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Down
East Tales VI
Here is another transcription of a recording of a meeting of the
Alexander-Crawford Historical Society. Judging by the numbering of the
tapes, this was probably recorded in 1981. People present at the
meeting included Jane Dudley, Milly Winchler, Parks Carle, Frank Fenderson, Sammy Saunders, Kay Church, Rachel (Brown) Hamilton, Ethel
(McArthur) Wallace, Mary (Belmore) Williams, Lloyd ?, and Margaret ?. John Dudley of Alexander, Maine filled in the names where there was only
a first name mentioned on the tape. Names and other words that could
not be transcribed exactly are in italics. Unknown voices are referred
to as "man" or "woman." Comments, explanations, and additional names
are in parentheses. There are several places where two or more people
spoke at the same time and couldn't be transcribed. This condensation
will be in two parts.
Jane Dudley started the recording: "This evening we are having our first
annual family picnic of the summer of the Alexander-Crawford Historical
Society. This is Jane Dudley speaking. We have many guests here
tonight and we're going around in a circle here and ask if several of
them wouldn't like to give us a little historical story about this
area."
The first story teller was Millie (Stanhope) Winchler, who said: "Well,
I was telling everybody that in 1923 I taught at the Four Corners School
and I had 37 kids and all grades, all eight grades and one girl that was
back for an extra grade because her family couldn't afford to send her
to the high school, so I tried to give her something extra. What do you
suppose I could give her with already eight grades and five hours in a
day? But, it really was a very happy and satisfying year and I taught
19 years afterwards and I never had a more satisfying year."
Next was Parks Carle who told the following story. "I can tell you a
story that comes from my neighbor. Samuel Cottle (was) supposed to be
the first settler of Alexander. He left Massachusetts and made plans
with a man to work with him to come a few weeks later than he did and
they arrived, Samuel and his wife arrived in Calais and he left her in
Calais and he went in to Dwelley's Lake. The man came later, Lawrence
Spearin, and those two men built their log cabin in three weeks. And,
then they went back and got the wife in Calais and she snowshoed in to
the cabin with them with baby on her back. And she stayed less than a
month and she could stand it no longer so they took her back to Calais,
left her in the same place she'd been before with friends there. And,
the two men again go back to the cabin preparing to stay the winter
alone, you know, the two. So the wife stayed three days in Calais and
she could stand that no more, so she got her friend there to take her
back to the cabin at the lake. She went back and stayed the rest of her
life. It had to be around 1810."
Milly Winchler asked what the name of the lake was then and said it is
called Pleasant Lake now and was Stephenson's Lake when she taught at
the Four Corners School. In between it was called Dwelley's Lake.
Another woman said that in 1881 it was called Harwood Lake.
The next speaker was Frank Fenderson. "Well, I can tell you a story
about Kaye Church's father (Bill Cushing) coming into our office, I
think, the summer of 1949, and he said, "Frank, tell me are you any
relation to the Fendersons in Crawford?" And I said "How did you
pronounce that name?" And, he said, "Fenderson." And, I said, well,
they spell it F-e-n-l-a-s-o-n. He said, "Yes, I often wondered about
that." He said, "But I was brought up by Sawyer Fenderson and Charlotte
Ford, Lottie Ford," and he said, "they always pronounced it Fenderson. Now," he said, "I know the people up in Princeton, they call it
Fenlason," so he said, "I wondered how the name was." So I told him
the story of the Fenderson family. It started with a Wallace Finlayson, F-i-n- l-a-y-s-o-n who landed in Portsmouth, Maine, Portsmouth, New
Hampshire in 1712. And, the town records of Portsmouth, cross indexed
the name under F-e-n-d-e-r-s-o-n, F-i-n-l-a-s-o-n, F-e- n-l-a-s-o-n, and
four or five other ways of spelling the name. And I said he had five
sons, he had one son, and that one son moved to Scarborough, Maine and
all the records there cross indexed under various names, but he ended up
adopting the spelling F-e-n-d-e-r-s-o-n. I've seen his burial stone and
it's spelled Fenderson. He had five sons. Four of them went by the
name of Fenderson and one Wallace Fenderson moved to Machias and he was
in the battle of the Margaretta and he adopted the spelling the town
clerk wrote down in the record of Machias, F-e-n-l-a-s-o-n. And, he had
many children, one of which was Nathaniel Fenlason who was one of the
early settlers of Crawford, and he came up as a representative of the
Pope and Talbot Lumber Industry and handled the interests of Pope and
Talbot for the entire township of Crawford which they owned. And, at
one time they offered this Sawyer Fenlason the township for $9000 but he
felt it was too much money, and decided he didn't want to buy it. So,
that's my story about the Fendersons and the Fenlasons. [H]e said that
definitely Sawyer pronounced it Fenderson just as prominent as can be,
and, he said "I never could figure out why because there's no d in it."
Sammy Saunders continued the story telling. "Well, I always tell this
story I guess to introduce myself. I'm Sammy Saunders, you all know and
postmaster in Calais. Now, I don't want that to confuse you any because
I'm one of those fast vanishing breeds of postmasters that were called
political appointees. I got the job more for who I knew than what I
knew. I've gone along with that. But, I was born in Mud Lane, and of
course Mud Lane is a little street that connects Irish Town and Indian
Hill. And, my father and mother both come from Canada and they were
hard-shell Baptist Republicans - and just a little spot of land he
bought in Mud Lane - was right in the middle of Mud Lane and we were
surrounded by Irish Catholic Democrats. I was born there, and the bad
thing about it was, here I was a Baptist Republican born in a
predominant Catholic Irish Democrat neighborhood and I was blessed with
the features and the name of a Jew and so you see what a hard time I had
coming up through Mud Lane. The Protestants wouldn't play with me
because their parents wouldn't let them associate with the people from
Irish Town. The Catholic children wouldn't play with me because I was
a different faith and there was only one Jewish family in the
neighborhood and that was big rugged Annie Siborskey and every time she
got close enough to me she'd knock the hell out of me. So, you see what
a hard time, but the thing that really changed in Mud Lane for us was -
in those days they had the old two holers, you know, and every house had
a two holer and it meant that you had to make a trip oh, several yards
out in the field or out the back end of your barn or someplace. My
father, on this land that he built - had been a brick yard and back from
the road about a hundred feet it dropped off into a sharp decline so two
thirds of the year this was covered with water so it made it hard for us
to have a privy out back because we'd either have to swim or skate to
it. So, my father, when he built the house, he put out a lot of stilts
from the street, you see, and he built the house - put the sills on and
he built the house up on stilts which meant the farther back we went the
higher the house got. So then we had no way of going to the outdoor
privy, so what he did then was he laid out a few more stilts and boarded
that up and covered it over and built a little lean to on it and he put
it up to the house and inside this - you went out the kitchen door and
you went into the shed and in corner of the shed he fenced off a little
piece and he put a nice door on it and we had a - he had it painted
white and we had two little ventilating windows that went across there
for the ventilation and we had the beveled seats and we had covers on
these beveled seats and we had even a rack for the old Sears and
Roebuck catalog. You know what the Sears and Roebuck catalog was to an
outhouse in those days. And, we also had a zip for the Sunkist. Now
maybe you've all heard about the Sears and Roebuck catalog but how many
have heard about Sunkist and what Sunkist was in those days oranges came
in crates and they would be in little wrappers which would be marked
Sunkist and whenever the store got in some oranges I would make the
rounds and pick up these little papers and we called them Sunkists. They were special for Sundays or company. And, every time that anybody
would go to the - out to the indoor-outhouse that we had, my mother
would say, "Now, don't use the Sunkist." And, I'd holler, "Don't use
the page with the bicycles on it." It got to be quite a joke. Everybody from all around the neighborhood came to see our
indoor-outhouse, and that's how we got acquainted in the neighborhood.
Mud Lane became my home then and they finally converted me to a
Democrat. I never changed my religion but I did become a Democrat and
that's how I got my job in the Post Office by being a Democrat and being
associated with Democrats."
Kay Church's story was, "It's so early it starts before I was born. About two months before my birth was due, we lived twenty miles, just as
we do now, from Calais, and my father, Bill Cushing, thought that it
would be only wise for his wife to go - to move into town to await the
birth. So, she stayed with my uncle, Lem Wallace, on Mait's Corner, and
his wife. Well, the time of the birth came and my dad seemed to have a
sort of mental telepathy about some things, a premonition and he
snowshoed twenty miles that night and got there in time for me to be
born. And, then we had to stay at Uncle Lem's and Aunt Blanch's until
March. I was born in January - until March and there was still so much
snow. It wasn't plowed then as it is now on Route 9, so he had to go
out with horse and sleigh with plenty of hay and all the usual
paraphernalia that would make up a very soft bed for them and bring my
mother and me home to the camp on Crawford Lake.
Frank Fenderson suggested that Kay Church could tell the story about her
father being brought up by the Fenlasons, but she said he should tell it
the way her father had told him. Frank said, "Well, he said something
that he was more or less brought up by Sawyer and he wasn't a Fenlason. And that his father was a seaman. And his mother had died. Both had
died and that - he said the Fenlasons were always famous for being very
kind to the - any children that needed help and he said Lottie Fenlason
was just like a mother to me and so was Sawyer Fenlason and he said to
me they're my parents." Kay Church added "Yes, he did stress that. Of
course he knew my fondness for Gram and Gramp Cushing. That was equally
strong. Yes, his very fondest memories were of Lottie."
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