USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Freeport > Three centuries of Freeport, Maine > Part 16
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The Desert is operated as a commercial proposition and the steady stream of cars passing to it from the main highway attest that it is an unusual attraction. Each car which enters the park- ing space is provided with a long placard, which is attached to the bumper and carries the title "Desert of Maine." Automo- biles thus placarded are common sights throughout New Eng- land. In fact, it has become so well known that the story is told of a Freeport man who was visiting in Quebec. When he com- plained of the dry summer in his home town he was asked if that was the reason it was called the "Desert of Maine."
In the separation from North Yarmouth, Freeport received these islands: Southworth's, Crab, Bustin's, Little Bustin's, Sow and Pigs, French's, Pettengill's, Williams, Sister and a number of small islands near the shore.
Crab Island is small and with the exception of a tree or two, is bare. It is owned by the estate of Admiral Peary, of arctic fame.
Bustin's has a large summer colony, with a hundred or more cottages. The affairs of the island are administered by repre- sentatives of the cottagers and a portion of the taxes assessed by
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the town is returned to these representatives to defray the costs of maintaining streets and other necessary works. Through their association a community building, tennis courts and a nine-hole golf course are maintained. A steamer connecting with Portland makes daily stops here during the summer sea- son and there is a ferry to South Freeport.
Pettengill's and Williams are unoccupied, although the lat- ter has an area of fourteen acres.
Sow and Pigs or Kittywink, as it is sometimes called, and Sister have one cottage each.
The old Tobacco Point, now Little Flying Point, is owned by Professor Cushing of Bowdoin College, who has a cottage there. This point is an island at high tide, but connected with the mainland by a bridge, which is removed during the winter season.
XXVIII
EARLY TRANSPORTATION
E ARLY settlers were greatly handicapped by difficulties of transportation. Overland they were limited to freighting upon the backs of horses, as they forced their way through the dense forest. Except where there were Indian trails the progress was attended with a great deal of difficulty and even these trails did not permit of two walking abreast, which rendered them of little assistance. Detours to avoid thickets, ravines and streams developed winding and difficult paths, in some cases the beginnings of the crooked highways which today cause the user to wonder why they were so laid out.
However, nature provided an easier, though often less direct means of communication in the bays and coves, which ex- tended far enough into the land to save the traveler a mile or two of laborious penetration of the forest. That there were real obstacles to travel elsewhere is evident from the fact that the oldest houses and the sites of those which have been destroyed are near the water. Since the coastline of Freeport, due to coves and tidal rivers is very long, it is clear that there was room for a considerable number of settlers before available shore farms were entirely taken.
The many reefs and islands may have kept out the earlier navigators, but small vessels of later comers reached every cove and inlet, so that the settlers were in closer communication with Falmouth (now Portland) and with Massachusetts ports than were the people of any of the colonies who had gone a few miles inland.
It was many years before suitable roads made it possible to use wheeled vehicles in travel and these were strongly built and in many cases two-wheeled, like the "One Hoss Shay" of Holmes' poem, "which was built in such a logical way" and lasted "a hundred years and a day."
In 1785 mails were carried by post riders on horseback. Each man had saddle bags to protect the mail and was provided with a long tin horn, which was blown when approaching the place where mail was to be delivered. Postal rates were high, and re- mained so for years. As late as 1838 it cost the sender twenty- five cents' postage on a letter from Maine to Maryland. The
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carrier also delivered newspapers, leaving them at houses along his route, first notifying of his approach by a loud blast of the tin horn. The very early mails were carried on foot, then on horseback and later in wheeled vehicles. The latter increased in size until there was room for an occasional passenger and thus we have the stage coach.
It may be well to dismiss from our minds all ideas relating to stage coaches, if these are based on the English variety or that shown in Wild West shows, for the coach used in Freeport be- fore the advent of the railroad was like neither of these. The coach used to represent those of the West is known as the Con- cord and is a New England product, originating in Concord, New Hampshire. The rude cuts found in handbills advertising stage lines represent something different from the Concord Coach, which was hung on leather straps or thoroughbraces. Fifty years ago a number of these old Concord Coaches were used by Maine hotels to transport guests to and from the rail- way stations to the hostelries, but it seems hardly possible that any of this type was in use in Maine before the first railroad reached out from Portland to connect that city with the rest of the state.
At any rate there was a line of coaches passing through Free- port, which served until the railroad absorbed its business. Lacking a photograph of the vehicles or an actual specimen of any one of them, it is safe enough to say that they were made with some provision for sheltering their passangers from cold and storm and were drawn by at least one pair of horses. The route, it is not unlikely, was the county road from Yarmouth to Freeport Centre and thence up the Ward Town road, finally reaching Brunswick. Another route, according to the oldest in- habitants, was through Mast Landing and over Pleasant Hill. Frequent changes of horses had to be provided, and it may be that some of the taverns now pointed out were places where these changes were made and where incidentally food and drink, particularly the latter, were provided for the weary passenger.
It is granted that no one innovation has had such an evolu- tionizing influence as that of the steam engine, as applied to the locomotive. This is true in our own case as elsewhere, for the coming of the railroad found Freeport a collection of scattered
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villages and settled the question of supremacy among them by choosing a route through the Centre Village and avoiding the others. This choice was due to the topography of the township, for the Centre was not then the most important part commer- cially, as it lacked industries, while Mast Landing had a grist- mill, a sawmill and a brickyard, South Freeport was the seaport and had shipyards and Porter's Landing was also a port, when Maine shipping was found in every ocean.
The Kennebec & Portland Railroad was incorporated in 1836 and united with the Bath & Portland Railroad Company in 1845. Work commenced in 1847. On July 4, 1849, as the track was laid from Yarmouth to Bath, a train of gravel cars, drawn by the locomotive "Kennebec," gave all who desired a free ride. It is told that one Freeport man walked to Bath in order to participate in the first trip. Although the Company was not equipped to meet the passenger requirements of those prim- itive days of railroading, regular passenger service began the next day, July 5. At Yarmouth the passengers transferred to the Atlantic & St Lawrene Railroad, later the Grand Trunk, to complete the trip to Portland. Because of disagreements with the latter company, two years later the Kennebec & Portland ex- tended its own line to Portland and became independent. For years the road ran but one passenger train a day each way. These trains had usually two passenger cars and a baggage car. There were also three freight trains each week. By 1874 there were four passenger trains of two to eight cars and two freight trains each way, daily.
The Kennebec & Portland Railroad was an ambitious under- taking for those days. Years ago it was swallowed up by the Maine Central, of which it became the nucleus. When all travel was by railroad, for the rails had put the stage coaches out of business, the Freeport station was a busy place at train- time and all local freight was handled in the freight house.
A newspaper clipping of 1904 gives us an idea of the volume of freight business done in the Freeport station:
"No attempt is made here to give shipments in total, only a few of the larger figures and kinds being men- tioned. Hay, of course, is the principal growth shipped from here and is shipped mostly in 11 ton carloads. These
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shipments were, beginning January 1903, for that month 26 carloads; for February, 16 carloads; March, 7 carloads; April, 17 carloads; May, 13 carloads; June, 15 carloads; July, 10 carloads; August, 7 carloads; September, 17 car- loads; October, 23 carloads; November, 21. This hay brings an average of $10 to $12 a ton.
In the shipment of apples a large part are Baldwins and mostly go to Portland and thence to foreign cities. In Port- land the rates are 32 cents per 100 pounds; for Boston rates are 92 cents per 100, there are 150 barrels to a car and 3 bushels to a barrel. From November 1 to January ist 6 carloads of apples were shipped from Freeport.
Mr. Woodman, the lumber dealer, received some 8 or 10 carloads of building lumber, beside 5 or 6 cars of shin- gles during the year. Mr. Libby receives a great many car- loads of logs and also some long lumber and ships away a deal of box shook, much of which goes to Boothbay for sardine boxes. He also does a big amount of manufactur- ing also for the home trade and expects to receive via freight about 200,000 logs in the rough this coming season.
The Eastern Stone Company sends away a lot of loaded cars which average about 18 tons per car. Their record from June 1903 to December 1903 is 31 carloads. This stone goes mostly in the rough to New York.
A rough estimate of the amount of leather shipped here to A. W. Shaw Company the past year was in the neighbor- hood of 475,000 pounds, while it is estimated that about 300,000 pairs of shoes were shipped away by them.
Davis Brothers is doing about $100,000 worth of busi- ness and have received at a quick estimate about 50,000 pounds of leather and are sending away thousands of cases of shoes yearly.
Mr. J. C. Clark is receiving by freight an average of per- haps 7 carloads of grain, flour, etc. per month.
In the few weeks before Christmas this year 4 carloads of Christmas trees went from Freeport, via freight to New York. In this shipment were about 450 bundles of 2,000 trees to a car, while to the Philadelphia market went some 500 single trees of extra large size, as the last named market
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Early Transportation
calls for only large trees, while New York people prefer the small growth. Rates on lumber to Portland are 3 cents a hundred on stow, 2 cents per hundred in carloads, hay 4 cents and for any Boston & Maine port 10} cents. The above shows that the outgoing freight receipts are about double those of freight sent in or from $1,200 to $2,000 for incoming freight and from $5,000 to $6,000 for out- going freight per year's average.
The firms and goods named here are by no means all which ship and receive over the freight line to and from Freeport but are a partial estimate of some of the largest amounts for the year just closed."
Now the number of trains has been cut down and there is a decided lack of interest when the trains arrive. Possibly in time the railroad will yield to more modern conveyors, as in the past the stage coach did. Since the Maine Central has entered both air and bus fields there is no question of its being driven from business as a corporation, since it owns its principal rivals.
Freeport entered the electric railroad stage of its history in 1902, when Amos Gerald, a Fairfield man, began a line to con- nect the existing Yarmouth to Portland road with Brunswick. This new railroad entered Freeport limits where the East Branch of the Cousins River crosses the main highway, fol- lowed the road to South Freeport and then came back to what is now the cement highway known as United States Number 1 and thence to Freeport centre. From the latter place it fol- lowed the same Number 1 to Brunswick. The power house and car barn were near the Maine Central overpass. To meet a later phase of transportation these buildings in 1939 house the Car Barn Garage. What the next phase will be and what part these buildings will play in it only the future can tell.
A summer hotel, known as Casco Castle, was erected by the railroad company at South Freeport. This did a flourishing business for some years but was finally destroyed by fire, leav- ing a tower, which had been a prominent part of the structure, as the sole monument to the project. Passenger service began July 23, 1902, between the Castle and Brunswick and by August 15 of the same year the entire route was operated. At first the railroad was well patronized and a number of local men were
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employed, but little by little the automobile took away the passengers until the road became unprofitable and was aban- doned in 1927. Even in that year a great portion of the network of electric lines covering the nation had been abandoned and now within twelve years of the closing of the Freeport line, one can hardly realize that once a passenger could travel from Free- port as far east as Benton Falls. He could also go as far west as New York, with indefinite connections beyond that city, using no other means of transportation than electric interurbans. This must have been a fine way to view the country, though such progress would now be considered slow as compared with the speed of the automobile. Of course, the era of the electric car, with trolley and fixed track has not entirely passed in 1939. Since it began in the 1880's this period has lasted fifty years or more, but it is surely drawing to an end.
Those whose recollections cover the World War remember the jitney bus. At first a slang term applied to a five-cent coin, the word was transferred to the forerunner of today's bus. These vehicles were improvised from the chassis of a car or truck bearing a body, usually homemade, in which passengers could ride more or less comfortably upon payment of a nickel fare. At first there were no laws to apply to this new form of transportation, so competition ran wild. Jitneys competed with each other and with electric lines, in some cases starting the latter on that decline which a little later became country- wide. Soon laws were passed to regulate and curb competition with existing means of transportation. Therefore, the jitney or bus was a small factor in Freeport until abandonment of the electric line opened the field. For some time after privately owned buses maintained a more or less irregular service to Brunswick and Yarmouth. As the Portland line still ran its cars to the latter town this gave connection with Portland. After a time the Yarmouth-Portland line also was discontinued and the Maine Central Railroad obtained the franchise to run local buses to Yarmouth and to provide for local traffic on its Boston to Rockland buses. Beside the Maine Central there are in 1939 several lines which take passengers to out of state points, but these are not allowed to carry local traffic. Today the bus appears to be the dominant means of transportation and bids fair to be so for some time to come.
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CASCO CASTLE, SOUTH FREEPORT, MAINE.
Casco Castle
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Early Transportation
Oldest of all transportation was by water. Scows, sloops, schooners, brigs, barks, brigantines, ships and the whole list of sailing craft have been used to put Freeport in communication with the rest of the country and the entire world. The first coast steamer appeared in Portland in 1823 and the next year steamer service was extended to the Kennebec River. It is re- ported that Captain Seward Porter, in 1822, placed an engine in a flat-bottomed boat, which ran to North Yarmouth, as it was then, and various points in Casco Bay. As the Porters were Freeport people, this town may have been included in its itinerary. The owner named the craft the Kennebec, but people along the bay called it the "Horned Hog."
XXIX
EDMUND B. MALLET
C FTEN men tell what they would do for the home town if they had the means, but rarely does this helpful spirit survive when the opportunity is at hand. But the excep- tion which proves the rule has been found, for the greater part of Freeport's industry and development are due to one man, who was driving a coal cart when news of his legacy arrived and was obliged to borrow his fare to New York, in order to put in his claim.
This man, Edmund B. Mallet, was born September 3, 1853, on board the ship Devonshire, son of her captain, Edmund B. Mallet, in the English channel. When he was thirty-one great good fortune fell to his lot when he inherited about $340,000. He moved from Pownal to Freeport and with the idea of start- ing some industry, built a shoe factory which cost $20,000. In obtaining the stone for the foundations his workmen came upon some unusually excellent granite, which lay in a sheet formation from three to eleven feet thick. All preliminary work was done at once and the quarry opened in 1886, which covered thirty-five acres, was one-half mile from the centre of Freeport, and employed thirty-five men. This stone was used in trimming the Kendall & Whitney block of Portland and the quarry supplied all granite used for the Maine General Hos- pital extension. Large contracts for the City of Portland and Cincinnati, Ohio, were also filled and at one time there were 150,000 paving blocks on hand. One huge slab of stone meas- ured forty-four feet in length by twenty feet in width and nine feet six inches in depth, another seventy-five feet in length by fifteen and one-half feet in width and six feet thick.
Probably the success of this business was the reason for a sec- ond quarry, which was opened in 1889 and covered eleven and one-half acres at Mallet's Station, then somewhat over a mile from town on the Maine Central Railroad line. Both quarries were under the management of Stephen W. Reed.
The stone manufactory, where the granite was worked and polished, was in a building one hundred and ninety-eight by twenty-two feet, with an engine room of thirty by thirty feet, in which was a thirty horse-power boiler and engine, the water
Edmund B. Mallet
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Edmund B. Mallet
for which was supplied from a nearby artesian well, two hun- dred ninety-five feet deep. The blacksmith shop was seventeen by twenty-two feet and of the same dimensions was the room for marble work. Foreign and American marble were worked in as well as granite, but the latter was used largely for cemetery memorials, not only in Maine but in other states as well, more particularly Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin. Other stone- work included bases, shafts, sarcophagi, plinths, dies and caps. Of this industry George C. Lovell was superintendent and twice a year took a business trip through the south. In 1889 one hundred men, twelve horses and six oxen were required to car- ry on this industry.
Mr. Mallet's interests were wide and varied. Realizing that there was need of a gristmill, he built one at a cost of $12,000 or $15,000 and outfitted it with the best machinery then obtain- able. Nearby he put up a sawmill for both sawing and planing and between these two mills, a brick boiler and engine house was erected to supply the motive power. The housing problem of his two hundred and fifty employees was met by putting up six cottages and three double tenement houses. He also owned and operated a brickyard and installed a waterworks system for the town.
Another undertaking was that of a business block on Main Street, one hundred feet by seventy-four feet, for a wholesale and retail general store, having a plate glass front and heated by steam. The first floor, used for dry and fancy goods was one hundred by thirty-eight feet, while the grocery and provision department was ten by thirty-six feet. E. S. Soule was manager of the dry goods and W. A. Davis of the grocery, provision and general merchandise section. W. H. Soule was bookkeeper and paymaster. Of all Mr. Mallet's undertakings Ernest E. Pink- ham was general manager and confidential secretary. It has been said by one who is a competent judge of merchandising, that this store was the best to be found east of Boston.
Among his real estate holdings was a section about one and one-half miles long, made up of the Pettengill and Aldrich farms on Wolf's Neck. Here he built a substantial wharf of granite, in anticipation of the summer hotel it was his inten- tion to erect at a later date. This, however, was never accom- plished.
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Three Centuries of Freeport, Maine
His philanthropic nature prompted him at one time to ask for an increased valuation on his own property, which would tend to reduce the taxes of others less fortunate. Also for the benefit of the town he gave a lease of his shoe factory to Shaw, Goding & Company of Portland. None of his Freeport business ventures were undertaken with the idea of personal gain but to give work to his fellow townsmen. His investments outside the town, however, were disastrous and eventually undermined his fortune.
Mr. Mallet was married in 1877 and had five sons. He was town treasurer for two years and a member of the Board of Selectmen for many years. In 1885, 1887 and 1889 he repre- sented Freeport in the House of Representatives and in 1891 and 1893 he was state senator for Cumberland County.
Interested in fraternal orders he was at one time Master of the Maine Grand Lodge of Masons and for a number of years maintained a hospital bed for the sick of the Masonic Order.
The shoe factory, which Mr. Mallet built, is still the largest of the factories in town, the buildings on Mill Street which housed his mills and office are standing and in use. The stone business and the brickyard are gone, but the houses on Denni- son Avenue and Oak Street serve as homes today and the water system is still adequate and supplying the town.
Those who remember Mr. Mallet speak in praise of him as having been a benefactor, who made Freeport the town that it is today.
XXX SOME SHORT BIOGRAPHIES
F OR forty-five years Nathan Nye conducted a general store in Freeport centre, either alone or in partnership. He came to this town from Massachusetts in 1803 and died here in 1870, at the age of ninety. For a number of years he was town treasurer and at one time represented the town in the state legislature. After 1825 the firm name was Nye & Harring- ton and finally N. & J. A. Nye.
Mr. Nye's sister, Deborah, married Joseph Porter, of Porter's Landing, one of the eleven brothers whose activities in ship- ping and merchandising made them well known throughout the country.
Samuel Holbrook was a graduate of Yale and came to Free- port from Connecticut in 1808, as partner in the firm of Hol- brook & Fowler. Remaining here but four years he returned in 1830 and was senior partner of Holbrook & Gore until 1836, when he retired in favor of his son, Samuel Appleton Hol- brook.
The latter combined his business interests with those of local and state politics, serving as treasurer of the town and member of the state House of Representatives and Senate. He laid out the park where the soldiers' monument and town hall are now. He also gave liberally for the new High School when it was instituted. Mr. Holbrook lived in the large old house be- side Willis Libby's filling station on Main Street.
The genius of one of Freeport's sons revolutionized the watchmaking industry and made it possible for rich and poor alike to own accurate timepieces. Before his time foreign and American watches, made by hand, were costly and difficult to repair. To Aaron L. Dennison, who died in England around 1895, is given the credit of beginning the mass production of watches in what has since become the Waltham Watch Factory.
Mr. Dennison was a native of Freeport and a member of that family whose ancestor was an early settler at Mast Landing. One authority gives it that he was born March 12, 1845, while another sets the year of his birth as being 1814. This latter date must be the correct one, for he was in Waltham, Massachusetts,
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Three Centuries of Freeport, Maine
in 1856. In early years the Waltham factory produced eight watches daily, the total product of its seventy-five employees, while in 1904 eight thousand timepieces were made every day.
Among the older people of Freeport few of the departed citizens are as well remembered as Edwin C. Townsend. Born here in 1834 his mentality and physique so developed that he became in his young manhood that individual whom all school committees sought, often unsuccessfully: A school teacher who could outrough the burly farm boys who attended winter terms of school and make them learn the subjects which he taught. It is said that Mr. Townsend taught sixty terms of school in vari- ous parts of Cumberland County, but that was a small part of what he did, for he was town clerk, selectman, county commis- sioner, trial justice and civil engineer. His professions and of- fices brought him into close contact with the people of the county and town, with whom his originality and kindness made for popularity.
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