Category Archives: Seacoast (mostly) History

Posts related to the history Seacoast area of Maine and NH.

A visit to Wood Island with Windows to the Wild

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During August of 2021, I kayaked out to Kittery’s Wood Island Lifesaving Station with with Windows to the Wild host Willem Lange and producers Steve Giordani and Phil Vaughn, where we spent a lovely day with Sam Reid, president of the non-profit Wood Island Lifesaving Station (WILSA), which is restoring the once-dilapidated Life Saving Station to a living museum.

The resulting show, titled Wood Island Life Saving Station, had its debut broadcast on New Hampshire Public Television on February 2, 2022, and is now available online at the NH PBS Youtube channel (Episode 1, Season 17), (and also will broadcast many times on NH PBS, WGBH, and other public television stations).

Wood Island, located just off the coast of Kittery, Maine in the Piscataqua River, is a tiny scrap of an island with a fascinating history. I’m working on a post about bootlegging in the Piscataqua River, but with one thing or another, my writing time has been limited. I’ll be posing more frequently come spring.

See the full 2022 for Windows to the Wild schedule here.

The dark-eyed little girl in the picture: Old photos tell the story of an immigrant family from Greece

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school photo of Mary Gekas

Mary Gekas, circa 1919-1921 (Digital Maine).

Browsing through the archives of Digital Maine, this photo of young Mary Gekas invites questions.  Born in 1915, she would have been 5 or 6 when this photo was taken at the Mark Dennett School in Kittery, Maine, and saved by a teacher in  scrapbook. Mary seems very serious for such a young girl. She lived on a farm on Dennett Road with her parents, Sophie and George Gekas, Greek immigrants from Turkey who were probably illiterate, at least in English.

When Mary’s mother Sophie registered as an “alien” at the Kittery Town Office in 1940, she signed her registration form with an X, and her husband George scrawled a rough approximation of a signature.  All of the four Gekas children went to school in Kittery. Like  many immigrant families, the Gekases probably highly valued education.  Mary eventually became a buyer for Kimball’s Department Store in Portsmouth, as well as a mother and grandmother. She was a passionate gardener and loved animals — perhaps the legacy of farm life.

Tony Gekas, circa 1919-1921 (DigitalMaine).

Mary’s brother Tony, a year younger, looks equally serious in this photo taken at the same school. Later, at Traip Academy, Tony played on the football team, graduating in 1934. He began his career as a welder at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and served his country during World War II in the 361st Infantry Regiment, 91st Division in the Italian campaign. After the war, he married, became a father to three children, and eventually landed in the Tilton, NH area, where he worked in insurance and, with his wife, operated a well-known pizza shop, and, according to his obituary, “was known for the many kindnesses shown to the area youth.”

In the school photo below, Mary and Tony’s younger sister Esther appears a bit mischievous — perhaps the family rabble rouser.  By age 19, at the time of the 1940 census, Esther was managing a dress shop in Portsmouth, so she was a go-getter. She married, but never had children, and was probably well-known at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Portsmouth.

Growing up on a farm in the Great Depression, these three children understood hard work. At the time of the 1940 census, when Maine and then the federal government required their parents to register as aliens, all three of these by-now young adults had jobs off the farm.

When these photos were taken, these siblings had no inkling that eventually they would welcome a baby sister, Garifelia, born in 1938. She’s still around,  living in the Midwest.

Undated class photo, Wentworth Dennett School, possibly around 1930, when Esther would have been 9 years old. She is in the second row, 1st child on the right. Note her stylish bob cut, and big smile — a contrast to her somber siblings.  Esther appears to be wearing jeans or leggings — very rare for a girl circa 1930. Was she a rebel? (DigitalMaine)

Their father, the farmer George Gekas, came to America around 1908, from Turkey. Their mother Sophie followed a couple of years later. Eventually, after spending time in Connecticut and New Hampshire, the Gekases bought a farm on Dennett Road. Two years later, they were joined by another Greek family, who bought a neighboring farm: the Vourvases, from Smyrna, Turkey. Smyrna was a tense spot in the Mediterranean, a Greek city in Turkish territory. Eventually, in 1922, the Turks burned the city in their drive to claim it as Turkish. Were these families fleeing the tensions that eventually flared into the Greco-Turkish War and the burning of Smyrna? Or were they economic migrants, heading to America for a better life?

Traip Academy football team, 1931 season. Tony Gekas is in the 2nd row, 2nd from right.

I suspect that the Gekas and Vourvas families, stood out in Kittery, with their dark eyes, hair and skin. At the time, anti-immigration nativist politicians and their supporters were stirring up a frenzy against the “yellow menace” — the flood of immigrants arriving from Italy, Greece and other countries in southern Europe.  The country, they said, was being overrun by these “dirty undesirables.” To stop them from turning America into a mongrel nation, in 1924, Congress passed the National Origins Act, which outlawed immigration from Asia and imposed quotas that discriminated against immigrants from southern Europe.  As a result, in the 1920s,  immigration from countries like Greece and Italy was sharply curtailed for almost 30 years, until modifications in 1952 eased the quotas somewhat by basing them on the 1920 census (instead of the 1890 census, the original basis for determined quotas). But the Act was not abolished until passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

By then, America had mostly forgotten that Greeks, Italians and others from southern Europe had once been “undesirables”. I wonder if the George and Sophie Gekas remembered.

P.S. I hope commenters can shed more light on these photos and share family stories. I hope to locate obituaries for George and Sophie once libraries are open and I have access to other archival sources.

 

 

 

 

Related posts:

The summer when Kittery aliens landed at the Town Office

Fragments of history: When the the KKK marched in Kittery, Maine

Sources and resources

Historic photos from the Mark Dennett School are from the DigitalMaine archive, and are part of a print collection held by the Rice Public Library, in a scrapbook titled ‘Reminiscences’, gathered by Mrs. J. Evelyn Woods when she was a teacher at the School. The original source for the Wentworth Dennett School photo and the Traip Academy  football team is unknown, but both photos are in the collections of Rice Public Library and Digital Maine.  See all names associated with the photo below and let me know if you can fill in any of the question marks!

Mary Gekas Kyrios obituary, Legacy.com, 2011.

Anthony Gekas obituary, Seacoastonline.com, 2002.

Esther Gekas Karayianis obituary, Legacy.com, 2014.

Wentworth Dennett School photo:

First row left to right: Bud Symonds, Sterling Cook, ?, Phil Gerry, ?, Robert Grogan. Second row: Vanetta Cutten, ?, Phyllis Blaney, ?. Barbara Wilson,, ?, ?, Esther Gekas. Third row: Henry Bowden, ?, ?, …Seaward, ?, ?, George Nickerson, …Curren, Clayton Edwards, Charles Plaisted, Stephen Robbins.

Traip Academy football team, 1931 season:

First row left to right: A. Ricker, Capt. Locke, R. Williams, Wilson, Blethrode, Bilbrusk, Boston, E. Obrian. Second row: Coach Slayton, Charles Neal, R. Hatch, Vinton Prince, Wm. Robins, Warren Wurm, Arthur Goodwin, Lersy Shea, Fr., Tony Gekas, Mg. Ford. Third row: Edw. McCloud, Bob Weaver, Jeff Cook, Leland Riley, Don Chick, Edw. McCloud, Bob Weaver, Jeff Cook, Leland Riley, Don Chick, Robert Stewart, Harold Hayes, Kenneth Newson, Gerald Obrian. Fourth row: F. Hatch, Fernald, Perry.

When a silent enemy traveled undetected: the Seacoast “throat distemper” epidemic of the 1730s

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“It was this readiness to adopt a theological explanation for the epidemic which was chiefly responsible for the hasty abandonment of a scientific one.” –Ernest Caulfield

Image of Fitch's printed sermonBy July 26, 1736, when Portsmouth’s Reverend Jabez Fitch speculated that the “throat distemper” epidemic ravaging the Seacoast was “the Fruit of strange Sins,” 129 children had died in nearby Kingston, NH–nearly a third of the town’s children.

This new and mysterious disease, with its horrific mortality rate, took hold suddenly, with the  appearance of gray or black spots at the back of the throat. Within a day or two, or sometimes hours, a child victim would be gasping and struggling for breath. If the disease was merciful, it claimed its victim quickly, but sometimes helpless parents had to keep vigil over slowly suffocating children for several days before the end came.

Kingston’s residents were baffled by this disease and stunned by how rapidly it claimed its victims. Unlike smallpox, the throat distemper seemed to erupt with no warning or contact from an obvious source of infection. With smallpox, colonial Americans understood that the disease spread rapidly from one infected person to another. Quarantine was one tool they used to battle smallpox, with towns often establishing quarantine stations during an outbreak.

The throat distemper, however, seemed to come on out of nowhere, as if God had suddenly decided he needed to provide a sign or warning to a certain cluster of people.

The first cases in Kingston occurred in homes located four miles apart, and then continued to appear in widely separated sections of town. Since its circulation seemed arbitrary, people abandoned (to their peril) the usual precautions they might attempt to prevent the spread of smallpox.  Although people had a general understanding of contagion (minus the specific knowledge of germs, viruses and bacteria), they did not know about “silent” or “healthy” disease carriers who were asymptomatic. Thus, Kingston residents who seemed unaffected by the disease probably were transmitting the bacteria in their town and in other nearby New Hampshire villages as they went about their business.

The epidemic next erupted in Hampton Falls, where one family reportedly lost all of their 13 children, then it travelled to Exeter, Durham, Dover, Chester, and finally to Portsmouth. At the Isles of Shoals, eight miles out to sea, the isolated fishing community lost 36 children. Ministers presided over fasts and prayers, but the fasting did not stop the spread of the disease, which jumped the Piscataqua River to Kittery, where 125 deaths were attributed to throat distemper, and then spread to other coastal towns in Maine. All told, over a span of about five years, the epidemic killed about 5,000 people in New England, most of them children.

Medical historians believe that the “throat distemper” was diphtheria, a bacterial infection in which a gray to black membrane develops in the throat, causing the victim to die from a choked airway, or from a blood infection caused by toxins produced by the bacteria. In 1890-91, German physician Emil von Behring developed the anti-serum that could, if administered in a timely fashion, cure diphtheria, (a discovery for which he was awarded the first Noble Prize), but the disease remained common in the United States until the 1920s, when a vaccination was developed. Although rare in the U.S. today, with only a handful of cases each year, diphtheria is still a public health threat in some parts of the world.

In suggesting divine causes for the epidemic, Reverend Fitch’s 1736 sermon may have inadvertently contributed to the spread of throat distemper. However, it also provided a wealth of specific information about the epidemic along with town vital records. Bare statistics reveal heartbreaking stories.

Ward Clark had been on the job as minister in Kingston for ten years. Hired in 1725 at age 22 to be the first minister of the new church, Clark had become a beloved and respected figure in Kingston. In the midst of the epidemic, along with two town doctors, Reverend Clark travelled from one home to another, offering spiritual comfort and medical advice, and probably spreading bacteria as he moved about.

Then, Clark’s own family took ill. On July 27, his wife Mary and their infant daughter died. A month later, on August 29, he lost his daughter Elizabeth, and then the disease also claimed his two little boys. Finally, the minister couldn’t take the suffering any longer. Bereft of his young family, Reverend Clark returned to his hometown of Exeter to regain his health, but died in May 1737 of a “wasting consumption” that may have been related to the disease, or to the trauma of loss.

The epidemic eventually eased, but returned time and again to Kingston and other Seacoast towns in the 18th century. In Kensington, NH, with about 600 residents, 120 children perished in the epidemic between 1735 and1737, “so many there were few children left to die,” writes town historian Reverend Roland Sawyer, who documents additional epidemics in 1745, 1747, 1760, and 1764.

I’ve looked for traces of the epidemic at the Plains Cemetery in Kingston,  but very few graves exist from before 1750. I’ve found two small gravestones from 1743, those of Seccomb French, who died on September 21, and his brother William, who went on to his fate two days later. Were these two little boys the victims of another diphtheria wave?

Somehow, their parents carried on. Father Nathaniel lived to age 69, long enough to see the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775.  Their mother, Abigail, lived to age 90. I would need to do further research to find out if they had more childre, but I suspect that their descendants walk among us today.

PS Reverend Fitch was a man of his times, when it was not uncommon to attribute many calamities to divine intervention. However, colonial ministers, who were the most educated, also were “early adopters” of scientific inquiry. In 1721, Onesimus, an African slave owned byCotton Mather, introduced the minister to the practice of smallpox inoculation — the pre-cursor of vaccination.  Inoculation usually resulted in a milder case of smallpox, and produced immunity (although some people also died from the practice). Mather used his pen and pulpit to advocate for widespread inoculation, gathered data and information on this “experiment,” and cited Onesimus as his original source.

Sources and resources:

This post is  modified version of material in my book, Pioneer on a Mountain Bike: Eight Days through Early American History, available from Amazon, at the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum, and from Rice Public Library.

Barry, John M. The Great Influenza; The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. New York: Penguin Books, c2004, 2005, p. 70. (info on diptheria).

Caulfield, Ernest. “A History of the Terrible Epidemic, Vulgarly Called the Throat Distemper, as it occurred in His Majesty’s New England Colonies Between1735 and 1740.” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 1939 January 11(3), p. 223, and pp. 243-245. U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Fitch, Jabez, An account of the numbers that have died of the distemper in the throat, within the province of New-Hampshire : with some reflections thereon ; July 26. 1736. U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Sawyer, Roland D. The history of Kensington, New Hampshire, 1663 to 1945 (232 years) with a family and homestead register of the pioneer families, early settlers and permanent citizens of the town. Farmington, ME: Knowlton & McLeary Co., 1946, pp. 264–265.

The summer when Kittery aliens landed at the Town Office

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Image of Governor's ProclamationIn late June of 1940, 39 aliens officially called Kittery home. Some had dwelled among the town’s residents for more than 50 years, others for just a few weeks. When Governor Lewis E. Barrows signed an executive order requiring all non-citizen immigrants to register at their town office, these foreign nationals followed the rules and completed the forms, which were collected, compiled and then analyzed for statistical data by the the Adjutant General’s office.

At the time, the idea of an illegal or undocumented alien did not exist. In 1924, Congress had passed legislation imposing the country’s first-ever immigration quotas. These quotas favored immigrants from northern Europe, since one goal of the legislation was to curb the number of “undesirable” immigrants flooding the country from Italy, Greece and other southern European countries. But immigrants didn’t need papers or a green card; they pretty much just showed up. And the quotas did not apply to the thousands of migrants coming from Canada each year.

Many of Kittery’s 39 aliens had been here for decades, but had eschewed citizenship, perhaps wishfully thinking that some day, they would return/retire to the old country, as some do today.

For example, Walter MacDonald, age 57, born in Digby, Nova Scotia, had  lived in Maine since he was 2. The father of five American children, he worked as a loftsman at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, but had never become a U.S. citizen. But his registration form indicates that he had just submitted citizenship application paperwork. Citizenship offered protection from deportation and separation from his family.

But Annie G. Simmons, age 75, retired and the mother of four, didn’t bother applying for her citizenship, at least not in 1940. A widow, Annie hailed from the Azores Islands and spoke Portuguese. She had lived in Maine for 58 years, perhaps long enough to feel that she had nothing to fear from the registration order.

Kittery’s aliens hailed from about 10 different countries, including the usual suspects — Canada (Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces), England, and Ireland, along with some outliers, such as Turkey, Greece and Finland.

Registration form Eero Akerston

Eero Akersten, age 53, a widower from Finland, had only been in Kittery for a few weeks. He worked as a butler on Gerrish Island for Mrs. Edward Crocker, so I suspect he was only in town for the summer, along with Margaret Auchterlonie, from Scotland, who worked as a nurse for Mrs. Fergus Reid.  Another summer resident, Elisabeth Menzel, originally from Chateau de Prangins in Switzerland, worked as  governess for the William W. Howells family.

How did these immigrants feel about being compelled to register their status at the Town Office? Were they frightened that news about the war in Europe would subject them to extra scrutiny? Or did they willingly comply with registration, feeling that they had nothing to hide or fear from this documentation, or even viewing the act of registration as a patriotic duty?

The evidence suggest that registration made Kittery’s aliens nervous about their future: 25 of Kittery’s 39 registrants immediately applied for citizenship (according to their forms). In 1940, the United States was determined to stay out of the war in Europe, but rumors abounded of foreign intrigue.  The Governor’s executive order also encouraged Maine’s residents to report suspicious activity, and some did (although not in Kittery). Becoming a citizen was the best route to a secure future.

Compared to other towns in Maine, like Biddeford or Sanford, Kittery had only a few aliens. Kittery’s population had remained stable — or some would say stagnant — since the early 1800s, with little in-migration.  That would soon change, as the Shipyard ramped up its workforce during World War II, but in 1940, most of Kittery’s residents had lived here for generations.

Some of these aliens likely stood out more than others. Walter MacDonald’s neighbors might have been surprised to learn he wasn’t American. When Annie Simmons first arrived in town as a young woman from a far-flung island, she must have been an exotic presence, but after 58 years, she was an older woman with a touch of a foreign accent. And Albert Maillett, operating a restaurant on Route 1, probably still had a strong French-Canadian accent, but serving up food and drink for 13 years likely had transformed him into a local.

All of these immigrants probably thought of themselves as ordinary people who lived unremarkable lives. We get only glimpses of their stories from the Maine Alien Registration forms, and other documents, like lines from the US census of 1940. I wonder what stories these aliens would tell today about going to the Town Hall to fill out the registration forms.

(P.S. I’m hoping some local commenters might have heard parents or grandparents talk about the registration process and what it meant to their relatives).

Related posts:

The dark-eyed little girl in the photo

Fragments of history: When the the KKK marched in Kittery, Maine

Sources and resources

At Digital Maine’s Alien Registration Order Archive, of the Maine State Library, visitors can browse through 20,000 non-citizen immigrants registration forms; this extensive collection of documents is searchable by town and name. To learn more about the Order, see this article by Maine State Archivist Samuel Howes: Maine’s Alien Registration of 1940.

The 1940 Census can be searched online via a National Archives database. However, it appears that census data is only available from larger cities in York County.

Walking with the mothers at Vaughan Woods, South Berwick

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South Berwick, Maine — On Mother’s Day this year, I went for a walk with the mothers in Vaughan Woods State Park.

Vaughan Woods is a popular local walking spot, as it includes, along with its three miles of trails, the imposing presence of the 1785 Georgian-style Hamilton House. Walking in Vaughan Woods was a wonderful Mother’s Day gift because I hadn’t been there in many years, and had forgotten the simple beauty of the woodland trail along the Salmon Falls River. After a cold April, everyone we encountered that sunny morning in May was happy to be outside, and we wished a good day to many mothers out strolling with children young and old.

Mothers have walked these 80+acres for centuries. Here are a few of pieces of their stories.

Walking along the trail beside the Salmon Falls River, we came upon the view of Hamilton House, built in 1785 by Colonel Jonathan Hamilton, an enterprising merchant and community leader. The Colonel married Mary Manning in 1771. Mary likely walked on this land with her two children, Betsey and Joseph, born a year apart. But Mary’s wealth couldn’t protect her family from the democratic afflictions common to all in the 18th century. Young Joseph died at age 15, and Betsey a few years later, at age 21, after giving birth to her first child, an infant who died a few months after her mother. When Mary Manning Hamilton died at age 50 in 1800, her obituary noted, among many other qualities, that she was “a peculiarly kind & tender Mother.”

One of the first European-American mothers to walk in this forest was Margaret Warren, mother of five, whose home was located on a high spot in the woods, and probably had a view of Cow Cove, since the site was likely soon cleared of most trees. Margaret, who hailed from Ireland and landed in Kittery, came here after marrying James Warren.

James was a Scotsman who had survived the 1650 Battle of Dunbar, where he was taken prisoner by Oliver Cromwell’s forces , then shipped out to the colonies and sold as an indentured servant.

James probably served the first part of his indenture at the Lynn Iron Works, but came with his master Richard Leader to Kittery – which then encompassed today’s town of South Berwick – around 1651 to build a saw mill at the falls of Great Works River (which enters the Salmon Falls River a short distance above Vaughan Woods). Somewhere along the way he met Margaret, and they married in 1654, by which time James had acquired his land.  They had their first child – or perhaps their first surviving child, Gilbert, by 1656.

The slight indention of a cellar hole mark the Warren homesite at Vaughan Woods.

The Warrens both had strong constitutions, with James dying in 1702, at age 81, and Margaret in 1713, who was probably in her 80s by then  (date of birth unknown).  Margaret and James lived in a time of sporadic but intense conflict between settlers and the Wabanaki. Her daughter Grizel Warren Otis, at age 24, and infant granddaughter Margaret — just a few months old — were taken as captives during the Wabanaki raid at Cocheco (Dover) in June 1689*.  I imagine that Margaret could see the smoke billowing in the distance as several houses burned across the river in New Hampshire.

As the crow flies, Cocheco was not far away — across the river and further inland. Word must have spread quickly, with Margaret soon learning of the death of her granddaughter, three-year-old Hannah, along with her daughter’s 64-year-old husband, the blacksmith Richard Otis.  She must have worried about Grizel and her fate.

Was Margaret hopeful when she eventually learned that Grizel had been taken to Montreal? Grizel, however, never returned home. She became a Catholic, took the name Madeleine, married a Frenchman, Philippe Robitaille, and started a new family. I’m guessing she was happier in Montreal, where she lived until her death at age 90. Unlike her old goat first husband, Grizel’s Frenchman Philippe was the same age, and together they had five children.

Margaret did not live to see the return of her granddaughter, Margaret, a remarkable woman known as Christine Otis Baker (Hotesse), who after many adventures landed back in Dover in 1734.  Christine-Margaret had married in Canada, but after seven years and three children, she became a young widow in 1714. Eventually she married Captain Thomas Baker of Deerfield, Massachusetts, whom she had met in Montreal, first in 1701 when he was a captive and then again in 1714 when he returned to Montreal on a negotiating mission.

French authorities would not allow her to leave Montreal with her property or her children, and she left her children behind to return to New England with Baker.  Although she later returned to Montreal to try to regain custody of her children, the authorities would not allow her to see them.  Christine soldiered on, had another son, and lived out her years, until her mid-80s, in Dover, New Hampshire, where she was well-known as a tavern keeper.

Almost 200 years after these events, another mother — a stepmother — served as indirect catalyst for reviving and remembering the stories of these earlier mothers.

Emily Tyson and Sarah Orne Jewett, in the garden at Hamilton House. Elise Tyson Vaughan, an accomplished photographer, was the photographer (Historic New England photo; citation below).

In 1898, Emily Tyson, the widow of railroad magnate George Tyson, and her stepdaughter Elise (Elizabeth) Tyson purchased the house on the recommendation of their writer friend Sarah One Jewett. The mother-daughter pair wanted to spend summers in Maine, away from the heat and pollution of Boston. By then, Hamilton House had fallen into disrepair, as the Hamilton fortune evaporated in the early 1800s (probably due in large part to Jefferson’s Embargo Act).  Several generations of the Goodwin family had tried to farm the property, but could not turn the tide on the steady decline of farming in 19th century Maine.

The two women restored the house to its former grandeur. Along with their York friend Elizabeth Perkins, they were leaders in the Colonial Revival movement** that led to a renewed interest in colonial-era history and the preservation of many colonial-era dwellings.

Elise Tyson married Henry Goodman Vaughan later in life, when she was in her mid-forties, and did not have children, but she nurtured artists and writers who frequented her home, as well as her own craft of photography.

Elise also was the mother of this park, donating the Hamilton House and the surrounding land to the state of Maine upon her death in 1949.  Now, on Mother’s Day and every other day of the year, we walk in her footsteps and those who came before.

The Warren home purportedly looked down upon Cow Cove, another historic location where, in 1634, the ship the Pied Cow anchored, and offloaded livestock and supplies to build the first sawmill at the Great Works falls. James Warren and other Scottish prisoners came 17 years later to work on rebuilding and expanding that first mill.

Notes and resources

Although you don’t really need a map to walk the trails of Vaughan Woods, the trail map here provides a good sense of the different locations described in my post.

Hamilton House, owned by Historic New England, is open for tours from June through October.  On summer Sundays, visitors enjoy concerts in the garden.

Thanks to the Old Berwick Historical Society for many specific dates and pieces of information from its information-rich website.

Sarah Orne Jewett’s romance novel, The Tory Lover, features Hamilton House as its setting, and features a cast of characters drawn from Maine-NH Seacoast history.

For more on the remarkable story of Christine Otis Baker, see Christine Otis Baker, Captured by Indians, Dover Public Library, Dover, N.H.

For more on James Warren and the Scottish prisoners of Dunbar, see “James Warren, #108 on ‘The Dunbar Prisoners’ List” at the website/blog, Scottish Prisoners of War.

Other sources for this post include www.geni.com, especially for Grizel Warren Otis Robitaille, and the Warren family genealogy at archive.org, especially for Margaret/Christine Otis Baker.

*On the Cocheco Raid: This raid was essentially a revenge attack upon Cocheco, in retaliation for an event near the end of King Philip’s War in which Major Richard Waldron of Cocheco invited hundreds of native people to his trading post for a peace parley. Instead, Waldron maneuvered the situation to capture 100s of native peoples, who were then executed or sold into slavery. The Cocheco Raid was one of the first events of “King William’s War,” or what many called the “Second IndianWar.” For more details, I highly recommend Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War by Lisa Brooks, which includes a companion website, especially Captivity at Cocheco.

**On the Colonial Revival Movement: I am aware that this movement also had its origins in the anti-immigration movement of the early 20th century, a time of peak immigration.  Tracing ancestry to the colonial era was a way of establishing legitimacy and superiority to the “hordes” flocking to America. That said, Colonial Revival resulted in the preservation of many buildings that might have been lost to the wrecking ball, as well as of documents, ephemera, and other clues that historians continue to unravel today to tell ever more interesting and complex histories of early America.

Vaughan, Elizabeth R. Full-length informal portrait of Emily Davis Tyson and Sarah Orne Jewett standing in the doorway of Hamilton House, South Berwick, Maine, undated. n.d. Web. 06 Jul 2018. <https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth-oai:bz60dd41p>.

The Maniacal Traveler plays with maps: my local history posts, via Google Maps

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This summer I am playing with mapping tools, which I eventually plan to teach my students at York County Community College to use in telling stories digitally.  Displayed here are my local history posts via Google Maps, many of which blend history with hiking, along with locations of nearby trails that I haven’t yet written about, and links to area historical societies.

Please click this link to display on a mobile device, which may or may not show a big white space below instead of my map.

If you click on the full screen square in the upper right hand corner, you’ll be able to  zoom in and out. The full-screen view also displays the legend.

This map is a work-in-progress; feedback appreciated.

Happy searching, reading, walking, and traveling!

Monuments, politics, and the cycle of forgetting: Remembering Bashka Paeff’s “Horrors of War”

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In Kittery, Maine, beneath the shade of an oak tree on a peaceful green common stands a monument that once stood in the cross-hairs of a politician who didn’t like its focus on the horrors of war. Today, many pass this monument daily, in their car and on foot, but Bashka Paeff’s beautiful bronze bas-relief sculpture, “The Sacrifices of War,” is now an almost forgotten part of the landscape.  This Centennial Year of War War I offers an opportunity to remember Paeff’s original title: “The Horrors of War.”

Bashka Paeff’s sculpture, “The Sacrifices of War,” was dedicated in 1925 as Maine’s Sailors and Soldiers Memorial for those who died in World War I. The newly-opened Memorial Bridge made Route 1 the main gateway into Maine, and the monument, located in Kittery’s John Paul Jones Park, greeted visitors as they crossed the bridge.

Born in Russia in 1894, Paeff immigrated to Boston with her family as an infant. There, she attended the Massachusetts Normal Art School, and then the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and worked as a subway token collector to support herself during the early stages of her art career.

The State of Maine commissioned the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in 1919 to memorialize the soldiers and sailors who died in what was then called the Great War. The state had selected this site as part of the Memorial Bridge project designed to ease travel from Portsmouth to Kittery. At the time, an older wooden toll bridge, dating to the 1840s, connected the towns further upriver, but most people travelled back and forth by ferry to Badger’s Island.

Paeff’s mother holds her baby close to protect the child from the horror of war.

Paeff’s sculpture centers on mother protectively holding her child above two dead soldiers who lay by her feet. At the time, according to scholar Jennifer Wingate, the “patriotic mother” was the focus of wartime art and propaganda, and post-war memorials. Images of the patriotic mother might be combined with images glorifying war, for example, a rifle or helmet garlanded with laurel leaves. The “pacifist mother,” by contrast, was associated with Bolshevism and radicalism, and definitely out of the mainstream. Paeff’s portrayal of a pacifist mother, Wingate tells us, “expressed her firmly held view that war memorials should not glorify war” (31).

A dog tries to comfort a soldier who has died.

Another dead soldier has fallen on the left side of the protective mother.

So why did rural and conservative Maine choose to commission a pacifist monument to greet visitors at the state’s main entry point?

In 1924, Maine Governor Percival Baxter, a Republican, worked with a commission that included veterans and other military representatives to select Paeff’s design from 20 proposals. Baxter specifically had solicited proposals that portrayed the devastation and not the glory of war; he wanted a pacifist monument for Maine. The state contracted with Paeff to develop the sculpture and monument for $15,000 (a fee which included all costs associated with building the monument, not just for the sculpture itself).

And then there was an election.

Republican Ralph Owen Brewster, riding on a wave of populist anti-immigration sentiment, and aided by an endorsement from the KKK, was elected governor in 1924 and took office in 1925.

Governor Brewster did not like Paeff’s design, calling it a “more of a glorification of pacifism than of [Maine’s] part in the global conflict” (quoted in Wingate, 35). Paeff had already completed a large clay model of the sculpture, but Brewster declared that he would not pay for it unless Paeff modified the design. A political battle ensued with former Governor Baxter defending the monument in the Portland Press Herald:

The Memorial is striking and teaches a lesson….it portrays the sacrifices made by women and children as well as by men….It would have been easy to have selected the usual form of a memorial with soldiers in uniform carrying guns, making the usual appeal to the martial spirit. The present memorial, however, depicts what war really is” (quoted in Wingate, 36).

Paeff carved this low-relief image of fighting soldiers as part of a compromise with Governor Brewster.

Ultimately Brewster had to honor Paeff’s contract. However, she agreed to some small alterations. In the background, she added two fighting soldiers and a line of marching soldiers, carrying rifles and ready to fight. The background figures, however, are only visible to viewers standing close to the monument. To passersby, they are invisible. And the name of the monument was changed, from “The Horrors of War” to “The Sacrifices of War.”

This low-relief line of marching soldiers was also added to the monument to placate Gov. Brewster.

In an interesting twist, at the dedication ceremony, Major General Clarence R. Edwards, re-branded the monument to align with Governor Brewster’s view. The frightened mother, he said, was appealing “to the soldiery to save her babe from harm” (quoted from various news accounts in Wingate, 36).

Bashka Paeff was still a young woman when she created “The Sacrifices of War” and she went on to a have a prolific and distinguished career, actively working until her death in 1979.

But after a time, the controversy as well as the memorial were forgotten. The bronze tarnished green. The concrete urns that anchor the monument ended up in the Piscataqua River. In 2000-2001, a $40,000 grant paid for the monument’s cleaning and restoration, and “The Sacrifices of War” was rededicated at a ceremony with then-Governor Angus King in May, 2001.

Paeff’s original intent is evident in the memorial, which reminds us of war’s horrors  — something generals, soldiers and sailors, military families, and civilians in war zones know all too well, and which the rest of us can all too easily forget. Taking a moment to stop in John Paul Jones Park to look at Paeff’s monument provides us with an opportunity to remember.

Sources and resources

Bashka Paeff was well-known for realistic animal sculptures as well as war memorials, fountains, and portraits. Notable works include the Boy and Bird statue in the Boston Public Gardens, the Lexington Minute Men Memorial, and a statue of President Harding’s pet terrier, Laddie Boy.

“Motherhood, Memorials, and Anti-Militarism: Bashka’s Paeff’s Sacrifices of War, by Jennifer Wingate. Woman’s Art Journal. Fall/Winter 2008, 31-40. Available online via GoogleScholar (the link is not persistent, but the article is easily found).

“Pollution and salty air damage statue,” by Jeremy Corcoran. Portsmouth Herald. September 21, 2000. Updated December 16, 2010.

“Sailors and soldiers reborn,” by Amy Wallace. Portsmouth Herald. December 30, 2000. Updated January 31, 2011.

“Wisdom on war’s waste, ” by Nate Evans. Portsmouth Herald, June 1, 2001. http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20010601/NEWS/306019984

For more history on the Memorial Bridge, and links to old Kittery photos, see my post, On Bridges and the Jet Set.

 

 

 

The tragedy of the waitresses: A 1902 boating accident claims 14 lives at the Isles of Shoals

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Fourteen people died in Kittery, Maine on July 17, 1902.  I came across a list of the dead by accident, while browsing through some old Town Reports. All who died were young, including three pairs of sisters. How had these young people died at the Isles of Shoals? And why had I never heard about this event in Kittery’s history?

I soon learned that all perished by drowning, victims of a capsized whaleboat 200 feet off the shore of Appledore Island. Most of the dead, 12 women and two men, served as waitstaff at the Oceanic Hotel on Star Island, thus the event is recalled as the “Tragedy of the Waitresses.”

At the turn of the 20th century, the Isles of Shoals remained a mecca for summer visitors.   The Oceanic Hotel and the Appledore House attracted college students, teachers, and others for the same reasons that young people today take on similar jobs: they offer a great opportunity to spend the summer earning money in a fun social place.

Sources differ in explaining the details of exactly what happened on that overcast July day.  Some, including the skipper, Fred Miles, said the boat was overcome by a squall that struck as the boat was pulling into the harbor, while others say the accident resulted more from bad luck than angry seas.

This sketch of the Ipswich whaleboat accompanied a news story in the July 20, 1902 edition of the Boston Daily Globe.

In his book,  The Isles of Shoals in Lore and Legend, Lyman Rutledge provides an account based on interviews with shore witnesses. In this version, the whaleboat, loaded with its 16 passengers, set off for an afternoon excursion from the dock at Star Island under gray skies that suggested a brewing squall. After a short sail, the boat was returning to the harbor as the squall struck.

A witness interviewed by Rutledge says that the whaleboat was returning just as the afternoon steamer was completing its crossing from Portsmouth.  On the whaleboat, skipper Miles tacked to starboard to pull into Appledore Harbor. With the turn, the boat listed to its port side, and the young women on the boat crowded over to the starboard side, from where they could get a better view of the incoming boat.

But as the whaleboat passed into the lee of the steamer, the heavy wind was cut off.  As the sails went slack, the leaning boat shifted hard to starboard. With all the weight concentrated on the starboard side, water began to pour over the gunwales, overcoming the boat. Loaded with rock and iron ballast for stability, the whaleboat sank, stern first, within seconds. Most of the passengers drowned because the suction generated by the sinking boat pulled them under the water.

The capsize must have been a scene of utter chaos, as waves rocked and pulled at the other small boats trying to rescue the waitresses. Skipper Miles and two young women survived, but all the others were lost. As the harbor calmed, rescuers retrieved nine bodies, which were laid out on cots in the music room of the Appledore Hotel. A diver recovered the five remaining victims in the days that followed.

Kittery’s coroner, Edward E. Shapleigh, set out from Portsmouth at around 9:15 that evening to carry out the grim task of documenting the dead.

Most of the dead were young women, including sisters Mary and Ena Adams of Portsmouth, and Laura Gilmore, of Exeter. At the last minute, Ella Adams and  Hattie Gilmore, both sisters of victims, decided not to go. The Adams’s brother Oliver, rowing a dory, was the first to reach the victims (July 19, 1902 edition of the Boston Daily Globe).

The dead included two Harvard students who reportedly perished as they tried to hold up some of the young women. Nobody was wearing life jackets, which might have saved them, but even today, it’s unlikely that adult passengers on such an excursion would don life vests.

Fred Miles, the whaleboat skipper, was  devastated by the accident. He died of tuberculosis in 1911 at age 57.

News organizations from New York to San Francisco reported on the tragedy of the waitresses, with a mixture of facts, hearsay, and imagination. Coroner Shapleigh ruled the sinking an accident, and concluded that no further investigation was warranted, but that didn’t stop the media, families, and  community from casting blame.

Some blamed the captain for heading out when a storm was brewing. Others blamed the dockmen for regularly loading too many people in the whaleboat, although Skipper Miles claimed that the boat could hold many more passengers. Miles reportedly blamed the girls for not shifting in the boat, although the event happened so quickly, it’s unlikely that 16 people could have scrambled to the other side in time to prevent the capsize.

A fisherman and lifelong mariner, and the father of 13 children (two who died in infancy), Miles originally hailed from Nova Scotia, but had lived in Portsmouth for many years.

The headline from the July 19, 1902 edition of The New York Times. All victims eventually were recovered by divers.

The New York Times reported that when Miles was interviewed at his Hunking Street home the following day, he was “in a state bordering on prostration.” Newspapers around the country circulated the quote below was widely circulated newspapers around.

Skipper Miles, quoted in the New York Times. His explanation places more emphasis on the squall, compared to Rutledge’s account, in which bad luck (combined with the storm)  plays a larger role.

The Adams sisters are buried in Portsmouth’s South Cemetery. Mary, age 31, had worked for eight years as the order clerk at the Oceanic House, and was considered a valuable employee, along with younger sister Ena, age 22. They lived with their adult siblings in the family home on Marcy Street, their parents having died earlier. Their four brothers served as pallbearers at their funeral.

Her obituary describes Exeter’s Laura Gilmore, age 20 and a recent graduate of Robinson Seminary, as a “charming young woman”, and one of 12 siblings who were “peculiarly attached to one another,” with the older brothers and sisters working to save money to send the youngest one to college.

From the porch of the Appledore House, on Appledore Island, horrified visitors watched as the boat overturned and sank. The hotel, built to house 500 guests, closed a year later, and burned to the ground in 1914 (Library of Congress image).

I wonder how Fred Miles persevered after the tragedy. His wife gave birth to their 13th child that November, a baby girl died two years later. Miles developed tuberculosis and died in 1911, at age 57, leaving behind his wife Mary and 11 children.

This summer, I’ve been taking sailing lessons. As a novice, I am easily confused by the trifecta of sails, wind, and boat dynamics. I crash into the dock on almost every landing, have capsized the boat in a light breeze and no waves, and even managed to bust the tiller.  Although Skipper Miles was an experienced mariner, I now better understand how rapidly changing conditions could result in such an event. Sudden squalls happen out at the Shoals every summer, sometimes doing extensive damage to boats, docks and anything else on the water.

The day after the sinking, at the Oceanic House, “guests came from their rooms…in silence and seemed confused as they entered the dining-room where only a little handful of  waitresses with haggard faces were there to serve them,” writes Rutledge. “Out of the twenty-two, sixteen were absent, fourteen never to return.”

A Dr. Parks, interviewed by Rutledge, noted, “Had you been an ardent Shoaler at that time could you have forgotten it? Could you have attended a single session for the next fifty years without at least once during the week recalling that fearful tragedy?”

The Oceanic Hotel, where most of the accident victims worked, circa 1900 (Library of Congress photo). The Oceanic Hotel remains open today, serving as a conference center, but individual guests can also stay there on a space-available basis. Star Island is also a great destination for a day trip.

Sources and resources

Comments and additional information appreciated, especially in regards to the technical details of how or why the whaleboat capsized.

“Last chapter: All bodies of drowned on way home.” July 22, 1902, Boston Daily Globe.

“Terrible Drowning Accident: Fourteen Persons Go Down to Death Off the Isles of Shoals.”  July 18, 1902, Portsmouth Daily Chronicle (in vertical file at Portsmouth Aetheneum).

“Their last sad journeys: Bodies of the Isles of Shoals victims sent to sorrowing families” July 19, 1902, Boston Daily Globe.

“Tragedy of the Waitresses.” In The Isles of Shoals in Lore and Legend, by Lyman V. Rutledge. Star Island Corporation, 1971.

For more information on staying at the Oceanic Hotel, visit the Star Island Corporation website. Today, Appledore Island is home to the Shoals Marine Laboratory, which offers a variety of visitor programs.

 

Return visit to Orris Falls with Windows to the Wild

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Click on the image to see the preview.

Click on the image to see the preview.

Early in January, 2017, I enjoyed a chilly morning to Orris Falls Conservation Area with Windows to the Wild host Willem Lange and producers Steve Giordani and Phil Vaughn. The resulting show, titled “The Maniacal Traveler” is scheduled for broadcast on New Hampshire Public Television on February 15, 2017 at 7:30, with repeat broadcasts on Sunday, 2/19. See the full schedule here. (Eventually NHPTV will archive the show here).

The show is based upon my earlier post, Travels on the White Rose Road to Orris Falls, a post that highlights the hiking within South Berwick’s Orris Falls Conservation Area, owned by the Great Works Regional Land Trust. Nineteenth-century writer Sarah Orne Jewett wrote a lovely piece about an afternoon ride on what she called the White Rose Road, including a visit to the lonely farmhouse of Daniel Littlefield.

We could feel a keen sense of Littlefield’s isolation on the January morning of the filming. Although I was verging on hypothermia by the session’s end (due to misplaced optimism about the temperatures), it was great fun to spend the morning with Willem (80+ years old) and producers Steve and Phil.  Crafting a 26-minute show, it turns out, isn’t so different from crafting a blog post, except that the on-site process takes longer (and probably the editing as well). It’s all about stitching words and images together to tell a story.

I recently wrote another post, Searching for the lost village of Punkintown, about another wonderful patch of land in Eliot that Great Works helped to conserve in the 1990s. For more on hikes in the Seacoast region of Maine and New Hampshire, see the tab, “Hiking: 4k and more,” at the top of the page.

 

Searching for the lost village of Punkintown

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In the 1920s, unmarried sisters Mary and Almira Payne reportedly were the last residents of Eliot’s Punkintown, a small community of 10 or so families who once lived near the outlet of York Pond. One town history relates Mary had no legs below her knees and travelled by walking “like a toad.”

Today, the remnants of Punkintown (also spelled as Punkin Town) lie deep within 500 acres of conserved forest land between Route 236 in Eliot and Route 91 in York.   Punkintown Road, now a trail,  still connects these two routes.  Exploring this trail and others that lace through these woods,  I wonder how often Mary walked on Punkintown Road to York or South Berwick.  She never married, but had five children. Did she have a common-law marriage? What became of her children? And what happened to the home where she lived? Mary died in 1927 and Almira in 1936.  One account reports that both are buried in the woods near the site of their home.

On my adventures in Punkintown, I have not found that site, or other cellar holes and foundations that once supported homes, but the woods are full of historical clues, like small quarry ponds, cemeteries, and old stone walls.

Punkintown wasn’t truly a town, but might have been a world unto itself, especially once snow piled up on the narrow road. Today, hikers and mountain bikers can get a feel for that isolation when exploring the trails that loop around this forest full of wonders like witch hazel and sassafras trees, and views of Bartlett Mills and York Ponds.

This hand-drawn map shows the direct route to P-town. Explorers will definitely want to walk or ride the loop the goes to Bartlett Mill Pond and past the Plaisted Cemetery.

This hand-drawn map shows the direct route to Punkintown. Explorers will definitely want to walk or ride the trail that loops by the shore of Bartlett Mills Pond and past the Plaisted cemetery. Post a comment if you would like me to share a more specific description of the northerly, more complicated loop (yellow line).

One history of Eliot suggests that the area was settled by Major Charles Frost, who set up a grist mill in the York Pond area in the 1770s. Today, the outlet from York Pond meanders down a channel reinforced with stone walls that look like someone built them 200 years ago, or yesterday. The grist mill may have the reason a few families settled here in the early 1800s.

But was Punkintown as isolated and hardscrabble as these deep woods suggest today? Near the shore of Bartlett Mills Pond, the Plaisted cemetery includes a family monument, a sign that the family was fairly well off, at least by 19th century rural Maine standards.

The Plaisted family cemetery, near Bartlett Mills Pond. Patriarch Ebenezer Plaisted, the patr

The Plaisted family cemetery, near Bartlett Mills Pond. Patriarch Ebenezer Plaisted, born in 1793, lived a long life, dying at age 88 in 1881. The Plaisteds married into the Emery and Payne families, all of whose local histories date to the 17th century.

Also, a photo of the Plaisted family house, labeled as built before 1800, looks sizable and quite respectable.  This house reportedly burned down in 1916, but thus far, I have not located a foundation cellar hole (it’s possible that it was filled in, or swallowed up by the newer homes on the private land beyond the York Pond outlet stream).

Ebenezer Plaisted House

This photo, which I found online, was published in Margaret A. Elliot’s book ” Eliot”, published in 2005 by Arcadia Publishing for the Eliot Historical Society.

The Plaisted family settled in southern York County in the 17th century. Roger Plaisted, a likely ancestor to Ebenezer, was killed by Indians in South Berwick in October of 1675, along with his son, Roger. So Ebenezer was likely well-established in the area, with many relatives and community ties.

No one knows for sure how the community came by the name, Punkintown. Some say it was because the people here raised and sold lots of pumpkins.

People lived in Punkintown from the early 1800s until Mary and Almira passed away, with one history suggested that the community died out after a tuberculosis epidemic in the 1920s. However, I question that assertion, since tuberculosis was as common as mud before antibiotics and didn’t “wipe out” towns in a year or two, as infected people tended to succumb slowly, over many years).  Edward Vetter’s account tells us that locals recall that an eccentric woman named Emma Payne who may have lived in Punkintown as late as the 1960s. Emma reportedly came to town occasionally to sell vegetables, some of which may have been pilfered from other gardens or farms along the route.

The trail to Punkintown begins on Punkintown Road,  by the Brixham Dance Works on Route 236 (across from Marshwood High School). Visitors should park at the top of the hill, off to the right in a small space that holds two or three cars. Here there is a confusing three-way intersection. Walkers or mountain bikers should turn head to the right and up a small hill.

Park at the top of the hill crass from this somewhat confusing sing. , which

Park at the top of the hill directly across from this somewhat confusing sign, which designates house numbers on the road and has nothing to do with the trail.

After ascending the first part of the hill, you will reach an intersection. Here, the old Punkintown Road — and the most direct route to the York Pond area — continues straight up the hill.

The right fork (somewhat straight ahead) takes hikers on the old Punkintown Road. The left fork takes visitors to Rocky Hills and a variety of other trails, including a loop back to Punkintown Road. However, you need an adventurous spirit to explore in here, as trails are not marked (although it is hard to get truly deeply lost). Upon request, I will post more specific directions to this route, which includes a stop at small quarry pond.

After climbing up to and then along a ridge, the trail descends gently towards the headwaters of York Pond, where an outlet flows towards Bartlett Mill Pond.

Bridge over the outlet from York Pond. Note the beautiful stone work, which lines this stream and may date to the early 19th century. Here, Punkintown Road continues on private land posted against trespassing. Several houses are visible, and the road links up with Route 91 in York.

Exploring further, a side trail on the north side of the road leads to the shore of beautiful York Pond, a hidden gem in the forest. Behind the pond, the glacial drumlin, Swazey’s Hill, rises above the pond.  You can circle the hill on a flat trail, or climb up and over it on a trail that eventually lands back on Punkintown Road, where you would turn right to head back.  At one intersection, a small white arrow directs you to stay right. Pretty easy.

December view of York Pond.

December view of York Pond.

But there’s so much more to explore.  To find the Plaisted cemetery, you take another trail on the south side of Punkintown Road. The trail intersects the road in two places (see map above). If you are facing the York Pond outlet stream (looking toward the private land), the trail is to your right.  After about 50 yards of walking, you will find the cemetery and Bartlett Mill Pond.  If you continue along the woods trail that runs near the pond shore, it will wind back to Punkintown Road, which is basically the spine for these trails and others in the forest.

We turned off the main PUnkin town road to the a side trial dtoarards BArlemt mill, and e

The single-track trail along the shore of Bartlett Mill Pond, headings towards the Plaisted cemetery.

This beautiful swath of forest features many other trails to explore on foot or mountain bike, all of them suitable for what I call intermediate middle-aged lady mountain biking (woods roads, some single track, and some mud, with a few logs that I walk my bike over).

I’ve lived in the Seacoast region for over 20 years and until this fall, when I first visited Punkintown on a Great Works Land Trust walk, I didn’t even know that this patch of protected land existed. On my explorations since then, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ll definitely come back again for more adventures in Punkintown.

Bartlett Mills Pond.

Bartlett Mill Pond.

Sources and resources

I welcome any corrections or additions to this piece.

The Great Works Land Trust has been working with other entities for 20 years to conserve the land in this area.  Today, this 500-acre forest includes parcels owned by conserved by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, the Nature Conservancy, and the Town of Eliot.

Much of the information about Punkintown comes from Edward Vetter’s A Pictorial Tour of Eliot: Historical Markers, Plaques and Landmarks in Eliot, Maine, edited by Esther Morrow. Vetter’s account is based the memories of Frank Parsons, who relayed his memories of Punkintown in 1987, when he was 87.

Margaret A. Elliot’s Eliot, published in 2005 for the Eliot Historical Society, also includes some information on Punkintown.