Tag Archives: Kittery history

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.

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.

 

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

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This photo by early 20th century photographer and businessman Frank Walker documents one of the KKK "Konclaves" held in Kittery in the 1920s.

This photo by early 20th century photographer and businessman Frank Walker documents a large KKK parade held in Kittery in the 1920s (courtesy of the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum).

Why and how did Kittery-ites join the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s? The Foreside parade in this undated J. Frank Walker photo likely took place on either June 30, 1924, or August 17, 1925, when Portsmouth Herald articles document these two “Konclaves” .

The 1924 parade concluded with a “naturalization” ceremony — an initiation ritual that echoed the ceremony for becoming a U.S. citizen.  The festivities wrapped up at Locke’s Cove with a cross burning.

But even though these two parades are fairly recent events, we have only fragments of history about the Kittery Klan.  Were the marchers — an estimated 400, according to some — all from Kittery, or was this a region-wide gathering?  Kittery was a small town of 4,700, so it seems unlikely that a single organization would draw 400 locals, especially at a time when many belonged to one or more fraternal organizations. Then again, 1924 lacked the myriad entertainments of the current era, so maybe the Klan parade provided an opportunity for a summer social event. On Labor Day, 1924, a Klan parade in Saco drew 300 marchers–reportedly a mixed crowd of locals and Klan members from throughout New England–so perhaps Kittery’s parades drew a similar crowd.

Some say–and again, this is hearsay based on fragments of talk and memory — that the parades were organized to protest the construction of St. Raphael’s Catholic Church in Kittery.  But in the 1920s, no construction was happening at St. Raphael’s, established in 1916 to serve the town’s small community of 77 Catholics.  Parishioners celebrated Mass in a small chapel, constructed in 1916 within the existing foundation of a one-time stable; the church was built in 1933-1934 at the same Wentworth Street location.  St. Raphael’s history book mentions that Catholics faced some bigotry, including the burning of a cross on the grounds of the basement church, but includes no dates.

Another view of the parade, which shows the marching band that also participated. The photo is undated, but The lighting suggest that this is a different shot of the same parade as above (courtesy of the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum).

Another view of the parade, which shows the marching band that also participated (courtesy of the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum).

Between 1923-1925, Klan membership surged in Maine to over 20,000 people (as reported by the Klan, with other sources reporting higher numbers), mostly due to a charismatic leader, F. Eugene Farnsworth, and a fear that French-Canadian immigrants might gain political power. Thousands of Quebecois were working in the mills of Biddeford, Saco, Sanford and other Maine towns, with more crossing the border each year.

What was happening in Kittery at this time? The town didn’t have the large mills with hundreds of employees.  However, U.S. Census records show a population surge in Kittery from 1900, when 2,872 people lived in town, to 1920, when 4,763 residents were counted–an increase of 66%.  U.S. immigration as a whole peaked in these years.  Was Kittery’s population increase fueled by immigrants? Or was the surge due to expanding job opportunities at the Shipyard as it built up during World War I?

In the early days of St. Raphael’s, the parishioners were not French-Canadians; the original membership list includes names such as Curran, Witham, Bridges, and Drake. This small group had been around for years, initially rowing to Portsmouth to attend Mass and then later traveling to South Berwick’s St. Michael’s Church.

Further north, in Portland and beyond, King Kleagle F. Eugene  Farnsworth, a one-time hypnotist best described as a huckster, had capitalized on fears of French-speaking Canadian immigrants to generate interest in the Klan. In 1923, Governor Percival Baxter, a Republican, spoke out against the Klan, predicted that the organization would fail to influence the “level-headed citizens of Maine.”

But he was wrong. Two years later, Republican Ralph O. Brewster became Maine’s governor, thanks in large part to the support of the “White Knights” who backed him.

This circa 1910 postcard shows an Atlantic Shore Line trolley crossing Locke's Cove. The KKK ceremony and cross burning occurred somewhere in this vicinity (Postcard from collections of Seashore Trolley Museum).

This circa 1910 postcard shows an Atlantic Shore Line trolley crossing Locke’s Cove. The KKK ceremony and cross burning occurred somewhere in this vicinity (Postcard from collections of Seashore Trolley Museum).

Farnsworth promoted “100% Americanism,” by which he meant White Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. By this time, Irish Catholics were mainstream in East Coast cities, and politically powerful, and Maine had a small Irish-Catholic population (the oldest Catholic church in New England, Saint Patrick’s, was established in Newcastle in 1808).

But a new horde of non-English speaking Catholics in a rural state like Maine posed a threat. They might take all the jobs or spread diseases in their tenement houses. They might gain political power and demand funding for parochial schools, or worse.

These sentiments echoed national anxieties about immigrants, especially the “yellow swarms” from Italy and other southern and eastern European countries.  By the early 1920s, the Klan claimed 6 million members, many recruited with its “100% Americanism” rhetoric.

This 1924 Portsmouth Herald article...

This Portsmouth Herald article describes the parade on June 30, 1924, including the cross-burning at Locke’s Cove. A similar short article describes a parade on August 30, 1925.

Today, when I see these photos of ordinary citizens marching in white robes, I wonder who they were and why they marched. Were they “old Kittery” residents, fearful of being displaced by industrialization and a changing economy?  Were they suspicious of French-speaking immigrants, even if they didn’t know any of these “outsiders” who didn’t speak English, practiced a “foreign” religion, and allegedly owed their allegiance to a religious leader in a faraway country? Were they seeking connection and community with others who made them feel safe?

During the Gilded Age of the 1890s, the outside world rediscovered Kittery, which became a popular summer destination for tourists who stayed in the town’s five large hotels.

But before the tourists came, Kittery, along with the rest of the Piscataqua region, was a sleepy backwater, in decline since Jefferson’s Embargo in the 1800s killed off the merchant economy (Kittery lost 35% of its population between 1800 and 1810).  Although many stayed and got by with farming, fishing, building ships, more than 100 years passed before the Kittery reached its pre-Embargo population of about 3,100 people.  Vital records in the Town Reports — births and deaths — show the same names over and again,  many from families who had settled here during colonial times.

kkk at the Grange 1933 (2)

This January 19, 1933 update on Kittery Grange news mentions Kittery Klan No. 5 as contributing to an upcoming Unemployment Bazaar.

The last documented Klan event in Kittery is a 1933 notice about a social event at the Kittery Grange.  By then, the Klan’s national membership had dropped to 45,000, with 225 members reported in Maine in 1930. The Klan had imploded, due in part to the murder trial and unveiling of King Kleagle D.C. Stephenson, a one-time salesman who had murdered his girlfriend, along with a variety of other allegations of corruption and abuse of power. In some parts of the country, the Klan continued to terrorize its victims, especially African-Americans, but it had lost its force as a national organization.

But before its implosion, the Klan had achieved several goals: it had helped to secure the passage of the 1924 National Origins Act, which limited the number of immigrants, especially non-Protestants from southern and eastern Europe. Then in 1928, the Klan helped to defeat presidential candidate Al Smith, a Catholic.

Still a small group in Kittery hung on.  I wonder who these ordinary people were, and why we have forgotten about Kittery Klan No. 5 so easily.

Sources and resources

I welcome all additions, corrections, comments, or suggestions for further information about the Klan in Kittery, via the Comments section.

Many thanks to Kim Sanborn, Executive Director of the Kittery Naval & Historical Museum, for sharing her insights on the Klan’s presence in Kittery.

U.S. Census data is compiled in an easy-to-read format on the Kittery, Maine Wikipedia page, but I have not been able to verify the accuracy of this data.

“The King Kleagle of Maine’s Ku Klux Klan was an opportunist,” by Sharon Cummings.  SoMeOldNews: Surprising Southern Maine History.  Cummings’s research suggests that anti-immigrant King Kleagle Farnsworth was himself a Canadian immigrant from New Brunswick, although he claimed Columbia Falls, Maine as his birthplace.

“The Ku Klux Klan in New Hampshire, 1923-1927”, Stephen H. Goetz. Historical New Hampshire, Vol 43, No. 4, Winter 1988. Goetz also looks at the brief time of the KKK in New Hampshire, where long-established French-Canadian communities had largely assimilated into the mainstream.  He speculates that the national “social hysteria” over immigration and other issues fueled Klan membership (which required the significant expenses of a $10 initiation fee and $5 for the white robe), as well as the general popularity of all fraternal organizations.

“The Nativist Klan.” Maine Memory Network of the Maine Historical Society.

Not a Catholic Nation: The Ku Klux Klan confronts New England in the 1920s, by Mark Paul Richards. Amherst/Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015.

Richards’s book offers insightful and evidence-filled chapters on the rise of the Klan in Maine in the 1920s.  By the mid-1920s, Roman Catholics were the largest single religious group in the state, with 173, 893 adherents, compared to the Northern Baptist Convention, at 32,031, and the Methodist Episcopal Church, at 22,938.  Richards also cites a 1930 Washington Post article claiming a peak membership of 150,141 Klan member in Maine, the largest in New England, and almost 20% of Maine’s population, or 30% of the white native-born population.

U.S. Immigration Legislation: 1924 Immigration Act.  U.S. Immigration legislation online. The National Origins Act set limits on immigration and set up a quota system based upon the current population of the United States which basically guaranteed that the majority of immigration slots would go to immigrants from northern Europe (Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia).

“Uncomfortable History,” by Candace Kanes. Maine History Online. Maine Historical Society.

Related posts:

For more on Kittery history during the Gilded Age of the 1890s (especially on the PK&Y Trolley), see my posts “On Bridges and the Jet Set” and “Remnants of the Gilded Age at Brave Boat Harbor.”

On early 20th century immigration in Kittery: The little girl in the photo and The summer when Kittery aliens landed at the Town Office.

Lives lived, and lost, at the Kittery Town Forest

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Kittery purchased the land for the Town Forest, once known as the Poor Farm, in 1820. An 1852 Auditors report (the oldest I've uncovered) mentions the Almshouse. Since the original purchase included a house and a barn, the town was probably using it as an almshouse for many years prior to 1852.

Back in 1820, in Kittery, Maine, the town purchased the original 13-acre plot that became the Town Farm or Poor Farm.

Sometimes when I walk in Kittery’s 72-acre Town Forest, I wonder what became of Ella Hill and her girl Annie. From 1891 to about 1897, Ella and Annie lived here at the Town Farm, or Poor Farm. In 1891, the town spent $2 to move Ella and two children to the almshouse. She arrived with an infant son, Fred, in her arms. He died on May 22 that year and probably dwells in an unmarked grave nearby.

Ella had another son, John, born around 1878 when she was 20.  The 1880 census tells us that she and two-year-old John lived with Rachael Fernald and worked as a domestic servant. Ella’s father, John Hill, a farmer, died in 1880, so she perhaps went to live with and work at the Fernalds  to keep body and soul together for herself and her baby.  No husband is mentioned in the scant records I’ve found that document Ella’s life.  After the census, young John disappears, so perhaps Ella lost two children.

At the almshouse, Ella and little Annie probably ate supper each night with Adelaide and Charles Leach. By that time, Adelaide, about 60 years old, and Charles, her 49-year-old younger brother, had been residents, or “inmates,” of the almshouse for more than 2o years. Perhaps they provided comfort to Ella when her baby died. Perhaps she comforted them when William Leach, possibly their brother or another relative, died there on January 23, 1892, at age 64.

More inmate deaths followed during Ella’s stay. In 1892, Mary Taylor, age 45 died, followed by John Ricker, age 80, and Abigail Clements, age 79. Not long after, 88-year-old Joseph Parsons arrived. Perhaps Ella helped care for these elders to earn her keep.

Ella and Annie stayed on until around 1897, when they disappear from the Kittery town reports. Did Ella marry? Did she find employment in one of Kittery’s big hotels, or somewhere else?

Town records are silent on her eventual fate. They tell us a bit more about Adelaide and Charles, both of whom lived most of their lives at the Town Farm, and died there. On January 22, 1901, Adelaide died. Although the town report listed her name as a farm inmate for more than 30 years, nobody caught the mistake that named her “Annabelle Leach” in the vital statistics.  Charles died 15 years later, on September 20, 1916.

What the records don’t reveal is why the Leaches, an old Kittery family with roots dating to the 1600s, landed at the almshouse. They arrived, it seems, with other members of the Leach family, including their parents, Ebenezer and Iza, some time between 1861 and 1871; a town report from 1861-62 records expenses for “partial support” of 30-year-old Adelaide Leach at a private home. The 1860 census tells us that Ebenezer Leach was a fisherman, as was his son Charles. Various town reports  list the “Leach property” as under town ownership, valued at $500 in 1906 (but not part of the Town Farm, valued at $2,000). What fate befell the Leach family, so that they lost their land and perhaps their livelihoods, and ended up living out their days at the Town Farm? Why did two young adults — Adelaide and Charles – stay at the farm?

The blue-marked Quimby Trail offers a loop walk of about 3 miles through the forest.

The blue-marked Quimby Trail offers a loop walk of about 3 miles through the forest.

Today, the Town Forest is one of the Kittery’s under-the-radar resources, one in which I’ve enjoyed walking, running, and biking since the 1990s. Over the past 20 years, the forest surrounding the town land has shrunk, as housing developments have sprung up on all sides, but the Town Forest remains a great place to wander, and to wonder, about the people who once called this place home, including a good number who still remain, buried somewhere in unmarked graves.

In 19th century New England, the “poor farm” was a well-established institution where some residents worked at farm chores to pay their keep. However, evidence in Kittery’s town reports suggests that taxpayers generally supported the five to eight residents who lived there, with the town paying a salary to a “superintendent,” and bills for flour, wood, food, and other necessities, and even for hiring nearby farmers like William Haley and Samuel Norton to do the mowing and other heavy chores. Although it’s possible that “inmates” took care of a small garden, most were too old to do the hard physical labor of farm work.

The 19th century almshouse has a reputation as a misery-filled place where all manner of humanity was thrown together, elderly widows and young children mixed in with vagrants and drunkards. But some poor farms, especially in rural New England, were more convivial and communal – places of shelter and community where residents might play cards together or just enjoy the benefits of human companionship. They were more like small old-age homes, where elderly residents who had no family or whose family wouldn’t or couldn’t care for them lived out their last days.

The forest offers no dramatic vistas, but lots of old stone walls, a family cemetery, and other remains of the past that speak to lives lived and lost here.

The Town Forest offers no dramatic vistas, but lots of old stone walls, two family cemeteries, and other remains of the past that speak to lives lived and lost here. Here in the Haley Family Cemetery, walkers will find Captain Haley’s 1864 gravestone embedded in the ground, surrounded by other unmarked or illegible stones.

I suspect that the Kittery Town Farm almshouse had a community-like feel to it.  Adelaide and Charles Leach surely enjoyed the company of little Annie Hill, who lived at the farm until she was about seven. 

In 1820, Kittery purchased the original 13 acres for the farm, along with a house and a barn, for $325. Later, Captain John R. Haley left 59 surrounding acres to the town. It’s unclear when the town began using the house and land as its “poor farm,” but a town report from 1852 mentions the almshouse, so I suspect the land was purchased specifically to serve as a home for the poor. Some sources that discuss the Pepperrell family note that one of the Sparhawk brothers of Loyalist William Pepperrell ended up living at the almshouse (and the timing, around the 1820s, sounds about right, as a Sparhawk born in the 1750s or 60s would have been an elder by the 1820s).

Town records suggest that the town began to move away from using the almshouse as the shelter of last resort in the 1920s, when the number of residents declined to two and then to one, Mary Gunnison, an elderly woman who lived there with caretakers Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hall until around 1922.  

Later, the town rented the farm for a $175 a year.  In many years, maintenance expenses outweighed the rental income, which probably led to the decision to demolish the almshouse in 1961.  Many Kittery residents today still remember riding the school bus past the almshouse on Haley Road.

Evidence of porcupine activity in the forest; the porkies love the bark of the many hemlock trees.

Evidence of porcupine activity in the forest; the porkies love the bark of the many hemlock trees.

Somewhere in this forest is a lost and unmarked pauper’s burial plot that probably holds the Leaches and the other souls who died while living at the Town Farm. When the snow melts, I’ll continue to look for it, as I wander, and wonder, about these people, their stories, and why they landed at the poor farm.

Sources and resources

The Town Forest, at 77 Haley Road, runs between Haley and Lewis Roads, with parking areas on both ends. At the southern end, the former town pound, where stray livestock was once corralled, is an interesting feature.

I welcome any comments or additional information that might fill out this story about the Town Farm.

The Town Farm now features one main loop trail, about 3 miles long, known as the Quimby Trail, named for the late Conrad Quimby, a retired newspaper publisher who called Kittery home for many years, and as Chair of the Conservation Commission spearheaded the creation of walking trails in the Town Forest. Numerous herd trails also thread through the forest.  Hunters regularly tramp in these woods in the fall, and more adventurous walkers can plunge deep into the forest without fear of getting hopelessly lost (especially now that residential development surrounds the forest).

Walkers will find the Haley Family Cemetery, on the Quimby Trail, soon after it bears left (from the Haley Road entrance). The Lewis Family Cemetery is located at the Haley Road entrance, next to the Town Pound.

The Rice Library holds town reports dating to 1874. More reports (but not all) can be found in Maine’s Digital Commons. The earliest report I found was dated 1852.

Some general information about the 19th century poor farm comes from David Wagner’s excellent study of six New England town farms and almshouses: The Poorhouse: America’s Forgotten Institution,  New York; Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

Information on the 1820 purchase is from the March 3, 2002 Portsmouth Herald article by Amy Wallace, “Kittery Hunts for Town Forest Solution,” by Amy Wallace.

Hunting is permitted in the Town Forest, so I recommend wearing hunter orange Monday to Saturday from November 1 to mid-December and avoiding the forest altogether at dusk and dawn, when hunters are most active. No hunting on Sundays.

 

Remnants of the Gilded Age at Brave Boat Harbor

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Kittery Point, Maine — I dip my paddle in the water, push the kayak into the channel, and glide away from the causeway.  I’m paddling into the marsh, heading out to Brave Boat Harbor for high tide.

At least once each summer, I paddle these quiet waters, squeezing my trip in between the tides and the rest of life.  Even though I’ve paddled the marsh many times, I always feel on the brink of a discovery that might be significant,  even if only to me.

Back in the 1600s, Brave Boat Harbor was a significant discovery for the explorers and early settlers who first came here. The shallow harbor provided safe anchorage from the angry Atlantic.  But the entrance is narrow, and the surf makes passage tricky. Hence, only brave boats dared to enter.

Today, I am floating level with the marsh grass on an incoming moon tide.  The astronomical high tide gives me longer window to explore the marsh, but typically I count on three hours around the published high tide (e.g. if high tide is at noon, I can set out at 10:30 a.m. and plan on returning to the causeway by 1:30).  I’ve learned the hard way that if I linger too long in Brave Boat Harbor, I will end up scraping mud, or stranded.

The marsh is close to home, but feels remote and wild. I spot a kingfisher, skimming across the grass and up into the trees.  A family of snowy egrets wades on the flooded plain. In the distance, the surf thuds at the harbor’s entrance.

IMG_1373

A great blue heron lifts off along with a snowy egret. The egrets, once a source of plumage for ladies’ hats, were  on the verge of extinction but now are  common site on the marsh.  They are here  not by accident, but because thoughtful people took action to conserve the marshes on Maine’s southern coast.

This marsh isn’t wilderness. As I navigate the series of S-turns towards the harbor, I can see the occasional house on its perimeter. But this marsh, officially designated as the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, offers refuge both for me and the birds and animals who dwell or pass through these waters and grasses.

Fewer than a hundred years ago, the marsh was a domestic landscape. For three centuries, horses and oxen dragged people and tools across these spongy fields so that farmers could harvest the grass for animal fodder. In the channel, human-made rocky paths once allowed animals to safely cross the mucky bottom.

Then, during the Gilded Age, when droves of tourists  began flocking to Kittery Point and York Harbor, workmen sunk pilings deep into the mud of Brave Boat Harbor to build a trolley trestle. For fifty years, the Portsmouth, Kittery and York (PK & Y) Electric Railway delivered vacationers from the ferry landing on Badgers Island in Kittery to York Harbor, with the clattering trolley cars traversing the marsh eight times a day during the summer months.

The PK & Y electric trolley doing a run on the trestle built through Brave Boat Harbor.

The PK & Y electric trolley doing a run from Kittery to York Harbor on the trestle built across Brave Boat Harbor (New England Electric Railway Historical Society).

This hand-drawn map shows the Routes of the different trolley lines in Kittyer and York, including the Portmouth, Kittery and York Electric Railway (PK & Y) line that hugged the coast and then crossed over Brave Boat Harbor. The trolleys ran until 1923, when the new Memorial Bridge facilitated the rise of the automobile (Seashore Trolley Museum Collection).

This hand-drawn map shows the routes of the different trolley lines in Kittery and York, including the PK & Y line that hugged the coast and then crossed over Brave Boat Harbor. The trolleys ran until 1923, when the new Memorial Bridge facilitated the rise of the automobile (Seashore Trolley Museum Collection).

As my paddle pushes the kayak forward, the vegetation changes, with less saltwater grass and more of the sedge-like salt meadow grass that was harvested for hay. The current stills as I approach the harbor. I push the boat around another bend and into the flooded pool, the still water tinted pink from the clouds above. Even though I’ve been out here many times, this moment of gliding into blue emptiness of Brave Boat Harbor always feels exhilarating.

Black cormorants roost on the line of rotting pilings. The birds stand with their breasts thrust forwards, their necks held high, as if standing at attention. At the harbor entrance, between Rayne’s Neck and Sea Point, small waves crash.

Relatively few kayakers venture out here. On this day, I spot a three or four others, but on the rocky beach,  I eat my lunch in solitude.

The trolley trestle falling into the marsh. The trolley stopped running in 1923, almost 100 years ago. I wonder how long these historical remnants will linger.

The remnants of the trolley trestle falling into the marsh.

Almost 100 years have passed since the trolleys stopped running. The pilings won’t last forever. Many have withered to anonymous stumps. People who aren’t familiar with the marsh’s history don’t know where they came from, or why they are there.  A few older folks in the region still recall riding the trolley as small children, but in a few years, all human memories of a bustling Brave Boat Harbor will disappear.

Here, these shorter pilings sit on a bed that would

Here, these shorter pilings sit on a solid bed built up to support them. The bed usually forms a low barrier but was flooded during the full moon tide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exploring these remnants of history of the marsh enriches my time here.  Still, I’m glad the marsh is a quiet place today, one that offers a mental escape from a mind intent on relentless planning and doing.

Kayaking here is a meditation in letting go. The ebb and flow of the tide dictates my itinerary. If I ignore the tide, I will end up stuck in the muck. If I note it, I glide on an authentic source of flow.

Sources and resources

The Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge was established in 1966 in honor of its namesake, although Rachel Carson did her work further up the coast, near Boothbay Harbor.  The Refuge protects 50 miles of marsh and coast in southern Maine.

For more on the Memorial Bridge and its relationship to the rapid decline of the Gilded Age “big hotel” era in Kittery, Maine, see my post, On Bridges and the Jet Set.

Experienced kayakers might enjoy the loop paddle through the marsh and around Gerrish Island to Pepperrell Cove and up Chauncey Creek to the causeway.  However, you need an ocean-worthy kayak to do, as ledges off Sea Point create waves and  swell.  It’s not a paddle for novices, and I wouldn’t recommend doing it alone.