Maine Women in History

Sarah Jane Farmer
By BDN Staff
Bangor Daily News

It should be no surprise that Sarah Jane Farmer (1847-1916) did something special during her lifetime.

Her father, Moses Gerrish Farmer (1820-1893) of Eliot, invented a fire alarm pull box, the design of which is still in use today. In 1847 he invented the first electric railway car. He was a transcendentalist, believing that his inventions were emanations from God, and, in this spirit, did not patent his inventions in his early years.

Best known for his work with electricity, Farmer had developed an electric light in 1858-1859 and illuminated his Cambridge, Mass., home with it in 1868, but was never able to develop a marketable product. He also is credited with working side by side with Thomas Edison.

Moses was serving as a professor of electrical science and a consultant to the U.S. Navy in Rhode Island when he and his daughter developed poor health and the family decided to return to Eliot in 1843. Moses became headmaster of Eliot Academy, and they named their newly built home "Bittersweet-in-the-Fields" because they felt "bitter" to leave their Rhode Island life behind, but "sweet" to be living in such a tranquil spot.

Sarah’s mother, Hannah Tobey Shapleigh Farmer (1823-1891) of Eliot, was a prominent philanthropist, involving herself with the abolitionist and feminist movements of the day. Their home was a way station on the underground railroad. Hannah founded Rosemary Cottage in 1888, a retreat in Eliot for unwed mothers and their children, serving families primarily from Boston. The cottage operated well into the early 20th century. The building was sold and converted to apartments.

Sarah Jane Farmer was the founder of what now is known as the Green Acre Bahai School in Eliot. It began as the Eliot Hotel, situated on a knoll above the Piscataqua River. She helped support the Eliot Hotel in 1890 with four other partners as a resort hotel. But the venture failed, and the hotel became a gathering place for members of all religions to discuss spiritual subjects. She is quoted on Maine Memory Network as saying that "I realized, too, how much more good would come from a summer vacation if instead of being burdened with the effort of finding amusement for leisure hours, one’s mind and soul could be refreshed by helpful thoughts."

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Molly Molasses
By Bunny McBride
Special to the Bangor Daily News

The life of Penobscot Indian Molly Molasses began on the eve of the American Revolution. She was born in 1775, as she told it, in a canoe on Green Lake. This long sweep of water, located in the Union River valley just northwest of Ellsworth, is on the old Native canoe route to Blue Hill Bay and the Mount Desert Island region.

Molly spent much of her first four years in glades along the Kenduskeag and Penobscot rivers between present-day Brewer and her tribe’s upstream village on Indian Island at Old Town. In 1779 the British ousted the American rebels from the Penobscot valley and occupied it along with allied Mohawk warriors, longtime enemies of Molly’s people. Having sided with the rebels, Penobscots fled to the Kennebec valley.

Not until the war ended in 1783 could 8-year-old Molly and her family return home to their valley, and then only to face a steady stream of Euramerican settlers. Within 40 years, thousands of newcomers lived there, and 250 sawmills dotted the Penobscot and its tributaries.

A stranger to security, Molly Molasses grew up guarded and suspicious. She had to figure out how to survive within a radically changing world that pushed her people to the margins of society — and sometimes over the edge. A strong and uncompromising woman said to have the gift of m’teoulin (magic), she refused to be invisible or silenced.

Turning to trade as a livelihood, she became a shrewd dealer, supporting herself and her children through selling and bartering things that she made or purchased. Often involved in exchanges between settlers and fellow tribespeople, she used intimidation and gossip to strengthen her position on both sides of the trade. No one dared cross her.

When asked why she was called Molly Molasses, Molly would grin and say, "’Cuz I sweet." But since she wore bitterness as a shield and appeared anything but sweet, she probably gained the nickname simply because it rhymed with Balassee — the Penobscot pronunciation of her second name, Pelagie.

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Cornelia Thurza Crosby
By BDN Staff
Bangor Daily News

Cornelia Thurza "Fly Rod" Crosby (1854-1946) was a writer, hunter, outdoor enthusiast, publicity agent and precedent-setter. Fly Rod, as she was known in sporting journals and newspapers across the country, was the first registered guide in Maine, the first Maine woman to shoot a caribou, Maine’s first paid publicity agent, and the first person to call Maine "the nation’s playground" — a name that stuck.

Born and raised in Phillips, Maine, Crosby attended St. Catherine’s Hall, as did the daughters of many prominent Maine families, according to the University of Maine’s Women’s History Trail. St. Catherine’s Hall, an Episcopal finishing school for girls, was founded in 1868 in the 1837 mansion of Augusta’s first mayor, Gen. Alfred Redington. After the school closed, buildings were purchased and converted for hospital use. Over time, the mansion was renovated, reshaped and finally demolished. The remaining vestiges of the school are the name of a street behind the hospital and the chapel that was moved to 60 Bangor St. in 1892, where it stands today as Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church.

Crosby began working as a housekeeper at the Rangeley House, a hotel in the North Woods, when her doctor told her she would die if she did not get "abundant doses of fresh air." She explored the nearby rivers, lakes, streams and forests of the Dead River region and learned to hunt and fish.

In 1886, a friend presented Crosby with a 5-ounce bamboo rod. She became so adept at fly-fishing that she once landed 200 trout in one day, according to Maine Guides Online. She began to write accounts of her fishing adventures and submitted them under the name "Fly Rod" to O.M. Moore, editor of the Phillips Phonograph.

"That’s mighty good stuff!" responded Moore, according to Maine Guides Online. "Send some more right away."

"Fly Rod’s Notebook" became a widely syndicated column appearing in newspapers in New York, Boston and Chicago, and the new name stuck.

http://bangornews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=162094&zoneid=614


Photo courtesy of the Maine State Museum

Joanna “Nan” Carver Colcord
By BDN Staff
Bangor Daily News

Capt. Lincoln Alden Colcord and Jane French Sweetser Colcord, two newlyweds from Searsport, sailed the bark Charlotte A. Littlefield around the world. When they returned home three years later, they were parents of two children, Joanna "Nan" Carver Colcord, born in 1882 in the South Seas, and Lincoln Ross Colcord, born in 1883 during a storm off Cape Horn.

Sharing similar experiences with other children in 19th century maritime families, Nan and Lincoln spent much of their childhood and adolescence at sea on various ships. Joanna photographed some of their adventures, including one trip in 1899 when Joanna accompanied her father on the State of Maine on a voyage to China.

The Penobscot Marine Museum’s collection includes many photos taken by Joanna Colcord during trips to places such as Asian ports. Some of them may be viewed on www.penobscotbayhistory.org. A University of Maine graduate, Joanna Colcord earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry (1909) and a master’s degree in biological chemistry (1909). Her theses may be viewed at www.library.umaine.edu or through the URSUS online library system.

She then made a major career change and studied at the New York School of Philanthropy and became a social worker.

After successful administrative careers in New York and Minnesota, she became a department director from 1929 to 1944 for the Russell Sage Foundation, which currently describes itself on its Web site as "an operating foundation directly involved in the conduct and dissemination of social science research. Colcord retired in 1944 for health reasons.

In 1950, Colcord married longtime colleague and widower professor Frank J. Bruno in Bangor, but Bruno died in 1955. Colcord’s complications from diabetes forced the amputation of one of her legs. She moved to Indiana to live with a stepson, where she died in 1960, according to Jeff Hollingsworth’s "Magnificent Mainers."

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Fannie Pearson Hardy Eckstorm
By BDN Staff
Bangor Daily News

Fannie Hardy Eckstorm acknowledged the difficulties that her gender posed in collecting the folk songs of male workers:

"The editors of this volume fully realized that collecting these songs was a man’s job. We knew very well that we could not go into lumber camps and the forecastles of coasting schooners, nor frequent mill boarding-houses and wharves and employment offices and even jails, where the unprinted, and too often unprintable, songs of the kind we must seek originate and flourish. Had a man competent to perform the task expressed an intention of preserving these songs, we should not have undertaken the work. But no man appeared steeped in balladry and versed in folk-music, understanding the hearts of the people and wise to interpret what he found in them. The old songs were fast vanishing. With them would be lost all they represented of the mental horizon of the pioneer, the cultures of the logger and river-driver, the hunter and trapper, the sailor and hand-line fisherman."

— Preface from Fannie Hardy Eckstorm and Mary Winslow Smyth’s, "Minstrelsy of Maine: Folk-songs and Ballads of the Woods and the Coast." Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927.

Fannie Pearson Hardy Eckstorm: Studied nature, gathered folk songs

Fannie Pearson Hardy was born June 18, 1865, in Brewer to Manly and Emmeline Freeman Hardy. Her father was a fur trader, and Fannie took numerous trips into the northern Maine woods with him.

In these trips she first heard the folk tales and folk songs of the lumbermen, hunters and American Indians of the region. She also attended school in Bangor, and her daily trek to school took her past the docks and other working areas of the city.

Eckstorm’s interest in ballads was nurtured at Smith College, as was her love of nature, and she founded that college’s Audubon Society chapter.

Women began to attend college in the 1870s, according to the Maine Folklife Center, and most of the teachers at New England’s women’s colleges were taught by professors educated at Harvard. Educated women of the time had few careers open to them, according to the Maine Folklife Center’s exhibit on women folklorists. Collecting and writing about American culture as it manifested in ballads was a relatively acceptable practice for women, though they frequently apologized for treading on men’s territory.

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(Courtesy University of Maine’s Maine Folklife Center)

Helen Augusta (Knowlton) Orne
By Walter Griffin
Bangor Daily News

The first woman admitted to the Maine bar more than a century ago was a sharp-eyed Rockland resident who was just as comfortable hunting rabbits as she was in a courtroom.

"She was extremely intelligent and she loved books," Judy Shorey recalled of her grandmother Helen Augusta (Knowlton) Orne. "She came from a large family and they were wonderfully close and had wonderful times together. She loved nature and birds, knew all the wildflowers and loved to hunt rabbits with her brothers."

For the past few months Shorey has been compiling information about her grandmother and has been recounting her ground-breaking story to local historical societies.

Shorey has cartons of documents and newspaper articles from all over the country about her grandmother. She always knew her grandmother had practiced law as a young woman but never realized the acclaim she received as Maine’s first female lawyer. Shorey was 16 years old when her grandmother died.

"I used to love going to her house because she told such wonderful stories about her growing up in Rockland," Shorey recalled.

It took a special act of the Maine Legislature to make it possible for Helen Augusta Knowlton to become Maine’s first female lawyer.

Knowlton was admitted to the Knox County Bar in 1899 at the age of 24. Before that could happen, however, special legislation was needed because at that time, women were not allowed to hold any state office and lawyers were viewed as officers of the state. When Chief Justice John Peters interpreted that the state law allowed only men to practice law, Knowlton’s advocates petitioned the Legislature to allow her to take the bar exam.

The young woman, who had completed her courses at Rockland High School in two years, handled 70 written questions on 21 subjects as well as several hundred oral questions with ease. She scored a 97.

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(Bangor Daily News/Walter Griffin)

Margaret Chase Smith: Paved the way for Maine's women politicians
By Aimee Dolloff
Staff Writer Bangor Daily News

Former Rep. and Sen. Margaret Chase Smith encouraged many of Maine’s female political leaders during her life, and her legacy continues to inspire women in leadership roles today.

"I think Margaret Chase Smith paved the way for Olympia Snowe and for me to be in the Senate," U.S. Sen. Susan Collins said in a recent interview. "When I decided to run for the Senate, I did not have to convince Mainers that women could be good senators because Margaret Chase Smith had served so well for so long."

Born Dec. 14, 1897, in Skowhegan to Carrie Murray and George Emery Chase, Smith tested her hand at many things before succeeding her husband in representing Maine’s 2nd District. She was a teacher, telephone operator, manager of circulation for the Skowhegan newspaper, and held an executive position at a local textile mill before she entered the political world.

Her involvement with women’s organizations began in the 1920s when she helped found the Skowhegan Business and Professional Women’s Club.

In 1930, she married Maine political leader Clyde H. Smith. When her husband died 10 years later, Margaret Chase Smith took his place as Maine’s 2nd District representative. She later was elected to the Senate where she served four terms before being defeated by Rep. William Hathaway.

Smith even ran for president in 1964 and was the first female to be nominated at a major political party’s national convention.

Collins first met Smith when she was in high school and was selected to visit Smith in Washington as part of the Senate youth program.

"Margaret Chase Smith spent nearly two hours talking with me about public service, about her Declaration of Conscience, about her service on the Armed Services Committee, and it astonishes me that she spent so much time with this 18-year-old girl from Caribou, Maine," Collins said. "When I left her office I was just thrilled with the time I had spent with her and I remember being so proud that she was my senator and I also remember thinking that women could do anything."

http://bangornews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=162272&zoneid=613

Women's history vital to present, future
By Julie Harris
Staff Writer Bangor Daily News

While Maine’s notable men constructed the bones of a solid economy and government, its notable women added flesh in the forms of schools, hospitals, libraries, churches and community outreach. Neither could have existed without the other, and together the men and women of historic Maine have left today’s generations with a solid foundation and the remnants of their pioneering spirits.

As the Bangor Daily News draws its Women in History series to a close today, it is logical to point out we highlighted only a handful of the women who should be recognized for their roles in building Maine. There are so many, some of whom made impacts beyond Maine’s borders, but more still who offered significant local contributions.

Look around your own communities and see whose names your public buildings carry. Women such as Mary Snow, who was Bangor’s first school superintendent; Helen Hunt, a noted educator in Old Town; Sara Green of Katahdin Iron Works, dubbed Maine’s first lady of the woods; Ellen G. White of Gorham, a co-founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Maine; Marguerite-Blanche Thibodeau Cyr, called Tante Blanche, "The Mother of Madawaska"; philanthropist Elizabeth Noyce; Cordelia Stanwood, an ornithologist after whom Birdsacre-Stanwood Wildlife Sanctuary in Ellsworth is named; Lt. Alice Zwicker, an Army nurse from Brownville who was a Japanese prisoner of war for three years; and many others you have brought to our attention during this celebration of Women’s History Month.

There are several organizations and individuals who have made this series possible. At risk of omitting a group or person inadvertently, special thanks is offered to the Maine Historical Society and its online museum Maine Memory Network, whose wealth of photographs really triggered this series and whose staff helped us obtain permissions to publish photos that originated with other organizations; Maine Folklife Center at the University of Maine in Orono, which has featured a special exhibit this month on Women at Work and helped BDN track down some elusive photos and information; the Waterboro Public Library whose Maine Writers Index (started and maintained by volunteers) is an incredible resource and is looking for new writers to add to its list, although its staff wants to stress the library does not have all of the books mentioned in the Writers Index on its own shelves; and authors Wayne Reilly, Bunny McBride and Joreen Freeman for contributing stories.

Several other organizations and people helped us too, including Maine State Museum in Augusta, Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport; Pejepscot Historical Society in Brunswick; Camden Public Library; the U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office in Washington, D.C.; Connecticut College; Bath Town Office; Penobscot Nation on Indian Island; Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan; Bangor Public Library; Bowdoin College Library in Brunswick; Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge; Norridgewock Historical Society; Skowhegan History House; Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor; Maine Women’s Hall of Fame at the University of Maine at Augusta; Phillips Historical Society; Hollingsworth Fine Arts in Orlando, Fla.; Eliot Baha’i Archives in Eliot; Sanford Historical Committee; Colby College Special Collections; Nordica Memorial Association; Old Town Public Library; and Maine State Archives.

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