USA > Maine > Hancock County > Blue Hill > Head of the bay : sketches and pictures of Blue Hill, Maine, 1762-1952 > Part 5
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Later the same year, the situation improved when the price of copper rose. A steamboat wharf was built on the west side of the Inner Bay, where vessels came to load. Colonel Darling, who had retired suddenly somewhat earlier, now returned to public life. But despite a temporary prosperity the public distrusted the mining operations. In 1883, Captain Daniel Dunn, a eapable Cornish miner with wide experience, eame here from the West to manage the "Douglass." New equipment was installed, and market pros- pects were brighter. But it was too late; people were wary. It was all right to work in the mines in the winter, but in the spring there was work to be done on the farms, and in the summer there was haying.
The "Douglass," the only mine which had continued to operate and to ship refined copper closed - probably in 1884. Many of the Maine laborers went to work in the quarries, and gradually the Village returned to normal. In 1888, The United Copper Company bought, but did not operate, the "Douglass." They, in turn, sold it in 1917 to The American Smelting Com- pany. The price of copper had increased during the war, and the new company operated the mine briefly with its own equipment and engineers. At the close of the war, with the acute need for copper gonc, prices dropped again. The "Douglass" closed once more, but this time the buildings were taken down and the shafts were filled with water.
RIGHT: The Pendleton House in 1890, when it was owned by John Snow. In the rear, cordwood is piled for shipping on the Town Wharf. BELOW: The Copper and Gold Exchange at the intersection of Main Street and Union Street, in 1895.
PENDLETON HOUSE
MINERAL SPRING
During the summer of 1895 or 1896, a guest at the Bluc Hill Inn sent to the S. S. Pierce Company in Boston for a case of their best ginger ale. The case which eventually arrived here was labeled Blue Hill Mineral Spring Ginger Ale. It was the product of a spring located about two-and-one-half miles from the Village, just west of the Bucksport road.
In the second geological report of the State of Maine, (1838), Charles Jackson, a Boston gcologist, writes of manganese deposits in Blue Hill moun- tain and lead ore on Long Island, and adds that "we were shown a remark- able chalybeate spring which is highly charged with carbonate of iron, and may become valuable for medieinal purposes as a tonic." However, it was not until 1882 that a Blue Hill Mineral Water Company was formed. Town records list the original owner as "Unknown," but John MaeNamara, an Ellsworth man, was manager at the Spring. Charged water and ginger ale were bottled at the Spring during this early period.
In 1893, when Thomas Crieve eame here, the mineral water became better known. A spring house was built over the ledge where the water bubbled into a pool, from which anyone was permitted to take water.
Adjoining the spring house was a large picnic grove with tables and benches. This was a famous place for picnic parties. Once each year, a Field Day was held there - usually on Labor Day - when everybody was
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To the Physicians.
EAST SULLIVAN, ME., June 28, 1894. To the Officers of the Bluchill Mineral Spring Co .:
DEAR SIRS: I take pleasure in stating to you on oath, that through the kindness of IIon. Gilbert E. Simp- son, of this place, who gave me six bottles of the Blue- hill Mineral Water, he knowing my situation for the past seven years that I have been confined to the house most of the time. Having been examined by fourteen doctors, most of them agreeing to my complaints which are en- largement of the Heart and Valves, Enlargement of Liver with General Dropsy, Enlargement of Prostate Gland, Curvature of Spine with the worst Constipation I ever saw in thirty-two years of practice of medicine. The water removes that heavy weight at pit of stomach from which I have suffered for the past six years. It is also a Diuretic and works well on the Kidneys. I have gained six pounds in six weeks and feel far better than for seven years. It has done me more good than anything I have ever taken and shall continue using it for some time to come. If you wish to use this letter and my name you can for I can recommend it to all people suffering as I am. B. H. ORDWAY, M. D.
Sullivan, June 28, 1894. Personally appeared the above-named Benj. HI. Ordway, and made oath to the above statement before me. G. E. SIMPSON, Justice of the Peace.
welcome and everybody came. Speeches by prominent men took up most of the afternoon; and the event constituted one of the important annual social occasions for family and friendly gatherings.
There was at that time a good bottling building where Mr. Grieve put up carbonated water and still water as well as the ginger ale made from his spe- cial formula. The company had its office at 85 Union Street in Boston. A price list from this office offers fifty quart cases of Blue Hill Still Water at $6.00, Sparkling Blue Hill Mineral Water (carbonated ) at $7.00, Blue Hill Ginger Ale at $7.00, and Blue Hill Nerve Tonic at $7.00.
The business seemed to decline after the turn of the century. Thomas Grieve left for Boston about 1902, but returned in 1906. The town records of 1912 list A. C. Hlagerthy as owner of the property, which then consisted of about forty acres and was valued at $2000.00. Three years later, in 1915, the buildings burned, never to be rebuilt. The spring changed hands again in 1924, when the property (valued at $600.00) was sold to George M. Allen & Son. At the present time it is owned by Mr. Maxwell Nevells.
LEFT: Facsimile of a circular distributed by the Blue Hill Mineral Spring Company. BELOW: Thomas Grieve at the Blue Hill Mineral Spring house - about 1900.
STEAMBOATS
Among the important daily events in Blue Hill from the late 1800s to 1934 were the coming and going of the steamboats. The trip to Blue Hill, one of the finest on the Atlantic coast, began with the departure from Boston at five o'clock in the evening on one of the big boats - the City of Rockland or the City of Bangor ( side-wheelers) and, later, the Camden or the Belfast (Eastern Steamship Company screw boats). It continued the next morning, sailing on a small boat of the Blue Hill Line across Penobscot Bay at sunrise - through Eggemoggin Reach or the Fox Island Thorough- fare into beautiful Blue Hill Bay.
As J. M. Richardson wrote in Steamboat Lore of the Penobscot, "the history of the Blue Hill lines is largely the story of Captain Oscar A. Crock- ett, who opened the service in 1881 with the diminutive old side-wheeler, Henry Morrison"; although there was some boat service as early as 1857, and there was always traveling by sailing vessels from Blue Hill to Boston. Captain Crockett seemed to know every native and summer resident, and he always had a hearty welcome for passengers boarding his ship at five o'clock in the morning at the Rockland wharf and at any of the many landings.
At first, the Henry Morrison ran to Contention Cove in Surry, and pas- sengers and freight were sent on to Ellsworth by stage. In 1887, Captain Crockett brought out the Blue Hill, but this twin screw boat, which was built for his line at East Boston, was not well suited to the run and had to be given up. He chartered several smaller boats until 1892, when the success- ful Juliette was built for him at Bath. The following year, the Catherine was also built for the Blue IIill run.
In 1899, the line was called the Rockland, Blue Hill, Ellsworth Steamboat Company, but in 1904 Captain Crockett sold his entire interest to the Eastern Steamship Company. Previous to that time, Captain Crockett made special summer excursion trips from Blue Hill to Bar Harbor - gala events, with the Blue Hill Inn orchestra on board. Once each summer, the Catherine or the Juliette would also make a fishing excursion into deep water for cod and haddock. These two boats were the favorites of Captain Crockett and his sons, Ralph and Lou - "experts and ever careful navigators." The Eastern Steamship Company replaced the Catherine and the Juliette with the Booth- bay, the Southport, and the Westport - the last of which made the final runs for the line in April, 1934.
LEFT: Members of the summer colony watching the departure of the Henry Morrison from the Parker Point wharf - about 1887. BELOW: The Steamer Boothbay - in the 1920s.
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AF BLUE HILL ME H.
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MOUNTAIN PARK, BLUE HILL, JULY 4 and 5,'92.
GRAND OPENING
BY THE Hancock County Agricultural Society.
FIRST DAY.
3 MINUTE CLASS. $100. PURSE.
V. D. Smith, Pretty Marsh ; B. G., Dick S. J. F. Gould, Prospect ; B. S., Hiekory Knox. Stevens Bros: Ellsworth ; S. G., Chester. F. E. Nye, Brooksville ; G. M,, Gypsey. E. E. Chase, Bluehill ; Blk. M., Lady Chase. F. P. Merrill, Blue Hill ; C. M., Bonnie M. Simeon Leach, Blue Hill ; B. G., Reuben T B. F. Small, Deer Isle ; B. G., BAL Leach Bros., Blue Hill : 9 ". Elijah Greenleaf.
G. H. Dyer
A. L. Ch-
Facsimile of the handbill distributed at the opening of Mountain Park by the Hancock County Agricultural Society, in 1892.
ALTHOUGHI FRANK SNOW HAS TOLD ME THAT "THERE WERE CATTLE SHOWS (in Blue Hill) as far back as I can remember, and I was born in 1866," the Hancock County Agricultural Society was not formed here until the last decade of the nincteenth century. Before that time, oxen pulling had taken place in front of the old Town School on Pleasant Street, on Main Street in front of the present Post Office, and in Tucker's Field, which would be about back of A. B. Herrick's carpenter shop. Produce and domestic exhibits would be displayed in the old Town Hall, but oxen pulling was the main event; and a great deal of good-natured rivalry existed among the farmers in this department. At the end of the day there was a parade of oxen - up Union Street past Merrill & Hinckley's store, across High Street, and baek down Main Street. At one time fifty-seven yokes were in line. ( It is sad to know that the last yoke in town was sold during the past winter. )
The date of formal organization of the Hancock County Agricultural Society is recorded as September 29th, 1891, although its first fair did not take place until the following year. Capital stoek, which was fixed at $5,000 and divided into 500 equal shares, was largely subscribed to by townspeople - some of whom paid by labor on the fairgrounds. The first directors of the Society were Frank P. Merrill, George H. Stover, Albert E. Varnum, Alfred C. Osgood, and Augustus C. Peters; and Edward E. Chase, George H. Stover, Merrill P. Hinckley, and Nahum Hinckley served re- spectively as president, vice-president, treasurer, and clerk.
Land was purchased about two miles from the Village on the Ellsworth road, and construction of a half-mile track was begun in the fall of 1891. This work was continued in the following spring, and on May 16th the directors voted "to hold the opening for two days, July 4th and 5th." At the same meeting they voted to adopt the name Mountain Park for their grounds, to leave the matter of fees from hawkers, peddlers, and wheels of fortune to the Secretary, and to place Frank P. Merrill in charge of the horse department. Soon after, they voted "to arrange for a trot as soon as convenient," and set the date for August 16, 1892.
The first Annual Fair at Mountain Park was held September 13th and 14th of the same year. Admittance to the park was fixed at thirty-five cents, carriages went in free, and grandstand seats cost ten cents. The program announces that "checks will be given to persons leaving the stands during the day," and that "no entrance fce being charged for stock, produce and manufactures, each exhibitor will be required to purchase his admission ticket the same as the general public."
The departments at the fair were varied, and perhaps horse-racing was the most important. From the first program we learn that there were six
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different classes - 2.55, 2.43, 2.35, farmers' race, free for all, and three year old - and that purses ranged from $10 in the farmers' race to $300 in the free for all. Other contests were arranged for drawing horses, driving horses, driving mares and colts, drawing oxen, and drawing oxen and steers.
The cattle department offered prizes for heifers, cows, bulls, and steers, as well as for the best yoke of oxen raised in the county and the best town team of ten yokes of oxen. This department also gave prizes for sheep, lambs, pígs, and litters of six or more baby pigs. A poultry division offered prizes for different kinds of fowl.
In the agricultural products division, awards were made for the best half- acres of wheat, oats, and barley, and also for the best peck of grains raised in Hancock County. Fruits and vegetables were also eligible for prizes in this division. Honey and dairy products both rated separate departments.
A manufacturers' division awarded prizes to products made in Hancock County, and the list is impressive - including covered carriages, tcam wagons, riding wagons, sleighs, pungs, axes, edged tools, harness, black- smith's work, carpenter's work, and shoemaker's work. Domestic manufac- tures, another division, listed premiums for woven blankets, fulled cloth
RIGHT: The Mountain Park track, photographed at the Fair of 1905 or 1906. BELOW: The last town fair - held in the village in 1890. The old Barrett house in the center background was taken down several years ago to make way for the gasoline station.
(ten yards), flannel, woolen yarns, tow cloth ( ten yards), cotton or woolen stockings, woolen gloves or mittens, woolen yarn and rag carpeting (ten yards of each), patchwork quilts, bed spreads, trimmings and tidies, em- broidery, lacc needlework, pillow shams, and millinery. Oil and water-color painting constituted another division.
The Annual Fairs continued with growing popularity. Subsequent inno- vations included the furnishing of stalls and pens for livestock (1893) and the hiring of a band as well as the display of fireworks ( 1896). New build- ings were added to the grounds from time to time.
At the turn of the century the county fair was a major social event, for horse-and-buggy transportation was slow, and relatives and friends who might meet at no other time made a point of meeting at Mountain Park. Early in the morning of opening day it was usual to see horses or oxen pulling hay racks laden with large families and sufficient equipment for two day of camping at the Fair Grounds.
Later, the Blue Hill Fair owed its continued success to the efforts of Mr. E. G. Williams, who served as secretary of the Society from 1923 to 1945. During that twenty-two year period he worked tirelessly and efficiently - improving exhibits, races, and shows by all-ycar-round investigation of other agricultural fairs. Under his stewardship the Fair became a profitable enterprise.
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SUMMER RESIDENTS
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TOP: A Sunday afternoon concert at Prof. Hill's cottage - about 1905. From left to right the following are identifiable in the foreground: Ellen Newhall and Marian Chapman (seated), Mary Hill, the three Misses McVane, Stella Bostwick, Bertha Tapper, Effie Kline holding Arnold Merrill's hand, Norman Hall, Wulf Fries, Miss Tapper, Ed Thompson, Professor Hill, Rob and Murray Crossette, Frank Teagle and Lucy Pearson. BOTTOM: Parker Point Bridge, where Lord Isaac let the world in, but kept his cows from getting out.
THE YEAR 1882, WHEN BLUE HILL'S SUMMER COLONY MAY BE SAID TO HAVE come into existence, is firmly fixed in the horse-and-buggy era. Travel to Blue Hill from Ellsworth (the nearest railroad depot) involved a drive of two hours or longer in that year, and the pleasant nightboat journey from Boston to Roekland and thence to Blue Hill was a proportionately lengthy affair. To the first summer visitors the remote village resembled present-day Blue Hill in many ways, but there were points of differenee too . .. the house of Frank Dodge where the Town Hall stands today, the post office, site of Ethel Hinckley's Variety Shop, the triangular grass plot in the center of the square where the town seale was used for weighing hay and oxen, and the tall nearby flagpole. White picket fences enclosed the fields by the roadside, and the front yards of the lovely old houses were surrounded by ornate fenees with faney gates swung elosed by weighted chains. (Only the house of Mr. Harry Duffy - the old Napoleon Bonaparte Holt house - still has such a fence). At the fork of the roads, a small high bandstand, white above and green lattieework below, was used for regular Saturday night concerts by the village band (Mr. Brooks Weseott was the leader, and Mr. A. F. Townsend played the cornet. )
The summer colony first took root at Parker Point. Peter Parker, for whom the Point is named, acquired this land ( as well as the Kneisel plaee, and the golf links from the water of the bay up to South Street ) by grant when he came from Andover in 1765. His two-story house, built on the slope near Mrs. Frank Teagle's driveway, has disappeared - as has the house built by his son Isaae on the erown of the hill. Winnecowetts stands on the site of his barn - an eighty-foot-long structure with a large pig pen baek of it, sur- rounded by a stone wall. The hill as Isaae knew it had a frog pond on the top and a sand pit on the eastern slope from which ships anchored in the cove were loaded.
Isaae Parker, Peter's eighth ehild, inherited 135 acres of land on the Point from his father. An austere and dictatorial man, who earned the name "Lord Isaac" among his fellow villagers, his eharaeter played an important part in the development of the present road connections between the Point and the golf links. To begin with, a trip to the head of the bay for Lord Isaae in- volved driving up through Tapper's Woods west of Parker Point, along South Street, and down Tenney Hill past the Congregational Church. He did have # footpath leading to the Jonah Dodge farm ( now the Country Club prop- erty ) from which a eart road known as Dodge's Lane continued to the vil- lage; but the intervening area of water now spanned by the bridge was then crossed by means of a single plank roughly hewn from an immense log. When the town considered extending Dodge's Lane beyond his place, Lord Isaae
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offered to build the necessary bridge on the condition that he might erect a gate across the new road to keep his cows on his land. The town accepted his offer, and both bridge and gate were built; but before long Isaac re- ported that the gate was being left open. The town claimed that it would be impossible to keep watch over the gate, whereupon Lord Isaac, considering the bargain broken, stated that he would tear down the bridge he had built. The fact that the transgressions ceased immediately bear witness to his pur- poseful character. ( The road was extended to the Kneisel place in 1848 and to the Sedgwick Road in 1887. )
Lord Isaac Parker died, aged 97 years, in 1877. Two years later, his son Israel sold the family farm to Hartford Sweet, of Salem, Mass. The new owner moved the house down the slope to the site of the original Peter Parker house in 1886, and it was at this location that as The Homestead it became the center of Blue Hill's summer colony. Even after summer colony members had built their cottages in ensuing years, many of them continued to take regular meals at the boarding house which had introduced them to the area.
The first summer boarder to stay at Hartford Swcet's was Emma Dole, of Bangor, who applied for board, was received, and spent several weeks there in August of 1882. In the following year, two new boarders arrived - Mrs. Benjamin B. Newhall, of Boston, and Miss Selma Borg, a Finn - and in 1884 the first move was made toward building a summer cottage on the Point. In that year, Mr. and Mrs. Ford H. Rogers, of Detroit, came here to visit Mrs. Harriet Morton at Orchard Lodge (now the Congregational par- sonage), and persuaded Mr. Swcet to sell them an acre of his land. George W. Butler was engaged by them to build a summer cottage, and in the following summer they moved into the completed Wild Rose. ( In 1887, the cottage was sold to John Teagle, of Cleveland, the sale being transacted through the transfer of oil stock. It has since been enlarged and given the name of Shoreacre. Its present owner is Mrs. Walter Teagle.)
The summer of 1885 saw two additional cottages erected on the Point. Prof. Junius W. Hill, of Wellesley, Mass., a boarder at the Homestead, built The Maples on the crest of the hill; and The Pines, now owned by the Ed- ward W. Weston estate, was built by the Newhalls. For many years, Prof. Hill's house was the scene of memorable Sunday afternoon concerts given by the owner, Wulf Fries, and Bertha J. Tapper.
John Holman, a relative of Prof. Hill's, came to Parker Point in 1886. To- gether the two men purchased twenty acres of land on the north side of the Point, and laid it out for roads and building lots. A well was sunk, pipes were laid for water and sewage, and permission was granted by the town in 1887 for the two to build a wharf at which the Rockland steamer stopped as it approached and left the village. Mr. Holman built his own cottage, Seven
Oaks, in 1887 (Mayo and Townsend were the builders). Long the center of entertainments and evening dances, it was later sold to Dr. E. P. Riggs, of St. Paul, and subsequently to Gertrude Haskell (Mrs. Coburn Haskell). It is now owned by Mrs. William A. Haskell.
Before the turn of the century, at least seven more summer cottages ( Sun- set Cliff, Mossledge, Winnecowetts, Lappahanink, Sevenacres, Ingleside and Inwood - which burned many years ago), were built on Parker Point.
TOP: Junction of the road in to the Point with the South Blue Hill road. BOTTOM: The Homestead as it looked when it was the center of the new summer community.
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The Blue Hill Inn in its heyday. The Inn served as a temporary infirmary when the Blue Hill Memorial Hospital burned in 1929. Three years later, the Inn itself was destroyed by fire.
During that time, The Parker Point Association was formed under a trust deed by Messrs. Holman, Hill, Hosmer, Lusk, Teagle, Mrs. Newhall, and Mrs. Kline to assure care for property which they owned in common, includ- ing the bathing beach lot in the cove where they erected the present bath- housc. The original well, dug in 1887, had to be enlarged many times, and the windmill was replaced by an engine. By 1900, Parker Point was clearly established as a summer community. The Association was dissolved in 1949 and the roads returned to the owners. The bathing bcach property was bought by Miss Delight Weston and deeded to the Blue Hill Country Club.
The chain of events which brought together Blue Hill's musical colony goes back to within one year of the summer settlement of Parker Point. The Newhalls, who came in the summer of 1883 ( when Mrs. Newhall's brother marricd a daughter of Jonah Dodge) brought Miss Selma Borg; Miss Borg later brought Eleanor Rose and Lilian Harmon (of Mossledge); and, in 1893, Miss Harmon brought the distinguished cellist, Wulf Fries.
Wulf Frics, who found Blue Hill much like his native Norway, spent
many summers in a little yellow and white farmhouse by the outer bay shore. (This house was later bought by Theodore Nevin, who took it down and built The Moorings, now owned by Mr. Harry Haas, farther back on the slope.) He was responsible for bringing to Blue Hill the pianist, Bertha J. Tapper, who built Tapper's Woods ( later bought by Martha Rutan and now owned by Mr. Frank Rutan) on the hill west of the Point Road. Mrs. Tapper, in turn, introduced to the community the celebrated Franz Kneisel, whose cottage and studios were on the old Harding place - the first point south of Parker Point on the outer bay. The latter brought Henry E. Krehbiel, dean of New York music critics, to Blue Hill, and also Horatio Parker, profes- sor of music at Yale.
The Krehbiel family lived on the hill west of the road, and according to story, the Kneisels would give the call of the Valkyric when communication between the two families was wanted. Franz Kneiscl conducted a summer music school with students boarding in homes throughout the town. There were many concerts in Blue Hill in his time, one each year being given for the benefit of local road maintenance. Later, Kneisel Hall was built high on the mountain slope, and this became the musical center of the community.
The Franz Kneisel Memorial Association was formed in 1952 with an en- dowment from the Loeb Foundation. The summer music school was re- opened and the regular Sunday afternoon concerts werc resumed. As in Franz Kneisel's day, weekly evening rehearsals are open to the public. Miss Marianne Kneisel continues to conduct the Kneisel Quartet in Blue Hill and on national tours.
The Blue Hill Inn, long a focal point of the summer community, was built in 1892 by George Stover (a relative of Eben Mayo). Located at the south- east corner of the crossroads at the top of Tenney Hill, it enjoyed a pano- ramic view of mountain, village, and Mt. Desert, for the trees standing be- low it now have grown rapidly on what was formerly open pasture ..
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