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Thomas Plant's LUCKNOW, now known as Castle in the Clouds

Thomas Plant Bets Big and Winds Up in a Castle in the Clouds

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Thomas Plant did everything larger than life when it came to baseball, his shoe manufacturing empire and his castle.

Little evidence remains of his triumphs on the baseball diamond and in the shoe factory, but there is a castle in New Hampshire that became a lasting testament to his monumental life.

Born on October 5, 1859, in Bath, Maine to French Canadian parents, Plant had no formal education beyond eighth grade, but he did have a head for business and exceptional athletic ability. He was a tough, gifted baseball catcher in an age where the position was played without benefit of a mask or (often) even a glove. He played in an era where there was no formal, single major league. Teams were sponsored locally and played for a company, town or other affiliation.

Though the era of the superstar athlete was more than 100 years in the future, Plant nevertheless used his baseball skills to catapult himself to success. After working harvesting ice and at other trades, Plant settled on a vocation: the shoe industry. His biographers note his baseball ability may well explain his move to Lynn, Massachusetts, the shoe-making capital of the world, as companies sometimes recruited employee-athletes to bolster their sports teams.

In 1886, Plant became one of ten investors who pitched in $100 each to form the Lynn Union Cooperative Shoe Company. Tradition states that he raised his stake by betting on a baseball team that he managed. Over time, he would venture out on his own to start the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company. The company history has its highs and lows. Over the years, workers suffered serious injuries that resulted in contentious lawsuits and at one point labor relations were so strained that the union workforce waged a boycott of the company until conditions and wages were improved.

Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company

Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company

At the same time, the company also was known for its innovations and progressive labor practices. At its Jamaica Plain facility (built in part to escape the powerful unions of Lynn), Plant implemented color-coded uniforms for his workers to aid in efficiency and built ramps so that employees who had to move about the factory could use roller-skates to be more productive. The plant also paid higher wages than others and provided gymnasium facilities and a library to facilitate worker self-improvement. At its peak, the facility was the largest shoe factory in the world with more than 4,000 employees. (It was destroyed by fire in 1976.)

Thomas Plant’s Personal History

Plant’s personal legacy was as complex as his professional one. In 1895, Plant married Caroline Griggs in one of Chicago’s best-attended society weddings of the season. Griggs was of Connecticut descent, and her father was a wealthy, self-made man like Plant. By this point, Plant’s shoe company was generating more than $1 million in annual sales. He had lived frugally, occupying a room in his brother’s home rather than building or buying his own. Plant had aspirations of joining Yankee society and his marriage to Griggs helped his cause when the couple relocated to Boston.

But the marriage was ill-fated. It officially landed on the rocks when Catherine learned that Thomas had a paramour ensconced in a luxurious apartment, possibly a woman he’d met from his factory. Caroline served Tom with notice of divorce proceedings and moved to Cohasset in 1910. For the next two years, the marriage made wonderful newspaper headlines, but it resisted repair. It ended finally when one morning Catherine came down for breakfast in Cohasset to find a check for $1 million in her napkin ring – the final divorce settlement (at least that’s the story that is told).

Thomas Plant Takes on the Trusts

While his marriage was unraveling, Plant’s business was also experiencing headwinds. The United Shoe Machinery Company was formed when six machine-makers joined together and created a virtual monopoly on shoe-making equipment. They convinced the government to place a tariff on foreign equipment while they began putting the shoe industry in a stranglehold. They wouldn’t sell their equipment. Rather, companies had to lease it and pay royalties on shoes produced on the machinery. And if a company used any other manufacturing equipment in a plant with United’s machinery, it was a violation of the lease and United could, and did, repossess its machines.

Thomas Plant was unhappy with United’s business model. He first tried to negotiate with the company, suggesting reduced royalties for companies that produced large quantities of shoes. United declined. So he next set about patenting his own equipment and working with other companies until he could assemble a complete manufacturing line using non-United machines. This touched off a lengthy period of litigation between United and Plant. As his marriage was disintegrating, Plant began negotiations to sell his company to United to end the dispute. Over a period of many months, the two sides negotiated a price and he sold.

Some said Plant intended to sell his equipment and factory to United all along. Others said he was beaten by the monopolistic United and the sale was a defeat. During the negotiations, Plant confided to one friend that he was tired of business, and all he wanted to do was find a place to retire to in peace.

Out with Caroline, In with Olive

The sale complete, Thomas Plant took a vacation in France. He met Olive Cornelia Dewey, who was 24 years younger than he. This put paid to Plant’s marriage as the divorce proceedings resumed and quickly settled once he returned. Plant next married Olive Dewey, and the two began the hunt for Plant’s dream retirement home. His niece had filled his head with stories about the natural beauty of the Ossipee Mountains in New Hampshire and he dispatched his brother and his secretary to begin buying up land.

While other wealthy industrialists chose Bar Harbor or Newport for their summer retreats, the Plants chose a beautiful mountain top in New Hampshire.

The acquisition of the 6,300-acre property did not go without a hitch, as some landowners did not wish to sell. In some cases, Plant paid exorbitant prices for parcels. In others, he resorted to bullying to get people to move. When he finally assembled all the acreage he wanted, work began in earnest on Ossipee Mountain Park.

Thomas Plant Builds His Castle

Architects were hired and fired, as were craftsmen and others. More than 1,000 workers set to work on the project. Work stopped in one early stage when a builder hired on more than 100 Italian craftsmen from Italy only to be told by Plant to fire them. The result was the workers took their foreman captive and only released him when Plant coughed up the pay he owed.

Bit by grinding bit, Plant’s army carved the road to the cliff on which the castle is built. Stables, outbuildings, and other facilities were constructed and pink granite was mined and incorporated into the building.
The 16-room, 10,000-square-foot mansion was completed in 1914, and they called it LUCKNOW, perhaps a reference to a Scottish Castle or perhaps a simple pun because people who went there were in luck.

As everything involving Plant, the house was complicated and unique. It featured a blend of architectural styles, including Arts and Crafts, Mission, and Colonial Revival, reflecting Tom and Olive’s eclectic tastes. Plant himself suggested there were Norwegian, Swiss and Japanese influences in its makeup.

Likewise, the furnishings reflected the couple’s tastes and interests. Tiffany glass skylights and furniture by Irving and Casson represented the current styles they favored. Timber and building materials from locales around the world were incorporated into the construction. Modern indoor plumbing, needle showers, up-to-date kitchen and modern phone system highlighted Thomas Plant’s love of technology.

A suit of armor sized for the diminutive Plant was displayed, as were Tom’s trophies for his horses and an art collection, including several pieces depicting Napoleon. Thomas stood somewhere between 5-feet and 5-feet, 4-inches, depending on what source you believe, and he had a fascination with Napoleon.

Though no longer part of the property, Thomas Plant also established the Bald Peak Colony Club to have a golf course where he could play with friends.

Thomas Plant Strikes Out

An advertisement offering Thomas Plant's LUCKNOW for sale.

An advertisement offering Thomas Plant’s LUCKNOW for sale.

Through most of the 1920s, Olive and Thomas Plant entertained guests at LUCKNOW, encouraging them to swim in Lake Winnipesaukee, ride horseback on the 30 miles of trails, enjoy a round of golf or just take in the scenic views.

Unfortunately, Plant’s success in the shoe industry did not translate to success in investing. He was patently bad at that, investing in sugar and Russian bonds, among other failures, and over the years his bank accounts dwindled.

He tried to sell LUCKNOW in the 1920s. His ad for the estate noted that the property was not for someone looking for a bargain and only men of “wealth and high standing and repute” should inquire.

“LUCKNOW is a country home for a man of big thoughts and ideas who can enjoy big things in a big way; a man who wants to make it possible for his family to spend long, happy summers and autumns in the open, close to nature, where they can enjoy within the limits of their own property every conceivable healthful outdoor sport.” He was unsuccessful in finding such a man.

Plant ended his life deep in debt. His former business associate held a mortgage on the LUCKNOW property and held off foreclosing, letting the Plants stay at LUCKNOW until Thomas Plant died in 1941. Upon his death, his friends had to take up a collection to pay funeral expenses, and the estate was sold at auction to settle his debts.

After Plant died, the property passed through a number of hands until it opened to the public as the Castle in the Clouds.

If you visit Castle in the Clouds.

Today the grounds are open for tours and hiking and riding seasonally, and the property includes a restaurant. It is a favorite destination for leaf-peeping. The property is located in Moultonborough, N.H. and offers a number of tours and special events each season. It is owned by the non-profit Castle Preservation Society.

This article draws on many sources of information, including the wonderfully researched Tom Plant: The Making of a Franco-Amer. Entrepreneur, 1859-1941 by Barry H. Rodrigue and Thomas G. Plant Shoe Factory Fire by Walter H. Marx.

Photos: LUCKNOW by Fletcher – Own work CC BY-SA 4.0,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_in_the_Clouds#/media/File:Castle_in_the_Clouds.jpg

 

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The Mystery of the Walker Pond Massacre

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Sometime in the late 17th century, or maybe the mid-18th century, English soldiers massacred some or maybe all of the Wabanaki Indians at a place called Walker Pond in Brooksville, Maine. But strangely, the Walker Pond massacre  a major event in the history of Downeast,  almost completely forgotten.

According to one version, a Puritan militia captain from Massachusetts traveled to the pond in 1755 with 200 men. They surprised the village and killed all but a few escapees.

According to another version, famed Indian fighter Capt. Benjamin Church in 1660 led an expedition from Boston. They intended to retaliate for the murder of the crew of a fishing vessel in Downeast Maine. They arrived at daybreak and killed many.

Col. Benjamin Church, ca 1675

You’d think archaeologists and historians could find the truth somewhere. So far, you’d be wrong.

Todd Seabold, professor of history at the College of the Atlantic, described how he tried to solve the mystery of the Walker Pond massacre during a presentation at the Stonington Public Library, 12 miles from the site.

“I was naïve enough to think we were going to resolve it,” he said.

Walker Pond Massacre

Today the placid surface of Walker Pond belies the violent murders that happened over 250 years (or maybe 300) years ago. The three-mile-wide pond sits at the base of Caterpillar Hill. From the top of the hill, an overlook offers a stunning vista. The land slopes to the Eggemoggin Reach, which flows between Penobscot Bay and its islands. Walker Pond gleams like a monocle.

View from the top of Caterpillar Hill. Walker Pond is in the middle.

Walker Pond, today lined with camps and farms and homes, was once a hub of Wabanaki travel among. They migrated seasonally and carried on trade up and down the Penobscot River watershed and Penobscot Bay.  The Wabanaki Confederacy – an alliance of the main Eastern Algonquian nations — stretched from the Kennebec River to the St. John’s River on the Canadian border. Seabold said the Wabanaki world centered at the pond. Seabold called Walker Pond the most significant native settlement in Downeast Maine.

“This was a very, very significant place and we would do well to remember that,” Seabold said.

The English attack, Seabold said, was an attack on Wabanaki power. It probably happened at the moment when the English destroyed the village as a center of gravity for the Wabanaki.

Native Remembrance

The Wabanaki remembered the Walker Pond massacre, Seabold said. “Their account was that 50 people survived and moved upriver to Old Town, now the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation.

All the accounts differ in their details in some important way, he said.

For example, Grace Limeburner, in Stories of Brooksville, wrote that Church came to Penobscot in 1704, killed and “took many Indians prisoner.”

A Memory of the Walker Pond Massacre

There was some local memory that lasted until the late 19th century, according to Seabold. But there’s plenty of disagreement about when, why, who, and how many were killed.

A story in the May 21, 1885, Republican Journal is one clue. It quotes Hosea Wardwell relating “some of the old legends handed down from father to son.” He called the Walker Pond massacre the “Massacre of Indians in Brookesville.”

“The Jesuits had established a mission here and the natives had embraced the religion of Rome and were its devotees and faithful followers,” he said. That made them obnoxious to the Puritans of Massachusetts, he said. “In their dealings with the Indians they did not stop to consider whether they were guilty or not guilty but slaughtered indiscriminately friend and foe.”

“While cruising the vicinity of Owl’s Head, Cargill surprised and captured a young sanap,” the account continued. He tortured the young native. That evening they landed at Bucks Harbor in Brooksville “and arrived at the Indian Village just at daybreak. To begin his cruel work he first cut the throat of Eggemoggin his guide, least he should alarm his people and give them an opportunity to escape.”

View of Bucks Harbor in 1908

The natives were making breakfast. “The surprise was complete. Before they were aware of the approach of a relentless enemy, the discharge of 200 muskets carried death and dismay in every wigwam. No resistance was made. Cargill and his men rushed on and with knife and bayonet finished what the rifle had failed to do. Not a pale fact was hurt.”

Only five escaped, according to Wardwell: the French priest, an old squaw and three papooses. The Indians say that more than 50 escaped and joined their friends at Old Town.

Another Version

Another version, collected by Donald Soctomah, tribal historian, puts the massacre in 1660:

Some time during the spring the Indians captured a fishing vessel in the Eggemoggin Reach, at a little cove called the Punch Bowl, killing the crew and burning the vessel. An expedition was sent out from the Boston area with Colonel Church leading, landing near South Brooksville, where they captured an Indian who was promised his life if he showed the village to them. He led them a long and difficult way which kept them traveling all night. They came up on the village just at daybreak. It was green corn time. The tribe had been having a feast and unsuspicious of danger were sleeping late with no guards posted. The whites killed many of them.

Furthermore, many stone arrowheads, spearheads and other native implements have been found there, and nearby many human bones have been excavated, showing the location of an Indian burying ground.”

What We Do Know—Some Clues

There was other evidence provided by Wardwell.

  • A Mr. Gray built mills at the pond outlet he employed a millwright from Massachusetts. The millwright said he recognized the place as one where he as a private took place in the slaughter.
  • About 1770 a widow Grindal settled there and she selected the battleground as her garden spot. She hated Indians and was accustomed to spurn their bones with her foot and pile them under the bank until she had a heap as large as a haystack.
  • Many relics were found in 1885: skeletons, stone arrowheads and hatchets.

He also remembers as a child being shown the cornerstone of the chapel by an old man named Levi Gray.

Folklorist Fanny Hardy Eckstorm, born in 1865, wrote that her father’s journal reported that he camped on the spot. An aged resident told him that many years before, when he was a boy, he used to dig bullets out of the pine trees there, where the whites and Indians had fought a battle.

That’s it. That’s pretty much all we know.

An Uncomfortable History

Seabold said no other records of the battle have been found. Neither has any archaeological evidence. A researcher pored over hundreds of pages of colonial documents to find out more, but found nothing, he said.

Seabold said the likelihood that the Walker Pond massacre happened during the French and Indian War is high. “But I have no evidence,” he said. Since the French and Indian War went on from 1754 to 1763, that would put James Cargill as the leader of the massacre.

The Battle of Carillon, which took place during the French and Indian War.

Once the Wabanaki power was broken, it became possible to settle Downeast Maine, Seabold said. The region had been a battleground since King William’s War which began in 1688.

Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is why there are so few clues. Other Indian massacres – at Norridgewock, for example, or the Great Swamp Fight – are all documented and memorialized.

Why the forgetting?

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Orson Fowler, the Phrenologist Who Started the Craze for Octagon Houses

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Between 1850 and 1857, people built hundreds of octagon houses, first in the Northeast and then in the Upper Midwest. The craze began with a phrenologist named Orson Fowler, who combined political activism with lifestyle advice and the study of the cranium.

Albert S. Potter house in Richmond, R.I.

Fowler practiced phrenology, a pseudoscience popular in the first half of the 19th century. He believed you could tell a person’s character and intelligence from the shape and size of his cranium. He wrote and lectured widely on the topic, as well as on temperance, health, education and women’s suffrage.

An intellectual jack of all trades, Fowler also had opinions on architecture. He viewed it as another problem for which he had the perfect solution: the octagon house.

Orson Fowler

He was born in Cohocton, N.Y., in 1809, graduating from Amherst College in 1834. Then he and his brother opened a phrenology practice. He met clients in his offices in New York and Boston. There he would feel their skulls and tell them about themselves. Clients included John Brown the abolitionist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and President James Garfield. He told Mark Twain he had an underdeveloped sense of humor without realizing who he was.

But he did tell John Brown he was too blunt and free-spoken, according to Fowler’s biographer, Madeleine B. Stern.

Fowler, his brother Lorenzo and Lorenzo’s wife, Lydia Folger Fowler, lectured often on phrenology, popularizing the pseudo-science in the United States. Before the Civil War, phrenology was used to justify slavery because it taught the inferiority of black people based on the shape of their heads.

Orson Fowler, however, opposed slavery. A vegetarian, he crusaded for animal rights, and he proselytized against child labor. He formed a partnership with the publishing house Fowler & Wells, which published Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Then he turned his attention to octagon houses.

Octagon Houses

Fowler was so busy practicing phrenology, he wrote, that he couldn’t find a comfortable home until he was past 40. But he spent 10 years cogitating on the best mode of building the home of his future years. And then in 1848 he wrote a book about his dream home, the octagon house.

The Edward Brackett house in Winchester, Mass.

The octagon house was “”a new mode of inclosing public edifices and private residences, far better, in every way, and several hundred percent cheaper, than any other,” he wrote.  It would bring “comfortable dwellings within the reach of the poorer classes.” Plus, he argued, the spherical in general was more beautiful than the angular.

Some of the practical advantages of the octagon house included a more even distribution of heat. And it needed only one roof, unlike a rectangle with wings or additions.

Fewer corners would save time doing household chores. And octagon houses offered more windows and more floor space. Triangular closets were the answer to storage questions.

clerestory-round-stone-barn-hancockclerestory-round-stone-barn-hancock

Fowler would have liked this round barn in Hancock Shaker Village.

Fowler also believed octagon houses promoted an “interchange of friendly and benevolent feeling.” That was true especially for octagonal schools and churches. And as for barns  — wedge-shaped stalls were ideal for horses, narrower in the rear than in the front. The open central space allowed a big storage area for hay and farm equipment.

Progress

Fowler was alert to the progressive thinking of the day, wrote Walter Creese in his article, Fowler and the Domestic Octagon. 

All around him he saw new ideas, new inventions, new ways of thinking. But not in architecture.

The Capt. Josiah Chase House in East Limington, Maine.

“Why so little progress in architecture, when there is so much in all other matters? Why continue to build in the same SQUARE form of all past ages?” Fowler asked.

The Octagon House: A Home For All, or A New, Cheap, Convenient, and Superior Mode of Building sold so many copies it went through seven printings.  More importantly, wrote Creese, in contemporary carpenters’ and builders’ books, “their authors paid him the supreme compliment of quotation and illustration, and often included polygonal schemes of their own.”

The Gravel Wall

After Fowler published his first edition of The Octagon House, he discovered something even better: An octagon house with a gravel wall. “Gravel” combined lime, stone and sand for a strong, cheap, vermin-proof outer wall.

The Rodney Baxter House in Barnstable. Mass., is exactly what Orson Fowler had in mind. Note the concrete walls.

 

He got the idea from a Mr. Goodrich in Milton, Wisc. Goodrich told him his gravel walls were so strong he’d let Fowler take a sledgehammer to his parlor walls. Goodrich would charge six cents a blow, because that’s how much (or how little)  it would cost to repair it.

Gravel walls had the added advantage of eliminating expensive framing and allowing the use of cheaper grades of wood.

In his second edition, The Octagon House and the Gravel Wall, Fowler railed against wood. He called it “objectionable.” He reasoned,

500 years in the future, when human population has increased as fastas it has for 100 years past, “her entire surface will be densely populated. But to raise wood enough to erect and repair all the human habitations then needed, will require immense tracts of land, which otherwise could be appropriated to raising food.

Fowler’s Folly

He got the idea for octagon houses when he decided to build a home on land he owned in Fishkill, N.Y. He wrote his book on the subject while his house was still in the planning stages. Fowler had so much self-confidence that his inexperience as a builder didn’t deter him.

It took him five years to build a 60-room behemoth with four stories and a cupola. Nothing he’d ever done afforded him such lively delight, he wrote. His love for his new home sometimes interfered with his sleep.

Fowler’s Folly

He didn’t love it that much, though. When he suffered financially from the Panic of 1857, he rented the house to a New Yorker who rented it to boarders. The next year many of the tenants suffered typhoid, which may have been caused by cesspool seepage through the gravel walls.

Fowler sold the house in 1859 and eventually moved to Manchester, Mass. He built a house there with an octagonal dining room. In 1897, Fishkill officials condemned Fowler’s house as a public health hazard and had it blown up.

Octagonal Houses in New England

It’s hard to say how many Fowler-inspired octagon houses still exist, wrote Rebecca Lewin McCarley. Some 560 historic examples have been identified, mostly in the Northeast and the upper Midwest. Some, however, have been demolished.

New England has 14 listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Maine has four on the National Register, 12 in total. Rhode Island has at least four, New Hampshire at least one and Massachusetts 21. Portland, Conn., has two octagon houses, side by side.

The first octagon house in Portland.

The heyday of the octagon house ended with the Panic of 1857. Subsequent generations viewed them as anomalies and failures, wrote Creese.

The second octagon house in Portland.

“It was primarily an experiment pieced together by an amateur, the result of an uninhibited individualism…furthermore the restless search for new architectural forms,” he concluded.

With thanks to Walter Creese. “Fowler and the Domestic Octagon.” The Art Bulletin 28, no. 2 (1946): 89–102. https://doi.org/10.2307/3047058. Also to Dwight Young, “Orson Squire Fowler: To Form a More Perfect Human.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976-) 14, no. 2 (1990): 120–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40258064.

Danbury Octagon House By Daniel Case – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11113222. Rodney J. Baxter House By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52928905. Edward Brackett House By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11661817.  First Portland octagon house PortlandBy Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/GCDOUGHERTY/all-towns-and-cities/portland_ct/portland15.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29546198;Second Portland octagon house By Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/GCDOUGHERTY/all-towns-and-cities/portland_ct/portland16.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29546156. Octagon House Josiah Chase By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121455124. Potter Octagon House By Jennifer – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121453730.

 

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The History of Maine’s Foremost Toothpick Mill

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 Due to its plentiful supply of wood, Maine mills became the major producer of toothpicks in the decades after the Civil War.  After more than a century of dominating the toothpick industry, the popularity of toothpicks markedly declined in the late 20th century in America. Eventually, that led to the closure of the last toothpick mill in Maine in 2003.

The history of the toothpick – the oldest habit of dental cleaning by humans – can be directly traced to artifacts of 5,000 years ago.  From ancient times until the 19 century, various civilizations across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas used materials such as bone, slate, ivory, silver, gold, quill and wood to make a variety of handmade toothpicks.  However, after the Civil War, a shift occurred in New England from craft to mechanical production of toothpicks.

The Toothpick Mill

While working in the import-export trade for his uncle in Pernambuco, Brazil in the late 1850s, Charles Forster (1826-1901) saw widespread use of toothpicks by the Brazilians. He then saw an opportunity to mass produce them when he returned to Boston.  Lacking mechanical skills, he became aware in 1859 of a shoe-pegging machine (i.e., a mechanism for attaching soles to their upper parts) developed by Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant.  By 1861 Sturtevant had granted Charlotte Bowman, Forster’s fiancé, the exclusive right to use his 1863 patent for making wooden toothpicks – a byproduct of shoe-peg innovation.

Forster then needed to create demand for his small, plain, pliable, flat (beveled at both edges) implement as debate swirled about its use in private and public settings.  Allegedly, to stoke demand in Boston, Forster hired people to ask for toothpicks in restaurants (e.g., in the Union Oyster House), hotels, stationers and other retailers.  More likely, his collaboration with Levi Tower, a well-known wholesaler, accounted for his marketing success.  Still, Forster sold an estimated 16 million toothpicks in 1869.

Oxford County has a lot of trees.

Forster initially used willow and maple to make his toothpicks. He finally turned to white birch due to its flavorless taste and strong texture.  However, a need for a plentiful supply of the wood forced Forster to relocate to Maine.  He operated first in Oxford County, beginning in Sumner in 1870-71. Then he started four more mills in Oxford County: in Buckfield (circa 1872),  Canton (1872-74), Andover (1875-1883) and Dixfield (1874). The Andover toothpick mill moved to Strong in Franklin County in 1883.  The Dixfield and Strong mills – –  Forster’s major operations — operated into the 20th century.  He obtained his supply of white birch from large timber mills, farmers and jobbers.

A Strong, Maine, sawmill

A Lot of Toothpicks

Forster’s patent gave him a virtual monopoly on flat toothpick production. It allowed him to make an estimated 500 million annually by the middle of the 1870s.  When the patent expired in 1880, new firms emerged in Maine, including one in Sebec (Piscataquis County) and one in Mechanic Falls (Androscoggin County), and other states.   Forster then began searching for a competitive advantage.  He soon teamed up with Charles Freeman, who obtained a patent for a machine to make a round toothpick in 1887. Another patent in 1891 for the toothpick itself left the points less prone to splinter.  His seasonal male and female employees worked about eight months of the year in Strong and Dixfield. By 1897 they made an estimated 6.5 billion toothpicks.

Responding to increasing demand, Forster bought the J. W. Porter mill in Strong in 1897.  From the 1890s onward, his toothpicks were marketed under the “Ideal” and “World’s Fair” trademarks. He sold them both domestically and in several foreign countries.

In 1904, following the death of Forster in 1901, his son Maurice founded the Forster Manufacturing Company in Dixfield and produced toothpicks under the “Gold Medal” brand.  A third Dixfield mill, known as the Dixfield Toothpick Company opened in 1909.  Both of these firms merged with the Berst Manufacturing Company in 1920, which the Diamond Match Company bought in 1946.

Felled by Floss

Meanwhile, the original company (known as the “Estate of Charles Forster” mill from 1901 to 1936) expanded. It acquired new mills and diversified into flavored toothpicks and other products.  During World War II, the firm (now the Forster Manufacturing Company, Inc.) made tongue blades and applicators for the military.  After the war, the company expanded its product line in East Wilton (Franklin County) to make ice cream spoons and cocktail forks. In Mattawamkeag (Penobscot County) it made clothespins.

However, by the 1990s other dental hygiene products and cheaper imports from China and Southeast Asia had eroded the toothpick market in America, including Maine.  In 1995 Diamond Brands bought the Forster Manufacturing Company.  When the Jarden Corporation acquired Diamond Brands in 2003, it closed the last remaining Forster toothpick mill in Strong.  The firm was making 7 billion toothpicks annually — down from 20 billion in 1992.  Thus, its self-proclaimed title as the “Toothpick Capital of the World” came to an end.

Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena College near Albany, N.Y.

Images: Oxford County trees By Wolfpoint – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83369380. Toothpick By HuttyMcphoo – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2053238

 

 

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U-boat Victims of World War II: New England’s Secret Rescues

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Late in the afternoon of June 5, 1942, a Coast Guard lookout spotted a wooden motorboat puttering up Nauset Inlet with 20 windburned, exhausted men aboard. He’d expected them — U-boat victims. They had radioed for help to navigate to Cape Cod from the spot where their freighter sank 200 miles off Nantucket.

The lookout notified the Nauset Coast Guard Station, which sent three trucks carrying blankets, medical supplies and a surfboat to the survivors. By dinnertime they reached the station, where they had hot coffee and sandwiches. Four local doctors examined them. One survivor suffered from exposure after three days in an open boat and one had a broken eardrum, hit by a boom in the torpedo explosion. The other U-boat victims were fine. They took showers and slept, unbothered by curious civilians or prying reporters. The Coast Guard posted guards around the station, and the Red Cross volunteers kept their mouths shut.

First Encounter Beach in Eastham

The 20 men belonged to the hundreds of traumatized U-boat victims rescued along the New England coast during World War II. The U.S. government did its best to keep their existence secret.  It had to because it didn’t want the public to know about the Battle of the Atlantic off the U.S. East Coast.  Over and over, the government and the military lied about the casualties inflicted by German U-boats sometimes just a few miles offshore.

U-boat Victims

Eight days earlier in New York City, the men in the lifeboat had boarded the Mattawin, a British freighter carrying 8.6 tons of military trucks, airplanes, guns and ammunition. The vessel had instructions to deliver the materiel to Alexandria, Egypt, for the Allied invasion of Africa.

Delayed a day by engine trouble, the Mattawin left Long Island Sound on May 31 with 71 souls aboard. Twelve passengers belonged to the American Field Service, a volunteer ambulance corps. Three gunners from the British military guarded the freighter with machine guns and a four-inch anti-aircraft gun.

At night the Mattawin  passengers and crew slept in their clothes because of the German U-boats prowling the Atlantic. In the first five months of 1942, U-boats sank nearly 500 ships, three a day.  They had left the sea littered with lifeboats, debris, loose cargo and oil slicks.

Attack

The Mattawin passed Nantucket Shoal Lightship at 6 a.m. on June 1, then headed  east-southeast toward Capetown. When night fell, eight men aboard the ship stood watch, the three gunners at the ready, according to Capt. Charles Sweeny.  They couldn’t see much, though, because clouds obscured the full moon.

U-505 captured off the coast of West Africa in 1944.

AFS volunteer Nicholas Madeira stood watch in the gun turret. “I’m pretty sure I saw the wake of the torpedo just before it hit,” he later wrote, according to historian Eric Wiberg in his book, U-boats in New England.

At 1:19 a.m., a torpedo exploded in the Mattawin’s hull, sending up a huge column of water from one of the hatches, Sweeny recalled.

Sweeny realized the Mattawin would sink fast. He ordered an SOS signal sent, the engines shut off and the lifeboats launched. The radioman then threw secret codes overboard. AFS volunteer Harry Blackwell pointed out a submarine 200 yards off the starboard side of the ship. “No time to look at the sub much,”  wrote another volunteer, Marshall Phelps.

Phelps, Blackwell, the other AFS volunteers and most of the crew quickly filed into four lifeboats without confusion. Three lifeboats pushed off. Minutes later, another torpedo struck. Captain Sweeny, still on board the sinking vessel, yelled to the others, “Every man for himself.” The last lifeboat remained in the davits, and Sweeny and four others hopped in. The Mattewin sank almost immediately, a mere 11 minutes after the first torpedo struck. Everyone had gotten off safely.

U-boats

Typically, the U-boat, U-553, waited for the crew and passengers to get into the lifeboats before firing the second torpedo. The Germans wanted to sink ships, not kill civilians. It wasn’t unusual for a U-boat to surface next to survivors in a lifeboat just after it had torpedoed their ship. The Germans would ask for the ship’s name, tonnage and destination. They’d then offer their victims water, cigarettes, bread and directions to the nearest land.

To win the war, Germany knew it had to delay the buildup of America’s war machine and interrupt supply lines to the Allies in Europe and Africa.  Germany sent its fleet of U-boats — 159 at peak strength — to sink merchants ships and oil tankers. The goal was to starve the Allies of industrial as well as military supplies.

U-Boat Victims on Lifeboats

The four Mattawin lifeboats had pemmican, cigarettes, chocolate, salted peanuts, 36 gallons of water and red sails. In the first boat, Sweeny had a sextant and chronometer. The fourth had a motor and a radio. For four hours they stuck together, rowing toward Cape Cod in the dark.  Sweeny figured they’d reach Cape Cod in seven days.

A crowded World War II-era lifeboat

At dawn they raised their sails. AFS volunteer Edward Fenton, Amherst Class of ’37,  wrote he’d never forget how beautiful it was — “the great red sail unfurling, and the sun upon it, and the men in their yellow suits against it. We sailed on all day, the other three boats following. We had an extremely good time in our boat, laughing, telling jokes; and the British engineers taught us a number of songs to which we have words.” Fenton would survive the war and write children’s books.

The four boats kept together until 2 p.m., when the third boat disappeared from sight. Sweeny told the motor launch to go ahead and find a rescue ship.

That night it rained,  making for uncomfortable slumber. As June 3 dawned, the third lifeboat remained out of sight.

Early that morning the launch spotted a Norwegian freighter, the Torvanger, which paused to let it come aside.  Capt. Leif Danielsen offered to take them aboard. When the men learned she was bound for Capetown, they said they’d prefer to try for Cape Cod.  Danielsen gave them some fuel. He then looked for the other lifeboats and steered toward them. They both declined to come aboard and continued sailing.

A motorized World War II-era lifeboat

Fenton, in the second lifeboat, recalled they had gone half an hour when they noticed the Torvanger was steaming toward them.

The Torvanger Turns Back

What happened aboard the Torvanger was this:

Rescues at sea, which sometimes took a long time, exposed the rescuer to U-boat attacks.  The Torvanger had risked U-boat attacks at least seven times in the past 48 hours. When she stopped for the Mattawin victims, she had already rescued two sets of U-boat victims. Some of them had been torpedoed on two consecutive vessels in the space of a week.

After she left the last Mattawin lifeboat, the Torvanger’s crew confronted Captain Danielsen. They were fed up risking torpedo strikes. After all,  three lifeboats full of shipwreck survivors told them they’d rather spend a week eating salted peanuts in an open boat than board a 7,000-ton freighter sailing unescorted across the Atlantic.

They demanded an armed escort before heading to Africa.

The Torvanger turned around and found two of the Mattawin lifeboats again. Captain Danielsen told the survivors  he’d decided to head back, and they agreed to come on board . But fog had drifted in and they couldn’t spot the other two Mattawin boats.

Survivors brought aboard a cutter

On board the Torvanger, Fenton recalled coffee and cheese in the salon, and a general reunion. “For the first time since the torpedoing, I found myself trembling,” he wrote. “The coffee slopped all over from my shaking hand.” That night Fenton bunked with the crew, along with another AFS volunteer, Richard Edwards,  nephew of future U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

The next day, June 4, the Torvanger encountered a convoy bound for Halifax, which welcomed the vessel to join them. By that evening they landed in Canada.

Halifax

Just as the U.S. Coast Guard did on Cape Cod, the Canadians kept the U-boat survivors under wraps.  After they landed in Halifax, Fenton wrote, “We were rushed in a bus to the Allied Seaman’s Institute, where tables had been roped off, with signs on them that read “Reserved – For Survivors Only.”

When the Mattawin’s launch landed in Eastham, the Coast Guard refused access to curious civilians, friends and newspaper reporters. The U-boat victims were whisked to an undisclosed location and interviewed by the U.S. Navy.

USCGC General Greene

On June 8, the third lifeboat was picked up by the Coast Guard cutter General Greene and taken to Nantucket. The island that month had taken in nearly 100  U-boat victims from four separate sinkings. Again, the Red Cross and the Coast Guard kept them sequestered. The survivors were taken to the Bennett Theater, where they slept on cots. Townspeople who brought clothes and bedding couldn’t get past the door. The General Greene then took the survivors to Newport for questioning by the Navy.

Throughout New England, 649 survivors of Uboats landed in a dozen ports, according to Wiberg. Some got counted twice, like the Mattawin survivors who landed at Nantucket and then Newport.

Nearly 300 landed in Boston and 160 in Newport. Nantucket hosted 133, Provincetown 62, and New Bedford 36. Portland, Maine, saw 50 U-boat victims. Other ports included New London, Conn., Falmouth, Mass., Eastham, Mass., Point Judith, R.I., Gloucester, Mass., Southwest Harbor, Maine, Rockland, Maine, and Brighton, Mass.

Southwest Harbor

The Navy had a harder time keeping a lid on the news that U-boats had attacked fishing vessels.  The Germans targeted fishermen because the Navy used them as observers. They had radio transmitters and “confidential fishermen observer kits.” They even got carrier pigeons to carry messages to shore.

On the same day the Torvanger picked up two U-boat victims from the Mattawin, U-432 shelled two Gloucester fishing vessels. The Ben and Josephine and the Aeolus were fishing southeast of Thacher Island. The Germans let the captains and crew escape in dories before delivering the coup de grace.

Mount Desert Rock, off Mount Desert Island

The survivors rowed for 14 hours, finally landing on Mount Desert Rock. They were interviewed at the Coast Guard station, then taken to the high school gym in Southwest Harbor, Maine. Local residents brought cots and bedding, baskets of food, fish chowder, hot coffee and dessert. The survivors then took a bus home, and their story appeared in the Gloucester Daily Times.

“When the full news became known, enthusiasm for the offshore fisheries declined sharply,” wrote Charles Dana Gibson, a relative of the Ben and  Josephine’s captain, Guiseppe Ciaramitaro.

The Lark

Just before dawn on June 13, 1944, U-107 fired two torpedoes and missed the 148-ton fishing vessel Lark, sailing off Cape Sable. The U-boat then fired a warning shot, and 25 of the 27 men aboard jumped into lifeboats. The U-107 then strafed the rigging, the pilot house and the hulls, damaging the boat and destroying two sails.  When dawn broke, U-107 slipped away. The captain, who’d stayed with the vessel, started the engine, picked up the men and made it back to his home port of Boston. There it tied up at a public pier on the morning of June 15.

The Navy decided to use the U-boat attacks as a publicity stunt, inviting the press to cover the story. The Navy pointed out it was the first time in two years anyone had seen enemy U-boats on the northeast fishing banks. That was a lie.

Why Lie?

Few today know that more than 5,000 people died in the Battle of the Atlantic — more than twice as many as at Pearl Harbor. The government did its best to cover it up. The Navy blamed torpedo attacks on boiler explosions or simply issued cryptic statements that a boat sank. During the early part of the battle, the Navy falsely claimed it had sunk far more U-boats than it actually did.

The news media also agreed to government censorship, which helped to hide the military’s incompetence in protecting shipping and the lives of merchant seamen.

Not until the spring of 1943 did the United States build enough oceangoing military strength to destroy U-boats faster than the Germans could build them.

Thanks to Eric Wiberg, author of U-Boats in New England, and uboat.net, on both of which this story relied heavily. 

Images: First Encounter Beach By ToddC4176 at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16093177. Mount Desert light-station, looking N. Maine, 1894. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005688368/. Lifeboat, survivors rescued and General Greene, The Coast Guard at War: Assistance XIV, prepared in Public Relations Division Historical Section, Oct. 30, 1944.

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Seeing the Elephant: Lewis and George Bisbee

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It is often said we stand on the shoulders of giants. In the American Civil War we name those giants Lincoln, Grant and Sherman. But that is only partially true. The Lincolns, Grants, and Shermans may have planned and directed the fight, but the common soldier did the actual combat. Without soldiers like Lewis and George Bisbee, all would have been for naught.

Seeing the Elephant

Many families like the Bisbees saw their sons go to war during the Civil War.  At least 15 of the Bisbee families of New England enlisted.

War in 1861 was an adventure. For the young men of both sides, the lure of war promised adventure in a righteous cause. Most Civil War soldiers had never ventured more than a few miles from their homes. Marching off to war was an exotic venture – “seeing the elephant” in the slang of the 1860s.  The elephant was a unique creature from a world beyond their imagination.

But America, unlike Europe, had never experienced war on a grand and terrible scale.  The newly enlisted marched off in blissful ignorance of what was to come.

Lewis Child Bisbee and George Dana Bisbee saw the elephant. They also saw more than their share of horror and misery.

Lewis Child Bisbee

The Bisbee Cousins Enlist

Lewis Child Bisbee enlisted as a private in Company I, 16th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, in Augusta on Aug. 20, 1862.  Lewis’s cousin George Dana Bisbee enlisted at the same time in Company C in the same regiment. Both men came from Hartford, Maine.

George Dana Bisbee

The war had gone on for a year by then, but the real bloodletting hadn’t happened yet.

On Aug, 27, 1862, Lewis won promotion to lieutenant, George to first sergeant. The regiment immediately marched off to Washington, D.C., without any time for formal training.

Though part of the Antietam campaign, the 16th Maine spent the time guarding rail lines and saw no action. It then continued with the Union Army in the pursuit of Gen. Robert E. Lee into Virginia.

Blanket Brigade

They had a problem, though. In September, when they left their camp at Washington, they had to leave everything behind. Their belongings would catch up with them later, they were told. So, they marched off with just the clothes on their backs and no tents. They remained thus for the next two-and-a-half months without any kind of shelter and with no change of clothes, underwear or shoes. They looked more like hobos than soldiers. Soldiers made them the butt of jokes, derisively calling them “The Blanket Brigade.”

Fall in Virginia in 1862 was particularly cold and rainy, and the lack of shelter or adequate clothing took a deadly toll. Of the more than 1,000 men of the regiment who left Maine, over 300 died or fell sick with debilitating pneumonia or flu.

On Dec. 1, 1862, Lewis Bisbee won promotion to captain, commanding Company I. He still led a virtually untrained unit that spent all day, every day, marching into Virginia with no time for training. Their supplies finally caught up with them at Thanksgiving. They then had their first real shelter and change of underwear since the beginning of September.

Baptism by Fire

In  December 1862, the Regiment and the Bisbee cousins received their baptism by fire at Fredericksburg, Va. The 16th Maine, positioned on the left flank of the Union Army received orders to assault the entrenched Confederate right — uphill.  When the veteran regiments on either side of them fell back, they persisted. After taking the Confederate position, they had no support.  They were ordered to fall back. Having suffered heavily in the assault, they found themselves in the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position. They could stay unsupported to await the inevitable counterattack or fall back as the only viable targets on the battlefield for the Confederates.

The Battle of Fredericksburg: The Army of the Potomac crosses the Rappahanock

Obeying orders, they retreated. One can only imagine the cursing and frustration of a unit that won its battle but had to give up what it had heavily sacrificed to gain.

Somewhere here George Bisbee received a wound in his left arm. Being shot in the arm by a large soft-lead bullet often led to amputation, but he was lucky. The wound must not have been serious since he remained with the unit.

Fredericksburg marked their introduction to the true horror of battle. The battle was a Union loss due not to the lack of valor of the soldiers but to poor leadership at the top. General Burnside noted after the battle: “If there is any glory in the battle, it belongs to the men from Maine.”

The Mud March

The year 1863 saw the regiment still in Virginia and participating in the infamous Mud March. During the fruitless four-day affair, the Army of the Potomac marched back and forth in miserable rain-soaked conditions along mud-clogged dirt roads, for no appreciable purpose.

Chancellorsville

The Regiment’s next serious action took place at Chancellorsville, Va., from May 1-5, 1863. While the battle resulted in a serious loss for the Union, the 16th Maine had some luck. It did not get involved with the part of the army that the Confederates routed.

The Battle of Chancellorsville

According to its unit history,

“The right of our lines was in extreme peril, for Howard’s corps had stampeded…On the double-quick, though burning woods, over dead and dying, amid a terrific cannonading and an incessant rattle of musketry, we pushed. Exhausted and panting, the Sixteenth took the extreme right and front of the Army of the Potomac at half-past ten P.M, and remained in the line of battle until 3 A.M. when we threw up breastworks…”

While fighting raged elsewhere, the 16th Maine held the right and eventually fell back with the rest of the army.

After Chancellorsville, the Army of the Potomac set off in pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as it moved to invade Maryland and Pennsylvania. The men of the Army of the Potomac marched an estimated 20 miles a day into Maryland and Pennsylvania. It took a tremendous effort in the heat and humidity of a very hot summer, in wool uniforms, carrying heavy equipment. The boys from Maine had no experience of those conditions. By June 30, the 16th Maine found itself bivouacked along Marsh Creek, about six miles from Gettysburg.

Action at Gettysburg

July 1, 1863 saw the 16th Maine Infantry and Lewis and George Bisbee leave their bivouac at 9 a.m. They force marched to Gettysburg, moving into position along Seminary Ridge. The Regiment belonged to the 2nd Division of the Union 1st Corps, arguably the best unit in the Army.

The area to their front had been the scene of bitter fighting by other units of the 1st Corps earlier in the day. Their corps commander, John F. Reynolds, died there. Moving to their right at about 1 p.m., they took up position behind a fence line near the Chambersburg Pike. They quickly engaged the enemy about 200 yards away behind another fence.

“Now came the order to charge bayonets. Color Sergeant Mower was the first to jump the fences, and the regiment followed with a ringing cheer, and in the face of a galling fire, went double-quick, scattering the rebel line, they going pell-mell to the rear. Our boys would have followed them, but were recalled and moved with the division still farther to the right.”

View to Oak Ridge (left) and Oak Hill and Peace Memorial (right. Photo by the author.

This move took them to Oak Ridge, a key to the Union position overwatched by the higher Oak Hill held by Confederate forces. (The modern Peace Light Monument now stands there.) With other 2nd Division regiments, the 16th Maine repulsed several Confederate attacks on the position. While the fighting raged there, the Union 11th Corps moved into position on the plain to their right. But after brief fighting, the 11th Corps was outflanked and fled the field in disorder. That left the Union force on Oak Ridge unsupported and fully exposed.

View from Confederate position on Oak Hill. Photo by the author.

Forlorn Hope

With no hope of relief, division commander Brig. Gen. John C. Robinson ordered the men to fall back to Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg. By now far superior Confederate forces pressed in on two sides, threatening to surround them and cut them off.  Robinson ordered the 16th Maine to “take that position and hold it at all costs.” The position, about 75 yards north of their current position, was literally the tip of the ridge then vacated by the other Union regiments. At the time, the 16th had only 275 officers and men left, including Lewis and George Bisbee. They faced four oncoming Confederate divisions that had yet done any significant fighting at Gettysburg. The divisions outnumbered the 16th Maine 20-to-1.

The 16th Maine Monument at Gettysburg. Photo by the author.

The regimental commander, Col. Charles W. Tilden, protested that it was suicide. But they obeyed the order and the regiment clung to the position.  Many of those men must have felt they would never leave this ridge alive as they looked out on the smoke that concealed the vast numbers of the oncoming foe. They held out long enough for the rest of the Union 1st Corps to retreat to Cemetery Hill, before a shortage of ammunition and the overwhelming numbers made it impossible to hold any longer. Being hard pressed now from three directions, the 16th Maine fell back, conducting a fighting and relatively orderly withdrawal, all the while pursued by vastly superior forces.

Saving the Colors

After going several hundred yards, the regiment found itself at the Railroad Cut, and by this time it was virtually surrounded with no hope for escape. If they had the time to look around them, they would have seen the fields covered with the dead and wounded of both armies. They’d been left behind from the hard fighting earlier in the day, when the Union 1st Corps soundly defeated Confederate forces, but at a high cost.

View from the 16th Maine marker of Oak Ridge. Photo by the author.

Such impressions would have been fleeting as their own reality came into sharp focus. Appealing to Colonel Tilden, the color bearers asked permission to tear their colors apart. They did not want them captured as war trophies, a major disgrace for the unit that lost them. With his permission, the men tore them to small pieces and each man in the regiment secreted a piece on his person. The Confederates never discovered them. Colonel Tilden snapped his own sword in half to keep it from being a trophy. Then he gave the order: Every man for himself and to make their way to the Union lines as best they could.

Lewis and George Bisbee, POWs

The majority of the Regiment, including Lewis Bisbee who was wounded in the fight, and George Bisbee, were captured, along with Colonel Tilden. Lewis and George probably saw little of each other during the actual fighting, but likely came together for mutual support in a shared fate as the men surrendered. Of the 275 men in the 16th Maine at the start of the battle, 11 were killed, 62 were wounded, 159 were captured. Only 43 escaped to the Union lines.

Col. Charles Tilden

The defeated Confederate forces quit the battlefield on July 4, 1863, and moved south into Virginia, taking the captured 16th Maine men with them. Lewis and George initially were sent to Libby Prison in Richmond. The only advantage to Libby Prison over the rest of the prison camps was that it was in a three-story warehouse, so at least there was overhead shelter. The windows had bars but no glass. Conditions there were beyond miserable, and Libby Prison was described as second only to conditions to Andersonville. The death toll from disease, lack of food and essentials, lack of hygiene and medical care, and outright neglect led to a high mortality rate. By the time the Bisbees and the other 16th Maine men reached Libby Prison, it housed more than 1,000. It was designed for 300. Things only got worse.

Libby Prison in 1865

Lewis spent 10 months in Libby Prison before being sent further south to prison camps in Macon, Ga. (Camp Oglethorpe), Savannah, Ga. (Camp Lawton), Charleston, S.C., and eventually Columbia, S.C> (Camp Sorghum). All Civil War prison camps were miserable, dehumanizing places, but Camp Sorghum was one of the worst. It was an open field, without shelter and fully exposed to the elements, no sanitation, no real food and no medical care. The prisoners had only the rotting clothes on their backs. The prisoners were already walking skeletons by the time they got there, transferred from other prison camps to alleviate overcrowding. Life went from bad to worse. Death was an everyday occurrence, and only the strongest survived.

Finally, Released

Somehow Lewis Bisbee managed to survive, and on March 15, 1865 he was released. He rejoined the 16th Infantry, his enlistment not officially ended. It is unclear if he rejoined it in time to be present with the regiment at Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. He mustered out with the regiment at Arlington Heights, Va., on June 5, 1865, and returned briefly to Maine.

Lewis had a brother, Sgt. Elisha Sylvester Bisbee, who fought in the Civil War with the 1st Maine Volunteer Cavalry. He was killed in action at the Battle of North Anna Bridge, Va., on May 22, 1864. Lewis most probably didn’t find out about his brother’s death until after his release from captivity.

Depiction of Libby Prison by David Gilmour Blythe

George Bisbee was sent to the same Confederate prisons as his cousin Lewis. He endured the same hardships in camps that fostered disease, starvation, neglect and brutality. It seems likely the two cousins provided emotional support for each other during their captivity. George was marginally luckier than Lewis in that he was paroled after 18 months, on Dec. 9, 1864. At that time the Bisbee family probably got its first real news about Lewis Bisbee’s status.

George Bisbee was later formally exchanged, meaning that he could return to active service. He rejoined the 16th Maine in time to fight in the Appomattox Campaign. His unit fought at White Oak, Gravelly Run, Five Forks and Sailor’s Creek. He was present at Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Now reunited with his cousin Lewis, he would have participated in the 16th Maine’s march at the Grand Review in Washington, D.C. He mustered out with the regiment on June 5, 1865 at Arlington Heights, Va.

George Bisbee had won promotion to 1st lieutenant while a prisoner. But in one of those then-peculiarities of the military, the Army later revoked his commission. He lost it because he couldn’t muster for it, as the Confederates had him in custody at the time!

Lewis Bisbee

Lewis Child Bisbee was born on June 7, 1834 at Hartford, Maine. He married Martha Brett Staples in 1856. The 1860 Census, before the war, listed his occupation as “carpenter.” Because of his capture and imprisonment only a year after he enlisted, he probably never made it home on furlough. His wife and children would have spent four long years not knowing his exact fate.

After the war, in 1865 he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota Territory, with his family. They had one son, James, and a daughter Luella, both born before the Civil War. After moving to Minneapolis, Lewis and Martha had two more sons, Ansel and Llewellyn. James died in 1871.

While his formal education is unclear, Lewis must have had some significant schooling. He worked as an architect and builder in Minneapolis. He won renown for designing and building many of Minneapolis’ prominent structures, including its first city hall, churches, schools and homes of the city’s influential residents. As with most Union Civil War veterans, he took an active role in the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic). He died on July 15, 1921 at Minneapolis, Minn.

George Bisbee

George Dana Bisbee was born on July 9, 1841 in Hartford, Maine. The 1860 Census lists him as a pupil at Teacher’s Normal, West Peru, Maine. A Normal School trained teachers at the college level. It is unclear what he did just prior to enlisting.

In 1865 he returned to Maine to live. In December 1865 he was admitted to the bar in Oxford County and began a lifelong practice as an attorney. On July 18, 1866 he married Anna Louise Stanley. Together they had three sons, Stanley, Seth and Wirt, and a daughter, Mary.

The Bisbee Family history notes that in 1872 and 1880 he served as a state senator. He held several other prestigious positions, including president of the Rumford Falls Trust Company, trustee and later president of Hebron Academy, Hebron, Maine (which still exists). He served four years as the U.S. marshal for the District of Maine, director and attorney for the Rumford Falls Railroad and president of the Rumford Falls Trust Company. George also belonged to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court. He died on May 26, 1918, at Rumford, Maine.


Lewis and George Bisbee are the author’s 5th cousins, 3 times removed.

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