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The Portland Gale of 1898, and the Cat that Saved a Life

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Of all the storms that struck New England over the centuries, only one was named after its victim: The Portland Gale of Nov. 26, 1898.

The monumental double storm killed more than 400 people and sank 150 vessels, including the steamship Portland in the worst marine tragedy of the 19th century.

It created a storm surge of 10 feet in Cohasset Harbor, blocked a harbor for months on Martha’s Vineyard and changed the course of the North River in Scituate. It deposited so much water in Boston that people rowed dories on Atlantic Avenue.

Sailing master Joseph Kemp compared the Portland Gale to the Great Hurricane of 1938.

Lt. Worth G. Ross, a life-saving station inspector, also witnessed the storm. “The wild fury of the wind and driving snow continued without abatement until late in the afternoon,” he wrote. “At times the force and roar of the tempest were so appalling as to be indescribable.”

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The last photo of the SS Portland before she sank in the Portland Gale.

The Portland Gale

Two low pressure masses headed toward New England on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. One came from the Great Lakes, the other from the Gulf of Mexico. The weather service only predicted the storm from the Midwest would strike New England. Had it noticed the two would merge, hundreds of lives might have been saved.

The S.S. Portland, a 280-foot wooden sidewheeler, was moored at Indian Wharf in Boston on Nov. 26, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Many passengers were returning home after visiting family from as far away as Philadelphia and New York.

Though the skies were clear that afternoon in Boston, they developed an ominous yellow light late in the day. “It was the greasiest evening you ever saw,” Kemp remembered.

Capt. Hollis Blanchard, the Portland’s skipper, went ashore as freight was loaded aboard the steamship. He called the captain of the Portland’s sister ship, the Bay State. Knowing only of the one storm headed his way, he said he would beat it before it reached Portland.

At 5:30 pm, the general manager ordered the steamship line’s vessels held until 9 pm, when the weather situation clear. Blanchard either didn’t get the message or ignored it.

A man from Brooklin, Maine, named Gott saw a cat leaving the steamer, taking her kittens down the gangway one by one. He decided the cat knew something he didn’t and got off the boat.

Sightings

At 7 pm the Portland cast off, before the sudden violent outburst of wind and snow. A number of other vessels, scurrying toward safe harbors, later reported seeing the steamship.

The Portland saluted the Kennebec and then the Mount Desert as she steamed out of Boston Harbor.

Several schooners caught sight of the Portland near Thacher’s Island off Gloucester. By then, the fierce storm had begun. At 11:45 pm, the schooner Edgar Randall nearly collided with a badly damaged steamship running without lights.

During a lull in the storm Sunday morning, the schooner Ruth M. Martin spotted the Portland off Highland Light in North Truro.

Blanchard may have headed into the storm toward open water. Over the years, fishermen recovered wreckage from her path. At some point on Sunday morning, the hull of the Portland opened up to the sea.

No one really knows what exactly happened. Some think she rammed another vessel. Some think the Portland Gale swept off her superstructure and she sunk like a stone.

Recovery

Around 7 pm on Sunday, bodies started washing up on shore halfway between the Race Point and Peaked Bars lifesaving stations. Watches on the bodies had all stopped between 9 and 10. The Portland Gale had cut off all communication between Boston and Cape Cod, and relatives began besieging the steamship line with telephone calls.

A Boston Herald reporter in Hyannis got part of a telegram from Truro, which convinced him the Portland had sunk. He left Hyannis by train and went as far as he could, but the storm had washed out coastal railroad tracks. He continued on foot, horseback and then train to Boston, where he filed the story on Tuesday and alerted the world to the Portland disaster.

The passenger list went down with the ship, so no one really knows how many died. Estimates range from 176 to 192 passengers and crew.  Searchers found only 36 bodies.

Aftermath of the Portland Gale

The three-masted schooner Newburgh slammed into Union Wharf on Martha’s Vineyard and went completely through. The bow and stern stuck out of the sides, which blocked shipping to the wharves. The Bertha Glover, which carried lime, caught fire and burned in Vineyard Haven Harbor for a week. Wrecked ships littered the coast after the Portland Gale. Among those that sank were the Calvin F. Baker, the Meris H. Perry, the Albert L. Butler, the Pentagoet and the Columbia.

The Portland Gale destroyed dozens of piers and houses along the South Shore of Massachusetts. It damaged coastal railroads, severed telegraph and electric lines and destroyed the ferris wheel and roller coaster in Hull.

Provincetown got hit especially hard. It destroyed half of the town’s wharves and businesses along the shore. Afterward, lumber, wharf pilings and planks from the wharves filled the west side of the harbor. The whole mass writhed like snakes as if the surf tossed them, according to an account in the Provincetown Advocate.

The newspaper also reported that Mrs. Henry Spears “watched from her windows while men cut frozen bodies out of the Jordan L. Mott’s rigging.

“From that time on, she kept the shades drawn on every window facing the harbor.”

The Portland disaster accelerated the shift from wood to steel-hulled ships, and from sidewheels to propellers.

In 2002, Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and the National Undersea Research Center at the University of Connecticut, located the Portland. They used data from American Underwater Search and Survey to identify her image in the Stellwagen Bank sanctuary at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay between Cape Cod and Cape Ann.

This story was updated in 2022. 

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Prudence Cummings Wright, Patriot Militia Commander, Captures 2 British Spies

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During those confusing, intense first weeks of the American Revolution, Prudence Cummings Wright organized a ladies group — to capture Loyalist spies in Massachusetts.

Her husband had just marched off to the Siege of Boston in the aftermath of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. So had the husbands of most of the other ladies.

Rumors flew that British spies were passing information from Canada to Boston through the town of Pepperell, Mass.

She decided to do something about it — even if one of the spies was a blood relation.

Prudence Cummings Wright

Prudence Cummings Wright was born Nov. 26, 1740, in Hollis, N.H., the daughter of Prudence and Samuel Cummings, the town clerk for 22 years. She had two sisters and three brothers, two of whom were Loyalists.

Prudence was a patriot. An ardent one.

She married another patriot, David Wright, in 1761. They lived in Pepperell, Mass., the next town over from Hollis, about 20 miles northwest of Concord. He had joined the militia as a private.

They had 11 children, though two of their children died young: six-year-old Mary died of fever on July 1, 1774, and on March 11, 1775, Liberty died. Prudence Cummings Wright, bereft, returned home to her parents in New Hampshire for comfort.

While there, she overheard her brother Samuel talk to his friend Leonard Whiting, a British army officer, about passing information to the British.

Prudence returned to Pepperell and gathered the women of the town. Then a 35-year-old mother of five, she organized 30 or 40 of them into a militia called ‘Mrs. David Wright’s Guard.’ The youngest, Elizabeth Hobart, was only 17.

Farm Implements

The women dressed in their husbands’ clothes and carried whatever they could for weapons. As the men had probably taken muskets with them, the women probably used farm implements such as pitchforks.

The women elected Prudence their leader, and she appointed Sarah Shattuck as her lieutenant. The women patrolled the roads leading into town.

Nehemiah Jewett Bridge, successor to the one the ladies’ militia staked out. Courtesy Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey.

They knew Jewett’s Bridge over the Nashua River was the only way through Pepperell. The Loyalists would have to cross it on their way to Boston.

Susan J. Smith, writing for the Pepperell Historical Commission, described what happened.

“Then they waited at the bridge, into the night, shielding the lantern, totally silent until two horsemen approached from the north,” she wrote. “Taking advantage of surprise Prudence burst upon them with lantern bright demanding to know their identity and business. Her brother Samuel knew the depth of his sister’s commitment to the cause and immediately turned tail avoiding possible fatal injury.

“Leonard Whiting pushed forward, believing he couldn’t be stopped by a bunch of women. He was wrong of course. Both were dragged off their mounts and searched. Dispatches intended for the British were found. The men were escorted to Solomon Roger’s tavern. There the prisoners were detained for the rest of night before being taken to Groton and the Committee of Safety in the morning.”

The committee gave the two men their liberty once they promised to leave the colony. Prudence never saw Samuel, her favorite brother, again.

Finally, Recognition

The women’s militia disbanded after that exciting night.

The town couldn’t pay the women for what they’d done until town meeting on March 19, 1777. Then Pepperell voted to pay Wright’s guard for their service. They referred to the volunteer ladies’ militia as “Leonard Whiting’s Guard.”

Prudence Cummings Wright died Dec. 2, 1823. Jewett’s Bridge has been replaced several times, and a covered bridge now stands at the crossing, along with a stone marker memorializing Prudence Cummings Wright.

With thanks to An Encyclopedia of American Women at War: From the Home Front to the Battlefields edited by Lisa Tendrich Frank. This story about Prudence Cummings Wright was updated in 2022. 

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Samuel Williams Watches an Eclipse From Behind British Lines in 1780

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The American Revolution in 1780 didn’t stop Harvard professor Samuel Williams from venturing behind British lines in Maine to observe a total eclipse of the sun.

samuel-williams-eclipse-mapThe British fort in Maine had recently been attacked unsuccessfully by a huge American fleet. But the British commander gave Samuel Williams safe passage to watch the eclipse. He knew the data he gathered would benefit both sides, whoever won the war.

So on Oct. 21, 1780, the first American eclipse expedition watched the moon’s shadow partially cross the sun from an island in Penobscot Bay. Then, to their dismay, the moon drew back before it totally eclipsed the sun.

Modern historians blame Samuel Williams for an embarrassing failure, for they say he miscalculated the total eclipse by a few miles.

But it didn’t fail. Samuel Williams made observations important to geographers and mariners. And if anyone should be viewed as the scientific goat, it’s the British commander who limited the time and place of their observations

Samuel Williams

samuel-williams

Samuel Williams

He was born April 23, 1743, in Waltham, Mass., to the Rev. Warham Williams and his wife, Abigail Leonard. He graduated from Harvard in 1761, but missed his commencement exercises. Instead, he traveled on a scientific expedition to observe the transit of Venus in Newfoundland with John Winthrop, his teacher. Winthrop was Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy.

Winthrop offered scientific explanations for natural phenomena. Earthquakes, for example, resulted from seismic activity rather than God’s wrath, he wrote.

Winthrop was great-grandson of the John Winthrop who founded Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was also grandson of Connecticut Gov. John Winthrop, who donated the first telescope to Harvard in 1672.

After Samuel Williams graduated from Harvard, he taught for a few years, then got a job as a minister in Concord. From 1764-79 he served as a minister in Bradford, Mass.

Then in 1780, Williams, along with John Adams and James Bowdoin, founded the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Sam Adams and John Hancock also got involved. That same year Williams succeeded John Winthrop as the designated spokesman for science in the Massachusetts colony.

Samuel Williams, Eclipse Chaser

Williams knew that on Oct. 21, 1780, Europeans in America would have the opportunity to see a total solar eclipse, something they had never done successfully.

A solar eclipse was a big thing. It would allow observers to measure longitude in America by computing the distance from Greenwich. The uncertainty of longitude in almost all locations in America “bedeviled the best geographers and mariners into the early 19th century,” wrote Robert Rothschild in Two Brides For Apollo: The Life of Samuel Williams.

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Penobscot Bay. The arrow points to the observation site on Isleboro.

Williams had a problem, though. The best place to watch the eclipse, according to his calculations, was near Penobscot Bay. But the British controlled the area.

Penobscot

Penobscot Bay served as a primary entry point for European shipping well into the 19th century. The British viewed it as vital to the war. Close to home port, it gave them access to timber for masts and a strategic base to defend against privateers while protecting loyalists. So the British constructed Fort George at the mouth of the Penobscot River in Castine in 1779.

Patriots in Massachusetts learned of the British fort on their territory (Maine then belonged to Massachusetts). So in 1779, they launched an expedition to dislodge them.

View of Castine from Fort George

The Penobscot Expedition came to grief as the worst naval disaster in U.S. history.

Shortly after the expedition’s failure, Massachusetts Speaker of the House John Hancock wrote a letter to the commander at Fort George asking for Samuel Williams’ safe passage and permission to set up an observation site. Colonel Campbell, the commanding officer, gave them five days and insisted they stay off the mainland.

Those were hardly ideal conditions.

Nonetheless, Williams and his small troupe – three assistants and six students — packed their telescopes and set out for Maine in an old galley ship, the Lincoln.

They selected a site on the island of Isleboro, across from Castine. There they set up their equipment with the help of Capt. Henry Mowatt. Mowatt had burned Portland (then Falmouth) and repulsed American ships during the Penobscot Expedition.

The Eclipse

The group spent several days preparing for the observation. On Friday, they were delighted to see there not a cloud in the sky. They had breakfast early. “All was hurry & agitation — the eagerness of expectation gave a brisk flow to the spirits — and gave life and vivacity for the business of the day,” wrote one student.

Just before 11 a.m. they adjusted their five telescopes and began to count the minutes and seconds for what they expected to be a total eclipse.

The sky got murky and dark. The air grew chilly and damp.  The eclipse “seemed to spread a general amazement among all sorts of animals,” wrote Williams. “Nor could we ourselves observe such unusual phenomena without some disagreeable feelings.”

During the one hour and 19 minute eclipse, the scientists noted two-thirds as much dew was deposited as on the entire two nights before and after.

Just seconds after 12:30 p.m. on Oct. 27, 1780, Williams and his party realized they hadn’t seen totality. They later realized the map of Isleboro was slightly off.

If they’d looked east across Penobscot Bay, they would have seen darkness for five seconds on the mainland, about five miles away.

A total eclipse would have allowed more precise measurements. As such, they needed several more days to adjust their clocks and make more calculations. But Colonel Campbell had rushed them away.

Was It a Failure?

Only a few more days would have made the observations more meaningful. But Williams and his crew recorded sufficient data to accurately calculate their exact longitude and latitude.

Without realizing it, Williams described Baily’s Beads, drops of sunlight that shine through the rugged lunar landscape as it passes the sun. A British astronomer, Francis Baily, later took credit for the observation.

But Samuel Williams’ eclipse chasing was the first instance of state-supported scientific research in America. The expedition was supported by Harvard, the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

“It is remarkable to learn that even in the midst of the armed struggle, scientific advancement was considered by both sides important enough to take priority over the more ephemeral concerns of politics and military supremacy,” wrote Lars D.H. Hedbor in the Journal of the American Revolution.

“Even as the course of history was being decided on the battlefields, this history of ideas and knowledge continued to unfold, only occasionally being hindered by mundane events.”

In 1787, Samuel Williams surveyed the boundary between Massachusetts and New York State.

He resigned his post at Harvard in 1788 after he was accused of forgery and went to work at a church in Rutland, Vt. There he helped found the University of Vermont, and he founded and edited the Rutland Herald.  He died in Rutland, Vt. on Jan. 2, 1817.


This story was updated in 2022.

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Fortunate Son: The Madness of John Stark

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For nearly 200 years, from the beginnings of the nation, the Stark name, beginning with John Stark, was the gold standard of New Hampshire. The family fortunes followed the arc of the new Republic from farming to industrialization to railroads and finance. Then in 1922, things took a dramatic turn.

John Stark’s Descendants

General John Stark was the hero of the Battle of Bennington. John’s son Frederick served as superintendent of the Union Locks and Canal Company of Manchester. Frederick also worked as a surveyor, judge and owner of a store that supplied the river men. He was the most influential businessman in the blossoming mill town of Manchester when he died in 1861.

Frederick’s son George became a surveyor and railroad builder. He was superintendent of the Nashua & Lowell Railroad and later the Boston & Lowell. He belonged to a six-man committee chosen to turn around the moribund Northern Pacific Railroad. A general in the New Hampshire militia, George was an essential recruiter for the army at the outbreak of the Civil War. By his death in 1892, he had built a fine home in Nashua. Though successful, he avoided any display of his wealth.

George’s son John Stark followed in his father’s footsteps As a civil engineer, he worked for the railroads. But by 1859, the Starks realized that finance was the blossoming industry of the day. Together they established a New York bank, J. F. Stark. John Stark would become a major force in Nashua as president of the New Hampshire Improvement Company and Pennichuck Water Works, with real estate and insurance interests. He served for 22 years as a library trustee and set up a country home in Hollis. He died in 1920.

George Stark

Then there was John’s son George. Few people in New Hampshire knew of him. Schooled partially at Andover, he had left the state as a young man, living in Boston, Atlantic City and Philadelphia. What little was known about him was that he worked in advertising. Those who knew John Stark , however, knew how George had disappointed him. And just after John died in 1920, the entire state found out just how much of a disappointment he was.

General John Stark

General John Stark

In John’s will, he left his son an income that would come from the investment profits from $50,000 (roughly $625,000 in today’s dollars). George bridled at the amount and vowed, “the exiled son of New Hampshire returns to his native soil to claim the inheritance that is his.” He announced his intention to sue to break his father’s will. The state waited in anticipation until June of 1922 when the trial over the Stark fortune began.

As celebrity trials go, the Stark case started out rather mildly, retelling the details of George’s early days. His father had married Eva Barr in 1873, and the couple had two children. Eva died in 1875, the same year George was born, and John married Eva’s sister Carrie, who raised the children.

Downhill Slide

There were few signs of acrimony in their early relations. That changed as George grew older. He had attended Andover, but stole money that his father sent him to pay bills and used it to party in Boston. Eventually, the school told John to come remove his incorrigible son.

Free from school, George turned to alcohol in a big way. He hopped from Canada to Boston on a non-stop binge. Frequent letters arrived at John’s home, asking him to pay the bills that young George had run up, sometimes fleeing ahead of paying. John wrote checks — for hotels, doctors, dentists and more – all to keep George out of jail.

John was trustee for a $14,000 legacy that George’s grandfather had left to him. When he turned the money over to George, he refused to take any fee for managing the funds. He begged young George to preserve the capital and use the modest income to launch himself on a successful career. George ran through the money, buying fancy furniture for an apartment, and travelling.

Along the way, George had married. Alcohol, especially absinthe, had pushed him into insanity. He ended up in a sanitarium for the insane. There, he met Alice Whitney. The two began a relationship and George moved in with Alice – well before his divorce from his first wife.

George credited Alice with helping him stay sober. But Alice had a difficult personality. When she and George visited New Hampshire, John cautioned the woman that his son could not support himself, much less a wife. The couple married anyway. Alice attacked John and smeared his first wife, claiming that she didn’t believe John was George’s real father. By the time they left, John confided to a friend he could no longer stand their company. He had dropped them off at the train station and left them to wait in foul weather.

Living Large

George and Alice moved to Atlantic City to improve Alice’s health. There they lived lavishly, renting expensive rooms and dressing in fine clothes. George launched himself into an advertising agency in Philadelphia, but never managed to pay his debts. By the time of his father’s death he had returned to Boston and was staying in a sanitarium for treatment of a nervous breakdown.

George wrote to his aunt — who was also his stepmother — with a plea for more money: “All I want is enough to take care of wife and self. Feel as though I am not going to live long.”

The reply was abrupt and harsh: “You were provided for far more generously than you deserved after 25 years of demand upon him.”

At trial, Carrie expanded on her late husband’s attitudes: “My husband worked hard and his belief was that the children of the wealthy should work.” John, she said, had drawn his will carefully and thoughtfully. He left George a modest income by design.

After two weeks, George produced a surprise witness. A nurse who had been fired by his aunt testified that the widow was more involved in creating the will than she let on. Then the blockbuster: George produced doctors to testify that John, his father, was insane and incapable of drafting a will.

John Stark, Reputation Upheld

John’s lawyers then blasted back at George: “He comes back to New Hampshire not to claim his rightful heritage, but to slander his father. He stands on the very brink of his grave and points his menacing finger at his father who cannot reply.”

A line of Nashua business leaders took the stand to testify that John Stark was not crazy. Among those who testified was Harry Gregg, father of future governor Hugh Gregg.

The attorneys presented a seemingly never-ending list of bills and pawn tickets that John paid off to get his son out of debt. And finally, they presented arguments that the doctors George had called upon had diagnosed his father as insane without ever meeting him in person.

At the end of the trial, the jury quickly declared that John Stark’s will was valid, dismissing George’s contention that his aunt had manipulated his insane father.

This story was updated in 2021.

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The Year a State Burned: Maine Fires of 1947 Wipe Out 9 Towns

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A plume of smoke near Dolliver’s dump signaled the end of Bar Harbor’s splendid era and the worst of the terrifying Maine fires of 1947.

Mrs. Gilbert called the Bar Harbor Fire department on Oct. 17, 1947, to alert them to the smoke rising from a nearby cranberry bog. What caused the fire, no one ever knew. But the world would soon find out about the inferno that destroyed half of Acadia National Park and nearly all of the mansions on Millionaire’s Row in Bar Harbor.

From October 13 to October 27, firefighters tried to fight 200 Maine fires, consuming a quarter of a million acres of forest and wiping out nine entire towns. The Maine fires destroyed 851 homes and 397 seasonal cottages, leaving 2,500 people homeless.

The year 1947 became known as the Year Maine Burned.

The Malvern, one of the five elegant hotels destroyed in the Maine fires of 1947. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Warnings of Maine Fires

Warning signs of the Maine fires appeared as early as March. An abnormally warm spring caused snow to melt early in the woods. Mid-July to October were unusually dry, with 108 consecutive days without rain.

Ninety percent of the state was forested, and the state had made little preparation for fighting wildfires. Most towns didn’t have a fire department. There was no warning system, no mutual aid agreement and no centralized command and control structure.

By early October, Maine was in a ‘high state of inflammability.’ People were urged to clean their chimneys and the Forest Service reopened fire watch towers normally closed on September 30.

Fires broke out during the first week in October in Portland, Bowdoin and Wells. By October 16, 20 separate Maine fires were burning.  Three days later, many Maine towns were covered with a smoky haze and smelled of burning wood. The night sky glowed red.

Maine Fires Trap 60

When the alarm went out, men and boys dropped what they were doing and rushed off to fight the fires. Men who went to work in small towns didn’t know if they’d be called on to fight the Maine fires that day. Volunteers came from all over Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

An eight-mile-long wall of fire burned in Kennebunkport. In North Waterboro, nearly 60 residents and volunteers were trapped for more than an hour behind a line of fire before escaping.

In York County, the fires destroyed most of the homes in Shapleigh and Waterboro. then swept toward the sea and consumed swathes of Alfred, Lyman, Newfield, Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Arundel, Dayton, Wells, Biddeford and Saco.

USS Little Rock

USS Little Rock rushed to Portland to help put out the Maine fires.

The Army-Navy Day in Boston scheduled for October 26 was cancelled. The USS Little Rock, a light cruiser harbored in Boston for the celebration, sailed to Portland instead with 1,000 servicemen and equipment to help fight the Maine fires. They saved the town of Hollis and many other small villages, working ‘as if their own homes were endangered.’

On October 29, with 40 fires still burning, the Navy joined the Army and General Electric in a novel method of fire suppression: creating artificial rain.  Two B-17s took off from Schenectady, N.Y., and dropped dry ice into clouds over York County.

But it had already begun to rain.

Bar Harbor Destruction

Stanwood, a cottage owned by James G. Blaine, was one of many destroyed by the Maine fires along Millionaire’s Row in Bar Harbor. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

After Mrs. Gilbert notified Bar Harbor fire officials of the smoke on October 20, the fire smoldered underground.  For three days it blackened only 169 acres. Then on October 21, strong winds spread the blaze until it consumed over 2,000 acres in Acadia National Park that day alone. Firefighting crews were joined by the Army Air Corps, the Navy, the Coast Guard, National Park Service workers from the East Coast and students from the University of Maine and Bangor Theological Seminary.

The next day nearly 2,300 acres burned on Mt. Desert Island. That afternoon, the wind strengthened and turned toward Bar Harbor, traveling six miles in less than three hours. Fire engulfed 67 seasonal estates known as Millionaire’s Row on the shores of Frenchman Bay. The fires missed the business district but destroyed 170 homes and five grand historic hotels near downtown.

Rescue

Bar Harbor residents fled for their safety, first to the athletic field then to the town pier. When fire blocked all the roads, fishermen from Winter Harbor, Gouldsboro and Lamoine evacuated 400 people by sea.

By 9 pm, bulldozers carved a pathway was through the rubble on Route 3 and 700 cars carrying 2,000 people slowly drove to Ellsworth. Sparks pelted the cars and flames flared overhead, but the motorcade made it to safety.

The fire continued to destroy acres of forest and the Jackson Laboratory before it blew itself out over the ocean in a fireball. It was declared under control on October 27, but smoldered underground until November 14.

Five people in Bar Harbor died as a result of the fire – two in a car crash and two of heart attacks. The fire destroyed 17,188 acres, including 10,000 in Acadia.

Aftermath

The fire changed the composition of the forests in Acadia National Park. It wiped out mature spruce and fir stands and replaced them with sun-loving birch, aspen and oak. Acadia’s forests now turn to red and yellow autumn colors instead of the monochromatic green that reigned before the Maine fires.

On Jan. 13, 1948, officials held a statewide firefighting and prevention conference in Augusta. As a result, many Maine towns established volunteer firefighting departments within the next two years. They began to use standard equipment and to train to national standards.

In addition, the State of Maine got a license for a two-way public safety radio network. The state granted the forest commissioner  more authority to respond to Maine fires and launched a public education program about fire safety.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Mather Byles, the Witty Loyalist Even the Patriots Liked

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Boston’s Rev. Mather Byles was a Loyalist through and through. His loyalty to England never wavered throughout the American Revolution. What set him apart from others, however, and what may explain his ability to remain in Boston unmolested until his death in 1788, was his wit.

Mather Byles Portrait by John Singleton Copley

Mather Byles portrait by John Singleton Copley

Mather Byles , a Harvard-educated clergyman born in 1706, became pastor of the Hollis Street Congregational Church in Boston in 1733. Though he did not use his pulpit to push his politics, everyone knew his views. Yet the colonial leaders viewed him highly. Because of his charm and wit, he often spoke at funerals of high officials.

Mather Byles

Mather Byles viewed the coming Revolution as probably inevitable, given the festering relations between the colonies and the crown. However, he viewed the undisciplined violence of the revolutionary leaders as particularly odious.

He is perhaps most famously remembered for his retort when questioned why he didn’t support the uprising of the Sons of Liberty. The quote attributed to him:

“Which is better — to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?”

During the siege of Boston, Mather Byles remained in his home and reportedly had good relations with the British who occupied the city. His influence did not extend so far as to protect his church, however, as the occupying forces converted it to a barracks.

robert hallowell

The Evacuation Of Boston by W.J. Aylward (New York Public Library).

Upon the departure of the British, Byles did not flee. His congregation, however, soon removed him from his post (a decision fellow ministers were not comfortable with). Massachusetts officials charged and convicted him of aiding the British and speaking against the Revolutionary cause.

Though ordered to leave Boston in 1778, the aging minister simply refused. Eventually the colonists learned to tolerate him, partly because they considered him more a buffoon than an enemy. Mather Byles could never resist a pun or a witticism, even in the direst circumstances.

The Mather Byles Wit

Some examples of his humor:

When he witnessed the parade of celebrating revolutionaries returning to Boston, he observed the rotund form of Henry Knox. He knew Knox as a bookstore operator before the outbreak of the war.

Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart 1806

“I never saw an ox fatter in my life,” Byles reportedly said as Knox passed by. Knox’s assessment of the remark? He called Byles a ‘damned fool.’

When Byles came before the judges who were to hear charges against him, he was ushered into their chambers and offered a seat by the hearth, as it was a cold day. His retort:

“Gentlemen, when I came among you I expected persecution, but I could not think you would have offered me the fire so suddenly.”

After they convicted him, Byles refused to leave Boston. The town leaders now had the quandary of what to do with the obstinate old minister.

Observatory

For a time they placed him under house arrest, and posted a sentry in front of his home. That scenario generated several farcical scenes attributed to Byles. Asked once by a visitor what the guard was doing outside, he replied: “Oh, that is my observe-a-Tory!”

On another occasion, he supposedly asked his guard to bring him water from a nearby well. When the guard refused to leave his post, Byles offered to stand in for him while he fetched the water, and the guard agreed.

While the sentinel went for a bucket of water, Byles shouldered his musket and marched to and fro while waiting for him to return.

Eventually, the town fathers got sick of guarding Byles. They temporarily removed his guard, reinstated him, and then permanently abandoned the operation. That gave him the opportunity to explain that, “I have been guarded, re-guarded, and disregarded.”


Thanks to: The Famous Mather Byles by Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton. This story about Mather Byles was updated in 2022. 

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