Review Essay

In Lieu of a Review: Context

David R. Jones

Local history: writing it, reading it, viewing it in a museum, we need to keep a bigger picture in mind; all and other parts of Maine and northern New England. An understanding of major trends in American history – democratization, commercialization, industrialization, urbanization, etc. – is fundamental. The changing place of the small town, agriculture, the family farm, small scale industry and commerce, are essentials. Beyond that, or closer to home lie the many histories that particularly affect Western Maine.

A good survey is a good place to start. Barry’s Maine is informative and lively. In Judd et al’s Maine, specialists address important aspects of Maine’s history, including industry, transportation, arts, revolution and Civil War…

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Collection Spotlight

MBHS COLL 113

The Libbie Kneeland Collection of Photographic Postcards

A Treasure Trove of Views Documenting West Bethel’s Past

Libbie Lynn Kneeland (nee Goodridge) was born in Shelburne, N. H., on November 6, 1903. For thirty-two years, Libbie was a teacher in the Bethel school district. She was also active in numerous community organizations, including the Bethel Historical Society, where she devoted countless hours to researching West Bethel with the intention of writing a detailed history of the village. Although Libbie passed away in 1980, before she was able to complete her book project, she had presented many of her findings at a meeting of the Bethel Historical Society in November of 1976. Her daughter Suzanne Grover donated her papers to the Society, where they have proven a valuable resource to many who have sought to build on her efforts. The collection includes several folders of newspaper clippings and handwritten notes, as well as a large album containing numerous views of West Bethel, mostly in the form of photographic postcards.

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From the Archives

Gander Corner Bugle

A Rare, Early Twentieth Century Handwritten Newspaper

In her essay “The Ladies Came to the Rescue” (Goose Eye No. 4, 2024) and book, Wit and Wisdom: The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages, Joan Newlon Radner wrote about the handwritten newspapers produced by small village lyceums throughout New England. Radner’s work discusses two such lyceum papers, that of the South Bethel Debating Society, and another produced in East Bethel. Recently, another such paper, relating to the village of West Bethel or, as it was once known, “Gander Corner,” was found among the papers of Libbie Kneeland, a longtime Bethel Historical Society member who spent years researching the locality.

Contextual clues suggest the paper was produced around the fall of 1904 and was written by a member of the Mills family. The volume number is indicated as “I” but the digit that follows, indicating the issue number, is too smudged to be certain of, and this is the sole issue known to survive. Like all such papers, the “Gander Corner Bugle” seems nearly incomprehensible at first glance, written in vernacular language, with nonstandard spelling, and full of inside jokes, nicknames, and unclear lines between fact and fiction. However, the paper rewards careful readers with a rich, colorful, if only partial window into the social life of the village around the turn of the twentieth century.

Our Gibbie1 sells fish every two weeks. Gib is a good hand at that job. Gibbie is not lazy, he just dallies a little about his work. Gib says he has some hay out yet, and is waiting patiently for the sun to shine and Gib is a patient waiter.

Our celebrated physician2 was in Gander Corner one day last week. Doc has invented a new kind of pills for humans and horses. Doc says he is going to try them first on horses and if they don’t kill ’em, he will try them on humans. Mrs. Doc helps him make his medicines, but she won’t take none of it, which shows her good cense. Doc says that he has scarce earned his salt lately being as no body is sick.

Our popular Station Agent Myles O’Reilly says that Harl Dennisons kerocene ain’t worth a “tupence” to build fires with on cold mornings, and we guess he knows. Spottie likes to pull on his suspenders every morning to sharpen her nails.

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Postcards by the Trainload

The Whitten & Dennison Company’s Rise and Removal from West Bethel

William F. Chapman

For a brief period in the early nineteenth century the small village of West Bethel could lay claim to being the headquarters of a substantial postcard printing, publishing, and wholesale distribution operation. The enterprise, known as the Whitten & Dennison Post Card Company, emerged from Louis G. Whitten’s picture frame business, which was begun in West Bethel in 1907. Whitten soon took on his brother-in-law (and college chum) Charles P. Dennison as a partner in the operation and over the next three years the two men developed a highly successful postcard operation, which grew to employ several dozen employees—both villagers and others from nearby towns or places beyond who boarded locally.

Though the company continued for many years—it was eventually succeeded by the Messenger Corporation, which continues today—as far as the economic development of West Bethel is concerned, it was no more than a flash in the pan; it had picked up and moved to Indiana by the end of 1910. Nonetheless, the company left an indelible mark on the memory of the village. Although no one alive today was a direct witness to the operations, many West Bethel residents of the twentieth century could recall an ancestor who spent time working in the “parlors.” And, of course, the company left a significant paper trail in its wake: hundreds of examples of the company’s postcards from their time in West Bethel may be found on online auction sites or in museum catalogs.

But what conditions favored the rise of such a successful operation in the tiny village of West Bethel? The location was not deliberately scouted, nor were the proprietors particularly likely candidates for business tycoons. Family ties brought them to the village, where, alongside hard work, familiarity with the postal business, convenient access to a railroad depot, and especially good timing seem to have been the decisive factors.

Our story begins with Louis Gilman Whitten, who was born in Montville, Maine, in Waldo County, on March 10, 1873. He was the son of Charles W. and Rachel (Pottle) Whitten.1 His mother died when he was just five years old, after which he was raised by Edward and Olive Glidden of Liberty, Maine, and began using the name Louis Gilman Glidden. Liberty is adjacent to Montville, and was part of it until 1827, but exactly how Whitten ended up in the care of the Gliddens is not clear. If there is a familial link, it is not noted in Mrs. Glidden’s obituary, which simply lists Louis as one of “two young men brought up from childhood by her as her own.”2

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A West Bethel Puzzler

The Enigmas of Edwin Ruthven Briggs (1841–1923)

Larry Glatz

This is a story of puzzles—from beginning to end. Some involve larger social and historical issues, others relate more to local and individual matters, while still others are mere games and diversions. But to begin with the enigma central to all others in this article: How could it be that a person, whose name and work appeared in the parlors and absorbed the attention of untold thousands of Americans through the latter half of the nineteenth century, remains virtually unknown in his hometown of Bethel, Maine, today?

Certainly part of the problem stems from the fact that the name by which he was known nationally—Ruthven—was not how the locals knew him: almost always simply as E. R. Briggs. A more serious difficulty is that his work was in the world of puzzling—a genre with the paradoxical quality of being at the same time both universally engrossing and exquisitely ephemeral. The critical factor, however, is that he practiced his art in the world BCC—that is, Before the Current Crossword, whose arrival in the second decade of the twentieth century soon rendered all previous puzzle forms antique.

Although the fellow was not the most well-known or creative puzzler of his day, he was certainly one of the most dedicated and productive. More importantly, his career spanned the entire era from the emergence in the mid-1870s of the puzzle editor as a recognizable figure in so many popular American publications to the virtual disappearance of the position some fifty years later when the syndicated crossword captured the field. For this reason alone, the man is worthy of more than mere local interest.

Moreover, since puzzles are based on obscurities and there appears to exist no other reasonably detailed view of a nineteenth century puzzle editor, why not begin untangling the thread here?

Yet another enigma: This photo taken by Briggs' son Elbert in 1908 is almost certainly of “the Veteran Puzzle Editor” himself. “Almost certainly,” however, falls frustratingly short of the exactitude Briggs would require of any of his own solvers. Curiously, the issue of the magazine appearing here includes a puzzle feature, but no contributors or prizes are mentioned in it.

Edwin Ruthven Briggs was born in the northwestern corner of Woodstock, Maine, on October 22, 1841. His parents’ farm was situated just north of Bryant’s Pond, on the town line of neighboring Greenwood. The Greenwood village of Locke’s Mills was only two miles distant, and about six miles farther to the west was the area’s central business community of Bethel. His parents, Luther and Bethiah (Swan) Briggs, were offspring of some of the earliest colonial settlers of the area, and his uncle, John R. Briggs, was a merchant and postmaster in the nearby village of North Woodstock.1

Although few today would recognize the name Edwin Ruthven, there was a legion of boys given that name in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The namesake character, as depicted in Jane Porter’s 1827 novel The Scottish Chiefs, was an intrepid fifteen-year-old freedom fighter and aide to the heroic William Wallace. The book went through numerous editions both in Great Britain and the United States, and as late as 1921, Charles Scribner’s Sons published a volume—now quite collectible—illustrated by N. C. Wyeth and edited by the Maine sisters Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith.

In March of 1847, when young Briggs was just five years old, his father purchased a lot in Locke’s Mills and began construction of what would become the first hotel in that community. Although the venture was not without risk, its rationale was sound. For several years all the talk in the area had been of a proposed railroad connection between Portland and Montreal. By the spring of 1845, it was known the route would run through Woodstock, Greenwood and Bethel before crossing into New Hampshire and proceeding northward to Canada. By that summer, surveys were completed showing the line would pass through Locke’s Mills, where a station would be located. It was obvious a public accommodation would be needed there.2

In addition to understanding the financial risks, Luther Briggs would also have known that a hotel in Locke’s Mills was likely to generate a degree of social controversy as well. Perhaps the only issue of the day which generated as much local talk as the railroad—and the weather—was that of temperance, and many of the “cold water brigade” in the area saw the town of Greenwood as desperately in need of salvation. A watering stop on the principal road between Portland and Bethel was in the village about six miles south of Locke’s Mills still known as Greenwood City. The village’s inns were notorious as dens of too great merriment for the young and too easy dissipation for the travelers. Years later, when the local historian—and evangelical teetotaler—William B. Lapham wrote in a local paper of the village of Locke’s Mills, he referred to Briggs’ establishment only as a “tavern,” while in a corrective response to the editor, E. R. Briggs held to the word “hotel.”3

By the time the first train steamed from Portland into the new Locke’s Mills station on March 10, 1851, the Alder River House—as Briggs’ inn was known—had been in business for over a year, hosting not only railroad workers and clients and vendors of John B. Locke’s busy mills, but local socializers as well. Young Edwin would have been exposed to more and different kinds of people than he had ever known before, and he would likely have access to numerous newspapers and magazines left behind by travelers. It is certain that by November of 1851, when the boy was just ten years old, the Portland Transcript arrived weekly at the hotel, since the paper’s records show that Luther Briggs took out a subscription that month. If Edwin had not been exposed to the developing world of puzzling earlier, the Transcript would certainly have introduced him to it.4

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Interview

A Personal History of the Pleasant Valley Grange

Pauline Applin

Interviewed by Dianne Ballon

In 2000 and 2001, the Mahoosuc Arts Council sponsored the Oxford County Grange Hall Tour Project, a series of events at Grange Halls across Oxford County featuring storytelling, poetry, and musical performances. As part of the project, professional sound artist Dianne Ballon was engaged to record a series of interviews with representatives of participating Granges. The original recordings of these interviews are now in the collections of the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society.

The wide-ranging interview which follows was conducted by Ballon on May 18, 2001, with Pauline Applin of the Pleasant Valley Grange, No. 136, which was located in West Bethel, Maine. Pauline, who was born and raised in Skowhegan, Maine, and her husband, John, originally from the Wiscasset area, were both math teachers at Telstar High School and residents of Mason Township at the time of this interview. Both were longtime members of the Grange. The Pleasant Valley Grange was founded 150 years ago, in 1875, and disbanded in 2016. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

Dianne Ballon: How did you come to the Bethel area?

Pauline Applin: We met in college and first moved to West Buxton, Maine, near Standish, because John’s first job was at Bonny Eagle High School. We lived there for three years and came here because John had maintained contact with the teacher placement service at the university, and when this area built what was then a new high school, Telstar High School, they were searching for teachers, and they particularly wanted someone who could teach advanced math. The university contacted him, and Elizabeth Lord, who was then math department head here in Bethel, also contacted him. He said, well, I think I’ll just ride up there and talk with them. When he came back he said it’s such a beautiful area, if they offer me the job, we have to go live there.

DB: How long have you been married, and did you raise a family?

PA: We’ve been married 37 years. I was thinking about it this morning. We have two daughters. We adopted two little gals. They were eight and five when they came to live with us. They’re now grown. One of them is in the Navy. She and her husband and their two children live in Norfolk, Virginia. Our younger daughter is working for General Electric at the headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

Becoming Involved in the Grange

DB: Could you tell me what Grange you belong to and how long have you been a Grange member?

PA: We belong to Pleasant Valley Grange, No. 136, and we’ve been members now for 26 years.

DB: How old were you when you first joined, and do you remember why you joined?

PA: I can’t tell you exactly how old I was. We joined because shortly after our moving here, we became very friendly with a rather large local family whose last name is Grover. One of the members of that family was also teaching at Telstar High School at that time, and we became very friendly with him and his wife. They belong to the Grange and they invited us to join.

DB: So up to that point you hadn’t known that much about the Grange?

PA: Hadn’t a clue. My husband had a little more of an idea because when he was growing up his family had moved from Wiscasset to a little town inland from Wiscasset called Alna, which is very rural, and he’d lived there for several years and had met people who belonged to the Grange because they were farmers. It was a big farming area then; it isn’t as much now. So he had an inkling of what the Grange was about. I had no idea.

DB: Are there aspects of the Grange that keep you there as a member? What do you enjoy about the Grange?

PA: I have to tell you, what impressed me about it when I very first joined—and I still feel this way—was the fact that anyone and everyone is welcome to join the Grange. There are no great expectations that you have to meet certain qualifications. The people we met came from so many different backgrounds. They had such a variety of talents. I was just very impressed with that. Age doesn’t matter, and even in the Grange ritual they talk about it being one of the very first fraternal organizations that welcomed women and gave them positions equal to those of the men. A woman can be Master of the Grange, no problem. So that’s what first impressed me about it, and I still feel that that’s one of the strengths of this organization.

DB: When you started, was there still a feeling of it having originated as an agricultural organization for farmers?

PA: Not a lot. Just about everyone who belonged when we joined had an outside job. Most of the people were very interested in gardening, and many of them still kept critters [laughs] because they enjoyed that. But, with the exception of one bachelor fellow who belonged then and has since passed away, no one else was able to earn their living farming. It’s sad, but it’s just the case.

DB: That is a sad commentary.

PA: In the state of Maine today you have to have a very unique situation to be able to earn your living farming.

DB: Do your recall whether any other of you or your husband’s family members ever belonged to the Grange at one time or another, and if so which Grange that would be?

PA: No one that I know of.

DB: On either side?

PA: On either side. I thought that John’s mother might have belonged, but he says that she didn’t.

DB: And are you a member of any other Granges?

PA: Yes, in this respect: If you take all seven degrees you not only are a member of your local Grange (which is called the subordinate), but you become a member of the county or Pomona Grange. So in our case, we belong to Oxford Pomona Grange No. 2, and that also automatically makes us members of the Maine State Grange and the National Grange.

DB: Do you have activities with other Granges? Does your Grange have activities?

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Editorial

With this fifth issue of Goose Eye, we take a slightly different approach. For the first time, our focus is not a broad topic, but a single place: the village of West Bethel. From time to time in future issues, we hope to do the same with other communities in the region. The aim of these issues will not be to offer a comprehensive local history, but to highlight a few particularly intriguing or illuminating stories—the riddles or curiosities that linger in the place’s past.

West Bethel lends itself particularly well to this sort of treatment. Its village center was once dubbed “Gander Corner” after a local legend that two men once stole a gander from a nearby farmer and roasted it on a blacksmith’s forge. Though legally a part of the town of Bethel, the village has always had its own unique identity. The village retains its own post office and for many years could boast many of its own shops and businesses and civic institutions.

We open with the story of one of those institutions, the Pleasant Valley Grange, as experienced by one of its longtime members, Pauline Applin. Pauline told her story to sound artist Dianne Ballon as part of a celebration and oral history project that took place over two decades ago, but the interview is published here for the first time.

At the center of this issue is Larry Glatz’s study of Edwin Briggs—or “Ruthven,” the nom-de-plume by which he was known to his readers and solvers. A prolific puzzle-maker whose work appeared in newspapers across the country, Briggs lived for much of his adulthood in West Bethel, and his life—much like his creations—remains a puzzle in its own right.

My own contribution explores the curious rise and sudden relocation of the Whitten & Dennison Post Card Company, a postcard publisher founded in West Bethel in 1907. In just three years, it outgrew its rural origins and moved its operations to Indiana, leaving behind a brief but striking local legacy.

What fun it was to put together a few pieces of the company’s history—including solving the mystery of why I could not, at first, locate one of the company’s founders, Louis G. Whitten, in his Bates College yearbook—but many questions remain.

In our regular “From the Archives” department, we feature the full text and selected illustrations from the “Gander Corner Bugle,” a handwritten newspaper filled with cryptic humor, obscure references, and inside jokes. As with other amateur papers of the nineteenth century, much of its meaning is now difficult to decode—but therein lies its charm.

In our “Collection Spotlight,” we showcase a set of photographic postcards from the collection of Libbie Kneeland, capturing West Bethel as it once was: a mix of buildings that retain their basic appearance today, others that have undergone major transformations, and many now lost. Though they speak silently, these images hint at both the known history of the village and the many untold stories now long forgotten—enigmas in their own way.

Finally, lest our investigation of the particularities of West Bethel village lead us to forget that all events unfold against a broader backdrop, David Jones contributes an essay on the importance of context in local history.

We hope this issue will encourage readers to see West Bethel not just as a dot on the map, but as a place with character, mystery, and a history worth exploring.

William F. Chapman
May 2025

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Abolitionizing Bethel

Anti-Slavery Activities and Political Transformation

William F. Chapman

On Friday, February 16, 1866, ten months after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, the “Eloquent Colored Lady,” Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, addressed an audience at Bethel’s Pattee’s Hall on the sub­ject of “The Lessons of the War, and the Claims of the Freedmen.” In summing up the reaction to her speech, the Bethel correspondent to the Oxford Democrat wrote that “many a man of world wide renown would willingly lose half their present renown if they could speak in public as eloquently as she.”1

Although not a household name today, Harper was indeed one of the most impressive figures of the nineteenth century. An author and poet as well as an abolitionist and suffragist, she was the first Black women to be published in the United States and was a highly sought-after speaker. This was Harper’s second tour in Maine. She had previously contracted with the Maine Daughters of Freedom for a series of speaking arrangements beginning in September of 1854, during which one of her audiences had included Maine Governor Anson P. Morrill.2

That Harper made such a positive impression on her listeners in Bethel that evening is surely a testament to the strength of her abilities and to the moral force of her arguments. But she also spoke before an audience that was primed to be far more receptive to both speaker and message than would have been the case in earlier years. If hearing an “Eloquent Colored Lady” speak was still a novelty in 1866, a few decades prior it would have been nearly unthinkable. The movements that had rocked the country in the nineteenth century—temperance, abolitionism, and women’s suffrage—had broken down barriers to women entering the public sphere. Bethel, Oxford County, Maine, and the whole of the northern United States had experienced a revolution in consciousness.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper is now receiving some of the attention she deserves, thanks to a recent surge of interest in new perspectives on the history of Black Americans and of slavery in the United States, which has produced both new scholarship and new writing for the popular press.3

An important dimension of this historical tidal wave has been to raise public awareness of the fact that the North too participated in slavery, both directly and through economic relations. In Maine, Patricia Q. Wall has documented the extent to which slavery was practiced, while the Atlantic Black Box project has encouraged research on Maine’s ties to the slave trade through the ship-building industry.4

While these are necessary correctives to popular myths, comparatively less attention has been given to the ways in which ordinary Mainers participated in the crusade against slavery. Yet this too is an important part of the story.

For anyone approaching the topic of abolitionism in Maine, the only detailed study of the anti-slavery movement in Maine remains Edward O. Schriver’s Go Free: The Antislavery Impulse in Maine, 1833-1855, published in 1970.5 This work remains a useful reference, but it is now quite dated and suffers from a number of limitations. First of all, the period under study is too short to trace the full arc of anti-slavery ideas. While it is certainly an author’s prerogative to focus their attention on a specific era, in this case it means failing to fully trace either the intellectual origins of the anti-slavery movement or the continuation of anti-slavery politics after the formation of the Republican Party.

Second, Schriver makes the somewhat odd choice to arrange the book according to three separate “impulses” he sees as having motivated anti-slavery activism (“humanitarian,” “political,” and “religious”) when in many cases the participants involved in each were one and the same persons.

Third, Schriver has little to say about grassroots participants in the anti-slavery movement, ignores the role of the free Black people almost entirely, does not mention the Underground Railroad, and does only a bit better with the role of women in the movement. Instead he primarily focuses on the activities and writings of the leaders of the movement in Maine, although he provides little biographical background even on these men.6

In short, it becomes clear that Schriver views the anti-slavery movement in isolation. This limited point of view leads to Go Free’s most serious conceptual error. Throughout the book, and especially in its introduction and conclusion, he suggests that the anti-slavery movement was almost entirely ineffective, “a feeble instrument.” He contrasts the anti-slavery men with more mainstream politicians such as Hannibal Hamlin and William Pitt Fessenden (the son of abolitionist leader Samuel Fessenden), who did not directly affiliate with the movement and “chose … to remain and to work within the existing social structure,” strongly suggesting that the efforts of the latter were ultimately more effective.7

The distinction, however, is too clean and hinges on a faulty assumption. It was not solely the political maneuverings of pragmatically-minded politicians or the relentless advocacy of morally uncompromising activists that led to the eventual abolition of slavery. There were larger social and economic forces which constrained the actions of both the more moderate anti-slavery politicians and the abolitionists. These conditions largely determined the degree to which the former were willing to risk association with the latter and the latter willing to compromise by supporting the former. Most ultimately converged with the impending Civil War and the birth of the Republican Party as an anti-slavery party of the masses.

Consider this: In 1835, the Oxford Democrat surely expressed a common-sense opinion when it editorialized against the “immediate abolitionists” as “misguided men, who pursue a favorite object with a perfect disregard to the consequences.”8 Yet, two and a half decades later Union soldiers would be heading off to battle singing “John Brown’s Body,” a marching song which unabashedly celebrated the legacy of the “martyr” John Brown—a man whose actions had gone far beyond the purported recklessness of the strictly nonviolent approach advocated by the early anti-slavery men.9

What happened in between? Moral agitation and political and economic conditions together led to an ever-widening chasm between North and South—a “house divided against itself,” as Lincoln would famously proclaim. While many Northerners had assumed that slavery wouldi gradually pass away in the South as it had in the North, what actually happened was far different. As Southern plantation owners felt their “way of life” was under attack from slave revolts and abolitionist agitation they further tightened the grip of slavery, passing laws that prohibited teaching Blacks to read, and crafting novel arguments in favor of slavery, which proclaimed that it was a “positive good” for society.

The interests of the North, with its rapidly industrializing economy based on a system of free labor, increasingly diverged from those of the South. But attempts to pass legislation for infrastructural improvements or to protect the nascent manufacturers from foreign competition were consistently foiled by the Southern aristocracy, which held disproportionate power in the legislature, thanks to the “three-fifths” clause and the structure of the Senate. And with fewer opportunities to obtain land in New England, her native sons (especially those born lower in the birth order), increasingly eyed the West, where they sought to preserve “free soil” for white expansionism. All this meant that by the middle of the century, Northerners were growing ever more weary of the strength of the “slave power,” while the South grew increasingly paranoid that slavery was under threat.10

Making sense of these broader shifts is the province of historians who study the political economy of the United States. But local historians have a role to play as well. While examining conditions in individual communities may not be able to elucidate the exact course that led to the Civil War, it may at least provide a way of observing some of the general shifts in public sentiment and point to broader patterns.

What follows is a preliminary sketch of the visible signs of anti-slavery sentiment in Bethel and nearby communities.

In the 1830s, Oxford County, with its tiny Black population and strong Jacksonian culture, is one of the places in Maine where the anti-slavery movement might have seemed the least likely to take hold.

It is no surprise that Matthew Franklin Whittier chose to situate his fic­tional town of Hornby, home to correspondent “Ethan Spike,” as somewhere in Oxford County very near to “Bethel Hill.”11 Spike was a kind of nineteenth century Archie Bunker, but this was no gentle satire. Written in tortured vernacular language, and replete with racial slurs and violent fantasies—historian William David Barry compared reading Spike to “biting into a fully quilled porcupine sandwich”—Whittier’s Spike letters were nothing less than a full scale assault on the intelligence and character of rural New England Democrats.12

There was a mutual and long-sustained mistrust between enlightened Whigs such as Whittier and the rural Yankee “yeomanry.” In 1835, the Eastern Argus had responded indignantly to a perceived insult to United States Congressman Dr. Moses Mason of Bethel:

The Federal Gazette appears surprised that the Hon. Moses Mason should have been appointed one of the committee to attend the examination at West Point. The Gazette would doubtless prefer a Federal gentleman from the city. One of the “Yeomanry” of the interior, we suppose, would not be intelligent enough for the fastidious Federal critics of the city … It is a little too early for the Federal party in this country to assume such an insulting superiority over the people.13

Yet even here, slavery was debated in the local lyceums, a sizeable minority of voters cast their vote for anti-slavery parties, and local associations were joined. Although my research confirms that radical abolitionists remained a minority, I have found more fragments of evidence than I might reasonably have expected, and believe this research could be fruitfully expanded. In Bethel, and in other towns, the evidence should be thoroughly examined for signs of grassroots opposition to slavery.

Where newspapers and earlier town histories fail us, they should be supplemented or supplanted by fresh examination of the available primary sources. Diaries and letters should be thoroughly read for references to attending anti-slavery meetings or lectures. If none can be found, any opinions expressed on the subject at all are of interest. There has been no event in the history of the United States of greater consequence than the Civil War, and probably no cause of greater moral urgency than the fight to end slavery. Understanding how public opinion transformed on this issue is of vital importance.

Obstacles to Local Anti-Slavery Research

The main reason for the dearth of scholarship examining anti-slavery sentiment in local communities is almost certainly the difficulty of obtaining reliable source material. Many histories of western Maine towns were published in the latter half of the nineteenth century and in many cases they have set the pattern for subsequent efforts. The compilers of these histories had access to sources that are no longer available to us, as well as the ability to correspond with and interview older residents—many just one generation removed from the earliest white settlers in town—but their interests and standards of evidence do not always align with our own.

The nineteenth-century histories of western Maine communities generally contain little information on anti-slavery activity, but we cannot simply take this absence of evidence as necessarily evidence of absence. These histories were often written in the context of a major anniversary and were intended to instill pride in the citizens of the town. Their compilers could be expected to focus on the aspects of their history which united the people of their towns, and not on subjects that had bitterly divided them.

Dr. Nathaniel Tuckerman True, whose “History of Bethel” series appeared in the Bethel Courier newspaper between 1858 and 1861, did not mention anti-slavery at all, while William B. Lapham’s 1891 History of Bethel contains just a few references to the subject.14

Newspapers are another source of information, but as Carol Kammen writes, “Newspapers, especially from the nineteenth century, are not always to be believed.” Most newspapers of the era were explicitly partisan. They were begun by supporters of a political party for the express purpose of advocating the agenda of that party.15

When anti-slavery was first emerging as a live issue, Bethel was served by just one newspaper, the Oxford Democrat, published in Paris, Maine. Before 1850, this paper was generally hostile to abolitionist efforts, and so it could not be counted on to report on them consistently or fairly. Furthermore, local news columns did not appear with any regularity until the 1860s. Prior to that, intermittent news items could most often be found randomly placed throughout the paper, wherever column space allowed.

The Norway Advertiser started in the 1840s, but it is hard to find copies from the early era and a great many issues may in fact be permanently lost. Thankfully, much of the content of the paper is preserved in a series of articles written by Dr. Osgood N. Bradbury entitled Norway in the Forties and first serialized in the Advertiser from 1886 to 1897.16

Norway in the Forties is also somewhat different from other town histories for the candor of its author, who was raised in an abolitionist household. Observing notice of an anti-slavery meeting held in Bethel in 1847, Bradbury comments that:

The young people who read can never know of the intensity of feeling upon the subject of slavery that characterized the Abolition and Anti-Slavery gatherings of those days. That subject like Moses’ rod swallowed up all other subjects. It divided families and churches, split political parties and at the last brought the people of the Republic face to face on the field of battle.17

An example of this divide may be seen in Bethel, where United States Congressman Dr. Moses Mason’s younger brother, Ayers Mason (1800-1890), who owned the Intervale Road farm closest to Bethel village, was “an early anti-slavery man, and an original Republican, though the members of his father’s family in politics, were generally on the opposite side.”18

In 1841, the Congregational Church in Lovell experienced a split among its membership when Moses Heald, a former member of the church who had moved to Georgia, asked for a letter of dismissal that would allow him to transfer his membership to another church. Heald had become a slaveholder in Georgia and a faction of the church, led by Obed Stearns, believed that he should not be permitted to be a member of good standing in any church. Tensions heightened further when Heald returned to Lovell the next fall. Sterns offered two strongly worded resolutions, one stating that:

In view of the course Brother Moses Heald has taken on the subject of holding slaves, this church feel that he has departed widely from Christian principles and the injunction of the Savior, “whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets’, and that he stands suspended from the privileges of the church until Christian satisfaction is given.

The second resolution stated:

As a church of Christ we feel called upon to bear our public testimony against American Slavery as being a great moral evil and a sin against God of the blackest dye, especially when practiced by those who profess to be followers of the meek and lowly Jesus. Therefore, be it resolved that we cannot, after comparing this cove and odious system with the mild spirit of the gospel, invite a slave-holding professor to sit with us at the communion table.

The debate was the topic of no less than six church meetings, with the resolutions first passed and then rescinded and then finally passed again as originally written.19

Early Anti-Slavery Efforts

Slavery was practiced in Maine from colonial times. It was brought to an end in the 1780s, when, after a series of court cases in which enslaved people successfully sued for their freedom, the Massachusetts Supreme Court issued a ruling in 1783, effectively banning slavery in the state.20

Slavery had again been pushed into public debate with the “Missouri Compromise” of 1820, when, after Maine overwhelmingly voted for independence from Massachusetts, the United States Senate linked its admission to the Union as a free state with the admittance of Missouri as a slave state. When the bill went to the House, five of the seven Massachusetts Congressmen representing the District of Maine voted against the compromise, but it passed anyway, by a narrow margin that re­quired both of the two Maine votes in favor.21

From 1816, the American Colonization Society had promoted the idea of gradually ending slavery, compensating former slaveholders for their lost “property,” and encouraging (or forcing) free Black people to emigrate to Africa. In 1821, the Society even purchased land in Liberia and established a colony for this purpose, but over the ensuing decades not more than few thousand people actually emigrated. Unsurprisingly, this “solution” was roundly rejected by nearly all free Black people in the United States.

Abolitionist efforts began in direct opposition to colonization. William Lloyd Garrison started his newspaper The Liberator in 1831, and launched a full scale attack on the Colonization Society with his Thoughts on African Colonization in 1832. In the fall of 1832, Garrison spoke at several places in Maine and debated an agent of the Colonization Society in Augusta.22

The first Anti-Slavery societies in Maine started in 1833. The most notable was born at a meeting at the house of Ebenezer Dole of Hallowell. Following the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia the same year, state and local anti-slavery societies were encouraged to form. The Maine Anti-Slavery meeting held its first convention in October of 1834.23

In 1835, the Oxford Democrat noted with scorn that anti-slavery meetings had been held in “most of the large towns” in Maine. Efforts were apparently underway in smaller communities as well. In the same issue, the Democrat claimed that, “The Abolitionists have a stronger team in Otisfield than the Whigs.” Of course, this may have been intended more as a taunt to the Whigs than a truly objective assessment of the strength of the abolitionist movement.24

The first Oxford County towns in which local anti-slavery societies were organized appear to have been Hebron and Weld. These societies formed before mid-1835. The Oxford County Anti-Slavery society may have formed in the next year, and a Dixfield society had formed by 1838.25

During the 1830s there was no attempt made to enter politics, and most of the early societies were guided by the principles of Garrison, who entirely opposed such efforts.26

Instead the principal tool of the early anti-slavery crusaders was moral suasion through public lectures, meetings, and the publishing of tracts and periodicals. The “agency system” sent lectures around New England. In Maine, Rev. David Thurston of Winthrop took up this post and visited a number of places in Oxford County in 1837, including Peru, Dixfield, Rumford, Norway, and South Paris. According to Thurston, “A constitution of an Anti-Slavery Society in Norway and Paris had upwards of sixty names attached to it before I left.”27

Although Thurston did not visit Bethel on this leg of the tour, another anti-slavery lecture was apparently arranged in Bethel that year. The lecturer is not known, but his appearance was said to have “excited great opposition” and “not only sneers and threats were thrown out, but signs of physical violence.” Nonetheless, the speaker carried on, according to an anonymous writer from Bethel who recalled the incident a year later.28

Eighteen thirty-seven turned out to be a year of great excitement for Maine’s small abolitionist movement, as it was in this year that Elijah Lovejoy was murdered by an anti-abolitionist mob in Alton, Illinois. Lovejoy, one of the nation’s first martyrs to freedom of the press, was born and raised in Albion, Maine, and his killing provoked much excitement in his native state.29

Thomas Treadwell Stone, of East Machias, who was formerly the minister of the Congregational Church in Andover, Maine, was one who was now willing to formally “connect” himself with the Anti-Slavery Society after having previously been reluctant to do so. It was not, he explained, simply the outrage of the killing itself, but attempts to divert public attention from slavery and to blame Lovejoy himself for having incited the riot that “broke the last link which connected me with the opposers of abolitionism.”30

At the third annual meeting of the Maine Anti-Slavery Society, in Augusta, numerous resolutions were passed, including one condemning the murder of Lovejoy. The idea of starting an anti-slavery newspaper in Maine was also discussed. This was done, and the first issue of the Advocate of Freedom appeared on March 8, 1838.31

Later that year, Thurston came to Bethel and Gilead. He was joined by Charles L. Remond, a Black abolitionist and orator who was an agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. This in itself created something of a sensation, for, as Thurston wrote, “many of the people in this region, thirty or thirty-five years old, ha[d] never before seen a colored person.” Nonetheless, in contrast to the lecture which had taken place a year prior, this one was reported to have been met with little opposition.32

Anti-Slavery Men Enter Politics

In 1840, the American Anti-Slavery Society split. The two primary issues that caused the split were whether women should be able to participate as full members, and the advisability of political action. One outcome of the split was that a national Liberty Party formed and fielded James G. Birney of Kentucky as its candidate for president. The electoral effort got off to a slow start; nationally, Birney received just 0.3% of the recorded popular vote. There’s evidence however, that at least a handful more votes went untallied. According to Osgood Bradbury, his father Jacob Bradbury cast one of the first two Abolition ballots in Norway, and, the younger Bradbury recalls, “If my recollection serves me those two votes were considered so very scattering they were not counted at all.”33 A few similar reports may be found in other nearby towns. In Bridgton, Lothrop Lincoln Lewis is reported to have cast one of just three votes in town for Birney in 1840.34 It should come as no surprise that no votes for the Liberty Party were recorded in Bethel that year either.

By the next year, however, the Liberty Party men were well enough organized to field a candidate for Governor, and in August of 1841, a call appeared in the Norway Advertiser for “all persons friendly to a Liberty Association in Norway to meet at the Town House on Saturday next at 3 p.m., to form such Association.”35

From 1841 to 1848, in the election for Governor of Maine, the Liberty Party often outpolled the Whig Party in Bethel, though the Democratic Party continued to reign supreme.36

This is presumably what William B. Lapham refers to when he writes that the “small Whig party embraced some of the most intelligent men in town, but they became divided upon the slavery issue and for several years there were three parties in town.”37

The Liberty Party vote is, at best, a blunt instrument for gauging of anti-slavery sentiment. In the first place, some men who may have otherwise sympathized with the cause may have simply been skeptical of single-issue political parties. But the more serious issue is, of course, that it was only men who were able to vote at this time. If it is a difficult enough task to look for general indicators of anti-slavery sentiment at this time, it is still more difficult to assess the role played by local women. Yet we know from evidence around the country that women made up an important part of what William Lloyd Garrison called the “great army of silent workers” that made the abolitionist movement possible.38

While it is not clear whether formal membership in the Oxford County Anti-Slavery Society was open to both men and women, Julie Roy Jeffrey draws our attention to the fact that “liberty men and women” alike were encouraged to come to the Society’s annual meeting at South Paris in 1847, where both the attendees and their horses would have their needs attended to by the anti-slavery men and women of South Paris.39

The Oxford County Anti-Slavery society met in Greenwood in 1846 and the Liberty Party convention met at the Congregational meeting house in Bethel the next year.40 These conventions were multi-day affairs. They show, despite a lack of extant record books, that the anti-slavery and Liberty Party supporters in these towns were well organized enough to arrange the accommodations necessary to host a countywide gathering.

The Bethel Convention was opened with a prayer led by Rev. Rand of the Congregational Church. Joseph Stephens of Greenwood was chosen President of the convention, while Jonathan A. Russell and Leonard Grover, both of Bethel, were chosen Secretary and Associate Secretary. Among the resolutions passed was one specifically supporting the partici­pation of women:

Resolved, That we fully appreciate the influence of women in this as in every benevolent reform, and welcome them, and solicit their renewed co-operation and activity in the field of Anti-slavery labor.

George Whitefield Chapman of Bethel was chosen a member of the committee to obtain subscriptions for the Liberty Association, as were Joseph Small, Rumford; Joseph Stephens, Greenwood; Reuben Foster, Hanover; William Frost, North Norway; James Eames, Newry; and Timothy Hutchinson, Albany.41

The Oxford County Liberty Party convention was held in Otisfield in 1848.42 This was the last year the party fielded a candidate for Governor, but the Free Soil party soon formed to take its place.

Political Transformation

By the 1840s and 1850s, a younger generation was coming of age in an environment where anti-slavery ideas could be more vigorously debated. Alonzo J. Grover (1828-1891) was noted to be a “decided abolitionist” who from his student days had held, “radical views upon political questions of the day.” Grover’s interest in such topics was nurtured by the debating society at Gould Academy, where he “delighted in the discussion of questions before the lyceum, in which his peculiar sentiments could be indulged in.”43

Timothy Appleton Chapman (1824-1892), the son of George Whitefield Chapman, was “strongly in sympathy with the Abolitionist movement, and a supporter of Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, John G. Whittier, and William Lloyd Garrison, long before their doctrines became popular.”44

The organization of the Free Soil Party brought the movement closer to the mainstream. Less radical than the Liberty Party, it nonetheless had the support of most of the Liberty men. The party focused narrowly on the single issue of opposition to the extension of slavery into the new Western territories, something a great number of Northerners could get behind.

As recently as 1848 the Oxford Democrat’s position on even this form of anti-slavery politics remained quite hostile:

The citizens of Norway opposed to the extension of slavery held a meeting last Saturday. The call was addressed to the advocates of Free Soil, Free Speech, Free men, and Northern Rights. All democrats would approve this so far as it goes; but true democrats go still farther—they advocate the rights of the whole Union. This advocating of a particular section alone is not democratic.45

The political winds were shifting, however, and the Oxford Democrat would soon play a key role.

By 1849, the Maine Democratic Party had become deeply divided. One faction of the party, which came to be known as “Woolheads,” strongly opposed the extension of slavery and sought to lure back Democrats who had joined the Free Soil Party. This faction succeeded in securing the nomination of John Hubbard for Governor. Their opponents, the “Wildcats,” opposed Hubbard and declared they “would never consent to make opposition to slavery the test of political orthodoxy.”46

The party was nearly ready to split over the slavery issue, but with the Compromise of 1850, the importance of slavery temporarily receded, and after the passage of the Maine Law—the first state law in the nation banning the sale of alcoholic beverages—in June of 1851, the temperance issue took center stage. Austin Willey said that, “All Free Soil Men were Maine law men, and the interest in the vigorous execution of that law diverted some labor from the cause of liberty.”47

The long-anticipated split finally took place in 1852, when the Wildcats, unhappy with Hubbard’s reelection, nominated their own candidate, Anson G. Chandler, for Governor. Although Hubbard’s signing of the Maine Law was the breaking point, the slavery issue was never far from mind.48 Hubbard received a large plurality of the votes that year, he failed to gain the majority needed. The decision went to the legislature, where, by the Maine Constitution, it was up to the Legislature to select two candidates and the Senate to choose between them. In the end, Hubbard and Whig candidate William G. Crosby were offered up and two Wildcat senators from Oxford County swung the ballot to Crosby.49

The next year, it was the Wildcats who succeeded in gaining control of the state Democratic convention. They nominated Albert G. Pillsbury, who upset the Woolhead faction with his refusal to clarify his position on the Maine Law. This time it was some of the most fervent Woolheads who moved to bolt.50 They received the strong support and, indeed, the active involvement, of the Oxford Democrat.

In late 1849, a fire at the Oxford Democrat office had preceded a series of changes in ownership. When longtime publisher George W. Millett obtained new equipment and restarted the paper in February of 1852, he brought on George L. Mellen as co-publisher, and then soon sold out altogether. Mellen ran the paper for a few years with co-proprietors and then as sole proprietor. In May of 1853, he installed as editor Dr. Thomas H. Brown, who wasted no time in staking out strong positions against slavery extension and in support of temperance.51

Then, on July 15, 1853, Mellen announced the sale of the Democrat to Noah Prince, who immediately used his new organ to issue a call for a State Convention in Portland for those Democrats who were opposed to selection of Pillsbury to nominate an alternative candidate for Governor. This was followed by a call issued August 5 for an Oxford County convention of those in favor of the Convention in Portland, which had chosen Anson P. Morrill. Among the signers of this call were Robert A. Chapman of Bethel and John J. Perry of Oxford, who was also associated with the Oxford Democrat and would later become its editor.52

Morrill placed third in the election statewide, but he polled second in Bethel, garnering 125 votes to Pillsbury’s 187, while Free Soil candidate Ezekiel Holmes managed 50.53 There again being no majority, the election went to the legislature, where Crosby again emerged victorious with the support of half the Whigs and nearly all of the Wildcats.54

The next year, however, Morrill, backed by a strong coalition of Whigs, Free Soilers, and Morrill Democrats, nearly won an outright majority and was elected Governor by the Legislature. His total in Bethel was 222 to Albion K. Parris’ 143.55

It was this coalition that went on to re-nominate Morrill and to form the Republican Party in Maine in 1855. And so it is with perhaps only slight exaggeration that historian William Berry Lapham boldly declares, “The Republican party of Maine, therefore, had its origin in Oxford County, and the Oxford Democrat was its first out-spoken and recognized organ.”56

Furthermore, the stakes were now clear to all and there was no mistaking the most important issues. In his journal of July 29, 1855, Ezra F. Beal of Norway, a rare diarist who wrote about more than just the daily weather patterns, summarized the upcoming election in the following terms:

The present is a very exciting political period. The excitement is greater than ever before in Maine. The contest is now between Rum and Slavery power and the Temperance and Freedom power. Much bitterness prevails.57

Morrill did not win the election this time. He garnered the most votes, but again, not quite a majority, and the Democratic-controlled legislature chose Samuel Wells. Wells served for one-year (which the Oxford Democrat labeled his “crow-bar” administration), before being roundly defeated the next year by Hannibal Hamlin who gathered a 19,000 vote majority.58

Hamlin, Oxford County’s favorite son, received 310 votes in Bethel in 1856, to Samuel Wells’ 195, inaugurating many decades of Republican dom­ination.59 As Lapham put it in 1891:

When the Republican Party was formed, this town gave it a hearty support, and since that time, a period of thirty-six years, it has uniformly given adherence to that party. None of the leading old time Democrats joined the new party, but lived and died in their early political faith, but the young men have been largely Republican.60

The margin grew still larger in the 1860 election. With Hamlin as Lincoln’s running mate, the presidential electors for “The Railsplitter” garnered 260 votes in Bethel to 101 for Stephen Douglas.61

We can only imagine now the excitement that the pro-Lincoln forces must have felt on the eve of the most consequential election in their nation’s history. Perhaps as many as 100,000 young men in the North took part in the “Wide Awake” movement, joining clubs that were part political association and part paramilitary organization.62 These clubs consisted of the youngest and most enthusiastic supporters of the new Republican Party. When the War of Rebellion began many of them would transition into Union Army units.

Wide Awake Clubs were formed in nearby towns such as South Paris and Bridgton, and there is no doubt that Bethel men participated.63 A “Mass Ratification Meeting” at Paris Hill on July 10, 1860, was reported to have been attended by 6,000 people. “From the North, they came from Andover, … Rumford, Mason, Gilead, Bethel, Hanover, Woodstock, Peru, Mexico, Dixfield, Greenwood, and Albany,” to hear speeches and to watch the mustering of the Portland Wide Awake Club, which had arrived on a special train and formed behind a line of 150 wagons to march from Norway.64

Two months later, on September 1, 1860, a “Grand Republican Rally” held in Fryeburg attracted some 4,000 people, if the Democrat is to be believed. There they were addressed by Israel Washburn, Jr., who was soon to be elected Governor.

The speakers’ stand, “tastefully decorated with evergreens and flowers, by the ladies of Fryeburg,” was adorned with three banners bearing mottos. At the left: “Liberty and Union, Now and Forever.” At the right, a quote attributed to President Monroe: “Slavery has preyed upon the vitals of the Union.” And in the center:

The young men were indeed “Wide Awake,” and even though some of the men, young and old, may not have noticed yet, the young women were too.

From Hardscrabble Village to Hiking Mecca

The Story of Grafton, Maine

William F. Chapman

After several hours of difficult bushwhacking, Moses B. Sears arrived at the top of the mountain we know today as Old Speck. As he looked out and surveyed the valley below, he was overcome by emotion. “[I] felt that [I was] not on the earth,” he wrote, “but [was] exalted to the ethereal regions.”

That God had created this mountain, rounded it in the palm of his hand, and planted it here to show forth his creative power and glory—that [I] stood not in a temple made by man’s puny hands, but in Nature’s high temple where, with his judges, he had traced in legible characters his own omnipotence, and that here alone might man commune and hold sacrament.1

Though many have doubtless had similarly spiritual experiences upon summiting Oxford County’s highest peak, few have had to work quite so hard for the payoff. There were no blazed trails in 1850 when Sears made his ascent up Speckled Mountain—as it was then called—no lean-to shelters, and no smart phone apps or even guidebooks to follow. Just reaching the base of the mountain was itself a challenge, and there were few options for accommodations, although in those days one could nearly always rely on the hospitality of a local family.

Sears was a trailblazer in every sense. In 1833, when he was 27, he had been among the founding members of the Maine Anti-Slavery Society at a time when abolitionist activity, even in the North, was viewed with contempt or suspicion, and frequently brought intense reaction.2 The Winthrop man was one of several brilliant and forward-thinking individuals associated with the mid-nineteenth century farmers movement.

His friend Ezekiel Holmes started the Maine Farmer and Journal of the Useful Arts in Winthrop in 1833. The paper sought to inform and give voice to independent farmers—and also, for a time, craftsmen and laborers—to uplift and educate them, and to advocate for their interest. It was part of a wave of similar newspapers founded in the 1830s and 1840s and aimed at ordinary workingmen. This was spurred by increasing rates of literacy and the growing importance of non-elites as a political constituency as all across the country property requirements were dropped for voting and suffrage became nearly universal among white males. These changes are linked with the Jacksonian era, although certainly not all newspapers of this type supported (and many were founded in direct opposition to) Andrew Jackson’s presidency.3

An intellectual haven for rural autodidacts, the Farmer was a place where one could read about the meetings of groups such as the Anti-Slavery Society, sandwiched in between articles on such topics as the latest science in crop rotation or advice on the pruning and care of fruit trees. The paper was born of the same spirit that would soon give rise to the organization of numerous farmer’s clubs—with the Bethel Farmers Club, founded by Nathaniel Tuckerman True in 1853, leading the way in Maine—the National Grange, and, eventually, the Greenback and Populist movements and their associated political parties. This work was slow at first. Dr. True, who would later assume editorship of the Maine Farmer, testified that, “not more than four or five persons could be induced to join” the Bethel Farmers Club on its first founding, and that “even these were exposed to the ridicule of their neighbors, but they persevered.”4

It was for the purpose of reporting back to the Maine Farmer that Sears made his tour through western Maine in 1850. His ascent of Speck, while perhaps not the first in history, is almost certainly the earliest to be the subject of a full written account.

Two years later, a party from New York visited the region for sightseeing and made what is likely the first documented ascent of Bear River White Cap or Baldpate.5 These early accounts show the pull that the mountains had on people from all over New England and beyond, even during the early period of settlement, at a time when getting there required a journey of several days and multiple forms of transportation.

Today tens of thousands of people visit Grafton Notch State Park every year. Perhaps a thousand pass through on their way to completing a hike of the entire 2,200 miles of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.6 Yet few of these outdoor enthusiasts likely realize that the valley was once home to a small community of tough-minded pioneers.

Rocky Start

The rugged terrain that makes Grafton so attractive to adventurers, yet proved so resistant to permanent settlement, began to form hundreds of millions of years ago, when the supercontinent of Gondwana collided with the mass of land that would eventually become North America.

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Personal Narrative

It Was Once Somewhere

Hiking “Low and Local” in Western Maine

Amy Wight Chapman

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, in the spring of 2020, the Appalachian Mountain Club urged people to “hike low and local,” rather than traveling long distances from home, hiking on crowded trails, and running the risk of injury and the need for rescue, thereby putting rescue personnel at risk as well. In fact, in order to get more people to heed their advice, and stay off the higher, more challenging mountains, the AMC even told peak-baggers that ascents of 4,000-footers and other high peaks completed during state-mandated stay-at-home orders wouldn’t count toward the lists it oversees—White Mountain 4,000-footers, New England 4,000-footers, and New England Hundred Highest.

As it turns out, I’m the poster child for the “hike low and local” directive. Staying close to home has never been a hardship for me, and when the pandemic hit, I was forced to do what I’ve been telling people for years was one of my life goals: to never leave Oxford County—whose 2,000 or so square miles, I’ve long maintained, have everything I really need, including endless opportunities to get outside and explore.

Oxford County offers some of the finest “low and local” hikes imaginable. Over the past few years, I’ve used the PeakBagger app on my phone to make rewarding new discoveries (as well as some scratchy, buggy bushwhacks), nearly all within a few miles of home, most in the company of my adventurous son and enthusiastic granddog.

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Editorial

Inspired by the ever-changing natural landscape which surrounds us, “Recreation and Re-creation” are the dual themes which run through the third issue of Goose Eye.

Amy Wight Chapman opens with a personal reflection on hiking in Oxford County, Maine, and discovering that the “middle of nowhere was once somewhere.” She then describes some of her favorite local hiking spots and details some of their history.

Continuing in this vein, I contribute a lengthy exploration of the history of Grafton, Maine, from the rough settlement established by the first Euro-American arrivals in the 1830s to what is today largely a state park and ecological reserve land, featuring one of the most interesting and challenging sections of the Appalachian Trail.

William B. Krohn writes of Samuel Farmer, an entrepreneurial Phillips, Maine, guide and hotel owner, who sought to expand the opportunities for tourism in the Rangeley Lakes Region during the mid to late nineteenth century. Farmer later moved out West and sought to remake himself.

Farmer’s writings mainly appeared in the Maine Woods, a newspaper whose editor, J. W. Brackett, re-envisioned its mission on several occasions, transforming it from a small town paper to a regional sporting sheet. In a brief companion piece to Krohn’s feature on Farmer, I attempt to untangle the newspaper’s complex history.

In our “From the Archives” feature we publish—for the first time—an account written by John Mead Gould of an 1875 trip up Goose Eye and Sunday River Whitecap mountains.

The stunning painting by Erik Koeppel which is featured on this issue’s cover and in our “Collections Spotlight” feature unites the dual themes of the issue. Koeppel’s painting, a re-creation of a now-lost landscape by White Mountain master Thomas Cole, depicts the aftermath of an event which helped launch tourism to the White Mountain region. My thanks to Randall H. Bennett, who worked with Koeppel on the project of recreating the painting, for his assistance with the feature. Randy has also generously donated the painting to the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society, where we intend to feature it in a new permanent exhibit on the history of Bethel and the region.

Finally, Bennett also contributes to this issue a review of Peter Dow Bachelder’s recent book on the history of the Maine tourism industry.

Goose Eye No. 3 is offered in the spirit of exploration. We hope that it not only makes a valuable contribution to scholarship on recreation in the region, but will also inspire many readers to get outside and embark on some of their own adventures.

As always, we thank you for your continued support of the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society. If you enjoy this issue, please help spread the word about Goose Eye and the Museums!

William F. Chapman
March 2023

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Review Essay

Health Care on the Maine Frontier

David R. Jones

Health Care on the Maine Frontier

Diseases in the District of Maine, 1772-1820: The Unpublished Work of Jeremiah Barker, a Rural Physician in New England. By Richard J. Kahn. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 568. Cloth $35.00.)

A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. By Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. Pp. 444.)

Birth, sickness, and death were fundamental aspects of life in early Bethel. So health care mattered! But we know awkwardly little about it. The same applies generally to the Northern New England frontier.

Moses Mason and Molly Ockett are early Bethel’s best known characters. Both were medical practitioners. Yet we know very little about their work.1 Histories of Maine and Northern New England only take up medi­cal/health history in the second half of the 19^th century. That’s not surprising. There’s little previous evidence: no effective licensure, registration, or required education even for doctors, much less midwives and healers; nursing was mostly women’s business. As medical schools and hospitals, first established in Boston, moved to Maine there was no immediate effect on the countryside. Advancing surgical techniques, new if not necessarily efficacious drug regimes, and the prominence of medicine, nursing, and public health in the Civil War provided evidence for historians.

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Collection Spotlight

1995.053.0001

Scale Model of Record Load of Wood Hauled for Marshall Hastings

Constructed by Erland Wentzell, whose father, Stanley Wentzell, was foreman of the pulpwood logging operations for Hastings

The Museums of the Bethel Historical Society is fortunate to have several historical models in its collection. One of the most unique of these depicts an 11.2 cord load of wood hauled for Marshall Hastings in the winter of 1932-1933. The one-inch-to-one-foot scale model was built by Erland Wentzell over a three-year period from 1993-1995 and was shown at the Fryeburg Fair in 1995, where it won a blue ribbon.

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From the Archives

Rumford Citizen, January 16, 1908

SIXTY WOODSMEN QUIT CAMP SATURDAY

Because Supper Was Not Served At Five-Fifteen

They Came To The Falls From Whence They Go To Other Camps

Although, as several articles in this issue have observed, no major unions were formed by Maine woodsmen in the nineteenth or early twentieth century, there were nonetheless occasional spontaneous outbreaks of collective action. The amusing story which follows comes from the Rumford Citizen, a newspaper dedicated to covering the mill town, but published in Bethel at the Bethel News plant by News proprietor E. C. Bowler. Bowler intended the paper to serve as an alternative to the more established Rumford Falls Times, which was seen as beholden to the interests of the mill ownership. Although it lasted only two years, from 1906-1908, the Rumford Citizen is an important source for its unique perspective on events in Rumford.

Those interested in learning more about the Rumford Citizen should see Randall H. Bennett’s article, “Bowler versus Chisholm, and the Ill-fated Bethel-Rumford Electric Railway,” originally published in 2006 in our newsletter The Courier and now available online.

Last Saturday and Monday, sixty men left Carter’s camp at Wildwood, and all of them came to Rumford Falls, some on foot Sunday, but most of them on the train Monday.

In an interview with Mr. Henry Conlon, an intelligent and able woodsman, the CITIZEN learned the circumstances underlying the wholesale exodus of the men from camp.

Said Mr. Conlon: “The trouble all arose over the matter of waiting for supper. A little matter it may seem; but we work two miles away and quit at 4 o’clock and it takes about an hour to reach camp. We have been in the habit of having supper served at a quarter past five, and this is what we want. After working in the woods and walking two miles we are a hungry crowd and when Saturday night we were told that supper would not be ready before six, there was a general protest among the boys. I presume I said more than the rest as I was spokesman for the crowd.

“In the midst of the talk, in walks the boss, T. H. Schools, and he said, ‘If there is any (here were injected a string of cuss words that would make the CITIZEN parrot of the state were they reproduced) son-of-a-gun among you that don’t like the arrangement he can pack up and get out as quick as he pleases.’”

“The result was that all but a few teamsters and one or two camp men asked for their time right on the spot, and some of us on the train this morning.”

Mr. Mark Steinfeld with whom many of the men hired for his camp says he will be able to place most of them at once. The appearance of so many woodsmen on the street, at once and in the midst of the season, gave rise to the report that owing to a lack of snow they had been discharged. There was a foot of snow at that place last week, and operations were going on well.

Manufacturing in Locke’s Mills

A Historical Overview

Blaine Mills

In 1816, what we now know as North, South, and Round Ponds were just three small ponds connected by a few streams and collectively known as the Alder River Ponds. That summer, the area around the ponds experienced a lot of thunderstorms and lightning strikes. Most of the shoreline around North, South, and Round Alder River Ponds was scorched. They were fast moving fires and it was mostly the brush that burned, but the tall timber was still standing. It was scorched and it was dead, but it was good enough to cut into lumber. A year later, in 1817, Samuel Barron Locke, Sr., from Bethel, decided to take advantage of the situation. He bought up most of the land around the ponds, intending to harvest the trees before the lumber rotted.

At that time, the area around the village was a howling wilderness. The only access was a blazed trail from Bean’s Corner to the village. It was kept open by trappers coming from the Androscoggin River over here to trap the three ponds. In the spring of 1819, Locke started building a dam. The dam was built near the top of the hill in Locke’s Mills (behind where Mellen Kimball’s house later stood), about 300 feet upstream above the present dam. He also built a small sawmill just below the dam on the north shore. It was powered by a tub wheel. A tub wheel is laid on its side in a flat tub and operates when the water is let into the tub through a gate at the bottom of the dam. It spins the wheel and powers the machinery up in the mill.

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The Amazing Early History of the Bethel Steam Mill

Peter R. Stowell

The Backstory

As its life as a spool mill waned following the decline of the wooden spool industry in the late 1970s, the Bethel Steam Mill remained a ghostly gray presence on the river side of the railroad tracks west of Bethel. One hun­dred years earlier, William E. Skillings began to produce thread spools there.

Mirroring the stacks of spool wood that once lined its mill yard, Skillingston, as the village was called by Bethel residents, was but a store, a boarding house or two, and a cookie-cutter stretch of houses along today’s US Route 2. Skillingston never rested easily as a name. But now, its older name of Steam Mill has risen from history’s ashes to assume its rightful place.

More than two hundred spool mills once existed in Maine, the first near Lewiston in 1848 to the late 1970s when they all had closed. Plastics became the new thread spools, and cheap offshore labor sealed their fates. More than 140 spool mills once operated in Oxford, Franklin, and Androscoggin counties. Only Aroostook, Knox, and Lincoln counties never turned a spool.

Oxford County hosted seventy mills; surprisingly, Bethel once had more than a dozen – five operating simultaneously in 1899. The Bethel mills were operated by (1) Eber Clough, (2) Isaac Morrill, and (3) Eben Richardson on Mill Brook; (4) Isaac Morrill in North Bethel; (5) Alpheus Bean, (6) George Merrill, and (7) Adams & Morrill in West Bethel; (8) William and Julius Skillings in Steam Mill, (9) Parker & Sawyer on Mechanic Street; (10) George Merrill & Nelson Springer, then (11) N. S. Stowell on Railroad Street; (12) Rufus J. Virgin, and (13) Hiram Hodgson in South Bethel. Spool mills plied their wood-turning trade and either thrived, stagnated, or were crowded out through competition. Those that failed to modernize were usually forced out of business.

The Bethel Steam Mill was planned on the coast of Maine but was birthed in turbulence, raised in poverty, and abandoned by its owner. Engineered to run by steam engines with five boilers, it was the first so designed. The Parker and Sawyer mill at Mechanic Street’s intersection with High Street followed years later. This mill originally made windows and doors before converting to spools in 1871.

The mill’s early history has been slow to reveal itself, leading to a skewed narrative that says the mill began in 1863 when entrepreneur David N. Skillings built a state-of-the-art spool mill in December. Skillings’ design made the mill’s spool output the largest of any mill in Maine. Oddly, the story continues, the Skillings mill would sit beside another mill owned by Albert and William Gerrish of Bethel, shown clearly on the 1858 H. E. Walling map of Bethel.

The mill’s history is much richer and filled with grand drama covering several decades. Spurred by the Charter of the Atlantic and Saint Lawrence Railway in 1847, the Bethel mill was constructed, and operated by Charles and William Donnell Crooker of Bath, Maine. Later Portland merchant John Lynch owned it then sold it to a consortium fronted by Portland’s Hezekiah Winslow. Winslow owned it but briefly when the mill became controlled by Portland native David N. Skillings of Boston in late 1872.

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The Enduring Legacy of Jigger Johnson

Trail Work and Lumberjack Mythology

Sam Norton

The first time I heard of Jigger Johnson was in Pinkham Notch of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. I was sitting on a filthy couch in the common room of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Hutton Lodge, where the AMC’s trail crew, of which I was a new member, dwelled at the time. At a moment of relative quiet, in an otherwise wild summer of work, our leader (the “Trailmaster”) read from Holy Old Mackinaw, a popular history book written in 1938. The first chapter, “Saga of The Jigger,” is a biography of sorts about a lumberjack named “Jigger Jones,” his rise to fame, and his ultimate demise. We all listened intently, if loudly, with our legs perched on tables, faces beaming, and drinks in hand. Many of us were dressed in plaid wool work shirts and suspenders and sporting weathered leather boots. The Trailmaster described the physical feats and absurd stories of a laborer who lived the better part of a century before us. We heard of a lumberjack who spent a life of work chopping and skidding trees in Northern New Hampshire and Maine.

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A Bit of Humanity Borne Before

The Life and Work of Stanley Foss Bartlett

William F. Chapman

O—poets write
And soldiers fight,
While merchants plan
and scheme;
But what can He
Expect of me?
I only sit and dream.1

Stanley Foss Bartlett sold himself a bit short when he wrote the preceding verse. After all, the young writer was already at work on his first book of poems, which came out when he was just twenty-two years old. Despite his life being tragically cut short while he was still in the prime of his career, Stanley accomplished more in his 35 years than most people manage in twice that time. During his lifetime he published one book of poems and left behind enough others for his family to gather into a second volume; wrote one collection of short stories, a modest but important contribution to Maine lumberjack lore; was for many years an editor and regular feature writer for the Lewiston Journal; and did commercial illustrating work for sev­eral well-known Maine brands.2

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