BERGLAND HISTORY

by Christy Bergland

  

In 1907, my grandfather John McFarland Bergland had just finished his residency training at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He was beginning to set up a medical practice when Mrs Clayton Brown, whose extended family owned and managed several hotels at Biddeford Pool, asked him and his wife Alice to come to this new summer colony on the coast of Maine for a few summers to be the doctor on call. He said yes.

Caring for the Pool’s small population of summer and winter residents was not difficult, although the eight-mile ride to the Webber Hospital in Biddeford was long, windy and bumpy. Margaret Milgate, RN or LPN, a year round “native” resident from a prominent local family of many generations, became his nursing assistant.

Dr. Bergland in front of the house Christy now owns

My grandparents had only a three-year-old son at this point. Another son, born in 1908, died at age nine months, so the summer of 1909 was one of mourning for them. My father, Eric, was born in midwinter 1910. Dad would spend part of every summer of his life deeply involved at The Pool until his death, at the age of 73, in 1983.

For many years, my grandparents rented the house now known as Christopher's Pasture. It had originally been the farmhouse belonging to Christopher Hussey. Gran lovingly referred to the house as the Hen House, possibly because an old chicken coop survived in the back. By the time my grandparents stayed there, the farm fields had already become the golf course, as the Abenakee Club had been established in 1893. The house is currently owned by Mary Blake.

Gran and my grandfather Doc brought with them from Baltimore a maid and a cook to help with their young family, which was the custom of the day. They packed steamer trunks, boarded the train for Boston and arrived in Saco Station. How they got down to the Pool in the early days is a good question. Was it by ferry, a horse and carriage, or an early automobile?

A few remembered tales of my Grandfather's doctoring at the Pool    

I remember hearing that my grandfather delivered Billy Drew in 1912 in the master bedroom of what is now the Anderson House on St. Martin's Lane. Billy and his brother Jody, from St Louis, became life-long friends with my parents. The house was then owned by Van Horn Ely from Philadelphia and later by the McRae family from St Louis. Eventually, neighbor Joe Deering bought it and sold it to William G. Anderson in the mid-1950s. It is interesting to note that my mother, Dodie Bergland, married Billy Anderson in 1994 and lived in that house for the next five summers, until Billy’s death in late 1999.

Another story was the sad “tale” of a dearly beloved cat whose tail had been run over by a vehicle. Flossy belonged to Courtney and Elsa Hemenway. The Hemenways, who were childless, were

extremely upset about their cat's condition. There was no vet at the Pool, so they brought her to Dr. Bergland, hoping he could heal her crushed tail. The doctor decided to amputate the tail, however, with all good intentions, Dr. Bergland, not knowing the proper amount of anesthesia to administer, gave too much and killed the cat. This was a tragic ending, one that my grandfather never forgot.

I have few memories of my grandparents at Biddeford Pool because, in their later years, they became only occasional visitors. When they did visit, they stayed with Mrs. Florence Evans in what we now refer to as a “B&B” -- Peter and Eve McPheeter's house.

I have a lovely memory of my grandfather: I was around 10 years old and I was floating in the ocean near the rope lifeline that stretched out into the waves; my grandfather, wearing an old-fashioned two-piece bathing suit with a small belt, was next to me.

More recent history

My family continued to rent houses each summer until 1970, when they built their own. They bought land from Margery (James) Stevens, who had inherited her parent's house next to the croquet courts. She sold the house to Peter and Ann Lindsay, but she remained in possession of almost an acre of land in front of that house, stretching from the road to the Great Pond. This became, and remains to this day, the Bergland house and property.

(first published Oct 17, 2018)