Mansfield-Brown

Henry (1832-1905) and Julia Kimball Mansfield (1850–1896)

Henry Mansfield was born on November 11, 1832, in Devonshire, England. His father wanted him to become a barrister. Instead, he joined the British Navy at fourteen and sailed as a cabin boy. He jumped ship in St. John, NB. His first connection to Vanceboro may have been on the railroad that took him through immigration and on to Greenbush, Maine. There he took up farming, married, and began raising a family.

Henry enlisted in the Union Army on Sept. 8, 1863, in Bangor, Maine as a “Volunteer Substitute” for Melvin Grant, Esq. of Eddington. He joined the 16th Maine Infantry Regiment and fought with Grant’s Army of the Potomac in the final campaigns of the Civil War. He was captured in the battle of Weldon Railroad, Virginia on Aug 19, 1864, and sent to Libby prison, then to Belle Isle, and finally to Salsbury prison in Oct. 1864. He was released in a prisoner exchange on June 21, 1865 and transferred to the 20th Maine. He was honorably discharged on July 16, 1865.

After returning to Greenbush, Henry and his wife divorced. Because of injuries and illness during his imprisonment he was unable to do manual labor. He became a night watchman for the European and North American Railroad in Mattawamkeag, where he met Julia Etta Kimball.

In 1872 Henry bought a farmhouse on High Street in Vanceboro and on May 12, 1873 Henry and Julia married and moved in. Their four children, Harry Francis Mansfield (1874-1953), Carrie May Mansfield (1877-1959), Edith Etta Mansfield (1880-1955), and George Howard Mansfield (1884-1961) were each born in the house.

Julia died of breast cancer on February 5, 1896, at the age of 45. Henry died on May 19, 1905 at the age of 72. Both are buried in the Vanceboro Cemetery.

Carrie May Mansfield (1877-1959) and Ora Wallis Brown (1880-1924)

After her mother died, Carrie lived for a time with her brother Harry, his wife and daughter in Houlton. She then returned to Vanceboro to care for her father. After Henry’s death, she met Ora Wallis Brown, a customs officer and a widower with two daughters. They married on Sept. 24, 1913 in McAdam Junction.

Ora Brown was born in Milford on October 16, 1880. His father, Wallis Brown, was a logging agent. His mother, Vesta Babbitch, was from Deer Isle, Maine.

Ora attended The Shaw Business College (now Husson). On March 29, 1902, at the age of 22, he was hired as a stenographer for the Customs Service in Vanceboro. He was a pitcher and played baseball for Shaw and for the Vanceboro team.

He married Catherine Hamm of Brewer and had two daughters, Katherine Frances (1906–1992) and Martha Louise (1908–1974), while living and working customs in Lowelltown. After his wife died in childbirth, Ora moved his two daughters back to Vanceboro. He lived on High Street and there he met Carrie.

After he and Carrie married, Ora and the girls moved into the Mansfield house. Carrie and Ora had a daughter, Dorothy (Dot) Mansfield Brown (1914-1997), and a son, Linwood Clinton Brown (Lindy) (1922-2006), both born at home.

Ora died unexpectedly on November 16, 1924 in the Calais Hospital from complications after an operation. He was just forty-four. Carrie struggled though the Depression in Vanceboro with four children and little means of support. After selling some land, she took in borders and sold baked goods and Avon products to make ends meet.

Katherine became a teacher and married Earl Philbrick (1903-1985) in Portsmouth NH; Martha became a nurse and married Barney Johnson (1903-1953). Dorothy married Hazen Wilfred Little (1908-1974), a locomotive engineer from McAdam. They had a daughter in 1936, Virginia June, who died in infancy, and two sons, Philip Hazen (1938-2012) and Harold Lloyd Little (1948). Linwood, eight years younger than Dorothy, worked at Jum Hunter’s store as a delivery boy and, after his 1939 graduation from Vanceboro High School, went on his first river drive to help support his mother.

Linwood Brown (1922-2006) and Diane Hodgkins Brown (1926-2013)

Lindy had good friends in Frederick (Beanie) McDonald, Bud White, George Keef, and many others. With Ora gone, the family had little money but made do. The generosity of friends and neighbors during those years tied Lindy to Vanceboro his entire life.

Lindy loved to go up lake, hunt and fish. He enjoyed school, especially history, was an avid reader and had a great memory. Before WWII, he worked on Maine Central train crews and when he was twenty he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He became a gunnery instructor, was promoted to staff sergeant and became a tail gunner serving in the 82nd Bomb Squadron, 12th Bomb Group of the 10th Air Force based in Finney, along the border with Burma. He sent his checks home to his mother.

Lindy met Diane Arlene Hodgkins Main after the war. Diane’s extended family, too, lived in Vanceboro. Her grandfather, Edward Savage Hodgkins (1873-1917), living in Lambert, married Ella Minerva Roix (1881-1962) of Talmadge on January 8, 1900 in Vanceboro. They had seven children, Ernestine Marion (1901–1981), Louise Marguarite (1903–1967), David John (1905–1950), Edith (Edie) Mae (1907–1979), Muriel Gladys (1910–1989), Reitha Cecel (1912–1991), Edward Savage II (1916–1987). After Edward’s death in 1917, Ella married Allan Robinson Johnson of Vanceboro and they had two children together, Josephine (Jo) Eileen (1919–1995)) and James (Jimmy) (1923–1971).

Diane, Edith’s daughter, adopted and raised by Louise and her husband Ralph Main, grew up in Malden, MA and Kittery, ME but spent her summers in Vanceboro visiting her grandmother and aunts. She became a nurse, married young, and after a divorce returned home to Vanceboro with her children, William (Bill) James (1951) and Susan Louise (1952). She lived with her mother who was running a hunting lodge, once part of the Hale Farm above the boat landing.

Lindy and Diane married on August 21, 1955 in Vanceboro and moved into the Mansfield house with Carrie. They had two additional children together, Lyn Mikel (1956) and David Wallis (1957). Diane was Vanceboro’s school nurse for a time and an informal town nurse, helping to care for neighbors and deliver a number of babies. She was an excellent seamstress, knit and crocheted beautiful sweaters for her children, and she loved making May Day baskets with her friend and neighbor, Sharon Crandlemire.

A Methodist, Lindy enjoyed calling Bingo at the Catholic Church, delivering Christmas presents to families in the snow, and gathering with friends at his house or the Legion. He was, like his father, a talented baseball player and played for Vanceboro, the McAdam Legionaires, the Maine Central ball club, and later for the Calais Mets well into his forties. He had a prodigious memory and loved to recite poems and old Come All Ye’s he learned from woodsmen and river drivers. He was visited by researchers from the UMaine Folklife Center on more than one occasion and featured as a source of old songs and poetry.

Lindy worked his way up the railroad seniority ladder, from crew member to fireman, to engineer. He and Diane left Vanceboro in 1962. They were concerned about the imminent school closing. Selling the Mansfield house was difficult, but Calais promised two good jobs, a railroad promotion and an RN position at the Calais hospital.

Lindy’s biggest joy in life was a visit with friends up home and he regaled his children and grandchildren with Vanceboro stories featuring the likes of Pooch Ross and the Lyons brothers. We knew when he said “worse than the time they blew the bridge up, up home” something big had happened. Lindy and Diane are buried in the Vanceboro Cemetery along with Henry, Julia, Carrie and her sister, Edith.

Family photo. Lindy and Diane Brown, 1959. Bill and Susan in the back; David and Lyn in the front.