2023 Hancock-Washington-Penobscot & The Highlands

Hancock-Washington-Penobscot & The Highlands

Publisher

Jim Burch

Editor

Dennis Burch

Design & Layout

Liana Merdan

Field Representative

Don Plante

Contributing Writers

Jeffrey Bradley

Pat Cassier

Charles Francis

Kathie Lee/Milo Historical Society

Pat Leonard

James Nalley

John L. Raye

Brian Swartz

Doug Tibbetts

Discover Maine Magazine is distributed to town offices, chambers of commerce, financial institutions, fraternal organizations, barber shops, beauty salons, hospitals and medical offices, newsstands, grocery and convenience stores, hardware stores, lumber companies, motels, restaurants and other locations throughout this part of Maine.

NO PART of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from CreMark, Inc. | Copyright © 2023, CreMark, Inc.

SUBSCRIPTION FORMS ON PAGES 48 & 58

Front Cover Photo:

Teacher Annie Thurlow with her students at Stonington Memorial School, ca. 1906. Item # 7619 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

All photos in Discover Maine’s Hancock-Washington-Penobscot & The Highlands 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.

It Makes No Never Mind

by James Nalley

According to weather trends on Sperling’s Best Places, the most pleasant months in Washington County are July and August. July is the “hottest” month, with an average high temperature of 76 degrees, ranking it as one of the “coolest” places in Maine. This is a welcome reward considering that the county receives snowfall for six months of the year. Even better, there are few summer days when the humidity is unpleasant. Thus, both visitors and residents should consider the following outdoor options.

First, there is the Wild Blueberry Festival in Machias. Held annually in August, Centre Street Congregational Church “rolls out the blue carpet” and offers blueberry-related crafts, food, entertainment, and contests. Held rain or shine, it has drawn thousands of visitors as well as national attention. Best of all, there is no admission charge. More details can be found at www.machiasblueberry.com

Second, there is the Bold Coast Scenic Byway. As Maine’s newest scenic byway, this 147-mile route passes through coastal fishing villages, such as Milbridge and Eastport, and offers picturesque views of Washington County’s rocky coastline, blueberry barrens, and expansive tidal flats. In other words, it highlights the unique, scenic, historic, and cultural aspects of coastal

Washington County. A downloadable and printable PDF map can be found at www.discoverboldcoast.com

Third, there is the Grand Lake Stream Folk Art Festival. Held annually in July, the quaint village of Grand Lake Stream holds this festival to celebrate its natural beauty and unique cultural heritage. According to its website (www.grandlakestreamfolkartfestival. com), it “brings together artists, artisans, and craftsmen (more than 60) to display and demonstrate their works, musicians to perform (Celtic, Bluegrass, Folk, and Jazz), and families and friends to enjoy all of this in a magical setting just off the beaten path.”

Fourth, for a quieter setting, there is the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge. Maintained by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it covers approximately 30,000 acres of land and includes two sections: one in Baring and the other between Dennysville and Whiting. Overall, the refuge’s landscape greatly varies, with rolling hills, large outcroppings, streams, lakes, and marshes. Such diversity provides habitats to more than 225 species of birds, endangered species, wildlife, and rare plants. More information can be found at www.fws.gov/refuge/moosehorn

Finally, there is the International Homecoming Festival in Calais. Established in 1974, this annual festival

(held in early August) celebrates the friendship between the two international communities of Calais, Maine, and St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada. During the festival, they present a street fair, activities, concerts, and craft shows on both sides of the border. It culminates with a spectacular firework display. More information can be found at www.internationalhomecomingfestival.org.

At this point, let me close with the following festival-inspired jest: Four college freshman partied too hard during a music festival and were unable to make it back for their final exam the next day. As they drove back to the college, they desperately tried to think of an excuse. They finally agreed on the same story: a tire was blown in the middle of nowhere, so they were stuck. They each sent the professor an email asking to retake the exam and gave the same excuse. The professor said that it was fine and asked them to take it the following day. However, for fairness, it would be a different exam. The next day, they received the exam and sat down as the professor watched them. The questions on the first page were easy and only totaled 10 out of 100 points. When they turned to the second page, there was a single question worth 90 points: Which tire was blown?

1950s School Bus Memories

by Doug Tibbetts

Getting to and from school in rural Maine is now taken for granted; everyone is assured that a big modern bus will pick up the students and deliver them to and from school in a very routine and un-eventful manner. That was not always the case.

In 1953, my very first bus was a 1940s Chevrolet limousine with four rows of seats. It was often called the “hot dog” bus, due to its elongated design. The bus was privately owned by Ralph Merrill and contracted by the town selectmen for the school year. This bus took care of half of the town of Stetson. A Chevrolet panel truck equipped with two wooden benches,

one along each side in the cargo area, handled the other half of town.

Our limousine was a heavy vehicle and was pretty good in the snow if it had snow tires, but sometimes tire chains were needed since the roads were not sanded very often. Only the really steep hills received any sand, which was accomplished by hand, with two men shoveling it off with spades as a third man slowly drove the truck.

The operator of the limousine was usually Charlie, the teenage son of Mr. Merrill. He clearly relished the challenges of snow in the winter and mud in the spring. If he saw someone stuck in a ditch, he would stop the school bus

and try to tow them out.

One very cold morning, the limo broke down out on Route 143 down by the Etna town line. Luckily, an empty pulp truck came by, and nine or ten students were loaded onto the back, with the two biggest kids placed on the sides to make sure nobody fell off during the five-mile ride to school. Mrs. Savage, the school’s cook, also took the bus each day, and she got to ride up front in the truck’s cab.

On the last day of school before the Christmas vacation, a house fire broke out just before the end of the school day. We were riding the “limo” bus down Route 143, in the same direction

Lori Whitten President

as the fire. Our teenage driver was so fast he caught up to a fire truck tanker headed to the scene from Corinna. He passed the fire truck, and we got to the fire first.

That first year riding in the limo was memorable for another reason, since it was also the year that the threeroom schoolhouse upgraded to indoor plumbing and an oil-fired furnace. The next year we had a different bus and new operator. The bus was a 1947 or ’48 Ford and was yellow in color and was constructed in what we consider to be the usual style for a school bus, but it was only about half as long as today’s school buses. The owner and operator, Harold Leeman, was a dairy farmer, and he had to milk his cows in the morning before leaving for his school bus route and again in the afternoon after completing the return route.

Perhaps those long hours made him a little grumpy. Regardless, he had his own methods of bus discipline that may

seem a little unorthodox today. Sometimes he would make an unruly boy sit up under the dashboard between himself and the door. The poor lad would have to fold up a little to fit in there, and every time we hit a bump, the student’s head would bounce against the steel bottom of the dashboard.

In cold weather, he might require a troublemaker to sit on the doorsteps. That spot was especially frigid, due to the folding doors not closing very well and the lack of a heater in the bus. As we traveled along, he would ask the offender, “How do you like it down there?” If a student really tried his patience, he would stop the bus, and everything would go deathly silent, for we knew this was not going to be good. He would come up the aisle and grab the culprit by the scruff of the neck, pick him up and unceremoniously deposit him in a different seat with a certain degree of force.

Notwithstanding this personal brand

of justice, all the boys would gladly lend a hand whenever the need arose, from helping to put on the tire chains, to filling in a washout caused by a heavy rain. There were additional duties on the way to school, such as picking up a fifty-pound bag of potatoes at Lewis Merrill’s farm and lugging the bag onto the bus, and later carrying it into the schoolhouse. Also, a five gallon can of whole milk had to be picked up at Henry Hartwell’s farm and delivered to the school kitchen.

The school cook, Mrs. Savage, still rode on the bus, and she was not the only extra passenger. One of our teachers, Mrs. Damon, was picked up at her residence and rode the bus for two years. We also frequently had Mrs. Leeman, our bus driver’s wife, along for the trip. After school we had one other task: Mrs. Savage and her husband Ben had some pigs at home, so we had to carry a small, galvanized trash bucket onto the bus with the lunch leftovers for (cont. on page 6)

(cont. from page 5)

the pigs to munch on.

In the winter, snow was a problem, but then along came the spring thaw, and mud became the issue. The bus could usually muck its way through, except for one morning when we got hung up in a mud hole on the Lapointe Road. Mr. Leeman left us in the bus and walked about a mile to the nearest farm, owned by Howard Ells.

Soon our bus driver returned, riding on the drawbar of Mr. Ells’ John Deere model A tractor. They got a chain hooked up to the front of the bus, Mr. Leeman got back in the driver’s seat, and Mr. Ells began to pull. The big John Deere snorted, gave off a big puff of smoke, and to our delight, stalled. Mr. Ells jumped down from the tractor, took hold of the flywheel, and restarted the tractor. He was more aggressive with his second towing attempt, and the muck grudgingly released its grip on the old Ford bus.

This was the only time we had to be pulled out, but during the winters we had often pulled cars out of snowbanks, as Mr. Leeman always carried his own tow chain. There was another time we were pulled out and we were towed off the road to a nearby house with the aid of an antique Farmall F20 tractor.

However, there were other problems such as one afternoon on the Mount Pleasant Road when we met the Worthmore grain truck operated by Shirley Savage. The road was narrow due to the high snowbanks, and in the process of trying to slowly pass by each other, both the grain truck and the bus became stuck and couldn’t move without sliding into the side of the other. Mr. Leeman had a couple of the boys get out to do some shoveling and help put on the tire chains, enabling both vehicles to get out.

At the time, the State of Maine offered a 50-cent bounty on porcupines

— which were killing hemlock trees — and if Mr. Leeman saw one in a field or tree, he would stop the bus and allow several boys to run out and knock the destructive animal on the head to collect the reward.

A later driver of the bus, Fred Beem, always kept an eye open for deer as we drove along during hunting season. His rifle was clipped to the bus’s dashboard with the type of metal fastener designed to hold a broom handle, so the firearm would be secure yet ready for use. Mr. Beem never missed an opportunity to get a little free labor from the boys on the bus. One of his additional duties was to go down to Etna once a month to pick up the federal government’s surplus food allotment for the Town of Stetson. He would have three or four boys stay on the bus at the end of the afternoon run and take us to the Etna town hall. There, we would open the rear emergency door of the bus and

load it up with all the food items. Another operation was to haul firewood home from where he was cutting it, so he would take us there at the end of his run to load up the bus. We would open the back door and pile the aisle full of wood all the way to the front, crawl in, and be dropped off at home afterward.

Mr. Beem hooked up an old car radio to the left of his seat. If you sat near the front you could hear the radio, adding another element to my wealth of memories about riding the Stetson school bus.

The Union River flood of 1923 caused the river to flow into Ellsworth and made houses collapse and be swept away. Item # 103953 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society / Maine Today Media and

The Enigma Of K-14

When a blimp duels a U-boat

by Jeffrey Bradley

Hancock County is a downeast coastal community that holds an eighty-year-old mystery. On the night of July 2, 1944, a blimp hunting enemy submarines crashed under troubling circumstances off the coast of Mount Desert Island in Frenchmen’s Bay. Evidence pulled from the water and witness testimony points to it being more than the simple accident the Navy labeled it, indicating instead that the guns of a Nazi U-boat brought it down. A stifling official policy and the obscuring mists of time have kept this controversy alive.

Patrol blimp K-14, a standard-issue airship used in coastal reconnaissance, was performing anti-submarine duty on

the night it crashed and killed six crewmen. Clearly, shots were fired between it and something, but the Navy’s reticence concerning any enemy activity during wartime forbids discussion and all were sworn to silence.

Few people realize how infested Maine’s waters were with U-boats during World War II. Only three days later for instance, U-233, perhaps the culprit, was caught lurking nearby and sunk. German torpedoes accounted for the loss of thousands of maritime tonnages from Maine to Florida, dispatching a staggering 454 American vessels by war’s end. Initially the unprotected merchantmen traveled alone and were backlit by the blazing light

ashore into easy targets. In one area known as Torpedo Alley, the Germans sent dozens of ships and men to the bottom practically unopposed in just a few months. Inexplicably slow to react—it took years to even resolve a basic design flaw that saw some US torpedoes circling back to sink the sub they had launched from—the Navy finally took measures to keep the marauders below and less of a threat. Among them was a fleet of lighter-than-air ships to patrol coastal waters. Goodyear K-type training blimps built prior to the war proved ideal for the job and were quickly pressed into service. At 250 feet long and powered by aircraft engines, they could drop silently from the sky, hover

and harass the enemy on or under the surface. With a crew of 10 and armed with a Browning machine gun, the airships could range for 2,000 miles at 80mph and were rigged to carry four depth charge bombs. Tasked with locating and reporting enemy locations, they were considered too lightly armed to attack directly, although some did, apparently K-14 among them.

Besides torpedoes, U-boats carried an 8-inch deck gun for shelling shore installations and the hapless merchant ships, heavy machine guns, and an “ack-ack” cannon for mounting aft of the conning tower. Powerful enough to knock armored aircraft from the sky, armament like this would make mincemeat of any blimp. Still, between surfacing and running out its guns the sub was vulnerable, giving the blimp a chance of striking first.

The telltale wake of a periscope spotted on that fateful night had the

Coast Guard scrambling ships and K-14 to investigate; later, it dropped nearer the surface to drag a sonar buoy through the water. At 9:20pm came its last check-in communication, then nothing more was heard from K-14.

Early the next morning rescue ships began to arrive to search for the missing blimp.

However, it was, their final encounter probably went something like this. Detecting the sinister silhouette low (cont. on page 10)

View of Frenchman’s Bay

(cont. from page 9)

in the water, K-14 went on the attack. Depth charges were dropped while the machine gun rattled incessantly, but all hell must have erupted under the hail of return enemy fire. In shot and shell and detonation the doomed craft spun out of control and plunged headlong into the sea. Barely awash, inside that crumpled gondola all was a howling chaos as numbingly cold water poured in to engulf the crew; gripping terror surely informed their frantic thrashings against the rising sea and sagging envelope that trapped them. In the inky darkness, five struggled in vain and drowned. With the windows blocked and the main hatchway sealed from the outside by a metal bar put there ironically to keep the men from falling out, only luck would assist some in escaping to safety. Of those, one died later that night of his injuries. The rest drifted dazed for hours in the icy water

and pitch blackness until rescue arrived with the dawn. In the hospital at Bar Harbor they were ordered not to talk. The blimp’s wreckage was towed ashore and examined. Most notable were the two missing depth charges and the gun casings littering the gondola floor. Holes in the envelope were consistent with anti-aircraft ammunition used by the Germans, and the entire rear section had been torn away as if by a larger projectile. Later an inquiry revealed that depth charge explosions had been heard aboard a patrol vessel around the time of the crash, and Schoodic Point observers reported “pom-pom” gunfire shortly after the blimp was seen headed out to sea. Fishermen and residents alike spoke of the flashes of gunfire off in the distance and the dull crump of muffled explosions. Finally, enough people came forward for a secret Navy document to

acknowledge that the damage indeed could have been “the result of enemy action.” Publicly, the story was given that the holes in the envelope were put there by salvaging hooks and those missing depth charges had simply been jettisoned.

Although officially listed as an accident caused by “pilot error” no one was ever charged with the crash. Maybe it was all hushed up to bolster public morale at the time, or maybe the Navy just believed its own adage that ‘loose lips sink ships’. But why stay with this fuzzy narrative when issuing a few medals today would resolve the thing more honorably?

One thing is certain. Just about everyone else believes that there was an old Dodge City-type shootout between the good guys and the bad and this time Marshal Dillon didn’t win.

A History Of Deerfield Leathers Made

by Pat Cassier

The year was 1959, when as a young man of 17 years old, I took my first trip to Maine. Traveling with my French-Canadian uncles and cousins, we voyaged to Maine’s Unorganized Territories just west of Stacyville (T3, R7) for a week of deer hunting. At that time our lodging was an abandoned logging camp, two buildings with an outhouse (doorless), about one mile east of Whetstone Falls (Swiftbrook Road) on the east branch of the Penobscot River. The Swiftbrook Road took us to the logging camp and at that time was a very narrow dirt road good for one-way traffic.

I was so impressed with the aura of the hunting camp, and the madness of it all that some of those memories are

in Maine

well preserved in my brain yet today. That trip continues for me today at the age of 80 and this fall of 2023 will be my 64th year of deer hunting in Maine’s Unorganized Territories. Oh yes, I’ve seen many changes and have had to adapt plenty over the decades.

During these past 64 years, I earned a living working with leather and leather chemicals. My job with Rohm and Haas was to sell chemicals to Maine tanneries for tanning and finishing leathers. And yes, Maine had some huge tanneries. There were about 6 of them located in Howland, Hartland, Dover-Foxcroft, South Paris, Saco, and Berwick. There were numerous others, smaller ones, located in various townships. The larger tanneries processed

cowhides and the smaller tanneries processed sheepskins. Irving Tanning Company, located in Hartland was the biggest, processing about 6,000 cow sides per day (3,000 cows) as well as sheepskins and cowhide splits.

Thus, from working in Maine to deer hunting and trout fishing there every year, I have found a second home. As tanneries faded from the scene, lives changed, and businesses changed. I went from being a chemical salesman and full retirement at age 56 to being the founder of a leather products manufacturing and distribution company called “Deerfield Leathers” located in scenic south Deerfield, New Hampshire.

Our connections to the Maine people with our leather products business have fostered the manufacturing of key leather items in the State of Maine to this very day. “Katahdin Belts,” “Katahdin Holsters,” the Maine “Barnbag,” and pet accessories are all produced in

Sherman, Maine. Our “Crazy Horse” wallet display boxes are made in New Hampshire and Maine out of northern white cedar or white pine. Every box has a different hand-painted scene of the wild west or the Unorganized Territories of Maine. An artist from Sherman, Sharon Sirois, paints the scenes and numbers and signs every box. To date, we are pushing 400 boxes that display our 30 plus styles of men’s “Crazy Horse” wallets, RFID protected, all

across New England and as far as Alaska. One can find Deerfield Leathers’ goods in trading posts, hardware stores, general stores, barber shops and travel centers across Maine, plus others as well. Likely locations to find our goods are Old Town Trading Post, Maine Military Supply, Ames True Value Hardware, Paris Farmers Union stores and S.W. Collins lumber yards to mention a few.

Over the years, I have several stories of the annual fall deer hunt and written a book entitled Unorganized Territories, which can be found at some of those retail locations. This book has enjoyed robust sales and a second issue is due out later in 2023.

To carry Deerfield Leathers’ Mainemade products, one can contact Deerfield Leathers at (603) 463-5591.

Bar Harbor’s Civil War Monument

A Trenton native brought it to life

by Brian Swartz

Aman with roots two generations deep on Mount Desert Island supplied the Civil War monument that Bar Harbor residents dedicated in 1897. Although funded by the town and private citizens, the monument owes its existence to Nehemiah H. Higgins Jr., of Trenton and Ellsworth. However, his father, Nehemiah Higgins, was born in Eden to Levi Higgins and Jerusha (Cousins) Higgins on December 18, 1819.

Covering roughly the northern 40 percent of Mount Desert Island, the town of Eden was incorporated by the Massachusetts General Court on February 23, 1796. Various villages dotted the town (Salisbury Cove and Town Hill are among those still existing); the

built-up area that developed opposite Bar Island became known as Bar Harbor, which became Eden’s new name in 1918.

Levi Higgins hailed from Massachusetts, and while the District of Maine belonged to that state until March 1820, Jerusha was born in “Eden Me.,” not in Eden, Massachusetts, according to the Maine Vital Records. Nehemiah Higgins was a “ship master” or a “master mariner” (depending on the source), but either term meant he was a ship’s captain, well-experienced with offshore wind and blue-water wave. He married Rachel Porter, and by June 1860 the couple lived in Trenton with their five children.

Higgins apparently never appended

Civil War monument in Bar Harbor (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

“Sr.” to his surname, but 10-year-old son Nehemiah H. Higgins Jr. was listed as such in the 1860 census. He was born in Trenton on December 24, 1849; technically he was 11 in 1860, but the official census-taker, Assistant Marshall Warren King, also got other information wrong for the Higgins household. He listed the family’s domestic servant, 39-year-old Mary Fowler, as a “master mariner.”

An Ellsworth history indicated that the elder Nehemiah later moved to Ellsworth to operate the “City Hotel” and that his namesake son assisted him for a while. The younger Nehemiah opened a granite business in 1885, during the heyday of Maine’s granite-quarrying industry. He quietly served Ellsworth as an alderman and school-board member and won election as mayor in 1893 and 1894. Among the Higgins-affiliated sites that exists into the 21st century is the Civil War monument standing in the cemetery on Mt. Desert Street in

Bar Harbor.

Many Eden men went into the Army or Navy during the Civil War, and some lie buried in cemeteries scattered across Bar Harbor. The Grand Army of the Republic strongly supported local efforts to erect a Civil War monument, and the effort gained traction in the mid-1890s.

The town provided $4,500 for the monument, and its backers raised the remaining $500 from “public subscription,” a term that translates as “private donation” today. Nehemiah Higgins Jr. got the contract to deliver the monument.

He purchased granite quarried in Barre, Vermont and hired Boston-based Cook & Watkins to sculpt the monument. John F. Cook and George R. Watkins had worked for the Vermont Marble Co. before starting their “wholesale granite and statuary business” in Boston in 1891.

The final, approved design incorporated a statue standing atop a pedes-

tal, the entire monument rising 33 feet from ground level. The statue featured a grizzled Union veteran, identified as such by his moustache (common to most Union soldier statues in Maine). Sporting a kepi and wearing his great coat with his cape thrown nonchalantly over his right shoulder, the soldier rested his right hand on his hip and grasped his rifled musket with his left hand.

The monument was erected in the Mount Desert Street Cemetery, sandwiched between the Bar Harbor Congregational Church to the east and St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church to the west. The Abbe Museum now stands directly across the street, and the Village Green is a short walk east on Mt. Desert Street.

Placed facing Mt. Desert Street (and hence south), the monument was engraved with a three-part raison d’etre: “In Memory of Eden’s Sons Who Were” above, “Defenders of the Union” in the middle, and “1861 — 1865” down be(cont. on page 20)

(cont. from page 19)

low. The front was also engraved with the GAR’s symbolic eagle-and-star ribbon and with a military scene: a stand of bayonets, two partially furled flags, and a cartridge box.

Eden residents dedicated the monument “with appropriate exercises” on Thursday, November 4, 1897. People gathered to watch a parade wind through the nearby streets. Among the parade’s participants were GAR members, Women’s Relief Corps members, Sons of Union Veterans, the Knights of Pythias, Bar Harbor firefighters, and local schoolchildren.

The parade “gave evidence of lively patriotism in the hearts of the people of Bar Harbor and the town of Eden,” an observer commented. People gathered in the cemetery and along Mt. Desert Street listened politely as GAR “Commander William Fennelly made the speech of presentation to the town.”

The program moved indoors with the monument’s unveiling. Additional

speakers were Maine GAR Department Commander Leroy Carleton of Winthrop, L.B. Deasy and George Googins of Bar Harbor, and Eben Hamor of West Eden.

After his death on November 9, 1901, Nehemiah H. Higgins Jr. was bur-

ied in Ellsworth’s Woodbine Cemetery. He lies forgotten, but his name lives on in Bar Harbor’s Civil War monument.

A MUST READ!!!

Written by Maine at War blogger and Discover Maine contributor Brian Swartz, the new book Maine At War, Volume 1: Bladensburg to Sharpsburg tells the story of Maine’s involvement in the first 18 months of the Civil War, as experienced by Maine men and women who answered the call to defend and preserve the United States. Maine At War Volume 1 draws on diaries, letters, regimental histories, newspaper articles, eyewitness accounts, and the Official Records to bring the war to life in a storytelling manner that captures the time and period.

Released by Epic Saga Publishing. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers: 492 pages, 313 photos and illustrations. $30.00

Cadillac Mountain In The 1880s

All aboard the cog railroad to the summit

by Brian Swartz

The 1,527-foot summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park became so popular by the 2020s that the National Park Service instituted a lottery system for people wanting to drive up the mountain’s access road from May to October. Only 140 years earlier, visitors could reach Cadillac’s summit by train — and once there they could eat and stay in a woodframed hotel accessed by a carriage road.

Cadillac was then called Green Mountain, and in the early 1880s hardcharging Bangor businessman Frank Clergue bought the Green Mountain Hotel and secured land to build a railroad up the mountain. He “quietly, but

legally” pursued organizing his railroad, according to a Bar Harbor history.

Clergue hired A. F. Hilton, a civil engineer, to find the best way up the mountain. Hilton “spent the months of December, 1882, and January 7, 1883, prowling over the sides of Green Mountain.”

Capitalism and geography limited the possible routes. To recoup his investment, Clergue needed paying passengers, and Bar Harbor had tourists galore during the summer. Otter Creek and Seal Harbor to the southeast and southwest, respectively, of Green Mountain, did not. Dorr Mountain barred railroad access to Green from the east. Although the railroad could

extend up the mountain’s southern slope from Otter Creek, few summerfolk stayed there. Green Mountain’s steep west slope above Bubble Pond excluded that approach.

After examining “several suggested routes,” Hilton recommended a hybrid: Wagons would carry Bar Harbor visitors to Eagle Lake’s north shore, where they would board a small steamer and cross the lake to a railroad landing on the east shore. The train would carry them to the mountaintop.

The steep grade prevented Clergue from building a standard-gauge railroad, so he opted to build a Mt. Washington Railway-style cog railroad with a gauge of 4 feet, 7½ inches. Clergue

already figured that the Maine Railroad Commission would approve his project (the official “okay” came in winter 1883), and he contracted with Bangor-based Hinckley & Edgery to manufacture two passengers cars.

Clergue started construction that spring. Cutting ties from trees harvested along the right of way, his workers set the ties in place and laid down the rails, which were bolted through the ties into the granite bedrock. Sometimes the workers bolted the rails directly into the rock.

During the project, Clergue housed his workers in the Green Mountain Hotel rather than transport them daily from Bar Harbor. A locomotive arrived at the Portland docks and reached Bar Harbor via the Stella Lee, a schooner. Workers then hitched 14 horses and hauled the locomotive “to a point between West and Cottage Streets.” Once the engine’s wheels were installed, the locomotive was moved to Eagle Lake,

with workers carefully winching the engine over rough sections of road.

The locomotive reached the lake’s north-shore landing on April 21, 1883. Richard Hamor, from whom Clergue had purchased the hotel, used his scow to transport the engine to the railroad landing.

Clergue bought a “stern-wheel steamer,” the Wauwinet, to carry passengers from landing to landing on Eagle Lake. It being land-locked, there was no saltwater route over which the Wauwinet could steam, so Clergue had the little ship hauled by winch and cable 2½ miles from Bar Harbor.

The project quickly took shape. Two women and their daughters were the first passengers on May 30. Clergue pulled out all the stops for his railroad’s June 23 grand opening. The chartered steamer Cimbria carried passengers to Bar Harbor that day; they climbed into a “horse-drawn ‘barge’” (also called a “bus”) to ride to Eagle Lake, boarded

the Wauwinet, and enjoyed the short cruise across the lake to the landing where the train waited.

Clergue threw “a two-day gala party” and greeted people checking out his railroad. He established a set train schedule: The train made four daily round trips, and guests could dine at the hotel or stay overnight. Sparks from the train occasionally ignited fires on Green Mountain, but that was a cost of doing business, as far as Clergue was concerned.

He would not tolerate competition, however. He ordered gates installed to block traffic on the carriage road. “Naturally, these gates were pulled down,” so Clergue hired men sent from Bangor to set dynamite into holes drilled overnight into the carriage road. The dynamite exploded the next day and damaged the road. It was soon repaired, and islanders and summerfolk alike realized that Clergue had a dark side.

What he had not revealed were his (cont. on page 24)

Check our Facebook page for updated hours

(cont. from page 23)

plans to extend rail lines all over Mount Desert Island, all the way to Seal Harbor, Northeast Harbor, Southwest Harbor, and Bass Harbor. First, though, Clergue wanted to build an electric railway from the steamboat landing in Bar Harbor to Eagle Lake. The summerfolk who essentially considered Mount Desert Island to be their private playground hired lawyers Hannibal Hamlin and A.P. Wiswell to represent them at a Maine Railroad Commission public hearing held on November 3.

The commissioners denied Clergue his electric railway. His Green Mountain Railway gradually lost business, then reached the point where revenue could not cover the creditors’ bills. As for the railroad’s assets, not much was left when the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department held a sheriff’s sale on January 16, 1893.

The locomotive went to the Mt.

nents,

Washington Cog Railway, and the Green Mountain Hotel burned in 1895. The Wauwinet’s only valuable compo-

its boiler and metal fittings, were removed, and the steamer was sunk in Eagle Lake.

Mount Desert Steamship at the Bar Harbor Wharf, ca. 1890. Item # 132 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

Two women workers standing by retorts at Underwood’s Jonesport Factory, ca. 1930. Item # 7907 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

The Mighty Men Of Machias The British went a running

by Joseph McBrine

Machias was settled in 1763 by an association of 16 men who moved from Scarborough to escape years of droughts and fires. Machias Valley offered marsh hay for livestock and large timber for the mills that were built by the early settlers.

Massachusetts Bay Colony agreed to make Machias an official Township in 1770. A meeting house was built and Reverend James Lyon was hired at the first minister of the gospel.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord occurred in April of 1775 and word quickly reached Machias. The people of Machias erected a Liberty Pole in support of those who shed blood in the name of Liberty. It was a clear sign of

defiance to Great Britain.

Just two months after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the British arrived in Machias on His Majesty’s Ship Margaretta. When British Captain

James Moore saw the Liberty Pole he became angry and demanded that it be taken down. The crew on the Margaretta had escorted Ichabod Jones’ supply ships to Machias to ensure the ships were loaded with lumber to be taken to Boston to build barracks for British soldiers.

The people of Machias did not want their lumber being used for British troops in Boston. Ichabod Jones decided that only those who supported the British trade would be able to receive goods from his supply ships.

The men of Machias and Reverend Lyon decided to attempt a capture of Ichabod Jones and the British Captain Moore during the Sunday church

service. The plan failed when Captain Moore observed a large group of armed men approaching the meeting house. Moore jumped out the window and ran down the hill to the Machias River where he rowed out to the Margaretta and drifted downriver. The men of Machias decided to go after the British ship. Jeremiah O’Brien and about 30 men boarded the supply ship Unity and Benjamin Foster and about 25 men went to East River and boarded the Falmouth Packet. This would be the first naval battle of the American Revolution.

Captain Moore realized he was unfamiliar with navigating the lower river and the mouth of the bay because he no longer had Ichabod Jones’ ships to follow. He pulled alongside a local ship and ordered 68-year old Captain Samuel Tobey onboard the Margaretta as a navigator. Tobey was likely not in favor of such a young British officer giv-

ing him orders and Tobey was sympathetic to the American cause. Shortly after, Tobey began navigating the Margaretta’s boom jib in the wind and it snapped in half. Tobey likely intended for this to happen because it caused the British to stop for repairs.

The Unity and Falmouth Packet caught up with the Margaretta and a battle occurred. John McNeil was shot and killed on the American side. Ebeneezer Beal lost both legs after being struck by British arms. John Berry was shot in the face with a musket ball, but lived and was granted what may have been the first military pension in America.

A month later in July of 1775, the British sent two large warships to Machias in search of the Margaretta. The men of Machias planned an ambush when some of the crew came ashore for fresh drinking water. Both British ships, named the Diligent and Tatama-

gouch were captured by the Machias Committee of Safety.

The Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. On July 6th British soldiers on board the HMS Viper invaded Machias. A 3-day battle occurred and one man from Machias was shot. The British captured 5 large fishing vessels and thousands of pounds of fish.

Machias knew that the British would return again and they wanted to be prepared. That summer of 1776 Sylvanus Scott and Samuel Scott built Fort Foster near the present day Rim Bridge. It consisted of long, earthen berms and a watchtower fort with housing. George Stillman built a small fortification across the river. John O’Brien retrieved the Margaretta which had been hidden out of sight up the Middle River. He readied the ship for the defense of Machias Bay.

The British did return in July of 1777 (cont. on page 28)

(cont. from page 27)

when the HMS Ambuscade dropped anchor in Machias. Word spread across the region and men came from many miles away to enlist in the local militia. The HMS Ambuscade quietly left the river without incident.

The British had planted a spy in Machias to learn where any arms might be hidden and to determine if rumors of Machias men attacking Nova Scotia might be true.

Reverend James Lyon and others had previously lived in Nova Scotia and they believed large numbers of the inhabitants there would fight for America.

George Washington had authorized Colonel John Allen, who had come from Nova Scotia, to build a militia of 300 local men and any Indians from the Wabanaki Confederacy who wanted to fight. Fortunately, Colonel Allen brought at least 43 Indians to Machias when the British invaded in August of

1777. Sir George Collier commanded the British fleet. His ships were the HMS Hope, HMS Rainbow, HMS Mermaid and the HMS Blonde.

Machias was a logging village and log and chain booms were commonly used on rivers to stop logs on river drives. The men constructed a large boom chain across the river where the present day Rim Bridge is located. This slowed down the advancement of the British fleet. Some of the British

went ashore and burned Fort Foster and other homes and barns. They also burned a mill and a tannery.

The British lowered smaller boats and rowed upriver to the mouth of Middle River. Captain Stephen Smith was in charge of a group of militia at White’s Point. A Passamquoddy man was with Smith as the British advanced on their location. A Passmaquoddy, Francis Joseph Neptune, asked Smith if he could fire his musket at the British

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officer in the approaching boat. Smith replied that it would be a waste of powder to take such a long shot. Neptune fired anyway and killed the British officer. Everyone began to cheer all along both sides of the Machias River. The British retreated and headed downriver where they boarded the HMS Hope.

Two men could be seen carrying a stretcher along the riverbank. The British assumed they were carrying a dead American. As the HMS Hope pulled anchor and began to drift downriver, the two men set the stretcher down on the ground. They removed the wool blanket from the stretcher to reveal a loaded cannon. The “dead man spoke” as the cannon fired a ball at the ship. The cannon ball hit its mark and blew a hole in the side of the HMS Hope

The British fled and never returned again during the American Revolution. They had had enough.

Revolutionary War Reenactors of Downeast Maine

These battles and other events are reenacted each year by volunteers of the Revolutionary War Reenactors of Downeast Maine which is part of the Machias Historical Society and the Margaretta Days Festival of Machias.

Millinocket Hoopsters Stand Proud

The ‘63 New England basketball tournament

by Charles Francis

Diehard Boston basketball fans of a certain generation still talk about the Maine team that took apart hometown favorite and favored Rindge Tech in the 1963 New England Basketball Tournament. The Maine team was the George Wentworth-coached Stearns High Minutemen of Millinocket.

In the decade before the 1963 tournament, teams from Connecticut had dominated this New England premier showcase for high school basketball. Connecticut had opted not to send teams to the tournament that year, and Rindge Tech, which had dominated Massachusetts high school round ball

that season, was expected to continue its winning ways for the New England tourney. When Steams High School put an end to that scenario in the semifinals, it sent a shock wave across the Bay State. What added salt to the injury that Massachusetts sports fans felt was that the ‘63 final was all Maine. The Minutemen from Millinocket went on to defeat the one team that had already beaten them that year, the Shipbuilders from Bath’s Morse High.

The 1963 New England Basketball tournament was the stuff that legends are made of, and it still serves as an important part of the mystique that is Maine high school basketball, and that

of Stearns and George Wentworth.

George Wentworth has gone down in Maine basketball lore as the state’s greatest coach. Part of the reason for this is that his Stearns teams always fared well. Beyond that is the fact that Wentworth instilled a certain ethic in his players — an ethic that stemmed from his own days as a student and an athlete, first at Eastern Maine Conference Seminary in Bucksport, and then at Notre Dame, where he played basketball in the early 1930s. For many, it was the 1963 New England Tournament that was the beginning of the modern era of Maine high school basketball.

In the tournament Stearns faced (cont. on page 32)

(cont. from page 31)

Rogers High of Rhode Island, and Rindge, before meeting Morse. Morse played Bishop Bradley of New Hampshire and Tolman High of Rhode Island. Both Maine teams played backto-back on Sunday, March 16th. Morse played first.

The outcome of the March 16th game between Morse and Bishop Bradley was never really in question, although there was a point in the third quarter when the score was tied. Then Morse proceeded to take its opponent apart and won 61 to 52. Stearns won its game over Rogers by a score of 69 to 61.

It was the Stearns-Rogers game that made Boston sportswriters first take notice of the team from northern Maine. While it could be expected that a Maine team could beat another from northern New England, the fact that a Maine team would defeat a southern New En-

George W. Stearns High School in Millinocket. Item #LB2007.1.108063 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org

gland team was out of the question. In addition, Rogers’ players were taller, and therefore supposedly possessed an advantage.

The first half of the Stearns-Rogers game was low scoring. At halftime, it was only 26-21 with Stearns out in front. In the third quarter Dean Vaznis, the Stearns big man, scored six straight points to increase the lead to twelve. The game was never in question after that. Terry Carr had a total of twenty-six points and Jon MacDonald, twenty. Boston sportswriters reported that while Maine teams were quite capable of scoring, they had yet to prove themselves against a Massachusetts team. Morse never would.

The next series in the tournament took place the following weekend. Morse was the first of the Maine teams to play. Tolman of Rhode Island proved to be more of a victim than an opponent. Morse won handily, 60 to 45.

The attendance for the Stearns-Rindge game was over ten thousand. More Massachusetts fans were in attendance than those from Maine. Rindge fans and Massachusetts partisans were disappointed, however, as the Minutemen opened by scoring the first six points.

Rindge did close the gap to one point in the second period, but then Carr and MacDonald alternated baskets. The second half of the game was what Maine fans have come to know as a George Wentworth patent game. The Stearns team played slow, control ball. While Rindge did close the Maine lead to a single point, once again, the result was never in question, with Terry Carr scoring a total of twenty-eight points, setting the stage for an all-Maine final.

The New England final in Boston was a repeat of the Maine final in Bangor. Morse had won that one by a single point in double overtime, and for

a time, it looked as if the Shipbuilders would again triumph over the Minutemen.

The first period ended with the score 15-13, Stearns. The half ended at 3025, Morse. The third period began with Stearns outscoring Morse 8-1 and ended with the Minutemen holding a 42-37 lead. Then, in the fourth quarter, Morse surged ahead. Altogether, the game was tied six times, but when the final buzzer sounded, it was Stearns by two points, 56 to 54.

Both Steams and Morse made excellent representatives from the State of Maine at the ‘63 New England Tournament. It is the Stearns-Rindge game and George Wentworth, however, that carry the sting of Maine basketball in the Bay State to this day. In much the same way, it is still Wentworth and Stearns that speak volumes on basketball in Maine.

Men standing

Bangor’s Frederic Vinton

Maine’s impressionist painter

by James Nalley

In 1861, a Bangor-born man, at the age of 15, moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he found a job as a bookkeeper. In fact, he worked as one for the next 20 years. Meanwhile, he had other aspirations. On the side, he began studying art under William Rimmer of the Lowell Institute, and specifically focused on portraits. By his early 30s, he had become so proficient that he quit his job and opened his own portrait studio. What set him apart from others was that, throughout his career, he painted people and landscapes “as he saw them,” without representing them as anything more. For example, a woman washing clothes by the river in France was simply that, and not a seductress, as suggested by

some of his counterparts. Always the student, he went on to work under some of the most renowned painters/teachers in the world, until his relatively early death at the age of 65.

Frederic Porter Vinton was born in Bangor on January 29, 1846. At the age of 10, he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois, but just five years later, his family moved to Boston. There, he dabbled in several career paths, such as a clerk and a banker, before settling into bookkeeping. As stated earlier, as Vinton performed his regular job as a bookkeeper, he began studying art with William Rimmer, an American artist. Rimmer, much like Vinton, dabbled in many careers to supplement his income

Frederic Porter Vinton

Portrait by John Singer Sargent

as an artist, ranging from carving busts from blocks of granite to earning a diploma to practice medicine. According to the book Painting and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design (2004) by David Dearinger, “Upon prompting from Rimmer, Vinton felt confident enough to send a review of some local artwork in the Boston Advertiser, thus publicizing his name as a trained artist.” At the age of 32, Vinton opened a portrait studio in Boston.

After his studio picked up business, he, like many artists of the time, traveled to Europe to hone his skills. As stated in the book The Art of Painting in the 19th Century (1908) by Edmund von Mach, “Vinton spent much of his time traveling the European continent, which influenced his work and helped differentiate it from the American work of the same time. One reviewer even called him, ‘an aristocrat of the old school,’ due to his eagerness to assimi-

late everything he encountered.”

However, throughout his life, his purpose was clear: travel and study art. For example, in 1875, he traveled to Paris to study with Leon Bonnat (a French painter and professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts). In 1876, he spent one year in Munich where he studied under Frank Duveneck (an American portrait painter) at the Royal Academy of Munich. Later, he returned to Paris and remained there for two years to travel the countryside to paint people and landscapes. In 1882, Vinton traveled to Spain with Robert Blum (an American artist who specialized in pen drawings and watercolors) and William Merritt Chase (an American painter and exponent of impressionism). The three artists spent much time in Madrid and Toledo, expanding their skills and knowledge and abandoning what they cited as a “dislike of German impressionism.”

It is interesting to note that before

his travels, Vinton was primarily a portrait painter. In fact, his first exhibition was in 1880, where he naturally presented a portrait. It was not until his European travels that he started exhibiting landscapes “as he saw them.” For instance, in 1884, he submitted his first landscape for exhibition: Street in Toledo. Again, he chose his subjects in their everyday settings and did not romanticize any aspect, unlike some of his counterparts.

In 1883, Vinton married Annie Peirce, after an 18-month trip across Europe. Some of his most famous paintings are portraits of his young wife. As for his paintings, they have been described as “impressionistic,” with some critics going as far as calling them “pre-1940s impressionism, greatly influenced by his European travels and his study under many important artists of the time.” In 1891, Vinton was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design in New York, and (cont. on page 38)

(cont. from page 37)

two years later, he was one of a handful of American painters exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Regarding the latter, Chicago hosted this world’s fair in order to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World. In this case, artists from the United States and 19 foreign countries were exhibited at the exposition.

On May 20, 1911, Vinton died of a bronchial affection at his home in Boston. He was 65 years of age. Following his death, his wife released some of his paintings to various exhibits around the country. Currently, his paintings are in the collections of some of the world’s finest art museums, including: the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston; the Harvard University Art Museum; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Museum of the National Academy of Design in New York.

Interestingly, there were some paint-

ings by Vinton that were extra special to him. In particular, there was La Blanchisseuse (1890). According to the MFA Boston, “Although washerwomen were sometimes represented in a different light, Vinton’s hard-working blanchisseuse, with her tub and the wooden box in which she kneels to keep her own clothes dry, provided an

interesting subject for his new-found skill in impressionist effects.” Perhaps he believed that his first work was not worthy of exhibition, or maybe he simply painted it for his own pleasure, in homage of a special time in his life. But either way, this painting remained with him out from the spotlight and was never exhibited until after his death

River View, Spring, A Landscape by Frederic Vinton ca. 1880

Brewer Schools During World War II

Population grew after the war

by Brian Swartz

Brewer experienced substantial population growth after World War II, with extensive housing developments appearing along Parkway North and Parkway South, and new roads were built to accommodate the growth. Returning veterans married and started families; the city’s schoolage population increased, too. Soon after the war, the city bought the Burr Lot, low ground between State and Parker streets. A contractor drained, filled, and graded the site upon which the two-story, 10-classroom State Street School was built. Its driveway opened onto Center Street, and its main entrance faced State Street. The school opened in September 1948 and closed in 2012.

Across Center Street rose a two-story building containing a shop upstairs and a gym downstairs, with a long flight of stairs linking the two floors.

Constructed by T.W. Cunningham Inc. for $236,608, the building served the adjacent Brewer High School and opened in January 1948. Houses continued rising in Brewer, and more students packed the existing schools. The school department bought 13 acres off the newly extended Washington Street in December 1948 and soon built the one-story, 12-room Washington Street School.

Even that facility could not accommodate the burgeoning school population. After acquiring a large lot at

the intersection of Parkway South and Pendleton Street in South Brewer, the school department constructed the eight-room Pendleton Street School, which opened in 1958. Students shifted there from two older elementary schools that closed for good.

The wood-framed Brewer High School had once occupied a lot at the intersection of South Main and School streets. Closed when a new high school was built on Somerset Street in the 20th century, that building was torn down. Its vacant lot came in handy by 1959, when the school department decided to build a one-story, three-classroom school on the site. Accommodating the overflow from the two-story, brick-

built Dirigo School across South Main Street, the School Street School opened in 1960.

With the existing high school bursting at its seams, in the 1950s the school department bought land on Parkway South, about a block from Wilson Street. Shaped like the letter “U,” the modern Brewer High School opened in stages, with one wing (the U’s left side) opening first. Juniors and seniors moved there in the late 1950s, thus freeing space at the older high school. Construction continued, and the other wing (the U’s right side) opened a short while later.

Joined in the middle at the gymnasium, the wings were dubbed the Freshman-Sophomore Wing and the Junior-Senior Wing. More students attended Brewer High as school-age populations increased in Brewer and Orrington, Holden, Eddington, Clifton, and Dedham, which all sent students to the school.

(cont. on page 42)

(cont. from page 41)

The 1960 federal census reported 9,672 people living in Brewer. The school department bought a lot on Capri Street (created post-World War II) and constructed the small Capri Street School to ease the student numbers at the State Street and Washington Street schools.

Except for some additional construction (such as a new music room) at Brewer High School, physical school expansion in Brewer reached its highest tide with the Capri Street School. Lured by cheaper land and country solitude, families were moving from Bangor and Brewer to neighboring towns, soon to experience their own growth-related issues.

Maine law lets towns without public high schools tuition their students to public high schools like Brewer and Bangor and John Bapst Memorial, a

Rocky Ridge Motel

former Catholic high school reopened as a secular high school in September 1980. Many couples started moving to Holden, Dedham, Orrington, and elsewhere in the latter 20th century so their children would have a choice of high schools.

Brewer’s population dropped to just above 9,000 people in 1980 and remained at about that level for the next few decades. With a declining schoolage population, the school department decided to consolidate students in pre-K through eighth grade in the new $33.4-million Brewer Community School.

Constructed on the grounds of the Pendleton Street School, the 150,000-square-foot BCS has five wings and several dozen classrooms. Its opening in the early 2010s saw all remaining elementary schools closed

and the Brewer Middle School sold for conversion to apartments. The Capri Street, Pendleton Street, State Street, and Washington Street schools were torn down. A multi-level housing complex now occupies the State Street School site, and public parks exist where the Capri Street and Washington Street schools stood.

The Brewer Public Library relocated from the rear of Brewer City Hall to the School Street School; the move improved library parking and accessibility.

A Scene Out Of Hollywood Railroad disaster in East Newport

by Brian Swartz

Early twentieth-century cinematic productions often incorporated a celluloid stunt equivalent to modern Hollywood’s perennial favorite, the highspeed chase — a car stalled on the railroad tracks as a loaded freight roars around the curve.

On film, the situation inevitably ended with the car’s occupants (including Laurel and Hardy on occasion) hilariously bolting for safety moments before the train’s engine sliced the automobile in twain. Maine audiences guffawed at such antics in the local movie theaters. Such a scenario was not funny for a Newport family, how-

ever, after nightfall on Friday, August 10, 1934.

That evening, Samuel Buzzell had borrowed a car owned by Newport resident Clifford Wheeler. He was heading home with his wife and their four-yearold daughter, Lena, driving through East Newport in an automobile that, as events quickly revealed, was not quite running right.

After the next few minutes, the car would not be running at all. Buzzell slowed for the Maine Central Railroad crossing on the Bangor Road (now Route 2), but as he shifted gears the automobile stalled. Emulating an already

legendary Hollywood situation, both car and occupants lay athwart a railroad track with the train acomin. The Buzzells could probably hear the rumbling train in the too-quiet August darkness. As Samuel worked choke and ignition, signal lights suddenly activated. Its engineers unaware of the problem, Maine Central Railroad train No.2, outbound from Bangor, approached the crossing. The Buzzells kept their cool that night. Samuel “told his wife to jump, and then grasping his child, he, too, abandoned” the car, a newspaper reported. After apparently handing Lena to her mother, an excited Buzzell bolt(cont. on page 44)

(cont. from page 43)

ed eastward along the track, trying to flag the train and save the automobile.

He “tried to catch the eye of L. Clark, the engineer of the train, but was unsuccessful,” the press account recalled. His arms hanging limply by his side, a dejected Buzzell could only stand and watch helplessly as No. 2 lumbered past him and reached the crossing.

The locomotive smashed the car, tossing it high in the air and strewing bits of wreckage along the tracks for more than a thousand feet. The automobile, which “was completely demolished,” exacted its vengeance, damaging the locomotive tender so badly that the train could not pull into Newport for another hour.

The Buzzells escaped injury (“narrowly escaped death,” the newspaper stated), as did the train crew. East Newport residents got a rude wake-up call. Several people rushed outdoors to investigate the ear-splitting screech

of shattered metal. More people gathered to examine the accident site. Three police officers (a state trooper, a Penobscot County deputy sheriff, and a Newport police officer) soon arrived to check for injuries and damage. Finding the Buzzells unhurt, the police officers cast a calming influence over the talkative onlookers.

No blood, only wreckage. The audience soon drifted apart in the bug-ridden darkness. Most people went home, but some volunteered to help clean up the railroad crossing. Some scrap metal undoubtedly vanished into local pockets as souvenirs. Wheeler had no car to recover, so whatever disappeared did not matter.

This was nothing unusual for Depression-era Hollywood, where trains and cars enjoyed a cinematic symbiosis. However, this was an exciting accident in Newport, where a train did not run over a car every day. A generation

earlier, the train might have claimed a farm wagon at the crossing. In “modern” Newport, the train chalked up a car, but not its occupants.

Hollywood missed a truly memorable auto-train collision. Do

Let’s Get Ready To Rumble

A North Woods lumber camp boxing contest

by Pat Leonard

Maine had had some unusual boxing bouts. Ripley’s Believe It or Not has a cartoon featuring Al Couture of Lewiston knocking out Ralph Walton in 10 ½ seconds of the first round on September 24, 1946. This is still regarded as the quickest knockout in all pugilistic history.

By a coincidence, another brief battle which received international attention if not approbation also took place in Lewiston, this time on May 25, 1965 when Muhammad Ali scored a questionable one-minute knockout defending his world title against former title holder Sonny Liston.

Few people have ever heard of the weirdest of all such boxing contests which took place one winter evening in a lumber camp in the Moosehead Lake area in 1913. Neither contestant was a Maine man. One was a highly experienced Boston pugilist who was born in Italy. The other was a Canadian professional weightlifter who weighed two hundred pounds more than his opponent.

At the turn of this century, weightlifting was a popular sport all over the world. The lifters of those pre-TV days were almost invariably ponderous men weighing over 300 pounds. They hoisted up a great variety of objects other

than their dumbbells; horses, platforms holding men, anchors, barrels, and even huge rocks, for example.

Every country boasted of it famous lifters. America, Henry Holtgrewe and Warren Lincoln Travis. France, the enormous Apollon. Prussia, Eugene Sandow. Luxembourg, John Marx. Germany, Arthur Saxon and his brothers. Austria, Josef Steinbach, and Karl Swoboda, still a national hero. Ireland, John Peter Gill, the ‘Kilronan Hercules’ and Canada, Louis Cyr, and Horace Barre.

Cyr, (1863-1912) was the most famous of all. At 5’8”, weighing well over 300 pounds, he was called “The (cont. on page 46)

(cont. from page 45)

Canadian Samson” and billed as the strongest man in the world.

Fantastically popular in Canada, Cyr fostered a host of imitators; squat, rotund, powerful youths who trained daily to emulate their hero, the famous Louis Cyr. One such man was Leo Meunier, son of an innkeeper, and a superb chef when not tugging away at rocks, picking up horses, or winning bets carrying pianos around ball rooms. Leo was indeed a stalwart man, 5’7”, weighing between 350 and 375 pounds in his best weightlifting condition.

When Cyr died in Montreal on November 10, 1912, the sport nearly expired with him. Leo was forced to take a job as a lumber camp cook in the woods of Maine the next winter. Fate decreed he was to be one of the combatants in the Moosehead Lake contest.

His opponent was Gus Raimo, born near Naples, Italy, on October 12, 1886. His parents immigrated to Amer-

ica when Gus was only three years old. Gus was the same height as Meunier but weighed a muscular 146 pounds. Gus became a professional fighter when only 16. He paid 25 cents to see the fights at McDonalds in Roslindale Square, Boston. Halfway through the evening’s program the promoter announced from the ring that the expected adversary of hard-faced Kid Crowell had not showed up; and the generous promoter sportingly stated he would pay five dollars to anyone in the audience who could stay at least three of the scheduled six rounds with flat-nosed Crowell. Five dollars was a week’s pay to Gus in those days, so he volunteered, surprised everyone by lasting the full six rounds, but lost the decision. This did not bother Gus. Despite a few bruises, he decided that fighting was an easy way to make money.

Over the next sixteen years, in addition to his six-day-a-week job deliv-

ering coal and ice, Gus fought an estimated 350-400 preliminary matches in the Boston area. His meticulously kept records were destroyed in a house fire many years ago. In the week before he married Mary McDonald on April 18, 1915, Gus battled six nights in a row in clubs around Boston to get ample funds to start their married life.

Mary finally persuaded Gus to retire in 1918 when Gus arrived home with a freshly broken nose and a couple of mean gashes after fighting a ten-round welterweight (147 pound) draw with the colorful and unorthodox Belgian Brown. The referee that night was Jake Kilrain, who had fought John L. Sullivan for the title back in 1889. Gus took a year off, then began a new career as a middleweight wrestler and had “fifty or sixty scraps in the next three years but my heart was not in it, so I retired for good.”

Although Gus never held a title, he

does have the distinction of being the oldest known ex-boxer, as he did not die until just after his 103rd birthday in 1989.

Before his marriage, adventuresome Gus spent five winters as a lumberjack in Maine, augmenting his regular earnings by boxing wild swinging lumberjacks at the regular Saturday night festivities. As Gus explains in a 1983 article when he was over 97 years of age: “All of the guys I fought in the camps were bigger than me; but none of them knew anything about scientific boxing; so I never got hurt. I had my strangest experience in the ring at a lumber camp in the Moosehead Lake area in 1913. The most famous French-Canadian strong man in the old days was Louis Cyr, a butterball of a man weighing 360 pounds but not very tall, and the best lifter in the world. The Canadians admired strength, and lots of them were weightlifters.”

“That season, one of our crew, the

cook, Leo Meunier, was a real good, amiable guy, popular with everyone although he did not have a word of English. Leo was from Quebec, only as tall as me, 5’7”; but weighing over 350 pounds and as solid as a rock. And about as quick moving as a rock. In between cooking, which he was good at, he trained lifting sets of wagon wheels, logs, and great big stones.”

“Somehow, Leo and I, although we were good friends, got matched up for a winner take all ten rounder one Saturday night. Of course, all the Frenchmen in the camp bet on Leo, as did some of the fellows from Maine who knew how strong Leo was; but a lot of the men bet on me. There was quite a crowd that night as another crew came from nearly eighteen miles away to see the fight.”

“The referee was the camp boss, a fellow about fifty, very tall and grouchy looking. Never a smile. He was the most hated crank in Maine. Although I was not experienced with an axe, I was

good at handling horses, so he tolerated me. After my first couple of fights, he made a lot of money betting on me.”

“When the bell rang, Leo’s strategy became obvious. Hold me with one hand and hit me with the other. Although he weighed a couple of hundred pounds more than me, at least we were the same height. I knew that once he hit me or grabbed me, I was a goner, so I kept away from him, sliding in and out now and then and belting him before he could retaliate. He could not hit met. He was aiming all his shots at my head.”

After the first round, there was a lot of French shouting in his corner; his friends were giving him advice. His tactics changed in the second round. He was trying to hit me anywhere in the body, with the hope that although he was not a speedy puncher, the sheer weight of one good sweep of that thick arm would send me flying through the ropes. I kept out boxing him.”

(cont. on page 48)

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(cont. from page 47)

“In the third round, Leo’s plan worked. But not on me. He took a wild pivoting swing. I had no trouble backing up out of the way, but the referee was not so quick, and Leo caught the camp boss squarely in the stomach, doubled him up completely, and the momentum caused him to fly out between the ropes, rear end first, his hands and feet outstretched in the ring. He landed on his keister at the feet of the men in the front row and was finished for the night. No referee from then on. The fight had to be stopped as everyone wanted to jeer at and curse the camp boss who had more than his pride hurt.”

“Leo just about stood up in his corner for the fourth round. He was out of breath and having trouble just staying on his feet. I kept out of his way, fearing some trick. He backed up against the ropes in his corner. Occasionally

I would pop in, feint, and then let him have one in the gut but this did not seem to hurt him or help me.”

“When the bell ended the fourth round, everyone could see Leo was done. So, I helped him sit down and then suggested to one of his handlers who could speak English that we call the fight a draw and call all bets off. This was OK with Leo once his friends explained it to him.”

“It took Leo a half an hour at least to get up enough strength and breath to walk back to the cook house where he had a cot in one corner. I walked back with him, one hand on his shoulder. The next day, Sunday, Leo stayed in bed all day and the camp boss was taken to a doctor many miles away. Leo was all right Monday.

Eastport’s Joseph Cony And the life of

by John L. Raye

Joseph Saville Cony’s short life swept like a comet over the horizon of the Civil War before it returned whence it came.

Born in 1834 in Eastport, a little island city once one of the nation’s busiest ports, it was where he called home. He grew up with the sea all around him, so it was no surprise that he ventured onto it at a young age. Volunteering in the Navy in 1862, he served as acting Ensign aboard the Union Warship USS Western World. That year he commanded several successful small boat raids along the Carolina coast. He was young, brave, ambitious, and determined to make his mark.

his two swords

Cony was issued two USN swords befitting his rising star. The first was an officer’s dress sword with an embellished blade and name engraving — an attractive weapon. The second was particularly special — an Ames 1862 officer’s cutlass with the U.S.N. cut out on the brass hand cover. This cutlass likewise featured a prominent engraving of his name. It was a serviceable weapon that would later see much action.

By

1863 Cony was the executive officer of the U.S.S. Shokokon. In command of a daring expedition, he took one of the Shokokon’s longboats along with six seamen and left a path of glory the U.S. Navy would not soon for-

Joseph Cony

get. His raiding party surprised a much larger rebel force in an encampment at New Topsail inlet, near the Confederate stronghold of Wilmington, North Carolina. Cony’s small force captured ten soldiers, a large howitzer, eighteen horses, extensive salt works, and most importantly, destroyed the blockade runner, the Alexander Cooper This was an extraordinary feat and was well documented in USN historical ledgers and military correspondence.

Much of the North’s strategy in winning the Civil War, right from the original “Anaconda Plan,” was to cut off the Confederate states’ lines of supply and commerce from the outside world. The Navy was to contribute immensely to this effort, and control of the Mississippi was critical in blocking rebel commerce. Closing Atlantic ports and the Gulf of Mexico were important to impede the Confederates’ supply chain. Grant’s successful collaboration with the Navy at the siege of Vicksburg, and

the Union Navy winning the Battle of Mobile Bay, were huge advancements for the North.

Yet Wilmington, North Carolina, and its “Gibraltar” — Fort Fisher — was still open in the fall of 1864, allowing arms, ammunition, and other critical supplies to reach the Confederacy. And for good reason: Fort Fisher was considered impregnable.

Joseph Cony would now play important roles in amphibian attacks on the Carolina shore and at two subsequent battles at Fort Fisher. USN archives document how General Peck lauded Cony’s landing expedition on the North Carolina shore while attached to the U.S.S. Britannia General Grant, meanwhile, was mired in Petersburg, Virginia and demanded Fort Fisher be closed to destroy the Rebel supply line.

Grant sent the incompetent but well-connected General Butler to accompany the Navy in storming Fort Fisher in December 1864. Acting Mas-

ter Cony did his part in shelling the Fort, but Butler’s Army contingent didn’t coordinate with the Navy, making the battle a disaster for the North, with hundreds killed and wounded.

After the Christmas of 1864, Grant wanted results, and this time Joseph Cony would play a bigger role. General Terry would now lead the Army forces and would coordinate well with Admiral Porter. Cony would lead his ship’s bombardment of the fort with accuracy. Then he would volunteer for the Navy and Marine contingent that would try to breach the wall of the fort on one side as the Army attacked the other side. While the soldiers were armed with rifles and bayonets, the brave Navy volunteers had only a cutlass and a revolver.

The Navy assault should have been timed to coincide with that of the Army, but the Navy, possibly seeking glory, went against the enemy first. Cony was in the front that was being battered (cont. on page 52)

(cont. from page 51)

by coordinated rebel rifle and cannon fire. Only a few times in USN chronicles does the war detail such ferocious rebel fire. Men fell all around Cony in an awful slaughter, with three hundred sailors killed or wounded. Only one Navy volunteer made it up the ramparts. The Navy, after valiant and repeated charges, was forced to fall back. Despite its retreat, it nevertheless succeeded in splitting the fort’s defenders, thus allowing the Army to break through on the other side. The North had taken the fort. Once again, Cony had proved invaluable. The battle of Fort Fisher was a major step in winning the Civil War.

Tragically, Cony’s time at sea did not end with glory. He died shortly after the war when the merchant ship he commanded sank off Cape Hatteras in 1867 in a violent storm.

Almost a century later, in recog-

nition of his important role in the war between the states, the name Cony was to grace a Destroyer in World War II, the U.S.S. Cony (DD-508). The U.S.S. Cony served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The ship was built at Bath Iron Works and sponsored in 1942 by Alice Sleight of Eastport, the closest living descendant of Joseph Saville Cony. She would pray daily for the safety of the sailors and officers of the Cony, and as Eastport’s librarian, would scour the newspapers to learn of the ship’s likely whereabouts. The ship and crew would play a critical role in the battle for supremacy in the Solomon Islands. The Cony would be awarded eleven battle stars over the course of a campaign culminating in the last line of battle confrontation with the Japanese Navy, wherein she sank an enemy destroyer.

Unfortunately, many sailors would die in a desperate attack by dive bombers and fighters trying to sink the Cony. The damaged ship would be repaired and continue fighting until the end of World War II and through the 1960s. In the meantime, Joseph Cony’s swords would reside in the Sleight home in Eastport, a reminder of his valiant career.

In 1947, the U.S.S. Cony was recommissioned and once again sponsored by Alice Sleight. In a speech given by John F. Kennedy, it was mentioned, “Joseph Cony, from Eastport, served with distinction in the war between the states specializing in amphibian landings along the southern coast.” The U.S.S. Cony would win two more battle stars in Korea and served in Vietnam as well, but she was most prominent in the Cold War. The USS Cony was part of the Hunter-Killer Task Group Alpha,

a squadron of eight antisubmarine warfare destroyers, that were equipped to hunt down Soviet submarines during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There, the cool of Cony’s captain and crew, as well as that of a Soviet submarine captain, arguably saved our lives from a nuclear holocaust.

Joseph Cony’s swords remained at rest atop Alice Sleight’s piano in her Eastport house on Key Street. Alice Sleight, now retired, was aging, and passed the Cony swords to her daughter, Ann Harrison, who was most honored to possess them. Going forward a few decades, Ann had given them some thought about where they should go, and it was on her birthday celebration, July 10, 2019, that she told her daughter, Jill Hume Harrison, that they should be given to a museum on permanent loan. When her daughter went to retrieve them from atop their hutch, she was stunned to find them missing. Af-

ter checking with her brother William, Jill notified the Boothbay Harbor Police Department. Likely suspects were personal care attendants who were assisting Ann in her recovery after a car accident. It turned out that other items were stolen as well — jewelry, money, electronics, an antique silver tea service, gold coins, a gold watch, and other family heirlooms.

Perhaps Dr. Jill Harrison had inherited some of Joseph Cony’s tenacity and persistence. She would need those traits and more to discover who had stolen the swords and to get them back, especially so when the police seemed to have given up on the case as unsolvable. Jill suspected a home health care worker and her husband, especially since she had been told that not all employees had passed a criminal background check. Indeed, the police issued a search warrant for one worker’s home when the radio frequency

from a stolen smart speaker device was picked up there. The speaker was there but not the swords. This worker’s husband had a criminal past, but by then, which turned out to be over a year later, the swords had long been gone.

The police checked some pawn shops to no avail in 2019, so now the real work began. Dr. Jill Harrison worked the phone and the internet with superb skill and pluck. Black of night deals at an auction house parking lot were hinted at. Dr Harrison had to follow up, but where? She contacted every auction house between Germany and Hawaii that dealt in historic arms. She also contacted historic arms dealers who had internet businesses, or brick and mortar establishments, and Ebay It was tedious work, but with tenacity, and when necessary, intimidation coupled with some luck, leads opened up.

The swords had first sold in Maine for less than $700 in December 2018. (cont. on page 54)

(cont. from page 53) were shipped to the Boothbay Harbor Police Department and returned to the Harrison family in December 2021!

Then they started to move across the country, their price increasing from one transaction to the next. Finally, they were bought by a collector in Baltimore at an auction for $7,500. By this time, there had been a chain of ownership that formed a dubious provenance. A Civil War collector from near Fort Fisher bought the swords in good faith for $17,000.

Luckily, Dr. Harrison had photographed the swords for a presentation to the U.S.S. Cony’s veterans. Even better, the swords were unique because each weapon was engraved with Joseph S. Cony’s name by the hilt. These were high-end swords in great condition, owned by a legend after whom a legendary World War II destroyer was named. They were quite a prize for the collector!

Dr. Harrison had the evidence of theft, proof of ownership, and the name and address of the improper new owner. Miracle of miracles, the swords

When Dr. Harrison called the Boothbay Harbor Police Chief and told him she had found the swords, he said he had to pick himself up off the floor. The collector, through a broker, offered the Harrisons $20,000 to buy the swords back. He also offered to give them to the Fort Fisher Museum upon his death. Dr. Harrison replied that she didn’t think her ancestor, who fought for the North, would want his swords at Ft. Fisher but rather in Maine, where they belonged. They would not be for sale at any price.

Watch for the swords to be on display in Maine in the near future, including at the Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Eastport, the city Joseph Cony called home.

The Milo Auditorium...and the “Theater Drop”

by Kathie Lee / Milo Historical Society

remember when I first saw the Milo theater drop curtain. We had recently moved to Milo (1988), and were attending our daughter’s daycare production under the guidance of “Miss Marie” (Marie Hayes). All the little children were a flutter getting ready for their big performance and Marie was running here and there corralling them all. The lights were down low as we found our seats. The auditorium was abuzz with excited friendly people all greeting one another. This surely was “A Friendly Town”.

I soon became mesmerized by the stage curtain. It was grand…, and maybe had seen better days, but it was truly a work of art. I imagined how many years this curtain had been greeting those coming to the auditorium for any number of activities. Shows and entertainment of all sorts, to include musicals, graduations, plays, dances, ball games, reunions, and Christmas pageants. I was sure that this place held lots of pleasant memories…. then… UP went the curtain as Miss Marie introduced her stage full of little preschool performers. How excited I was.

According to Allen Monroe, Secretary at the MHS / Milo Historical So-

ciety… it is believed that the curtain was installed sometime during 1923 when the town hall was built. I can’t help noting this to be one hundred years after Milo’s incorporation in January of 1823. And, now in 2023 as we celebrate our town’s 200th Anniversary stories abound…, bringing back to life this and many other fond memories of special and exciting times in the form of “Remember When’s”.

I just had to find out more about this curtain…, this work of art. So, my search began. Days of research and phone calls brought me to several companies that restore these theatrical curtains. I was able to confirm that Milo’s theater drop curtain was sold by the O.L. Story Scenic Company, the oldest

company of its kind at the time. I found it interesting when I read an ol’ advertisement…, it is stating with pride the fact that the life expectancy of Story’s “drops” to be 12-15 years with good care. I would say it was well cared for as it survived in use for almost 70 years.

Orville Lincoln Story (1861-1916) learned his craft as an apprentice in his father’s scenic company. He worked as a carpenter with the Boston Ideal Opera Company for a season, and in 1882 took over his father’s business providing hand painted scenery to numerous opera houses and theaters in the Boston area.

I found it odd that this drop painting depicted a scene from some exotic country rather than something more (cont. on page 56)

(cont. from page 55)

local in theme. I really wasn’t sure…, a villa, a castle? But, when I thought more about it, I found it plain to think that people came here for entertainment, to “get-a-way” so to speak, travel the world from an auditorium seat and dream of faraway places. With that thought in mind, I wasn’t at all surprised to find that our drop was Story’s depiction of The Chateau de Chillon / Chillon Castle on Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

Advertisements for Story’s business began to appear in New Hampshire business directories in 1884. As “Dealers in all kinds of Stage Supplies,” O. L. Story offered “Decorative Panels and Friezes for Interior Decorations, Oil Portraits, Photograph Backgrounds, Theatrical Properties and Papier Mache Work.”

Conveniently located near a railroad station; delivery by train was the logical way to transport these large sceneries on wooden rollers that were heavy and often more than twenty feet in

width. After Story’s death, the business continued into the mid-1930s under the management of his younger brother. I can imagine the day that the curtain arrived by rail in Milo. Was the train greeted with a wagon and men to bring this massive work of art to the auditorium for its installation…? Did the company send their own crew to raise the curtain…? Were there detailed instructions…? Either way, I imagine it was quite an undertaking getting it raised and in working order ready for the auditorium’s grand opening March 4th, 1924.

The “Theater Drop” curtain at the Wingler Auditorium in Milo, Maine.

The theater drop curtains boasted being prepped with a fire retardant prior to painting, which was a big selling point at the time as many theaters still had gas lighting. Also, providing cameo placements for local advertisement was becoming quite popular. The Milo curtain was one of the more elaborate designs available at the time. You could order from a select group of items to include, people, animals, drapes, designs, water, mountains, buildings, themes…, all aspects holding a dollar value to be tallied. Milo’s curtain was designed with virtually all the available elements except advertising cameos. This hand painted drape which covered the height and width of the open auditorium stage was truly a breath-taking display.

As change is inevitable, Allen explained that after much discussion and review of the curtain’s condition, sadly the curtain was taken down in preparations for the town hall’s renovation in the mid 1990’s.

When asking Allen about “what

happened to the curtain”… he replied, “The curtain was cut up before being disposed. Sections were given to the Milo Historical Society. The sections we received had the signatures of cast members from past performances of high school plays. We offered some of the sections to the various classes at alumni time and others were given to individuals who requested them. We took one section that had a scene that was attractive and noteworthy and had it framed and is on display at the MHS’s museum. We also took pictures of the intact curtain. We had a few sections hung up in storage for many years and then noticed that they were deteriorating badly, paint was flaking off and the material was rotting. Sadly, we finally ended up disposing of what was left.” What a grand treasure Milo enjoyed for nearly 70 of its 200 years. I do hope that you enjoyed this little trip “Down Memory Lane”.

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