Harpswell Historical Society

Memoirs of the Harpswell Cottages
Harpswell's 250th Anniversary

1954

I first heard of Harpswell in the summer of 1888, when the doctors said my little sister Beulah, then seven, should leave the city of Lewiston, Maine, where our home was, for convalescence after a serious illness of erysipelas.

My grandfather, Calvin Turner Towle, knew that the George Merriman family of West Harpswell sometimes took "roomers and boarders" in the summer. He wrote to them and it was arranged that my mother, Cora Bunker Towle, Beulah and myself should spend the summer at the Merriman farm.

We were driven to Harpswell from Lewiston by my father, Walter Chase Towle, in grandfather's top buggy. The 29 mile trip took practically all day, the journey being especially tedious over the sandy Brunswick Plains (later chosen as a site for the present Air Base by the U. S. Navy). The jolting ride down the rocky crossroad to the farmhouse was quite terrifying to Beulah and me. The Merrimans were prepared for us and we were given the large square front bedroom downstairs with double bed and a trundle bed for Beulah.

So many of my memories of Harpswell are interwoven with the Merrimans who were delightful people of old New England stock. The father was a great favorite of mine, gentle and humorous. The mother was the former Lydia Stover of North Harpswell, pretty and very ladylike, whom we all called "Lydie". There were two children, Mary Ellen, then about 13, and Albert Justin, about a year younger than Beulah. There was also aged Aunt Huldah, the surviving sister of Sarah Alexander Merriman, George's mother, whose sole support he was.

The farm at that time was virtually a self-sufficient community, as most Maine farms were then, and some still are. Since it was on the coast, however, the sea as well as the land provided the living. That first summer and for several years George and his neighbor, Charles Hinkley, were concentrating their combined energies on catching porgies which they hauled by nets. These nets were set in the evening and were hauled about daybreak, because the seals (abounding in the bay) would tear the nets as they stole the fish when daylight broadened. Even so, there was an almost daily task of repairing to be done after the nets had been spread and dried on the grassy banks.

The porgies were slivered to remove their fatty sides and the remainder discarded to be used as fertilizer on the land - an old colonial custom. These slivers were salted and "packed" in barrels ready to be sold at Prince's Point, Orr's Island, as bait for deep sea fishing. After the porgies had been attended to George would haul his lobster traps while Charles returned to his own farm duties. By 11 a.m. we children were usually waiting with him at the fishhouse for Lydie's dinner call.

Beulah and I had never been in the country or at the seashore before and were fascinated by the spacious well-kept farmhouse; the big barn filed with sweet hay and containing a great rope swing; the woods, where we made houses carpeted with soft moss and inlaid with wild pink rosebuds; the wharf: the boats, and the fishermen's daily activities. As my little sister grew stronger, she and Albert became loving playmates. Mary and I were not so harmonious. However, George and Lydie became very devoted to my mother. We three returned to the farmhouse the following summer, 1889, and my father drove down several times to see us (he spent the intervening weeks with his parents in Lewiston). We were all so happy in Harpswell that Mamma decided we ought to have our own cottage. It was with some difficulty that George was persuaded to sell the half acre on the south corner of the ancestral farm but Lydie's affection for my mother "won the day".

Our cottage, the first of several along that shore, was begun that fall and was ready for us in 1890. With little imagination we called it "Oak Cottage" for the huge old tree - at least one hundred years old, reportedly - at the edge of the bank. Today it is long past its prime but many oaks and birches have sprung up round about; one which my mother watered faithfully was know as "Cora's Little Oak" and she always referred to the young growth at the back as her "woodlot".

Ownership was shared by my father and Effie Wood, a friend of the family who has lived with us since my mother's marriage, and who later spent the long summer vacation from her work in the Hill Mill with us. The cottage was built by George Merriman and Charles Hinkley. To the best of my knowledge the lumber was brought by water from Portland. The cottage was originally a two room structure with combined living room and kitchen downstairs, and one large chamber containing three double beds upstairs. The stairs (which my children insist was a ladder!) ran steeply up the back but were changed afterwards to the present flight by a visiting "handy" friend.

The first furniture was a motley collection from my Grandmother Towle's attic, transported by hayrack from Lewiston by our city neighbor Lindley Cartland. We drove along ahead to show the way and stopped at a district schoolhouse in Topsham for a picnic lunch. The building was not locked so we played there for half an hour, with Lindley Cartland as the stem teacher who threw a book at my mischievous mother. The Merrimans also gave us a homemade couch which had stood in their kitchen some years and it figures prominently in the treasured picture of "Beulah and Me and the Cozy Comer".

A hammock was swung from the lower large branches of the oak tree. Once, while they were quite young, Beulah gave Albert such a hard punch that he fell out of the hammock and rolled down the bank to the rocks on the cove. His head was cut and bleeding when his mother ran to pick him up. She was expecting another child in a few months but suffered a miscarriage because of this shock and strain, or so she always thought.

There was much running back and forth between the cottage and the farmhouse. 
At first we got our water at their well and our milk and eggs from their supply. It used to be an adventure for me to go down cellar into the cool stoned-up milkroom or up to the henhouse for eggs. Then, too, we spent many evenings visiting and laughing in the cheery kitchen and listening to George tell tales of his experiences aboard sailing ships, or his trips to Grand Manan and the Bay of Fundy for fish. Sometimes he could be persuaded to sing old ballads but not often. One I remember was a long, long story of how the blackfish came into a cove on Orr's Island and were stranded there. They were killed by people armed with every weapon that could be seized quickly.

I was hysterically frightened of thunder storms (until I was 16) and felt safe only when at the farmhouse and in George's calm, reassuring presence; so at the sign of a threatening cloud we all started for "The House" (as we called it usually) and security!

Until 1901 we came to Oak Cottage every summer, from the time our schools closed, the last of June, until State Fair Week in Lewiston, about the first week in September. I loved to roam all the nearby pastures picking berries with Effie Wood, or gathering driftwood along the shore with Aunt Huldah, or wandering in the fields and woods with Beulah and Albert. I enjoyed going barefoot until one day of great adolescent embarrassment Captain Peleg Merriman, the seagoing son of Captain Daniel Merriman, a cousin of George and local hero, confronted me on the shore dressed in his city best. l\4y feet never felt larger and I abandoned the practice henceforth.

Sometime around 1894 we had begun to travel by the Maine Central Railroad from Lewiston to Brunswick, then down to Harpswell Neck by the "Stage" which carried mail and passengers. We were dropped off at Captain Daniel's fine house at the head of our crossroads, whence we walked to the shore, leaving our luggage to be brought down in a wheelbarrow later. In later years we made the journey by railroad to Portland and then by the steamer "Merriconeag" (365 Island Route) to the boat landing at South Harpswell. There all boats were met by local drivers who carried us and our luggage in varied horse-drawn conveyances to the cottage door. While we waited in Portland for the afternoon boat to leave, my mother annually made a trip to Goudy & Kent's Wholesale Bakery. There she bought a box of their cookies which were put aside because broken, overcooked or misshaped. The box, holding about a halfbarrel was a feature in the cottage all summer and was free for us children at all hours for lunching. My Grandmother Bunker's maiden name was Goudy and my mother and the bakery proprietor (a very attractive man, I've heard) tried to establish common ancestry. (But since I took up the study of the family tree I've found no evidence!)

As I have said, Oak Cottage was the first to be built along that shore or for some distance north or south, for that matter. But no sooner had it been built than Fred Jackson of Farmington, a brother of Alvah, owner of the next farm south, persuaded George to sell him the Cunner Rock Point. The cottage, carriage house, wharf and boat which he built for his bride "Vonnie Pearl" were a shade more elaborate than our establishment. Before long, Fred and Yvonne were divorced and the buildings sold successively to the Weymouths, the Marwicks and the Lynches, to come finally into the possession of the present owners, a niece of the Lynches, Katherine Merrill and her husband. The well which Alvah Jackson dug on his property at the head of the cove supplied water for all the surrounding cottages existing then and later. At one period six families were drawing from it with primitive well-hood and pail.

Next the three large cottages known as Shore Acres were built beyond Reddick's Cove on the Hinkley farm. The owners were Justin Hinkley, their eldest son, a lawyer in Springfield, Mass., and two of his friends, Milton Bradley (of the well-known manufacturer of games and school supplies) and the Rev. Mr. Pillsbury of the same city, who brought a group of boys for summer tutoring and vacation. These three families were somewhat exclusive and pretentious and comprised the summer aristocracy of West Harpswell for many years until their young people married and the eiders ceased to come. Then the cottages changed hands, and several small ones were built on that farm.

Sometimes we were allowed to walk to Moses Bailey's store at West Harpswell on errands or to make our small purchases. We preferred to take the cart roads and foot paths around Reddick's Cove over the stile at the Hinkley farm, through the spruce woods and up the main road by Rufus Merriman's house (now Ed Leeman's). One memorable day we had been sent to get a hand rake for George and a jug of molasses for Lydia. Beulah and Albert thought it would be a good idea to put the rake handle through the jug handle and carry it between them. Somebody stubbed a toe, the rake fell, the jug broke and great was the consternation. I believe Mr. Bailey trusted us for another jug of molasses which was carried more carefully. 
Before Rural Free Delivery was instituted we called for our mail at the postmaster's at West Harpswell. The mail for points below there came by steamboat to the post office at South Harpswell.

As I grew older, Mary and I became more companionable. I attended the parties Lydia gave for the young folks of Harpswell and visitors staying at the farm. Home-made ice cream was the highlight of the refreshments and old fashioned kissing games the entertainment with singing and dancing for added jollity. So I became acquainted with many boys and girls of families up and down the Neck and met my first beau. He was from Ash Cove Point, the son of a local carpenter, and had tight curly blond hair and sea blue eyes. In rural fashion, he began accompanying Mary and me home from the weekly evening prayer meetings at the Methodist Church in West Harpswell and soon was calling at the cottage. I remember especially one Sunday he called for me with horse and buggy and took me to his home for dinner where I met his assembled family and was duly inspected. Later in the day we went over the old Tide Mil~ a Harpswell landmark (now vanished) which harnessed the tides for power. Chester and I wrote some dull and infrequent letters for a few winters but he was superseded by my high school classmate, Jacob Marcus Salomon. Jake with his brother Simon Henry had been sent to Lewiston from Groveton, N. H. by their parents to obtain a better education than was available in their home town.

Among our early visitors to stay at Oak Cottage I recall Effie Wood's mother, Harriet Heal Wood, because of a very unpleasant few weeks she caused me when I was thirteen, adolescent and disagreeable. Effie's brother, Douglas Wood (father of Dr. Howard Douglas Wood of Hope Street High School, Providence, fame) was more welcome; and my Aunt Alice Bunker Wiswell with her two children, Norma, four, and Eugene, two, was excellent company, though she did attract my Chester with her pretty young charms! For several years while I was attending Bates College Jake spent a week every summer at Harpswell. He had a room at the farmhouse but spent the days with me and the family and ate my mother's delicious meals with us. He gave us a new hammock for the oak tree - orange and black and fringed, in the style of the era - and I remember he spent most of one visit lying in it and studying for his Masonic initiation! One Sunday, with my classmates Alice Cartland and Lincoln Roys, we attended service at the Congregational Church at Harpswell Center. The Rev. Elijah Kellogg, retired pastor, preached the sermon. The boys were most interested in the fact that the preacher was the famous author of one of their favorite declamations, "Spartacus to the Gladiators." The old cemetery with its slate headstones was a fascination for us also.

The continuity of our visits to the cottage was broken for a time after 1901. My father had died in February, 1898, my mother was not well after that, Beulah was clerking for a while in a Lewiston store before taking up her teacher's training at the Dingley Training School and I was being interviewed for high school teaching positions.

I taught at Old Town, Maine, 1901-1902, and at Orange, Mass., 1902-1903, and Beulah began her long career of teaching in the Lewiston grade schools.

By 1901 Mary Merriman had married Harry Bibber, of Basin Point, South Harpswell; he was a seafaring man being engaged then in deep sea fishing out of Portland. Later he became a cook on the fishing vessels and was absent for long periods at sea. Harry and Mary went to live at Cundy's Harbor, Great Island, Maine. After Austin, Linwood and the twin boys, Walter Russell and Arthur Randall, were born, George insisted that the Bibbers return to the Merriman homestead and there the other five Bibber children were born: Roy, Gertrude, Kenneth, Milton and Herbert.

Jake and I were married in Boston, October 21, 1903, with my sister and his brother as witnesses. Henry, after a year at Dartmouth College, had been graduated from Brown and was attending Harvard Law School at the time. Jake and I went to New York on our wedding trip, and then settled in Groveton where he was already established in business.

Frances was a year old when I next went to the cottage. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Savage and their Francis (2 years old) and Annie Tibbets of Groveton joined Beulah and me there. Mrs. Savage took over the cooking most delightfully, Charlie and I brought in the blueberry crop and Francis Savage is remembered for his bitter weeping on the second stair! Marguerite was born April 14, 1906 and didn't see Harpswell until the next year when Lucy Nugent made the trip with me and we spent a few weeks there. Jake came down for a week and we left him to care for the children one day. Frances went to bed but Marguerite was the sleepless kind. We returned to find Jake asleep on the couch and the baby upended and asleep on the floor! I can see the pathetic wait: still. The summer Noel was 8 months oid we went to the cottage again, but after that I found it easier to spend the summers in our roomy new house in Groveton with the five children. Once we hired a cottage at Did Orchard Beach to give the children the benefit of sand and warmer bathing but none of us liked the place as well as Harpswell.

My mother died May 30, 1908. When her estate was settled Beulah took the property at 170 Holland Street, Lewiston, which became her home for the rest of her life. William Merrow, whom my mother had married in 1906, and I took cash settlements. Beulah later bought my mother's share of Oak Cottage from Effie Wood. Effie retained half of the lot and had another cottage built on it.

We were always welcome at Oak Cottage, however. At times Beulah had friends from Lewiston to stay with her, and as my children grew older and the Maine seacoast had more appeal, we came for some weeks during the summer. There were during those years many children to play with - all the Bibbers, the Wing boys from Lewiston who occupied the Jackson fishhouse, the five Linehan children from Waterbury, Conn., whose parents hired Mrs. McGregor's cottage, and the two Crowninshield boys whose grandparents built the Ladd cottage at the north end of the farm. All these provided fun for each other and many evenings gathered around the campfires they built under the big oak tree and told ghost stories!

Then came many changes at Harpswell. Late one fall, George Merriman was returning home from the shore when he suffered a cerebral shock and collapsed half way to the farmhouse. Although he lived on for three years, he was mentally incapacitated. Albert Merriman was living in Topsham after his marriage to Abbie Snowe, so Harry Bibber left his swordfishing ship and came home to help with George's care. After George died, Lydia retained her part of the farmhouse, but as Mary's children grew older, more and more rooms were gradually taken over for their use. When Lydia died and was buried beside George in Hillcrest Cemetery, overlooking High Head and Harpswell Bay, the Bibbers took over the mother's place and Gertrude and her husband, Stanley Merriman, and daughter Mary Louise occupied one end of the house.

Alvah Jackson's wife had died and he sold the farmhouse and part of his land io Austin Bibber, the eldest Bibber boy, who had married Doris Coyle, a Providence High School teacher. Mr. Jackson sold his shore property and the little Oak Lodge on it to a Mr. Douglas of Bowdoinham. The Hinkley farm had been sold to Mr. Moody, whose daughter married Edgar Lemay and with her family still lives there.

Harry Bibber had returned to sea after George died, since Albert Merriman had built a house to the south of his mother's and lived there for a time. When Mary Merriman Bibber died (about 1930) Harry, who was not in the best of health, came home to keep house for the remaining children. He hauled his lobster traps every day in his dory, rowing in the traditional seaman's standing-up style. He claimed he had picked up the dory after it was abandoned by rum-runners trying to land a cargo in Harpswell during Prohibition. He cooked many a batch of biscuit and huge blueberry pie for my sister and me. He was a sweet, companionable man. All of us have fond recollections of him, sitting on his porch, smoking his pipe and with an eye always cocked for any activity on the bay or change of weather. In a fit of depression and discouraged by ill health, Harry jumped from his boat and was drowned in 1941. The farmhouse, once so prosperous and bustling with life, is now abandoned and falling to pieces, as the Bibber children have married (all but Walter, and Kenneth, who died) and departed.

About 1925 Mrs. Bibber had written that Joseph Stover and J. Albert Curtins (his nephew) were offering for sale nine shore lots of their Harpswell property and she believed I should be interested. Lots 4 and 5 on their plan was the knoll overlooking Harpswell Sound and Stover’s Harbor with its fine view of Orr's and Bailey Islands. This was one of my favorite sites, also known and beloved by George Merriman. Jake immediately purchased the two lots for $150 each but it was not until 1939 that our new cottage was built. Jake brought down a crew of nine men from Groveton and the cottage was built in 10 days, the lumber being brought from Brunswick by truck over the farmhouse road and. by permission, over Mr. Douglas's land. The workmen were boarded by Harry Bibber. I named the cottage "Merryknoll", in part for George Merriman and in part for its physical aspects, although Jake ~ways referred to it as "Lena's Ledge" and had a sign painted with this on it.

Mr. Curtis. on his first visit to the newly built cottage spoke of the bold water along those lots and the name "Bold Water Cottage" has had its appeal. On one hilarious occasion the following suggestions were offered by members of the Salomon family:

Viewpoint Chowder Head Close Quarters Judge's Grudges Pieces of Hate Hemmed Inn Shore Nuff Sparkie Plenty Berry Nice Hi-de-ho 
Sons of Birches Jest Best 
Blind Alley Cold Cuts 
Blue Daze

Gulls and Buoys The Tannery Hidden Haven Baked Alaska Far Cry 
Point Less Pleasure Dome Lost Interest The Doll-drums Lost Cause Clam Up 
Storm Center All Holler Petti-Point Solstice 
The first to occupy Merryknoll in the early summer of 1939 were Frances and her husband. Thomas E. Murphy. and their new baby, Brian, then three months old. as well as Emmett and Rosalyn Murphy. Eleanor and I arrived later from Providence after they had gone home. and in September we experienced the first hurricane to visit the Maine coast.

For some time after Merryknoll was built we continued to use kerosene for our lamps and wood stoves. By 1950 Mrs. Kenson Merrill persuaded several other cottage owners, including Beulah and myself, to agree to have the Central Maine Power Co. extend their line from the Clark farm on the so-called "Mountain." After the electricity was brought in, Noel Salomon, with the able assistance of Leonard Kane and Richard Salomon, wired both cottages so we had lights and "progress was no longer obstructed." Marguerite provided the first refrigerator for Merryknoll and the next year, with Frances, provided one for Oak Cottage. Electric grills were next installed for cooking and heating water, plus a radio for Guy Lombardo's music and the New York City baseball games.

From the beginning we had rocky roads to travel from the main highway to the shore. Our right of way was the road past the Merriman farmhouse, although some years the road across the Jackson property was considered slightly better. Gradually, however, we came to use the Mountain road, contributing small sums annually to its upkeep. These roads were satisfactory, however, only as long as we desired to reach just Oak Cottage. After Lloyd Thompson constructed the excellent road to his new house, we had the present spur from his road to Merryknoll, permitted by our original deed built by Arnold Lemay under Mr. Thompson's supervision. This gave us direct access to Merryknoll, thanks to funds provided by Eleanor and her husband.

This year, 1954, we obtained an independent and convenient source of water supply from our own well - having long since abandoned the well originally dug on the lots. In order to strike water beyond the ledge on which the cottage stands (and within our shore rights), it was necessary to buy land 40 feet deep on the entire west side of the property. The process was begun in 1953 by John Rush, a local well digger, who located a supply with a divining rod cut from a nearby cherry tree. This rustic performance had its skeptic observers, including the Kanes, but events confirmed Mr. Rush's judgment. He completed the well in the spring of 1954 under Mr. Thompson’s persistent urgings and direction. Samples of the water were dispatched to the State Department of Health and Welfare at the state capitol and approved as satisfactory and excellent for drinking water.

With the passage of the years marked changes have taken place in the marine life along the shore. When I was a girl clamming was a major occupation at all seasons. Barrels of them were dug every winter at Reddick's Cove and hauled by the cart road across the pastures to the Merriman fishhouse. Now clams in any quantity have practically disappeared. From the wharf and from Cunner Rock we were able to catch small fish such as cunners, flounders, tomcod and eels. Today these fish are scarce; no one bothers to throw a line into the water though some are caught in seines off Merriman Ledges for lobster bait. Lobsters are still plentiful and lobstering is a profitable business since laws are protecting the industry. I recall how very proud my mother was when she learned to knit "heads" for lobster traps under the tutelage of Lydia Merriman.

The "Age of the Automobile" has largely eliminated travel by water. We used to set our clocks by the Gurnet, an excursion boat which every day sailed from Portland to the Gurnet House on Great Island. This was taken off in the 1940's and only recently the Aucocisco (successor to the Merriconeag) ceased to call at South Harpswell and the boat landing there has been demolished.

Life at Harpswell has always been placid and restful with little excitement to mar the march of days. The day after war was declared between England and Germany in 1939 I had the thrilling experience of seeing the "Queen Mary," already converted to a troopship in her gray battle dress, slipping across the open sea beyond Bailey Island as she made her way home by the Great Circle Route.

One year, when Linwood and Ruth Bibber with their two little children were living in Oak Lodge, just south of Beulah's cottage, their three-burner oil stove exploded and the cottage with all their possessions burned to the ground. Fortunately, all members of the family were out of the house at the time. Beulah gave the family the full use of her cottage and its contents for the winter, after which Linwood built his own house back of his father's on the hill.

Another threat to our cottage was in 1949 when a serious brush fire swept across the woodlots from Reddick's Cove to Beulah's. The side of the cottage was slightly scorched. Fire companies from several surrounding towns were called to put out the blaze.

The hurricane of 1939 found Eleanor and me alone in the newly built cottage. The wind was rising about 5:00 p.m. when Eleanor made her way home from Doris Bibber' s with difficulty. As the evening wore on we became quite alarmed but, since it was our first experience in that exposed location, we called it a severe Line Gale and sat it out. When the news began to arrive of disasters in Rhode Island we were less sanguine. Harry told us that if our cottage weathered that storm we had noting to fear in the future.

And so it proved in 1954 when "Carol," on August 30 and "Edna," a week later, lashed the coasts again. Ruth Bibber and I sat out the forenoon while Hurricane Carol raged around my cottage, ignorant of the fact that Mrs. McGregor's oak tree had been uprooted and thrown with great force on the roof of Oak Cottage. It had moved the cottage about three feet off its base, cracked the kitchen chimney, broken some windows and done some other minor damage.

A week later Hurricane Edna with almost equal force raged again and miraculously moved that tree off from the cottage and down on the shore. This time 1 was all alone but felt no fear since that terrible pressure which characterized the hurricane of 1939 was absent, and, in the daytime, the scene was fascinating to watch.

In my study of the genealogy of my parents, I discovered that Richard Potts, the first settler at South Harpswell, for whom the point and Pott's harbor were named, was an ancestor of my father. He and his son Thomas escaped the massacre by the Indians in 1673 when his wife Margaret and younger children lost their lives. I discovered also that Harry Bibber and I had a common ancestry in John Drew of Durham, NH, whose daughters Rebecca Drew and Abigail Drew married Clement Bunker and James Bibber, respectively, in the early days of the colony.

Addendum, 9/24/99

Lena Towle Salomon died in 1955 in Providence, Rhode Island.

These memoirs have been re-typed by her granddaughter, Frances Robinson Townsend, daughter of Eleanor Salomon Robinson, the "Eleanor" of the memoirs.

I have tried to re-type these pages with little or no change in the wording and/or grammar, in order to keep the flavor and authenticity of the original. Many of us are grateful to have this look at earlier times and lives in this very special place.

With Merryknoll the center of Salomon descendent activity, Oak Cottage, built in 1890 on the half acre in the south comer of George Merriman's farm, fell to disuse and disrepair in the 1970's. Eventually the property, as well as the Wood and McGregor properties mentioned herein, was annexed by owners of the Merrill property which lay between Oak Cottage and Merryknoll. All three of those cottages have been taken down, the lots now part of the Kessel estate (60 acres) stretching from the main road, Rt. 123, to the shore. The "Mountain Road" of my grandmother is now a paved drive, guarded by stone pillars and electronic gates!

The Kessels, however, must have liked the Victorian design of Oak Cottage. In its advanced state of disrepair, they had it taken down, but another was built a few years ago of the same design, though moved a bit further back from the water as zoning regulated.

Merryknoll stands, with some modem amenities like vinyl siding and a hot water shower in the woodshed, but still with an outhouse and only cold running water in the kitchen. We like it that way! The current owners, grandchildren and great grandchildren of Lena Towle Salomon, share use from April through October every year, and the pace of life for those in residence remains "placid and restful."

Frances Townsend