cochran was little different from Baptist and Methodist preachers that were successfully making inroads into Congregationalism.

Jacob Cochran entered the Saco Valley from Conway, New Hampshire. Tradition has it that he had been an Army supply master during the War of 1812.

It had been a position of trust and influence. When the war ended. however, Cochran had no alternative but to return to his parents’ New Hampshire farm in Enfield where he had been born. Then, as the story goes, Cochran began passing himself off as an itinerant preacher.

It would have been easy to do, as there were any number of similar ministerial folk about, ministers that had been ordained by local community election.

It would seem that Cochran was a master of improvisation. He gave those that he preached to what they wanted or thought they wanted, including stories from the Bible in which a man shared

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seven wives. He also called for communal ownership of property.

At first the nondenominational and apparently ecumenical Cochran was invited into local Saco Valley churches as a guest preacher. This stopped as ministers of the establishment churches came to understand his message for what it was. Free Will Baptists in particular opposed him. Soon Cochran was persona non grata as far as being able to enter a church. The result was Cochran resorting to camp meeting format. He preached in private homes, barns and in the open. Then the expected occurred.

Cochran was threatened with prosecution under the old Puritan Blue laws.

In 1830 Jacob Cochran went into hiding to escape prison for the practice of polygamy. Cochran successor John Dennett wasn’t up to the task of keeping Cochranites faithful. 1830 was also the year that the Book of Mormon came out. In 1835 Mormons held a

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conference in Saco. The site was chosen on purpose. It was in the heart of Cochran territory. Many of the former followers of Jacob Cochran in the Saco Valley found the new alternative to the old established order to their liking and converted.

Jacob Cochran offered his followers a sense of extended community.

Like the Quakers and the Shakers, with whom the Cochranites are sometimes compared, Cochran doctrine offered a means of revolt from the theologizing of older, established Puritan inspired sects. However, what Cochran preached was largely negative, because it failed to present a fully developed doctrine able to withstand the rational attacks of more sophisticated denominations. This latter point explains why Mormon missionaries found it easy to convert many Cochranites and then get them to move west.

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View of corn fields in Fryeburg, ca. 1950. The flood plain of the Saco River was prime land for growing corn due to its rich soil. During World War II this area of Maine produced more corn per acre than any other spot in the United States. Item # 6575 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

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The 1927 Lewiston Fair Harness racing action was fast and furious

by Brian Swartz

F

ast and furious harness racing made memories — and earned some money for lucky bettors — during the Maine State Fair held at the Lewiston Fairgrounds in early September 1927.

The fair’s opening day fell on Labor Day, September 5, and 31,000 people took advantage of the perfect late summer weather to pay admission to the Main Street fairgrounds. Fair organizers claimed that the crowd broke previous opening-day attendance records.

While the midway and various acts attracted many fair-goers, at least 7,000 harness-racing fans packed the grandstand (and perhaps as many more

lined the rails) to cheer on the local horses against all comers. Those race fans looking for some excitement were not disappointed.

Monday featured four competitive races and sizable purses: a 2.14 trot ($750), a 2.24 trot ($500), a 2.17 pace ($750), and a 2.11 pace with a $1,000 sum, a magnificent sum in pre-Depression Maine. The first three races required three heats to determine the top three horses.

Not so the 2.11 pace, where drivers and horses competed fearsomely through five heats. The fans cheering for the locally owned Rubicon and driver Billy Nelson saw the Lewiston

horse lose one heat to Gold Quartz and Rochester, N.H. driver Harry T. Hayes.

Then, as the pacers launched into the first turn during the next heat, “a hopple broke and the horse (Gold Quartz) stumbled, going end over end,” the newspaper reporter described the accident. Flying 30 feet, Hayes bounced upon landing; he suffered severe bruising.

Rubicon and Nelson went on to capture the 2.11 pace by winning the fifth (and determining) heat.

As expected, significantly fewer people attended the fair on Tuesday.

Local horses still dominated the racing action: Dagastan won the 2.18 trot (continued on page 28)

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(continued from page 27) (with a $750 purse) in four heats, and Beau Dillon took the 2.22 pace (with a $500 purse) in three heats.

The day’s racing was scheduled to conclude with a 2.15 trot and pace featuring a $750 purse. A local horse, Peter Azoff, was “the top-heavy favorite” in this competition, according to the reporter; the chestnut swept two heats and only needed to win the third heat to claim the race and the “first money.”

But as the horses rounded the back stretch in that third heat, “the chestnut’s hopple broke.” The unfortunate Peter Azoff took off running; “while the horse was within the flag when it came down, he was disqualified,” the reporter commented.

On Time, a Bangor horse, claimed the third heat. The accident involving Peter Azoff delayed the evening’s action; after racing resumed, Lewiston-based Andora Girl and driver “Blustering Frank” Hayden (then 73) captured the next two heats, described

by the reporter as “neck and neck duels around all the turns.”

The day’s honored guest, Gov. Owen Brewster, watched from the stands as darkness fell on the fairgrounds and postponed the 2.15 trot and pace until Wednesday.

That day’s four races saw four upsets, with the most exciting underdog win occurring during the 2.16 trot held in the afternoon. In 1925, Henry Clukey of Dexter had paid $150 for Addie Echo, an 11-year-old horse that had hauled coat carts through the streets of Auburn. An experienced harness racer and horseman, Clukey saw something in Addie Echo that others did not.

He raced Addie Echo in September 7’s first race, the 2.16 trot. While “the favorite, Benzol Jr., acted badly in all heats,” the 13-year-old Addie Echo tore around the Lewiston track in 2.14¼ and “won in straight heats, and fast time,” according to the press.

An upset occurred in the 2.19 as

“Joe Direct led a nine-horse field in straight heats” and defeated the favorite, Miss Possibility, a newspaper reporter noted. In the following 2.20 trot, Lorna Doone out of Skowhegan “outlasted the three-year-old Harwah” (and driver Clukey), according to the press account. “Harwah was a strong choice, but early speed faded the horse and the fifth and final heat found it outhoofed.”

As for completing Tuesday’s sunset-postponed race, the National Trotting Association intervened and awarded the win and the top money to Andora Girl and Frank Hayden.

Lewiston racing fans enjoyed the fourth (and final) day of their sport on Thursday, September 8. Besides races offering the typical $500 and $750 purses, the day featured the “Free-ForAll” with a $1,250 purse.

Pierce Chappelle of Bangor brought Caruso to the track. To meet the challengers from Penobscot County, the owners of Auto Pace “imported Billy

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Fleming from the Grand Circuit” to drive their horse in the Free-For-All, according to the press. “Chappelle drove Caruso to a straight heat victory, staving off frantic brushing by Auto Pace on the home stretch of each heat.”

The last race of the 1927 Maine State Fair featured 3-year-old horses.

The race “brought the ‘stormy petrels’ Jack Kingsley and Pierce Chappelle together for the first time” that week, a Maine paper noted, “but the fighting birds never even so much as glanced at each other.”

A festering feud between Chappelle and Kingsley had caused the National Trotting Association to warn “that any more trouble would result in a long, and possibly life, suspension,” according to the paper. This warning “has apparently tamed them down.”

No matter the off-track issues he had with Chappelle, Kingsley drove the 3-year-old Sadie Dillon and won the Lewiston fair’s last race in two heats.

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The 1918 Spanish Flu An epidemic in Southern and Western Maine

by James Nalley

B

y the end of World War I in 1918, an estimated 16 million lives were claimed by this conflict. According the National Institute of Health in Washington, D.C., the 1918 flu epidemic took approximately 50 million lives and it was rampant in areas ranging from the densely populated cities of the United States to the remotest parts of Maine. At its peak, the flu had affected 25 percent of the U.S. population and in one year, the average life expectancy dropped by a staggering 12 years.

The illness emerged in two phases. In May 1918, the first phase, referred to as the “three-day fever,” appeared without warning and the victims recovered after this brief stint. As if the illness was

taken aback by such human defenses, it mutated into a more deadly version

by September. Upon its return in early fall, some victims died within hours of their first symptoms, while others’ lungs filled with fluid and they suffocated to death after a few days. Residents of southern and western Maine were no exception and according to the following timeline, one can see how quickly the illness spread into this particular region and how it was dealt with by various entities: Sept. 7, 1918: Located 35 miles northwest of Boston, Camp Devens was a military camp erected after President Wilson declared war on Germany a year earlier. Crammed with more

than 45,000 soldiers, the first case of the flu is reported. Within a week, approximately 9,000 soldiers are affected.

Sept. 14, 1918: A total of 16 nurses arrive from Maine to help care for the ill. Of this initial group, 10 are from the Central Maine General Hospital in Lewiston and six are from Milo.

Sept. 23, 1918: Captain William Lawry, the Secretary of the Maine State Senate, contracts the illness while visiting Camp Devens. He dies upon his return home. This was just one case of many in which visitors had become ill and travelled back to their respective homes across the country only to spread the virus even further.

Sept. 25, 1918: The Maine Depart-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com ment of Health issues a warning about the flu’s transmission, stating that the “disease is given off in secretions and transmitted by coughing, sneezing, and the sharing of towels and utensils.”

Sept. 26, 1918: Public assemblies in Maine are closed and Portland’s Chief of Police states that anti-spitting laws will be strictly enforced.

Sept. 27, 1918: Leverett Bristol, the Health Commissioner of Maine, requests that movie theaters be temporarily closed as a preventative measure, but that schools should remain open.

Sept. 29, 1918: Bristol sends a request to Surgeon General Rupert Blue for more “nurses for influenza work” in Portland. The city’s hospitals were filled to capacity with the ill, many of which were affected soldiers returning from duty in Europe. Due to the overwhelming need for nurses in other cities, the Public Health Service was unable to send help. He also suggests that citizens wear masks in public, which

~ Caring for the ill outside of hospitals ~ (public domain photo courtesy of James Nalley)

(continued on page 32)

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(continued from page 31) the mayor promptly rejects in laughter.

In regard to such denial, the Lewiston Board of Health states, “To even suggest that there is an epidemic here is untrue. There is most certainly none.”

Sept. 30, 1918: All public schools, churches, theaters, dance halls, pool rooms, and lodge rooms are closed until further notice.

Oct. 1, 1918: Relatives of the Mainers at Camp Devens flock to the camp after which they are allowed to remain overnight. The opening of Colby College is postponed and the students are asked to return home. Meanwhile, officials continue to point out that the conditions in Portland and Bangor are under control and thousands continue to frequent heated theaters to literally keep warm.

Oct. 4, 1918: Cities in southern and western Maine are canvassed for healthy citizens who can volunteer as nurses for the ill (with or without medical training).

Oct. 5, 1918: The Maine Fuel Administrator authorizes that the use of automobiles be limited so that they can conserve their fuel and drive to the country on weekends in order to “escape the infected districts of the city.”

He also states, “With cool weather and plenty of sunshine, it is expected that the number of new cases will take a downward trend.”

Oct. 7, 1918: The Board of Health in Waterville closes all places of amusement. In response, many citizens simply go to Fairfield for such amusement.

Oct. 10, 1918: Amidst all of the regulations, saloons remain open. According to an editorial in Portland, “They are overcrowded, glasses are shared and hardly washed, and spitting on the floor is a regular event.”

Oct. 11, 1918: Churches and auditoriums are converted into makeshift hospitals.

Oct. 13, 1918: All of the Catholic

churches in Lewiston hold indoor services, despite the closing order by the Board of Health.

October 15-18, 1918: State officials send a report to the U.S. Public Health Service stating that “The illness is at an epidemic level in Portland.”A total of 80 new cases appear in the State Prison in Thomaston with numerous cases in the state’s mental hospitals.

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berculosis Association issues the following statement: “Spanish Influenza is undoubtedly due to lack of sunshine and fresh air, to dampness outdoors and in getting wet feet; and is spread by careless spitting, and by coughing and sneezing without covering the mouth.”

Oct. 24, 1918: Although there have been more than 8,000 cases of influenza since September, the Board of Health orders the removal of the ban on public gatherings since the “situation has been improving.” Meanwhile, the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad is shut down and the work at factories has stalled due to the number of deceased workers.

November 1918: The illness subsides in Portland, but new cases at still coming in from Biddeford, Bath, and Saco.

By May 1919, 47,000 cases of the flu have been reported in Maine with approximately 5,000 deaths. Among this number, half of the deaths occurred in October alone. However, many sourc-

Without a mask, this man was forbidden to board the trolley. ~ Public domain photo courtesy of James Nalley ~

es state that the actual numbers were underreported by the various doctors working in the field. To put this in perspective, in the 1.5 years of U.S. involvement in World War I, a total of 1,026 Mainers died while in service.

Among this number, half of the deaths were due to the flu and not combat.

On a brighter note, the response by the state of Maine was positive, especially by January 1919. For example, a state law was enacted requiring all schools to teach personal hygiene, which was financially supported by a budget that was more than double that of the previous year. In addition, all of the local health boards came under the control of the State Department of Health and the number of health officers increased from three to eight. Furthermore, the Maine Department of Health stated that, by November 1919, “288 out of 1,175 physicians have already volunteered for emergency influenza (continued on page 34)

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(continued from page 33) work if the need should arise. If called up, they would be placed upon the payroll of the U.S. Public Health Service.”

Today, there is practically no evidence that this epidemic once ravaged the state. No longer are there signs that ban public gatherings nor are there the white cards with red letters that warned people not to enter certain houses that contained the ill. There are only commemorative plaques hung in honor of those who gave their lives to care for the sick. Perhaps we can continue to learn from such times and improve our preparedness as nature quietly finds ways to mutate its deadly viruses in the future.

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Windham’s Chief Polin

by Charles Francis

The death of a legend

A

legend has it that Captain William Wescott of Standish discovered the bones of the near-mythical Chief Polin while working on the Cumberland-Oxford Canal during the early 1830s. Not all Wescotts subscribe to the tale, though. There are those who question it in part or whole. Regardless, as the story goes, Captain Wescott is said to have brought the Chief’s bones home and squirreled them away in his attic.

There are other tales of Polin. One, much more pertinent to our day, and certainly more worth remembering, relates to his trips to Boston to speak on the matter of the Presumpscot River dam blocking the passage of fish.

Remarkably, it would seem the Chief managed to speak with Governor Shirley. While the officials of the day in Massachusetts listened to Chief Polin’s pleas, more dams were built. Today the Chief’s efforts are identified as the first instance of attempting to influence environmental legislation in or for Maine.

Succinctly put, the instance stands as ‘the’ example of New World riparian considerations. Unlike the story of Captain Wescott and Chief Polin’s bones, it’s one that has cold hard documentation. The records of Polin’s visits can be found in the archives of the Massachusetts General Court.

Then there is the legend of Chief Polin’s death. The word legend is cho-

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sen deliberately here. A legend is a tale based on hearsay. This one has Polin shot by Stephen Manchester in a rifle duel the Chief lost, because Polin, a noted hunter, bungled loading his weapon.

One version of the tale suggests it was Polin who killed Ephraim Winship with a shot through his eye. Another has it he killed Ezra Brown. Maybe he killed both... maybe neither. If there’s real agreement, it’s to the effect Chief Polin was the individual responsible for the misdeeds.

Aside for the Massachusetts documentation of Chief Polin’s visits to Boston, most everything written about him is myth.

As to the unearthing of Chief Polin’s (continued on page 38)

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(continued from page 37) bol of the Presumpscot’s noble origin.

Variations on the myth of Polin’s death have appeared in writing almost from the time the Chief was killed in 1756. Diarist Parson Thomas Smith of Portland was probably the first to write of it. It appears in William Williamson’s 1832 two-volume History of the State of Maine. In 1843 John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem about the Chief’s death, Funeral Tree of the Sokokis. Whittier has the Chief buried with a silver cross on his chest. The “Funeral Tree” is on the banks of the Saco. The details are clearly a matter of poetic license. In 1897 Portland historian Nathan Goold produced a work devoted to Chief Polin’s slayer, Stephen Manchester. The book’s lengthy title is Stephen Manchester the slayer of the Indian chief Polin, at New Marblehead, now Windham, Maine, in 1756, and a soldier of the revolution, with his ancestry. Goold calls Polin the “war-

22

2

bones, one tale has them found not far from the banks of the Presumpscot, another by the Songo River. The former says all or most all the Chief’s bones were dug up. The latter says just the head. The latter also says the Chief suffered from prognathism or perhaps acromegaly, meaning he was a giant.

The unearthed jaw bone was said to be huge. Some suggest it was that of a bear.

Of all the Chief Polin myths, the most significant is that of the Chief as an environmental exemplar. It’s one that has been picked up by the Friends of the Presumpscot River. The Friends of the Presumpscot hope the river can be returned to its primordial, pristine state when spawning salmon, shad and other fish once filled it. The Friends believe that “with careful stewardship the river can move to a rebirth of its once original beauty and bounty.” Chief Polin stands as a Native American symEYECARE

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rior king of the Rockameecooks.” The work has recently enjoyed renewed readership, having been brought out in reprint. The tale can also be found in more recent histories.

The purpose of this piece does not include an investigation of the various renditions of the killing of or death of Chief Polin. What follows is the briefest of possible commentary.

In general, the majority of accounts agree on the following: Ezra Brown and Ephraim Winship left the area of the New Marblehead stockade to work on Brown’s lot. They were accompanied by guards, one of whom was Stephen Manchester. Brown and Winship, some distance in the lead, were shot and scalped by a band of Indians that included Chief Polin. Manchester and three others went in pursuit of the marauders to exact revenge. A confrontation ensued in which Manchester killed Polin.

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Nathan Goold cites a tradition in the Manchester family to the effect that Polin and Manchester initially fired at each other simultaneously and without effect. Manchester won the subsequent race to load and prime, and killed Polin.

The majority of accounts on the death of Chief Polin stress that with his death the region enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity, one that lasted till the Revolution. Nathan Goold places special emphasis here. For Goold, Stephen Manchester is the hero credited with ushering in the new era.

The death of Chief Polin might be described as out of the ordinary. It does, after all, involve two figures who have come down to us as larger than life. Polin’s death lacks authentication.

The latter point seems clear. That there are variations as to what occurred. Out of the ordinary and unauthenticated are definitions of myth. Then there is the issue of Polin’s burial and disinterment

mentioned above. It’s the stuff of folk fiction.

So, is the story of Chief Polin’s death mythical, imaginary? If one applies a bit of critical analysis to the details surrounding the accounts of Polin’s demise, one quickly sees a few things that don’t quite fit. The most glaring problem is how is it there was time to scalp Brown and Winship?

Of all the myths, the most significant is that of Chief Polin as an environmental exemplar. This is the one picked up by environmentalists, the Friends of the Presumpscot. The Friends hope the river can be returned to its primordial, pristine state when salmon and other fished filled it. Chief Polin stands as a Native American symbol of this “noble origin.”

Chief Polin is a mythical figure; so is Stephen Manchester. Is it necessary to look at them as such? Writers created them. Their combat drama as described

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is mythical. Remove the myth and you begin to see them as they were. A fair amount is known about Stephen Manchester. Much less is known of Polin.

Both Chief Polin and Stephen Manchester are signifiers of the passion for the “noble origin.” Stephen Manchester is a nineteenth century noble figure.

Nathan Goold made him that. With the environmental movement, Chief Polin assumed a noble role, a modern day one. Thrown into the mix one sees ideals, visions of a better time, a paradise lost, be it of post-Polin / pre-Revolutionary peace and prosperity or a precolonial garden, an Eden.

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Mayor G. Earl Taylor The biggest little city in Maine, and its Mayor

by Rosanne M. Peeling

I

been mayor since 1953. He gained the office through symbolic election which originated with the “summer people” who vacationed at nearby Province Lake. The elections were conducted on the Fourth of July at the Taylor’s store.

There were times when those elections made it into local newspapers. In the June 24, 1987 edition of the Carroll County Independent, the election was anticipated with the following headline: Taylor City elections highlight Independence Day celebrations.

The story was accompanied by a photo captioned “Mayor” Taylor and Pete, showing Earl with his dog. Earl was interviewed and the article stated (continued on page 42)

f you live in Southwestern Maine, you may have heard of Taylor City.

If you haven’t, it isn’t actually a city, but it is a phenomenon for those who have experienced it. Some of its uniqueness can be found in its location which overlaps parts of two towns, two counties, and two states. As you cross Rt. 153 from Taylor City Country Store and walk over to Ye Olde Sale Shoppe, you will be entering another town, county, and state, but you will still be in Taylor City, which has also been termed the “The Biggest Little City.”

The only real similarity between Taylor City and a city like Portland is that it has a mayor. G. Earl Taylor has

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(continued from page 41) the following: Taylor said he fears he will lose the election because he is getting older and the cost of being elected (paying bribes in popsicles) is getting too high.

However G. Earl Taylor was always re-elected and although the elections came to an end, he is still known as “The Mayor” to this day. He has been issued license plates that say Mayor which also had something to do with those who elected him. His mail was, and is still, addressed to Mayor and he is often greeted and referred to as Mayor just like it is his first name.

It seems like Earl should be mayor even without the elections because he is descended from Taylors who not only formed Taylor City, but made their mark on history in other ways. William S. Taylor was the first generation to inhabit Parsonsfield. He was a doctor and an elder who lived in a homestead at the top of Stagecoach Road. William’s

grandson, also named William, was a harness maker and a Grandmaster Mason. He lived to be 100 years old and received the Boston Post Cane which had the tradition of being presented to the oldest resident of a New England town.

Two more notable ancestors of G. Earl Taylor were participants in the Civil War. His great-grandfather, Decatur Monk, was wounded fighting under the command of Joshua Chamberlain who led his troops to victory at the battle of Little Round Top during the Gettysburg Campaign. Earl’s great-greatuncle, George Beal, was a corporal in the First Maine Calvary of the Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Company I during the Civil War. Corporal Beal was wounded at the Battle of Malvern Hill, also known as the Battle of Poindexter’s Farm, the last of the Seven Days Battles fought in Virginia.

After the war, George Beal came

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home to Parsonsfield. He and his wife Rose Taylor Beal lived in the house that Earl currently lives in. The original structure was built in 1878 and George built an ell on the house. He also was a member of the building committee of the church in Taylor City erected in 1891. Across the street from the church he built the Oakwood Cheap Cash Store in 1895. Later the store was renamed The Trading Post and is now adorned with the Taylor City sign.

Like George Beal, G. Earl Taylor returned to Parsonsfield after serving in a war, which was World War II. In 1947, he married Alice Carter, the daughter of his former teacher who taught at the school in Taylor City known as the Line School because the state line ran through it. Also in 1947, Earl took over ownership and operation of the store his great-great-uncle had built. Six years later, Earl was elected Mayor of Taylor City.

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In addition to being “The Mayor,” the 93-year-old has been a participant in the community. He has served on the Parsonsfield School Board and he continues to be a trustee of Parsonsfield Seminary listed on the National Registrar of Historic Places which he graduated from in 1940. No matter how many roles Earl has filled in the community, he will always be best known as the Mayor of Taylor City.

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South Paris Beavers Hide and seek frustrated a Maine game warden

by Brian Swartz For two months in summer 1948, four beavers waged a game of hideand-seek in South Paris with Harry N. Kearney, a Maine game warden — and Kearney almost gave up winning the game.

The tale of the South Paris beavers started around the end of World War II, when landowner I.G. Moore noticed a pond forming where Farm Brook flowed past a field on his Town Farm Road farm near the Oxford town line.

He discovered “a small dam thrown across the little brook several hundred feet into the woods,” according to Portland Press Herald reporter Jack Quinn.

Figuring the beavers caused little

damage so far from his farm fields, Moore left the varmints alone.

Fast forward to spring 1948, when Ma and Pa Beaver added two baby beavers to their happy family and decided to build a larger beaver house and a bigger dam on Farmer Moore’s property.

Suddenly the small pond expanded to “seven or eight acres” (Quinn’s guesstimate) and flooded “a large garden spot … and several acres of hay land.”

Moore complained to Warden Kearney, who promptly examined the dam and blew a big hole in it with dynamite.

“The backed up water was released,” Quinn reported.

Pulling a few all-nighters, the (continued on page 46)

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(continued from page 45) South Paris beavers repaired the dam and re-flooded Moore’s land. Kearney planted more dynamite in the dam, and the explosion “ripped out even a larger hole in the animal-made barrier of sticks, leaves, and mud,” Quinn jubilantly wrote.

Kearney figured he had won Round Two, but the beavers worked with a vengeance and enlarged their dam. Kearney fought Rounds Three and Four (and maybe Five) before deciding to take on the beavers hand-to-paw that July.

Knowing that water rushing through their dam would drive the beavers nuts, Kearney planted “a wire-covered cagelike trap under water near the dam,” Quinn told Press Herald readers. Kearney then “tore out about a foot of the dam and went home.”

The beavers scrambled to repair their damaged dam. Tripping the trap

without entering it, they evaded capture that night.

The next day, Kearney moved his trap nearer the dam and punched a big hole in it. Twenty-four hours later he found, inside the sprung trap, “Mama beaver, hissing and snarling, every one of her 55 pounds resenting her forced captivity,” according to Quinn. Kearney thrust a stick through the wire trap and dragged it and its “snarling” occupant through the woods to his circa-World War II Jeep.

Releasing Ma Beaver at a small brook several miles away, Kearney watched as the rotund rodent ambled from her prison to the water. After plunging into the brook, the beaver floated near the far bank and “looked with resentful eyes at Kearney,” wrote Quinn.

He possibly accompanied the warden on his beaver-moving trip; some-

one other than Kearney took the photos of the warden and his caged prisoner that accompanied Quinn’s article.

That night Kearney reset his beaver trap on Moore’s land and tore a hole in the beaver dam. The three remaining beavers repaired the dam and left an empty, but tripped trap; a frustrated Kearney reset the trap yet again and tore out part of the dam — yet again.

On this, his fourth attempt, Kearney trapped Pa Beaver and relocated him to the same brook where Ma Beaver now resided. According to Quinn, Pa Beaver “went slowly to the edge of the brook and suddenly got a scent of his mate. He ran up the stream a few feet, returned and ran down the stream and then plunged into the water” while pursing his sweetheart, according to Quinn.

The young beavers — unfortunately, Kearney never did get their respective

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names — proved to be pretty numb. Although Ma and Pa vanished while venturing around that strange wire thing concealed by the damaged beaver dam, Jack and Jill Beaver did not put two and two together.

“In the next two days Warden Kearney captured the remaining two beavers and transported them to their new home, where they disappeared,” Quinn reported.

Deciding the beavers needed time to acclimate to their new home (after they had built it), Kearney declined to reveal where that home might be found.

“He wants them to have time to become acquainted with the brook before being bothered by sightseers,” Quinn explained.

At the beavers’ former home, sufficient damage was done to the now derelict dam to allow the water to drain off Farmer Moore’s property.

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48

The Androscoggin

by Charles Francis

Through a geologist’s eyes

W

hy is it there are so many gigantic rocks up around where the Androscoggin leaves New Hampshire for Maine?

How is it that Sebago Lake is so deep?

Why is it that the Androscoggin has so many twists and turns from Bethel on, so many drops and falls? How is it the Androscoggin almost seems to reverse itself before joining with the Kennebec? And why does it join the Kennebec, anyway, when it’s almost reached the sea on its own? Shouldn’t the Androscoggin be adding its discharge to the salty brine just like, let’s say, the Penobscot or the St. John? It drains as similarly vast a region as either of them.

Anyone who has ever studied a ge-

ographer’s map may have pondered or reflected upon the above questions.

All, that is, but for the depth of Sebago Lake. After all, even a common road map shows the Androscoggin as going on... and on... and on. That’s why its name gets repeated even on the smallest of maps.

There are, of course, reasons why the Androscoggin is the way it is. Those reasons weren’t put down in black and white until the early 1920s when a geologist named Irving Crosby did so. Ironically, the facts explaining the Androscoggin’s oddities and wild peregrinations were all in place, all known — sort of like a puzzle is known before it’s put together — well before Crosby

put them all together as one coherent picture. Crosby is the one, too, who explained why Sebago is so deep. The latter fact should tell you that even though the river and the lake are distant on the map they have an intrinsic connection.

The Androscoggin is Maine’s second longest river... that is if you don’t count the St. John. The Penobscot is first at 350 miles, (the more than half Canadian St. John is 210), next is the Maine portion of the Androscoggin at 175, the Kennebec comes in at 150, the Saco at 104 and the St. Croix, the boundary with New Brunswick, at seventy-five. (Note: Mileage figures are sourced from a State of Maine data base. There are other estimates.)

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(continued from page 48) Yes, that’s right, Maine’s second longest river, with headwaters in New Hampshire, has no outlet all its own to the sea. This oddity is one that made mapmakers as far back as the late 1600s question the true lay of the land.

Look at a map of the east coast of North America and you’ll see why. There’s no other river comparable to the Androscoggin east of the Appalachians.

Irving Crosby was the first to really explain the why of this. By really explain, I mean explain in plain language that anyone can understand.

Irving Crosby had a way with words.

He called the Androscoggin a deranged drainage. Think of some of the synonyms for deranged: mad, crazy, unnatural, abnormal. That’s how Crosby viewed the Androscoggin. Mind you, Crosby was a geologist, not a poet.

As a geologist, Irving Crosby probably spent more time studying the Androscoggin from where it enters Maine

to its discharge point at the Kennebec than any member of his profession.

Though Crosby was at one time employed to produce a map of the ancient bed of the Androscoggin, the river’s mapping was more than just a job to him. It was an avocation. Simply put, the Androscoggin fascinated Irving Crosby. That’s why he spent as many weeks as he could each summer in and around Bethel. For Crosby, the immediate Bethel region was the key to understanding the Androscoggin. Above the town the river was one thing, and had one identity; below the town it was another, and had another identity.

Irving Crosby was a major figure of the early decades of the twentieth century in geology. Specifically, his field was that of engineering geology.

He was one of the first of his field to publish engineering geology maps.

His maps included what some consider to be the first detailed seismic studies

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depicting relative stability of local terrain as it relates to earthquake-induced ground motions. Irving Crosby was the son of William O. Crosby, a seminal figure in the discipline of geology, and MIT’s first great geology instructor. The elder Crosby had his own consulting firm, which the younger joined.

Among other projects, the firm consulted on subways and tunnels for the Boston Transit Commission; advised on the Boston dry dock; and acted as adviser to the Charles River Dam Commission for the development of the Charles River Basin Project. Irving Crosby took part in all of this work.

Here is a brief summary as to how Irving Crosby saw and characterized the Androscoggin as it pertains to Maine above and below Bethel. It must be emphasized that the Maine and New Hampshire boundary as far as the Androscoggin is concerned is a strictly arbitrary one, and that it in no way

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reflects geography, or for that matter, geology.

The upper portion of the Androscoggin that concerned Irving Crosby extends from Berlin, New Hampshire, west of the main ranges of the White Mountains, to Bethel. The terrain is high mountains and deep valleys. From Berlin the river flows through a narrow valley in granitic rocks. At Gorham it turns abruptly east, passing through mountains of extremely hard schist to reach Bethel.

The lower section of the Androscoggin extends from Bethel to tidewater at Brunswick. It is characterized by broad valleys and low, rounded mountains.

The closer to the sea, the lower the hills, with the exception of the occasional free-standing upthrust or monadnock.

Above Bethel the terrain is younger, showing less erosion. Below Bethel the terrain might be said to evidence extreme old age, being softer and full

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of creases and wrinkles. The lower portion of the Androscoggin differs greatly from the upper, being extremely irregular, meaning possessing sharp turns and, on occasion, meanders.

Irving Crosby based some of his conclusions on the work of Charles Hitchcock and George Stone. Hitchcock had been Maine State Geologist and held the same position with New Hampshire. Stone built on Hitchcock.

Both geologists speculated the Androscoggin had once flowed directly to the sea through the Sebago Basin. It did so during the period geologists call preglacial, before the glacier.

Starting with the earlier work of Hitchcock and Stone and using his own extensive investigations, Irving Crosby concluded that in preglacial times there was a small river extending southeastward from Bethel. As the glacier receded, the Androscoggin took this latter route rather than its old one because

debris dumped by the glacier blocked the old route. As to what so disarranged the Androscoggin east of Bethel... that was the result of great deposits of glacial debris.

Irving Crosby described the Androscoggin with another wonderful image besides that of deranged: he called the Androscoggin a “pirate” river. When the Androscoggin couldn’t follow the original bed of the small river east of Bethel because of deposits of glacial debris, it cut a new course through softer material, thus performing an act of piracy. These piratical acts were of long-lasting economic importance. The falls at Rumford, Livermore, Lewiston, Lisbon, and Brunswick are due to the displacement of the river by glacial deposits. They are the result of the Androscoggin’s piracy! In short, these long time bastions of the Maine economy would never have been established but for the Androscoggin pirating a new (continued on page 52)

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(continued from page 51) bed!

We now move on to Sebago Lake.

Just why is Sebago so deep? And specifically how does this relate to the Androscoggin?

Sebago is 316 feet deep. Though smaller than Moosehead it is deeper. At its deepest Sebago is forty-nine feet below sea level.

Irving Crosby took the work of Hitchcock and Stone and his own, and concluded that in preglacial times the Androscoggin flowed south from Bethel down what is now the valley of the Crooked River until it reached Sebago Basin. From there it either followed the present Presumpscot or Nonesuch to the sea. In other words, one or the other of the two aforementioned rivers or perhaps both are the residue of the preglacial Androscoggin. Seismic work done by the U.S. Geological Survey in the 1990s backs this up. In short, the great depth of Sebago Lake is the result

of the action of a great river, the preglacial Androscoggin, on the particular geologic makeup of the Sebago Basin.

Crosby also identified a preglacial course for the Little Androscoggin: through Poland and thence to Casco Bay. So, how fitting is it to call the Androscoggin deranged and piratical?

Maybe it’s a matter of poetical preference. Regardless, Mainers should be glad the river was or is so, particularly the great mill towns of Rumford, Jay, Livermore, Auburn, Lewiston, Lisbon Falls and Brunswick.

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The Toughest Mile The Appalachian Trail’s Mahoosuc Notch

by Charles Francis The name Mahoosuc seems to call to one out of the depths of the Maine wilderness. It’s eerie, weird and strange.

It’s an ancient name, Indian, Wabanaki.

It’s reputed meaning is “a place where wild animals live.”

Mahoosuc references a mountain range. The Appalachian Trail traverses its entire length. Tradition has it that the “toughest mile” of the famous trail is here. That “toughest mile” is found in Mahoosuc Notch. If Mahoosuc Notch is indeed the “toughest mile” on the Appalachian Trail then perhaps it is the “toughest mile” in Maine.

I love the name Mahoosuc for its strangeness. I’ve hiked and explored

portions of the range, though not the entire portion of the range’s Appalachian Trail. I’ve explored sections of various mountains of the range. I was drawn there because of so many of the mountains of the range bear names as unique or almost as unique as the name of the range itself.

If you are looking for a collection of strange Maine place names then the Mahoosuc Range is the place to go.

The Mahoosuc starts at the New Hampshire border with Carlo Col. That’s not all that odd a name taken by itself. But then there’s Goose Eye, Old Sec, Bald Pate and Surplus.

The Mahoosuc hasn’t been all that

stable a geographical designation throughout its history. Oringally it ran as far as Andover. Then mapmakers extended in further east. There we have mountains with names like Old Blue and Elephant. Today the Mahoosuc includes side ranges with mountains bearing names like Sunday River, Whitecap and Puzzle.

These names are just a beginning, though. My favorite name for any Maine mountain has to be Aunt Hepsy Brown Mountain. Aunt Hepsy is in Dixfield. Aunt Hepsy hersef was one of the early settlers of the town. She moved there from Jay. This, however, is taking it a bit far from the Appala-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com chian Trail’s and Maine’s toughest mile, and whether it is indeed deserving of the name or not. And it presents us with a question. Is the Mahoosuc Notch section of the Appalachian Trail truly deserving to be known as the “killer mile?”

According to a variety of sources the first explorers of Mahoosuc Notch were members of the White Mountain Club of Portland.

The White Mountain Club of Portland was founded in 1873. This is three years before the Appalachian Mountain Club was formed. The White Mountain Club is often said to have been the second mountaineering society in the United States. The club was instrumenta in exploring and describing many previously undescribed sections of the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire and Maine. The club is credited with the first written descriptions of Mahoosuc Notch. These descriptions speak to the Notch’s terrain

without using pejorative terms such as “toughest” and “killer.”

Hiking guide books of today describe Mahoosuc Notch as a deep gap in the Mahoosuc Range of western Maine. The general sentiment seems to be that the Notch is one of the slowest traverses on the entire Appalachian Trail. Bouders on the mile-long section of the Notch present obstacles that must be climbed over and sometimes under. I found it an altogether unique hiking experience. This had a lot to do with the number of steep ten-foot drops extremely close to where I planted my feeet, as well as the places where I had to remove my pack to crawl under a boulder in order to stay on the trail.

Mahoosuc Notch is a good place to go for a day hike or to camp. I have been there twice: the first time for a day hike, the second to camp for two nights and explore. I was drawn back for a longer stay because the Notch, which links Fulling Mill Mountain and Ma-

hoosuc Mountain, is so beautiful. It’s also wild. There is no road there.

According to the guide book The Best of the Appalachian Trail, the Mahoosuc Range is the most rugged section of the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

Victoria Logue, the author of the work, says “A lot of elevation is gained and lost. The mountains in this chain are all over 3,500 feet in elevation.” She warns that “you will be hiking along the crest of the ridge, [and] water will be scarce… carry plenty.” However, water is readily available in the area surrounding Mahoosuc Notch and in the Notch itself.

The glacier created Mahoosuc Notch. When it did so, it created a wonderland of caves. In their depths you can find ice even in July. Snow in June is not unknown.

Bull Branch of the Sunday River runs through the Notch. Much of it runs buried under tumbled rocks. The gurgling of the stream is a cheerful sound. (continued on page 56)

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(continued from page 55) At least I found it so. Both times I was in the Notch it was a bright, warm sunfilled day. Others claim the brook adds to the sense of mystery established by the tumbled rocks with their caves.

This may be so on an overcast or rainy day.

Is Mahoosuc Notch the “killer trail” it is reputed to be? There is no question that it is dangerous. Moss and boulders here can be slick and wet. Hikers need to be careful. It’s not the place to slip and fall. As one guide says “Once you’re down among the boulders, there is no way around them except over, under and to either side.”

Is Mahoosuc Notch really the “toughest mile” of the Appalachian Trail? I can’t answer this question. I have not hiked much of the famous trail. Maybe if you are bent on getting from the Georgia start to Maine finish as fast as possible, it is. It isn’t all that tough if what you want to do is explore in a leisurely manner.

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Western Maine

58

Of Fiddleheads And Ferns A Maine gardener’s treasure

by Charles Francis

F

gracefully in the breeze. In short, they make a good garden backdrop. They’re easy to grow, too, and deer leave them alone.

Then there are those who appreciate ostrich ferns in the wild, growing in dappled shade on the forest edge or around ponds. We are talking about those with the botanical leanings here.

The naturalist types, with copies of American Fern Journal or Rhodora stashed away. They are the sorts of individuals who know and appreciate the mountains of western Maine as a Canadian forest, the sort who thinks there is nothing more beautiful than a mountain glade filled with large but delicate ferns.

iddlehead ferns are ostrich ferns, though not everyone uses the latter name. Most likely it’s because fiddleheads are an edible marker of spring. Fiddlehead gourmets covet the short time the fiddlehead emerges.

Then they forget about the plant till another spring rolls around. Gardeners, however, treasure the leafy ostrich fern, caring little for its edible manifestation.

Gardeners value ostrich ferns because few plants are as delicate yet as durable. Their common name refers to the foliage, or fronds, which resemble ostrich feathers. The fronds are upright, reaching three feet or more before gently arching over at the tips.

They have an airy quality and move

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com Yes, there are those who roam the als. forested hills of western Maine in Merritt L. Fernald was a botanist. search of nothing more than ferns. It’s In his time – he died in 1950 – he was nothing new, either. In fact, some of the regarded as the most respected scholar best known names in the early field of of the taxonomy and phytogeography fern botany made western Maine their of the vascular plant flora of temperate home. Clarence Knowlton of Farming- eastern North America. Born in Oroton was one. Lillian Easton of Ches- no, he taught at Harvard and published terville was another. Other Franklin more than 850 scientific papers and County residents included H.W. Jewell wrote and edited the seventh and eighth and A.H. Trundy. All were recognized editions of Gray’s Manual of Botany. for their work. And, not incidentally, Fernald also wrote the 1943 Edible all were amateurs.

Wild Plants of Eastern North America The fact that the names of the fern with Alfred Kinsey. enthusiasts listed above are those of Like Fernald, Catharine “Kate” FurPage amateurs is not meant to 1/3 imply thatVertical bish Color was a Ad Maine-born botanist. She Discover Maine Magazine all who were or are drawn to Maine’s specialized in collecting, classifying $750.00 color western mountains in search of ferns and illustrating the state’s flora. It was and their allied species fall into this cat- the focus of her life. She devoted over egory. Some noted early professionals sixty years to her interest, travelling were drawn here, too. Kate Furbish thousands of miles throughout Maine. came here. So, too, did Merritt Lyndon In the process she created extremeFernald. One also needs to be careful ly accurate drawings and watercolor as to the meaning of amateur. First, paintings of the plants she found. Two however, a word on the two profession(continued on page 60)

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(continued from page 59) plants are named for her, an aster and the infamous Furbish lousewart. It was the latter, an endangered species, that put a halt to the development of the Dickey-Lincoln hydro project.

Of the amateur botanists list above, Clarence Knowlton and Lillian Easton both published articles on the flora, especially the ferns, of Franklin County and the mountains of western Maine in a number of respected botanical journals.

Clarence Knowlton spent his early life in Farmington before moving to Hingham, Massachusetts. He was a member of the publishing Knowlton family of Farmington. The firms include Knowlton, McLeary & Company and D.H. Knowlton & Company.

Knowltons were job printers, especially of schoolbooks and pamphlets.

Clarence Knowlton served as president of the New England Botanical Society.

He was an outstanding amateur field

botanist and accompanied Merritt L. Fernald on a number of his botanical expeditions at least one to the Atlantic Provinces of Canada. Knowlton had a love of mountaineering which led him to study the flora of his native Franklin County as well as that of the White Mountains.

Lillian Eaton was the daughter of a Chesterville farmer. Though lacking the education of a Merritt Fernald, United States Department of Agriculture recognized her as an authority on Maine flora. Fernald corresponded with her regularly, and she served as one of his guides in Franklin County.

She contributed to USDA publications on subjects involving cultivation of farm crops in areas of higher elevation.

In 1906 Lillian Eaton helped put Chesterville on the map as far as the USDA is concerned. That year she guided a USDA official named Agnes Chase around her community. Chase

was particularly interested in local grasses. Eaton later wrote a monograph of the experience for Rhodora magazine, titled Notes on Plants of Chesterville, Maine. In it she describes a number of plants besides the grasses she and Chase found on their expedition. She sent at least one plant to Harvard for examination. Merritt Fernald identified it as Oxalis Acetocella. Fernald indicated he knew of but one other place in North America where the plant is found.

Lillian Eaton introduced Clarence Knowlton to the Chesterville Area.

This is so even though Chesterville is a close neighbor of Farmington. Writing in an early volume of American Fern Journal, Knowlton says” “When I made my first botanical visit to Chesterville… I invaded on of the peat-bogs, and was surprised and delighted to find a big fern growing there in abundance.

Some of the fronds were five feet tall.”

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Knowlton later identified the fern as Woodwardia virginica, a species most often found on the coast.

Clarence Knowlton might best be described as western Maine’s fern expert, at least during the period of his lifetime. Knowlton liked nothing better than discovering hitherto unknown – at least to him – fern varieties. He produced a number of papers on the subject. One is titled Ferns and Their Allies in Southern Franklin County.

That Clarence Knowlton loved ferns is clear from his descriptive encounters of unexpected discoveries. On one occasion he runs across the variety named Asplenium acrostichoides on Day Mountain on the border of Strong and Avon. He finds the specimens at an altitude of 1,000 feet, on the shaded side of the mountain. He says they are “numerous and well developed, the best I have ever seen… very different from the smaller specimens [I] have usually

found in other places.” Another variety he is introduced to is on “I never expected to see in Farmington, but Mr. Jewell finally discovered two lonely plants crouching beside a granite boulder in a large pasture.”

The above discussion is a brief attempt to impart some of the “fun” to be had seeking out ferns in western Maine.

Quite clearly Clarence Knowlton loved his avocation. One cannot imagine the others mentioned above feeling otherwise. And none of them were interested in ferns as an addition to their flower gardens… much less the cook pot!

In closing, it would be remiss not to mention that fiddlehead ferns are not all alike. Yes, the flavor is nutty and earthy, a bit like broccoli rabe or asparagus. But not all fiddlehead ferns are edible. Look for a U-shaped groove on the inside of the stem and a thin, brown, papery coating to identify the edible sort. Pick just a few per plant while still

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small and tightly furled; they turn bitter as they mature. Before cooking, wash lightly and gently rub off the papery coating. Fiddleheads can be steamed or boiled, and are delicious sautéed in olive oil with garlic or bacon. Better then these few brief words, if you are a first-time fiddlehead gatherer, get a good fern book or pick with someone who has done it for years.

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64

Summers On A Maine Pond Childhood memories never forgotten

by Karen Bessey Pease

I

pulled an old photo from the dusty album. September 1979.

My parents owned a cabin on the shore of Tufts Pond in Kingfield.

During the summers of my childhood, I practically lived at that cabin and on that pond.

Each spring, my pal Patty and I went smelting at the inlet, down the hill from the camp.

On rainy afternoons I curled up on a bed in a corner of the porch, reading and listening to the drum and patter of falling water on the tin roof, and to the haunting call of the resident loons.

Tufts Pond is where I first paddled a canoe; first dug oars through clear wa-

ter as I rowed an aluminum boat – and it’s where I learned how to operate and maneuver the Johnson Evinrude outboard. My first solo motorboat outing (one I did not have permission to take) resulted in depositing a few dabs of white paint on the shoreline rocks to the left of our dock. I quickly learned the

rudimentary technique of ‘reverse’… as well as how to camouflage and redistribute stones to thwart my parents’ ability to deduce their daughter’s latest transgression.

Tufts Pond is where I caught crawdads. Some, I caught in traps. Others came in on my bathing suit or tried to hitch a ride on my bare toes.

Tufts Pond also hosted my one and only sailing lesson, which was remarkably unsuccessful. Patty and I had no problem at all sailing down to the pond’s outlet from Norris Stansbury’s camp. The dilemma arose when the fickle wind refused to switch directions at the same time we needed to sail back

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com UP the pond.

I discovered that Tufts is far larger than it appears when you’re towing a sailboat upwind with a short rope by walking barefoot in the shallows at dusk. And Patty learned that my mother could get cranky – downright wrathy, even – when we continually pulled stunts that put us in harm’s way AND required that Mum come ‘rescue’ us.

On a whim, Patty and I swam across the deep pond from the Deer Farm Camps beach to our cabin. Another time, Patty thought it would be adventurous to STAND while paddling the canoe. She was right. It was. It was also wet. And later, once the canoe had been righted and we were back on shore, it was hilarious.

Yes, my time spent at the Pond helped define my childhood…as did my bold and brash friend. The pond, the water and its wildlife were balms to the soul. When Patty and I were on the water…we were buoyant. Free.

That September of 1979, for my sixteenth birthday, my folks allowed me to have a ‘pajama party’ at the camp.

No adults…just a bunch of giggling girls armed with hot dogs, marshmallows, sleeping bags and bug dope. The drizzly, damp evening was spent inside – gas lights aglow as we played cards, told stories and laughed the night away.

One girlfriend showed a notable lack of enthusiasm when she discovered that ‘doing her business’ involved a flashlight and a 100-foot walk through dark woods to a spider-infested outhouse.

Another caused a minor ‘midnight upset’ when she turned on her flashlight and caught a mouse in its beam, precariously perched directly over her head on the metal rod that tied the end walls of the upstairs bedroom together. There was NO WAY she was going to go to sleep after that! (She did, of course… but only because exhaustion eventually overrode fear.)

Being a country kid, I took in stride

things like mice and privies and walks through the dark, verdant forest. My girlfriends were less-than-enchanted with an autumn evening without electricity or running water – but they were troopers. They had to be. They were at the mercy of ‘camp life’ until my folks came to get us the following day.

Saturday dawned clear and cool.

We watched the mist rise from the glass-like surface of the pond as we lolled on the porch eating a breakfast of chips and dip washed down with warm Pepsi. My friends got it into their heads that they wanted to go for a boat ride. It was a perfectly reasonable request. We were sitting a few feet from a tranquil lake and there was a canoe and a rowboat tied up to the dock. The only problem was…I could only find 2 PFDs. Personal Flotation Devices. As the daughter of a Maine State Game Warden, there was no way I could break the law. Each person in a boat need(continued on page 66)

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66

(continued from page 65) ed a PFD and I was NOT going to be the warden’s daughter who got caught short. The previous year, I’d been the warden’s daughter who got lost in the woods overnight. There was a limit to how much humiliation I’d cause my Dad. It was decided that we would go out two at a time. I never considered the possibility that my girlfriends weren’t adept at rowing. I put Wanda and Robin into the aluminum rowboat, passed the cushions over and cast them off.

Somehow, these diminutive gals maneuvered the boat into the middle of the pond. Perhaps the wind was on their side? Or maybe they had a brief spurt of sour-cream-and-onion-infused energy? Whatever the case, it soon became clear that they were stuck. Individually, they didn’t have the strength to row. One oar would go in…the boat would turn a half-circle…and then the

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other oar would perform the same service…but in reverse. I walked out onto the dock, shouting instructions…but to no avail. They changed places but then the girl at the oars faced backwards.

That would have worked if she’d also rowed ‘backwards’…but she didn’t seem to understand the science of the chore. Then they plunked down sideby-side and each manned one oar, accomplishing little except a back-andforth motion of the bow. If I hadn’t been so worried about them (they’d been going in circles for a half-hour) I would have cackled in hilarity.

Finally, I made a decision. They were exhausted. Scared. Even…humiliated. So I broke the law. I untied the canoe and hopped inside – sans PFD – hoping desperately that I would return to shore before my parents arrived at camp, thereby keeping my dastardly criminal act a secret.

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I paddled out to the rowboat; tied a line to its bow; then swung it about and towed it to shore. Wanda and Robin climbed out on legs of jelly…relieved to be on land – and determined to gracefully take the good-natured ribbing from our pals.

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68

A Day At The Devonian Beach The first Mainers were multi-leggeds

I

by Jeffrey Bradley

magine yourself adrift in a rubber dinghy on an ancient Devonian sea.

Hundred-foot waves rear overhead caused by a moon that hangs in the sky like a continent. You go hissing over a reef but find shelter in a quiet lagoon.

You’re relieved, yet notice dark objects writhing upon the shore. Just before beaching an ominous silhouette as big as the dinghy appears beneath you.

Oh, no, Eurypterids—giant sea scorpions! Suddenly the dinghy is punctured, pitching you headlong into the surf.

Something hideous rushes over to seize you and drag you under… but don’t worry; this can never happen. For the eurypterids, armored fish and super-size

insects of the Devonian Age have been extinct for 250 million years.

Perhaps a billion years ago in ancient Maine a seabed was uplifted in an ongoing process of mountain building.

Over the eons, with the help of glaciers, this weathered into impressive geomorphology. The faerie realms of Gulf Hagas near Milo, flinty Mt Kineo, and the scenic environs of White Cap Mountain, back of Brownsville, all reveal that matrix laid down so long ago in stratified, ice-hewn splendor.

Entombed within whorls of slate and flaky shale formations near Katahdin, or eroding from crumbling cliffs that ring the Central Maine Basin, are fos-

sil remnants of Earth’s early life easily struck from their sandstone seams with the single blow of a hammer. And south of a line drawn roughly through Augusta, Greenville and East Millinocket the bedrock shades from sedimentary to volcanic conglomerates of granite and gneiss.

The Devonian period is so remote it’s known as the “Age of Fishes.” Life swarmed in the oceans but was just beginning to colonize land. Only the buzz of disturbingly large insects, the grunts of lobe-finned fishlike Rhizodus, with the amazing ability to gulp air and come splashing ashore, and the din of flabby amphibians croaking within the

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com steamy swamps, was all that broke the silence. Not a bird or a bat or even a lizard would so much as rustle the underbrush for many millions of years.

But the seas! Cameroceras the giant squid ruled the deep until the rise of the fishes produced a “plated” behemoth capable of challenging its briny domain. Protected by a tapered shell measuring as much as forty feet, this super-nautilus “orthocone” strangled prey with its muscular tentacles or tore it to shreds with a powerful beak. Inshore, the shallow reefs teemed with plantlike crinoids and blastoids, sea shells of dubious design, and an array of sea life whose outlines may or may not be considered bizarre. The buggy, crabby trilobites that tangled murderously with carnivorous sea worms fled from the stealthy approach of man-sized Anomalocaris, which name means “abnormal shrimp.” The plentiful fish were represented by jawless, cartilaginous and bony species, includ-

ing armored leviathan Dinichthys, the terror of the Devonian seas. And those oversized, aggressive sea scorpions that could paddle swiftly underwater or come clacking up on land were, in essence, the world’s very first ‘surf and turf’.

Oxygen levels were higher then, and the climate was generally mild. Hardly more than a degree or two of difference in temperature existed between the equator and the poles. The “Old Red Continent,” as scientists formerly called it, one of only two large landmasses, contained nascent Maine, but not in any shape that you’d recognize on a map. The rest was open ocean.

Spending time on a Devonian beach means dialing the way back-machine to 300 million BC. Just keep in mind that as we exit the portal the air might make you dizzy and the plants are a little bit weird.

Looks like the way back deposited us a little ways back from the beach.

Never mind. The surf is pounding on the other side of that forest, and we’ll get there in no time if we follow this path. But single file, please. And better slather your sunscreen on as the plants haven’t had time yet to scrub the air of greenhouse gases, especially ozone, which is probably pretty intense. More important, we need to return here by nightfall because, well, we just do.

Are we having fun yet?

These woods we’re entering may seem creepy, but that’s because they’re primeval. Nature is still experimenting, and only recently have scrappy patches of greenery given way to large-scale forests of 100-foot Cooksonia trees, palms crowned with “antlers” instead of fronds, and these spiky vines creeping around everywhere. And if some of the trees look gnarly it’s due to their not being trees at all but gargantuan club mosses. But what’s really freaky are these twisty, surreal filaments covering the trees instead of leaves. They won’t (continued on page 70)

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(continued from page 69) be around for millions and millions of years. Take these towering lycopsids, for instance; don’t they resemble a hybrid pine tree-saguaro cactus? Say, this forest is creepy!

But I wouldn’t, you know, keep poking that burrow. A wholesome den does not have crumpled husks piled disturbingly about the entrance, or a smooth spot where a heavy body has been repeatedly dragged. My On Giant Devonian Bugs field guide that I luckily packed warrants it must be the lair of Megarachne. Do you see any eyes gleaming? Says here that a scientific debate rages over it being a spider or a scorpion. At two feet across, it’s venomous and hideous, and I personally do not want to get involved in the argument. Let’s just hurry past the holes.

But wait; something large comes slithering this way. This illustration on page 9 identifies it as possibly Arthropleura, “at ten feet the world’s largest arthro-

pod ever.” Interesting, a millipede the size of a crocodile. It also states, “diet uncertain but probably herbivorous,” so I guess we can ignore its hissing.

But mind if it’s the six-foot Euphoberia centipede, for it bites.

Whichever, it no doubt feasts on these mammoth cockroaches underfoot. The guide says they’re so numerous the Devonian could’ve been called the “Age of Cockroaches” instead of fishes. (It also mentions predacious hawk-sized dragonflies somewhere ahead, so be careful.) At least there aren’t any ants yet to ruin our picnic, or flies to spoil the fun!

Just beyond that clump of Dr. Seuss-looking horsetails and the meadow of spongy fungi (first let’s tiptoe around this swamp so as not to disturb the Eryops)I believe we’ll arrive at the beach. Not too hasty, or we risk depriving some future scientist of discovering how important this Pertica quadrifaria

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fern is in the evolution of leaves. It will also become the official state fossil of Maine if we don’t trample it first.

Think how strange it is standing in what could be in future downtown Jackman or Greenville; and stranger still is how scientists will puzzle eons from now over the fossilized boot prints we left on our trip to the Devonian!

Here’s the beach, although I’m sure it’s not what you expected. Days were longer back then — now — because the moon that’s so frightfully close (it takes up fully a third of the sky) formed only recently, geologically speaking.

When Earth collided with a huge object from space the eject coalesced into the moon. Now it’s so large, and so close, it acts like a giant brake slowing the Earth’s rotation. (From space the pair appears as twin planets.) This nearness also accounts for the stupendously high tides and crashing breakers. When “surf’s up” in ancient Maine, it’s up! As

far as swimming goes, don’t fret about the nasty eurypterids because I’m sure the orthocones have chased them away.

But stay in the shallows, for horrid Dinicthys patrols the reef. It may not have teeth, but at 33 feet this massive fish can shear you in half with one slice of those dreadful jaws. According to the field guide, that is.

This domain of “walking” air-breathing fish, weirdly alien vegetation and insects the size of retrievers is like no landscape of modern Maine.

But extinction ended all that more than a quarter-billion years ago when a great demise very nearly extinguished all of life on the face of the Earth.

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72

The Sidney Algernon Farrar Mystery A matter of musical roots

by Charles Francis

S

idney Algernon Farrar’s ancestors are a mystery as is why he married another Farrar.” That’s what Bruce Farrar says and he knows as much about the Farrar family as anyone. Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe there’s someone living in Oxford County or elsewhere who knows more.

A part of this piece has to do with just who Sidney A. Farrar was: who his parents were and where they came from. That’s not the only subject here, though. It also has to do with a remarkable musical gift, the gift of a Farrar named Geraldine. Geraldine was Sidney A. Farrar’s granddaughter.

Another member of the Farrar family, Dr. Christine Mork, suggests Geraldine’s gift came from her mother’s side of the family, the Barnes family. Dr. Mork’s area of expertise extends to the general area that is often simply identified as nature verses nurture. In short, Mork has a good grounding as to arriving at an assessment of the origins of Geraldine Farrar’s gift. Or maybe she doesn’t, maybe the picture is a bit broader or complex. Before taking this up, we wil say a bit about Sidney A. Farrar and who he married.

Sidney A. Farrar’s hometown was Paris. He married Maria Farrar.

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Maria’s parents were Bela and Ludia (Thayer) Farrar of Buckfield. Bela and Lydia are part of the Farrar mystery.

Bruce Farrar and Christine Mork don’t know anything about their origins either.

Sidney A. and Maria had three children: Alice J., George H., and Sidney Douglas Farrar. All three were born in Paris. Sidney D. is the Farrar of interest. Sidney D. married Henrietta Barnes. The couple lived in Melrose, Massachusetts. Sidney D. and Henrietta had one child, Alice Geraldine Farrar. So who was Alice Geraldine, Geraldine Farrar? It is she that makes this

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com essay go.

Willa Cather called Geraldine Farrar “Darling of Fortune.” Geraldine was an opera diva and a great one She starred in movies. Cecil B. DeMille directed her. She was noted for her beauty, acting ability, and “the intimate timbre of her voice.” In the early decades of the twentieth century, she had a large following amoung young women, nicknamed “Gerry-flappers.” That’s all we really need to know about Geraldine, that she was ‘the’ superstar of her day, though it is intriguing to know she had had a seven-year love affair with conductor Arturo Toscanini. This piece is, for the most part, concerned with the source of Geraldine’s artistic gift, not she herself. This takes us back to Geraldine’s forebears and the source of her gift.

There is a good reason why Dr. Christine Mork suggests Geraldine Farrar’s talent comes from the maternal side of the family. We aren’t talking just about nature, meaning genes, here,

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but also nurture, meaning environment.

Henrietta Barnes, Geraldine’s mother, was a talent in her own right. She was a gifted pianist and vocalist. Geraldine’s maternal grandfather, Dennis Barnes, was a musician. He had an orchestra which he taught and trained, he gave violin lessons, and he composed. Mother and maternal grandfather were factors in Geraldine’s life from the standpoint of genetics and environment. This point being made, we will turn to paternal influences.

Sidney Douglas Farrar was a baseball star when the sport was in its early years. He payed for Philadelphia’s National League team. In the off-season he was a storekeeper. This doesn’t meant that he lacked for artistic talents.

He was a member of his father-in-law’s orchestra and a member of the Melrose Band. He sang in both the Universalist and Episcopal Church choirs. He was a good enough vocalist that he and daughter Geraldine sometimes sang duets in local shows. This was during

and after the time Geraldine achieved stardom.

Sidney Algernon Farrar aso lived in Melrose for a time. This means he was another influence in the nurture of Geraldine. Sidney A. was also a member of Dennis Barnes’ orchestra and the Melrose Band. Sidney A., in fact, possessed some pretty good musical credentials. Between 1861 and 1868 he served in three Army regiments as a bandsman. We now turn briefly to the Farrar family of Paris and possible areas for future research as to their origins.

It would seem that two Farrar first names indicate potential family tradition. These are the names Alice and Sidney. The question is are there others of generations back bearing those names? Alice Geraldine was named for her Aunt Alice. Sidney Douglas was named in part for his father. He was also named for his father’s close friend Sidney Douglas Perham. Sidney (continued on page 74)

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Western Maine

74

(continued from page 73) Perham was a Maine governor. The town of Perham in Aroostook County is named for him.

The above presentation raises an intriguing question about western Maine of the nineteenth century. What was the musical environment of Oxford County in that period? The presentation also suggests that musical gifts and interests are products of both nature and nurture.

Music is a universal. Darwin counted the “capacity and love for singing or music” among “the most mysterious forces” characterizing humanity. Music is everywhere. It is cross-cultural.

It consists of pure, pitched tones and recognizable rhythms. We respond to music from birth in the form of the lullaby. This suggests that music is an engrained need, like the need for touch.

Music appeals to emotions, it enhances them. Just listen to the sound track from the movie Jaws. We need music,

but one can also say it is useless.

The point to the above is that Alice Geraldine Farrar was the product of two lines that produced above average musicians. Evidence indicates that musical accomplishment in the Barnes family began with Geraldine’s grandfather, Dennis. As to the Farrar family, we don’t know anything beyond Sidney Algernon.

In the past Discover Maine Magazine has been kind enough to publish pieces similar to this. Invariably, readers came forward with information solving the particular issue. If that happens here in regard to the ancestry of Sidney Algernon Farrar and his wife Maria Farrar, it may just add a bit more to what we know about Geraldine Farrar, one of the great stars of stage and screen.

Discover Maine Magazine has been brought to you free through the generous support of Maine businesses for the past 24 years, and we extend a special thanks to them.

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

Thanks for supporting those businesses that help us bring Maine’s history to you!

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Western Maine

76

The Minister’s Tale Western Maine’s Sylvester Strickland

by Charles Francis

A

s a child Fanny Lord visited her grandparent’s farm in the country. Lord wasn’t her name then, though. Her name was Strickland.

Lord was her married name. She married Charles Lord.

Fanny Lord was named for her grandmother. That was one of the things that made the visits memorable.

Another was her grandmother’s stories of her own childhood in Turner. The elder Fanny grew up there to marry a minister’s son, Hastings Strickland, the son of the Reverend John Strickland.

Fanny Lord’s visits to her grandparent’s farm took place in the 1850s.

That was a time period very different from the one we know today. Fanny es-

pecially remembered “a big round table that turned back against the walls and made an armchair when not in use as a table. On this were set… little plates of that dull, pinkish shade of red, found only in old crockery. Around the rime in white-raised letters were mottoes from Benjamin Franklin… Fanny looked upon the plates as an admonition that she be as wise in [her] generation as [Franklin] was in his.”In her way Fanny would realize the high-minded goal.

Fanny Lord was one of the original founders of the King’s Daughters’ Home in Bangor. The principles of the King’s Daughters’ Home were those of Christian charity. The home was a place of refuge for girls and wom-

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en to go safely when in Bangor, girls and women with very little money and no friends. This is not a story of the King’s Daughters’ Home, however. It is a tale of the great-granddaughter of the Reverend John Strickland, the first minister of Turner and later minister in Andover.

Among Fanny Lord’s memories of her grandparent’s stories of her minister great grandfather there is one that stands apart from all the others as a true indicator of that worthy cleric’s character. It is the tae of John Strickland’s son Sylvester.

Sylvester was the ninth child of John and Patty Strickland. Lest one wonder, Patty would appear the given name of Across from Rite Aid

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com A good-hearted farm wife from the outskirts of Turner took the babe and for long months nursed his infirmity. When Sylvester returned home his feet “were not noticeably unlike those of [his] more favored brothers and sisters.”

Fanny Lord tells this tale in her A Minister of Ye Olden Tyme. She concluded the story saying “among John Strickland’s descendants the club foot has many times re-appeared, down to the present generation.”

A Minister of Ye Olden Tyme is long out of print. It was written sometime in the first years of the last century. Fanny Lord was born in 1839. The time span tells us Fanny was recalling stories long locked in her memory. The same must be said of her grandparents. This is not a negative criticism but rather one very positive. One way family tales are passed on is by grandparents telling grandchildren what they remember of their own childhood. It is a practice that links the generations, a

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John Strickland came to Turner in 1784. He was a Presbyterian and Yaleeducated. He remained in Turner until 1804. The dates may be off a bit. We know Reverend Strickland was the subject of some controversy in Turner. Exactly what the nature of the controversy was is not found in the historic record of the day. Strickland was not Turner’s (continued on page 78)

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the Reverend’s wife. Tradition has it that she was “Miss Patty” all her days in Turner and Andover.

Sylvester Strickland was born with club feet. He was born in Turner in 1785. This was a time when surgery was in its infancy and anaesthetics yet to be discovered. The question was what to do about little Sylvester’s deformity.

The Reverend Strickland had heard club feet could be brought to something near normal by bandaging. The bandaging had to be done soon after birth, when cartilage was still malleable. In addition, the feet were to be encased in unyielding wooden shoes all day and night. It was a long process and painful. As this story goes, Miss Patty opposed the ordeal, refusing her consent.

The Reverend, however, thinking of his son’s future and “seeing there the greater suffering and torture of the child, forced to go through life humiliated by his deformity, gently but firmly took his stand.”

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(continued from page 77) minister after 1804. In 1806 he became Andover’s minister. He died there in 1823. He was eighty-two when he passed away.

John Strickland was not the typical divine of the times. This seems clear from Fanny Lord’s stories, stories that come down from her grandparent’s recollections. In particular, the Reverend Strickland approved of dancing. Perhaps in that approval we have the roots of the theological controversy in Turner.

John Strickland would seem to have preached a theology more in tune with the modern age than that of some 200 and more years ago when parental discipline was at its most unyielding. Fanny Lord says her great grandfather’s “sympathies were always with the restless youth of his parish.” He even approved of recreation!

Reverend Strickland was of a liberal bent. He and Miss Patty were the

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parents of twelve children. All twelve learned to dance. “Young people must have some recreation.” He would say, “and dancing is as innocent as any.”

That the reverend Strickland was not unpopular in Turner is seen in the increase in numbers of his congregation. In the time Strickland presided in Turner, church attendance grew from fifteen to thrity. There were, however, differing theological currents in the community. One was Baptist, the other Universalist. Or so Fanny Lord suggests. The record indicates that Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists and Universalists were all represented in the town by the 1830s. The absence of a Presbyterian congregation speaks for itself.

For Fanny Lord, the Reverend Strickland was “a hero and true blue as every Presbyterian should be...”

Of course, her opinion might be viewed as circumspect. She cited Turn-

er town records to the effect that after Strickland’s departure, “The town became a spiritual wilderness.” It seems a complaint was lodged against the town in court “for neglecting to provide themselves with a public teacher of purity, morality and religion.”

John Strickland’s last years, almost twenty, were spent in Andover. Those twenty years would seem to have been rewarding ones. Andover historian Sylvanus Poor wrote of Strickland “He was...a minister and a man much beloved and respected.”

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Western Maine

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~ Early view at Smithfield ~ photo courtesy of the Smithfield Historical Society

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81

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

Smithfield Celebrates 175 Years as Maine’s Only Leap Year Town Yup! Maine’s only leap year town is celebrating 175 years and we want you to join us for an unforgettable celebration! Mark your calendar for Friday, July 31 through Sunday, August 2nd, 2015. More on this later...let’s start with a bit of Smithfield’s history so you can get to know us a little better before you arrive! Smithfield was incorporated on February 29, 1840 making it “Maine’s only Leap Year Town.” It was incorporated from parts of Dearborn to the south, Mercer to the west and East Pond Plantation to the north and east. Prior to the incorporation, this area was known as “Greeley’s Mill,” a farming and lumbering community. There were numerous farms back then with two still in operation today along with a few family owned lumbering businesses as well. Smithfield has since become a favorite destination for travelers from all over the world who come to recreate on North and East Ponds located on either side of our beautiful town.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s the town boasted a hotel, store, post office, restaurant, and blacksmith shop; a true destination. In 1895 the town built its first and only church, the Smithfield Baptist Church.

In the early 1900s two major fires in the Village of Smithfield changed the center of town and many businesses did not rebuild.

Today in the village there is still a mechanic for hire, a public beach at Sunset Camps, where families have returned to the same cabins each summer for 100 years, and the Sunbeam Roller Rink. Starting out as a dance pavilion known as North Pond Casino and later North Pond Roller Skating Rink, it is Maine’s only open air, wooden floor rink.

Built in 1922, most children who come to enjoy the fast paced action today are direct descendents of original roller skaters.

Another piece of history in the heart of the village is the Fairview Grange #342. It’s managed by an active and lively group of volunteers who have grown the membership and visibility over the past few years with collaborative efforts from the North Pond Association and Duratherm Windows. The original hall, built in 1913, burned in 1915.

That structure was destroyed again in 1986; the current hall was built on the same spot along the shore of North Pond.

More recently, in 2008 the Smithfield Elementary School closed and in February 2009 the Municipal Offices and Volunteer Fire Department moved into the space at 926 Village Road. Join us for the former school’s rededication ceremony as Smithfield’s Municipal Complex after the Leap Year Town Parade on Sunday, August 2nd at 1:30pm!

A wonderful addition to the village area is the Smithfield Maine Historical Society located in the Groves House next to the Baptist Church. The society enters its 6th year as an active organization that is devoted to preserving the history of Smithfield. It has a wonderful collection of Smithfield artifacts on display and a newly published book titled The Making of Smithfield: The Early 1800s.

Visit, and a member will show you around on Saturday, August 1st. See Smithfield as it has changed and grown through the years.

This summer, Smithfield’s 175th Anniversary Celebration is sure to be an unforgettable family oriented three-day event.

For a small town, with a population slightly over 1000, Smithfield boasts many hidden gems and a community full of various businesses, active non- profits and groups who will together contribute to the weekend-long festivities: Smithfield, Maine Historical Society, North Pond Association, East Pond Association, Fairview Grange #342, Smithfield Community Garden, Smithfield Baptist Church, Moonshiners Snowmobile Club, Camp Matoaka summer camp for girls, and the Smithfield Volunteer Fire Department.

Please see our calendar of events on this page. We look forward to seeing you!

Come Celebrate Smithfield’s 175th Anniversary!

Friday, July 31 LOCATION: Fairview Garage #342 5-7pm - Saturday Night Supper on a Friday Night: Baked Beans/Franks/Biscuits/Salad 5-7pm LIVE MUSIC by Dave Mello and Kevin Jameswhile you enjoy your meal!

Come Join the Fun! July 31-August 2nd

Saturday, August 1 10-2pm Classic Car Show at Morrow’s Garage LOCATION: Fairview Grange #342 9-1pm Arts & Crafts Fair 10-3pm North & East Pond Association Tents 4-5pm “Poetry in the Grange” featuring Maine’s Poet Laureate Wes McNair and Smithfield’s own published poet, Douglas “Woody” Woodsum 7-10pm: Saturday night Dance to the music of Shiloh Creek

Saturday, August 1 (cont.)

LOCATION: Smithfield Maine Historical Society 9-3pm Open House & Tours 2-4pm Sunbeam Roller Rink Skating LOCATION: Municipal Complex - ONGOING ACTIVITIES 1-2pm: Marvelous Magic by Stephan the Great!

FREE FAMILY FUN ALL DAY including Antique Motors & Tractors, Concessions, Free Cotton Candy & Sno Cones, Face painting, 70 ft Inflatable Obstacle Course and Bounce House, Balloon Twister, and much more!

~ Sunday, August 2nd @ 1:30pm: Leap Year Town Parade! ~

Immediately Following the Parade - Re-dedication of the Municipal Complex. Cake for Everyone!

*All Times Are Subject To Change. Please visit our website: www.smithfieldme.com or Find Us On Facebook for updated information and grab a program!*

Western Maine

82

A.B. Stickney The railroad tycoon from Wilton

by Charles Francis

A

. B. Stickney could have been the most famous railroad man of all. He started as superintendent of construction on a road that would have made him so. It was a road that would have taken him beyond a Vanderbilt, beyond a Harriman, beyond a Hill.

In April of 1881, A. B. Stickney was appointed superintendent of railroad construction for the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR). His employment for the CPR was short-lived, however. Stickney resigned at the end of the year under allegations that he and CPR Chief Engineer Thomas Rosser made a considerable amount of money on land speculation based on their knowl-

edge of the railway’s route plans west of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Stickney was replaced by William C. Van Horne.

The CPR was the most ambitious railroad project in North American history. Had A. B. Stickney been the man to see the railroad’s construction through till it reached the Pacific, he would have gone down in the history books as one of the greatest railroad men of all time, his name would have been included with the aforementioned Vanderbilt, Harriman, Hill and Van Horne. As it is though, Stickney still gets included with listings of railroad tycoons, albeit those perhaps best described as of the second order. Stickney’s position as first president of the

Chicago Great Western Railway assures him of this.

A. B. Stickney was Alpheus Beede Stickney. A. B. — that’s how he was known to friends and associates alike — was a Wilton man. He was born in Wilton on June 27, 1840. His father was Daniel Stickney and his mother the former Ursula Maria Beede.

A. B. was one of those types we like to call a self-made man, the sort of individual who early on demonstrates a stick-to-it sense of getting things done, the sort who never had the advantages of a college education. As a youngster A. B. wanted an algebra book that cost seventy-five cents. He got it by drying windfalls from his grandfather’s Wilton

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com apple orchard and selling them at two and one-half cents a pound. Shortly after this, when he was eleven or twelve, A. B. got his first steady job, working for a Wilton shoemaker. In short, A. B. entered the world of work, developing business skills at an early age. It was a work ethic that ran in the family.

Daniel Stickney, A. B.’s father, grew up in Hallowell, working in one of the machine shops there. He went on to become a school teacher, and then a Universalist clergyman. In his early thirties he was editor and publisher of a prominent and influential Presque Isle newspaper the Loyal Sunrise. The Sunrise is noted as one of the early promoters of the Aroostook region.

A. B.’s mother’s family, the Beedes, are noted as the founders of the Carroll County, New Hampshire town of Sandwich.

A. B. Stickney has a history as a railroad man that’s somewhat conflicted. That much should be clear from his

removal as head of the CPR. In fact, in Canada he’s viewed as something of a scoundrel. But that’s another story. In the United States, however, the story is a bit different.

In Illinois A. B. is looked upon as the founding father of the village of Stickney. Today Stickney is an upscale suburb of Chicago. The story of the village of Stickney is closely linked with the history of Stickney Township, organized in 1901. The township was the location of A. B.’s Clearing Industrial District. In 1913, the village of Stickney was established from Stickney Township land. The Stickney-Forest View Library District, in part, memorializes A. B.’s name.

A. B. Stickney has been the subject of a number of scholarly historic works, and there are recent biographies of him.

American writers treat A. B. a good deal more favorably than Canadian.

As a general statement, in the United States, A. B. is regarded as “a maverick

among railroad executives of the time.”

He was a maverick because he favored some regulation by the federal government and was opposed to the most flagrant abuses of the railroads. The following quote indicates some of A. B.’s out-of-step principles. The comments are, in effect, an indictment of a privileged class, the railroad tycoon.

“The managing officers were... potentates,--’railroad magnates,’ ‘railroad kings.’ They traveled in state, surrounded by their personal staff, the heads of the different departments, who were almost as important personages as their chiefs. When they visited a town on their lines, the principal business men rushed to greet them. The fat of the land was at their disposal.

Merchants sent baskets of champagne to the heads of the traffic departments and sealskin jackets to their wives, while on the other hand, special rates were liberally bestowed upon their favorites. Special clerks were required (continued on page 84)

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Western Maine

84

(continued from page 83) to be wholly employed in issuing free passes. Judges and juries seemed to have a perceptible bias in their favor, the brightest attorneys were retained, and minor officials were glad to grant them favors. The country press was subsidized with passes for editors, their families and their friends.

A. B. Stickney is also recognized as one of the great progressive leaders of Minnesota. He made St. Paul his home for most of his adult life, and is buried there.

A. B. grew up on his parents’ Wilton farm and attended a village school.

When he was eighteen, he took up the study of law in the offices of family friend Josiah Crosby of Dexter.

He supported himself in this period by teaching school. He was admitted to the bar in 1862. The same year he moved to Stillwater, a Minnesota town not far from St. Paul. For several years he taught school. He then opened a law

office.

1869 saw A. B. moving to St. Paul and his having first involvement in railroads. It was just the right time, too, for the career change. Railway construction in the northwest was in its infancy around 1870.

A. B.’s first important railway position was as Vice-President, General Manager and Chief Counsel of the St. Paul, Stillwater & Taylor Falls Railway.

He later superintended the construction of a portion of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railroad. Then came his involvement with the CPR. Despite this career setback with the CPR, A. B. landed on his feet quickly. He built the St. Paul Union Stockyards and packing houses in 1882 and, that same year, became Vice-President of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad. Then, two years later, he began the construction of the Minnesota &

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Northwestern Railroad, which later developed into the Great Western. He was president of this road until its consolidation with the Chicago, St. Paul & Kansas City, when he became president of the merged company, a position he held until 1892 when he became Chairman of its Board of Directors. He held this position until 1900. In 1908 and 1909, he became receiver of this railroad. A. B. retired in 1909.

A. B. Stickney died at his St. Paul, Minnesota home on August 9, 1916.

Today he is largely remembered for the courageous and candid manner in which he argued the responsibilities and duties of railroad corporations to the public.

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85

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Edmund Muskie The man who would be president

by Charles Francis

O

ne of the best known and most politically biased campaign photographs ever taken shows Rumford-born Edmund Muskie standing on the steps of the Manchester (New Hampshire) Union Leader building in 1972. According to captions and descriptions accompanying the myriad reproductions of the photo, presidential aspirant Muskie is upset and possibly even shedding tears. In short, Muskie has lost his cool, something no politician — especially one with national aspirations — should ever do.

At the time the damaging photograph was taken, Edmund Muskie was in a hotly contested race for the Democratic nomination for President. Today

many political analysts trace the beginning of Muskie’s decline in popularity as a potential candidate to what happened on those snow-swept steps on that winter day.

1972 was the tail end of the war in Viet Nam. Muskie’s chief opponents in the race for the Democratic nomination, George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy, were viewed as one-issue antiwar and/or extremist candidates.

In contrast, Edmund Muskie, a moderate, was looked upon by many as a pragmatist who held the welfare of the entire country as his primary motivation in running for the nation’s highest office. Those who supported the latter view pointed to Muskie’s record as a

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Maine governor and his record as an environmentalist in Congress. His environmental stances in the U.S. Senate earned him the nickname “Mr. Clean.”

The history books tell us George McGovern went on to win the Democratic nomination for President. They also tell us he went on to suffer one of the most decisive defeats in the history of presidential campaigns to Richard Nixon. Most analysts believe Edmund Muskie would have proven a much stiffer opponent for Nixon in the 1972 campaign. Certainly his reputation as a political moderate would have appealed to a much broader swath of the electorate. (continued on page 86)

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(continued from page 85) Today younger generations of Mainers know little of Edmund Muskie, how he changed Maine, and the debt the country owes him for championing such pieces of legislation as the Clean Air Act. This is unfortunate, as Edmund Muskie was one of the state’s greatest movers and shakers. In particular, as Governor, Muskie moved the state’s antiquated public education system into the modern era.

Edmund Muskie was born Edmund Sixtus Marciszewski in Rumford on March 28, 1914. He died March 26, 1996 in Washington. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was accorded this latter honor for his service in the Navy during World War II. Muskie’s education includes, in addition to Rumford-area schools, Bates College and Cornell University Law School. Following World War II, Muskie began a law career in Waterville, and entered state Democratic pol-

itics. He is viewed as the prime mover in creating the state’s Democratic Party as it exists today. Prior to Muskie’s election as Governor in 1954, only four other Democrats had been elected to the state’s highest office since the Civil War. Edmund Muskie’s greatest gift to Maine is, without doubt, the Sinclair Act. Today many see the Sinclair Act as the most forward step in educational policy ever taken in Maine. What the act did was to consolidate many small school unions into larger school administrative districts (SADs).

From the very onset of the creation of the Sinclair Bill, it was clear that Governor Muskie wanted it enacted. To fund it, he took the sales tax up a whole percentage point, a necessary step to help pay for it. What the Sinclair Act did was to allow towns to create or join school districts by a majority vote at town meeting. Once towns voted dis-

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tricts to life, the district could contract debt for building construction, salaries and so on.

Support of the Sinclair Bill was essentially bipartisan. The fact that it was bipartisan is largely due to Governor Muskie’s management of the cause. Each Monday Muskie held dinner meetings with party leaders from both sides of the aisle. The meetings were basically informal sessions where Democrats and Republicans could iron out their differences under Muskie’s guidance. It was a strategy that worked.

Unfortunately, Muskie did not use similar planning strategy when he ran to become a presidential nominee, a fact numerous political historians have commented on.

Edmund Muskie was elected to the U.S. Senate four times beginning in 1958. As one of the first environmentalists elected to the Senate, he was in the forefront of efforts to clean up the

87

DiscoverMaineMagazine.com

country’s air and water. It was a position that gave his name national recognition and led to his becoming Hubert Humphrey’s running mate in 1968.

The Humphrey-Muskie ticket lost to the Nixon-Agnew ticket in the popular vote by less than one percentage point.

The closeness of the 1968 race made Muskie a favorite for the 1972 race.

Various political pundits, including Theodore White, author of The Making of the President 1972, place Muskie’s 1972 political disintegration at the feet of Nixon’s Dirty Tricks Unit.

According to White and others, Nixon feared Muskie more than any other Democrat. The infamous “Canuck Letter” is usually attributed to this fear.

The Canuck Letter was a forgery.

It is most often attributed to members of Nixon’s White House staff. It was, however, widely believed at the time to have been written by Muskie. In it, Muskie was said to have called Canadi-

ans Canucks. It is an insult for someone outside of Canada like an American to call a Canadian a Canuck. Muskie, of course, as a Polish-American with many Maine friends of French-Canadian background, would never have done something like this. While Mainers knew this, voters across the country as a whole did not. News reports also said that Muskie lauded the actions of socialists in Maine and Canada in the letter. Theodore White and others attribute McGovern’s victory over Muskie to the forged letter.

In 1980 Edmund Muskie became Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State.

President Carter also awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Edmund Muskie retired from public life in 1981. He died of heart failure. Today one can only wonder, if as President, Edmund Muskie would have influenced the country as he did Maine when he was Governor.

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James Ezekiel Porter Strong native met his demise at the Battle of Little Bighorn

by Mike Bell It is a great distance from the deep woods and rivers and streams of Maine, to the open prairies and rivers of central Montana. But a native son of Maine, Lt. James Porter, found himself at the end of that “road” on a hot June day in 1876.

And when the sun set on that Sunday at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, all they found remaining of James Porter was a bloody buckskin jacket. A sad end, for a life that held so much promise.

James Ezekiel Porter was born in February of 1847 in the small town of Strong, Maine. The village had been incorporated in 1801, and by the time that Rachel Porter gave birth to her oldest son, Strong was a thriving community.

James Ezekiel Porter "James Ezekiel Porter of Little Bighorn". Licensed under PD-US via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ File:James_Ezekiel_Porter_of_Little_Bighorn.jpg#/media/File:James_Ezekiel_Porter_of_Little_Bighorn.jpg

The Porter family were stalwarts in the community. Indeed, James’s father, Jeremy, was a very active local businessman, and was quite active in local and state politics.

Young James spent his formative years in this quiet town on the banks of the Sandy River. When the time came for more education, he took advantage of the opportunity to seek an education that some of his peers did not get. He attended the Maine State Seminary (now Bates College) and later spent a year at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. But he soon got a unique opportunity to combine education with the life of adventure when he applied to

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com the United States Military Academy at West Point. He graduated in 1869, and was ranked pretty square in the middle.

He was ranked 16th out of 39.

Unlike men who had gone through the academy in the years during the Civil War, young Porter faced an uncertain future. The army had been scaled back, and the focal point for the postwar military was out west, guarding railroads and settlements as the country moved relentlessly westward. There was seemingly little chance for glory and advancement. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he would end up a major after a number of years. Or just maybe lightning would strike and he could actually see some real fighting.

It did. Porter was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in the 7th US Cavalry.

By the time of his posting, the regiment already had a reputation for action due to the leadership of its field commander, Lt. Col. (Brevet Major General) George Armstrong Custer. The 7th had

Remains of Battery Porter at Fort Hunt in Virginia. The battery was named in Porter’s honor in 1903.

"BatteryPorter" by The original uploader was Ser Amantio di Nicolao at English Wikipedia - Own work (Original text: Cropped, stitched, and lightened version of photographs taken by me for Wikipedia.). Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BatteryPorter.jpg#/media/File:BatteryPorter.jpg

taken part in actions against the plains Indians in Kansas and Oklahoma in the first years of its existence. Porter’s first posting was to the plains of Kansas.

Garrison duty was tedious and Porter must have been thrilled when he later went with the regiment to Kentucky, among other states, where it aided in Reconstruction duty and worked to end the reign of terror of the Ku Klux Klan.

All the while, Porter was mindful of the stresses this life put on his wife, Eliza, especially when the Porters started a family. Porters’s bride, Eliza Wescott, hailed from Lewiston, and the two had married in Portland in 1869.

When the 7th was reformed and later primarily garrisoned at Fort Abraham Lincoln in North Dakota (near Bismark), Porter found himself a (continued on page 90)

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(continued from page 89) newly minted 1st Lieutenant and second in command of Co. I. The captain of the company was Myles Keogh, a hard-fighting Irish soldier of fortune.

It was Keogh’s horse Commanche that would later be remembered as the sole survivor of Custer’s Last Stand.

In the summer of 1873, while most of the regiment went on to Fort Lincoln, Company I was detailed, along with Company D, to help with a joint U.S./ British survey project near the Canadian border. The troopers were there to primarily provide security for the American survey crews. So much for excitement and fighting with the 7th! When winter came, the detached companies were stationed nearby at Fort Totten and then completed their task the following summer. This meant that they were not involved in the great expedition to the Black Hills in the summer of 1874. Press reports of gold soon caused the Black Hills area to be flooded with white settlers, and caused

a new rift in the already tense relations between the United States government and the native nations.

Plans were made in the winter months of 1875-1876 to organize a fighting force that would conduct a campaign to bring the Indians to bear.

One group would march east out of Fort Ellis, Montana and another north from Fort Fetterman in Wyoming Territory.

The third, under command of General Alfred Terry and including the Seventh, would march west out of Fort Lincoln.

It must have been a bittersweet time for the young Lieutenant. The Porters had just had a second child, and life in the army was certainly a stress for the family. And at the same time, this was a chance to fight and get promoted. As the Seventh marched out of Fort Lincoln on May 17th, they made a splendid site. Many of the officers, including Lieutenant Porter, emulated their commander and wore buckskin. Elizabeth Custer later recalled an unsettling feel-

ing as the regiment marched out of the fort.

Just over a month later, on the morning of June 25th, the Seventh found themselves near the valley of the Little Bighorn. Custer had followed a large trail indicating a large village had crossed a divide. He was now worried that the village knew of his presence.

If the village broke up and scattered, all would be lost. He split his regiment into three columns. Three under Major Reno would approach the village from one end and drive the Indians into five companies that Custer himself commanded. Another three were sent off to the far bluffs to ensure the Indians did not escape to the west. Porter and Co. I went with Custer to their death.

Historians know little of what actually happened, not for a lack of trying, to those five companies. To a man, all died that day. Oral tradition from the native perspective indicates that some panic and confusion reigned on the bat-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com tlefield, and the fighting was over rather quickly. But new archeological studies have also shown that some of the soldiers put up a stiff resistance. This was seemingly true of Company I. They worked to provide a rear guard action as other elements of the regiment worked their way to a high ridge on the battlefield where Custer and a number of men were found two days later.

Undoubtedly, James Porter was one of those who acquitted himself well that day.

When the dust settled and help arrived, nothing was found of the young soldier from Maine, other than his bloody buckskin jacket. It was found in what remained of the village by soldiers from Terry’s column who had arrived on the 27th. It is likely that his body was mutilated and quite unrecognizable after the fight and simply not identified. In any case, he now became part of the legend that we know as Custer’s Last Stand.

Eliza Porter received a widow’s pension and lived out the rest of her life in California, where she died in 1915.

There are two markers that help us remember the courage and sacrifice of this hearty Maine fellow. One is in the village cemetery in his hometown of Strong. His name is listed there along with graves of members of his much beloved and respected family. The other is on the battlefield in Montana. On the backside of what is now known as Battle Ridge are a group of markers.

These markers denote where the soldiers of Company I likely fell. (They had originally been buried there after the battle, but were reinterred in a mass grave atop “Last Stand” hill.) Among this line of simple marble markers, in what appears to have been a good defense line, is one with James Porter’s name on it.

It is a lonely place and so very, very, far away from home.

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Western Maine

The History Trail Guide of the Moose River Valley

by Annie Nielsen

M

ystery…strange disappearances…visitors of all ages enjoy the Trail Guide of the Moose River Valley. This publication delves into the rich history of interesting spots along and near the Old Canada Road National Scenic Byway, starting at the museum right on Main Street in Jackman.

Curiosity guided Anita Della Fera as she researched locations of intrigue by reading old newspapers, Sprague’s Journal of Maine History, the Historical Society’s book titled History of the Moose River Valley, as well as other sources. Her favorite part of the research, however, was interviewing the local residents.

“The experience was wonderful,” she reflects, smiling. She was fascinat-

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ed by the stories of survival and life as it was in the late 1800s and early 1900s, such as how Captain Holden and his family, while pulling his 88-year old mother on a sled, walked 65 miles by snowshoe to the cabin he built. She learned about where the center of town used to be and why it changed, and how trains were used for transporting groceries (among other things).

On the back of the guide, a colorful map created by Gail McDougall, also of Jackman, assists the curious with their journey in time starting at the museum and traveling northward to the various landmarks. After a stop at the Hilton Cemetery near the Canadian border, the journey turns southward to locations of mystery and intrigue, past the railroad and onward to the WWII

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One unusual spot of interest on this map is at the Attean Overlook, where a child in a sled is sliding down the side of the mountain. This beautiful rest stop “overlooks” Attean Lake, the surrounding mountains, and, on clear days, offers views of the windmills at the Canadian border. In the earlier days, children would slide on sleds down from the Overlook all the way to town (probably about six miles)! Mrs. Della Fera had the opportunity to interview Jeannette Holden of Jackman, who happened to be one of these children who participated in those amazing rides.

The idea for such a guide was suggested at one of the Historical Society’s meetings a couple of summers ago to benefit visitors who would like to ex-

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DiscoverMaineMagazine.com plore further the rich history of the Moose River Valley by actually visiting some of these sites. “That was the inception of it,” states Mrs. Della Fera.

After discussion, the Historical Society members applied for a $1,000 grant from the Maine Humanities Council, a nonprofit organization located in Portland that promotes strong communities by providing cultural enrichment opportunities that cross social, economic, and cultural barriers. The grant offered the opportunity to create spiral-bound, laminated copies and stapled, paper copies. Anyone interested in learning more about the intriguing history along the Route 201 corridor may contact the Jackman-Moose River Historical Society and borrow their laminated copy of the trail guide for a refundable $20 deposit. After traveling to the sites, it can be returned to the museum for a full refund of the deposit. It’s a great way to discover what life was like years ago in the Jackman area.

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Photos courtesy of Annie Nielsen and the Jackman-Moose River Region Chamber of Commerce

One U.S. Navy Veteran is among the few buried at the Hilton Cemetery in Sandy Bay Township.

The Jackman-Moose River Historical Society Museum on Route 201, Main Street in Jackman, Maine, offers visitors glimpses into the past lives of local residents.

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Skowhegan’s Louise Helen Coburn College student helped found a national sorority

by Brian Swartz

B

eing Number Two was okay with Louise Helen Coburn, a ground-breaking college student from Skowhegan.

Born in Skowhegan to Stephen and Helen Miller Coburn on Sept. 1, 1856, Louise Helen grew up in an era when women had limited professional and educational opportunities. The men who dominated some professions (especially medicine) kept women from moving into those fields.

Stephen Coburn hailed from Bloomfield, a town located along the west bank of the Kennebec River opposite Skowhegan. In 1839 he graduated from Waterville College (later Col-

by College), which along with many other American colleges did not accept female students.

Coburn pursued a law degree at Harvard in the early 1840s and settled into private practice in Somerset County.

Society changed fundamentally during the formative years of Louise Helen Coburn. Well-populated Skowhegan annexed Bloomfield in 1861.

Wartime necessity expanded employment opportunities for American women during the next four years; women clerked in government offices, nursed sick and wounded soldiers, and operated textile machinery in Maine mills.

During the Civil War, the young

Louise Helen knew that her father’s brother, “Uncle Abner,” was elected Maine governor. Fourteen years older than Stephen, Abner Coburn served one term, from Jan. 7, 1863 to Jan. 6, 1864.

Her parents encouraged Louise Helen Coburn to broaden her horizons.

Colby College, which had become the first New England college or university to admit women students, had admitted 21-year-old Mary Caffrey Low as its first female student in 1871. She was joined two years later by Coburn, Ida Fuller, Elizabeth Gorham Hoag, and Frances Elliott Mann Hall.

The women did not waltz into Col(continued on page 96)

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(continued from page 95) by willy-nilly just because they were women. Access to higher education was restricted only to the (perceived) best and brightest in that era. Coburn underwent an eight-hour examination to prove that she could cut the educational mustard; conversant in Greek and Latin, she passed the professor-administered testing.

Co-eds (the term apparently was not coined until circa 1878) were definitely a novelty at Colby — and elsewhere, of course, as gender barriers collapsed at other colleges and universities. The Colby women discovered they could crack other barriers as well; male students who assumed that men were smarter than women could only watch in dismay as Low took the 1875 valedictorian honors.

Colby’s first woman graduate, she presented her valedictory address entirely in Latin.

Greek societies had thrived at Colby since the 1845 formation of a Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter in Waterville.

Fraternity Zeta Psi established a chapter at Colby in 1850, and Delta Upsilon approved a Colby chapter in 1852.

The five Colby women students established Sigma Kappa Sorority on Monday, Nov. 9, 1874. The college administrators required the women to develop bylaws and a constitution for their proposed sorority; Coburn and her allies did so, with Low signing her name to the petition and Coburn adding hers.

The other women signed, too, and Colby faculty members later approved the nascent sorority.

Louise Helen Coburn became the second woman to graduate from Colby College. She never let the distinction go to her head; for the rest of her life, Coburn would be dedicated to Colby College and Skowhegan, her hometown.

The original Sigma Kappa Sorority constitution limited chapter membership to 25 women; perhaps the sorority’s petition passed muster because administrators and faculty members did not anticipate much more than 25 women attending Colby College in any particular year.

But the college attracted many women students. In time, Sigma Kappa Sorority added Beta and Gamma chapters at Colby. Those chapters later disappeared, but Delta Chapter became established at Boston University after Colby student and Alpha Chapter sister Elydia Foss transferred there in 1904.

She met some BU co-eds interested in joining Sigma Kappa, which had been chartered as a Maine-based sorority. Sigma Kappa members living in Maine responded to the possibility of expanding the sorority across state lines by incorporating it as a national sorority in April 1904.

After graduating from Colby, Coburn pursued additional education and training as a botanist. She remained closely attached to her alma mater and

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became its first woman trustee. Coburn lobbied for Ninetta Runnals, a dean, to be named as the first woman to a full professorship at the college.

Already a poet and a writer when she came to Colby College in 1873, Coburn extended her literary skills by editing the Maine Botanist and writing the two-volume Skowhegan on the Kennebec, released in January 1941.

Her earlier published works included Kennebec and Other Poems (1916) and The Trees of Coburn Park (1928).

Coburn was active in many volunteer organizations, including the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Skowhegan Women’s Club, and the Skowhegan Town Improvement Society.

Coburn lived in the family homestead, located near where Elm and Pleasant streets intersect a short walk west of the Skowhegan Public Library.

In 1936 she started playing a key role in preserving local history by buying a circa 1839 Greek Revival cottage located across Elm Street from her house. The vacant cottage overlooked the Kennebec River.

Coburn restored and expanded the cottage and reopened it as a museum dedicated to Skowhegan history. Today known as the Skowhegan History House Museum & Research Center, the facility displays many artifacts and other materials collected by Coburn and other Skowhegan residents. The Bloomfield Academy Trust manages

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the museum and, via the History House Association, opens the building to the public each summer.

Suffering from failing health, Louise Helen Coburn died on Monday, Feb. 7, 1949.

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Meet Our Writers We would like to give a special “Thank You” to our writers who shared great history stories with us for this edition.

Charles Francis Charles Francis is a Maine native. Born in Portland in 1942, he taught high school history and English at Central Aroostook High School. His antecedents extend back for generations on Monhegan Island and in the Mid Coast Region. Louds Island in Muscongus Bay is named for one of his direct ancestors. In addition to writing local history, genealogy and nostalgia, he is a recognized poet.

James Nalley James is a full-time writer and editor specializing in history, travel, and cultural topics. In addition to his regular column, It Makes No Never Mind, he is a busy editor for the Enago Corporation based in Tokyo, Japan and Mumbai, India. His articles have been published in more than 100 magazines, journals, and websites. When not writing, James is a competitive full marathoner and a frequent traveler who enjoys exploring the mountains, beaches, and volcanoes of Nicaragua.

Brian Swartz A fourth-generation Mainer, Brian Swartz recently retired after a 25-year career as a newspaper editor. An avid historian, he publishes the Maine At War blog, and enjoys writing for Discover Maine Magazine. Brian lives in Hampden with his wife and their fluffy orange cat.

Karen Bessey Pease

Karen Bessey Pease is an award-winning newspaper columnist (Observations From The F.A.R.M.) and author of the Young Adult novel, Grumble Bluff. Karen also writes custom poems, provides notary services and is active in her community. Married and the mother of three, she lives on a 70-acre homestead in the beautiful western mountains region of Maine. http://karenbesseypease.blogspot.com/

Rosanne M. Peeling Rosanne is a lifelong resident of Maine. Her love of history comes from her grandmother who was a one-room school teacher and her uncle who is a World War II Veteran. In addition to writing, she also likes taking photos, including ones of historic buildings. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in English and has taken some graduate classes, one being a writing class which helped her discover her potential to write for an audience. She also enjoys antiquing, walking nature trails, and road tripping with her son, Nick.

Jeffrey Bradley Jeffrey Bradley is a freelance writer with a flair for natural history. Utilizing his ability to combine a naturalist’s observations with the creative insight of the storyteller, Jeffrey lays out our natural offbeat world in engaging, informative prose. He is currently researching a book on Flagler’s Key West Extension, The railroad that went to sea.

Mike Bell Although he hails from the Midwest, Historian Mike Bell now calls Maine home. He has a Masters in History from the University of Wyoming and a Masters in Teaching from the University of Maine. Mike has given talks on a number of historical topics both here in Maine and across the country.

Mike has been an historical interpreter and was featured in a History Channel documentary about PT 109. He is a die hard Red Sox fan and enjoys skiing and traveling.

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A very special thanks to Annie Nielsen from the Jackman-Moose River Chamber of Commerce for her story contribution

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Above and Beyond, LLC ..............................................29 Absolute Services, Inc. ............................................... 91 ABT Plumbing, Heating & Cooling .............................60 Acton Fair ..................................................................22 Advantage Insurance .................................................62 Affordable Tree Service ............................................. 42 AJ’s Everything ..........................................................75 Allen’s Drilling & Blasting .......................................20 Anchor Realty ............................................................37 Andrew Ames Logging ................................................7 Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce ...........29 Anne Plummer & Associates .......................................25 Apple Valley Golfers Club ...........................................30 Archie’s Inc. 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Manzer, Inc. ...............................................68 Caleb C. Chessie Excavation ........................................42 Carl Huston Excavation Contractor, LLC ....................35 Caron’s Body Shop ...................................................12 Carpentry & Construction Services .............................41 Carpentry & Odd Jobs ..............................................87 Carrabasset Valley Bike, LLC .....................................89 Central Maine Community College ..............................3 Central Maine Sandblasting ......................................96 Central Maine Septic & Portable Toilet Rentals ............5 Central Tire Co. 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Wilson & Co. Excavation .....................................49 D.B. Industries ...........................................................17 D.H. Pinnette & Sons, Inc. ..............................................6 Dag’s Bait & Tackle ....................................................13 Danny Boy’s Irish Pub & Restaurant ........................14 Dave’s Towing & Recovery .......................................72 David Stevens Excavation & Septic Systems .............55 Davis Concrete ............................................................76 Deer Farm Camps & Campground ..............................89 Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers .........................84 DeWolfe & Wood Booksellers ...................................40 Dig Maine Gems ........................................................48 Don’s No Preference Towing .......................................34 Dufort & Son Builders ................................................14 Dunn & Pakulski Optometrists ..................................95

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Business

Business

Dutch Treat ........................................................61 Dyer Septic Service ............................................46 E.W. Moore & Son Pharmacy ..............................94 Eastside Convenience .......................................40 Eastside Mall ......................................................83 Echo Lake Lodge & Cottages ................................51 Ed Hodson Masonry ...........................................16 Edmunds Market ...............................................88 Ed’s Grove Discount Warehouse .........................20 Everything Kids .................................................16 Everything Warehouse ......................................29 Evo Rock & Fitness ...........................................42 Fairfield Antiques Mall .....................................10 Farmington Farmers Union ..............................85 Farmington Martial Arts Academy Karate .......83 Fast Eddies ........................................................16 Fayette Country Store ........................................79 Fiber Arts Cottage .............................................23 Final Touch Painting & Carpentry ...................54 Fine Line Paving & Grading ...............................70 Finelines Auto Body ..........................................23 Finish Line Construction ...................................69 Fireside Inn & Suites Auburn ...........................14 Fireside Inn & Suites Waterville .........................55 Fireside Stove Shop & Fireplace Center ...........32 Fontaine HVAC & Solar Energy Services, Inc. ..28 Footer’s Masonry ..............................................10 Foster Tree & Landscaping ................................56 Franco Center ....................................................30 Franklin County Chamber of Commerce .........84 Franklin County Farmers’ Markets .......................59 Franlin Memorial Hospital ...............................57 Franklin Savings Bank .........................................6 Franklin Somerset Federal Credit Union ...........5 Fryeburg Glass ..................................................23 Fusion Lounge ..................................................32 Fyre Flye Creations..............................................56 G3 Firearms ......................................................50 Galen L. Burke Construction, LLC ......................18 Gateway Marina ...............................................48 Gendron’s Seafood ............................................11 George’s Banana Stand ....................................95 Giambra Drywall & Construction ....................11 Gingerbread Farm Perennials ...........................51 Glen Luce Logging, Inc. ....................................50 Goin’ Postal ......................................................74 Grandpa Joe’s Sugar House ...............................22 Gray Family Vision Center ..................................38

Kelvin’s Auto Repair ....................................64 Ken & Thom’s Floor Covering, Inc. ..............74 Kennebec Metal Recycling .......................96 Kiesman Drywall Inc. ...............................43 KMD Auto Repair ........................................96 Knight’s Carpentry ....................................85 Knowles Lumber Company ......................15 Kokernac Generator Sales & Service.........35 Koob’s Garage and Auto Body ................92 Kori’s Kap Bakery & Deli ...........................93 Kramer’s Inc. ..............................................53 Kyle Mann Tree Work ................................46 L.E. Taylor & Sons .......................................10 L.P. Poirier & Son Inc., Excavation ..........28 L.V. Allen & Sons, Inc. .............................20 L/A Luxury Limousine ...............................11 L/A Radiator Works & Air Conditioning ...13 La Fleur’s Restaurant ...............................51 Lake Region Auto Supply .........................24 Landscape Design Concepts ...................72 Laney’s Pit Stop .....................................71 Langlois’ Auto Body & Auto Sales ............31 Larsen’s Electric .........................................86 Lavallee’s Garage .......................................94 Law Mountain Wreaths N’ Bakery ..........92 Law Office of Brian D. Condon, Jr., Esq...36 Lewiston House of Pizza ..........................31 Lifetime Auto Care ......................................18 Lisbon Community Federal Credit Union .35 Logan Home Builders ................................23 Louvat Plumbing Service ..........................62 Lovewell Hearing .......................................23 Lovewell Logging ......................................51 Luce’s Maine-Grown Meats ....................69 M.A. Mathews Co. ....................................56 M.A. Vining Landworks, LLC .....................93 Maine Gro Compost .................................12 Maine Historical Society ..............................8 Maine-Ly Foam...........................................43 Maine Mineral Adventures .........................48 Maine Motel & Cabins ............................27 Maine Pellet Sales LLC .............................14 Maine Warden Service ..............................85 Major’s Heating, LLC .................................74 Mama Bear’s Den .......................................69 Manely Men Haircuts ................................17 Marcel’s Barber Shop .................................13 Marco’s Restaurant ......................................27 Martins Auto Center .................................43 Martin’s Service & Sales ............................63 Matheson Tri-Gas .......................................30 Maurice Restaurant ....................................47 McAllister Accounting & Tax Services ....78 McMahon’s Water Services .......................40 MEI Excavation .........................................47 Mel’s Raspberry Patch ..............................40 Memorial Guard LLC ..................................50 Merle Lloyd & Sons ...................................94 Metcalf’s Trading Post ................................43 Mexico Trading Post ...................................86

Greater Bridgton Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce....23

Greenwood Orchards Farmstand & Bakery ......78 Gridiron Restaurant & Sports Pub ....................28 Griswold’s Country Store & Diner ...................69 Hair By Tim .......................................................87 Hall Implement Co. ............................................39 Hammond Lumber Company ..........................54 Hardy’s Motorsports ..........................................89 Harris Bros. Rubbish Removal ............................11 Harris Drug Store ..............................................66 Harris Septic Service ..........................................84 HealthReach Community Health Centers ...........5 Heart & Hand Inc. .............................................43 High Tide Low Tide Seafood ............................70 Highland Lake Resort .......................................45 Hight Chevrolet/Ford/Chrysler/Dodge .................4 HLR Builders ....................................................36 Hodgdon Well Drilling, Inc. .................................7 Hollis Construction Inc. ....................................25 Home, Hope and Healing Family-Centered Nursing Care..........80 Hoyt Chiropractic Center ...................................16 Hungry Hollow Country Store ............................9 Hunter’s Truck & Tire Service, Inc. ..................14 Hydraulic Hose & Assembly ................................8 Image Auto Body ..............................................94 J&J Haines Excavation, Inc. .............................87 J.P. Masonry ......................................................15 J.T. Reid’s Gun Shop ..........................................6 J.T.’s Finest Kind Saw ......................................63 Jackman-Moose River Region Chamber of Commerce...92 Jake’s Garage .....................................................62 James Painting & Renovations ........................76 Jason Stevens Excavation & Earth Work ..........79 Jean Castonguay Excavating .............................51 Jimmy’s Shop ‘N Save .......................................93 Jim’s Custom Sawing, Bush Hogging & Rototilling ..15 JMH Excavation .................................................45 John H. Burnell, Excavation .............................41 Johnny Castonguay Logging & Trucking ..........52 Jordan Lumber Company .................................90 Judy’s Variety ....................................................87 JW Awning Co. .................................................15 K&J Heating Inc. ..............................................38 Kash for Kans Recycling, LLC .............................41 Keith Hadley, Inc. .............................................77

Mid-Maine Equine & Canine Therapeutics.......52

Mike Wainer Plumbing & Heating .........55 Mills Market ..............................................87 Monmouth Federal Credit Union ..............7 Montello Heights Retirement Community........31 Morrell’s Septic Tank Service .....................44 Morrow’s Garage ........................................56 Mosher’s Meats & Seafoods ......................60 Mother India ............................................32 Motor Supply Co. ........................................8 Moulton Lumber Co. ..................................5 Mountain Country Supermarket ................93 Mountain View Tree Care .........................43 Mount Blue Motel .....................................82 Mr. Adams Tattoos ...................................83 Mt. Blue Drug ...........................................58 Murray Energy ...........................................49 Nadeau Developement Corp. ....................49 Naples Packing Co., Inc. ..........................86 New Portland Agricultural Fair ..................88 Nick DiConzo Builder ................................78 Norseman Inn and Motel ........................76 North Bay Estates .....................................79 Northland Hotel Rooms & Lounge.............92 Northwood Builders ....................................6 Norway / Paris Soft Serve ............................73 Not-A-Con Home Improvements ..............72 Oberg Insurance & Real Estate Agency ....24 Old Ford Antiques & Collectibles .............83 Old Mill Stream Ice Cream Shoppe ............79 Oquossoc Marine ......................................65 ORA the Salon ............................................70 Orion Property Professionals ......................59

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Orr Excavation ...........................................60 Otis Federal Credit Union ..........................78 Our Village Market ..................................88 Oxford Casino ................................back cover Oxford Federal Credit Union .......................62 Oxford Hills Chamber of Commerce ......25 Oxford Hills Taxi .......................................75 Oxford Mud Run ........................................72 Packard Appraisal, Inc. ..............................44 Paris Autobarn LLC ....................................45 Pat’s Pizza Auburn .......................................32 Pat’s Pizza Bethel .......................................76 Pat’s Pizza Windham .................................38 Penobscot Marine Museum ......................26 Phillips Construction ..................................83 Pine Tree Paving .........................................73 Pitcher Perfect Tire Service ......................56 Pleasant Street Bingo Hall ........................11 Poland Mining Camps .............................37 Posabilities Physical Therapy & Yoga .......74 Potter Plumbing Co. .................................52 Poulin-Turner Union Hall .......................95 Premier Groundscapes ...............................34 Pressure Pro ..............................................33 Provencher’s Landscape & Nursery ........12 R.E. Lowell Lumber Inc. .........................49 R.F. Automotive Repair .........................95 R.W. Merrill Electrical Contractor, Inc. ...48 Rails Restaurant .......................................31 Ralph Libby Chain Saws .............................49 Ramada Conference Center ......................32 Range Pond Campground ........................17 Rangeley Building & Remodeling ...........67 Rangeley Electric ......................................66 Rangeley Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce..66 Rangeley Saddleback Inn ..........................67 Ray’s Firewood ...........................................35 RDA Automotive ........................................11 Record Building Supply, Inc. ....................72 Red Mill Lumber ......................................24 Redington-Fairview General Hospital .......71 Richard Wing & Son Logging Inc. .........19 Ricker Hill Orchards ....................................50 Rick’s Garage ..............................................69 Rising Sun Cafe & Bakery ..........................73 River Valley Chamber of Commerce ........86 River Valley Grill .........................................87 Riverbend Campground ...........................16 Robert W. Libby & Sons, Inc. ...................9 Robert’s Auto Center ..................................15 Robin L. Day & Sons Excavation ...............54 Rockwood Bar & Grill ..................................68 Rockwood Convenience Store ....................68 Rocky Coast Coffee Roasters .....................34 Rocky Mountain Snowcross ......................61 Rocky Mountain Terrain Park....................61 Rodney Ellis Jr. Construction .....................52 Rolfe Corporation .......................................44 Ron’s Market ...............................................80 Ron’s Transmissions ....................................16 Roof Solutions ...........................................58 Rooster’s Roadhouse .................................76 Rottari Electric ...........................................17 Roy I Snow, Inc. ..........................................33 Roy’s All Steak Hamburgers & Golf ...........33 Roy’s Motor Sports ...................................41 RP Auto Repair .........................................91 Russell & Sons Towing .............................47 Ryan’s Tractor & Tree Service ....................31 S&L Upholstery & Auto Tops ..................37 S&M Property Maintenance ......................19 S.A. McLean, Inc. .........................................43 S.S. Milton Restaurant ................................49 Sabattus Antique Mall ..............................12 Sally Mountain Cabins ..............................93 Sandy River Farm Market............................58 Sandy River Golf Course & Driving Range .........84 Sanford International Film Festival ......21 Sanford-Springvale Chamber of Commerce.....21 Scribner’s Mill & Homestead ......................48 Sebago Lakes Region Chamber of Commerce.......18 Seth McCoy’s Excavating ............................21 Shears To You Hair Salon ...........................83 She Doesn’t Like Guthries ..........................12 Signworks ...................................................82 Skowhegan & Waterville Tire Center ........95 Slattery’s Stables ........................................73 Small Engine Specialty ...............................7 Smile Again Dentures, Inc. ........................32 SMT&E ........................................................21 Smithfield Historical Society ....................81 Solon Superette .........................................70 Spencer Group Paving, LLC .......................50

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Spillover Motel .....................................65 Sports Trader .......................................30 St. Peter’s Cemetery ...............................9 Sterling Electric ...................................56 Stetson’s Auto Service .........................25 Stevens Electric & Pump Service Inc. ...7 Stevens Forest Products .....................53 Steve’s Dojo .........................................13 Stratton Plaza Hotel & Traitor Lounge ...91 Strong Hardware & Building Supply ....88 Sturtevant Plumbing ...........................73 Summit Roofing ...................................65 Taylor’s Drug Store ................................69 Terralift Augusta Septic Revitalization ...53 Thai Smile & Sushi ................................84 Thai Smile 2 ..........................................84 The Belmont Motel ..............................70 The Brake & Exhaust Center ....................39 The Canaan Motel ...............................71 The Irregular .........................................64 The Kingfield Woodsman Restaurant ...64 The Korner Store & Deli .........................79 The Little Red Hen Diner & Bakery .........63 The Looney Moose Cafe ........................91 The Meadows ........................................17 The Milk Room Store .............................19 The Peppermill Restaurant ...................22 The Pickup Cafe ....................................71 The Roost Bed & Breakfast ................36 The Settlement ...................................13 The Sterling Inn ...................................68 The White Elephant Country Store...............63 Theriault’s Snowshoes ...........................6 Thomas C. Goding & Son Building Contractor...52 Thompson Builders .............................24 Thompson’s Restaurant ......................93 Thyng Paving LLC ................................20 Tilton’s Market .....................................77 Top Notch Fabrication ..........................29 Town & Lake Motel and Cottages........66 Town Line Pipe & Truck, LLC................70 Town of Farmington ............................58 Town of Mexico ...................................86 Town of Smithfield .............................81 Trail Riding & Lessons Horse Therapy.......79 Trail’s End SteakHouse & Tavern ..........90 Tranten’s ..............................................82 Triple D Redemption & Tanning Spa ..........89 Tumbledown Brewing .........................83 Turner Contracting & Remodeling, LLC..39 United Methodist Economic Ministry ...89 Upper Kennebec Realty ........................93 Varsity Lettering Inc. ...........................27 W.L. Sturgeon, Inc. ..............................22 Warren Brothers Construction ............80 Waterways Coffee Shop & Quick Lube ...40 Watson, Neal & York Funeral Home .....22 Weber Insurance .................................62 Weber Insurance Group .......................62 Webster’s Mini Excavation ..................78 Welch’s Hardware & Lumber ...............21 Western Maine Contracting Services ...85 Western Maine Flooring ......................61 Western Maine Market.com .................59 Western Maine Pharmacy, Inc. ............64 Weston’s Meat Market ..........................35 Whited Peterbilt ................................34 White’s Land Management .................61 Whitewater Farm Market ....................80 Whitings Electric .................................65 Whitney Tree Service ...........................37 Whittemore & Sons Outdoor Power Equipment ......71 Whittemore Pool & Spa Management ..60 William Perry Cigar Lounge ..................24 Wilson Excavating, Inc. ..........................75 Wilson Funeral Home ...........................18 Wind Swept Acres Arabians ..................52 Woodlawn Rehab & Nursing Center ......71 Wood-Mizer of Maine ...........................78 Woodrest Cottages ............................54 Woodsome Trucking & Logging, Inc. ..18 York’s Market ........................................90 Your Country Store ..............................39

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