A Visit with Grampa 14 -16 January 1989: Transcription of an audio recording made while driving through Poland and Auburn and sitting around the old kitchen table at the Leroy Frank homestead in Hackett’s Mills, Poland, Maine 14-16 January 1989. In the company of Leroy W. Frank, Thomas W. Frank, Hal T. Frank, Sara C. Frank and Royal T. Frank.
Introduction
During my final year of medical school, from 14 - 18 January 1989, I paid one of my last visits to Grampa up in Maine. I didn’t have the opportunity to visit often and had long been planning to interview him about his life and our family history. I also wanted to preserve some of the anecdotes I had heard him relate over the years so I brought along a tape recorder. My father and my sister Sara were present as well. We visited for three days and drove around to various sites germane to our family history or to Grampa’s boyhood. We traversed the Hardscrabble Road, drove around Minot and Minot Corner, and wandered through a very icy Mountain View (aka Marston’s Corner) Cemetery (Grampa was the only one of the four of us who did not slip and fall!). We even drove to the site of Grampa’s former residence on the Jackass Annie Road. We covered a lot of ground and I knew by the end of the week that I had probably asked too much of him. He was completely worn out. We did quite a bit of walking on icy, snow covered ground the day before we left and Grampa’s diary entry the day after we left notes that he was “very tired.” Two days after we left he wrote, “Once to and from the mailbox was all the traveling I did. It wasn’t planned that way, but that’s how it turned out. I’m not rested up yet from the 17th." I think however that Grampa would be pleased that his efforts resulted in this enduring record.
In retrospect there are many additional questions I would have asked him and there are also many facts and dates that I can now look-up online and wouldn't have to ask, but there was no internet in 1989. Truly these recordings are great treasures and I’m very glad I made them. Hearing Grampa’s inimitable laugh and the voices of my father and Uncle Royal almost puts them back in the same room with me. These recordings have left me with something more tangible and less ephemeral than memory alone. I will gladly share these recordings with any who would like them. If I find a way to link them to this blog I will do so. I had always planned to transcribe the tapes but the length of the recording kept this project on the back burner for nearly thirty years! I have transcribed them nearly verbatim and, although a few hems and haws have been omitted, I have not tried to adapt the spoken word to suit the written page. Although Grampa never would have written down these words as he spoke them, my hope is that you will be able to better imagine Grampa’s voice if I leave his Maine dialect unaltered. Where appropriate I have added annotation. In some places I am unable to add clarifying annotation because too much time has elapsed since the recording was made and I no longer recall what was said. For example, I did not always turn the recorder on quickly enough to catch the beginning of an anecdote or conversation and a few words were lost here and there. Occasionally Grampa recited or read the same poem twice or told a variation of the same story more than once. I left these recapitulations in place and did not try to combine or edit them. I have included photographs, letters and documents when they bear upon the topic. A few of the photographs were taken at the time the recordings were made. Contributors to the recordings include myself (Tom), my sister Sara, my father Hal T. Frank (Dad), Royal T. Frank (Uncle Royal) and Leroy W Frank (Grampa).
And so, the transcription begins:
Tape I
Tom: Riding with Grampa, um, visiting some of the ancestral homes, January 14, 1989.
Ok Grampa, start now:
Grampa: “Methuselah ate what he found on his plate
And never as people do now
Did he note the amount of the calorie count,
He ate it because it was chow!”
[This is the first stanza of an anonymously authored jingle entitled originally “And He Ate Meat” but frequently re-printed under the title “Methuselah’s Diet.” Grampa recited this often but he did not write it. The rhyme which dates to about 1907, has a curious history. It was originally circulated by the meat packing industry in the wake of Upton Sinclair’s highly influential book The Jungle to reassure Americans that it was indeed safe to eat packaged meat. [Schwarz, Richard W., John Harvey Kellogg, M.D.: Pioneering Health Reformer, Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Pub Assoc., 2006, p. 42.]
Tom: OK Grampa, tell me about this schoolhouse.
[In front of the Minot Corner schoolhouse]
Well, I went to school here when I was eight years old until I was ten, and then I moved down to Hardscrabble and went to the Hardscrabble school. But we had school downstairs and the upstairs was empty for a while. And then they had school upstairs and the downstairs was empty. Then, years later they had both upstairs and down one year when I went there. A nice old schoolhouse. Four generations.... no … three generations went there. My father was there at the school, I went to school [there] and your father went to school there.
Tom: And what do you remember about the school Dad?
Dad: Well I just remember I came here when I was five years old and my first year of school was here. Then we moved away and I didn’t come back here again until I was ready to enter the seventh grade at age twelve. Then I attended the school upstairs. They had grades six through, I believe, six through eight upstairs here. Downstairs they had what they called sub-primary or kindergarten through the fifth grade. I spent my sub-primary or kindergarten year downstairs and upstairs I did the seventh and eighth grades.
In this photo, my father, Hal T Frank is fifth from left in the middle of the front row (enlarged in the inset). The teacher, "Mrs. Alice Frank," was Goldie Alice (Hayward) Frank, wife of Dad's first cousin, once removed, Claude E. Frank.
[We then drove down to the Hardscrabble Road and parked outside the old Frank farmstead at 838 Hardscrabble Rd in East Poland.]
Grampa: Yup. I lived here until I was fifteen years old and I milked cows. I started to milk when I was eight years old and I remember one time I did a milking here and my neighbor was drunk and couldn’t milk his cows and he wanted me to come up and help him. He milked one and I milked nine and I remember I said “Boy, I’m nine years old and I milked nine cows!” I thought that was pretty big, pretty good. I was proud of myself. I could milk one in five minutes, ten cows in an hour. And I enjoyed that work. So, I didn’t care for school. People told me, “You got to get an education. Go through high school and get a good position.” And I said “This position is alright with me. I like milking cows and working on the farm.” So, I didn’t work very hard in school.
Tom: And so that was your window up there?
Grampa: I was born up where those two windows are, [in] the room up there. But after I got to be a big kid I used to sleep downstairs behind that window between the trucks there. In that room there.
Tom: Does it look pretty much as it did then?
Grampa: The building looks just the same on the outside. The same shape and everything.
Sara: Wasn’t it white though Grampa? It seems to me I remember it being white.
Grampa: Well yeah it was white clapboards and then later they painted it green with white trimmings.... and now they’ve got these fiber shingles on top of the clapboards. I don’t like the looks of it as well.
Sara: No, it should be white.
Grampa: And those three windows there, those are finished-off rooms up over the stable. And they used to have hired men here and the hired men had those rooms up there.
Tom: Now who was the first Frank to own this?
Grampa: Whitney Frank. And then, then his son, my father, Hal, and then Walter owned it. Hal sold out to Walter and I came right back as soon as I could and stayed here until I was fifteen years old and Uncle Walter died and, and the buildings were sold. The land and buildings were sold and I had to leave. But I would have stayed here all of my life here if I could
have. I liked it. If I’d have understood the business part of it I would have stayed. I could do the work but I didn’t know the business end of the farming and I had to give it up. I didn’t even try it. I didn’t
have a chance to try it.
Detail from above photo. L-R Walter C. Frank, James Frank, Bertha A (Winslow) Frank (probably holding her daughter Miriam who was born in 1902) and Harry L. Frank (aka Hal) ca 1904. James was Whitney’s younger brother, born deaf, his speech was difficult to understand and there were a few jokes in the family about some of his expressions. He lived with Walter and Hal until his death in 1907. Royal T. Frank, (Hal and Walter’s brother) moved-in for a while with his family after James died.
Tom: How old was Whitney when he purchased this place?
Grampa: I think he was a young man, in his twenties. And he raised his family here. His father owned another house in this neighborhood. His father’s name was Thomas Frank. And they raised a large family. But right here my father, and my uncles and my grandfather and two of his brothers lived here.
Tom: Were they born here?
Grampa: No, no. My father was. My father was born here, and so was I. And my brother and my sisters were born here.
Tom: Were they born in the same room as you were, or you don’t know?
Grampa: I don’t know, I’m not sure, but I think so.
Tom: Well, I’m just going to get out and take a picture of it.
Frank siblings (Leroy, Emily, Miriam and Lawrence) at the old homestead ca. 1965
Sara: I want to get out too and take a look around.
Grampa: They were roofing this barn here. A man was up near the ridge pole and nailing on shingles and he began to slip down the roof and he couldn’t stop, he kept struggling and trying to stop himself going down but he turned on his back and dug his heels into the roof but it didn’t do any good he kept right sliding toward the eves and when he got to the eves he says “Now’s the nipper!” and over the eves he went right down into the manure pile. Way up to his neck in the manure pile.
Tom: [Laughter] Who fished him out?Grampa: [Laughter] I don’t remember. I didn’t see it, I heard tell about it but.
Sara: Nice soft landing anyway!
Grampa: Yup.
Dad: It was right out there, wasn’t it Dad? At the side of the barn?
Grampa: Ya.
[We then drove across the way and parked outside the old Hardscrabble schoolhouse which was very close by at 327 Hardscrabble Road. In 1989 it was a private residence but Google maps image from 2019 shows it to be home to Hair Essentials, Family Hair Care and Precision Builders. Most of the trees Grampa and his classmates planted appear to have been removed. The ledge on which Grampa twisted his arm is still visible behind the building.]
Tom: Tell me about this school Grampa.
Grampa: This is where I first went to school when I was five years old. And it didn’t have the front porch there then. But the rest of the building looks just as it did then in those days. And these trees... us kids set them out. They were little tiny trees. Every arbor day we’d set out two or three trees.
Tom: So, you planted all of these [trees in front of the schoolhouse]?
Grampa: Yes, these were all trees that we set out. And this ledge here... we used to go on top of the ledge and play at recess time. And I remember I ran down over that ledge as fast as I could run. And I cut my toe and went down and I landed on my hands to save my face but I twisted my left arm and I had to carry my arm in a sling for two or three weeks. Didn’t break it but it twisted the muscles and I had to be in a sling for quite a while. But we had a lot of fun there.
Tom: Did any generations besides you go to this school?
Grampa: My father went there and my uncle went there to school. And my grandfather taught school there.
Tom: Your grandfather taught school here?
Grampa: Yes, he taught school there and ran this farm here too.
Tom: Thomas Frank? No...
Grampa: Whitney. Whitney Frank. [1]
Tom: What were you going to say Dad?
Dad: Well Dad had a little run-in with an older boy named Frank Fields[2] here and Dad also at one time asked the teacher what graduation meant and said that he was going to graduate. Let’s go into that a little bit. Remember when you were going to graduate?
Grampa: Oh yes, I got sick of going to school, I was only, it was first grade, I was just a little fellah and I got up and I says, “I’m graduating” and I got up [quit the school] and started up the house but my father came down and met me and picked me up and took me right back in. [Laughter]. Ah, those were the days boy.
Tom: What was the run-in with Frank Fields?
Dad: When you brought the sled down around his ears. He said Minot Corner was too much for you, you had to go down to Hardscrabble to go to school.
Grampa: Oh yes. [Some of my classmates] teased me a lot. They said “Minot Corner was too much for him so he come down here to Hardscrabble.” And they uh, got me mad. I took a sled and brought it down over [Frank Field’s] head. And the teacher put a stop to that so I couldn’t kill him. [laughter]
Tom: Well, I guess I’ll go out and take a picture of it. It looks like it’s a house now, eh?
Grampa: Yes, People live there now, yup.
[1] Whitney Frank (1815-1898) was Thomas and Lucy (Small) Frank’s oldest surviving son. He raised his family in the farmhouse in which Grampa was born. Whitney was the second of twelve children, his older brother Royal Thaxter Frank died at the age of 21, possibly of a ruptured appendix. Thomas’s brother, Alpheus Frank of Gray, named his first-born son Royal Thaxter Frank in 1836 after his deceased nephew. Alpheus’s son Royal Thaxter Frank was the first resident of Gray to attend West Point (class of 1858) and retired from the Army a Brigadier General in 1899. In addition to his brief service as a schoolmaster, Whitney was a successful farmer and prominent citizen. He served as a Poland town selectman in 1852 and 1853.
[2] Frank E. Field (1905-1976), son of Charles and Bessie (Mack) Field.
Dad (speaking to his father): What about the time that the teacher was having you read and you repeated what the teacher said?
Grampa: Oh. That’s when I was just learning to read. She had the book in front of me and I stood there and she says “See the bird” and I said “See the bird” and I repeated everything she said but I didn’t even look at the words, you know. I just thought this was easy, all I had to do was repeat what she said. Then she said, “Leroy, are you asleep?” and I said “Leroy are you asleep” and then the whole school began to laugh ! Taking life altogether too easy! [Laughter]
[We then returned home to Hackett’s Mills, and sat together around the kitchen table, Grampa recited his poetry from some notebooks. We then kept Grampa up past his bedtime playing Boggle]
Poem about Bud, the dog.
Grampa: Poor Bud, the one-eyed
Got that way when he tried to be free
He didn’t get far when he was struck by a car
That is why all he can see
Must be seen with one eye
Poor Bud.
[Recorder clicks off]
[Recorder clicks on]
Grampa: Now how do I start that?
Grampa: It was getting along towards evening
After the close of the day
Late in the month of April, Or maybe it was May
There was just enough breeze stirring to make the pine trees sigh
When it dawned on me that I always have lived,
and never, ever will die
There was a whippoorwill shrill from the wooded hill
And peepers from the bog
And from a distant neighbor’s yard the barking of a dog
Now it wasn’t the sight of the soft moonlight, the season, the sounds or the weather
No, I believe it was a blending of all these things together
That gave me that wonderful feeling
That this individual, I
Have lived since before the beginning
And never, ever will die
[Grampa reading from a notebook containing some of his poetry]
At the End of a Hot August Day
Away from the toil and strife and wrath
Into a cleansing, soothing bath
Then turning the big fan on full blast
Standing in its heavenly breeze bare-assed
Getting all cooled off at last
A perfect end to one Hellish day
Grampa: That’s the end of that one.
Grampa: Under these stones lie Jamies' bones
O Death, it’s my opinion
You ne’er before took such a blitherin bitch
Into your dark dominion
Tom: That one was by Robert Burns.
[Entitled “Epitaph on a Noisy Polemic,” this piece first appeared in the Kilmarnock edition of Burns' Works. “Jamie,” was James Humphrey, a mason who was clearly no friend to Burns. Curiously “bitch” appears to have been a gender-neutral insult.]
A handwritten variant of the poem Grampa recites below. He signed it, "Yorel Knarf" as he was often wont to do. Yorel Knarf of course, being "Leroy Frank" spelled backward
Grampa: Before the 1907th year
It’s safe to say that I wasn’t here
I wasn’t here and I wasn’t there
It seems that I wasn’t anywhere
Now tell me neighbor and tell me friend
Before the beginning and after the end
What is there?
We’ll keep it a secret, please don’t shout
But tell me what it’s all about.
I’m listening.
Cremation for Me
When I pass on
I hope that my remains will be
A small scoop of ashes
Scattered o’er the lea
Just a small scoop of ashes
And then no one should mind
Which portion is my head,
Or which is my behind
Dad: Now tell them why you wrote that.
Grampa: Huh.
Dad: It had to do with Betty[1] being afraid that Grammy was buried wrong end to. No it wasn’t Betty it was....
Grampa: Oh yeah, that’s right. No that was Lila, Lila.[2]
Dad: Oh Lila.
Grampa: Yes, she was in here crying and having a helluva time. She said they’d buried her mother wrong end to. They ought to dig her up and turn her around. [laughter]
[1] Helen Beatrice (Thurston) (Pressey) (Casperonis) Mitton aka "Aunt Betty", 1916-2002.
[2] Lila Adeline (Thurston) Price, 1898-1978.
A Prescription for My Neighbor’s Insomnia
So my rooster keeps you awake with his crowing
Why you don’t sleep better I wouldn’t be knowing
But if you don’t mind, I might suggest
That you don’t go to bed till you need the rest.
If you’ll just stay up till you’re tired out
My rooster can crow, and the children shout
The dog can bark and the old cow bellow,
You’ll sleep all night, like a real good fellow
To open your eyes, you’ll not be able
Till the good wife calls you to the breakfast table
If this doesn’t work you can give us a lift
Down here in the mill on the midnight shift.
Uncle Royal: That was for George Leadbetter,[1] wasn’t it?
Grampa: Yup.
[1] George Elwood Leadbetter, 1910-1994, son of George E and Georgia A (Thompson) Leadbetter.
Glory to God at Dawn
Awareness comes, I am alive
A rooster crows, the clock strikes five
Over the river to the east a’ ways
The roaring traffic is starting its day
The winter air is damp and cold,
I’m quite short-winded and getting old.
But I’m thanking God I have the wits and time
To sit at the table and dream up a rhyme.
And where did I get the wits and time
To wield a pen and scribble a rhyme?
They were loaned to me by the One above
The God of wisdom and light and love.
Grampa: And this is
Whew, Burr!!!
It’s wrong to complain
But it seems that I’ve got to
It’s too warm to use blankets
And too cold not to
I’m all tired-out cause from midnight till dawn
I was tossing em off and pulling em on
[laughter]
Absent Minded Abbie
She may be a poor-planner, but she isn’t a shirk
And oft times she finds herself, piled up with work
She was doing an ironing early one morning
When most of the townfolks were stretching and yawning
And while she was ironing she hummed and she sang,
And all of a sudden, the telephone rang.
And hardworking Abbie, the poor thoughtless dear,
Slapped the hot iron right up to her ear!
Perhaps you wonder what happened now?
She woke the whole town up shrieking hell-OW!
Yes, she rattled the windows with an awful hell-OW!
[laughter]
Tom: What made you think of that one?
Grampa: Why I don’t remember how I happened to.
Satan
Satan is real, you can bet your ass
He’s a convincing, conniving snake in the grass
He’ll lure you away from your hope in God
And tell you your future ends down in the sod.
Satan the Devil
The evil spirit is real, you can bet your ass
It’s more dangerous to man than an unfaithful wife
It may lure him away from his trust in God
And convince him his future ends down in the sod
[Unintelligible]
I’m just a country boy from up in Maine
I get in lots of trouble when I try to entertain
If I succeed too well, I’m awake all night
Tighter than a teddy bear, higher than a kite
That’s the end of that I haven’t got any more in [this notebook].
I’ve got some more in here I think....
“The Marvelous Machine” ... I read that already.
“To Dad, when you feel inspired, please set it down on these pages.”
[Sally’s gift inscription]
“As I was watching the goats in the barnyard” ....
.... That’s the way that [poem] started.
As I was watching the goats in the barnyard, after the close of day
It was late in the month of April, or maybe it was May
There was just enough breeze stirring to make the pine trees sigh
When it dawned on me, I have always lived and never, ever will die
There was a whippoorwill shrill from the wooded hill
And peepers from the bog
And from a distant neighbor’s yard, the barking of a dog
Now it wasn’t the sight of the soft moonlight, the season, the sounds, or the weather
No, I believe it was a blending of all these things together
That gave me that wonderful feeling
That this individual, I
Have lived since before the beginning
And never, ever will die
This is ...
Reflections at Forty
This day I’ve reached forty
A most fearful plight
The thought makes me shudder and shiver at night
As the pain in my joints becomes more severe
And my fair, flaxen foretop recedes to the rear
But one thought makes me happy
My head very soon
Will reflect the light, and shine like the moon
[laughter]
The following verses are comments on our very changeable weather and the extremes of cold and heat with which we are blessed here in Maine.
The weather is warm in Hackett’s Mills
Fog has crept in and hid in the hills
Folks are stricken with coughs and chills
The doggone dump is dismal
Sudden Change
The ground is frozen and covered with snow
It’s clear as a crystal and forty below
Some folks may like it but I don’t know
I like it a wee bit warmer
Dog Days
There’s a chirping of crickets from the fields and the thickets
And the hills [unintelligible] in the haze
We don’t cease perspiring
Even after retiring
For the nights are as hot as the days, my friends
The nights are as hot as the days.
At the End of a Hot August Day
Away from the toil and strife and wrath
Into a cleansing, soothing bath
Then turning the big fan on full blast
Standing in its heavenly breeze bare-assed
Getting all cooled off at last
A perfect end to one Hellish day
“The above is a bit profane and some verse or worse I’ve written is more profane than that. Did you ever stop to think of what this word “profane” means? Fane is a word meaning a temple, church or alter. And profanity is contempt of God and sacred things. To the real profane person, nothing is sacred. Profanity is easy to drift into and hard to avoid. It’s one of Satan’s traps. Let’s not forget that Satan is real and so is God. It’s best for us to hope and believe that we are from God.”
Vandalism and Misdemeanors
Many lose their freedom and all of their possessions
Because of misdirected aggressions
Problems
Two problems faced me early today
They were who shall I write to,
And what will I say.
A voice that I heard, it came from above
It said, write to your wife man,
The woman you love
And then came an order that gave me a chill
It was “Get busy now, or Ed Bilodeau will!”
Grampa: Ed Bilodeau was a fella that had a crush on your grandmother when she was in the hospital. [laughter]
Uncle Royal: Oh, that crazy sonofabitch. Was he crazy! He was an orderly there. He was in his sixties.
Dad: I was visiting Mom in the hospital [unintelligible] and she had gotten a letter with that poem in it. And Sally, Freeman’s wife was there. And she was laughing, when Mom read that. She got a big kick out of it.
Royal: [Ed Bilodeau] sent her a whole thing of plastic flowers, an arrangement, out here. It was real pretty.
Grampa: He wrote and asked me if he could come out and visit. I said, “Come ahead, if you want to.” He never did. [laughter]
Grampa: Here’s the “Damaged Dog”
Poor Bud, the one-eyed
Got that way when he tried to be free
He didn’t get far when he was struck by a car
Now all he can see
Must be seen with one eye
Poor Bud.
My wail and my woe and my worry at seventeen
If things continue as they are, I’ll be a wage-slave all my life
I’ll never own a house and land, and never have a wife.
“I didn’t let em continue that way!”
August 29th 1981
This day Scott and Brenda became man and wife
May they overcome illness, worry and strife
May they live together for year after year
May they have their Golden Wedding Anniversary here
May it be like a great story, poem or song
Then if it lasts forever it won’t be too long
Thanks
We give thanks dear God above
Giver of wisdom, light and love
For all our many blessings
For the sense of balance, that we may walk
For our voices, that we may sing and talk
For the chance to learn to read and write
For our beds and blankets in the cold, dark night
For the strong, able folks that tended us, ere we could tend ourselves
For inspiring our builders to
Build vehicles that outrun the deer, outswim the fish, and outfly the birds
For inspiring doctors to repair broken bodies.
Teach us to get along with one another
Teach us to avoid war
Teach us to strengthen the weak
And may we defeat the very Devil
I Wonder
I wonder,
Is there anyone here at this august meeting
Who can tell us what started the first heart beating
And would you tell us just for fun,
Exactly how the job was done?
We have many shining heads and some crowned with snow
But there’s so many things that we just don’t know
“Yup. That’s it I guess. Yup, very limited.”
End of Tape I
Tape II
Tom: Grampa talking about the Freeman family Bible with me and discussing other aspects of the family tree.[1] Grampa, what do you know about this Bible?
Grampa: I really don’t know very much about it. It was in the family all my life. And when I was a little boy, I knew it came from the Freeman family and the Freemans were my grandmother’s people – my father’s mother’s people, my paternal grandmother. Her name was Mary Frost Freeman. She is in here... right here. She was my grandmother. She was born Sept 25, 1825 in Standish, down in the town of Standish. And her mother, hid in a brush pile, when the Indians massacred the whole family, but she kept out of sight, and after they’d left she went to the nearest white settlement, which I think was in Portland.
Tom: What was her mother’s name?
Grampa: Her mother’s name was Mary Frost.[2] That’s about all I know about this. These other people here are Hamblens. I don’t know them. I don’t know who they are really but they’re related to the Freemans.
Tom: Who wrote all these names down in here, these Hamblen names?
Grampa: No, I’m not sure but I think that handwriting is [that of] my Uncle Grenville Chipman. [Julius Grenville Chipman (1837-1924) was the husband of Whitney Frank's daughter Sarah and the father of his cousin Ethelinde or Ethel]
Tom: This handwriting here, all of it, or just the more recent [entries]?
[1] Grampa had given me the Freeman Family Bible several years earlier and I brought it back to Maine with me on this visit so I could look over the entries with Grampa. When we looked through the Bible and discussed the entries, Grampa was pretty tired-out and the various relationships were so unclear to me that sometimes my questions, in turn, confused Grampa. Much of what he knew about the family history he had obtained in discussions with his Uncle Walter. Grampa never knew any of the Freeman family personally. For this reason, the transcription of our conversation above should not be used to understand any of the Freeman or Hamblen family relationships. Years later (in 2012) I clarified the genealogy of the Freeman-Hamblen branch of the family and published an annotated transcription of this Bible record. See “Freeman-Hamblen Family Bible: Gorham, Standish, and Poland, Maine, An Annotated Transcription” in The Maine Genealogist, Vol 34, No. 2 (May 2012), pp. 79-87.
[2] Mary Frost, entered in the Bible as “Polly Frost”, was actually Mary Frost Freeman’s maternal grandmother. The name “Mary Frost Freeman” does not appear in the Bible. Her name is written in the Bible only with a middle initial as “Mary F. Freeman.” There is no written record of her full name and we know her middle name only because Grampa remembered Walter referring to her as “Mary Frost Freeman.” In discussing the Freemans during the taped interview, he thought that “Mary Frost” was the mother of “Mary Frost Freeman” but the Bible shows that “Mary Frost” (given in the Bible as “Polly Frost”) was actually Mary Frost Freeman’s maternal grandmother. Mary Frost Freeman’s mother, Sally (Hamblen) Freeman, was the daughter of Joseph Hamblen and Polly Frost.
Grampa: That’s all one man’s handwriting and I think that was written, or copied, copied by my Uncle Grenville Chipman, my Aunt Sarah’s husband.
Tom: Do you know how old this Bible is?
Grampa: No, I’m not sure but it’s got to be well over one hundred years old. It’s almost the same shape it was when I first saw it.
[
Tom: Well you can be sure I’ll take good care of it.
Grampa: Yup, I’m sure you will. You were the only grandchild I had that was interested in it, I think. Nobody else expressed any interest in it so I was glad that you did. [Reading through Bible again] “John Freeman, died 1864.” He must have been a brother to my grandmother.
Tom: Look at this. “George E. Freeman, died Sept 4th 1862, aged 27 yrs, 7 mos, of a wound in his head received Aug 3rd, Washington, in a Battle near Centreville, Virginia, 27...”
Grampa: “27th of February” I think. [The entry reads “Aet 27 yrs, 7 mos”]
Tom: Do you hear that Dad?
Dad: Yes, I’ve read that before.
George Edward Freeman was known as "Uncle Ed" to the Frank children. I later discovered that his gravestone in Mountain View Cemetery is only a cenotaph. His remains actually lie in the cemetery of the Soldiers' Home in Washington, DC). The cenotaph photographed in 1989 is in the middle photo and his actual grave marker is on the right. A cache of letters written during the Civil War from George E Freeman to his nieces and parents has been divided among the heirs of Emily Frank Serfes. I found George E. Freeman's photograph in the Bowdoin College archives. It was in a diary belonging to one of his Civil War comrades who saw him before he succumbed to his wounds at the Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C. The Freeman family will be discussed in a later post.
Tom: So, of the Freeman’s, [the only one] you know [about] is Mary Frost Freeman?
Grampa: She was my Grandmother, yes
Tom: And Mary Frost married John Freeman then.
Grampa: Ya. [Mary Frost Freeman] died in 1892 in Poland, [she] was my grandmother.
Tom: Died when?
Grampa: Feb 5th 1892 in Poland, Maine. The very next year, Thomas Freeman died, Feb 28th 1893 in Auburn.
Grampa: [Reads a few lines from the Bible but does not know anything about the individuals mentioned.] “Nathaniel Freeman” and what’s that name?
Tom: “Isaac Freeman.”
Grampa: Oh, ya. I don’t know, they must be brothers. [Married in] “Gorham, by Rev. E. Lombard.”
Tom: When did Grenville Chipman write these [names] in here?
Grampa: I’m not sure when that was but it had to be a long time ago.
Tom: Do you know when Grenville Chipman died?
Grampa: I’m not sure just when but it was in the 1920’s. It was about 1920, I guess. That’s about the last time I remember seeing him. He used to come out and stay with us on the old farm and visit. See he married my father’s sister Sarah. He was my father’s brother-in-law. [
Tom: I wonder how these Hamblens got married in with the Freemans?
Grampa: I don’t know.
[Continuing reading] Polly Frost. That’s the Frosts and the Freemans.
Tom: Do you think she might have been the one [who witnessed her parents] killed by the Indians?
Grampa: No... it was Mary Frost... Not Mary Frost Freeman, Mary Frost.
Tom: And this woman is named Polly Frost. [
Grampa: Yes, she married the Hamblen, didn’t she? Yes, that might have been her.
Tom: She was born April 18th 1767, died aged 93 March 8th, 1861.
Gravestone of Polly (Frost) Hamblen. Grandmother of Mary Frost Freeman. Fort Hill Cemetery, Gorham.
Tom: Who were Mary Frost Freeman’s parents?
Grampa: John Freeman and Sally Hamblen. It was down in Standish that the Indians massacred their whole family but Mary Frost hid in the brush pile. [The last conflicts with the Indians occurred about 20 years before Polly Frost was born and the episodes of fatal altercations with the natives in 18th century Gorham and Standish are well documented. I couldn't find any account that jives with this tale so I suspect Uncle Walter's imagination may have been at work here as it was in many other family stories]
Tom: That was in Standish, Maine?
Grampa: Yes, Standish, Maine. That’s about thirty miles from here. Twenty-five or thirty miles. Not far from Windham. North of Windham I believe.
Tom: I’m [now] going to go through [the Frank] family tree that we talked about earlier to see what more you can tell me. Now Stephen Frank, what did you hear about Stephen Frank? [Grampa was trying to remember the details of a family register that he once had. He thought that Stephen Frank was immigrant ancestor, or at least the first on the register but his memory was faulty here. As I
Grampa: I never heard very much about him only that he lived in Gray and came from Freeport. And he was the father of Thomas Frank.
Grampa: And Thomas Frank moved from Gray to Poland. And one of his children, Whitney Frank, was my grandfather. And he had a large family besides Whitney Frank, there was a lot of them.
Tom: Do you know who else was in the family?
Grampa: Well there was John and James, two or three girls. Henrietta was one and I don’t know the names of the other ones... Betsey, I believe, and there was Weston, that’s the youngest one. I don’t know where Whitney came in there but he wasn’t the first one. No, the first one was Royal T. And there was.... I don’t know, I don’t know. I had the whole family register. It burned up when my place burned. Lost it. I had it on the wall and I can’t remember the names in the row there. Whitney and David, there was a David Frank.
Tom: OK. So far you have David, Royal T., Whitney, John, James, Zachariah, Weston and Thomas Jr. That’s eight.
Grampa: Eight of them. That might be all the boys. Then there was three or four girls.
Tom: Henrietta, Betsey...
Grampa: And I don’t remember the other names.
Tom: OK. Now Stephen Frank, you say that his parents may have come from England?
Grampa: Yes, to Freeport, Maine.
Tom: Where did you hear about them? Who told you about them?
Grampa: My Uncle Walter Frank, my father’s brother.
Tom: If he was your father’s brother then he would have been another of Whitney’s children, right?
Grampa: Yes.
Tom: Do you know any of Stephen Frank’s children besides Thomas Frank?
Grampa: No, I don’t
Tom: But one of them was Thomas Frank and we know he was born in 1792 and died in 1877. And he was married to Lucy Small who was the daughter of David Small? [Lucy Small was not the daughter of David. She was the daughter of Isaac Small (ca 1749 – ca1820) and Susanna Hobbs (born 1751 – died about 1813). David Small was Lucy’s grandfather. In 1748 David Small (1726 – ca 1795) married Sarah Knight (1728 – ca 1800)]
Grampa: Yup.
Tom: And you don’t know who David Small was married to?
Grampa: No, I don’t.
Tom: What can you tell me about David Small?
Tom: Where did you hear about him?
Grampa: I heard about him from my Uncle.
Tom: Uncle Walter?
Grampa: Yes. He told me these things. I didn’t read it in the history books. I don’t know.
Dad: Wasn’t [Wetzel] the one who shot an Indian woman who was nursing her child?
Grampa: Yes, shot the baby through the head and her through the heart, she was nursing the baby. He said “Nits make lice.” The man who was with him got after him about that, he said “That wasn’t necessary!” He said, “Oh yes, nits make lice.”
Tom: Well he doesn’t sound like too pleasant a character.
Grampa: No, no. He wasn’t. There was quite a few of those men in those days who got their wires crossed. They saw their parents killed by Indians. That’s what did it when they were young fellows and they figured they’d get revenge and that’s all they lived for.
Dad: Wasn’t it his family that was killed by Indians?
Grampa: I don’t know about him. I was thinking of Wetzel.
Tom: You don’t know about David Small’s parents, do you?
Grampa: No, no.[1]
Tom: When was that attack on Lewiston planned by the Indians?
Grampa: The year I couldn’t say. I don’t know when that was. It can probably be estimated somewheres near by reading the history books.[2]
Tom: One of his daughters anyway was Lucy Small. We don’t know any other children in the family?
Grampa: No, I don’t.
Tom: But Lucy Small married Thomas Frank and they had the children we just went over. One of whom was your grandfather Whitney Frank. When did Walter die?
Grampa: He died in 1922.
[1] David was the great-grandson of Francis Small (1625-1714). Francis immigrated to New England from Devonshire in England with his father Edward in the 17th century and lived in Kittery, Maine. He was a prominent Indian trader until King Philip’s War forced him to move back to Massachusetts. He died in Truro on Cape Cod. (See Frank, Thomas W., “Small Beginnings: The sons of Joseph and Mary (Libby) Small, Founders of the Small Family in Gray, Maine,” The Maine Genealogist, Feb and May 2020). I will post information about the Small family later. The Franks had many connections with the Smalls.
[2] The story of David Small and Lewiston Falls is apocryphal - at least insofar as it relates to David Small. David Small (1726 – ca 1795) was actually Lucy Small’s grandfather, not her father. The tale is an old one and the events at the Falls are attributed to many different people - most commonly the Indian scout Joseph Weare. The legend was explored in a series of 1999 articles published in Androscoggin History: Newsletter of the Androscoggin Historical Society, Feb-Oct 1999 entitled respectively Three Stories: Native Americans Lured to Death Over Falls by Douglas I. Hodgkin, Event At The Falls: More Stories and Event At The Falls: Analysis by Nancy Lecompte. The Weare (also Wier or Weir) version is also related in Poole, H. A., History of Poland: Embracing a Period of Over a Century, Mechanic Falls, Maine: Poole Bros., 1890, 160 pgs.
Tom: How old was he?
Grampa: He was 63.
Tom: Do you know when any of these other Franks died, Thomas Jr?
Grampa: No, I don’t but Thomas Jr. was an Uncle to Uncle Walter. Walter was my father’s brother but Thomas Jr was my father’s uncle and Walter’s uncle.
Tom: OK. So, Walter was your father Harry’s brother.
Grampa: That’s right. He had two brothers. Royal and Walter. Royal was the older one. And there was a Royal in the older generation too. Further back.
Tom: Yes, Royal T. was a brother of Whitney Frank.
Grampa: That’s right.
Tom: What else can you tell me about Thomas Frank and Lucy Small? Do you know anything about their life, what he did for a living?
Grampa: Well he was a farmer and a woodsman. That’s all I know about him. He didn’t have a beard. I’ve seen a picture of him. And he was a smaller man than his son. He wasn’t a large man but they said he was quite a physically strong, able man. I don’t know much more about him. I know where his house used to be on a road that’s now discontinued, down by the Little Androscoggin River. And he raised a large family. And that’s about all that I know of him.
Tom: What did he look like in the picture you saw of him?
Grampa: Well he looked a lot like my father. Only he was a much smaller man. I would say by the looks of him that he couldn’t have weighed more than 160 pounds. And my father was a 200 man. But they looked a lot alike in the face. But my father always had a mustache and Thomas was smooth-faced, no beard. His son Whitney had a beard.
Tom: So, Whitney Frank married Mary Frost Freeman.
Grampa: Yup.
Tom: Who was the daughter of John Freeman and Sally Hamblen...
Grampa: Yup.
Tom: And we have all their children listed here in the Bible.
Nathaniel Freeman born July 23 1817 Gorham
Isaac H. Freeman born May 5th 1820, Standish
Thomas J. Freeman born Sept 26 1821Standish
John Freeman Jr born Dec 18 1822 Standish
Mary F[rost] Freeman born Sept 25 1825 Standish
William Freeman born Jan 18 1829 Standish
Charles H. Freeman born Oct 14 1831 Standish and
George E[dward] Freeman born Feb 5 1835 Gorham
Grampa: And they were born in Gorham and Standish
[A confused discussion about the Freemans from the Bible follows. I have omitted it. I published a proper accounting of this family as given in the Freeman family Bible under the title “Freeman-Hamblen Family Bible: Gorham, Standish, and Poland, Maine: An Annotated Transcription,” The Maine Genealogist, May 2012, Vol 34, p. 79]
Tom: Do you remember anything about your grandfather Whitney Frank?
Grampa: I can’t remember anything. He died before I was born. So, I’ve heard of him, heard things about him. He was a schoolmaster. He taught school and farmed as well and he was on the board of selectmen here in Poland. He was active in town government. And that’s about all I know though he was one of the leading citizens in the town.
Tom: And he lived in the house that you showed me...
Grampa: Down on the Hardscrabble Road, yup.
Tom: And he married Mary Frost Freeman and they had several children, and among them was your father.
Grampa: Yup.
Tom: How many were there in your father’s family?
Grampa: There were three boys, Royal and Walter and my father. And two girls, Sarah and Emily.
Tom: Do you know any middle names?
Grampa: Walter was Walter Clark Frank. My father was Harry Liddell and my Uncle Royal was Royal Thaxter Frank. The girls I don’t know their full names.[1]
Tom: What was Royal T – Whitney’s brother’s middle name? Was he a Thaxter too?
Grampa: Yes, I think so.
Tom: So that’s the same name as the Royal Thaxter who was the Civil War Colonel.
Grampa: Oh ya. They were named after him I suppose.[2]
[1] They may have been Sarah Hamblen Frank and Emma Freeman Frank.
[2] Actually, Thomas Frank’s eldest son Royal Thaxter Frank (1813-1835) was the first of the name. He died as a young man, so his uncle, (Thomas’s brother) Alpheus Frank of Gray named a son who was born almost exactly one year after the death of Thomas's son, Royal Thaxter Frank. Alpheus’s son, Royal Thaxter Frank went to West Point (Class of 1858), served throughout the Civil War and retired from the Army as a Brigadier General after the Spanish American War. He is buried in Arlington. Whitney named a son Royal Thaxter Frank also after his deceased older brother. Grampa kept the name alive but substituted Thurston for Thaxter in honor of his wife’s family.
Tom: But these other names, Clark, Liddell... were they family names somehow?
Grampa: I don’t know how they happened to get their middle names. I never heard how.
Tom: When did Royal Thaxter Frank, your father’s brother, die?
Grampa: He died in 1920 I believe.
Tom: And how old was he?
Grampa: He was 72, I think.[1]
Another photo of Royal T. Frank in front of his Minot Corner forge but before he has completed the horseshoe.
Tom: And Harry Liddell?
Grampa: He was 77. He died in ’42.
Tom: And Sarah Frank
Grampa: She must have died earlier, 1914 or somewheres along there. I was a small kid when she died.
Tom: Do you know how old she was.
Grampa: No, I don’t, but she was probably in her 80’s.
Tom: And Emily?
Grampa: Aunt Em, she died, when I was in Connecticut. She must have died in 1930. She was about 72.
Tom: Do you know when Whitney’s brothers died?
Grampa: I don’t know when they died. The youngest one was Weston. He died in New York State. He must have been in his seventies, I don’t know.[2]
Tom: What year was that?
Grampa: That was about 1919. Somewhere along there.
Tom: He was the youngest one in the family, eh?
Grampa: Ya. The oldest I think was Royal and I don’t know when he was born or when he died.[3]
Tom: What can you tell me about any of your uncles?
[1] Royal Thaxter Frank (1847-1920) married Ada Partridge (1859-1952) in 1877.
[2] Weston, whose full name was Alpheus Weston Frank, wasn’t the youngest but he lived the longest, dying in 1920 in New York at age 88.
[3] Royal was the oldest. He died in 1835 at age 22.
Grampa: Well Royal [grand-nephew of the Royal who died in 1835] was a blacksmith and he operated a small farm for a while, did farming in his spare time, but most of his time was spent blacksmithing. Shoeing horses. And that’s about all I know of him.
Tom: Did you know him?
Grampa: Oh yeah, I knew him. I was a young kid when he died. I was probably 11 years old when he died but I remember him well. He wasn’t as heavy as his two brothers. He was a lighter weight man. Fairly tall and I don’t remember much more about him. He had a mustache, no beard.
Tom: And what do you remember about Walter?
Grampa: Walter had been married but his wife died years and years before I was born and they never had any children. He was childless. And he was a selectman here in the town for years. And operated a farm down there in the old home farm. Bought my father’s part of the farm from my father and he owned it entirely for a while. He died at age 63 and there was so much debt on the farm that the sale of the livestock at the auction just about paid up the mortgage so I really didn’t inherit anything. I was supposed to have the farm and the cattle and everything but when my father, I was only fourteen or fifteen of course and my father was in charge, he said, “You’re not going to mortgage your life,” he says, “on this place. Like your Uncle Walter did.” He says, “You’re going to get rid of it right now.” I wanted to stay there but no, he says, “We’re going to get rid of this place.” And so, he unloaded it and the debts owed on it were just about paid by the sale of the herd of cattle.
When Walter died on 3 Aug 1922 he left the farm to his nephew Leroy who lived with him. His parents had to be appointed his guardian to take legal possession and sell it. That is probably one reason Grampa was bitter about it his whole life. It was his farm and he was forced to sell it though he wanted to keep it more than anything else in the world. He mentioned that his father, a southpaw, would sweat to sign his name and his signature does look pretty shaky here.
End of Tape I
Unable to make their mortgage payments, the sisters had watched helplessly as the bank foreclosed. Now the auction of their family home was but a few minutes away. Dressed in black, they sat quietly as a group of strangers mingled about them. "Who are these people?" Barbara Brigham asked. "They don't know us. They don't know anything about us."
To know these spirited women -- Barbara, 81, a retired film makeup artist, and Coco, her "much much younger" sister and the original Elizabeth Arden Girl -- adds to the tragedy of their situation. Four years ago they owned their home free and clear. But believing in a friend, and the friend's insistence that she could double their money, the two sisters took out a $1 million mortgage on their house. The friend, Adela Holzer, said the money would be returned, doubled, in a short time. "She said David Rockefeller was behind the deal," Barbara Brigham recalled. "How could you go wrong with a Rockefeller?"
Dukes, Duchesses and Paris
Falling behind on the $12,000 monthly payments, the sisters took an additional $250,000 mortgage, "to cover our debts while we waited," Barbara said. "And then one day we were sitting on the glider outside and we read a newspaper article. Adela had been indicted for bilking her friends out of millions of dollars. I said, 'I can't believe this.' It was unbearable."
It all had started so differently. The Brigham sisters and their two brothers were reared in Paris and later lived on 72d Street in Manhattan. Their parents were Ethel Frank, a concert singer, and Arthur Brigham, a banker. The family associated with duchesses and dukes. "Grand dukes," Coco will correct you. "My mother spoke 14 languages. She was an extraordinary woman." Ms. Frank was the Madonna of her day, at least in breaking with tradition. "She bought an automobile caravan from the Duchess of Marlborough," Barbara said.
"You may know her as Consuelo Vanderbilt," Coco added. The caravan, a forerunner of the mobile homes of today, was used to cart the Brigham family around Europe and the French Riveria as Ms. Frank wowed audiences with her soprano voice. "She would stop in a field, and people would just gather round," Coco said. "She could feed 100 people with just one can of Sterno."
After Europe and Manhattan, Ms. Frank and her two grown daughters moved to suburban Long Island. It was 1958. Their house in Upper Brookville was originally part of a huge mansion built in 1928 by James B. Clews, the banker, who helped finance the restoration of Versailles. "He built a French mansion of his own in Brookville," Coco said. The Brigham home was one wing, 11 rooms with marble and rosewood floors and an attached four-car garage. Almost five acres went with it.
Life there was idyllic. Ms. Frank tended her garden as Coco and Barbara kept busy with their show-business careers. Besides the Elizabeth Arden girl, Coco modeled for Kroeger Beer and Chesterfield cigarettes. She sang with Leonard Bernstein in concert. She performed in plays. Her sister was doing experimental makeup work. "Lots of fantasy," Coco said. "Barbara did a television series of fairy tales."
And there were the parties. "Upper Brookville has a law you can't make any noise past your property line," Coco said. "But the way this house was built we have a soundproof kitchen and dining area. We have 24-inch reinforced-concrete walls. So we would have people playing the saxophone and drums, and nobody but us heard them."
Quiet days were spent on the front porch. "We're 23 miles from the Midtown Tunnel," Barbara said as she sat on the glider. "Do you hear anything?" Just a few chirps from the sparrows that call the outdoor chandeliers home.
About eight years ago Ms. Frank died, and the sisters took over running the estate. They both were still working then. It was on a job that Coco met Ms. Holzer. "She was my boss," Coco said. Coco had the lead in the road company of the play "All Over Town" which Dustin Hoffman directed. "Adela was the best boss Coco ever had," Barbara said.
"Everybody adored her," Coco added.
In 1988 the sisters gave a party for Ms. Holzer. "After she saw the house she must have thought we had money," Barbara said. "Because all of a sudden she told us she had a way of easily doubling our money. So we gave her $10,000 from our savings account. She doubled it to 20. We gave her 20, and she doubled it to 40. Wouldn't you be impressed?
"She said she was so grateful to us for all that we had done for her that she wanted us to share in her secret. David Rockefeller was going to marry her. She said he was behind all her plans."
As Ms. Holzer was soliciting the Brighams she was obtaining money from notables like the mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne and the chief of pediatrics at New York Hospital, Dr. Maria New. She told them that she was putting the money in a musical about Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. The show ran just one night.
"But we didn't want our money going into a play," Coco said. "We knew all about the theater. So she said our money could be doubled in oil, gold and sulfur. We told her we didn't have big money, and she said, 'Why don't you mortgage your house?' So we did. It was appraised at $2.75 million. We only took a mortgage for $1 million and then we waited. And waited. She kept saying, 'Next month,' you'll get you money back next month.'"
But few got their money back. Ms. Holzer was arrested for swindling 65 people out of $4 million. She was convicted and sentenced to 4 to 8 years in prison. She is now out on work release. "We have a judgment of $1.5 million against her," Barbara said.
"But it's just a piece of paper," Coco added. "We also have a piece of paper from her saying she owes us $3 million."
Sale of Paintings, Rugs and Jewelry
With the mortgage payments' piling up, the sisters started selling their belongings. "We sold our paintings," Coco said, "our Oriental rugs, our jewelry."
All the hired help was dismissed. Coco mowed the lawn and washed the laundry. "I tried to clean one room a day," she said. This from the woman who once modeled the Hope Diamond and was courted by a maharajah.
"Finally we realized it was a dead horse," Barbara said. "So we tried to sell the house. The vultures came looking. There were no serious buyers, although one woman seemed interested. She wanted a house where she could keep 40 cats."
By the time the bank foreclosed, the sisters owed $1.4 million, the mortgages plus arrears. "We had A-1 credit all our lives," Barbara said. "This was so hard to take."
They started looking for a place to rent. "But places are so small," Barbara said. "Coco found a little place in Bayville. It's upstairs, but the landlord wants $1,000 a month for it. And where would we put our furniture?"
"We really have no place to go," Barbara said as she and her sister sat by the courthouse steps. With a "World News Tonight" notepad in her hand, Barbara was ready to take notes at the auction. She wasn't sure what she would write down, but it was important to be prepared, she said.
"It's a shame," said Joseph Giampietro of Real Estate Strategies in Jericho as he watched the sisters. Mr. Giampietro was one of five people attending the auction. "It's really a shame it's happening," he said. "But someone's going to purchase the house. Why not me?"
On this day it would not be him. The voice of the referee, Christine Adamowicz, droned on as she read paragraph after paragraph of legal doctrine. She named Coco, Barbara and Ethel Frank as the owners of the house. "Ethel died 10 years ago!" Barbara shouted out. Everyone looked down at their feet.
The bidding started at $800,000 and ended there. No one bid, so the bank obtained the house for the $800,000. "The ladies are now tenants," said Joseph Ferrar, who watched the auction. "If someone buys the place, they could be out in 30 days."
"The tears that must have been shed on that stoop," Barbara said as the sisters got up to leave. There would be no tears from the Brighams. With a grand wave to a courthouse guard, they headed for their 1984 Chrysler.
"Maybe it's all for the best," Coco said. "We are writing our story, you know. And maybe this was handed to us as a wonderful script. It's got everything." Except sex, she confided, but when the movie producers take over, who knows.
"My mother used to say," Coco recalled, " 'If you put two nickels on your eyes you never see the sunrise.' "
"Come, Barbara," she said, helping her sister into the car. It was time to go home and pack. Future sunrises awaited them. The Brigham sisters just weren't sure where those dawns would be.
Tom: Continuing on this tape talking with Grampa about the members of the family we had just finished talking about Royal Thaxter Frank the blacksmith, [and Walter Clark Frank] the brothers of my great grandfather and Grampa’s father Harry Liddell Frank. Now, what was the order in that family from oldest to youngest Grampa?
Grampa: My father was the youngest. He was the youngest in the family.
Tom: And is he why you named my Dad Hal?
Grampa: Yup, yup.
Tom: And who was the oldest?
Grampa: Royal T.
Tom: Where did Walter come in?
Grampa: He was after Royal. He married but they had no children. His wife died early in his marriage.
Tom: What was his wife’s name?
Grampa: Alice
Tom: What was her maiden name, do you remember?
Grampa: Durant, D-U-R-A-N-T. [sic, her name was Duran]
Tom: Where was she from?
Grampa: Mechanic Falls. And he did marry again in the last year of his life. He married Maggie Flagg, a widow. Married in May and died in August.
Tom: Did Royal T. Frank have any children?
Grampa: Yes, he had a son Claude Frank and a daughter Blanche.
Tom: And who did he marry?
Grampa: He married... I don’t remember her name!
Dad: Ada
Grampa: Ada, that’s right!
Dad: Aunt Ada
Grampa: Ada. And her name was Partridge before she married him. Ada Partridge, that’s right.
Tom: And she died in her nineties, eh?
Dad: She was very old, I remember...
Grampa: Ninety-three.
Dad: Yup. 93. She died before I came back from Germany but I remember her into my teens. She was still alive when I left here wasn’t she?
Grampa: I think so.
Dad: She was. I believe she was.
Grampa: She died in that big storm.
Dad: Oh yes that’s right.
Tom: What year did she die?
Grampa: What year was that great big storm?
Dad: Well I don’t think I was here.
Grampa: No.
Dad: I was overseas.
Grampa: Well what years was you overseas?
Dad: Well I was overseas from 47 until 50. I came back in 1950. I was overseas almost four years.
Grampa: Well she died about 1949 I guess.
Tom: In a big storm?
Grampa: Yes. In the month of February.
Tom: She was killed by storm itself or she just died during the storm?
Grampa: She died during the storm, in her home, in her house. She didn’t die on account of the storm. [1]
[1] Ada Partridge (1859-1952) married Royal Thaxter Frank (1847-1920) in 1877. The severe February 1952 nor'easter impacted all of New England. The storm's rapid intensification resulted in 12 to 30 inches of snowfall between February 17 and 18. The nor'easter is estimated to have caused 42 fatalities.
Tom: Are Claude and Blanche still alive?
Grampa: Blanche was the oldest. No, neither one of them are alive now. Claude lived to be sixty-eight years old.
Tom: What year did he die?
Grampa: I don’t remember what year he died.
[Claude Eugene Frank, 1884-1949]
Dad: He died of lung cancer. And again, I was overseas. I’m not sure if I was in Germany or Korea when he died.
Grampa: He died before his mother did.
Tom: A year or so before?
Grampa: Yup [Claude Eugene Frank (1884-1949) married first Rena Dillingham (1885 – about 1960) in 1909, and second Goldie Alice Hayward (1889-1977) in 1916]
Tom: So, around 1948.
Grampa: Yup.
Tom: What about Blanche Frank?
Grampa: Blanche? She died years before that. She died about 1940.
Dad: Oh no Dad, Blanche Frank? Claude’s sister? She died many years before. She was a young woman when she died.
Grampa: Well she was, yes. She was in her forties probably.
Dad: Oh, I thought you said she died in 1940.
Grampa: Oh no, no, no. She died before that, yes. Yes, she died before you... you don’t remember her, no. She must have been in her forties and she died about 1935.
Tom: 1935? So, Dad was alive when Blanche was living?
Dad: Well I don’t really know, but I often heard you speak of how she died young. But I never saw her in my life and it seems I would have if she died in 1935. There’s one picture of her with Claude and she’s got a very long skirt....
Grampa: Yes, I guess she died before I was married.
[Blanche May Frank, 1879-1927]
Dad: I don’t know.
Tom: How did she die, what did she die of?
Grampa: And I really don’t know that either.
Dad: You once said tuberculosis.
Grampa: It probably was, yes.
Dad: Also, it has been said cancer.
Grampa: More likely cancer. Yeah, I think it was cancer.
Dad: And Royal Frank also died of tuberculosis you said.
Grampa: He had heart trouble.
Tom: OK. That takes care of Royal Thaxter and we talked about Walter who was childless. Sarah and Emily, did they marry?
Grampa: Yes, yes. Sarah married Grenville Chipman and I don’t know what year it was because it was a long time before I was born. And Emma married Al Rounds and that was before I was born too.
Tom: Where were they from Grenville Chipman and Al Rounds?
Grampa: Chipman was from Auburn and Rounds was from Mechanic Falls.
Tom: Funny that Chipman would have penned in all that stuff about the Freemans since he wasn’t even a blood relative.
Grampa: I know it but he looked into it you know. He helped my Uncle get a record.
Tom: He helped which uncle?
Grampa: Walter.
Tom: Walter was really interested in the genealogy?
Grampa: Yup, yup.
Tom: Did Grenville Chipman and Sarah have children?
Grampa: Yes, yes. They had children. Grenville Chipman and Sarah had two daughters, that’s all.
Tom: What were their names?
Grampa: Ethel and uh... Huh, funny I can’t remember.
Dad: Stella
Grampa: Stella. Sure. Lived up here in Mechanic Falls.
Dad: Married Jim Johnson and they had a son Philip and Ethel had a son Henry.
Grampa: That’s right yup. And they were so much different that they didn’t seem like sisters to me. That’s why I couldn’t place the other woman.
Tom: Who did Ethel marry?
Grampa: She married a Johnson, Henry Johnson, Sr., yeah.
Dad: He worked for...
Grampa: He was a shoe shop man.
Dad: He worked for United Shoe.
Grampa: United Shoe, that’s right.
Dad: He traveled. They went to England.
Grampa: They went to England, yes. He traveled for the United Shoe Company.
Tom: And they had a son Henry
Dad: Henry Dexter Johnson Jr and he graduated with a Civil Engineering degree from Northeastern University. And he was an officer in World War I.
Tom: Oh really. He was an officer in World War I, Henry Dexter Johnson, Jr.?
Grampa: And he died fairly young.
Dad: He died ten years younger than his mother. His mother was 79 he was 69. He died somewhere around here. He worked for Zimmerman, Zimmerman in Pennsylvania. And he got a good job as an engineer out there.
Tom: Come over here Dad so I can get you on the tape.
Dad: Well I’m reading the torture book. And I want... Dad should be telling this. [Dad was enthralled by this book on the torture of the Inquisition I had given him. Sara was disgusted by it. I just now
took it off my shelf and found, tucked in the back, notes I had taken during my conversations with Grampa on this trip!]
Tom: I want both of you. You both contribute together, you stimulate one another’s memories.
Grampa: Your father seems to be able to think better than I can tonight I don’t ... things I should remember I don’t, I can’t place it. I couldn’t think of my cousin Ethel’s sister! God, awful!
Tom: Dad, Ethel is the one you were quite fond of, right?
Dad: Right.
Tom: Tell me about Ethel. What you remember about her.
Dad: Well I used to go almost every afternoon from high school to her house. I started visiting her on Friday evenings when I was in my first year of high school but I didn’t go there regularly until my second year of high school and then I used to go there and do my homework in the afternoon and she would sometimes help me with Latin especially Latin and sometimes with algebra. She of course had been a teacher herself.
Tom: She was educated?
Dad: Oh yes. I don’t know if she had a Master’s Degree or not, I think she did. I don’t know what it was in. I know she got a special prize in her undergraduate years at Bates for her proficiency in the ancient languages, Latin and Greek and she had studied both Latin and Greek of course she had what they called a liberal arts education in those days, they still do call it that.
Of course, you saw the account of her in the newspaper clipping with her picture. She taught for a while in a college out in Massachusetts called Beaver College or something like that. You got a brochure from them.
Tom: She taught at that college?
Dad: Yes. For about a year.
Tom: Beaver College is in Pennsylvania I think.
Dad: No, in Massachusetts.
Tom: Well the one I got a brochure from was in Pennsylvania.
Dad: Oh, it was? Well she taught at some college in Massachusetts for about a year I think. Well I used to visit her and we used to talk about a lot of different things. And she died in 1946. She started having small strokes. Like one morning, one Sunday morning I went to her house and she didn’t answer the door and I kind of felt something was wrong and finally she came down stairs and opened the door and said she was out of sorts. And she said “I might as well tell you I’ve been having apoplectic strokes.” And she had some paralysis of two fingers in her left hand, the little finger, and the finger next to that. Then she seemed to be getting on for quite a while through the rest of that year, that winter. Then she went to visit a friend of hers in an office in Lewiston and while there she had a massive stroke and fell unconscious to the floor, hit against the wall and was taken to the hospital. I visited her twice at the CMG hospital and she was just lying on a bed there in a big open ward. She couldn’t talk, she could use words, she recognized me, she was glad to see me, but she couldn’t speak coherently. It was a word salad. No words connected at all. And she was trying her best to talk to me but she couldn’t. Couldn’t communicate with me. I saw her twice and that was the last I saw of her until I heard of her death. She was taken out to her son’s house in Pennsylvania. She was in a nursing home first. Miriam went to visit her once. She recognized Miriam she put her arms around her and she said “You know me don’t you Cousin Ethel.” She nodded and smiled but she couldn’t talk at all by that time. And then she was taken to Pennsylvania where she was confined to bed of course. There she wouldn’t let any of the nurses near her. She’d kick them if they tried to come near her. The only one person she’d let near her was her son Henry.
Tom: Now Henry, what became of him?
Dad: I don’t know. I only met him once and that’s when they brought her back up here for the funeral. I was a pall bearer at the funeral. We buried her at Marston’s Corner. The last thing I remember hearing him say to Claude Frank was “Well, I’m glad this is over. I’ve taken too much time off.” “Yes, Henry but it’s a thing that’s got to be done.” “Yes, it’s got to be done” said Henry. And I didn’t think too much of him really. Rather flip at this occasion for one thing.
Grampa: It annoyed him.
Dad: Ya, right. And to me he seemed to be a little too cheerful for the occasion too. After all it was his mother. She had helped him through school and everything else.
Grampa: I remember him shaking hands with me and “You’re looking good Roy. I think you’ve done well.” Cause he hadn’t seen me since I was a boy. And then when I met him there at the funeral all my children were there then. I was married and...
Dad: Yup. But anyway, Miriam didn’t think too highly of his conduct at the funeral either. [Ethel is buried in Mountain View Cemetery, Auburn]
Tom: Grenville Chipman, was he an educated man?
Grampa: Yes. He was a well-educated man.
Tom: He went to college?
Grampa: Yes. He went to Bates.
Tom: Do you know when he graduated?
Grampa: No, I don’t, no I don’t.
Tom: Sarah Frank, did she go to college?
Grampa: No.
[Sarah Frank actually took the "Ladies Course" which prepared school teachers at the Maine Seminary in 1861].
Tom: And Ethel had a sister Stella who married Jim Johnson.
Grampa: That’s right. And she was confined to a wheelchair the last ten years of her life. She got too close to the electric car line when the car came along and the conductor made a mistake. He opened the door before the car stopped. And when they open the door, the step comes down, and the step hit her leg and crippled her so she had to be in a wheelchair the rest of her life.
Dad: They had to remove the bone, the whole femur from her leg.
Tom: How old was she when that happened?
Grampa: I’m not sure but she must have been at least sixty-five when that happened. I’m not sure about that but she was quite cheerful. When I went to visit her I always left feeling better than when I went in. She was most all the time cheerful. She had one son and two daughters.
Tom: Who were the daughters? She had a son Philip?
Grampa: Yes. And the last I heard of him he was in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He worked in Council Bluffs and lived in Omaha, Nebraska or vis versa, I don’t know which. They were just separated by a river.
Tom: What were the two daughters’ names?
Grampa: Molly and Ruth. Molly was the oldest and she went to New York State and that’s the last I heard of her.
Dad: I met her once and she taught in a business college out there.
Grampa: And you met Ruth?
Dad: Never, no.
Grampa: Ruth was about my age. I don’t know if she’s living or not but she went out to New York too, and that’s the last I heard of her.
Tom: Grenville Chipman did what for work?
Grampa: When he was a younger man he operated a grocery store for years in Auburn. And after he left the grocery business he retired and he just kept a garden and lived in Auburn there on the outskirts of the city; had a small place and a small garden. And he used to visit a lot up on the old farm. I only remember him as an old, retired man. I never knew him when he was young.
Tom: What did he look like?
Grampa: He was a very slender man. Probably 5 foot 11. Not a very heavy fella, lightweight. Slightly stooped shoulders. Slow moving man but quite skilled. He was a good carpenter and a good furniture maker. Things like that he could do. He fixed that table out back there. He fixed that table. Got it down out of the attic and ... Really spoiled it as an antique but made it a more serviceable table. Put those drawers in there, and that’s what spoiled it as an antique. Put the drawers in and put a shelf in at the bottom there but the shelf has been taken out since.
Tom: Where did that table originally come from?
Grampa: That was in the attic when I was a little fellow and I don’t know, it’s probably going into its second hundred year. It is cherry wood, black cherry.
Tom: Do you think it belonged to Thomas Frank, maybe even Stephen Frank?
Grampa: No, I should imagine Thomas. Whitney anyway. Maybe Whitney.
Tom: Now Emily married Al Rounds from Mechanic Falls. Did they have any children?
Grampa: Yup. They had Merle Rounds and Burton Rounds. I don’t remember any others. Merle Rounds I met and he died childless. I doubt if he reached age sixty, he was not very old.
Tom: What was Al Rounds line of work?
Grampa: He worked in the mill at Mechanic Falls, paper mill.
Tom: We’ve talked about Royal T. Frank. We’ve talked about Walter who was childless and Sarah and Emily. Now that takes us to your father Harry Liddell. What do you remember about your father Grampa?
Grampa: Well, he was forty-three years old when I was born and I don’t know how old he was when he got married but my brother was sixteen years older than I and they’d been married a couple of years before he was born, so probably eighteen years before 1907 that he was married. You had that down last night, figured it out when he was born, didn’t you? He worked until he was past fifty on the farm, where he was born on the home farm then he sold to his brother my uncle, his half the farm and moved into Auburn. Didn’t stay there long, about a year, then he came out to Minot Corner and worked in the mill, Rogers Fiber Mill, right here in this neighborhood, within walking distance of the mill but he used a horse and a wagon to get back and forth. Put the horse in a stable up here. He couldn’t walk very far because he had weak ankles, lame ankles. He was a big man and he was too big for his feet and ankles and he had swollen ankles, deformed ankles really and made him lame. Hurt him to walk. But he was a strong and quick man on the job. He was about 6’2”; weighed about 220. Really, really, he was the most able man of his family, of his two brothers. I think he was much more able than Walter or Royal. He wasn’t as skilled as Royal. Royal was a skilled blacksmith. And Walter wasn’t really skilled at any work really. Kind of a competent workman. My father was a good workman but not skilled either. He wasn’t a carpenter or anything like that. And he died at age 77.
Tom: What year?
Grampa: In ’42.
Dad: Your father once said that he had missed his calling, he should have been a blacksmith.
Grampa: Ya. Like his oldest brother, ya.
Tom: Where did his brother learn the blacksmith trade?
Grampa: Minot Corner. I don’t know where he learned it but he worked into it and bought a blacksmith’s shop in Minot Corner and ran it for years.
Tom: What other memories do you have of your father? Any incidents or things you can recount to me?
Grampa: Well, he was really a very gentle, good man. Nothing rough about him. You know what I mean. He wasn’t very well educated but he did read a lot. He couldn’t write at all. He was left-handed, a southpaw, and you could hardly read his name. He’d sign his name and he’d sweat when he signed his name. It took him a while to do it. It was shaky and it didn’t look – you couldn’t read it hardly. But he did read a lot. Fairly well-read but couldn’t do any writing. And, well, he worked long hours. Worked day and nights. Some nights I don’t know how he got any rest at all. He’d work in the mill nights and work on the farm days with his team of mules. He’d go out plowing for neighbors around and work six or seven hours with this team through the day then go into the mill and work eight hours at night and sleep when he could. But the winter of the flu he pretty near died. He had the flu and he was in bed quite a long time.
Tom: That was 1918.
Grampa: Yes, yes. He’d tear the sheets right down, oh rip em’ right up. And rave, and holler to the horses. Thought he was driving his mules in the woods. He was working all the time really, tiring and wearing himself right down in bed. He came right down, oh way down, down to about 180 or something like that when he got up on his feet again. He couldn’t do anything until about the time the choke cherries got ripe in August and that was the first thing that tasted good to him. He went down in the field, along the edge of the field, where the choke cherries were growing and he ate handfuls of choke cherries, and he said they tasted wonderful. He picked up after that and began to walk faster and move faster and went to work again in the mill. That was his last job working in the mill here. I think he had to quit the mill though when he was in his early sixties. I worked longer than he did in the mill.
Tom: And how long was he sick with flu?
Grampa: He must have been sick with the flu from March until the last of April.
Tom: You told me about someone who worked through the flu although he was feeling awful.
Grampa: That was my Uncle Walter. He had to milk those cows. They had to me milked and he didn’t have the money to hire anyone to do it or there wasn’t anybody around to do it. They were short of people. Everybody was sick with it. And he just had to do it. You couldn’t leave cattle not milked. You’d kill the whole bunch of them you know. That would be cruel [unintelligible]. He just had to do it. Of course, I used to help him when I was alright but I had the flu too and he wouldn’t let me go down to the barn to work he said it would be dangerous, and it probably would. It’s a wonder he lived through it, but he did.
Tom: Well, you had the flu too. What do you remember of that.
Grampa: Well, I was alone in that big house with my Uncle, fourteen-room house. And the doctor said, one doctor said, “I can’t come down here, to take care of that kid.” He says, “You’ve got to send him up with his father and mother to Minot Corner and I’ll come down on the electric cars and take care of him. He says, “I’m not coming up on the electric cars and have you come up and meet me with the sleigh and ride two miles down the Hardscrabble Road to take care of that kid. And my Uncle says, “I understand that when you move anyone with this flu, they don’t live.” “Well, that’s true. That’s true”, he said. “But if you want me to take care of him you’ll move him up to Minot Corner.” “Well,” my father says, “I guess we’ll get along without you, doctor.” And he got another doctor. [laughter]
Sara: Who said that, your father or your uncle?
Grampa: My uncle.
Tom: Why was it that you lived with your uncle?
Grampa: Well, that was where I was born down on that farm, and my father and my mother sold their half of it to my uncle when I was about six years old. And it just about killed me. I never forget it. It is just as though it was yesterday. I was never so broken-hearted in my life. I howled and howled and howled and I remember they tried their best to calm me down. I was about six, moving into town there and didn’t want the city anyway and strange house and I had never known any house but that one. And just as soon as I could... they had come out to Minot Corner and it was only two miles from the old farm... and I went down every chance I got. And every weekend, Friday night I’d leave school and instead of going home, I’d go down there and stay with my uncle on the old farm. And finally, they had trouble, I told you about that, with the teacher here at Minot Corner. And my father went over and took my books back to her and said “He’s going to school down at Hardscrabble.” And I went down and lived with my uncle. And then I come up every Sunday to see my folks but I stayed down there and went to school. We didn’t always get along but I still liked the place and I stayed there.
Tom: You didn’t always get along with your Uncle Walter?
Grampa: Not always, no. He’d have his spells when he was ugly as the devil. But my father said that I was the only kid that knew, ever knew, that could get along with Walter! I did get along with him because I’d look at his face and I knew when to keep my mouth shut. I knew some days I’d get away with anything and some days watch it by God. No matter how well I behaved I’d get hell. Y’ holler ... you could hear him a mile, you know.
Tom: What would set him off?
Grampa: Oh just, I guess, he just was feeling ugly that’s all. I don’t know really what would touch him off. But that’s when I knew I was in for it, a hard day with him! But I don’t remember his ever really striking me or anything like that but he’d set in and shout and... then he’d be awful...
Sara: Your father was a very gentle man?
Grampa: Yes, he was. He was gentle.
Sara: He was big but he was gentle?
Grampa: That’s right. Ya, he wasn’t loud like my Uncle Walter either.
Tom: Alright now, where were we? What about you getting that five dollars?
Grampa: Oh yes. We had what we called box suppers at the school every once in a while. We’d take a box... my mother would put up my lunch for me on a Sunday she’d make me up a nice box and I’d take it down to the school to put with the other boxes there and then there’d be somebody chosen to auction off the boxes. And I bought one and they knew I had some money. They knew Uncle Walter had given me five [dollars] and by Jesus they bid me up and I didn’t know enough to hold down until I got up to five dollars and then nobody bid... I didn’t leave anybody holding the bag... I wanted that box, and I got it. Then I got it and I didn’t have any more money so I went up to the house right next door “Unc I’ve got to have another five.” “What! You got rid of that one!” And I says, “Yes, I’ve spent it and I bought a box” and I says “I want another box.” And there was two or three neighbors there, smoking their pipes and talking with him you know, and he didn’t want to refuse me with them there anyway. And he give me another five and I went right down and spent that. [laughter]
Tom: That was a lot of money, five dollars!
Grampa: Oh yes, it was! I didn’t realize it but he knew it! [laughter]
Tom: How old were you then?
Grampa: About 12. And I set between the two girls and had the best of the food in both boxes. Stuffed my face. [laughter]
Tom: Was that a five-dollar gold piece that he gave you? Was it a coin?
Grampa: Nope, folded money. He was generous that way. He was real generous. But I worked. I got so I could milk faster than he could, and after a while I was milking most all of the cattle. Then when he got to courting, I was milking them all. He married again and he was off to see his widow and I milked the whole herd twice a day! And well, it trained me. I liked the work anyway, that kind of work, and I got better and better at it. Fifteen years old and I was getting stronger every year. And he died in ‘22 and I moved up to Minot Corner with my father and mother where a lot of people said I should have been anyway all the time. And then I didn’t have the cows to milk until my neighbor, Bud Harris, needed some help and when I heard that he wanted me to help him milk I was overjoyed. I got up there just as quick as I could and I helped him twice a day. He paid me something, but he didn’t pay me much. He couldn’t afford to pay much but it took a lot off his hands.
Dad: You had a run-in with Walter when he was courting Maggie. You were doing all the work and Walter was having one of his ugly spells and this time you faced up to him. Now let’s hear the rest of it.
Grampa: Oh yes, that’s right, that’s right. I remember, I was feeling a little bit ugly and I was tired because I was getting up so early and milking the cows and after, in the middle of forenoon, the cows was out to pasture, I’d set down and doze in the house, and rest a little bit. And he’d been out working in the hot sun in the potato fields. And he come in kind of ugly you know. I see that he was ugly but I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. And he says “What’re doin!” I says, “What the Hell are you hollering about!” When I said that, he stepped toward me and I just reached over and grabbed a pitchfork. He took a look at me and I stood and looked at him and he turned around and went up in the house and kept his mouth shut. That time. He backed down that time. He knew damn well that I was going to stab him. [laughter]
Sara: How old were you Grampa?
Grampa: About fifteen. It’s a good thing he did know enough to go back in the house, it would have been sad for everybody! [laughter]
Tom: Ok now, your Dad was married to.... what was your mother’s name?
Grampa: Bertha Winslow
Tom: And what do you remember about your mother?
Grampa: She was a real nice, very good woman. But she never went out much, went to entertainments or dinners or things like that like a lot of the other women did. She stayed home most all the time. Kept a good house and kept very good meals on the table. She was a good cook and a good housekeeper. And most all the time she was a pretty gentle woman. But I think you could get her mad quicker than you could get my father mad. But she wouldn’t take too much. I remember she made me mad one time when she said I couldn’t do anything, she stayed by it, she’d never give in. And Merritt Harris wanted me to come up to his house to play and I was going to go up and my mother said “No, you’re not going up there.” And I got so damn mad I said, “You damn fool!” Well I had just got that out of my mouth when I got two or three clips right to the side of the head, one on each side. First time and the only time she ever slapped me down but boy she did! [laughter]
Sara: How old were you Grampa?
Grampa: Oh, I must have been fourteen. That’s when I left the old farm and came up there to live.
Tom: When did she die?
Grampa: She died in ... let me see... I was down at Vassalborough at the time... about... When was I down to Vassalborough?
Dad: Vassalborough?
Grampa: Yep.
Dad: [Unintelligible]
Grampa: Then it would be about ’32. 1932, I think so, ya.
Tom: How old was she when she died?
Grampa: She was only sixty.
Sara: Was she much of a reader?
Grampa: Huh?
Sara: Did she like to read?
Grampa: She liked to read, ya but she didn’t have much time for reading, like my father did. She didn’t read the way he did. She was a teacher. She was a schoolteacher when she was a young woman.
Sara: Oh. In those days it was a respected job.
Grampa: Oh ya, yes.
Tom: She never went to college?
Grampa: No. She didn’t go to college but she was fairly well educated and she taught school for a year. That’s where my father met her she came down and eighteen miles in those days wasn’t like it is today. You didn’t have a car to go. You’d have to go with a horse, and it would take a horse about all day, you know, to go eighteen miles. You’d have to get him out started about three in the morning to get there in time for school so she had to live near the school. So, she lived next door to the schoolhouse and paid board there. That’s why my father met her there.
[Bertha Winslow was from Webbs Mills in Casco].
Tom: What schoolhouse?
Grampa: That little schoolhouse down to Hardscrabble I showed you yesterday.
Tom: That’s where she taught school, eh?
Grampa: Ya. She taught school there. That’s the only place she ever taught school.
Sara: How long did she teach?
Grampa: I don’t know but it couldn’t have been very long. Probably less than a year.
Tom: Then she met your Dad?
Grampa: Yes, well, he was right there where she was living you know. My uncle and my father and my grandparents were living there, yup.
Tom: Do you know anything about their courtship?
Grampa: No. No, I don’t. Never heard anything about that.
[The heirs of Arthur Serfes have several letters from Bertha Winslow to Harry that date from the time of their courtship and marriage. They kindly sent scans of these documents. Uncle Royal (Royal Thurston Frank) once told me that Hal, on at least one occasion and probably more often than that, walked all the way from Bertha's home in Webb's mills, Casco to his own home on the Hardscrabble Rd in Poland, a distance of about fourteen miles. Bertha was 18 at the time she wrote this letter]
Tom: What did your mother look like?
Grampa: She was about my height, she was a short woman, about the same height as your Aunt Sally. I mean Belisle. And she was stout, heavy woman.
Dad: Well you have a picture of her here Dad.
Grampa: That’s right.
Sara: She looks like she had a real pretty face.
Grampa: Yes, she was a nice-looking woman, yup.
Dad: You have a picture of her sitting on a porch in the last years of her life and you have a picture of her when she was a young woman.
Tom: What kind of books did your father like to read? What kind of reading did he do?
Grampa: Oh, he read a lot of Zane Gray’s western stories and novels. He read novels a lot. And he read books aloud to me. He used to read the Boy Scout books aloud to me and Alger, Horatio Alger books.
Tom: What was your favorite book that you remember?
Grampa: I liked the Alger books when I was a kid. Of course, when I got older I liked Jack London most. He was my favorite author.
Tom: Tell me about your brother and sisters. Who were they in their order of age?
Grampa: Lawrence was the oldest and he was born sixteen years before I was. I was born 1907 so [he would have been born [27 Mar 1892]
Tom: What was his middle name?
Grampa: His middle name was Lawrence, Harry Lawrence Frank. And he married Isabel Wilson. And they had two boys and three girls I believe, yup, five children.
Tom: What were the names of the children?
Grampa: Averid was the first one born. He died at age fourteen. Diphtheria. And the next one was Monroe. Walter Monroe, W. Monroe, they called him Monroe. Then there was Lucy Marcella. And they called her Marcella.
Tom: How did you spell Marcella?
Grampa: M-A-R-C-E-L-L-A. And Kathrine, with a “K” and Methel, M-E-T-H-E-L. Methel was the only blond in the bunch and I haven’t seen her since she was a baby and I don’t know if she’s living or not. But last I heard she was adopted by a family down at Walnut Hill.
Tom: Why was she adopted?
Grampa: Because my brother’s wife died the winter of the flu and left him with five small children. And my mother wasn’t able, my mother wasn’t too well, she was getting old and she couldn’t take care of all those five children. And Lawrence knew some people who wanted to adopt and he let them go. All but Averid and Marcella. And Averid died and he got Monroe to come and live with him although Monroe had been taken, not adopted, but taken onto a farm down in Topsham and I don’t know how Lawrence got him back but he came back and lived with his father and didn’t get along very well with his stepmother so he came up and lived with my father and mother, his grandparents. And he died a few years ago.
Tom: What do you remember about Lawrence as your big brother?
Grampa: Well, I was only two years old when he left home and got married and he was almost a stranger. I knew a lot of people better than I knew my brother. He’d come home every once in a while, and visit, but not very often because he had a family coming right along. Every year a new child and he was working hard to keep things going so he didn’t have much time for anybody else - for his mother and father. He didn’t call on them very often. I know my mother felt pretty bad about it and Dad didn’t say much about it but my mother felt pretty slighted. Maybe, maybe he wasn’t quite as thoughtful as he should be. We went down to visit him, my father and I, but my mother wouldn’t go. When he went to Portland to live. One Sunday, I, beautiful day and I had a car and I didn’t know what to do and I says “Dad, let’s go down and see Lawrence.” And “OK.” And my mother says, “No, I’ve got something else to do.” She wouldn’t go down... well, she never saw his second wife and she didn’t want to see her so, she stayed home. We went down and had a good visit.
Tom: What kind of car did you have?
Grampa: I had an Overland. They don’t make them now. Overland Light Four they called it. It was a real nice little car, peppy little car, make all the hills. All I needed.
Tom: What year was that?
Grampa: That was in ’23.
Tom: Was it a new car?
Grampa: No, no. I bought it second handed and I ran it right into the ground. I wore it all out. Had to junk it.
Tom: Now what did Lawrence do for a living?
Grampa: He worked for the American Railway Express for a good many years.
Tom: What did he do for them?
Grampa: Material handling and he was a foreman for a good many years.
Tom: Who were your other brothers and sisters?
Grampa: Just two sisters. One brother and two sisters. Miriam married Eddie Gammon. She was my older sister, five years older than I. She worked in the shoe shop. She had one child, Shirley French is her daughter. And she died a few years ago... in ’85... no... she died before that.
Tom: How old was she when she died?
Grampa: She was 70, about 70 I think.
Tom: When was she born?
Grampa: She was born five years before I was, 1902.
Tom: She married Eddie who?
Grampa: Gammon. G-A-M-M-O-N
Tom: What did he do?
Grampa: He worked in the shoe shop.
Tom: And they had one daughter Shirley French? Was French her middle name or did she marry a French.
Grampa: She married French.
Tom: What was her husband’s name?
Grampa: James French
Tom: And what did he do?
Grampa: He was a mill man. He worked in the fiber mill down here.
Tom: Did you go to the wedding?
Grampa: Oh yes, yes.
Tom: Did you go to Miriam’s wedding too?
Grampa: Ya, ya. I did, ya.
Tom: Your other sister was Emily. What was Emily’s full name?
Grampa: Mary Emily Frank. She married Louis Serfes.
Emily Frank ca 1923, age 13
Louis Serfes, Emily (Frank) Serfes and their first born child Arthur, 1929
Tom: How do you spell his last name?
Grampa: S-E-R-F-E-S.
Tom: And what did he do?
Grampa: He ran a restaurant. He was born in Greece. He was a Greek. And they had two boys and a daughter.
Dad: Three boys and a daughter.
Grampa: Three boys and a daughter, that’s right.
Tom: What were their children’s names?
Grampa: Arthur Serfes was the first one, Harry was the next one and the youngest boy was Nicholas Serfes. And the youngest girl was Mary Lou.
Sara: So, they must have been Orthodox if she married a Greek from Greece.
Dad: Well he was but Emily joined the Episcopal church. But later on, Arthur, her oldest boy is now a priest. And Harry, their second son, his wife [unintelligible] the church too.
Sara: Oh, really.
Tom: What do you remember about your sisters when you were growing up?
Grampa: Oh well, I don’t know. I didn’t get along with them too well when they were growing up.
Tom: I can understand that!
Sara: We were very good to you. We treated you like a little angel. You weren’t one but we treated you as though you were!
Tom: What in particular do you remember about them?
Grampa: Well, Miriam was a high-strung nervous woman and my folks kept an eye on me. They wouldn’t let me scrap with her much. I could get her crying pretty quick and easy you know. But Emily was different. Emily could hold her own pretty damn well. She’d get me awful, awful mad but there wasn’t much I could do about it! [laughter]
Tom: You went to school together with your sisters.
Grampa: Yup, ya. Miriam was way ahead of me of course, she was five years older. I didn’t go to school with her for very long. And Emily was three years younger. I was there when they were there for a while.
Tom: Is Emily still alive?
Grampa: No. She died last summer.
Sara: If you had come to the 80th birthday party you would have met her. She was at Grampa’s 80th birthday party.
Grampa: That’s right.
Tom: She died at what age?
Grampa: She was born in 1910. She was 78 I believe.
Dad: Born in 1910, she died last May. She would have been... you’re right.
Grampa: Your mother was 75, they were born the same year.
Tom: Do you remember when Emily was born?
Grampa: I remember when Emily was born. I remember when she was a little tiny baby in the carriage. I was only three or four years old. But I remember her. The first memory I have of her, she was holding a nursing bottle, her face was just as red as a beet, she was awful red, and I went over to speak to her and she didn’t answer me. Because she wasn’t old enough of course she was just a tiny little thing and I didn’t realize that because I was only three or four years old. And I talked a few minutes to get her to talk to me and that made me mad because she wouldn’t say anything. And I was just about to conk her one with something and my mother saw me. And my mother put a stop to that awful quick! [laughter] That’s the first memory I have. Then we got older, oh she was three or four years old and I was a little older and we went out in the orchard trying to catch robins, in the first of the springtime when the first robins showed up. And we thought... oh, somebody, a hired man working on the farm told us... if you put a little salt on the robins’ tail you can catch em. So, we got handfuls of salt and we went over in the orchard and tried to get a little salt on the robins’ tails so we could catch them. Well, boy we had a helluva time trying to catch robins and I got mad at her because I figured that she had just spoiled my chances of catching a robin by scaring it before I got to it, you know, and I got mad at her and I remember, I started to poke her one, but she got me by the hair and dragged me around. She got the best of me that time. [laughter] And I remember the men, standing around, laughing. They said, “You better not try to knock her around!” [laughter]
Dad: What about the game with the tub of water and the beans?
Grampa: Oh yes. I remember in a hot, hot day in the summertime we got a big pail of water, put it in a shady spot, and we’d take turns sticking our heads down in the water. See how long we could hold our breath down there you know, before we had to come up for air. And Emily got the idea that if she could get me to laughing, I wouldn’t stay down there as long as she would. And she did. She got a few beans. And when I stuck my head down there she’d drop a bean or two, she said “Roy, that’s a human bean.” [laughter]
Sara: So, you laughed.
Grampa: Ya, ya. I had to come up for air then! It didn’t take much.
Tom: Tell me about your mother Bertha Winslow’s family. What do you know about her family?
Grampa: Well, she had only one sister. No brothers. And this Fenton Yates that was here this morning or yesterday morning, married my cousin, my aunt’s daughter. My Aunt was his mother-in-law.
Tom: What was her sister’s name?
Grampa: Mae. M-A-E I guess it was.
Tom: What was her married name?
Grampa: Walker
Tom: What were Bertha Winslow’s parents’ names?
Grampa: Cyrus Winslow and Emily Holmes (before she married him). Cyrus I think was born in Freeport and my grandmother was born in Jefferson, New Hampshire. And my mother was too because she went up to be with her mother when the baby was born. That’s how my mother happened to be born up in Jefferson.
Tom: Who were Cyrus Winslow’s parents?
Grampa: His name was Robert Winslow [sic] and that’s all I know. I really don’t know anything about him.
Tom: Was he from Freeport as well?
Grampa: Freeport, ya.
Tom: You don’t know who he married?
Grampa: No, I don’t.
Dad: May I do some reminding here?
Grampa: Small, Small. She belonged to the Small family but I don’t know the first name.
Dad: Cyrus was at home he was doing homework one night, he was doing algebra and he learned his father had remarried. OK, tell the rest of the story...
Grampa: My grandfather heard that his father was getting married again. And he was a schoolboy at the time, and when he heard about that, he threw his books. He was all done school. He went right down to Portland and got into the Army and he was only fourteen or fifteen but he lied about his age and went down in the War, the Civil War. And he stayed there through the War. He got through quite a few battles. He was in the Battle of Cedar Creek, the Battle of Bull Run and he never got wounded or anything. He came out of it alive and came home.
Tom: Do you know what unit he was in?
Grampa: No, I don’t. No, I don’t.
Tom: What did he do in the War? Was he a soldier?
Grampa: He was a messenger boy. He went up to the front with things from the higher officers, you know, messages up to the front. He told me about riding a horse a long ways and the horse got thirsty and when they came to a spring to drink, the horse dropped his head so quick, my grandfather went right off over the horse’s head and into the water! [laughter]. He told me about that. But he was lucky he didn’t get killed. He was pretty young so I don’t think he did anything in the battles. He was just a messenger boy, back and forth.
Dad: He had a brother Charles.
Grampa: That’s right. He had a younger brother Charles.
Dad: I saw him once.
Grampa: Yup.
Tom: What was Charles’ middle name?
Grampa: I don’t know.
Tom: Do you know what Cyrus’s middle name was?
Grampa: I think it was Robert.
Tom: What did Charles do?
Grampa: He was a paper mill man. Worked up here in Mechanic Falls paper mill most of his life and I went to his son’s funeral just a month or so ago. Ray Winslow.
Dad: Oh, I didn’t know Ray died.
Grampa: Yup, yup.
Dad: How about Abbie?
Grampa: Abbie’s living alone now, yup.
Dad: Where’s Donald?
Grampa: Donald is living right here in this town now.
Dad: No kidding?
Grampa: Yup. He’s come down from Waterville and he’s living here over at the five corners. Built a house.
Dad: I haven’t seen Donald since I was about twelve years old.
Tom: Maybe one of those people have a picture of Grampa Winslow?
Grampa: No. I tried to get one. I asked Ray. Ray didn’t have one. Abbie looked all around and she didn’t have a picture of Cy Winslow. You’d think he’d have one of his Uncle but he didn’t.
Tom: What did Cyrus Winslow look like?
Grampa: Well he was about 5’11” and he wasn’t a very heavy man. About like you. About your size I guess. He wasn’t either extremely heavy or light either. And he walked lame. He had one leg that he couldn’t bend very much because when he was a younger man a piece of iron went through his knee, jumped through his kneecap. And that fixed that. In those days they didn’t patch them up quite as good as they do now so he couldn’t bend that leg.
Tom: Was that after the War?
Grampa: That was after the War. He was working in a sawmill. A piece of iron broke off of some of the machinery and jumped through his leg.
Dad: Who was that Dad?
Grampa: Cyrus Winslow.
Tom: Did you visit him often?
Grampa: I used to go up and visit him quite often. He lived up here with my Aunt up to Mechanic Falls. I wished I had asked him more questions. If I could talk with him now there are a lot of things I’d like to find out that I neglected then. Too late.
Tom: Emily Holmes was his wife. What do you know about her family?
Grampa: She had a sister Laura but I never knew her. I’ve seen pictures of her. And she had quite a few... a sister... Betsey, Betsey I believe. But I don’t know. I don’t know the rest of them. There was a big family of them too. There was a William and a [recording stops]
End of Tape II
Tape III
Tom: We were just talking about the children of Emily Holmes and you said that there was one Lincoln.
Grampa: Yes, he was the youngest and he never raised any children.
Tom: And who else was there?
Grampa: William. And as far as I know, he never raised any children. And I think there was a Wendell and I don’t know the names of the others.
[I will discuss the Holmes family of Jefferson, NH in another posting but the names of Reed and Betsey (Jordan) Holmes' children were:
Tom: What about Reed?
Grampa: Reed was the father of Lincoln and my grandmother. He was my grandmother’s father. And I don’t remember his wife’s first name, I don’t remember what it was.
Tom: You don’t remember what Reed Holmes’ wife’s name was?
Grampa: Not her first name. Before she married she was a Jordan. I remember that from reading the obituary.
Tom: Do you remember what Reed Holmes’ mother’s name was?
Grampa: I don’t remember.
Tom: And Dad do you remember what Reed Holmes’ wife’s first name was?
Dad: [Speaking to Grampa]. Didn’t you mention her name last summer? When we were up in New Hampshire. Didn’t you give her name then?
Grampa: I don’t remember.
Dad: I don’t remember it either. I don’t know if I ever heard it or not.
Grampa: I’m not sure I ever did.
Tom: Linc was the one who had all the camps in different places, right?
Grampa: Yes, yes.
Tom: He was the brother of your grandmother.
Grampa: That’s right.
Tom: What do you remember about Reed Holmes? Did you ever meet him?
Grampa: No, he died before I was born. Years before I was born. He was the same generation as Whitney Frank, same age – about that time. I think he was a farmer and he was born in Vermont at the headwaters of the Connecticut River in the Connecticut Valley and he moved over to Jefferson, New Hampshire and raised his family in Jefferson. He was a farmer and a woodsman and he died by being crushed by a load of grain. [He was] going down a mountain road and the binding chain broke and he was riding on the load and it came on top of him, killed him. So he died very sudden with his boots on. And I don’t know whether his children were grown up or small at the time. That’s one thing I would have found out from my grandfather if I’d had my wits about me and had asked him. He could have told me all those things but it’s too late. Nobody knows now. I even tried to find out this year when I was up to Jefferson in the town records. I went to Jackson and the woman in the library at Jackson said that she’d try to find out for me. She wrote me a letter, I’ve got it around here somewheres, but she hadn’t found out. There was a woman that she was going to ask that had gone away and wouldn’t be back for a month or so. So, I don’t know if I’ll get any information or not. I’d like to find out just what hill it was, where it was, and things like that.
Sara: Wow. That’s an unusual way to die.
Dad: The Holmes boys, especially Lincoln were quite the fighters and brawlers?
Grampa: Yes, yes. They were rough, tough guys.
Grampa's notes on the back of Reed Holmes' picture
Reed Holmes, (1807-1874)
Bertha Newell (Jordan) Holmes, (1814-1879)
Dad: Linc Holmes cleaned out a whole room full of men with an axe handle.
Grampa. Yeah.
Tom: Tell me that story Grampa.
Grampa: Well, as I remember, I don’t know. He got the best of a bear with an axe handle.
Dad: Oh, he did?
Grampa: The bear had got one of his pigs ...
Tom: This was Linc Holmes?
Grampa: Yes. As I remember it he was the one that did that, yes. The pig was squealing, [the bear] was lugging it out of the pen and [Linc] heard the commotion and he picked up an axe handle on his way out. And he laced the bear once or twice and the bear dropped the pig and ran! [laughter]
Dad: Also, whenever there was a visiting medicine show, medicine barker, medicine show doctor or a group of show people, carnival or anything; they’d ask first if the Holmes boys were around.
Grampa: Ya, if the Holmes boys were around. If they were they went right on, they didn’t stay. Because they got rough with them. They’d demand so many songs, so many pieces of music and if they didn’t play they’d break the damned accordion right over their head! Kind of a rough, rough gang.
Tom: What did Linc do that he had all those camps?
Grampa: He was a woodsman. He was a common laborer, working the woods. He had a team. He always had a team of horses.
Tom: So, he didn’t own those camps, he just worked in those various camps.
Grampa: I think so, yes. The last of his life he owned a house up here to [unintelligible] above Mechanic Falls and he had would hire out horses that he worked around there with, farming and hauling gardens for people, things like that.
Tom: You knew him then.
Grampa: I’ve seen him but I didn’t know him well. I visited his house just once.
Tom: What about Wendell Holmes.
Grampa: I never knew him. I never knew any of the others but my grandmother.
Tom: What do you remember about your grandmother?
Grampa: She looked almost exactly like my mother. People called her Mrs. Frank and she had to correct them. And she was a real nice woman. She used to come and visit us once in a while and I was always glad to see her. And she was so much like my mother that we liked her right off, you know. And I went over to visit [unintelligible] that one time, Webbs Mills. Just she and my grandmother were the only ones there. I was only about 12 or 13 years old and grandfather was a fairly quiet man, he read most of the time and my grandmother was working around the house and all I could do was set around there. Nobody to talk with. I was board stiff. I didn’t stay there long I [unintelligible]. [Webbs Mills is] eighteen miles from here, over in that direction.
Tom: What was their house like on the inside?
Grampa: It was an old farmhouse with a barn. He kept a couple of cows and I remember him going out to milk. He did the milking when he was there but my grandmother used to have to milk when he was working in sawmills. When he was younger and before he retired he worked in sawmills and corn factories.
Tom: Do you remember anything else about Emily Holmes, your grandmother?
Grampa: I don’t know. Only that she was born in Jefferson, New Hampshire and I think my grandfather met her by going up there from the Civil War with her brother. He met her brother in the War and when they come back, he went up there and got a job in Jefferson, in a sawmill up there and met my grandmother there. I’m only guessing a lot of that.
Tom: Which brother would it have been, Lincoln or William in the Civil War?
Grampa: It was the older one, William.
Tom: William.
Grampa: Ya.
Tom: We might be in luck with some of this stuff. Most of the Civil War pension records are in existence. We might be able to find out more about the people who were in the Civil War.
Grampa: Didn’t you try to look up my grandfather’s one time?
Tom: I tried. I was hoping I’d have access to some of those records and I didn’t where I was. I need to write-in to find them.
Grampa: It would be in Portland I think, where he signed up.
Tom: That would be Cyrus Winslow, signed up in Portland?
Grampa: Ya, ya. And I think that William Holmes would have signed-up up to Jefferson, New Hampshire.
[I subsequently did obtain Cyrus Winslow's Civil War pension records]
Pension File Cyrus Winslow
National Archives C -- 2511512 Ninety pages
A portion of the pension document is transcribed here:
Examiner's Claim No. 987882
Cyrus R. Winslow,
Company I, 30th Regiment,
Maine Volunteer Infantry
Department of the Interior,Bureau of Pensions,Washington, DC, January 26, 1904
Sir:
Will you kindly answer, at your earliest convenience, the questions enumerated below? The information is requested for future use, and it may be of great value to your family.
Very respectfully,
E. S. Ware, Commissioner
Mr. Cyrus R. Winslow, Webb's Mills, Cumberland Co., Maine
No. 1. Are you a married man? If so, please state your wife's full name, and her maiden name.
Answer: Yes. Emily A. Winslow, nee, Emily A. Holmes.
No. 2. When, where, and by whom were you married? Answer: October 20, 1867. Whitefield, New Hampshire. Reverend Mr. Kendall.
No. 3. What record of marriage exists?
Answer: Records destroyed by fire.
No. 4. Were you previously married?
Answer: No
No. 5. Have you any children living? If so, please state their names and the dates of their birth.
Answer: Yes. May L. Winslow. November 13, 1868.
Bertha A. Winslow. September 24, 1871.
Date of reply, January 29, 1904
[Signed] Cyrus R. Winslow
Eastern Division HGS, Examiner Claim No. 987882
Cyrus R. Winslow, Company I, 30th Regiment,
Maine Volunteer Infantry,
Department of the Interior,Bureau of Pensions,
Washington, DC,
January 26, 1904
Sir: to aid this bureau in preventing anyone falsely personating you, or otherwise committing fraud in your name, or on account of your service, you are required to answer fully the questions enumerated below.You will please return the secular undercover of the enclosed envelope (no envelope enclosed) which requires no postage.
Very respectfully,
E. S. Ware Commissioner
Mr. Cyrus R. Winslow, Webb's Mills,Cumberland Co., Maine
1. When more you born? Answer: September 30, 1844 [4 is written over a 3, probably because he was back calculating what his date of birth should have been had he been 18 years old when he enlisted. He was only 15 and lied about his age and was probably afraid to admit that on his pension application.]
2. We were you born?
Answer: Casco, Maine.
3. When did you enlist?
Answer: September 20, 1862
4. Where did you enlist?
Answer: first in Otisfield, Maine. 2nd in Portland, Maine.
5. Where had you lived before you enlisted?
Answer: Otisfield, Maine.
6. What was your post office address at enlistment?
Answer: Bolsters Mills, Maine.
7. What was your occupation at enlistment? Answer: Farmer.
8. When where you discharged? Answer: August 29, 1865.
9. Where were you discharged?
Answer: Portland, Maine
10. Where have you lived since discharge? Give dates, as nearly as possible, of any changes of residence.
Answer: From discharge to 1876 in Whitefield and Lancaster New Hampshire. From 1876 to present date in Casco, Maine.
11. What is your present occupation?
Answer: Farmer.
12. What is your height?
Answer: 5'10".
Your weight? 200 pounds.
The color of your eyes? Blue.
The color of your hair? Gray.
Your complexion? Light.
Are there any permanent marks or scars on your person? If so, describe them.
Scar on right knee joint, knee pan gone.
13. What is your full name? Please write it on the line below, in ink, in the manner in which you are accustomed to sign it, in the presence of two witnesses who can write.
[Signed] Cyrus R. Winslow
Witnesses: 1. Edwin S. Owen 2. Albert E. Spiller
On this second day of September, A.D., 1902, personally appeared before me, a Justice of the Peace, in and for the aforesaid County, duly authorized to administer oaths, John W. Holmes, aged 66 years, a resident of Groveton in the County of Coos and State of New Hampshire whose post office address is Groveton. That he has been well and personally acquainted with Cyrus R. Winslow for 36 years. That I was personally acquainted with Cyrus R. Winslow at the time he received the injury to his right knee joint and I was present on that day and also the circumstances connected with the injury. He met with this accident in a sawmill in which he was employed on the 14th day of June 1871 at the town of Whitefield, Coos County, State of New Hampshire under the following circumstances. A tool commonly called a saping knife attached to an arbor running at a high rate of speed broke from its fastening by reason of a defective bolt and was thrown from its position on the arbor with great force striking his knee, passing through it and shattering the joint. I know this to be a true statement by personal acquaintance and observation and that this injury was the result of an accident and was not in no way due to vicious habits and that the claimant is not and never was addicted to vicious habits.And I further declare that I have no interest in said case and am not concerned in its prosecution.
[Signed] John W. Holmes
State of New Hampshire, County of Coos, SS
Sworn to and subscribed before me this second day of September, A.D., 1902, by the above named affiant, and I certify that I read said affidavit to said affiant, including all the words added on and erased, with its contents before I executed the same.
I further certify that I am in no wise interested in said case, nor am I concerned in its prosecution; and that said affiant is personally known to me, and that he is a credible person.
[Signed] William W. Pike, Justice of the Peace
Claimant's Affidavit
State of Maine, County of Cumberland, SS:
In the matter of Cyrus R. Winslow late a Private in Co. C. of the 25th Regiment of Maine Volunteers, for Original New Law Pension.
On this third day of March, A.D., 1903, personally appeared before me, a Justice of the Peace in and for aforesaid County, duly authorized to administer oaths, Cyrus R. Winslow, aged 58 years, a resident of Casco in the County of Cumberland and State of Maine whose post office address is Webb 's Mills and well known to me to be reputable and entitled to credit, and who, being duly sworn, declares as follows:
that Cyrus R. Winslow is the claimant in the above-mentioned cause, and that I was not in the military or naval service before September 10, 1862 and from that date to August 20, 1865 I served in the following organizations (Co. C., 25th Maine Regiment) and (Company I, 30th Maine Regiment) and after that day I served in Battery M, 3rd US Artillery from on or about January 1, 1866 to on or about October 15, 1866 and that I have not served in the military or naval service of the US otherwise than above stated.
[Signed] Cyrus R. Winslow
[Signed] E. A. Barton
Tom: Now Mae Winslow and Bertha Winslow were the daughters of Cyrus and Emily, right?
Grampa: That’s right, ya.
Tom: And they had no sons.
Grampa: Ya, Mae Winslow, Mae Walker, she had George and Fred and Robert – it was the other way to, Robert was the oldest, it was Robert and Fred and George!
Tom: But Cyrus Winslow and Emily Holmes had no sons just the daughters Bertha Winslow and Mae Winslow.
Grampa: That’s right.
Tom: George, Fred and Robert Walker, eh?
Grampa: Yes.
Tom: Where did they settle down?
Grampa: Mechanic Falls.
Tom: Who did she marry, Mae Winslow?
Grampa: She married Al Walker.
Tom: What did he do?
Grampa: He worked in the mill, paper mill. Mechanic Falls paper mill. And he had a small farm besides.
Tom: I guess we’ve about covered that. Do you remember anything about your Aunt Mae, Mae Winslow that’s of interest?
Grampa: Well my Aunt Mae didn’t look at all like my mother. You wouldn’t know that they were sisters at all. She was dark and my mother was blond and Aunt Mae was not such a gentle woman as my mother.
Dad: (Speaking to Grampa). Are you supposed to take those [pills]?
Grampa: Yes, I am. Before I go to bed.
Dad: OK, alright.
Tom: She was not a very gentle woman, eh?
Grampa: No, she was more rough. She was bigger and stronger and she had a husband that wasn’t so very big and strong. And I didn’t see it, I never saw them have any trouble, but I heard say that she used to back him right up against the wall and grab him right by the shirt! If they had any arguments, she was the top dog! [laughter]
Dad: Who was her husband?
Grampa: Al Walker.
Dad: Oh yes. [laughter]
Sara: That’s funny!
Dad: Fenton Yates married his daughter, Ella.
Grampa: She would take no shit from anybody!
Sara: Oh dear.
Tom: (To Grampa). And you’ve met [Aunt Mae] before?
Grampa: Oh yes. I used to go up there once and a while and visit.
Tom: They had George, Fred, Robert and a daughter Ella?
Grampa: Ella, yes.
Tom: And who else?
Grampa: Robert, Fred and George and the girl Ella. That’s all there was there. Ella was Fenton Yates wife.
Tom: Ok, now Grampa, I’m going to ask you to tell me a little bit about your childhood but before that I’d like you to dig out some family skeletons if you can think of any. Any stories that you remember about any characters in the family.
Sara: Any scandals?
Tom: Yes, scandals, anything like that.
Grampa: I don’t know of any. I don’t know of any.
Sara: Well you can tell us, it’s our family too!
Grampa: [laughter] We were very well-behaved, law abiding people! [laughter]
Sara: Except for that woman who used to push her husband around, eh?
Grampa: [laughter] Ya. I don’t remember any scandals, no.
Tom: Well Dad, I want you to help prompt here. Can you think of any family scandals or similar such?
Dad: Well I can’t think of anything I would call really terrible scandals I guess. Though there was an incident where Cousin Claude caught his Uncle Walter and choked him till his tongue stuck out. They had some kind of beef, what was it Dad?
Grampa: Oh, they didn’t get along very well. Uncle Walter didn’t like Claude very much and Claude didn’t like him. And they didn’t get along too well. Claude was younger and quicker and stronger all his life anyway; he was a better and more able man than Uncle Walter...
Sara: Who was Claude?
Grampa: Claude was Uncle Royal’s son.
Tom: Claude and Blanche were the two children of Royal Thaxter Frank
Grampa: Ya. Claude wasn’t really what they call a good citizen, not exactly. He used to get drunk a lot. Not a quarrelsome man I don’t think, but he was kind of strange in lots of ways. Strong, able, but not a steady working man. If the weather was good and they had to get hay in, and there was a ball game going on, he’d go and play ball! The hell with the hay! [laughter] And that’s why my uncle didn’t like him, one reason. He didn’t have any responsibility. He didn’t care much whether work went well or not. He was going to have fun. He was a fun-loving guy.
Dad: Well his mother, Aunt Ada, [unintelligible]
Grampa: Oh, that’s right. She’d stand up for him. “He’s only young once and I don’t blame him.”
Dad: And she said, I guess I can take his place and she took his place working in the hay field.
Grampa: Yes, she’d go out in the field and work in his place, ya.
Dad: He’d rather go out and play baseball.
Grampa: Ya, he’d let his mother work in the hayfield.
Dad: Except one time he gave some kids some chewing tobacco and a kid got sick and puked in the well.
Grampa: That’s right! He gave our cousin Merle Rounds, he was our age and he was down there, and Claude was chewing tobacco and it wasn’t hurting him any, he was used to it. He gave Merle some chewing tobacco and it made him sick and Merle was down near the well and he puked in the well! So, they had to bail the well out.
Dad: Aunt Ada made Claude pump that well dry. [unintelligible] only time.
Grampa: Ya, that’s one time where she really forced him! [laughter]
Tom: And he choked your Uncle Walter till his tongue came out?
Grampa: Oh Claude, ya, ya, ya.
Sara: Tell us that story. What happened?
Grampa: I didn’t see it. It was before my time but I guess Uncle Walter was a little loud with him and same as he used to be with me, and Claude just handled him rough that’s all. He didn’t point a pitchfork at him the way I did, he just went right at him with his bare hands and knocked the hell out of him.
Dad: Well at another point there your father and Uncle Walter had some wine they had made.
Grampa: Oh yes. They were going to drink that wine after they were all out of debt.
Tom: Who was going to drink the wine?
Grampa: My uncle and my father.
Grampa: They made the wine and they used all the wine but one bottle And they said we’ll take this bottle and put it up here in the barn, hide it up here back of the beams, and we’ll leave it until all the mortgage is paid off the farm and all our debts are paid.
Sara: And that wine is still there.
Grampa: No, it isn’t still there. Claude found it! And Uncle come in the house and Claude was pretty well stewed and he says, “Walt, what was that damn fine stuff that I drank. I found it up on the beam in the barn.” Oh, boy Uncle was mad. But he didn’t dare to do anything about it. Nothing much he could do. [laughter]
Dad: But as for any real scandals, I can’t think of any.
Grampa: No.
Dad: I guess the old folks kept things pretty quiet. [laughter]
Sara: Well there were some scandals on the Thurston side!
Tom: We’ll go into the Thurstons later. Now why was Claude living with you on the old Frank place?
Grampa: His father and mother lived there with him too.
Tom: Oh, Royal Frank lived there too?
Grampa: Yes. The three brothers lived there together. No, no, my mother and father, when they moved out, Uncle Rol and his wife moved in. That’s the way it was. Uncle Rol took my father’s place there on the farm with my Uncle Walter. I guess Uncle Walter wanted them to come in, he didn’t figure he could handle it alone. But he would have been better off alone and he found that out after a while and they had a falling out after a few run-ins with Claude why they moved away and Aunt Ada didn’t like Uncle Walter very well either, so they moved away. Uncle Walter had it alone so I went down and lived with him. And I stayed there until Uncle Walter died and so let things go.
Tom: Were you the one who discovered him when he died?
Grampa: Oh no, he died in the hospital. Ya, he had cancer. He was quite sick.
Tom: Alright Grampa, I’m going to want to discuss the Thurston side of the family but for right now I just want you recount to me your boyhood as you remember it and your times growing up and raising this family.
Grampa: Well my boyhood wasn’t always a happy one I think I had a lot of trouble when I was a kid. It wasn’t all fun. I went to school with boys that was older than I was, bigger. I generally had the wrong end of the battles. I didn’t like math very well so I didn’t get top rank in school. I did well in English. And things I liked I worked at and things I didn’t I wouldn’t. That’s what the trouble was. That’s what held me back. Because I didn’t like everything. I guess some kids might like everything and they got ahead. And oh, I had fun, but I worked a lot because I was not with other kids much down there, there wasn’t any other kids. Only once in a while, on a Saturday, Frank Fields, Jeanie MacDonald, two or three others would come over and we’d play hide and seek and things like that like I was telling you about down there. And I remember Jeanie MacDonald and I one Sunday, beautiful, beautiful day, we went up on the ledge back of the schoolhouse and there was a stump fence, a long stump fence. And the end of it was up there on the ledge and the end stump looked just like a fireplace. It had a hole under it and it just made a perfect fireplace. It was a hollow stump and we thought what a wonderful fireplace, natural. So, we put in a lot of wood in there, and paper, and pine needles and so forth and started it up. And we had a fire there and going up like a chimney and before we left, we lugged a lot of water and doused it. We thought we put the fire all out. We didn’t see any signs of it when we left. And of course, we didn’t tell the folks anything about building a fire, didn’t tell my uncle or anybody. In the middle of forenoon, the next day, that stump fence went up in flames! All the way down. It traveled in the ground. We just drove the fire down into the ground and it traveled in the roots, you know, and broke out later in the day, the next day. Warm day and a little breeze stirring. They didn’t know whatever started that fence but the whole neighborhood was out there fighting the fire! [laughter]
Dad: And you kept quiet about it.
Grampa: We kept quiet about it for years! I told Uncle Walter afterwards, years afterwards what happened.
Tom: What was his reaction when you told him?
Grampa: He didn’t say anything. He said he suspected something like that. And he explained why it broke out the next day. I said, “I don’t know why it broke out. We put it out with water and there wasn’t any sign of fire when we left.” And he says “Why you just drove it down into the roots and it traveled in the ground.”
[Tape Stopped and started]
Grampa: Let’s see if I can think of anything more. Of course, a lot of things happened but I can’t remember much of em.
Tom: Did you have any crushes on girls or anything when you were in school?
Grampa: Oh, there was always some girl that I liked the looks of pretty well. I never was very successful, I never dared, I was never pushy. I admired them from a distance. Your grandmother was the first one that ever met me half way. So, I grabbed her when I was nineteen and she was seventeen. She was my only girl really, I knew very well.
Dad: And if you hadn’t done that none of us would be here today.
Grampa: [laughter]
Sara: That’s right, none of us!
Tom: Do you remember any of those girls that you kind of took a liking to?
Grampa: No, no.
Tom: What were your friends like? Who were your friends?
Grampa: Oh, I had a few friends but I was a loner most of the time. I did chum around some with a few of them. I used to scrap a lot and have a lot of fights when I was a kid. I don’t know why but I remember Joe Leveque, I remember I got into a row with him, chased him right into the store, grabbed him by the ears, and dragged him right down on to the floor and started to pound his head on the floor and the storekeeper got me by the collar and sent me home. Told my father about it and Dad said “What’s the idea of buttin’ in on that kid when he’s having a row with the other one? “Well,” he said, “I can’t have the boys fighting in the store. Your boy was getting the best of it anyway, and he wasn’t going to let up. So I [put a stop to it]”
And I told you about the teacher.
Tom: Ya.
Grampa: I made that look as bad as I could so Dad had me going down to Hardscrabble to school.
Tom: When did you first start writing poetry?
Grampa: Oh, I’ve tried at that all my life, off and on. Never wrote anything very wonderful.
Tom: What is the first verse you can remember writing?
Grampa: I don’t remember. I can’t remember what the first one was. I used to read a lot of it, you know. And you read a lot of it and after a while you cook some up yourself, you know. That’s the way I’d always get something going after I’d been reading poetry for a while.
Sara: Did your father like poetry too?
Grampa: He liked it. Ya, he used to quote a lot. My mother did some but I think Dad quoted more poetry than my mother did.
Tom: What did he like to quote?
Grampa: Oh well he used to speak about “Those bells of Shandon which sound so grand on the beautiful waters of the River Lee.” I’ve heard him speak about that, recite that.
Sara: Who wrote that?
Grampa: I don’t know. I don’t remember. Its somewhere here in the house, in one of the books. And Dad used to... oh I don’t know. He used to sing a song for us kids: “For ee, for oh, he was my darling boy; For he was the lad with the auburn hair, and they called him Michael O’Roy.” That’s an old, old song, yup.
Sara: Is that how you got named Leroy?
Grampa: No. I don’t think so. “Michael O’Roy,” I believe that’s what it was.
Tom: Who were you named after?
Grampa: I think Leroy Spiller was a man up to Norway my mother went to school with. That’s were Leroy came from. And Winslow is my mother’s family name...
Tom: But you were named Weymouth originally, right?
Grampa: That’s right, your remembered that, huh? I changed it to Winslow because I heard my grandmother talking with my mother about it, she said it’s the same middle initial, you could change it to Winslow if you wanted to, and I thought, if she don’t I will, and I changed it to Winslow.
Tom: And where did “Weymouth” come from?
Grampa: I don’t know where my mother got that Weymouth idea.
Tom: He wasn’t a preacher or something?
Grampa: No, no. I believe Leroy Spiller was the preacher. I don’t know. Yes, I guess it was a minister Weymouth, ya, ya.
Tom: I think you told me that at one time.
Grampa: He used to come in to the house to visit, to eat, you know. They’d have a minister come for dinner every once in a while. I remember the man who was painting our house and living with us at the time, he said, “Now Roy, no tantrums, no getting mad, you’ve got to be pretty careful, the minister’s here to eat. And there’s always angels around where there’s ministers and you don’t know what will happen.” I says, “Angels?! What do you mean angels?” I’d never even heard of them before. “Well you can’t see em”, he says. “They’re spirits”. He got me so scared I didn’t dare to look at the moon or anything else. I hang right on to my mother’s skirt and followed her all around the house. [laughter]
Sara: Did your father tell you this about the angels?
Grampa: Oh no, no. This was a man that was painting the house. He gave me all those fairy tales. My folks wouldn’t tell me anything very bad they’d never try to scare me. But he got a good kick out of that. I was looking around everywheres watching for something. And I kept still at the table. It worked! [laughter]
Tom: Did any schoolteachers come to dinner too?
Grampa: No, but we had one that boarded there. That’s the one I showed you a picture of her. The old lady that died just a few years ago.
Tom: So tell me how you first met Grammy.
Sara: That was your introduction to Geninny!
Grampa: That was my introduction to your grandmother, yup! [laughter]
Sara: Little did you know then that you’d be married to her.
Grampa: I had no idea of it! [laughter]
Tom: When did you first take a fancy to Grammy?
Grampa: Oh I don’t know, I guess I was eighteen years old working for [unintelligible] on the water wagon.
Tom: On the water wagon?
Grampa: Ya. Spring water. We peddled spring water in Lewiston and Auburn. I don’t remember all the details but it was about time I had a girl to go around with and go to shows with and take to theater and ....
[tape clicks off]
[tape clicks on]
Grampa: I remember your Uncle Aaron didn’t like the idea at all because your grandmother running around with me. We went to the theater most every night in town and he says to your great-grandmother, to his mother “Why do you let her run around with him?” “Well”, your great-grandmother says, “He’s a good boy.” “Well, maybe he is a good boy. But she’s too young to have children. And they couldn’t get married now. She’d die the first year! She’s only a little girl and a skinny little girl at that. If she ever got pregnant, she’d die!” Well, your great-grandmother had seen more of life than her boy had, and she figured that probably the danger wasn’t quite as much as he thought it was, so we married. [laughter]
Dad: Well, grandmother [Gertrude Chase] married when she was fourteen.
Sara: Wow! You’re kidding! Fourteen!
Grampa: Ya, ya.
Dad: And grandfather [John Phinney Thurston] was 24.
Sara: Wow.
Tom: And how old were you Grampa?
Grampa: I was nineteen and your grandmother was seventeen.
She wouldn’t marry me when she was sixteen. I wanted to marry a sixteen-year-old but “no-sir” she was going to wait till she was seventeen anyway so I had to wait till she was seventeen.
Tom: Where were you married?
Grampa: Up to her house, her father’s house.
Tom: You had a preacher come?
Grampa: Yup. We had a minister come there. Give him a five-dollar bill if I remember right. He came down, tied the knot.
Tom: What was his name?
Grampa: His name was Howard Long.
Tom: What church did he belong to?
Grampa: Methodist church down on Minot Corner, he preached there and at the Methodist church at Mechanic Falls.
Tom: What was the date of the wedding?
Grampa: September 10, 1927.
Tom: You were still working on the spring water wagon at the time?
Grampa: No, I quit there and had a job where I made more money. I was working on the town road. Got a little bit more money. I had to get more money because I was spending more. Before that I was putting five dollars a week in the bank and paying my father and mother five dollars for board a week, and putting two dollars in my pocket, I was getting twelve dollars a week. And that was good pay for a common laborer in those days. And that two dollars a week tended to buy my clothing and sometimes I’d put an extra ten in the bank out of that. And I had a couple hundred dollars when I started running around with your grandmother. And then, going out all the time instead of saving, I didn’t save any more, for years and years.
Tom: Do you remember your first date with Grammy?
Grampa: Oh, ya, ya. I think I do. I had to ask your great-grandfather if it was alright if she went to the show with me [and he said] “Yes, I think so.”
Tom: What show did you go to?
Grampa: We went to the Music Hall, it’s no longer in existence, in Lewiston. They had vaudeville. That was the only theater that had vaudeville shows. We had the vaudeville besides a movie so it was a good two hour show and we’d go two or three times a week, you know. That took money.
Tom: How much did it cost to go to the show?
Grampa: Not very much, not very much to go to the show but we’d go out and eat after that you know and I had had a car, I got an Overland car, you can’t have a girl without a car. I had to get the car first, before I could get the girl because no girl wanted a boy who was on foot! [laughter] So I got a car and we went everywhere. Here there and everywhere. And that took money.
Sara: Good thing that that wasn’t true in your day Tom!
Tom: Oh, I know!
Sara: He didn’t learn to drive until a year ago.
Tom: How long were you going with her before you got married?
Grampa: Let’s see, started running around with her in April and we got married in September. That wasn’t long was it.
Tom: No. Not too long at all. When was Grammy’s birthday?
Grampa: Her birthday was the 4th of September and we got married on the 10th.
Tom: Right after she turned seventeen!
Grampa: Right after she turned seventeen.
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