Articles

by Lyn Mikel Brown

When Teresa and Richard Monk moved into their house in 1970, they discovered two big brass horns in the cellar. They’d bought the house from Lloyd Day, a customs inspector, but the instruments, they soon discovered, came from another house Mr. Day owned, once Perley Blanchard’s, a member of the Vanceboro town band. The Monks donated both horns to the Vanceboro Historial Society, where they now sit under a photo that includes Blanchard and the rest of the twenty-two uniformed band members.

The Vanceboro Brass Band was organized and directed in 1922 by Harold Bonneau, a U.S. Customs officer who played and taught violin and clarinet. By 1925, the group was in high demand, playing for parades, at home and away ball games, offering concerts on Memorial Day and the joint celebration of Canada’s Dominion Day, July 1^st, in McAdam and U.S. Independence Day, July 4^th, in Vanceboro.

Every September the band traveled to the St. Stephen Exhibition, a popular county fair, complete with harness racing, stage shows, agricultural displays, and carnival rides. Bands from the surrounding area were invited, a different one on display each day of the week. The band of the day would parade from the international boundary halfway across the Ferry Point Bridge and proceed to St. Stephen, down Water Street, left onto King Street and on to the exhibition grounds.

Herb Gallison, in his memoir, The Life and Pretty Good Times of Herb Gallison writes about Vanceboro’s turn to parade on September 1925. To appreciate the story one needs to know that, prior to their departure for St. Stephen, a number of the band members had a taste of the good stuff.

On the Vanceboro Band’s day, the members assembled at the Knights of Pythias Hall, mostly bright and generally early. Uniforms pressed, white caps gleaming, duck trousers chalk white, black shoes shined, and instruments mirror-bright, except for the clarinets and drums, which were naturally dull. The members boarded various privately owned automobiles and went bumping down the old Woodstock Road with chins held high by the choker collars….Squeezing the tuba into the trunk didn’t appear to be easy. Someone was heard to remark, “That car is loaded to the gills.” It was never determined whether the remark was actually directed at the occupants.

Somewhere along the route the five-passenger sedan containing seven uniformed musicians got separated from the caravan. They finally showed up on the bridge just before the band was due to step out. Most of the musicians were not immediately aware that they had detoured through Milltown, where a certain apothecary was reputed to be dispensing the much-sought-after elixir.

The band assumed parade formation in the middle of the bridge. The command was issued and it moved out toward Canada. As it made the right-angle turn down Water Street the band was playing “The Gladiator” by Himself, John Philip Sousa. It is a difficult enough number to play while seated in a concert hall. Near the Canadian Pacific Depot the band made the sharp left turn up King Street.

In front of Burns’ Restaurant, with the thoughts of delicious boiled lobster dripping melted butter causing general salivation, the band struck up “Invercargill,” an old favorite it could play by memory in the dark. Suddenly a trolley car on the rails in the middle of the street came rattling from the direction of the band’s destination.

Something had to give, and the car coming downgrade wasn’t fixing to stop. With the old familiar march tune blaring forth, the band took a starboard tack toward Cliff Hanley’s meat market—all but the tuba player. From the front row on the extreme port quarter he swerved left and marched along the gutter in front of Johnson’s drug store, never missing a note, while the streetcar passed between him and the rest of the band. As the car creaked on by, the marchers swung back to the middle of the street and the tuba left the ditch to join formation, still Oompa-oomping those resonant bass notes.

Thanks to the Monks, the Vanceboro Historical Society has that rogue tuba. We don’t know if the tuba player had a bit to drink or if he simply made the safest maneuver. Either way, if you think it’s easy playing the Invercargill March side-stepping a trolley, give a listen.

When the European & North American Railway Line connecting Maine to New Brunswick was completed in 1871 and the Shaw Brothers Tannery began operations, Vanceboro’s population grew quickly. Scores of enterprising young men and women migrated east to establish new lives and livelihoods on the banks of the St. Croix. This is the story of two of these newcomers who shared a common and arduous history: both were members of the famed 16th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment that served in the Union Army during the Civil War.

In spite of the regimental affiliation they shared, Henry and Horace never served in the 16th Maine at the same time. Henry was taken prisoner before Horace joined the regiment, and Horace was discharged before Henry was released. Yet just nine years later they would be neighbors on the west side of High Street in Vanceboro.

After the war, Henry returned to Greenbush, where he discovered that his first wife, assuming he had died in the war, had remarried. They were divorced in 1871. Because of injuries and illness during his imprisonment, he was unable to do manual labor. He became a night watchman for the Eastern & North American Railroad, perhaps first in Mattawamkeag, where he met Julia Kimball. 

We know very little about Henry and Horace’s relationship during the 31 years they were neighbors in Vanceboro. Were they friends? Did they talk about their experiences in the war? We know that Henry attended at least one regimental reunion (in Augusta in 1883); perhaps Horace joined him? Perhaps they attended GAR Post meetings in Calais or Eastport together? Or, perhaps they weren’t interested in reliving the horrors of the war, or their social circles were different enough that their paths rarely crossed, even in a small town. No matter what, they both served the union with distinction and valor and Vanceboro is proud to call them her own.   

The Exchange Hotel is well-known in Vanceboro history because of its association with Werner Horn’s failed attempt to blow up the railroad bridge spanning the St. Croix in February 1915.

What is less well-known, however, is that the hotel, operated by James Tague’s son Aubrey, and neighboring buildings, owned by prominent businessman Horace Kellogg, tragically burned just a year later, on April 22, 1916.

According to the Bangor Daily News, “On Wednesday morning about 2 am a fire broke out at the rear of the Exchange Hotel. Before it was discovered the hotel was on fire, from there the fire spread to the store of and barn owned by Horace Kellogg. Many other houses were threatened, especially Mr. Kellogg’s storehouse and the residence of L. Field. These buildings were saved only by the heroic work of the soldiers of the 62nd Contingent from St. Croix, and much praise and thanks are due to them.”

There was only one immediate casualty of the fire. Henry Lowe of Danforth was staying overnight in the hotel with his cousin James McTague, intending to travel to Bangor in the morning.

But the fire and subsequent losses took its toll on Horace Kellogg, too. He died in March 1917, and his obituary includes the following: “a little over a year ago the store in which he started business in Vanceboro was burned at the time of the burning of the Exchange Hotel. The old building held associations for Mr. Kellogg which inevitably came of long associations with such things and his friends had noticed a great change in him since that time.”

After the fire the hotel was never rebuilt. In the fall of 1916 the hotel lot was divided between James Tague’s heirs: Bertha Tague Keef and her husband Ralph built a house on the west side of the hotel lot that was purchased by Faye and Georgia Crandelmire in 1934 and still stands today. Aubrey Tague’s store occupied the east side of the hotel lot for many years.

by Mark Tappan and Lyn Mikel Brown

We’ve taken a deeper dive into the life of one of Vanceboro’s most adventurous and accomplished “daughters”– Ruth Carolyn Holbrook (1896-1993).

Ruth’s remarkable story is linked, of course, to that of her mother, Louisa Catherine Sprague Holbrook (1863-1937), and Louisa’s father (Ruth’s grandfather), George MB Sprague (1828-1913), one of Vanceboro’s “founding fathers.” Sprague was a farmer living in Princeton, Maine, married to Rhoda Colwell Sprague (1834-1870) when Louisa—their first child–was born. A year after Rhoda’s death in 1870, followed shortly by two of Louisa’s younger siblings, George married Margaret Bishop and accepted a position as Deputy Collector of Customs in Vanceboro. The family relocated to Vanceboro when Louisa was eight. The family lived in a big house on the corner of Second and Shaw Streets, where they raised five children.

In 1887, when Louisa was 24, she married local businessman E. A. Holbrook (1863-1934). They immediately moved into the large Holbrook house on Salmon Brook Road, where E.A. and his brother Harry had been raised by E.T. and Mary Holbrook. E.A. and Louisa raised three daughters in that house: Mary (1888-1941), Margaret (1891-1973), and Ruth. The doting parents had three small white stones, one for each daughter, embedded in the living room stone fireplace. 

Louisa’s adult life was comfortable, and she enjoyed the benefits and privileges afforded to her as the spouse of a successful businessman and landowner in Vanceboro during the first decades of the 20^th century. For example, on the 1900 census, E.A., Louisa, and their three daughters, along with the widowed E.T., are listed as living in the house along with an 18-year-old servant, Essa Stythan. Louisa’s obituary says that she was “long prominent in fraternal and social life in Vanceboro….[s]he was a charter member of Washington Temple Pythian Sisters…a member of the nonpareil chapter, Order of the Eastern Star…and chairman of the Vanceboro branch of the Calais chapter of the Red Cross.” In addition, “of a social disposition, Mrs. Holbrook was known and esteemed by the entire community personally and in social gatherings.”

We don’t know much about Ruth’s early life. She went to Vanceboro schools, and she likely travelled with her family during holidays. She graduated from Vanceboro High School and entered Colby College in the fall of 1915, at the age of 19 (following in the footsteps of her sister, Margaret, who graduated from Colby in 1912). While there, she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority, the Chi Gamma Theta sophomore society for women, the Ladies Glee Club, and the Guitar Club.

We can only guess why Ruth decided to leave Colby after only two years. She was certainly a gifted artist, and perhaps Colby did not provide her with enough training or academic support in that realm. Maybe Colby’s small campus in Waterville did not feel like a good fit. Perhaps she had bigger dreams. In any case, she spent the 1917-1918 academic year “attending an art school” in Boston, according to the Bangor Daily News; in January 1920, she was reportedly “attending school” in New York City.

We do know that in May 1922, at the age of 25, Ruth applied for a US passport to travel to Belgium, France, and Switzerland, sailing on the Melita out of Montreal. Her passport application lists her address as 266 West 94th St. in Manhattan and her occupation as a “costume designer.” She continued to live and work in New York through the 1920s and 1930s. She is listed on the 1930 Federal Census as living on West 92^nd St. in Manhattan as a “roomer.” Her occupation is listed as “buyer for specialty shop.” We don’t know more about her professional life during this period—possibly she was employed in the arts, design, and fashion industry during the difficult years of the Depression.

Ruth was certainly a talented artist. By the mid 1930s she turned her attention to illustrating children’s books, and subsequently, wrote and illustrated her own. Her first illustrated book was Blanche Elliott’s Timothy Titus (Doubleday, Doran, & Co., 1937), followed by a “junior” book she wrote and illustrated herself. Cap’n Benny’s Birdhouses (Doubleday, Doran, & Co.,1938), follows an unlikely friendship between a boy and a lonely retired Northeast Harbor sea captain. She then illustrated Hildreth Tyler Wriston’s Camping Down at Highgate (Doubleday, Doran, & Co., 1939). In 1940, she published her most well-known book, Katy’s Quilt (Doubleday, Doran, & Co., 1940).

Katy’s Quilt tells the story of a young girl and her family living in Washington County, Maine, just after the Civil War. The book is fascinating because, while Ruth clearly took some literary license in telling Katy’s story, it reflects quite accurately real events in Ruth’s family and in the growing towns of Calais, Princeton, and Vanceboro in the 1860s and 1870s.

Katy (clearly modeled after Ruth’s mother Louisa Catherine) is excited when her father (modeled after Ruth’s grandfather, GMB Sprague) takes a new job in Vanceboro. The family packs up their belongings, takes a horse and wagon to Calais, then a train up the Canadian side of the St. Croix River, and walks across the unfinished bridge to Vanceboro and their newly built home “on the top of the hill.”  Once the bridge is completed, the whole town celebrates President Ulysses S. Grant’s visit to Vanceboro to commemorate the completion of the European & North American Railway. And Katy even gets to meet the President, who compliments her on her shiny new tassled shoes.

Katy’s Quilt was the Literary Guild’s selection for August 1940. It also received a glowing review from Oscar Shephard in the Bangor Daily News. While this “delightful” book about a family of “Maine pioneers of an earlier and more rugged day” is “intended primarily for little ones,” writes Shephard, “it will appeal also to those adults fortunate enough to have retained a touch of childhood’s idealism in their hearts.” The book is “simply and honestly told,” and “Miss Holbrook has a deft literary touch. Her style is smooth as velvet—or, if you prefer another simile, a flowing crystal stream that carries the reader along with it. She writes with effortless art.”

In spite of the success of Katy’s Quilt and Ruth’s obvious talent as an artist and writer, she published nothing after 1940, either as author or illustrator. Instead, she continued to work in the New York City retail industry. She is listed in the 1940 census as living in Scarsdale, NY with her sister Margaret Titcomb and Margaret’s son Lee Raymond Titcomb (age 11). Margaret is registered as the “owner” of “ladies retail apparel” and Ruth is listed as “saleswoman” of “ladies retail apparel” (it would seem they worked together in the store Margaret owned). Ruth does not appear in the 1950 census; Margaret and Lee, do, however, living together (without Ruth) in Eastchester, NY (a 10-minute drive from their 1940 Scarsdale address).

In 1952, at the age of 56, Ruth upended her life and changed her professional direction completely. She and her nephew, Lee (then age 23) founded Woodbury Pewter in Woodbury CT. According to Lee’s son, Brooks Whitcomb, current CEO of the company (now in its 73^rd year of operation), Lee was an electrical inventor and engineer and Ruth was working for major department stores designing window displays. With Ruth’s marketing and design background and Lee’s mechanical skills, they decided to go into business together. What distinguished Woodbury Pewter was craftsmanship — each piece was made by hand, using the tools and methods utilized by pewter smiths in the 1700s and 1800s. When they started the business, according to Brooks, “Dad would make the pewter and my great aunt Ruth would load up her Studebaker station wagon; and like the old-fashioned Yankee peddlers, would zoom around to little stores all over New England, selling the wares they were making.”

Later in life, Ruth moved to Mexico to live, once again, with her sister Margaret. There she studied art, shifting from watercolor to acrylic, and producing colorful portraits of local people and sweeping landscapes in Mexico. In 1973, at the age of 82, Margaret died and was buried in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.

The final chapter in Ruth’s remarkable life was spent in Florida, living with family and continuing to paint. Ruth died in Palm Beach on February 20, 1993 at the age of 97.

For a town its size, a great many young men and women from Vanceboro served their country. All but a few returned to build and support a community where people looked out for one another. Those who experienced loss were shored up by friends and neighbors who mourned with them, brought food, attended services and funerals. Dorothy Cummings Amero describes Memorial Day as “a big deal in Vanceboro” with “a parade that went from the Legion Hall to the cemetery” and included most of the town: “Legion members, Boy Scouts, Knights of Pythias, and the school kids, grade by grade.” Officiants and veterans stood on the hill of a cemetery decorated with flowers and flags. There were speeches, bowed heads, a lone bugler playing Taps, a twenty-one gun salute. “Even as kids we knew why we were there,” Dorothy remembers, “to express our gratitude to those who fought and died so that we can live the way we do.”

Please take a moment to reflect on those community members, both men and women, who served and send love into the world for those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

While the railroad station was connected through telegraph pretty much from the town’s beginnings, telephones came to Vanceboro and surrounds in 1919.

Folks remember the old crank telephones and party lines well into the 1950s. As is so often the case in border towns, things, well, operated a bit differently. Calls were directed through Canada and then back to the states.

Philip Palmer, stationed in Quantico, VA in WWII remembers that calling home went something like this:

Me to Virginia operator: “Vanceboro 545 ring 5.”

Operator to DC: “Vanceboro 545 ring 5.”

Repeat to New York, Boston, Bangor, Calais, St. Stephen.

“Sometimes there would be a long delay before the St. Stephen operator would answer and the Virginia operator would get frustrated and wonder out loud what was taking so long,” Mr. Palmer explained. “I told her that we were going from the U.S. to Canada so it had to be inspected, which was causing the delay. She said, ‘Oh.’”

Mary McAleney, then living on Salmon Brook Road with her family, also recalls how the connection downstate went through Canada. Her family didn’t have a phone until 1960, so she walked into town to make a call.

“To call my Grandfather in Brooks we would go to Tid Sears’ store to use the phone. I remember when I was entrusted with this task. After clearing things with Tid, I called the McAdam operator who connected to St. Stephen to Calais, then to an operator in Bangor then Belfast then Brooks, where I would ask for my Grandpa.”

Bill Brown remembers the sense of awe he felt with their first family phone.

“Definitely an ‘…everything’s up to date in Kansas City…’ moment for me when it was installed. It was a two piece crank phone, with a wooden box that had the ringer, attached to the living room wall. You “dialed” the phone by picking up the black receiver/mouthpiece and then turning the crank on the side of the box. One long crank to get an operator and an out of town line. People were given a two or three ring “number.” Ours was two longs and a short. There were two and four party lines. If someone was talking on your line, you had to wait your turn. And you could hear a click from someone else’s phone or hear them breathing when they would pick up to listen in on your conversation.”

Operators, of course, and sometimes a nosy neighbor or two on the party line had the full scoop on town gossip. Some folks remember grouchy operators, no doubt annoyed at those who didn’t follow protocol. Harold Little from McAdam, whose mother Dorothy (Brown) Little grew up on High Street, recalls his Uncle Lindy visiting from Vanceboro. 

“He’d call Kenny Essensa to see if he was home. He would grab that handle and give it about two complete turns. He knew he would get hell and the supervisor would come on the line to give it to him. But he knew that supervisor all his life and he would say, “Is that pretty little Annie Egan?” Annie would say, “Oh my God, Lindy Brown!” and they would have a great chat.”

Party lines remained through the 1970s and early 80’s and many can recite their numbers to this day. Among the artifacts at the Vanceboro Historical Society is an original crank phone as well as its successor, itself a relic of the past, the rotary phone.