MEMORIES OF THE POOL part 1

by Carrington Williams, Jr. (1917-2014)

Originally written in 1997 & revised in 2006

Submitted by Dabney McCoy

During the first half of the 20^th century, until air conditioning was available, Southerners migrated to New England to get away from heat and humidity during the summer months. Thus in the early 1900s, my grandmother, Fanny Young Miller, came to Little Boar’s Head, New Hampshire, with her two daughters, Fanny (my mother) and Margaret, for the summer. Subsequently they traveled to Biddeford Pool and, in 1909, rented the cottage, known as the Flatiron, which Mother was to buy in 1952. My grandmother died in 1916, the same year Mother and Daddy were married.

During World War I, “The Great War to end all wars,” visits to Biddeford Pool were suspended. In 1920, our family rented the cottage on Ocean Avenue that was owned by the Dunlaps until 1996 and is now owned by the Coupes. My parents paid $120 for three months! We were in this house for several summers.

I remember watching with awe as the Coast Guardsmen launched their rescue boats into crashing surf by rolling them on round timbers down the ramp, which still exists, thanks to the wonderful restoration of the Coast Guard Station by the Johnsons. It was amazing to see the oarsmen (there were no motors) propel those heavy boats over the waves into deep water.

There were few houses along Ocean Avenue in those days, but Eagle’s Nest and the three identical houses built by families from Holyoke, Massachusetts have been there many years. We rented various houses over the next thirty years, including the Flatiron, the Elliott Cottage (now the “Seahawk”) and the house now owned by the Hulse family.

In the old days, travel from Richmond to Biddeford was by train. The first leg went to New York, changing from Pennsylvania Station to Grand Central in order to catch the State of Maine Express, an overnight sleeper. It arrived in Biddeford at about 5 a.m.. Then we had to take a small, narrow-gauge train to Camp Ellis and board the Nimrod or the Goldenrod for the short voyage from the mouth of the Saco River to the dock at Biddeford Pool. Sometimes we took the Federal Express train overnight from Washington to Boston, again changed stations and took the Boston and Maine Railroad to Biddeford. We always had a dog that was shipped in a crate in the baggage car, and we invariably paid him a visit during the changeovers.

In later years, as roads improved, we drove up and, still later, after 1952, Mother and Daddy worked out a combination of fly-drive. This involved Mr. Dick Carner driving their car, loaded with clothes and other belongings, and accompanied by Hannah, their cook. They usually took about a day and a half, Mr. Carner taking naps in the car. He unpacked at the Flatiron, then he met Daddy and Mother at the Portland Airport and flew back to Richmond. At the end of the summer, the routine was reversed. For many years, Emory and I traveled the same way.

In 1920, Mother and Jane Lindsay, who had been girlhood friends at Biddeford Pool, met again when families returned to the Pool after World War I, and they were surprised to find that both Andy Lindsay and I had been born on October 3, 1917. Andy became a close friend of mine, and we enjoyed our friendship until Andy’s death.  When he was 16, in 1933, Andy dropped out of school and joined the crew of the Joseph Conrad, an old square-rigged schooner, and sailed around the world! From then on his life revolved around sailing, and for a long period he was steward of the Yacht Club and sailing instructor.

When we were children, Mother and her sister Margaret took a cottage together. I never understood how the two families ever had enough room for four adults, six children, and two servants.

Uncle Churchill and Aunt Sally Young, Susan Coffield’s grandparents, visited there also, and my memory of Uncle Churchill occupying the only bathroom for an hour each morning is a vivid and still painful one! He was most unathletic in appearance and yet won the club tennis tournament on more than one occasion. Dicky Carrington visited me several times and, on one occasion, we were looking out of the third floor window of the Elliott cottage and saw a man collapse unconscious after being struck in the head by a ball sliced from the #7 fairway into the #8 fairway!

Perfect for Three Bachelors

by Janice Hamilton

Over the years, several people told me that our cottage, which is next door to St. Brendan’s Chapel, was once owned by the Catholic Church, but I didn’t know whether that was true. The house has three small bedrooms and three bathrooms upstairs, and what used to be a maid’s room and bathroom off the kitchen. As my mother said, it would have been perfect for three bachelors. Perhaps it was used as a summer vacation home for priests.

Last year, I visited York County registry of deeds office to see what I could find out about the property’s history. That meant researching two lots: lot #6 with the house, and the adjoining lot #8 with the garden, both described “on a plan of the Isaac Bickford Pool Farm divided into lots in April 1861 and as corrected in August 1864 by Dominicus Jordan.” (This plan is referenced in many early deeds at the Pool, however, I have yet to find a copy of it.)

The earliest record I found showed that, in 1865, Biddeford businessman Thomas H. Cole and two partners sold lot #6 to Nathaniel McBride. McBride sold it to Emma Estelle Goldthwaite in 1900 for $130. Emma and her husband Wright Goldthwaite must have built the house because, in 1914, they sold the lot, with the building, to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland for $3900. This suggests the City of Biddeford assessment database, which says the house was built around 1880, is incorrect – unless the house was built elsewhere and moved -- but it does prove that the church owned the house.

Postcard of Main Street. St. Brendan's has not yet been built (it opened in 1916) and our house, on the right, does not yet have dormer windows at the back. 

In 1928, the bishop sold the house to three people: Frances M. L. Foster and Laura Foster Robbins, of Biddeford, and Cornelia (Brookmire) Gillette, of Chicago. It was sold and resold several times over the next 20 years, until 1948, when Julia Foster Bartlett acquired it.

Julia and her husband, Edwin Bartlett, who is still remembered at the Abenakee Club for his knowledge of croquet rules, were from Milwaukee. The Bartletts came to the Pool in August and rented the cottage to my parents each July. In 1963, when the Bartletts decided they were getting too old to make the trip, they sold the house, fully furnished, to my parents.

The adjoining lot had a very different history, and revealed a big surprise: the City of Biddeford auctioned it off for non-payment of taxes. I discovered why in a 1913 newspaper article.¹

In the mid-1800s, lot #8 on the Bickford plan belonged to Daniel Holman, owner of Highland House, one of the Pool’s first hotels. As well as being a successful businessman, Deacon Holman, as he was known, was very religious.

Holman died in 1878, leaving his extensive land holdings at the Pool to his wife and, after her death, to his grandson, Walter Starkweather. Holman’s will stated that, if Starkweather had no children, the Maine Missionary Society was to inherit his property forever. According to the newspaper, Starkweather was childless, but the Maine Missionary Society was not keen on the inheritance. Since the land could never be sold, and was considered unproductive farmland of no value, no one even bothered to pay the taxes on it.

Frederick T. Brown of New York City, owner of the Sea View Inn, won all of Holman’s Pool real estate at auction, paid the taxes owing to the city, and paid $1,000 to the Maine Missionary Society to clear up the title in 1883. Brown died in 1898 and his heirs sold part of lot #8 in 1948. The new owners sold it to Julia Foster Bartlett later that year and she sold it to my parents at the same time as she sold them the cottage.

For more than a century, 42 Lester B. Orcutt Blvd. has had a unique history, but the names of many of those who owned it, including Isaac Bickford, Thomas H. Cole, Daniel Holman, Frederick T. Brown and members of the Foster family, also appear in the deeds of many other houses in the neighbourhood. 

Note:

1. “Last Will and Testament of Daniel Holman; An Interesting Document That Has Caused Much Trouble; Strange Instrument That Has Finally Resulted in the Brown Estate Possessing the Pool Property,” Biddeford Daily Journal, Dec. 8, 1913. On microfilm at the McArthur Library, Biddeford.