USA > Maine > Hancock County > Bar Harbor > The story of Bar Harbor, an informal history recording one hundred and fifty years in the life of a community > Part 17
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By no means was the Mount Desert Island fire out, after the intense wind of Thursday the twenty-third. Up to the afternoon of Saturday, the 25th, it wandered about, out of control, but steadily being throttled down, till its last burst, back across the Crooked Road, was checked in the woods-thanks in part to a drop in the wind, thanks even more to the plentiful supply of manpower and engine power that allowed the overwhelming of the sides of the
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fire and the narrowing of its front; without this the drop in the wind would not have meant so much.
From Saturday to Wednesday, the twenty-ninth, the fire continued to hold so large a part of the town limits of Bar Harbor that it was impossible to let the evacuees return. Bar Harbor had been deprived of all utilities except water and sewerage. The essential business and legal records of the town were safe, but needed to be brought into line for use in starting things anew. A whole special organization had to be set up to deal with problems of relief and insur- ance. In four days that was done by a combination of modern know-how and Maine resourcefulness. The Bangor Hydro-Electric Company, for example, picked up a spare transformer unit at Millinocket, and set it up for use at Bar Harbor, making a new substation on the island. The telephone company, the light company, and the water company all listed those who had been burnt out; a com- bination of the lists, plus the assessor's list, formed the master list used by the Red Cross. Those lists in themselves furnished intimate pictures of the town's life; for examples, discrepancies between them told which man had dug his own well, which man lighted his home by means of a home electric unit, who was living in retirement by the rental of houses he had built in his active days. Another picture of modern Bar Harbor ways was discerned when Mr. and Mrs. Tripp returned from Florida to reopen their restaurant to act as a Red Cross canteen, once the firehouse had closed up shop. Best example of all, two days after the fire the com- munity leaders had organized the Bar Harbor citizens' committee, as a suitable recipient for the donations pouring in from all sides.
Finally, on Wednesday morning, October 28, at 10 a.m., it was possible for the authorities to allow all those with
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standing homes to return to Bar Harbor. Radio and press announced it, and all day, until the 6 p.m. curfew, cars streamed in, while two overworked national guardsmen stuffed the bosoms of their shirts with passes. All this was accomplished because men knew how to work together. In law and theory, there were nine authorities: The board of selectmen of Bar Harbor, the fire chief, the police chief, the emergency medical officer, the National Guard, the army, the navy, the park, the coast guard. In fact, how- ever, there was unity of command, for the men of all these agencies knew how to co-operate, and did so. The fire was not out when the evacuees came back. It was not officially out until November 7, and later on, after snow had fallen, it was found that it still, technically, was not out, for digging in Sieur de Monts Meadow turned up fire four feet underground. There was a vast area to be quenched; fortunately, a means was worked out for much of the quenching. Miles of hose, and many "Pacific pumps," distributed by Commander Ellsberg, went throughout the burnt area and controlled the fire. If the fire afforded any lesson, it is the value of such portable pumps, which put out the October 17 fire, and of portable radios, which might have prevented the Great Fire from breaking loose.
Those lessons have been learned. Bar Harbor now has more pumps. Even more important, thanks to the gener- osity of private persons, it has a radio-telephone station and radio-equipment on jeeps, which allow for communi- cation throughout the whole island. The forests are now better protected.
The Great Fire was a dramatic event; but it was only half the story. Even more important was what Bar Harbor did to pull itself together. Damage had been great. In area, fifty-five per cent of the town had been burnt; in buildings,
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sixty-seven of the two hundred and twenty-two summer cottages, one hundred and seventy of the six hundred and sixty-seven year-round residences. This meant a loss of $1,077,000 of assessed value, seventeen per cent or one-sixth of the 1947 assessment, for winter residences; $1, 128,000, or two-fifths or forty-one per cent of the cottage assessed value.
What could be done about this loss? Here, too, outside agencies gave invaluable help. A magnificent gift from the Damon Runyon Fund ensured a year's running expenses of the Jackson Laboratory, and allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its income and the other gifts that poured in. Other reconstruction was aided by the prompt settle- ment of insurance claims. The completeness of the destruc- tion simplified the adjusters' work; proof of loss was horribly simple to effect. The generosity of the summer colony and of the rest of the island gave ample funds to the citizens' committee. Above all, the trained disaster workers of the national Red Cross came into town to administer to immediate rehabilitation needs.
The task of the Red Cross was difficult, for local condi- tions were, as is almost always found to be the case, unusual. For example, in solving the problem of emergency housing, the suggestion was made that government surplus pre- fabricated houses would supply the need. By splendid efforts, such housing was discovered and was shipped to Bar Harbor, only to have it found that local contractors could build more quickly and cheaply from wood in stock. Fortunately, elsewhere in Maine the "tin houses" found welcome and use. So it was in other matters. Red Cross officials discovered that a larger proportion of Bar Harbor residents had insurance coverage than usual, which forced a reconsideration of the usual formulas for assistance. Nat-
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urally, local ways of life-and local special needs varied, and they required learning by the trained staff, as they worked away in the old Reading Room. Such work of rehabilitation is always difficult, in the period of exhaustion that follows on a disaster, when the excitement is over and the future looks bleak, because the Red Cross has funds, and also the duty to say "no" at times, in order to conserve those funds. Despite all this, the job was done ahead of schedule, without any of the complications that had been feared, and in a way to win grateful admiration.
However, "God helps those who help themselves." At the time, the question was naturally raised as to what pro- portion of the population would have to leave town to make its living. Such was a natural question for trained disaster workers to have to ask. The answer was, to Bar Harbor's credit, that practically none left. They stayed because the community solved, in due course, the problems with which it was faced.
The first were financial. With assessments down, town funds for the future would be seriously lower. Yet costs of the fire had to be met. It would be one thing to give no firefighting pay for the dread day when all had been fighting fire for their own lives; but the simple bill for the work of quenching the raging forest fire was staggering, $25,819.89 more than appropriations and receipts. For- tunately, the Maine legislature was called into special session, and granted an abatement of half of the State tax of $52, 356.19, which almost exactly met this overspending. That met the immediate financial emergency. Future expenses were met by rigid economy, and by the adoption of the town-manager system of government, as had been recom- mended in a governmental survey made in 1939. When the warrant committee had finally dealt with the town budget,
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and when the town officers, including the newly appointed town manager, had voluntarily cut their own salaries, so much had been saved that the tax rate after the fire was actually lower than that before the fire, despite the great loss of taxable property.
Having made economies, Bar Harbor also prepared to build up its income. Clearly, there was a good side as well as a bad to the destruction of property. Here, if ever, was a chance to make a long-range town plan. Immediately, with the fire still in the woods though under control, the town-planning board met. Through the generosity of John D. Rockefeller and Joseph Pulitzer, the services of Harland Bartholemew and Associates, city planners, were obtained. On the basis of the suggestions made by their report, the same town meeting that voted the town-manager plan voted a new zoning ordinance. That done, work by the planning board, by Harland Bartholemew and Associates, and by a steadily enlarged group of advisory committees, is progressing, at the time of writing, towards working out a long-range plan that will express the intelligent desires of the community.
However, inducements to future building would not be enough. Bar Harbor, which once had had sixteen hotels, now had only four small ones. A capacity for over two hundred summer visitors had been wiped out when the three big hotels, the De Gregoire, the Malvern, and the Belmont, went. Traditionally, Bar Harbor's permanent summer vis- itors had begun their attachment to the resort by staying in hotels. To exist, it was generally believed, Bar Harbor had to have a hotel.
Those who generously wished to help the town from out- side paid immediate attention to this problem. Fruitful and helpful suggestions were made, and important efforts were
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made to find means for building a hotel. But none seemed feasible. At that point, in the spring of 1948, the Bar Har- bor Lions Club took a hand. Knowing that at Fort Fairfield, Maine, there had been a similar community need for a hotel to replace one lost by fire, the club paid for a survey by the same advisory group, and discovered that such a hotel as Bar Harbor needed might be an economic possibility if the funds could be raised locally. The same organization pro- vided technical assistance, local effort raised the money, and the residents of Bar Harbor raised their share of funds before going to the summer colony for aid. By Labor Day, 1948, the capital needed for a new hotel was in hand. More than that, so attractive had the proposition become that a hotel chain offered to buy an interest in the project.
There, at this time of writing, the story of rebuilding after the fire halts. But progress is still being made, and seems to have a moral behind it-the moral that underlies the whole story of Bar Harbor.
For Bar Harbor is a place in which democracy has suc- ceeded when other forms of government, other ways of life, have failed. Here is where the Jesuits, who made an earthly paradise out of Paraguay, were unable to set up a colony. Here is where Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac, who later made a fortune when he founded Detroit, was unable to establish a feudal manor. Here is where Francis Bernard, whose family knew how to manage great landed estates, spent money to no avail. But after these men of power and position had failed, along came ordinary, everyday Ameri- cans, bringing with them the town-meeting system of government and the co-operative way of handling prob- lems, and succeeded.
Of course, there is, here, no complete parallel. The Jesuits and Cadillac were driven out by war, Bernard by revolu-
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tion; if conditions had been different, perhaps any of their settlements would have lasted. But there is this to say about the parallel: Bar Harbor also met with obstacles-the Rev- olution, the War of 1812, the typhoid epidemic of 1873, the Great Fire of 1947-and it did surmount those ob- stacles, and it surmounted them because it was a democ- racy of Americans who knew how to help themselves.
Sources, Notes, and Bibliography
The purpose of any discussion of sources is to answer questions which may arise in the minds of readers. When dealing with sources as varied as are those of The Story of Bar Harbor, perhaps the most efficient way of fulfilling this purpose is to take four generalized questions, and at- tempt to answer each in the way most suitable to it. These would seem to be: Who helped in this? Where can proof be found for the statements made? What have been the reasons for including or omitting material? And why are names spelled and printed as they are?
To answer these in reverse order: Names have been spelled in accord- ance with usage of the time referred to. On this principle, Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac, who was unique among the French in Canada in his day in sticking to one spelling, has his name spelled as he signed it; his grand-daughter, who wavered between De la Mothe and De la Motte, is held to the former. Her married name, De Grégoire, has the accent she put on it; the hotel named after her and her husband does without the accent. Uncle Ebenezer Salsbury has his name spelled as Town Clerk Thomas Paine wrote it down, as have other early settlers; the cove named after him is spelled as the Town of Bar Harbor and the Salisbury family spell it, and not as the Coast and Geodetic Survey spell it.
Here we find a sore point in the matter of local nomenclature. Local residents, summer visitors, and the federal government-including its highly individualistic representative, the late Mr. George Buckman Dorr -have had their own ways of choosing and spelling names. The dark question of having at least seven names for five Porcupine Islands can be avoided, since the Maine supreme court decided they were part of the Town of Gouldsboro, when it passed on the purchase of one is- land by General Fremont. But the mountains cannot be dealt with so easily. The answer has been the use of the names marked on the Bates, Rand, and Jacques path map before Mr. Dorr sought to impose his own to further the acceptance of the national park, with one exception. For though the path map names are still current, in most cases, the chief mountain of the island, the Mount Desert of the old charts, has become Mount Cadillac. It is therefore so referred to, except when, as in con- nection with the Green Mountain Railway, it was found more natural to use the earlier name, "Green."
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As to capitalization, one idiosyncrasy has been adopted. When the words General Court have been used to refer to the legislature of Maine or Massachusetts they have been capitalized, as a reminder of their special New England meaning.
In deciding upon inclusions and omissions, the aim has been to relate matters of general interest, and to avoid present-day personalities. When many data could be boiled down to a sentence or a paragraph, that was done, if it did not affect the picture of the development of the com- munity. When one incident could exemplify many incidents, one was chosen from many. When dealing with the present only a few events were mentioned which had not previously been discussed elsewhere in print.
But this has not meant that research has not gone into those events which have been narrated so briefly, or that record has not been kept of such research. It was part of David O. Rodick's intention that a sesquicentennial history should provide a body of information about the town's past. In consequence, all the notes gathered have been tran- scribed on uniform 4- by 6-inch slips. In certain cases, as with original deeds, records of military service in the Civil War, of shipping and of some aspects of the census, as well as of early post-office appointments, fairly extensive collections of notes afforded the basis of a paragraph or of a single sentence. Much manuscript material has been acquired in photo-copy, either as photostat or as microfilm. Perhaps a listing of what was thus obtained may be of interest.
From the French Colonial and Marine Ministries, respectively, have come microfilms of Volumes 2 and ro of the Acadia papers (C 1I 2 and Io in the usual numbering), and the log of the Embuscade, the former found on this side of the Atlantic only in transcript at Ottawa, the later not in any form. Negatives of these microfilms are now at the Library of Congress, with positives at Bar Harbor.
From the Library of Congress has come a microfilm of French manu- scripts bearing on Cadillac's early career and on his grand-daughter's request for land in Maine, together with photostats of key pages.
The National Archives have provided a composite film of French- man's Bay Customs District records, a film of the 1830 census, and photostats of vessel enrollments and registrations, of survey corre- spondence, and of navy records of the Otter Creek Radio Station, as well as of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century maps.
The Census Bureau has provided microfilms of the census reports of
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1840 to 1880. The Dominion Archives at Ottawa and the John Carter Brown Library at Providence have provided photostats from their col- lections of maps and of copies of maps.
The Massachusetts Archives have provided photostats of legislative material connected with Mount Desert Island when part of Massa- chusetts, and the Massachusetts Supreme Court Archives have provided photostats of the litigation concerning the De Grégoires' title.
The Massachusetts Historical Society has provided photostats of news- papers and Lafayette's letter of introduction for the De Grégoires; the Maine Historical Society allowed the making of microfilm of their holdings.
The Secretary of State's office at Augusta had photostats made of legislative petitions. Jointly, the Princeton University Art Museum and the Frick Art Reference Library have provided photographs of Thomas Cole's sketch book.
The Provincial Archives at Quebec have provided photostats and transcripts of the records of French feudalism in Maine.
Warm thanks should be expressed to the officials of these institutions. The provision of films and photostats was accompanied by thoughtful and suggestive help in searching for source material, which made in- vestigation a real pleasure. Here Mr. Douglas Leach, as research assistant, made his important contribution.
Nor were these the only institutions which offered help. The Ayer Collection of the Newberry Library, in Chicago, and the Burton Col- lection, of the Detroit Public Library, made searches whose importance was no less great because the results were negative. The Acadia Na- tional Park facilitated work at the Sawtelle Collection at Isleford, that treasure house of Mount Desert sources which is now open to the public, after being closed since Dr. Sawtelle's death. Mr. Robert Applebee gave freely of his fund of information about the shipping of Eastern Maine. Officials of the Lincoln and Hancock County courthouses aided in search among deeds and county records, as did the Maine Railroad Com- missioners. The Honorable Harry A. Crabtree of Ellsworth provided analyses of land titles from the time of Louis XIV through the grants of the Bingham Estate. Mr. Pierpoint Johnson drew to the author's at- tention the house sites shown on the Des Barres Map. Mr. Harry Binnse allowed use of the Bancel de Confoulens Papers. Gratitude should be expressed to them, as well.
Unusual assistance was given by. Madame Bouvet de Maisonneuve, in
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securing microfilm from France, and by the Société de Microfilm of Paris in reproducing the documents she had edited and collated. Mrs. Evans, of the Jesup Library, showed especial kindness in making its facilities available. But, above all, thanks should be expressed to the many in- habitants of Bar Harbor-too numerous to be mentioned individually, and among whom it would be invidious to select representatives to thank by name-for all they did to help this work on. They, and above all the town officers, and the town committee, with Messrs. John Ash, Seth Libby, Ben Hadley, Horace Croxford, and Tobias L. Roberts, as their hard-working agents, rendered most valuable help in compiling this book.
The sources for Chapters I through Chapter IV are on the whole suf- ficiently simple to be referred to by footnotes, except for the De Grégoire grant material, and shipping, census, and Cranberry Rendez- vous material, in Chapters III and IV, respectively. In the later chapters, however, fullscale footnoting would be burdensome and of no especial aid to the scholar who might want to use similar sources for other pur- poses. In those chapters, and in the instances given above, footnotes have been replaced by paragraphs of comment on sources.
I. Explorers and Claimants
I. To avoid confusion, the reader should be reminded that a New England town is not an urban center but a rural area. The limits of a New England town may be as far from signs of habitation as the fabled "Los Angeles City Limits." However, the town is also a self-governing group of citizens, living in that area; the context in which the word is used shows which meaning is intended.
2. See Bascom, Florence. Geology of Mount Desert Island. n.p., n.d., revised and reprinted from the Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, October, 1919.
3. Parkman, Francis. Pioneers of New France. (1897 ed.). p. 261, foot-note. De Costa, Benjamin Franklin. The Handbook of Mount Desert. 1878, pp. 7-9. (Not in earlier De Costa guides.)
4. Lawton, Jordan, and Maddox, Compilers. The Island of Mount Desert Register. Auburn, Maine. 1909. p. 17.
5. Whether one should agree with Babcock that Vinland was at Quoddy, with Gathorne Hardy that it was New York Harbor, or with Fernald that it was in Labrador, is not here the question. The point is not the location of Lief's Booths and Straumey, but the fact that the attempt to make that identification can arouse interest. Mrs. M. L. Abbott, teach- ing in the Bar Harbor Grammar School, makes Lief's Voyages live to
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her pupils by suggesting that Vinland was near Rockland, Maine. Much local controversy has been roused by the suggestion that Crossness, where Thorvald Ericson was killed and buried, was Jesuits' Cove. It is equally sound-and equally unsound-to put Lief at Taft's Point. Be it noted, for the record, that the Abbe Museum has found no viking re- mains in its excavations.
6. Harrisse, Henry. The Discovery of North America. London, 1892, pp. 116-22, 176-86, 232-42. Kohl, J. G. Collections of the Maine Historical Society. Second Series, Vol. I, passim. Mr. Douglas Leach has gone through the writings on early exploration, and especially I. N. P. Stokes. The Iconography of Manhattan Island to sort out the possible and impossible visitors to Bar Harbor.
7. Ganong, William Francis. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada. 1917. II. pp. 105 ff.
8. Ganong, William Francis. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada. 1902 II. pp. 127-232. This tercentenary article on Dochet Is- land gives references to the eye-witness accounts of Champlain and Lescarbot. See also Commissions du Roy et de Monseigneur l'Amiral, au Sieur de Monts, pour l'habitation es terres de Lacadie, Canada & autres endroits en la nouvelle France, photographically reproduced by George Bucknam Dorr in 1915. The Prince Society edition of Champlain Vol. I, p. 41, Vol. II, pp. 39-41, 55, 137, also contains the Rev. Mr. Slafter's identification of Otter Creek as Champlain's landing place.
9. Sources for the French version of St. Sauveur are the Jesuit Rela- tions, Vol. III, and the English Haklyut, Vol. XIX.
10. The adventures of Alden and Bradford are in Willison, George F., Saints and Strangers. New York. 1945. pp. 289-305. A good general account is in Parkman's addition to his Pioneers of New France, the sec- tion entitled "The Lords of Acadia," written after a visit to Bar Harbor. See also Morison, Samuel E. The Course of the Arbella from Cape Sable to Salem, Colonial Society of Massachusetts Publications. Vol. XXVII. pp. 285-306, and Buffington, Arthur. Sir William Temple, ibid. pp. 308-19.
2. Feudal Acadia
I. Daviault, Pierre, Le Baron de St. Castin, Chef Abenakis. Montreal. n.d. passim. Buffington. op. cit. Rameau de St. Pere, Edmond. Une Colonie Feodale en Amérique, L'Acadie. Paris. 2 vols., 1889, is suggestive, but in spots-e.g. Castine's arrival at Pentagoet by canoe, I, p. 131-is sheer fiction.
2. Rameau de St. Pere's guesses do not stray too far from the re- searches of Professor W. B. Munro into Canadian feudalism.
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3. France, Colonial Archives, C 11, D 10, pp. 37-44. (Hereafter re- ferred to as C II, D, etc.). Though most statements by Cadillac are suspect as self-interested twistings of fact, this is close enough to usual Canadian custom and refers to a period far enough in Cadillac's past to justify believing it.
4. Roy, P. G., compiler. Inventaire des Fiefs et Seigneuries. Beauce- ville. 1927. Vol. II, pp. 132-187.
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