Temperatures are falling. There will soon be a crunch of frost on the morning grass and a glaze of ice on every puddle.

It’s the time of year when L-A residents of past generations began watching for a hard freeze on lakes and ponds. Skating would soon be possible, and this was a passionate pastime for many of that day.

One of them was Addison Roscoe Whitman of East Auburn. He was said to hold the Lake Auburn skating record. The record wasn’t for speed or races won – it was for commitment over many years.

In October 1915, Addison was 84 years old and he recalled his youth in a two-page article in the Lewiston Journal Illustrated Magazine Section. He remembered buying his first pair of skates for “four-pence, ha’penny” (12 cents). They had been made by a local blacksmith and, like all old skates, they were strapped to the bottom of boots.

Whitman used those same skates from an early age right through his 82nd year.

“I have seen Lake Auburn a glare of ice, like one great piece of glass, many a time in the winter, and I have skated over its surface from one end to the other so that I know its shoreline like a book,” he told a reporter.

Whitman recalled a day when the ice was “temptingly smooth” and it looked like a heavy snowfall would soon end the skating season. He and about 20 other young people set out in the morning “right after breakfast and skated all day long, scarcely taking time for dinner or supper, until 11 o’clock that night.”

He said, “I often wondered how many miles we covered that day.”

Today, an ice arena seems to be the only way to experience skating. There are now year-round opportunities at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee and at the newly expanded Norris Ingersoll Arena in Auburn. The Ingersoll Arena at Pettengill Park is just a stone’s throw from the brook and small pond where, particularly in the 1950s, outdoor skating to music under the lights provided many treasured memories.

Whitman’s stories of skating across Lake Auburn are just part of a wealth of East Auburn history from his memory, as well as from a descendent, Arthur Whitman, who resides in one of the houses of many Whitmans who shaped that part of early Auburn.

The Whitman family lived initially in North Auburn (1800 to 1840s) on the Stage Route from Portland and on to Turner, Rumford and Rangeley. Zenas Whitman (1767-1849) and his family were among the first settlers of Auburn.

His son, Zenas Whitman Jr., built a house in East Auburn on property purchased from Samuel Berry, who had the original grant, including much of the property around the outlet of the lake, according to information provided by Arthur Whitman. That house, which was later enlarged to accommodate a growing family with five children, is now the Fireside Stove Shop on Route 4.

Whitman said there are six or seven houses in East Auburn either owned by Whitman family members or which were lived in by descendants of Zenas Whitman Jr.

In the early 1800s boyhood of Addison Whitman, there were only 21 families between the village and the Turner town line. Whitman’s memory in 1915 painted vivid pictures of those homes and business. He recalled youngsters “coasting” on their sleds from the heights of Mt. Gile down the long and straight Oak Hill Road.

He told of the old red schoolhouse at East Auburn where “Wash Ray, as we called him, put a ladder against the chimney and boarded in the top.” When the morning fires were started, the school smoked up and the students enjoyed a “forced holiday.”

Addison Whitman also talked about early industry at East Auburn. He told about a maker of “looking-glass frames” and a mill that produced shoe pegs.

His 1915 account described water power to various mills near the lake’s outlet. There was a veneer mill, a mill that turned out shingles, clapboards and bedposts, and a gristmill, as well as the village’s early “clothing mill” where woolen goods were finished and dyed. Residents brought in their rolls of wool cloth that measured from 12 to 25 yards, with a pound of wool required for each yard.

That dye house was also an early dance hall for area residents.

From the earliest days, Whitman has been a prominent name in East Auburn.

Across the lake, that family’s contributions were recognized a couple of years ago when Spring Road was officially named Whitman Spring Road.