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rockland maine

Abbie Burgess, Teenaged Heroine of Matinicus Rock Light

Abbie Burgess, at just 16, kept the light burning in Matinicus Rock Lighthouse for 21 days in 1856 during a violent storm. While the tempest stranded her father on the mainland, she protected her mother and sisters from the violence of the wind and waves.

Matinicus Light Twin Towers, where Abbie Burgess kept the lights burning.

The government built the twin towers of Matinicus Rock Light in 1827 on the treeless and windswept Matinicus Rock, six miles south of Maine’s Matinicus Island. In 1846, granite towers and a granite keeper’s house replaced the wooden towers. President Franklin Pierce named Samuel Burgess lighthouse keeper in 1856. Burgess moved to the rocky outpost with his invalid wife, his son and three daughters, including, of course, Abbie Burgess.

Abbie Burgess

Abbie Burgess, the oldest daughter, was born Aug. 1, 1839, in Rockland, Maine. She quickly learned to run the light, allowing her father to fish for lobsters and sell them in Rockland. Years later, she described the difficulty of tending the old lard lamps on Matinicus Rock.

…sometimes they would not burn so well when first lighted, especially in cold weather when the oil got cold. Then, some nights, I could not sleep a wink all night though I knew the keeper himself was watching. And many nights I have watched the light my part of the night, thinking nervously, what might happen should the light fail.

In all these years I always put the lamps in order and I lit them at sunset.

In January of 1856, while her brother had gone fishing, her father sailed to the mainland to buy food and oil for the lamps. Shortly after he sailed away the wind changed into a raging nor’easter. Abbie Burgess realized the danger and moved her family into the lighthouse.

The Terrible Storm

She wrote a letter to her friend Dorothy describing how they survived during the terrible storm:

…Early in the day, as the tide arose, the sea made a complete breach over the rock, washing every movable thing away, and of the old dwelling not one stone was left upon another.

Abbie Burgess

The new dwelling was flooded, and the windows had to be secured to prevent the violence of the spray from breaking them in. As the tide came, the sea rose higher and higher, till the only endurable places were the lighttowers. If they stood we were saved, otherwise our fate was only too certain.

But for some reason, I know not why, I had no misgivings, and went on with my work as usual. For four weeks, owing to rough weather, no landing could be effected on the rock. During this time we were without the assistance of any male members of our family. Though at times greatly exhausted with my labors, not once did the lights fail. Under God I was able to perform all my accustomed duties as well as my father’s.

You know the hens were our only companions. Becoming convinced, as the gale increased, that unless they were brought into the house they would be lost, I said to mother: “I must try to save them.” She advised me not to attempt it. The thought, however, of parting with them without an effort was not to be endured, so seizing a basket, I ran out a few yards after the rollers had passed and the sea fell off a little, with the water knee deep, to the coop, and rescued all but one. It was the work of a moment, and I was back in the house with the door fastened, but I was none too quick, for at that instant my little sister, standing at the window, exclaimed: “Oh, look! look there! the worst sea is coming.”

That wave destroyed the old dwelling and swept the rock.

Matinicus Rock Light today

Cornmeal and an Egg

To fend off starvation, Abbie Burgess gave her mother and sisters a daily ration of a cup of cornmeal and an egg. Then after three weeks her father finally returned.

Samuel Burgess did not support Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and lost his job as lighthouse keeper. Abbie Burgess, though, stayed at the lighthouse as assistant keeper to John Grant. He had four sons and she married one of them, Isaac.

Together Abbie and Isaac worked as assistant lighthouse keepers. In 1875 they moved with their four sons to keep Whitehead Light for 15 years off St. George, Maine.

A Lighthouse Gravestone

Abbie Burgess died June 16, 1892 in Portland. In her last letter she wrote that she often dreamed of the old lamps at Matinicus Rock. She wondered if the care of the lighthouse would follow her soul after it left her worn-out body.

“If I ever have a gravestone I would like it to be in the form of a lighthouse or a beacon,” she concluded.

Fifty years later, maritime historian Edward Rowe Snow located Abbie Burgess’ grave in Forest Hills Cemetery in Thomaston, Maine. But it had no lighthouse or beacon as a gravestone. Snow placed a small lighthouse at her grave.

The Coast Guard named a buoy tender based in Rockland after Abbie Burgess. Authors Peter and Connie Roop wrote a much-loved children’s book about her, Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie. And today, Matinicus Island attracts visitors to view its puffins.

With thanks to Women of the Sea by Edward Rowe Snow. This story was updated in 2022. You may also want to read about Ida Lewis, the bravest woman in America, here.

Images: Puffin By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106949397. Matinicus Rock Light courtesy NOAA.

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Henry Ingraham, June 7, 1810: ‘Mr. Nath Crockit came after the crazey woman’

Henry Ingraham followed his father’s example when at age 13 he began to keep a diary. Between the two of them, they recorded life in coastal Maine from 1795 to 1875.

Henry Ingraham

He was the son of Joseph and Bradbury Ingraham, pioneers who settled on 210 acres bordering Rockland Harbor in the late 18^thcentury. Joseph met Bradbury through her father, who he met while walking home from the Battle of Castine.

Joseph farmed and raised livestock, burned lime, built a landing and served as justice of the peace, selectman and town clerk. Henry would follow his father into farming. When he was in his 70s, his advice on sowing barley is recorded in the Annual Report of the American Institute of the City of New York, 1868-9, as part of the report of the Farmer’s Club.

Mr. Henry Ingraham, Rockland, Me., says he has sowed barley for 50 years; that he uses three bushels to the acre, and would not advise mixing it with oats. He finds it superior to either corn or oats for fattening. He mows it when not fully ripe, gathers it like grass, and feeds out the straw.

His early diary entries record the weather, a neighbor’s accident, the scarcity of fish, his brother Charles‘ activities, his father’s comings and goings. He also wrote about the crazy lady, whose last name he later revealed was ‘Caulson.’ She would later show up in church and at his front door.

On June 7, 1810, Henry Ingraham wrote,

thursday June 7. 1810 this Day Southerly & easterly winds, Some moderate, looks like a Storm. my Dad went to Mr Jarveys & got one shoe set on the Mare. & Mr Nath Crockit came after the crazey woman to keep her a Spell & I am glad She is gone away out of the Neighborhood — Henry Ingraham

With thanks to Red Barn Publishing.

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The Maine Ship Captain Who Invented the Modern Donut

In 1847, a Maine ship captain invented the donut as we know it today – with a hole.

On the day Lewis Hine took the photo of a waitress next to a plate of donuts (with holes), Capt. Hansen Gregory lived in the next town. He was telling his cronies how he’d gotten the great inspiration to cut a hole in a donut.

14-year-old waitress at the Exchange Luncheon in South Boston. Photo, by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

Captain Gregory, 85, lived at the Sailor’s Snug Harbor in Quincy, Mass. His fame as the inventor of the modern donut had spread, and the Washington Post interviewed him in a story published March 26, 1916.

He told the reporter he discovered the donut hole when he worked as a 16-year-old crewman on a lime-trading schooner.

“Now in them days we used to cut the doughnuts into diamond shapes, and also into long strips, bent in half, and then twisted,” he said. “I don’t think we called them donuts then–they was just ‘fried cakes’ and ‘twisters.’ Well, sir, they used to fry all right around the edges, but when you had the edges done the insides was all raw dough. And the twisters used to sop up all the grease just where they bent, and they were tough on the digestion.”

First Donut

He asked himself if a space inside the dough would solve the difficulty – and then came the great inspiration.

“I took the cover off the ship’s tin pepper box, and—I cut into the middle of that donut the first hole ever seen by mortal eyes!”

Gregory, born in 1832, would have had his insight around 1858. According to the New York Times, he rose to second mate at 19, mate at 21 and master mariner at 25. He sailed in all kinds of vessels from the lime coaster to a full-rigged ship.

A plaque at Nativity Lutheran Church pays homage to an iconic food. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

But the donut made him famous. He had asked a tinsmith to fabricate a donut cutter for him, and soon, reported the Times, ‘cooks everywhere had adopted it.’

He returned to Camden, Maine, where he taught his mother the trick. She sent several plates to Rockland, Maine, where people gobbled them up. After that, the donut never looked back.

A plaque in the town of Rockport, Maine, marks Captain Gregory’s birthplace, now the parsonage of the Nativity Lutheran Church. The National Baking Association nominated him for the Baking Hall of Fame, but it doesn’t appear he made the cut.

Sailors Snug Harbor

More Donut History

How reliable is the old sea captain’s tale? The Food History Timeline posts donut recipes before 1858, and they all advise cutting the donut into diamonds, squares or twists. Then in 1877 a donut recipe calls for cutting them into rings.

The Food History Timeline also notes that after the Civil War, ‘ inexpensive tin doughnut cutters with holes were manufactured commercially and sold widely.’

Capt. Hanson Gregory died in 1921. You can visit his grave at the National Sailors’ Home Cemetery.

Lewis Wickes Hine, by the way, took many photos of very young workers, which then influenced the passage of child labor laws. His caption read, “Exchange Luncheon. Delia Kane, 14 years old. 99 C Street, South Boston. A young waitress.”

This story about the donut was updated in 2023.

Image of Nativity Lutheran Church courtesy Google Maps.

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May 9, 1814: Brother Charles the Privateer … Dronded

Charles Ingraham went off to sea as a privateer during the War of 1812 and it almost ruined him. It didn’t kill him, though. Something else did.

Henry Ingraham

Charles was the son of Joseph and Bradbury Ingraham, pioneers who settled on 210 acres bordering Rockland Harbor in the late 18^th century. Joseph farmed and raised livestock, burned lime, built a landing and served as justice of the peace, selectman and town clerk.

Joseph met his wife through her father, who he met while walking home from the Battle of Castine.

Charles’ brother Henry began keeping a diary when he was 13. His father kept one too. The two of them kept diaries from 1795 to 1875.

A Bermuda sloop engaged as a privateer

Henry’s diary includes firsthand accounts of the War of 1812, which broke out June 18, 1812, when Henry was just 15.

‘very Dark times in our national affairs,’ Henry wrote on May 21, 1812.

On July 4, 1812, Henry, then 15, wrote that Charles, then 19, wanted to go to ‘Destruction or privateering.’

On July 31, 1812, Charles entered on board the privateer Dart under the command of Capt. Curtis. Their parents were very much against Charles going. ‘He is a poor fellow inexperiencd knows but Litle what a place he has put himself in. But we hope for the Best,’ wrote Henry.

Charles, the Wicked Privateer

Despite several scares about privateers being taken by the British, Charles returned home from privateering on Sept. 14, 1812. A few days later Henry reported Charles ‘went up to the Store,’ where he drank and swore. ‘wicked Boy allmost ruined – having his own way & going a privateering,’ wrote Henry.

Charles then joined on with another privateer, the Growler, which saw action that killed two men and a boy and injured six. Henry reported the battle on March 1, 1813. The family didn’t learn Charles was safe in Boston for another nine days.

Charles came home for good Nov. 20, 1813. Six months later, he drowned in Penobscot Bay.

On May 9, 1814, Henry Ingraham wrote:

Monday May 9^th [1814] we have Dismal news that my poor Brother Charles & Isaa Spear And Edward Robinson Are all Dronded poor Charles has Been at Home allmost Six month he came home the 20^th November.

(Charles’ grave is at Tolman Cemetery on Lake Ave. in Rockland.)

With thanks to Red Barn Publishing. This story updated in 2022.

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Edna St. Vincent Millay Gives Thanks for a Basket of Flowers, May 4, 1918

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a 22-year-old Vassar student on May 4, 1918 when she wrote a letter thanking her friend Corinne Sawyer for a basket of flowers. She was already famous for a poem she wrote when she was 19.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on Feb. 22, 1892, in Rockland, Maine. Her father left the family when she was six, and her mother, Cora, moved her and her two younger sisters around until they settled in Camden, Maine. Cora was a night nurse and frequently left for days. She relied on her oldest daughter, who she called “Vincent,” to run the household from the time she was around 12.

Edna St. Vincent Millay Writes a Poem

When Edna St. Vincent Millay was 19, her mother suggested she enter a poetry contest. Her poem Renascance won fourth prize. Anyone familiar with midcoast Maine will recognize the references of the opening lines:

ALL I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me;

The poem won national acclaim.It also caught the attention of wealthy philanthropist Caroline Dow, who offered to raise the money for the young poet’s college tuition. Edna St. Vincent Millay spent a semester at Barnard College. Then in 1913 she transferred to Vassar, where she raised hell. She smoked cigarettes, cut classes and took illicit midnight walks in the woods. Finally she left Vassar in 1917 for the Bohemian life of Greenwich Village.

Edna St. Vincent Millay would win tremendous critical acclaim for her poetry and fame for her feminism and her many love affairs with both men and women.

Thank You Note

All that was still before her when she wrote from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to her friend Corinne Sawyer:

Dear old chum –
Bless your heart! You
don’t forget me, do you? A May Basket! Why
it made me a little girl again.
It got here in wonderfully good condition
nothing smashed – nothing spilled. And its
perfectfully dear so sweet outside as in —
I love you a keg-ful, Corinne of Camden, and when
I get home we’ll talk as ever.
Member me to your folks.
– Vincent of Vassar

With thanks to All-night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930, by Andrea Barnet. This story updated in 2022.

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Andrew Wyeth’s First Date With Christina Olson and Her World

Andrew Wyeth met his future wife and Christina Olson, the subject of his most famous painting, on the same day – his 22^nd birthday.

Christina’s World, by Andrew Wyeth

Christina Olson was born on May 3, 1893 and as a child contracted a disease that curbed her mobility — probably Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease. Her world was then limited to her farm on Hathorne’s Point in Cushing, Maine, where she lived with her brother Alvaro. The house had been in their family for generations, since Capt. Samuel Hathorne II built it in the late 18^th century.

Wyeth spent summers at his own family’s summer home in Cushing.

Christina Olson

In The Art of Andrew Wyeth, Brian O’Doherty described his visit to the Olsons at their farm.

“…the first thing that one notices about Christina is her voice,” he wrote. “It is firmly lucid, a practical countrywoman’s voice, and it immediately wipes out her myth, the romantic half-pitiable aura of a spirit strait-jacketed into immobility. Her voice is immediate, without self-pity, and she follows what she has to say with a shrewd slow look from her brown eyes. She has a force of character that would make any condescension to her paralysis an insult.”

“She rules like a queen,” Wyeth once said.

Wyeth met the Olsons on a date with Betsy James – July 12, 1939. He went to Betsy’s house, and she then drove him to the Olson farm. Betsy vaguely remembered the reason: She’d just learned to drive and wanted to go somewhere. She and Andrew married the next year.

Years after meeting Christina Olson, Wyeth later said, she didn’t make much of an impression on him. The farmhouse did. The Olsons let him set up a studio in a room on the second floor. Looking out the window one day in 1948, Wyeth saw Christina Olson crawling in the field and got the inspiration for Christina’s World.

He worked on the background for two months, while closely sketching Christina’s hair, body and hands. Betsy posed for the figure. “I worked on the hill for months, that brown grass, and kept thinking about her in her pink dress like a faded lobster shell I might find on the beach, crumpled,” he said.

When it came time to lay in the figure, he put a pink tone on her shoulder – “and it almost blew me across the room.”

Flat Tire — Not

Wyeth then hung the painting in his house in Maine and no one reacted to it. “I thought, Boy, is this one ever a flat tire,” he said.

He was wrong. From then on he started receiving letters about Christina’s World — about one a week.

He had painted Christina Olson many times on her farm. Christina’s World, she said, was her favorite.

Alvaro Olson died on Christmas Eve in 1967, and Christina Olson died a month later. They were buried on their property in their family cemetery. Andrew Wyeth died on Jan. 16, 2009. He, too, was buried in the Olson family cemetery.

Andrew Wyeth receiving the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush in 2007.

The farmhouse, a National Historic Landmark, is now owned by the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. Christina’s World hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

This story about Christina Olson was updated in 2022. The image of Christina’s World By http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=78455, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8005786.

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