What follows are some clippings from Page 1 of the December 10, 1896 edition of the RANGELEY LAKES newspaper. This edition was so interesting that I never got passed page 1 before finding some interesting material. What follows below is from a feature entitled “Recollections” found above the fold. Just as we today enjoy looking back to get a “snapshot” of what 1890’s Rangeley was like, they were doing the very same thing in “Recollections” which harkened back to the 1840’s. Often, the person most depended upon by the editor, Harry P. Dill, for these memories of early Rangeley was a sage old gentleman who went by the pen name of “Old Laker”. I am led to believe that in 1890 the reader was just expected to know who exactly Old Laker was, because I have never seen where Editor Dill shares his real name, however I believe this was none other than Deacon Lake who homesteaded on the north shore of Rangeley lake up towards Oquossoc. In this edition Old Laker tells of some of the earlier Native Americans of the St Francis tribe, witches, and ghosts. Of particular interest was the Dartmouth educated Native American, Annanse. The locally noteworthy Chief Mettaluc (Mettalak) was of the St. Francis. I will have to contact Dartmouth at some point to learn if more information on Annanse is archived there. The Historical Society would appreciate any information regarding Native Americans in the region. Enjoy what follows and be sure to get outside and make some outdoor history of your own! Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays Everyone!
(Editor’s note: Contemporary commentary in italics, otherwise copy is reprinted just as it was in 1896, although some paragraphs or lines are omitted for space reason’s).
Vintage map of Rangeley Lake (1861) details the names of early landowners located around the lake.
Recollections
Good Mrs. Daniel Bunker believed in witches, and to stimulate the faith of others in the uncanny creatures, she used to tell how one of her mother’s cows was so beset by those agents of his satanic majesty that she gave bloody milk. So, one night, Mrs. Butterfield, armed with a butcher knife and guided by a caudle in a tin lantern, went to the barn and cut off a piece of poor Molly’s tail. The result was as expected, for immediately after, the cow stopped giving bloody milk and an old woman in the neighborhood was found to be nursing a very sore finger. But a skeptical neighbor of Mrs. Bunker suggested that the location of the wound on the witch neither logically, nor anatomically corresponded to that inflicted on the cow. Nevertheless, Mrs. Bunker’s faith in the witchery and the remedy remained unshaken.
There was a little colony of Indians of the St. Francis tribe in the settlement in the 30’ s and 40’ s. The “Big Indian” of the party was Louis Annanse, a graduate of Dartmouth College, his aged sister, two nephews (the brothers Jerome and Elijah Wasmimmet) Jerome’s wife and several children. They occupied a log cabin on the road leading to Nathaniel Toothaker’s and Abraham Roses’. There the women made prettily colored baskets. The men tanned moose hides and made mittens of them. In harvest time they worked for the farmers. Down in the woods sloping westerly to North Cove, Jerome and Elijah smoked and softened their moose peltry to a fine tint of yellow their entire “plant” consisted of a tin pan of smoldering chips set in a hole in the ground and having as a chimney a green moose hide drawn around it cylindrically to absorb the smoke. It was a bit of savage life calculated to impress a boy observer very keenly.
I think the first moose taken alive in that region was captured by Jerome and Elijah. It was a young one, and while it was feeding on lily pads in a shallow of Cupsuptic lake, the Indians stealthily approached and pulled it into their boat, they brought it to
Deacon Lake’s where it became so far domesticated that, after roaming the woods all day for food, it would return to its pen at night. Its favorite food was the blossoms of fireweed called “wickup.”
More than fifty years ago Annanse wrote for William Dodge a geographical description of the lake region, including the nomenclature of the several bodies of water. I think it varied somewhat from the names as now spelled and pronounced. If Mr. Dodge has preserved that writing, its reproduction in the “Rangeley Lakes” would doubtless afford great satisfaction to the readers of the paper. It was Annanse who told Capt. Kimball that the once pine-shaded point between Lake Cupsuptic and the outlet stream from the Kennebago and Rangeley Lakes, was an ancient Indian burial place. It was a charming spot before it was spoiled by flooding.
Speaking of witches reminds me that there was, according to Mrs. Joe Bowen (she who eloped through the woods to Canada with the Indian Jerome), at least saw one ghost in the old settlement. It was a young one and he entered the Bowen cabin through a window, paused a moment by the bedside of a sleeping child and then disappeared through the outer door. What came of this visitation I do not recall, except the story made a profound impression upon one youthful listener. Considerably later than the date of this apparition Bowen’s eldest son (William) fell sick, and when he was thought to be near death Bowen called at a neighbor’s and begged a winding-sheet, which was then the regulation habiliment of the dead. But the boy survived and lived to manhood, spending his youth in the service of Abner Toothaker. When at school somebody shewed to him a clipping from the Franklin Register, telling of the elopement of his mother, he offered to give ten cents for it, but I think the offer was refused.
To revert to the subject of ghosts, the late Mrs. Joseph Frazier used to “see things” of a startling character- One of them was the illuminated outline of a coffin in the darkness of the night. Another was the “appreghostian”, or double, of her husband when he was bodily far away. Mr. and Mrs. Frazier, who moved from Wilton in the early 30’s to what is now Dallas Plantation, were disciples of the pioneer Mormon, Joseph Smith. In the 40’s they lived near the outlet of Dodge Pond, and later on near the school lot. Job Chase, who lived south of Dodge Pond in the 30’s, on the farm cleared by a Mr. Thomas, married a sister of Mrs. Frazier—a Butterfield.
Old Laker
[Note]. The written geographical description of the lake region, mentioned above by “Old Laker”, is not supposed to be in existence. Mr. Dodge informs Rangeley Lakes that when he left his home in Rangeley, about 55 years ago,” he left the book behind him, and has never seen it since. It was about 1836 that Mr. Dodge went on several moose hunting trips, with Annanse, occasionally going over the line into Canada. They killed a great many moose.
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