Names fill the blackboard at the front of the room that was once school to children who lived at Lincolnville Beach. As many as 42 of them, first graders through eighth, sat in the neat rows of desks, some of them siblings as families were large then. The littlest scholars sat closest to the teacher, while the oldest were in the back, some appearing old enough to be out of high school. In fact for some, grade eight would mark the end of their education.

The Beach School, District 17 as it’s called in town documents, closed in 1947 along with the four other remaining one room schools, when the new Lincolnville Central School was built.

The names are written in chalk; for several years after the Historical Society had turned the former classroom into a museum, visitors were asked to sign the blackboard if they’d attended a one-room school in Lincolnville. Eventually, the board filled up with names and a sliding plexiglass cover was installed to protect it.

I frequently study that blackboard, most of the names calling up a face, a gesture, a voice. All but a very few are just a memory now. And this past week-end one more is gone. Fred Heald, at nearly 94, passed away at home. If you live in Lincolnville you may be familiar with the name Heald, sometimes Heal. There are a lot of them; it’s a name embedded in the ancestry of many folks living in the area, an old family to be sure.

There seems to be a musical gene running through that family, back to old Dave Heal (to distinguish him from subsequent Dave Heals) one of the original members of the Lincolnville Town Band which was founded in 1870 or so. Musicians tend to crop up in every generation, including Fred’s late son Don, and his daughter Jane, brother Don, niece Ann, nephew Ernie. Fred loved to sing, and along with his brother sang in the UCC’s Wing and a Prayer Choir.

When Wally and I moved to town in 1970, a couple “from away” was, to say the least, a novelty, even though Wally had grown up a mere 50 miles away in Augusta. Perhaps I was the exotic one, the city girl, a Midwesterner of all things. But no, he was just as suspect as me. We were strangers

Today I bet half of us (pop. 2,164) weren’t born here, didn’t grown up here, perhaps didn’t even work here or raise our families here. Of course, many of us have brought Lincolnville natives into the world, sending those kids, our offspring, to LCS and Camden for high school, and in some cases even seeing them stay on (or come back from youthful adventure).

Yeah, I know all about the cat who had her kittens in the oven; you can’t call them biscuits. Still, every single one of our oldest families were once immigrants, starting when Nathan Knight, who is considered Lincolnville’s first permanent settler in 1770, came from away. Just like today’s newcomers they brought new ideas from their original homes with them. Imagine how the Abenaki who summered on our shores felt about these intruders, setting their nets, hunting game with guns, cutting down the forest.

Those early settlers were completely absorbed with basic survival: building log cabins, clearing enough land to plant crops for food, hauling rocks out of the way, bringing babies into the world. By the turn of the 19th century, thirty years after Nathan and Lydia Knight, water-powered mills were turning logs into boards and grain into meal. Ships, built on the shore, brought some measure of prosperity through trade with the wider world. The native peoples are barely mentioned in the chronicles we have from that time, mere incidentals in the daily course of the newcomers’ lives.

Eventually, with basic infrastructure in place, there was energy left over from all this labor to begin setting up a government. In 1802 the two original settlements – Canaan and Ducktrap Plantations – were incorporated as one town: Lincolnville. And people continued to move in. By 1850 Lincolnville’s population had peaked at about 2,150.  Still many of our supposedly original families didn’t arrive until the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Then something shifted. Perhaps it was the lure of jobs, of making actual money and not just the subsistence farming that Lincolnville offered. By the 1870s, a mere century after Nathan and Lydia’s arrival, their great-grandchildren, as Arno Knight’s diary describes, were traveling all over the place. To Framingham to work in a straw shop, to Dedham to labor on somebody else’s farm for cash, to a Rockland to teach school, to Colorado to mine for silver. The Knights came and went for a time, and most settled eventually in Lincolnville, but the tide had turned.

The middle years of the 20th century saw a population half of its 1850 peak. These are the years when those on our chalkboard list were growing up. A good many of them left for greener pastures after high school, working and raising their families in more prosperous towns out of state. And then came home to retire.

Coming and going. Much like today’s newcomers. I attribute the beginning of this influx of people to the early 70s, not surprisingly, the years Wally and I along with many of our friends came to Lincolnville. The place of our birth, of our growing up and coming of age is only one fact of our lives. What counts, it seems to me, is where we are today.

And so, if you live here, you’re from here. Not Illinois. Not Augusta. Here on the shores of Penobscot Bay, among the Camden hills of Megunticook, Cameron, Frohock and Garey, on the slopes of Masalin Mountain, on the edges of the Coleman pond marsh near where Nathan and Lydia built their log cabin.

And more. If you spend just a few months at camp, or even a modern home on Pitcher or Nortons or Levensellar or overlooking the Bay, then spend the other months dreaming about it, you’re from here too.

Enough of divisions. Enough of “us versus them”. We’re all from this special place, and lucky for that.

Each of us has his/her own legacy, be it musical talent or a way with figures or just an easygoing nature. Fred Heald left me with the memory of his heartfelt singing, sitting in his pew right across the aisle from mine.

The Election

From Dave Kinney:
“The Town Office staff has now issued in excess of 900 absentee ballots.  This number is more than the total number of voters that voted in the July elections and nearly 50% of registered voters. 

“If you are voting via absentee ballot we encourage you, once you are comfortable with your selections, to return your ballot to the Town Office well in advance of Election Day.  Ballots can be returned via the mail or in person to the Town Office at the front counter, in either the mail slot or the new ballot drop box.  For ballot drop offs on weekends or during the hours that the Town Office is closed (or when we are open and you just don’t want to come in), the mail slot is located just to the right of the front door.  All items deposited there go into a locked metal receptacle.  The ballot drop box is located adjacent to the front walkway directly in front of the handicapped parking spot.  Both locations are checked periodically (including weekends) by staff.  If one drop off seems like it is full please use the other.”

Of course, you can also decide to vote the old-fashioned way, in person at the polls in the Lynx gym on Tuesday, November 3. That’s what I plan to do, and since nearly half the town’s voters have already requested absentee ballots, there shouldn’t be long lines, right? But sadly, there’ll be no bake sale, always a big draw on Election Day. Dave says that all ballot clerk positions are now filled; apparently there have been several people volunteering to help, a good sign for future elections.

Broadband Survey

If you haven’t already filled it out, the Broadband committee has put together a survey which they ask every resident to fill out. There were several questions you might not know the answers to, but fill out what you can. Either use the survey that came in the mail to all households or do it online here.

The Great Disappointment

Nearly 180 years ago this Thursday a number of Lincolnville families trudged up to the ledges overlooking Megunticook, prepared to meet their Maker at midnight, Oct. 22, 1844. William Miller, a charismatic preacher from New York state had been spreading the prophecy all over New England that Judgement Day was imminent, that day in fact. Needless to say, those folks who had neglected to get in hay or wood or food for the winter, and even given away their farms, were disappointed.

Rosey Gerry has been leading a walk up to what became known as the Millerite Ledges on Oct. 22 for the past couple of decades. It’s a fascinating combination of brisk, early morning hike up the mountain and history lecture as Rosey points out cellar holes along the way and tells stories. The group gathers at the end of Maidens Cliff Road (just up from the Youngtown Inn off Youngtown Road) where you can park, between 6:30-6:45 a.m. Bundle up; it’s likely to be chilly!

Condolences

Sadly, High Street lost another long-time resident when Joanne McKee passed away last week. Joanne was librarian at Lincolnville Central School for many years. Sympathy to her husband, sons and families.

And of course, condolences to Fred Heald’s family and friends.