“Single blessedness”: The Bachelor Beans

“Single blessedness”: The Bachelor Beans

by | Sep 28, 2024 | Sullivan Sorrento Historical Society, Sullivan-Sorrento History

The bachelor Bean brothers, John and Josiah, seemingly lived simple and uneventful lives on their farm into old age and were buried on the small plot on the property. But a look at the local newspaper of the time has yielded the discovery of a short period of much excitement for the brothers at the hands of a single woman – something they had to put the kibosh on.

The article published in the Ellsworth American on March 25, 1875 provides a titillating look into their lives:

 

“Ellsworth Police Court. PETERS, JUDGE.

John S. Bean, Compl’t, vs. Deborah M. Bean. Complaint for larceny and breaking and entering dwelling-house.

This was a very unique case, and the trial of it unfolded curious family incidents. There lived in Sullivan two brother Beans, as like as two Peas. They dwelt together in unity – together they inherited the acres of the paternal Bean – together they toiled with honest industry upon the farm of their fathers – together they kept bachelors’ hall in the ancestral home. There they lived year after year in peaceful serenity, and rural quiet. Thus they passed through youth, early manhood, and middle age, until more than half a century had gone by.

They were both bachelors. One is a bachelor now. The other mourns that he is not. Like liberty to the Roman poet, matrimony, though late, came to him at last. He met his fate in the fair Deborah, who was comely in person and energetic in purpose. She was duly installed in the dwelling of the brothers, and cooked, baked, washed, swept, sewed, and other household labor did perform for them. The harmony was disturbed, however, and the brothers were also disturbed.

Presently the Benedict made over to the bachelor his share of the lands and goods, and withdrew from the domestic circle to be a wanderer upon the face of the earth. Why he withdrew will never perhaps be known. Squire Wiswell hinted that it was because of the Xantippean proclivities of Deborah. Squire Emery repudiated that and declared that it was only the natural cussedness of the unregenerate man. Judge Peters said it made no odds in this case, and so he didn’t care what he left for.

After the departure of Benedict, the bachelor gently intimated to the woman that she was working too hard and needed rest, and ought to visit her friends. She said she couldn’t think of it, – that she was anxious to keep the work right up. He then intimated that there was no need of her doing anything more for him, – that he could get along without her. She thought he couldn’t – that he needed her to take care of him. He then entreated her to leave, but she replied, “entreat me not to leave thee.” He then told her she must leave, but she said she wouldn’t – that there was her home to which her husband had brought her, and there she should stay. He said he would put her out. She said he couldn’t.

Here was a dilemma. He was too gallant to lay hands upon the woman – and too kind hearted to use violence. He resorted to strategy – watching his chance when she was out, he shut the doors against her. She returned, undid the fastenings, re-entered and resumed her old place. At length the man appealed to the law, and caused her to be arraigned for the offence of burglary in the day time, and this was the case before the Court.

The woman’s counsel argued that she thought she was right, and so the criminal intent was lacking. The man’s counsel insisted that as she had done it after being forbidden, and did it knowingly, after having been informed of the ownership, she must be held guilty. Judge Peters said that as the act was done in broad day, and the woman had claimed a right to stay there, he could not believe that she had any felonious intent in her mind, and accordingly discharged her. Thus the parties were left in stata quo ante bellum and the problem of how to get that woman out of that house was left unsolved by his Honor.

We learned however that the Respondent on returning, cut the Gordian knot by vacating the premises, and leaving Mr. Bean to vegetate alone in his single blessedness.”

 

 

With a story like that, what can we find from additional research? For starters, Deborah White was born July 28, 1841 in Harrington, daughter of William and Elmira (Colson) White. She lived with her family, working as a housekeeper, until the age of 22, when she married Daniel Look Ramsdell in late 1860. They had two daughters, Julia, born 1861, and Mabel, born 1864, and lived in Addison. Daniel worked variously as a carpenter, farmer, and seaman, and was lost at sea in 1867, making Deborah a widow. Deborah then moved with her two daughters into the home of one of Daniel’s older brothers, Sullivan Ramsdell, and worked as his housekeeper.

Sometime between 1871 and 1873, she married Josiah Bean of Sullivan. It appears that her two daughters stayed with their uncle Ramsdell in Addison during this time. Josiah was born in 1814, which would put him close to 60 years old at the time of marriage, with Deborah being in her early 30s. In 1874, Josiah Bean left town for several months and paid for a notice to run in the Ellsworth American that read: “Notice. All persons are hereby forbidden from harboring and trusting my wife, Deborah C. Bean, on my account, as ample provision has been made for her, by me. Josiah Bean.” It can be surmised that she was running up a tab in his absence.

He returned at some point, and the divorce of Josiah and Deborah is recorded in April 1877 at the courthouse in Ellsworth. The 1880 census has Josiah living back at home with his brother John, this time with 46-year-old Hannah Lindsey as housekeeper. Josiah died August 10, 1891, and in his will left Hannah $100 “and the bed she sleeps upon at my house with necessary bedding.” His estate was worth over $9500, including $233.66 in cash on hand and $442.50 in gold. With the comfortable items in the estate, it is not hard to understand why Deborah would not want to leave.

Deborah is recorded on the 1880 census as divorced and living in Milbridge with her daughters. She died there on June 23, 1898, aged 57 of heart disease and mitral regurgitation (heart murmur). Her stone reads “Deborah M. Wife of Josiah Bean, Former wife of Daniel L. Ramsdell.” It is interesting that despite the brief marriage and divorce, Josiah is mentioned on her stone.

The headstone of Deborah (White) Ramsdell Bean in Milbridge.

Back to the old Bean farm, there is the question of the stone in the family plot for Judith Ash. Who was she and how did she fit into the family? In 1870, Judith Ash was listed as the housekeeper for the Bean brothers, with her age given as 58. She passed away on July 4, 1871 and was buried on the property in the family cemetery. According to her MOCA file, she had been the daughter of Robert (1763-1835) and Abigail Rolf Ash (1767-1837). Being the second youngest of her siblings, Judith cared for her parents into their old age. After their death, she moved in with the Beans, living with and taking care of them like family for over 30 years. For one so dedicated to the care of the home and its bachelor brothers, it must have been appropriate for her to be buried at the place she called home.    

Excerpt from the Ellsworth American, March 25th, 1875.

1891 obituary of Josiah Bean.

The Tale of Nelly Butler Comes Full Circle

The Tale of Nelly Butler Comes Full Circle

by | Oct 14, 2023 | Sullivan Sorrento Historical Society, Sullivan-Sorrento History

A bit of Sullivan history comes to life through documents, descendants, and the vivid imagination of an author! While the Nelly Butler hauntings took place over 200 years ago, their connection to present day is still strong. WABI 5 News came down to investigate, with author Michelle Shores, Selectman Reg Bud Means, and Sullivan-Sorrento Historical Society’s Tobey Connor.
Things began with an ending – the death of Eleanor Hooper Butler in childbirth, first wife of George Butler in 1797. They had lived at Butler’s Point, a part of Sullivan that became Franklin later on. Two years later in 1799, her supposed spirit began communicating and eventually manifesting in the cellar of Abner Blaisdell’s home, which was located near what is now Taunton Drive in Sullivan. The spirit’s target appeared to be Abner’s young daughter, Lydia, and was insistent that Lydia and George be married. In prophesying, the specter began to draw crowds, and proved itself to Nelly’s family to be Nelly herself. Documenting this in real time was the Rev. Abraham Cummings, a Harvard-educated pastor tending to the area. He took down over 35 eyewitness accounts of locals, who were divided over whether the spirit was in fact Nelly, or a sinister influence. When he himself saw the spirit, his view on the afterlife was forever changed.
The specter could manifest into the full form of a woman and led crowds on walks to the homes of nonbelievers. George and Lydia did marry in 1800, but she died a year later in childbirth.
Utterly distraught by these events, George took all of her clothes and put them in a rowboat, set them on fire, and pushed it into the outgoing tide. This took the flaming vessel right past the home of Abner Blaisdell, who was horrified at the sight. His feud with George would continue for the rest of their lives, even leading to the dissolution of the First Baptist Church in Sullivan.
Rev. Cummings published his documentation in 1826 with the title A Question on Immortality.
Marcus Librizzi and Dennis Boyd researched and published Cummings’ work anew in 2011.
Michelle Shores’ book The Gathering Room is based upon the true events.
View the segment here:
The Cooper Shop of Sullivan Harbor

The Cooper Shop of Sullivan Harbor

by | Aug 18, 2023 | Sullivan-Sorrento History

The Cooperage, or Cooper Shop formerly stood on the rocks on the shore in Sullivan Harbor along what is now Harbor View Drive. This was the main road (often referred to in those days as the town or county road) through Sullivan before Route 1 was built and filled in. The shop was built in the early 1850s for Daniel Wilson, who moved his family first from Bradford to Franklin, where the 1850 industry census for the town recorded Wilson as having made 4,680 barrels by hand that year, using over 93,000 staves and 46,000 hoops to do so.

Within a couple of years, Wilson had moved his family to Sullivan and the cooperage was built. They lived next door in the former Capt. William Salter house which had been built in the 1830s and originally was located just up the hill before Salter moved it for the Wilsons (Salter then built a new house for his family in the old location). 

In 1863, Daniel Wilson purchased the parcel of land which held the shop and home. The 1863 deed also conveys “the points of rocks on which it now stands and also the stone wharf built expressly to accommodate said Cooper Shop.” Across the road was the childhood home of Sullivan author Alice Turner Curtis. According to Leila Johnson’s book Sullivan and Sorrento Since 1760, Curtis remembered the Cooper Shop as being most active in the 1870s. “…the “Cooper Shop” is the building toward the “Cove”, where Daniel made barrels in the 1870s, which were loaded onto schooners and sent to various ports.”

Daniel Wilson was born in 1816 in Bradford and married Lorinda there in 1844. They had 9 children:

  1. Stanislaus, b. 1845 in Bradford, m. Georgia Simpson
  2. Alvin T., b. 1847 in Bradford, m. Alice J. Wooster
  3. Harvey, b. 1850 in Franklin, died in childhood
  4. Augustus H., b. 1852 in Sullivan
  5. Arabelle C., b. 1854, m. Capt. Charles Allen in 1898
  6. Andalusia, b. 1856, died in childhood
  7. Charles M., b. 1858
  8. John H., b. 1862
  9. Charlene (Lena), b. 1866 in Sullivan.

 

Sullivan Harbor before the new Route 1 ran through it, with the Cooper Shop and house in center and remnants of the stone wharf running to the right.

The family all lived together in the same house through Daniel’s death at age 73 in 1889.

His son Alvin kept the cooperage going for a few more years. An excerpt from the Ellsworth American in 1893 reads: “Sullivan – Mr. Alvin Wilson has manufactured and sold over 100 fish barrels this spring.” As the need for handmade barrels declined along with the shipping industry, the Cooper Shop was left silent by 1900. Alvin had moved on to the stone and cement manufacturing business, and in 1898 his sister Belle had married with the old family house becoming the Allen home.

When Belle married Charles Allen, a steamboat captain, she had been running the Sullivan Harbor post office on her own for several years. He was a widower and single father of a 7-year-old daughter, Ruth. Belle raised her as her own, and after Charles’ death in 1919, Ruth continued to live at home while she worked as a teacher at the nearby schoolhouse. Not for long though, as on Sept. 7, 1920, she married Elwood Morton Wilbur, a civil engineer, and off they went to live at the American consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

Belle remained in her old family home until the last years of her life, and she passed in 1941. Her estate sold the home to Winifred Zulich and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Berwind, early followers of Rudolph Steiner and anthroposophy.

Within a few short years, a new chapter for the home and Sullivan’s history would begin, when…

 

Sullivan’s first public library found its home in 2 rooms in the second floor of the house in 1948 when the owners donated its use – the first incarnation of Frenchman Bay Library. Rev. Margaret Henrichsen was inspired by this charitable act and got a committee together made up of 14 local women to guide the library forward. By 1952, the library occupied the entire second floor of the home and thrived with community support.

In the winter of 1956, an overheated chimney resulted in the old house burning, but many books were rescued and stored in the basement of the Grammar School. A newly planned Rec Center would become the future and current home of Frenchman Bay Library.

Also in the 1950s, the new state highway which would become US Route 1 was built across the head of the harbor on a small causeway, causing the interior portion to become known as the tidal pool, and the old main road to be called Harbor View Drive.

Years after the Wilson/Allen home burned and the Cooper Shop was dismantled, new property owners used brick and granite from the old foundation to build a patio at the edge of the Mill Brook.

Among the blocks in the foundation, they found a large piece matching the Paul Dudley Sargent monument, inscribed with his name and year of death, 1828. It’s unknown how it became a part of that foundation, though the reason would have been known by Captain William Salter who put it there in 1862.

Today, the Tidal Pool along Harbor View Drive fills and drains as ever, and though the two bustling buildings are long gone, the “points of rocks” on which the Cooper Shop was built are still in place, along with the remnants of the age-old stone wharf that once kept schooners steadily supplied with barrels to move goods to and from ports far away and long ago.

Side view from west of the Cooper Shop and the Wilson/Allen house on Sullivan Harbor, before Route 1 filled in the area.

The Wayward Spindrift

The Wayward Spindrift

by | Oct 13, 2022 | Sullivan-Sorrento History

When a new boat is built and christened, it is generally a happy time for all involved.

But in the case of the Spindrift, no one could have expected it to truly live up to its name! The boat was built in the Machias River in the winter of 1918 with Sullivan to be her home port under Captain Mitchell of Milbridge. Her inaugural trip in March of 1919 was to be a simple one to Halifax to pick up a load of lumber, with a partial crew of 9. The names we know to be on the crew were Clarence, Howard and Leonard Martin, Alfred and Ott Preble, and E.E. and Jessie Bragdon. Years later, Clarence Martin would give a detailed account of what happened on that fateful maiden voyage.

To start, the ship wasn’t loaded with much ballast as it was thought the trip would be short and sweet. On board there was enough bread and coffee for the four days expected. However, after one full day in the Bay of Fundy, a great gale struck and carried the Spindrift with it. The ship, being lightweight and bobbing like a cork over the water, was at the mercy of the wind, and on the high seas, the planks began to loosen. The crew focused on keeping the ship afloat as the gale blew her further and further off course.

The crew of the Spindrift at the wharf in Sullivan, March 1919

Out of food, some of the boys wanted to try their luck on a lifeboat but were persuaded by the others that the rough seas would swallow them up. After a couple of weeks, there was a lull in the weather, and a Patagonian ship passing by gave them some beef and flour, but it wasn’t enough. The drinking water they had on board went bad and sickened all of the men. 32 days later, when the winds finally eased up, the men found themselves in the Azores – on the other side of the Atlantic!

There, they were given enough victuals and a course for Nassau, with the ship barely making the trip. The crew spent a month there while repairs were done, and then were sent to Jacksonville, Florida, where the Spindrift and its crew were sent by train up the East Coast back to Maine. Amazingly, none of the crew perished in their ordeal, but the experience did turn a few of them off to mariner life for good. As for the Spindrift, it made one more trip – to deliver a load of lumber to Puerto Rico – but sprang a leak on the way back and sank off Norfolk, VA, bringing an end to the short career of the ship built in Machias.

Merriam-Webster gives the definition of a spindrift as “spray blown from waves during a gale”; and true to its name, the Spindrift was indeed blown across the tops of the waves during a gale.

Survivor Captain Clarence Martin of Asheville swore off sailing after his experience aboard the Spindrift. Pictured in 1952.
How Did the Bert Gray Road Get Its Name?

How Did the Bert Gray Road Get Its Name?

by | Sep 10, 2022 | Sullivan-Sorrento History

Have you ever wondered who how the Bert Gray Road got its name?

Bert Gray’s signature, 1915.

The Bert Gray Road (Route 200) was previously known as the Franklin Road, or the Franklin Woods Road. This route was established many generations ago, and historically only a handful of families lived along it. This included a branch of the Simpson family – specifically Richard Simpson (1791-1858) and his wife Lovisa Wooster Simpson (1799-1888). Both were born in Sullivan and spent their lives on a farm here. They had three children: Albert (1820-1873), Eliza (1823-1896), and David Aaron (1825-1915).  All three spent their lives on the farm, never marrying. Eliza was a schoolteacher. Aaron, the name he preferred, served in the Civil War with Maine Company A, Coast Guard Infantry alongside the Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin!

He returned from the war intact and ran the family farm for many years. He’d outlived his family and as he grew older, found himself in need of help. So around 1900, Aaron Simpson had his friend Albert Stephen Gray move his family in permanently to help run the farm and take care of Mr. Simpson in the twilight of his years. Bert Gray bought the farm and his family continued to care for Mr. Simpson there. This was an ideal arrangement – Mr. Simpson got to live out his days on his family land, and to see it prosper again as the Pleasant Hill Farm.

Pleasant Hill Farm House, c1930.

Bert Gray was born in 1856 in Sedgwick on a farm there. Later, he became a quarryman, and that is what originally brought him to Sullivan, with his wife Eleanor Mary (“Nellie”) and four children in tow: Sarah, Abbie, Joel, and Linwood. Farming life suited Bert much better, and the kids all helped out. Sadly, in 1907, their son Joel died there at the age of 22 from tuberculosis.

A sawmill was in use for many years there, and the present marshy area used to be a much fuller pond before the road was filled in. The Pleasant Hill Farm was located a little over a mile up the Franklin Road and still encompasses a great area of land. The old farmhouse still stands, and a family cemetery is there as well.

Old Mr. Simpson passed away in 1915, and Bert continued to run the farm until his own passing in 1936. The farm was passed down to his son Linwood who lived there with his wife, eventually becoming a successful merchant. The Grays were a musical family, with a pianist, opera singer, and composer among them, and performances were common at the house.

On a still summer’s night, with the sound of tree frogs and nighthawks in the air, one can almost imagine the faint sound of music emanating from the old farm on the hill and down into the surrounding woods.

Do you have any old photos or memories of the Gray farm? We’d love to hear from you!

Linwood and Mary Gray at Pleasant Hill Farm on the Bert Gray Road, 1957.
Down By the Old Mill Stream

Down By the Old Mill Stream

by | Jul 7, 2022 | Sullivan-Sorrento History

Did you know that one of the most popular songs of the early 20th century was inspired and written right here in Sullivan? “Down by the Old Mill Stream” was originally penned by local barber Frank L. Carleton, who was persuaded to sell the work for $60 to a summer visitor by the name of Tell Taylor, who heard the song while having a shave. Taylor, a music publisher from Ohio, knew a hit when he heard it, and published the song under his own name in 1910, without giving Carleton any credit. It became a staple of barbershop quartets, vaudeville, and eventually mainstream music, and went on to bring in over $80,000 in profits.

Back in Sullivan, Frank Carleton, who’d been writing his own songs and poems since the 1870s, continued working in his barbershop. Locally, everyone knew that the song was his, even as it was covered by the Marx Brothers, Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, Nat King Cole – even John Denver and the Muppets! Over the years, the issue of authorship was brought up by Carleton’s family, but as no written contract was made when Tell Taylor handed Carleton the $60, there was no way to prove it. In those old days, things were done on a handshake and a smile in the barbershop, but Carleton would have had no idea he was passing up the chance to become a wealthy man. He published other songs in the same vein, such as “My Rosalie of Tennessee” and “When I Tied the Bow of Blue on Bessie’s Hair”.

Frank Logan Carleton, c. 1920.

Sheet music cover art for another of Carleton’s songs, published in 1922.

There is some debate over which stream Carleton referred to in the song. In 1939, after Carleton’s death, Chief Stanwood of Big Chief Camps at Tunk Lake wrote to the paper and declared that Frank had told him it was Morancy Stream. Carleton’s granddaughters later remembered that it was the small stream behind Frank’s house on present-day US Route 1 and Route 200, by the Mill Pond. That was the Mill Brook, though a mill never existed on it, nor could one be supported by the meager water flow. Another issue is that accounts vary as to when Carleton wrote the song. Chief Stanwood asserted that he had written it prior to 1882, as he had heard it himself then. If that is the case, Carleton didn’t live by the Mill Brook at that time. Others maintain that he wrote the song in 1908, which would align with the family’s time in that house, as well as making sense of the lyrics which refer to his bride as now having hair of gray after many years of happy marriage.

In the 1980s, much research was done – a collaboration between Carleton’s granddaughters, local reporter Glen Dalton, and the Sullivan-Sorrento Historical Society. Dalton concluded that Morancy Stream must be the inspiration as it was the only stream capable of supporting a mill, and at least two existed there in the 19th century – notably, Reuben Smith’s textile operation established in 1810. He published his findings in both Yankee Magazine and the Ellsworth American in 1984. In 1989, at the Sullivan Bicentennial Celebration, the historical society had a float featuring a mill on a stream to honor the song’s true history. The float won first place!

Whichever stream the song refers to (and why not both?), it was Frank Carleton’s experience here in Sullivan that served as the true inspiration. The song is sentimental, a love song, and starts with the memory of meeting his love, Martha Connors (“With your eyes of blue, dressed in gingham too”), whom he married in 1886, and finishes with a reflection on a life well lived together. They had two daughters, Rae and Bessie. Rae married Dallas Ashe of Gouldsboro and had a daughter, Anne Pauline, before tragically dying of septicemia at the age of 23. Their daughter became a dancer in New York before marrying a Hollywood songwriter and going on to work as an actress there. Frank and Martha’s daughter Bessie married Fred Neale, and they had three children with descendants still living in the area. Frank is buried at York Hill Cemetery in Sullivan.

 

You can listen to the 1911 recording of the song here. 

The old Smith mill on Morancy Stream, built 1810. 

Parade float honoring “Down by the Old Mill Stream” and Frank Carleton at the 1989 Sullivan Bicentennial. The float won first place.