MAINE FOURTH OF JULY FACTS

A contribution to evolution
Maine people and places played important roles int he heroic beginnings our our nation.
By Ray Routhier and Meredith Goad
Staff Writers Portland Press Herald

More than a year before the American colonies declared independence from England, a group of Mainers showed their resolve to be free – and in the process proved that the mighty British Navy might not be so mighty.

In June 1775, about 60 rebels from Machias and surrounding towns, led by Jeremiah O’Brien, captured three British ships in what is considered by many historians to be the first sea battle of the Revolutionary War. It was just one of several crucial military encounters that occurred in Maine during the war.

So as we celebrate our country’s anniversary of independence this week, it’s a good time to look at the major roles played by Maine places and people in our nation’s heroic beginnings.


FIRST NAVAL BATTLE

In June 1775, Machias was an isolated lumber-exporting town far up the coast of Maine, which at the time was part of Massachusetts and not yet a separate state. The town’s survival depended on trading lumber for food and supplies. With tension between the British and colonists high, business was drying up.

Enter Ichabod Jones, one of the financial backers of the Machias lumber business.

The Battle of Lexington and Concord had happened less than two months earlier, and Boston was filled with British loyalists and surrounded by American militia. So Jones made a business deal to supply the British in Boston with badly needed lumber from Machias for ship masts and general construction.

Midshipman James Moore, a young British officer, was given command of a ship called the Margaretta, and was ordered to travel with two merchant ships to Machias for lumber. When they arrived, Moore and his 20 sailors were met with armed resistance.

An estimated 60 locals attacked the British and took control of the two supply ships. Moore fled down the Machias River on the Margaretta, pursued by O’Brien and the two ships. Moore’s boat was in poor repair, and the Americans overtook him and came aboard. A hand-to-hand battle ensued and Moore was fatally wounded.

After the battle, O’Brien and others from Machias outfitted the captured ships and used them to harass British shipping for the rest of the war as privateers. “I think the people in Machias figured they had just captured British ships and killed a British officer, so there was no place to go but forward,” said James S. Leamon, a retired professor of history at Bates College in Lewiston and author of “Revolution Downeast: The War for American Independence in Maine.”

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A day to embrace 'We the people'
Traditions change, but the Fourth still honors a nation like no other
By KELLEY BOUCHARD
Staff Writer Portland Press Herald

Gardiner residents went all out when they resumed holding Fourth of July parades in 1907.

They hadn’t organized an Independence Day procession for 20 years. But that year, enjoying a shoe-manufacturing boom, the town was in the mood to celebrate. Bands, buggies and men on horseback streamed down Water Street.

The 1908 parade was even bigger. It featured three of the 15 automobiles owned by Gardiner residents, and an eye-catching group known as the Lady Riders. Led by a brass band, 21 women on horseback wore coordinated costumes and hats.

“Throughout history, no matter how modest the community, most would try to mount a parade to celebrate the Fourth of July,” said Earle Shettleworth Jr., a longtime Gardiner resident and executive director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.

For more than two centuries, people across Maine and the United States have celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence in ways both simple and elaborate.

On the day before he and other delegates to the Second Continental Congress signed the now-famous document in Philadelphia, John Adams predicted how future generations would celebrate the seminal act.

“It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance,” Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, on July 3, 1776. “It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with (shows), games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

Fourth of July festivals, picnics and parties have long featured parades, pageants, games and fireworks – not to mention food reflecting the bounty of the season, such as strawberries, salmon, peas and, in this part of the country, lobster and clams.

Shettleworth’s late mother, Esther Knudsen Shettleworth, a daughter of Danish immigrants who grew up in Portland in the early 1900s, remembered Independence Day parades that featured characters called “Horribles” or “Antiques.”

“People would dress up in old clothes and costumes and look as bizarre and foolish as they could,” Shettleworth said. “It was good fun, it was comic relief, and it wasn’t expensive because they just went into their attics and put on their grandparents’ clothes.”

The characters were especially popular during the Colonial Revival era after the Civil War, when the country was nostalgic for the Revolutionary War period, and they remained fixtures in many parades through the early 1900s, Shettleworth said.

Another long-standing tradition calls for decorating homes, businesses and public buildings with the U.S. flag and red-white-and-blue bunting.On Wednesday, Chris Considine hung one 4-by-6-foot flag and several smaller ones outside his wife’s antiques shop on Route 1 in Falmouth.

“We decorate to show our pride,” said Colleen Donovan, owner of Foreside Antiques. “It’s an amazing feat that our country exists as it does, as wonderful and as flawed as it is.”

Visits to seaside amusement parks, such as Peaks Island and Old Orchard Beach, became popular at the turn of the 20th century as travel got easier with trolley cars and steamships. Pig roasts in the early 1800s gave way to backyard hotdog and hamburger barbecues in the 1950s.And while church bells heralded the Fourth in the 1700s, today we see large and long fireworks displays across the nation. In Boston, Washington, D.C., and other major cities, they’re often accompanied by orchestras and broadcast on television.

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