DEAR SUN SPOTS: Don’t know if you’ve had any responses about the bottle for Dr. True’s Elixir (July 6), so I’m sending you a little bit.

Dr. True’s Elixir, a laxative, was invented in the 1850s and was one of many elixirs and “patent medicines” sold all across the nation in the 19th century and into the 20th. It was widely advertised in newspapers and old magazines, including the Lewiston Evening Journal and Daily Sun.

Dr. True lived in Auburn (then Lewiston) and was a physician locally for a while but mainly the proprietor of his Globe Drug Store and manufacturer of that patent “worm” medicine.

I discovered that Sun Spots, reprinted part of a very informative story about him and the product on Aug. 27, 2008.

Readers can see one of several photos of a vintage bottle at antiquebottleshop.com (http://tinyurl.com/d5hqgyj); this one is very sharp.

Hope this is helpful. The interested party also could do some research on this in their local library. — A. via email

ANSWER: A. is right about the previous Sun Spots column, which can be read at sunjournal.com/node/60037. It originally appeared in the Lewiston Daily Sun on Sept. 17, 1921.

DEAR SUN SPOTS: I hated the term “poor farm,” although both Lewiston and Auburn called them that. The Auburn City Farm, as it should have been known, was at 1250 Turner St., the site of Central Maine Community College now (formerly the Central Maine Vocational Technical Institute).

When I was a student at Webster Grammar School in the 1930s, I became friends with Verner Bridges (alter Verner Hobbs). Her parents were Rex and Geneva Bridges. He was the superintendent and she the matron of the farm.

Indigent people in Auburn were housed in rooms similar to a boarding house. Mrs. Bridges cooked the meals, often for as many as 30 people, and Mr. Bridges tended to the farm, the gardens, the piggery and other animals. Several “handymen” were employed to help with chores.

I spent many summer vacations with Verner. The piggery was a couple of hundred yards from the main house and was a source of delight to me. Little pink baby pigs were born every day, and the Auburn garbage was collected daily and fed to the many pigs who inhabited the place.

In later years the garbage had to be cooked, but as I remember it there was no cooking done at that time. I remember the time Verner and I rode in the back of a truck to Livermore Falls accompanied by a hug sow.

My memories of the Auburn City Farm are vivid. I also remember that an unpleasant odor permeated the place, but as a kid I got used to because for me it was a fun place.

Verner and I remained friends throughout our lives until her death a few years ago. She had a sister, Thelma, whose husband worked for the Lewiston Sun Journal. — Dot Buchanan, dbbent@roadrunner.com

ANSWER: What a nice story. Sun Spots heard similar tales from her grandmother, who spent some of her childhood living on the poor farm her father ran in West Virgina. Some good coming out of unfortunate circumstances.

DEAR SUN SPOTS: In response to the question about the Auburn poor farm (July 6), the poor farm in Lewiston was a huge imposing brick building located behind the National Guard facility on Goddard Road.

Growing up in the 1950s within a few miles of the farm, I recall seeing the poor people scouring the woods for empty bottles they could return to the local markets for cash.

When the farm closed,the Androscoggin County Community Action Program, now known as Community Concepts, worked out of that building, which was eventually torn down. — Claudette Therriault, ctherriault@myfairpoint.net

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