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A New Age Retreat in Eliot, Maine, Saves the Career of Marsden Hartley

Marsden Hartley called himself ‘the artist of Maine.’ He was a renowned Modernist artist who painted manly, rugged scenes of fishermen, mountains and rocky seashores.

Mount Katahdin Maine First Snow by Marsden Hartley

But at a time when he considered abandoning art, it was an eccentric New Age community run by a woman in Eliot, Maine, that saved his career.

Marsden Hartley

Born in Lewiston, Maine, on Jan. 4, 1877, Marsden Hartley was the last of nine children born to English parents. His mother died when he was eight. His father remarried and his family moved to Cleveland in 1892. He studied art first in Cleveland and then moved to New York to study and embrace the Bohemianism of Greenwich Village.

Marsden Hartley by Alfred Stieglitz, 1916

Beginning a pattern he would repeat throughout his life, in 1901 he left New York for Maine for the first of many summers. Hartley would forever bounce between the city and the country, tiring of one, then the other. In 1937, after a long stint in Europe, he returned to Lewiston. He declared then that he wanted to become “the painter of Maine.”

He had moved to Lewiston before, in the fall of 1906. Then 29, he hoped to earn a living teaching art. He rented a studio and sent out handmade announcements, but he had few takers. Worse, his paintings didn’t sell. He had so little money he thought about giving up art for journalism.

A friend suggested he contact the Congress of Religions, a utopian community at Green Acre in Eliot. Green Acre, a former shipyard, was run by Sarah Farmer for the purpose of promoting peace, religious unity and, later, the principles of the Baha’i faith. Farmer raised the first known Peace Flag, 36 feet long, on an 85-foot flagpole.

The Inn at Green Acre

Green Acre

Hartley got a job as a handyman at Green Acre, putting up tents and doing odd jobs in exchange for room and board. He was treated as more than the hired help, and engaged in discussions about Eastern mysticism with the residents. He also talked about literature: Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman and Blake.

Marsden Hartley’s summer at Green Acre helped crystallize his views that landscape represents the earthly and the transcendent in human nature. Perhaps more importantly, he met a wealthy patron.

The former Sara Jane Thorp was a timber heiress and the widow of Ole Bull, the famous Norwegian violinist and composer. She followed the Swami Vivekanande. When she left nearly all her estate to the Vedanta Society, her daughter challenged the will, claiming the Hindus had driven her insane.

Mrs. Bull also extended her generosity to artists, including the Green Acre handyman. She held a one-man show of Marsden Hartley’s work at her home. His supporters from Green Acre attended, and the exhibit was a success. Best of all, he earned $90 from the sale of his paintings.

Lobster Fishermen by Marsden Hartley

Success at Last

That success convinced Marsden Hartley to soldier on with his art, which he would do until his death in 1943. He is considered one of the foremost American painters of the first half of the 20^th century.

The Peace Flag is still raised in Eliot, Maine. Green Acre is now a year-round Baha’I school operated by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States.

This story last updated in 2022.

Images: Marsden Hartley by Stieglitz By The Metropolitan Museum of Art – http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ap/web-large/DT6731.jpg, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56215414. The Inn at Green Acre By Sisay Borga Sabera – Sisay Borga Sabera, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64792699. Lobster Fishermen By The Metropolitan Museum of Art – http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ap/web-large/DT6731.jpg, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56215708. Fishermen’s Last Supper Public Domain.

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Flying Santa Left His Reindeer Behind For These Deliveries

The New England Flying Santa tradition was born in the teeth of a fierce winter storm when lighthouse beacons along Penobscot Bay guided a frightened pilot home to safety.

Flying Santa, 1937. All photos courtesy Friends of Flying Santa.

That frightened pilot was a Friendship, Maine, native named William Wincapaw. He showed his gratitude to the lighthouse keepers by dropping packages of treats for their families from his plane. He was the first Flying Santa.

Since 1929, Flying Santas have dropped Christmas presents for New England lighthouse keepers and their families from float planes, biplanes, a DC-3 and helicopters.

No Radar, No Radios

Bill Wincapaw was a skilled floatplane pilot who flew mail, medicine and supplies to remote coastal communities. He also flew sick and injured people to safety or to get medical help, often in bad weather.

It was a dangerous job. In those days, pilots flew by dead reckoning or with rudimentary navigational aids and landmarks. Radar hadn’t been invented yet, and airplanes had no radios.

In 1929, Wincapaw got lost in a winter storm over the North Atlantic. His compass failed, and his plane was dangerously low on fuel. Finally, to his relief, he spotted the beam of a lighthouse–and then another. He followed the beacons to a safe landing.

That wasn’t the only time lighthouse beacons saved Wincapaw’s life in a storm. The lighthouse keepers looked out for him through the year, and relayed back to the airfield when he safely passed their stations.

Bill Wincapaw

Wincapaw knew the lighthouse keepers and their families led hard, lonely and monotonous lives. He started landing near the lighthouses from time to time to thank them and to chat with the keepers. He eventually concluded he wasn’t doing enough to show his appreciation. So on Christmas Day 1929 he loaded his plane with a dozen packages of newspapers, magazines, coffee, candy, tobacco, soap and yarn. He took off into the air and dropped them, one by one, to the lighthouse keepers in the Rockland, Maine, region.

Dressing the Part of Santa

Wincapaw thought the small luxuries would help make the lighthouse keepers’ isolated lives more bearable. A few days after that first Christmas flight, he was surprised to see a message staked out in the snow. A lighthouse keeper’s wife had used old newspapers to spell out ‘Thank you.’ Wincapaw vowed to do it again.

The next year he added more lighthouses and Coast Guard stations to his route. His young son Bill, an aspiring pilot, helped him out. When Wincapaw learned they called him the Flying Santa, he began to dress the part during the Christmas flights.

Bill would get his pilot’s license at 16 and start flying solo. By 1933, father and son were delivering Christmas packages to 91 lighthouses. Local businesses such as LaTouraine Coffee helped underwrite the cost of the packages and the flight.

LaTouraine plane dropping a package over Boston Light

But it was getting to be too much.

Enter Edward Rowe Snow

The Wincapaws moved to Winthrop, Mass., in 1933, and they could not have known how fortuitous their choice of a new home would be. Young Bill attended Winthrop High School, where he took history from a 31-year-old teacher named Edward Rowe Snow.

Snow, descended from sea captains, loved history, adventure, treasure hunts and the New England coast. He would write over 100 publications in his lifetime. Two years after teaching Bill Wincapaw he would become famous for a book, The Islands of Boston Harbor. His vivid stories made him an increasingly popular lecturer, columnist for the Quincy Patriot Ledger and radio host. He would campaign successfully to save Fort Warren on Georges Island in Boston Harbor.

All that was in the future when Bill introduced Snow to his dad. Bill Sr. asked him if he’d like to help with the Flying Santas. Snow enthusiastically agreed. That year, 1936, Bill Jr. and Snow flew to 25 lighthouses and Coast Guard stations in southern New England. Bill Sr. flew the northern route. Fortunately, someone took pictures of his flight.

Bakers Island Light in Salem, Mass., 1936.

In 1938, Bill Sr. got a job flying gold and mining equipment over the jungles of South America. He couldn’t make it back for Christmas, so he asked Snow and his son to take over. They did fine.

There was just one thing: Snow wasn’t a pilot. When Bill joined his father in South America, Snow spent his own money to hire a pilot and an aircraft. His wife Anna-Myrle would join him, and eventually their daughter Dolly would too. The Snow family would become the heart and soul of the Flying Santas.

World War II

The Flying Santas almost didn’t make it through the 1940s because of World War II. In 1941, Snow managed to drop 35 packages, his pilot carefully avoiding high-security installations. The plane was painted with the words ‘Christmas Seal Plane’ so it wouldn’t be mistaken for enemy aircraft.

There was no Flying Santa in 1942.

Bill Jr. was a lieutenant commander in the Navy, ferrying bombers to England before he was stationed at Quonset Naval Air Station in Rhode Island. Bill Sr. became chief of maintenance, ‘so Billy’s ship would be running right.’ Ed Snow was in North Africa, commissioned as a lieutenant in Army Air Corps XII Bomber Command. Wounded in a bombing mission in late 1942, he spent Christmas in a hospital bed recovering.

Straitsmouth Island Light in Rockport, Mass., 1936.

Snow’s injuries got him a discharge from the Army in 1943. He told a radio interviewer he planned to visit the lighthouses by car and boat. A U.S. government pilot happened to hear him, and arranged for Boston’s Fighter Wing and the Civil Aeronautics Administration to continue the Flying Santa tradition that year.

The Flying Santas rebounded after the war ended. In 1946, Bill Jr. flew a DC-3 along the northern leg, his dad dropping the packages. Snow and his pilot flew the southern tier. It took two days for them to fly 115 lighthouses and Coast Guard stations from Cohasset to Canadian border.

The Torch Is Passed

On July 16, 1947, 62-year-old Bill Wincapaw suffered a heart attack shortly after taking off in a seaplane from Rockland Harbor. The plane nosedived into the water, which killed him and his 20-year-old passenger. The memorial service three days later was attended by lighthouse keepers, their families and Coast Guard, Army and Navy representatives.

As the service began at 2 pm, foghorns and lighthouse warning bells rang out along Penobscot Bay. During his Christmas flight that year, Ed Snow dropped a memorial wreath over Rockland Harbor in honor of William Wincapaw.

Snow honored him another way: by dropping 175 packages from Canada to Florida. By then the packages included more products donated by New England businesses, such as Gillette razor blades, LaTouraine coffee, tea, dolls, pen and pencil sets – and Ed Snow’s latest book. The package included dog biscuits if he knew the family had a dog. Theyalso came with a self-addressed card so the lighthouse keepers could let him know if the Christmas packages were delivered safely.

They weren’t always. Sometimes the wind blew off his fake beard. One January he received it in the mail with the message “Here are your whiskers, where is our package?”

Plum Island Lifesaving Station, 1936

The Doll Disaster

On Monhegan Island, Snow once took out a row of picket fencing. He always reimbursed the lighthouse keepers for damage, and the cost of insurance was a major Flying Santa expense.

In 1945, Seamond Ponsart, the five-year-old daughter of a lighthouse keeper on Cuttyhunk Island, desperately wanted a doll for Christmas. Flying Santa flew by and dropped her family’s package on a rock, smashing the doll. Ponsart was heartbroken. Her father bandaged the doll and gave her a crutch so Seamond would at least have a sick doll. But it wasn’t the same. The next year, the family moved to West Chop Light on Martha’s Vineyard.

Snow knew about the doll disaster. On Dec. 12, 1947, he chartered one of the first commercial helicopters to fly to nearby Gay Head Lifesaving Station, where the Ponsart family greeted him. Snow handed the doll to a delighted Seamond. “Like a fairy tale, I had Santa Claus hand me a doll to replace the broken one,” she later recalled. (Watch a 13-second video of Snow and Seamond here.) Seamond Ponsart would join the Coast Guard, and in 2003 she flew in a helicopter with Flying Santa. She called it ‘a top event of my lifetime.’

Winding Up

Snow brought Flying Santa to new heights during the 1950s. In 1953, Flying Santa went coast to coast on Coast Guard aircraft. He delivered packages along the East Coast on Christmas morning, flew to the West Coast and dropped packages from San Pedro to Tillamook Rock Light. He added lighthouses and lifesaving stations in the Great Lakes and Bermuda. In 1954, he delivered packages to Sable Island, 100 miles east of Nova Scotia. The plane landed and Snow got into a wagon drawn by semi-wild ponies to deliver packages to the island’s 26 inhabitants.

Ipswich Light, 1936

One year, children assembled at the Ipswich Lighthouse, waiting for Flying Santa. Edward Snow was running a bit behind schedule. Hearing the sound of an airplane, the keeper called up to his wife, “Has Santa arrived yet, dear?” Immediately he heard the Christmas bundle crashing through the skylight.

His wife yelled down, “Yes, dear. We can start the party now.”

Flight Restrictions

By the 1970s, Flying Santa was cut back due to flight restrictions, mounting costs and Snow’s age. In 1972 he had to travel to the Boston Harbor islands by boat and car. Bad weather caused them to cancel most of their visits in 1974. Finally he hit on a solution: He chartered a helicopter the next year, a big thrill for lighthouse keepers’ children.

Ed Snow on Goat Island in 1978

In 1981, Snow retired from his duties as Flying Santa after 45 years. In a ceremony at the Hull Lifesaving Museum, he presented his Santa suit to Ed McCabe, the first of the next generation of flying Santa. Friends of Flying Santa was formed from the Museum.

Edward Rowe Snow died in 1982, but Flying Santa lives on. In 2021 Flying Santa celebrates his 92nd anniversary.

* * *

The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s book, Historic Italian Christmas Cookies, tells you how to make those delicious treats. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Available now in paperback from Amazon; just click here.

Thanks to Joe McHugh for his book, The Flying Santa and especially to the Friends of Flying Santa. Also thanks to Gordon Harris of the Ipswich Historical Society for the Ipswich anecdote. All photos courtesy Friends of Flying Santa. Read more about them here. This story was updated in 2023.

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Edwin Arlington Robinson, Maine Poet

[jpshare]Something hopeful shines through the dark pessimism of a Christmas poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, who salvaged friendship and fame from bitter failures in his childhood and youth.

The poem is called Karma. It won a Pulitzer in 1925, one of three times the prize would be awarded to Robinson.

Christmas was in the air and all was well
With him, but for a few confusing flaws
In divers of God’s images. Because
A friend of his would neither buy nor sell,
Was he to answer for the axe that fell?
He pondered; and the reason for it was,
Partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus
Upon the corner, with his beard and bell.

Acknowledging an improvident surprise,
He magnified a fancy that he wished
The friend whom he had wrecked were here again.
Not sure of that, he found a compromise;
And from the fullness of his heart he fished
A dime for Jesus who had died for men.

Many of Robinson’s poems focused on failure, and it isn’t hard to understand why. He was born on Dec. 22, 1869 in Alna, Maine, but his parents moved to Gardiner when he was two. He described his childhood as stark and unhappy. His mother was disappointed he wasn’t a girl. His parents didn’t name him until he was six months old, and then did it by asking a man from Arlington, Mass., to pick a name out of a hat. Even then Robinson hated the name ‘Edwin” as well as the nickname ‘Win.’

His oldest brother Dean, a doctor, became addicted to laudanum. His middle brother Herman married the woman he loved, Emma Shepherd. He boycotted the wedding, and the marriage turned out to be a disaster. Herman turned to drink, suffered business failures and died a pauper.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson spent two years at Harvard, where he hoped to be published in a literary magazine but failed. He returned to Gardiner. His father had died and Emma, now a widow, had moved in with the Robinson family. He twice proposed to her and she twice refused. He moved to New York to live the life of an impoverished poet. At 26 he spent $100 to publish his first book, The Torrent and the Night Before. He meant it as a surprise for his mother. She died of diphtheria days before the books arrived.

He had more luck with his second book, The Children of the Night. Kermit Roosevelt read it and recommended it to his father, President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt like it, too, and got Robinson a job at the New York Customs Office, where he had plenty of time to write.

In 1916, an anonymous donor provided him a monthly stipend, which allowed him to continue writing poetry uninterrupted. Poet Amy Lowell gave him a rave review in The New Republic; critic William Stanley Braithwaite had called him ‘America’s foremost poet.’ He began to achieve literary success, winning the Pulitzer Prize three times during the 1920s.

He spent 24 summers at the MacDowell art colony in New Hampshire as an eminence gris. There he had a comfortable routine and the respect and affection of musicians and artists.

Edwin Arlington Robinson died of cancer in 1935.

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Flashback Photo: The First Televised Presidential Debate: Smith vs. Roosevelt

[jpshare]

Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Chase Smith.

The first televised presidential debate was not, as you might think, in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. It was actually in 1956, between Maine Sen. Margaret Chase Smith and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

CBS wanted two women to debate the merits of President Dwight Eisenhower, running for re-election, and Adlai Stevenson, his Democratic challenger. Both women were party stalwarts and seasoned politicians; both were the logical choice for the role.

Sen. Smith, however, was reluctant, believing Mrs. Roosevelt the better debater. But she finally agreed and set to work preparing for the debate. She first focused on her appearance, setting a precedent John F. Kennedy would follow four years later with great success.

In her autobiography, Declaration of Conscience, Sen. Smith describes her thinking about her outfit in much the same way Eisenhower must have plotted the invasion of Normandy.

“What would I wear?” she wrote. “How would my hair be styled? What would Mrs. Roosevelt wear—what would her hair style be?”

She decided to counter Mrs. Roosevelt’s height advantage by emphasizing slimness – a dark outfit with full or three-quarter sleeve. That would contrast nicely on black-and-white television with what Mrs. Roosevelt would probably wear – tweeds. A simple dark suit, she wrote, ‘accentuated the importance of hair styling. I remembered that she usually had a full-bodied hair style, rather loosely rolled and pinned back. “

Then there was the hat question. “Nov. 4 meant cool weather. If so, such a hair style plus a hat would tend to give her a top-heavy appearance.” Sen. Smith decided to wear no hat, a short strand of pearls and her trademark red rose. “This would not only effect a contrast of trimness but of simplicity,” she wrote. Sen. Smith tactfully avoided the word ‘dowdy to describe Mrs. Roosevelt, who arrived wearing all Sen. Smith could hope for: a loose-fitting beige shantung suit, a hat and an Adlai Stevenson button.

Four years later, Sen. John F. Kennedy’s careful attention to his appearance — dark suit, suntan and broad smile – gave him the edge in his debate with Vice President Richard Nixon’s light suit and hastily applied pancake makeup.

Sen. Smith had another trick up her three-quarter sleeve. She anticipated Mrs. Roosevelt would be confident, detached and not fully prepared. She would speak with conviction and authority. To counter that advantage, Sen. Smith decided to be brief and polite – and to save her best argument for last, when Mrs. Roosevelt couldn’t respond.

“Mrs. Roosevelt was extremely articulate and fluent,” she wrote. “I stuck to brief answers. It was evident that Mrs. Roosevelt was caught by surprise as I refrained from tangling with her. The more I spoke softly and smiled faintly, and the less I said in reply, the more Mrs. Roosevelt seemed to be put off balance. For the whole debate, on points of argument, Eleanor Roosevelt was winning hands down. Only her apparent uneasiness at our strategy of brevity and restraint caused her to talk even more than she intended. This began to come through to the viewers, I was told, to the point of diluting the effectiveness of her excellent arguments and blunting the edge she deserved.”

Mrs. Roosevelt had questioned President Eisenhower’s leadership ability. Sen. Smith, in her closing remarks, pointed out her late husband and Winston Churchill had chosen Eisenhower to be commander-in-chief of allied forces in Europe and to lead the country to victory in World War II. “They chose him on a nonpolitical basis of principle,” she concluded. “They now attack him just because he is not a partisan Democrat.”

In the end, it wasn’t clear who won the debate. It was clear who was happier with her performance. Mrs. Roosevelt refused to shake Sen. Smith’s hand afterward, and said to her companion as she walked away, “Did you hear what she said!”

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How Maine’s Samuel Mayall Brought America its First Woolen Mill

Samuel Mayall didn’t just bring the first woolen mill to America. He gave Maine two of its first businesswomen, and a statesman who took a principled stand on slavery.

Mayall built his woolen mill in Gray, Maine, in the late 18^th century with ingenuity, hard work and a little industrial espionage.

Mayall Mill Postcard

Born in 1761, he came to New England from old England, in Yorkshire. Technology was beginning to emerge that could mechanize the centuries-old craft of processing wool into cloth. The woolen guilds were wary of the technology, fearing it would cause them to lose control of the woolen trade. They did their best to keep it to themselves.

English craft guilds dated back centuries, and dyers, fullers and weavers all had roles to play in the production of cloth. They were tightly regulated. Substandard products could get you fined, and apprentices and journeymen were not free to move from one master craftsman to another. The oppressive nature of the guilds prompted many to look for ways out.

The First Woolen Mill

Mayall, seeing the opportunity in unregulated America, smuggled some English trade secrets out of the country, bundled in cloth destined for sale to the Native Americans. Once in New England he set up shop, first in Boston with a horse-powered carding operation in 1788 or 1789. But he soon moved to Gray, where he built his mill on the Collyer Brook, which powered his wool carding and cloth dressing operation in 1791.

Mayall took in wool from farmers and brought it to his mill where he made it into cloth. The news of Mayall’s success was not well received by the English craft guilds, and they twice threatened him. Once they shipped him a hat threaded through with needles dipped in poison. The second time they mailed him a box containing pistols intended to detonate when opened. (They didn’t.)

Mayall Mills. Original mill is background, right. State of Maine photo.

Mayall Mills. Original mill in background, right. State of Maine photo.

Mayall prospered, however, serving for a time as town selectman and running his mill until 1831. After his death, two of his three daughters, Mary and Phanela, took over and ran the mill. At the same time, one of Mayall’s five sons, also named Samuel, entered politics. He served in the Maine Legislature and then represented Maine in Congress as a Democrat from 1853 to 1855.

‘Shaken off the lethargy’

Mayall broke with the Democrats over slavery, however. He switched to the Republican Party after Democratic President Franklin Pierce opened the door to expanded slavery in the Midwest. Mayall left the party in no uncertain terms delivering a fiery speech on the floor of the House:

The people of the free states are aroused. They have shaken off the lethargy which has so long rested upon them. They are prepared to grapple with this question of slavery and to wipe away the stain from the Federal Government. No magic wand will again pass over them, lulling them into quiet repose, while southern oppression shall wind its meshes about the limbs of the northern giant. Our Sampson will not be seduced to sleep on the lap of effeminate servility, while she shaves from him the locks in which his great strength lies. No sir, this federal government must be divorced from all support of the “peculiar institution.”

In 1855, the younger Samuel Mayall moved to Minnesota and later served in the Civil War. The Mayall Mills, meanwhile, under the leadership of his sisters, did a booming business supplying woolens for the Union troops, among other customers. They expanded and built a new mill to add to the output from the first. At its peak, Mayall Mills employed 20 people and produced 30,000 yards of woolen cloth in a year.

Samuel Mayall lived out his life after the war in St. Paul, Minn., where he died in 1892. His sisters sold the mill in 1879, and it closed for good around the turn of the century.

This story last updated in 2022.

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29 Historic New England Apple Recipes

Are you looking for a book to help you explore apple recipes from yesteryear? This book, “29 Historic New England Apple Recipes,” is your guide to the past and present of New England’s favorite fruit. With this book, you will:

Discover the rich history and unique recipes of apples, from cider to pie
Learn how to make the same traditional recipes that early colonists used to make
Unlock the secrets of making the perfect apple pie

You can’t go wrong with my recipe for tarte tatin!

Enjoy the same flavors that New Englanders like Louisa May Alcott, Fannie Farmer and Julia Child loved.

Try my recipe for Apple Slump!

This book includes recipes for traditional New England apple dishes, fun facts about the unique history of apples and a guide to making cider and cider vinegar.

Get ready to explore New England apples! The new revised edition is available now in paperback or as an ebook from Amazon.

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