GRANDUNCLE CLARENCE REMEMBERS Pt3

This is the last part of my Granduncle Clarence West’s
memories as taken from “The History of Wilsons Mills-and-
the- Magalloway -Settlements” . The subjects range from
“squirrel whiskey” to grist mills and the cost of food. I ’ll
have some comments on all of this in a following post:


“P.C. Ripley worked at the dam when they were building it.
He was the top blacksmith. He could make most anything.
He made wrenches and tools of all kinds for the crews.
Ripley used to say that Brown Company kept all the
ingredients to make `squirrel ’whiskey. You just mix up a
batch, then bury it in the ground to season it. When you dig
it up it’s pretty stout, but good. Just one drink of it will make
a squirrel go up a tree tail first!

That grist stone they took out of the river this spring was
the top stone. If you look at it you can see the holes in it.
There’s a thing goes through the hole in the middle to pick it
up by. Too bad they couldn’t find the other stone. It used to
take days to sharpen those stones. It was all done by hand
and they all had to be the same. They had a nice grist mill at
Errol Dam. They had two stones, one special for buckwheat
and one for flour. The top stone sets still and the bottom one
goes around. You had to be awful careful to keep the grain
running all the time.

If you heard the click of the stones hitting together you
knew you were going to get something hard on your teeth.
The grain went down the cellar to a hopper, onto a
conveyor, through a machine they called the `smut’ mill,
then back upstairs and into a rig they called a bolt. This
was a cylinder screen about 10 feet long and about three
feet around. It had different sized screens and it kept turning
over and over and the grain fell into a row of boxes under it.
When it was done you pulled out a drawer and filled your
bag.


“There’s sure some difference in the price of flour and meat
and everything nowadays. I can remember when Joe and
Martha Brooks had a little store over in Upton. Joe would
kill a cow and go and peddle it around for three cents a
pound. Milk was five cents a quart; butter was high,
twenty-five cents a pound. Eggs were one cent apiece.
When I was going to school, anytime I needed pencils or
paper or anything for school, I’d go out to the barn and get
a few eggs to trade for what I needed.


You know, I was thinking about it the other day, I’ve had
boats all the time I’ve been here, and that’s going on
fifty-one years, and I’ve only been to the head of the lake
ten times.”


Source: The Town of Wilsons Mills Maine, “The History of
Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-Settlements”
(Wilsons Mills, Me. 1975.) pp.96-97

GRANDUNCLE CLARENCE REMEMBERS Pt2

Here’s part two of my Granduncle Clarence’s memories
of the construction of the Azicohos Dam as it appeared in
“The History of Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-
Settlements” including a wandering cow and Clarence taking
a shortcut across the top of the dam:


“Roberge cut the flowage. They used to bring the water
up to the works to keep the frost out of the north side of
the dam. When the water is low you can still see where
the steam pipes cooked the cement. Roberge finished the
flowage by cutting off the trees right at the top of the ice.
Brown Company’s tow-boats had quite a time at first.
Sometimes they’d make a mistake and end up in the woods,
or wind the tow-line up in the propeller, or knock a blade
off the propeller in the dri-ki(driftwood). Stan Wentzell was
the one who finally corralled the dri-ki by booming it in the
coves. Stan was a good man. When he told you something
you could believe it.


There used to be a quarry up in back of the barracks.
When Clarence Gray logged in there a few years ago he
cut trees out of it. That concrete pit up back was the water
pit. Water lines ran down to the houses, storehouses, cook
camps, etc. On one of the cottages the front porch was way
up high. When I had a cow, every time she didn’t come
when I called, I always knew where to find her. Under
that porch!


They used to have a telephone line run up from the top of
the dam to the foot of the sluice. You remember Pat
Crowley. It was his job to stay on the top of the dam and
stop the wood if anything went wrong. It took six feet of
water to sluice and the wood went nine-tenths of a mile in
three minutes. That sluice was the slickest piece of work I
ever saw. It sure took some figuring. George Freeman
designed it. He went to school with Paul Bean. He came
from Gorham, Me. After he left here he went to Chicago
to work on a hotel that was tipping over. Then he helped
build a railroad through the Rocky Mountains. After that
he went out to San Francisco and worked on the Golden
Gate bridge.


Bean and Harris came up one day to see about doing
something to the sluice gates. We drove around to the other
side of the dam and then Bean discovered he need the
blueprints that had been left over at the house. He was
going to send his driver over after them but I told him I
could do it quicker. There was about an inch of water
running over the splashboards but I went across and got
the papers. When I got back, Bean stood there with his
hands in his pockets watching me. He said `I didn’t like to
see you do that, Clarence!’ It wasn’t long after that they
put in the bridge above the splashboards.”

Source: The Town of Wilsons Mills Maine, “The History of
Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-Settlements”
(Wilsons Mills, Me. 1975.)
pp.95-96

GRANDUNCLE CLARENCE REMEMBERS Pt1

My granduncle Clarence P(hilip) West was the caretaker of
the Azicoos Dam in Wilsons Mills, Oxford, Maine for
fifty years. He was born in Cambridge, New Hampshire on
17 March, 1895 to Philip J. West and Clara (Ellingwood)West
and died on 5 June 1983. The SSDI gives his place of
residence as Errol, Coos Co., New Hampshire at the time
of his death.


Clarence married Mabel Jane Ilsley on 25 Jun 1919 and
together they had three children: their son Lee and their
daughters Leita and Ruth.



When Wilsons Mills celebrated its sesquicentennial in 1975
they decided to mark the occasion by publishing a book:
“The History of Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-
Settlements”. It includes an interview with Clarence about
his memories of his time at the Azicoos Dam and it makes an
interesting companion to the memories my Aunt Dorothy
sent me about her and my Dad’s time there as children,
which I posted here.

Tomorrow is the 113th anniversary of Clarence’s birth, so in
honor of him, here’s part one of the interview from the book:

“Clarence P. West, at eighty still caretaker at Aziscoos
Dam, is an interesting man to talk with. He was here
recently to look at some old pictures that had been brought
into the book committee on the building of the Azizcoos
Dam and we got him talking of the old days. He came here
as caretaker in 1924 and has been here ever since. We first
asked him how he happened to come here. These are some
of his comments.

“When we were first married I went to Pontook to work on
a survey with Walter Sawyer. Mabel and I lived in a tent
that summer. Sawyer would have had a nice dam there if
they had let him. He had one planned that was near four
thousand feet across with penstocks clear to Twitchell’s
for power. From that job I went to Lisbon to work in a
sawmill for West Bros. Later I went to see Mr. Bean about
a job and he told me to send in my application. There were
about a hundred other applications but when they got
narrowed down to five I was still one of them. After
Vashaw died, Lewis Chadwick was transferred to Errol and
I came up here. That was in 1924.


When the new Dam was built the gate house on the old dam
was removed and set up for a blacksmith shop. It still stands
there to-day just in back of the parking area. You know, the
timbers in that old shop were hewed by hand.


One of the big towers to hold the cable was up back of the
house, the other one was almost over to where the road to
Rangeley is now. There was a double track from the end of
the dam to the quarry up back on the hill. The cars worked
from a cable, when one went down, the other came back
up. There was a track with a whole string of cars that they
loaded with a steam shovel. The tops of the cars turned
around to dump. That shovel was on wheels and they had
to keep planks under the wheels all the time. It was set up
in a pit to load dirt for fill on the south side of the cam. The
cars were hauled along the tracks by a big black horse. And
when the whistle blew at quitting time that horse stopped
right in his tracks and there he stood till someone unhitched
him and headed him for the stables.


When they were building the dam it was nothing to meet
a string of horses a half mile long from Colebrook to
Azicoos.”

(to be continued)

Source: The Town of Wilsons Mills Maine, “The History of
Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-Settlements”
(Wilsons Mills, Me. 1975.) pp.94-95

BEDTIME GENEALOGY 15

I spent part of the afternoon on the Great July Organize Your
Genealogy Files project. I’d been so wrapped up first in the John
Ames file and then Aunt Dot’s Memories transcriptions that I
hadn’t made very much headway. But I had bought a denim sort
of material expandable file case a week ago to move some of my
files into and today was the day I got that done. These are the
original family sheets Aunt Dot sent us years ago that have been
kept in several manila file folders for years now. While they were
in order most of the time, they frequently would get shuffled
around when I was going through them looking for something.
They certainly look better in the case filed alphabetically by
family name.


I was also looking for some links to some of the places Dot
mentioned in her memories and found one for Gould Academy. I
glanced at the history page and I think either Mr. Hanscom or
Mr. Ireland was the headmaster who finally asked her about my
Dad. I couldn’t find any suitable sites for Wilson’s Mills or the
Azicohos(or Aziscoos) Dam so I’ll have to wait until later for that.


I’ll get back to the John Ames files again in the next few posts.

AUNT DOT'S MEMORIES

This the first in a series of posts which are my transcriptions
of 13 handwritten pages. They were written by my Aunt Dot
 (Dorothy West Bargar) and given to me yesterday when we attended
my nephew Paul's wedding.

Some explanations of the names mentioned: Phillip was
Phllip Jonathan West, Dot's grandfather and my great
grandfather. Hazel was her older sister and Flossie(Florence)
the youngest.

"Dingle" is a new term to me and sounds like a shed.


"Our family lived on Back Street in Upton from about 1830 to
1927. I have a picture of Bud and Hazel, taken Aug., 1926 that
was given me by Pop’s cousin Louie West (his dad was great
uncle Paul -Philip’s brother). This was the first I heard that I
ever lived in Upton. My birthday was in April of that year.


From conversations, I think I remember we probably moved
to Magalloway for a short time, then to Wilsons Mills. Phillip
stayed in Magalloway.


The first place I remember living was in a little square cabin on
the shore of Azichoos lake back a trail from the dam house.
There was a wagon trail past an old stone quarry and a foot
path along the lake shore. The quarry was home of the bear
that we always looked out for. The cabin was partitioned off in
one corner-a room big enough for a white iron double bed and a
built in double bed with a bunk (half size) up under the eaves.
There was a path between the beds wide enough for a dresser.
The remainder of the cabin was one L shaped room (except the
L was upside down & backwards) (end p.1)


The back door opened to a covered walk that led to a dingle
where we kept outdoor tools and dry wood for the fire. The
space from the door to the dingle was about the width of a
standard sidewalk. I have always remembered the dingle
because that is where the bag of toys that Santa brought was
kept. I only remember one Christmas that we received presents
and must have been when I was three because Flossie was not
yet in the family.


Don’t remember what Hazel& Mother got. Pop got a necktie,
Bud got pocket knife. (he would have been 5 years old) and I got
a pull toy -it was a green platform with red wheels & a red pull
string and had a white celluloid lamb on the platform. We also
got a tiddle wink game, which at my age was a great failure at,
but liked it anyway. That was probably 1929.


In years later we always decorated the house and had fun
making our decorations from newspapers and magazines. For
many years we had carefully saved the few fold out paper
Christmas bells and a few pieces of red & green rope that had
come with the family before any time that I recall."(end p 2)

GOING UP HOME 3

The rest of the trips usually depended on how much time we had
left. Longer vacations usually included a drive up to the Aziscohos
Dam where dad’s Uncle Clarence had been caretaker since 1924
and did the job for over a half century, or a stop at Tom’s Diner in
Wilson’s Mills. If it was winter we got to see the deer come down
out of the woods to eat grain put out to keep them from starving
in a bad year. One usual stop was a trip to the ice cream stand in
Berlin with all the cousins.


If we chanced to be there on Sunday we’d drive into Berlin to the
nearest Catholic church and attend Mass. This was a matter of
some importance to my mother. Dad converted to Catholicism
so they could marry and it might not have been a decision his
parents were comfortable with. The clearest memory I have of
those masses is of the day we realized the priest was speaking
French now instead of Latin or English.

On the way back home we might stop at one of the attractions
along the way: Six Gun City, Santa’s Village, Clark’s Trading
Post or The Old Man of the Mountains. Sometimes we’d bring
back more than souvenirs. Over the years there were several
kittens, at least one puppy, and one parakeet that made the trip
down south to Massachusetts with us. Twice we brought back
the flu.

We’ll skip the details on that.

I haven’t been back up to Maine or New Hampshire for twenty
years now although my sister has made the trip with her family
several times. I’m not a great long distance driver. But lately
I’ve been thinking about those vacations and the land where
my father’s family took root a lot lately.

Maybe I’ll take a trip up there again. If I ever get a reliable
car to do it in.

SO WHAT DO I KNOW?

Alright, I'm faced with some roadblocks on both my maternal and paternal lines. My mother was a White and her father walked out on the small family during the Great Depression. My mother and uncle never talked about their father around me and when they did it was very little and usually preceded by a few choice terms I won't repeat here. Both my parents and my uncle are deceased now so that avenue of questioning is closed to me.

And on her mother's side we can only go back one more generation to the McFarlands who came over from Ireland.

My father was a West and while my Aunt Dorothy (and others) have traced the line back to John Cutter West on the 1837 Maine Census, none of us who've climbed that family tree have been able to find his parents or a record of his supposed birth in Plymouth, Ma. in 1802. It's through his marriage to Arvilla Ames that I can trace my descent from many early Ma. colonists. And his grandson, Philip Jonathan(my great grandfather) married Clara Ford Ellingwood who is another link to the early settlers.

Besides my aunt's earlier research I have a copy of a book on the history of Wilson's Mills, Maine and a book on the Dunham and Ellingwood families (more on these later.) I have a copy of the marriage certificate and divorce decree of my mother's parents. I also have a copy of the 1880 census with my mother's grandparents the McFarlands and their children alive at that time listed on it.

I've two letters from relatives on each side of the family with information on births, deaths, and marriages.

So while I have some brickwalls I also have more information than many others have when they started up.

When I began my genealogy work I used an older computer
jokingly known as George but recently he has been replaced
by Elaine, a Christmas gift from some of the best friends I could
have ever have. And my sister and her family gave me a nifty
printer/scanner/fax machine which I've named Newman. These
make things much easier and I can't thank them all enough for it.

I also have a secondhand laptop I call Kramer which is the backup
now.

And there it is. What I have information wise and what tools I have to work with while climbing my family tree. .