The Lincolnville Local: One day about a dozen years ago, while visiting Sharon Moody Pendleton’s shop, Grampa Hall’s, she gave me a small notebook her son had found while renovating his house. “I don’t know what it is,” she said, “but it’s old. Would the Historical Society want it?”

I took it home and started reading. It took a while to figure out that what I held were the minutes of some organization called the Local….

One hundred years ago this summer a small group of Lincolnville men, and one woman (who by the way, wasn’t yet allowed to vote), were engaged in persuading their neighbors that Socialism had solutions to the problems of the day.  

Lincolnville Socialists?

In the fall of 1911 the state Socialist party sent out a “parade of socialist speakers … to inspire … the cause of socialism.” Their audiences always included women, though they couldn’t yet vote, and entertainment was provided by local bands. In February 1912 the Lincolnville Local convened their first meeting at the newly-closed Rackliffe school, located on Beach Road near the South Chester Dean Road intersection. Their first decision was to order 100 copies of The Appeal, a Socialist publication; their second decision was to take no organized action in the upcoming town election. They would continue to meet twice a month for the next five years, finally disbanding when the U.S. entered World War I.

The Lincolnville Local claimed twenty members in good standing, with twenty-four men and one woman mentioned as attending during the five years they met. The average age of the attendees was 44; eleven were farmers, two were millmen, along with a cooper, a sailor, a painter, a mason, and a civil engineer. Four were boys in their early teens when they began attending meetings, young sons of the regulars. Three of these came to be regulars themselves toward the end. David H. Heal, who owned a sawmill in the Center and lived at 228 Main Street with his wife, Mary King Heal and two children, was the Local Secretary. This title denoted chairman; Horace Thurlow kept the minutes.

A little-noted part of our history is that both Knox and Waldo counties were in the forefront of labor reform movements in the late 19^th century, including, in 1877, the National Granite Cutters’ Union in the Rockland area, and the Union Labor Party, organized in 1886 in Prospect. The latter included fishermen, sailors, farmers, mechanics, and laboring men of all trades. It addressed control of the banking system and railroads, and opposed dealing in agricultural futures. All of these issues impacted the small, mostly subsistence farmers of Lincolnville and surrounding towns.

Then, in 1900 a Warren farmer, Norman Wallace Lermond (a distant relative of the Lincolnville Lermonds), became the leading spokesperson for the newly-formed Socialist Party in Maine, promising a “heaven on earth—a radical transformation of man and Society.” There followed a long list of orators, Socialist speakers who came to the state on behalf of their Party, visiting meeting halls, Granges, and Fourth of July picnics.

Besides distributing The Appeal and other Socialist leaflets around town, the Lincolnville Local planned entertainments: a free fish chowder supper at the 1912 Labor Day gathering, a 1913 Fourth of July program, and a 1916 band concert and lecture by Socialist S.E. Bearsdley. Most of the Lincolnville Town Band members at the time were Socialists (as were members of the Camden Town Band), and proceeds collected at their performances were turned over to the Local. As a political party the Socialists regularly fielded a slate of candidates for national, state and county office.

Public lectures by these prominent Socialist speakers were an important way for the Local to get their message out, and they brought James F. Carey, Anna Maley, Dan White, F.H. Maxfield as well as Beardsley to town to speak at the Old Church (today’s UCC), at the Town House (stood at corner of Town House and Belfast Roads), and at Cilley hall, a dance hall at the Marshall Cilley farm on Gould Road, since burned down.

Overseas World War I was breaking out. In May of 1914 a meeting was held at the Old Church to “discuss War and to show the Socialist remedy for it.” A year later the members voted on peace measures. Then on April 2, 1917 President Woodrow Wilson read a war message to Congress, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy.” Two days later the Lincolnville Local met to discuss this war talk and “other jingo tactics”. Two days after that the United States declared war on Germany, and events overtook the Socialist message. In early May the Local discussed “the so-called public safety meeting held at the Grange hall last evening”. It was obvious there would be no Socialist remedy for war after all. The Lincolnville Local of the Socialist Party was meeting for the last time.

What to make of this five-year progressive movement in the heart of our little town? A couple of dozen farmers and others, hard-pressed by the dismal economics of the day – bad land, distant markets, no cash, and looming war – tried to think their way out of their plight. They were convinced there must be a better way to organize the economy, and they did their best to persuade their neighbors of the same.

When the Great War finally ended, and the soldiers came home, circumstances for Lincolnville’s farmers were worse than ever. It would be another 60 or 70 years before the final dismantling of local agriculture; in recognizing the inherent problems with the economy, the Maine Socialist Party, in the first decades of the 20^th century, would prove prophetic.

Read about Lincolnville’s Socialists in more detail in Staying Put in Lincolnville, Maine: 1900-1950 (Available at Western Auto, Schoolhouse Museum or Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs ) Other sources include The Socialist Alternative: Utopian Experiments and the Socialist Party of Maine, 1895-1914, by Charles A. Scontras.  or through the Maine State Library.

A note from Librarian Sheila Polson: “The Lincolnville Community Library will be closed Tuesday through Saturday, September 2 through 6, for a holiday break. It will re-open Tuesday, September 9 from 5 to 8 p.m. Books that have been checked out may be returned during that time in the large box on the library porch. And thanks to everyone for their wonderful support of the library!”

Last week’s Lincolnville Band concert was cancelled, but will be held this week, Tuesday, 7 p.m. at Breezemere Park at the head of Nortons Pond in the Center. Don’t forget your lawn chair, bug spray, and sweater. You can also listen from your car if you wish.

This Wednesday, September 3rd, fitness instructor Becky Dunton will start an introductory one month series of fitness/yoga classes at the Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road. Each class will consist of 45 minutes of strength/cardio training followed by 45 minutes of yoga; cost is $15 per class, or $8 if you only want to do one segment. BYOE (bring your own equipment if you have it: yoga mat, towel, dumb bell weights. Weights aren’t necessary, but a mat is if you do the yoga segment.) Contact Becky or just show up on the 3rd.

If you haven’t had a chance to see Searsmont artist Nancy Glassman’s show at the Community building, stop by on the next two Thursdays during the weekly Soup Café, 11 a.m. to noon, or Sundays, 9-11 a.m. through the 14th.

The Soup Café, a delicious homemade soup lunch, is held at the Community Building every Thursday, noon to 1 p.m. and is starting its sixth month. Open to all, the meal is free, though donations are always welcome. If you’re working in town come by on your lunch hour; if you’re home with kids, bring them. The soup is good, and so’s the conversation. United Christian Church sponsors it, and volunteers take turns making soup, cookies, setting up and cleaning up.

If you’re coming to either the Community Building or United Christian Church in the next month you’ll come up to the “road closed” signs barricading Searsmont Road, but both buildings are still accessible as “local” traffic.

The L’ville Center Indoor Flea Market will be held Saturday, September 20^th at the Community Building. For table rentals, contact Mary Schulien at 785-3521.

Community Birthday Calendars are still available for pick-up, if you pre-ordered, or for sale if you didn’t. They’re $8 each, and if you had listings last year, they’ll still be on this year’s calendar. Proceeds from them, the 60^th annual issue!, go to the Historical Society. Originally, the Lincolnville Volunteer Fire Department sold them; the LHS took over the calendar over ten years ago.

Many people have wondered about the “Entering Lincolnville Center” signs that appeared on three roads into the Center in the last week or so. One is near Nortons Pond, one on Hope Road, and another on Belfast Road. A fourth will be erected on Searsmont Road after the culvert project is completed. The Lincolnville Community Alliance commissioned the signs, and Walt Simmons of Ducktrap Woodworking made them.

Sometime last winter/spring a small sign appeared at the end of Krystal Coombs’ driveway –  CHEI. Krystal’s a neighbor, and, being naturally nosy, every time we drove by I wondered what that meant. Then the other morning, while straightening up the Beach bulletin board, I spotted a flier for the Camden Hills Equine Inn: CHEI.

Krystal grew up with horses, working at horse farms after school, on week-ends and summer vacations; she says she was always at the barn. But then, as happens to so many of us, she says “I grew up…life got in the way, I stopped working on horse farms, moved away from horses completely. Married, divorced. Turned the big five O. And then turned the corner. My life began again last fall [when] I created my lifelong vision for my farm. From an empty field sprang my barn. The fencing came next. The schooling ring has just been finished. [Then]I found my dream horse with one phone call. This life will always have horses in it.”

The idea of sharing it with other horse owners led to the idea of the Camden Hills Equine Inn . With the riding trails of Camden Hills State Park practically at her front door, and her new barn with spacious and elegant stalls, rubber floor mats, window and center grates it’s the perfect place to bring a horse. The barn has a wide center aisle, water and electricity. The schooling ring is 70’ x 100’ and fenced. Krystal can find accommodations in the area for the human visitors as well, and offers guided rides. Though she’s not ready to leave her day job, she says what could be better than taking a day off to ride with her visitors?

Last week’s story about Joe and Elsie Nickerson brought a wonderful story from Pat Felton of Belfast, their granddaughter.

“I was the first grandchild, and lived with my Mom and Dad, Ruth and John Felton, in the apartment over Felton's Grocery in Camden,” she wrote. “During the war, most of the adults in our family worked in the Camden Shipyard. Afterward, Joe and Elsie returned to the many work tasks full-time on the farm, in the woods, cooking for others, and many other things. After my family added two more children to the apartment, I'm sure I was able to spend more time on the farm. The day I was to return to my first-grade class at the Knowlton St. School, I had my vacation extended a few more days when I came down with the mumps! None of the rest of the family caught the mumps; and Gram gave me a little extra TLC at the farm.

 “I probably got to go to more than one Grange supper where I tried to be very helpful setting tables and cutting pie slices. I had my hand in many kitchen tasks at the farm from making cookies, shelling peas, and rolling out the donut dough. Twisting the dough into odd shapes and dropping them into the bubbling fat was one of my favorites. I could eat molasses donuts all day, if allowed to do so. A not-so-favorite memory was being asked to bring the cows down from the field up near the blueberry grounds. I recall that Suzy and Mazy were always in a hurry to get through the gate before I had pulled away the two sections of the gate, and often tried to push their way through before I could get out of the way. Needless to say, it frightened me until I found a better way to do the task.

 “The feelings that remain deep within me from Gram and Grampa have stayed with me all my life. Every chance they had, they would find time to help others. I'm sure that was the same as what we see today in Lincolnville, and in many other rural communities. And they helped each other, such as when either of them had a health issue. Gram could carefully skin out a pelt after finding an animal in a trap, if Grampa was over to Togus awhile. The same thing with using King or Doll plowing, or using any other farm implement. When the dinner bell rang, though, it was time to head to the house and enjoy a great meal - and often some great stories after. No one ever tired of Grampa's stories - on a motorcycle in France during WW-I, hunting, fishing, logging, trapping, and a memorable game of cribbage! And his laugh! You can never forget that laugh and how contagious it was. I have to say that Bert Eugley and Uncle Stanley Wellman were close runner's up with their laughter.

“Yes, my grandparents didn't have a whole lot except for their land. When someone had a need, though, they were always ready to lend a hand even if it made their own day much longer, with never a thought of doing otherwise. I only wish so many more children could have such meaningful experiences, even for just a week or two.”

To be included in This Week in Lincolnville, contact Diane, ragrugs@midcoast.com with events, family milestones, wildlife sightings, anything to do with our town.