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Augusta Maine

The Greatest New England High School Football Rivalries

New England high school football rivalries go back to the days when teams traveled by stagecoach to visit their opponents. When there were no field goals or forward passes and when no one was really all that sure about the rules. When schools held fundraisers to buy the ball – which, by the way, was round.

Many people associate high school football rivalries with the South. And yet New England, with 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, has about a third of the centuries-old high school football rivalries in the country. But considering that players originally called football ‘the Boston Game,’ perhaps it’s not all that surprising.

Beginning in 1875, New England high schools have celebrated their football rivalries with bonfires, pep rallies, parades, snake dances, community dinners, alumni reunions … and fights, riots, bomb threats and eggings.

In no other region do so many high school football teams play on Thanksgiving Day every year. Many, but not all, of the Thanksgiving Day games involve ancient rivalries. Massachusetts has about 50 of them, Connecticut 15 and Rhode Island about 20.

Northern New England has only two Thanksgiving games, probably due to the weather. Manchester, N.H., holds a Turkey Bowl to determine the league champions, and Portland, Maine, features a crosstown rivalry between the Deering High School Rams and Portland High School Bulldogs.

In 2020,the COVID-19 pandemic put all those rivalries on hold, as state and school officials canceled entire football seasons.

Boston Latin-Boston English. Classic.

Before the Civil War, football was more of an excuse for a brawl than an actual game. But then a more organized version evolved. Boys from East Coast prep schools began to play what they called the Boston Game, something of a cross between rugby and soccer.

Then a group of students from Boston schools, including Boston Latin and English High, formed the Oneida Football Club. They played pickup teams starting in 1862 on Boston Common. In 1925, surviving members dedicated a small monument on their old playing field. They bragged they’d not only never been beaten, they’d never allowed an opponent to score.

Artists’ rendering of an Oneida Club game on Boston Common.

The Oneida Club disbanded after a few years. Then in 1887, Boston Latin played English High on Thanksgiving at Harvard Stadium. They did it again for 130 consecutive football games. It’s the oldest continuous Thanksgiving high school rivalry in the country.

Latin tends to beat English (they’re 80-38-13), and in 2011 the Wolfpack gave the Bulldogs a 50-0 drubbing. With Latin ahead 44-0, Latin let a woman player onto the field, senior Kathy Le. The crowd cheered.

Massachusetts has 11 other high school football rivalries that go back more than a hundred years.

Some Thanksgiving games between rivals attract thousands of fans, like the 100^th annual Salem-Beverly contest in 1998. The game drew 11,000, a bigger crowd than struggling Major League Baseball teams can sometimes lure to their ballfields.

Beverly’s first team

Needham-Wellesley

Five years before Latin and English went after each other on the gridiron, Needham and Wellesley high school athletes played their first game. The rivalry started when West Needham and East Needham split up in 1881 amidst a bitter controversy. They took their high schools with them, so West Needham became Wellesley.

On Thanksgiving Day in 1882, they started the oldest public high school football rivalry in New England.

As the two teams lined up on the crooked midfield line, the Wellesley captain realized he only had nine players. So he sent his brother into the stands to find two more.

The rivalry intensified over the next few years, and by the end of the century both teams used ringers – including ‘out-of-town professionals.’ Then in 1901, the schools limited ringers to town residents, which made for lousy football but good boxing. Several fistfights livened up the game, which featured frequent fumbles and ended in a 0-0 tie. Andrew Wyeth’s uncle managed the first all-boys’ team in 1906.

The Needham-Wellesley Thanksgiving rivalry had to take a break for the world wars because so many players enlisted. Officials also cancelled the games from 1950-52 because rioting broke out.

As recently as 1991, the game was called because of a bomb threat on the field. It turned out to be a prank by some Needham High School kids.

Fitchburg-Leominster

In 1898, the eighth Fitchburg and Leominster game went to a 0-0 score until the last two minutes. Then Fitchburg scored on a punt return — with the help of the hometown crowd, which kept any tacklers away from the ball carrier. The referee ruled the game a scoreless tie.

The next day the Fitchburg Sentinel had the audacity to report a win with the headline, “Fitchburg Wins 5-0.” The score stayed in the record books that way until 2010, when a Leominster Sentinel and Enterprise reporter insisted on changing it to 0-0. At the end of 2019, the Leominster Blue Devils have played the Fitchburg Raiders on Thanksgiving 104 times. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the match-up in 2020.

Norwich Free Academy vs. New London

Six years after the first ever collegiate football game, two Connecticut high schools started the longest high school football rivalry in history: Norwich Free Academy and New London High School. Ulysses S. Grant was president.

It started on May 12, 1875, and it hasn’t been continuous. But it has been fierce, with faculty sometimes playing as ringers. One year a Norwich-favoring referee let the clock wind down a little too slowly, time enough to let his Wildcats score the winning goal.

In 1898, the Wildcats were playing the Whalers in New London when a sudden snow squall enveloped the playing field. An NFA punter kicked the ball in the air, and it disappeared. The game ended since the teams had no more balls.

Another game ended early four years later, when Norwich Free Academy scored 130 points on New London in the first half. The game was called.

The Norwich Free Academy football team, 1898.

In NH, It Starts in Little League

On New Hampshire’s Seacoast, boys start hearing about the epic rivalry between Dover High and Rochester’s Spaulding High when they’re in Little League. In 2011, 30,000 fans watched the teams compete in a playoff match.

One long-tenured Rochester coach brought such intensity to the game that the Dover players believed he spied on their practices from the nearby woods. And whenever a small plane flew overhead, they’d stop their drills and mill around the field because they thought Spaulding wanted aerial photos of their practices.

In 1969, the Spaulding Red Raiders and the Dover Green Wave played their 63^rd game to a 0-0 tie. A rainstorm reduced the field to a quagmire, the players so covered with mud it was hard to tell the teams apart. A Red Raider claimed he scored a last-second touchdown, but no one could tell for sure.

Weather conditions probably explain why the three Northern New England states have only two Thanksgiving Day games — the Manchester, N.H., Turkey Bowl and the game between Crosstown rivals Portland Bulldogs vs. Deering Rams at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Maine.

Cony, Gardiner and … Chizzle Wizzle?

“Chizzle Wizzle, Chizzle Wizzle, sis boom bah! Cony High, Cony High, rah, rah, rah!”

That cheer for Augusta’s Cony High School Rams inspired students in 1892 to form the “Chizzle Wizzle Association” to raise money for the team. The Rams faced the Gardiner Tigers that year in their first of many games.

Miss Aldine Holmes kicked off the first Chizzle Wizzle in 1893 with a piano solo and Miss Cusick and Mr. Studley ended it with a duet. Ice cream and cake were served during intermission.

If that sounds decorous, the games were anything but. Ten years after the first game, the Gardiner Journal called the schools ‘old time rivals’ and complained of rowdyism.

Gardiner won by 2-0 in the 1910 game that involved quarreling and ‘the mixing up of the crowd and the players after nearly every play.’

After losing the 1926 game, Cony students threw rotten eggs at the Gardiner fans. ‘One girl’s hat, stockings and coat were ruined,’ reported the Gardiner Journal, which also noted Gardiner fans ‘went home quietly with sad faces,’ when they lost. Augusta, on the other hand, didn’t feel the need to be ‘sportingly generous.’

Augusta’s Chizzle Wizzle now lasts four days and ends with a ball, not a brawl. Cony students claim it’s the longest running high school variety show in the country. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic drove the variety show online.

A Marine recruiter talks to Cony players after they beat Gardiner in 2016. Photo courtesy U.S. Marine Corps.

Vermont’s ‘The Game’

In Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom they just call it ‘The Game’ – the St. Johnsbury Academy Hilltoppers vs. the Lyndon Institute Vikings. In 2013, a USA Today survey of the country’s greatest high school football rivalries. ‘The Game’ won the Vermont, New England and Eastern regions and finished fourth in the United States.

Sometimes thousands of fans attend the game between two towns that don’t have 15,000 residents between them. Excitement mounts in the week before the contest, with bonfires, a parade, class floats, a pep chapel, an alumni dinner and, as the Caledonian Record put it, ‘screaming teens.’

These Vikings really wanted to win.

The rivalry dates to a game played on Oct. 27, 1894. Lyndon had never played an opponent before and lost 28-0. To commemorate the 100^th anniversary of The Game, a state lawmaker (clearly a St. Johnsbury fan) sponsored a resolution that gloated over that first victory. Even though anyone who could even remember the game was probably long dead.

But on that ‘auspicious and historic’ fall day, the resolution went, the two teams ‘met on the gridiron’ to play the ‘new and intriguing sport’ evolving into one of Vermont’s ‘favorite autumnal activities.’

In that game, the two squads of ‘interscholastic athletic pioneers’ played a game in which St. Johnsbury ‘demonstrated their strategic mastery’ and ‘handily defeated’ Lyndon.

Three Miles Apart

No two high school football teams have played as many games against each other as Westerly High in Rhode Island and Stonington High in Connecticut. Though in different states, the schools are only about three miles apart. They’ve played against each other since 1911, and in 1913 they started playing on Thanksgiving as well as during the regular season.

The town Rotary Clubs take turns holding a dinner for both teams the night before the Thanksgiving game. The schools hold pep rallies in their auditoriums and the townspeople go to nighttime rallies on the commons.

By 2018, the Westerly Bulldogs and the Stonington Bears had played 98 games on Thanksgiving Day, with pretty even won-loss records. The 2018 game was a mismatch, though, with Westerly beating Stonington by 61-0. That, however, was only half as bad as the 1917 game, when Westerly beat Stonington by 122-0. In fairness, most of Stonington’s first-string players had enlisted and left to fight World War I.

There’s a terrific mural commemorating the rivalry behind C.C. O’Brien’s Irish Sports Bar and Café at 8 Mechanic Street in Pawcatuck.

Andover vs. Exeter

Two of the greatest ever football coaches played in one of the greatest ever high school football rivalries.

Amos Alonzo Stagg suited up for Phillips Exeter’s Big Red nearly a hundred years before Bill Belichick played center for Phillips Andover’s Big Blue.

An Andover-Exeter game. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones collection.

Stagg probably had to take a stagecoach for away games. Belichick was there in 1971 when some Andover students got caught trying to spray paint Exeter’s field blue.

The oldest private high school football rivalry began on Nov. 2, 1878 when both schools had existed for about a century.

Stagg, a poor Irish student, attended Exeter with the intention of going to Yale as a divinity student. But as a standout athlete he felt sports calling to him, and he ended up playing key roles in the development of intercollegiate football and basketball.

Belichick, the son of an assistant coach at Annapolis, went to Andover as a postgraduate to improve his chances at college. He played center in a game against Exeter that left the team undefeated. Buzz Bissinger, who later won the Pulitzer Prize for Friday Night Lights, reported on the game for the Phillipian. They won 34-8. Belichick, 37 years later, gave his daughter Amanda a felt pennant with the score of that game on it when she entered Andover.

He later said he learned about the science of football at Andover, and that he owed the school a lot. Patriots’ fans should be forever grateful.

Bill Belichick at Andover with his friend Ernie Jones.

Massachusetts High School Football Rivalries

Phillips Andover Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy (New Hampshire) since 1878.
Wellesley High School and Needham High School since 1882.
Milton Academy and Noble and Greenough School (Dedham) since 1886.
Boston English High School and Boston Latin High School since 1887.
Malden High School and Medford High School since 1889.
Winchester High School and Woburn Memorial High School since 1891.
Beverly High School and Salem High School since 1891.
Newburyport High School and Amesbury High School since 1891.
B.M.C. Durfee High School (Fall River) and New Bedford High School since 1893.
Athol High School and Ralph C. Mahar Regional High School (Orange) since 1894.
Leominster High School and Fitchburg High School since 1894.
Newton North High School and Brookline High School since 1894.
Barnstable High School and Falmouth High School since 1895.
Reading Memorial High School and Stoneham High School since 1899.
Marlborough High School and Hudson High School since 1900.
Melrose High School and Wakefield High School since 1901.
Whitman-Hanson Regional High School and Abington High School since 1910.

Connecticut High School Football Rivalries

Norwich Free Academy and New London High School since 1875.
Ansonia High School and Naugatuck High School, since 1895.
Shelton High School and Derby High School since 1904.
Stonington High School and Westerly (Rhode Island) High School since 1911.

Maine High School Football Rivalries

Cony High School (Augusta) and Gardiner High School since 1892.
Thornton Academy (Saco) and Biddeford High School since 1893.
Hebron Academy and Kents Hill School since 1894.
Lewiston High School and Edward Little High School since 1897.
Portland High School and Deering High School (Portland) since 1911.

New Hampshire High School Football Rivalries

Phillips Exeter Academy and Phillips Andover Academy since 1878.
Spaulding High School (Rochester) and Dover High School since 1906.

Rhode Island High School Football Rivalry

Westerly High School and Stonington (Connecticut) High School since 1911.

Vermont High School Football Rivalry

St. Johnsbury Academy and Lyndon Institute since 1894.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the list of oldest high school football rivalries. This story was updated in 2022.

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Cornelia Fly Rod Crosby, The First Maine Guide

Cornelia Fly Rod Crosby accomplished what legions of outdoor sportsmen can only dream of, and she did it in the 1890s: She made a living at fly-fishing and writing about it. In the process, she attracted thousands of people to the Maine woods to hunt and fish for a uniquely Maine experience, something L.L. Bean would eventually capitalize on.

Postcard showing Fly Rod Crosby with fly rod and fish.

Fly Rod Crosby was six feet tall, scandalized people with her dress, caught 200 fish in a day and became the first licensed Maine guide. Born before the Civil War, she conquered poor health with her vigorous outdoor life and lived past World War II. She befriended Annie Oakley, shot the first caribou legally in Maine and became an advocate for catch-and-release fishing as well as less-restrictive clothing for women.

She described herself more modestly:

I am a plain woman of uncertain age, standing six feet in my stockings…I scribble a bit for various sporting journals, and I would rather fish any day than go to heaven.

Phllips, Maine

She was born Nov. 10, 1854, to Lemuel Crosby and Thurza Cottle Porter Crosby in Phillips, Maine, home of the Rangeley Lakes. Her father suffered from poor health and died of tuberculosis when Fly Rod was two.

She and her brother Ezekiel also had sickly constitutions, and Fly Rod took a fresh air cure — spending as much time outdoors as possible. She inherited $600 in her teens and spent it on two years at St. Catherine’s Hall, an Episcopal girls’ finishing school in Augusta.

During the 1870s she worked as a bank teller near Phillips. Her health failed from time to time, and she spent months recuperating.

Sometime before 1878 she had a lung ailment from which she wasn’t expected to recover. She was carried to the foot of Mount Blue to try the healing power of nature. It not only worked, but she caught her first trout.

In 1886, a friend gave her a 5 oz. bamboo rod. She got good at fishing. One day she caught 200 trout.

She then got a job as a telegrapher in Phillips, spending as much time as she could fishing in the Rangeley Lakes.

Fly Rod’s Notebook

Fly Rod Crosby

She began to write up stories about her fishing adventures, which she submitted to O.M. Moore at the Phillips Phonograph. Moore gave her the nickname Fly Rod, and Fly Rod’s Notebook was born. It was a chatty account of fishing adventures and misadventures with information about where to stay and what the sporting camps were like. Fly Rod’s Notebook became a syndicated column appearing in newspapers in New York, Boston and Chicago.

She caught the attention of the Maine Central Railroad, which was looking to replace its lost freight business with tourists. Maine’s population was moving to the city as young people left their farms to work in factories and mills. The railroad paid Fly Rod to promote Maine’s outdoor industry. It was Fly Rod who came up with the slogan ‘Maine — the Nation’s Playground.’

She organized Maine’s exhibit at the First Annual Sportsmen’s Show at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1895. At the second annual show she caused a sensation. She wore a Paris-inspired green leather hunting outfit with a skirt that stopped short at mid-calf, matching tall green lace-up boots, a tailored jacket with a red sweater and a peaked red and green hat. Record crowds came to watch her demonstrate fly fishing and praise the virtues of Maine’s forests in front of a log cabin stuffed with deer heads and fish tanks with live Maine salmon and trout.

At that 1896 sportsman’s show she met Annie Oakley, who became a lifelong friend.

The First Maine Guide

By the mid -1890s she worked in banks in the winter when her health permitted and fished in the summer. She caught 2,500 trout in the summer of 1893, the ‘happiest and best’ year of her life. She probably released most of them as she was one of the first advocates of catch-and-release fishing.

In 1897, the Maine Fish and Game Association hired her to lobby the Maine Legislature for a state-run system to register the state’s hunting and fishing guides. On March 19, 1897, the Legislature passed the bill requiring guides to buy a $1 license every year and file a one-page annual report. Maine registered 1,316 hunting guides that year and gave Fly Rod the first license.

Postcard ca. 1920 of Rangeley Lake

She organized Maine’s entry at the Boston Food Fair that year. Wearing her green suit, she brought the log cabin, stuffed deer and a 107 lb. squash. Her mother demonstrated spinning and Lucy Nicolar showed how to make Penobscot baskets.

She was sidelined two years after she wrenched her knee while boarding a train, and tuberculosis attacked the injury.

In 1926 she lost sight in one eye and couldn’t hunt or fish. She spent the spring of 1926 in St. Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston, Maine, and converted to Catholicism. She still fished in the Rangeley lakes in her 80s.

Cornelia Fly Rod Crosby died on Armistice Day, 1946, a day after her 93rd birthday. In 2012, the first 20 miles of the Fly Rod Crosby trail opened. Find out more here.

With thanks to More Than Petticoats, Remarkable Maine Women by Kate Kennedy. This story was updated in 2022.

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John Calvin Stevens, Designer of Maine (Especially Those Shingle Style Houses)

John Calvin Stevens left an indelible mark on Maine by designing more than a thousand buildings in the state over his six-decade career.

The Brown-Donahue House in Cape Elizabeth, designed by John Calvin Stevens. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The Brown-Donahue House in Cape Elizabeth. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

He made major innovations to the Shingle style of architecture so characteristic of coastal summer cottages like the Bush compound in Kennebunkport.

John Calvin Stevens

He was born in Boston on Oct. 8, 1855, the son of a cabinetmaker. His family moved to Portland when he was two.

He wanted to go to MIT, but couldn’t afford it. So he apprenticed to Francis H. Fassett, an influential Portland architect. Stevens began designing buildings when he was 18 and didn’t stop until he was in his 80s.

His houses still stand along the Maine coast, especially Cape Elizabeth and the Casco Bay islands. You can also find them n Portland’s West End and suburbs.

Winslow Homer studio

He designed the Winslow Homer house and studio, transforming the latter from a carriage house. Like many of his buildings, the Homer studio connects organically with the Maine landscape and incorporates historical motifs. Stevens’ style was described as having a ‘primitive simplicity and wholesome vigor.’

L.D.M. Sweat Memorial Galleries, Portland Museum of Art

L.D.M. Sweat Memorial Galleries (at the rear of the building), Portland Museum of Art

Stevens also painted landscapes and collected art. He donated Homer’s painting Afternoon Fog to the L.D.M. Sweat Memorial Galleries, which he designed. The galleries now belong to the Portland Museum of Art.

His own painting, Delano Park, Cape Elizabeth, hangs in the Blaine House, which he did not design, in Augusta.

John Calvin Stevens House. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

So Many Buildings

He designed nine buildings for Hebron Academy and the Psi Upsilon Fraternity House on the Bowdoin College campus. The National Park Service lists his own home, the John Calvin Stevens House, on the National Register of Historic Places.

Charles M. Bailey Library in Winthrop, Maine

He also designed many public libraries, municipal buildings, hotels, and churches. John Calvin Stevens’ libraries can be found in in Buckfield, Clinton, Rumford, Houlton, Waterford, Limington, Winthrop, South Paris and Bethel.

Biddeford City Hall

Stevens designed buildings like the Biddeford City Hall (above) in the Colonial Revival style.

Bay of Naples Inn

Sadly, some of his grand Shingle style hotels like the Belgrade Hotel in Belgrade Lakes and the Bay of Naples Inn in Naples are no longer with us.

He had a son, John Howard Stevens, also an architect. John Howard joined his firm in 1898 and when he made partner in 1904 they renamed the firm Stevens Architects.

Stevens died on Jan. 25, 1940. The City of Portland declared Oct. 8, 2009 ‘John Calvin Stevens Day’ in his honor.

Image: Winslow Homer studio by By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28901158. This story was updated in 2022.

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Martha Ballard, Midwife. As Good As, In Some Ways Better Than, the Best Doctors

Martha Ballard somehow managed to deliver 797 babies in the frontier community of Hallowell (now Augusta), Maine, between 1785 and 1812. She kept her now-famous diary during those years, which also tells of endless work cooking, gardening and spinning.

She reckoned she performed a total of 981 deliveries in her lifetime, since she only started keeping her diary at the age of 50.

Martha Ballard diary entry, Aug. 27, 1791

Her diary would fade into obscurity, passed around from people to the Maine State Library, where a historian then discovered it. Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich mined what seemed a mundane chronicle to reveal insights into women’s role in the frontier economy, medical practices, the prevalence of violence, treatment of debtors (Martha’s husband), marriage customs, the Malta War and, of course, birthing babies. Thatcher’s book won the Pulitzer Prize and PBS then aired it as a documentary.

Martha Ballard

Martha Moore was born on Feb. 9, 1735 in Oxford, Mass., to Elijah Moore and Dorothy Learned Moore. Little is known about her early life and education. At 19 she married Ephraim Ballard in 1754, and they had nine children between 1756 and 1779. Three of them died in Oxford during a diphtheria epidemic in the summer of 1769.

Martha wasn’t the only health care provider in her family. She had two uncles who practiced as physicians, and her great-niece, Clara Barton, founded the American Red Cross. Her great-great-granddaughter, Mary Hobart, was an obstetrician who graduated from Women’s Medical College, of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.

The Kennebec River today at Augusta

Sometime between 1769 and 1785, Martha and her family moved near the wild Kennebec River on the Maine (then Massachusetts) frontier.

She started her diary on Jan. 1, 1785, when she was 50 years old.

mr Ballard left home bound for Oxford. I had been Sick with the Collic. mrs Savage went home. mrs foster Came at Evening. it snowd a little.

Using a quill pen and homemade ink, she then made 9,999 entries over 27 years. In them she described the dangers and difficulties of her life. In 1981, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich got a grant to research Martha’s diary. Ten years later she published her prize-winning book, A Midwife’s Tale about it.

Better Than a Doctor?

Martha Ballard used home-grown remedies and traveled by horse (sometimes falling off) and canoe to her patients. She treated burns and rashes, frostbite, coughs, colic and sore throats. Most of the medicines she grew herself, gathered in the wild or transformed from household staples. She did buy some medicines, like camphor.

In at least one respect she was a more methodical and progressive practitioner than most country doctors, argues Ulrich. Martha Ballard kept medical records — in her diary — something most country doctors didn’t do. Her diary is practically the only medical record that exists for Hallowell in the 18th century, save for a one-page letter.

In other ways, Ulrich notes, Martha Ballard’s habits didn’t differ much from those of the best doctors of the age. She attended autopsies and meticulously recorded medical and obstetrical details. She also paid attention to vital records and was generally committed to facts.

Martha Ballard, Midwife

On Aug. 27, 1791, Martha Ballard helped with the birth of two children. She would have been about 56 years old. She wrote in her diary that Isaac Hardin called her at 4 a.m., and his wife delivered a daughter at 1 p.m.

Then, “I went Directly from there to James Savages, my hors mrd in a Swamp and I fell off,” she wrote. After extricating herself and her horse from the swamp, she arrived at the Savages at 3 p.m. to find his wife safely delivered of a fine son with the help of James’ mother.

Martha then went back to the Hardins by Colonel Dutton’s farm, rode Hardin’s horse home, and arrived at 8 p.m.

She wrote that she was, ‘very much fatigud.’

Chores, Too

Like most early American women, Martha Ballard spent endless hours carding and spinning. Cloth was hard to obtain on the frontier, the women had to pick, spin, comb, dye and card flax, wool and, to a lesser extent, cotton. Historian Alice Morse Earle writes that early American women bought cotton by the pound. Earle describes the tedious process.

…the seeds were picked out one by one, by hand; it was carded on wool-cards, and spun into a rather intractable yarn which was used as warp for linsey-woolsey and rag carpets. … Sometimes a twisted yarn was made of one thread of cotton and one of wool which was knit into durable stockings.

At least Martha didn’t weave the cloth herself. She took her spun cotton, wool and flax to Mr. Edson, who wove it.

On July 27, 1786, Martha Ballard wrote in her diary that she carded cotton as well as built a fence, cared for sick children, bought meat and received visitors.

Clear. I carded Cottne & Cutt Aulders and maid a Sort of a fence part round the yard By the mill Pond, and then was Calld to Eliab Shaws to See his Children, they being Sick with y^e Canker rash. Hannah North, Tammy & Sally Cox here. Bro^t a quarter of Lamb, wt 7-1/2 lb. Polly Bisbe & Adams here to Day.

The Diary Ends

She last wrote in her diary in the spring of 1812. In an undated entry, she wrote,

Clear the most of ye day & very Cold & windy. Dagt Ballard and a Number of her Children here, mrs Partridg & Smith allso. Revd mr Tappin Came and Converst Swetly and made A Prayer adapted to my Case.

at home, very feeble, Revd mr Tappin [ ] see me.

A notice of her death was published on June 9, 1812.

You can browse Martha Ballard’s complete diary here.

With thanks to Martha Moore Ballard and the Medical Challenge to Midwifery by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Also from Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health by Judith W. Leavitt (Editor), Ronald L. Numbers.

Image of the Kennebec River By Billy Hathorn – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34058018.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Eastman Johnson Paints ‘The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket’

The name of Eastman Johnson is inscribed above the entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for a reason: He co-founded the world-famous institution.

Detail from The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket (1880)

Eastman Johnson was a Maine-born artist whose politically connected father brought him into contact with well-known portrait subjects.

Eastman Johnson self portrait

He earned a reputation for painting scenes of everyday life and portraits of famous figures such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Eastman Johnson

He was born July 29, 1824 in Lovell, Maine, and grew up in Fryeburg and Augusta.

He was the eighth and last child of Mary Kimball Chandler Johnson and Phillip Carrigan Johnson. His father served as Maine’s secretary of state for two years before moving to Washington, D.C. as an appointee to the U.S. Naval Department.

Eastman had worked as an apprentice to a Boston lithographer in 1840. He joined his family in Washington, D.C., at about 20. There he earned a living drawing crayon portraits , including John Quincy Adams and Dolly Madison

He studied in Europe before returning to New York City. He then made his name with his masterpiece, a painting called Negro Life at the South, a street scene of slaves in Washington, D.C.

Negro Life at the South

Eastman Johnson sympathetically depicted the plight of slaves. While on an extended visit to Wisconsin, he painted members of the Ojibwe tribe. He also painted genre scenes – everyday scenes of ordinary people – of husking bees, sugaring off, an old stagecoach and cranberry harvesting. In his time people called him The American Rembrandt.

Sugaring Off at the Camp, Fryeburg, Maine

Cranberry Harvest

Johnson, always on the lookout for rural subjects, found inspiration on Nantucket and surroundings in 1870. As a native New Englander he wanted to paint outdoor New England, and the cranberry harvesters did it for him. Art critics consider it a significant painting because of Johnson’s evocative technique. He emphasizes the light and the landscape, as well as the sense of a community at home on the land.

From his vacation home on Nantucket, Johnson wrote in 1879, “I was taken with my cranberry fit as soon as I arrived and have done nothing else.”

Eastman Johnson died April 5, 1906.

This story was updated in 2021.

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June 12, 1843: Lydia Patterson Meets ‘Very Familiar’ Girls at the High School for Misses

S.E. View of Portland in 1832, Taken from Fort Preble, on Purpooduck Point

Lydia Patterson didn’t want to seem too nosy during her first hour at boarding school in Portland, Maine, on June 12, 1843.

She had just arrived at Mrs. L.K. Wells’ High School for Misses from Kennebunk, Maine, when she sat down to write to her younger sister Mary. She was 20 years old, born on April 26, 1823, the daughter of Lydia (Hutchins) and Capt. Actor Patten Patterson, a master mariner. She spent about three months at Mrs. Wells’ school, studying academic subjects and drawing.

Lydia Patterson would marry widower Daniel Walker Lord in 1853. He was a merchant, a shipowner, an elected state official and a trustee at Bowdoin College. They would have two children, Daniel and Mary. Lydia Patterson Lord died June 5, 1885 in Malden, Mass.

Portland June 12 — 1843

Dear Mary
I arrived here safely this afternoon about one o-clock. I had a very pleasant ride, but like the old woman saw nothing but a few rocks and trees flying past. Tell father I saw no more of the gentleman who was to attend to my trunk and box, but I had no trouble, a man took me directly to Mrs Wells in time for dinner. I paid ninepence. The school-room is in the same building, but Mrs. Wells excused me this afternoon before I thought of making the request. The school hours are from nine to 12 and half-past two, to 5 There are five boarding with Mrs Wells myself excepted, and about 20 scholars in all. There are two beds in the room I am to occupy: a Miss Green from Topsham (who has enquired about the Bourne,s and Perkin,s and says her great Grandmother resided in Kennebunk and was related to them,) occupies one bed from Belfast. with a Miss Whittier. And a Miss Cushman from Augusta (who has been here since last December) and myself the other. I have a very good place and plenty of room for my clothes & trunk. The room is quite large and pleasant, has a — carpet on the floor, 2 wash-stands 2 tables 2 looking-glasses 4 chairs each with 4 legs I expect. I have not yet counted them. I believe we are to take turns in making bed and sweeping the room.

The washing is done out of the house, there are ten pieces allowed weekly. There is a boy in the house who does the errands. The letters are directed to the care of Mrs Wells and sent in a package to the house, I am told. The girls are very familiar but I do not like to make to many enquires the first hour. I shall know more about the school and studies the next time I write

I have the room to myself this afternoon the school is out and one of my roommates has gone out to ride, and another called me to see a steamboat come in, and then took her bonnet and went out. I had forgotten to say my room is in the third story of a large brick building or block of buildings I scarcely know how it looks outside yet. There is a very prettily furnished room on the first floor which I went into first, and suppose it is to be the common parlor as i was there introduced to Mrs and Miss Kellogg and all the young ladies.

I have contrived to fill a letter with almost nothing according to directions. I shall be very glad to receive a letter from you this week and let me know how mothers plaster draws. and all the little news both in doors and out I feel very well contented so far and think when you come I shall feel a great deal better. I think of nothing more to say at present expecting ink is purchased of Mrs. Wells. I borrow this afternoon.

Yours affectionally
Lydia Patterson

With thanks to the Maine Historical Society via Maine Memory. ‘S.E. View of Portland’ Courtesy Osher Map Library, Smith Center for Cartographic Education.

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