A hundred autumns ago, Mainers flocked to fairs just as they do today. In 1902, beautiful weather brought large crowds to Livermore Falls for the Androscoggin County Fair. Afterwards, a correspondent for the Lewiston Evening Journal was eager to report the prizes awarded by the Androscoggin Agricultural Society for the traditional cow, sheep, swine, poultry and vegetable competitions.

“No agricultural fair should ever be permitted to degenerate into a mere midway,” the unnamed correspondent observed.

The lack of magicians performing stunts such as lying on beds of nails or eating fire “added to the value of the fair as an educator,” he stressed.

In addition to being educated, the crowds were sober. The correspondent was happy to note that “not a single drunken man has been seen on the grounds,” thanks to the “no liquor” rule.

Eighty-six-year-old Mr. A.P. Fuller of Livermore Falls was a regular at the Androscoggin Fair. He had moved to the area as a teenager, when “it was a wild county, and they didn’t have fairs in those days.” Fuller was described as “straight as an arrow and still hale and hearty.”

“The young fellows don’t want to follow me in a hay field I can tell you,” he boasted on fair day.

The Androscoggin County Fair was followed by the Maine State Fair that year in Lewiston. The State Fair’s culinary show drew delightfully-named desserts (delicate, ribbon and sunshine cakes) and handiwork (point lace handkerchiefs and patchwork quilts made of silk or unbleached cotton) as well as the latest in domestic technology.

To the Journal, the display of Glenwood cooking and heating ranges was “one of the most attractive spots in the exhibition hall.” Fairgoers marveled at the ovens lined with fireproof asbestos to keep the temperature at an even heat.

The Glenwood Company was so excited about the since-banned mineral it even gave away asbestos mats for the kitchen.

The State Fair did not escape the fakir entirely. In “Professor” Bonnette’s show, the performer was taken aloft by a hot air balloon and “shot” from a cannon.

Anxious fair-goers were told that in Rochester, N.H., the Professor’s parachute hadn’t opened until his feet hit the ground, landing him in the hospital for seven months. A similar mishap had put his wife in the hospital for five years.

However, at the Maine State Fair in Lewiston in 1902, the Professor’s hot air balloon hovered over the fairgrounds, and he sailed out of his cannon and floated gently down to his spellbound audience without injury.

Luann Yetter has researched and written a history column for the Sun Journal for the past nine years. She teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington.