A taste of local flavor

Hello neighbors!

This week, we wanted to offer a taste of what everyday life was like in Bridgton at the dawn of summer over one hundred years ago. So instead of any one big article on breaking news, we have instead taken selections from the shorts column, titled “Breezy Short Notes of Local Flavor,” in hopes to give an idea of the sort of weekly events the News liked to report on. These short tidbits often filled an entire page, with a ‘department’ for each town served by the paper. This was the place to post notes on local construction, the travels of Bridgton residents, medical appointments, fishing and hunting catches, anything and everything the people of town ought to know. Given how much more significant an out-of-state visit was in those days of limited travel, such things as going to Conway or Portsmouth were considered news enough to make the paper.

As a final note before we begin, you may be struck reading these articles at just how many incidents of fire were reported. In these local happenings, we find descriptions of two major fires in our area this week alone, one in Harrison and the other on the shores of Highland Lake. On top of this, in the article on the construction of Mr. Meserve’s new house, I must reveal that the timbers he is using from the “old Bridgton House” were salvaged after its destruction by fire, and the closing article about a typo in the News edition of the week earlier is explained away as the result of the fact that the Bridgton News itself had just survived its second fire – this time a small one, but enough to upset the printing room and damage some of the typefaces.  And this is by no means an oddity in these early papers.  

For the whole of the 19th century, and the first several decades of the 20th, here in rural Maine, fires were a common and often widely destructive event. With most houses lit by candles and later gas lamps, and owing to the solid wood construction of most of our buildings, a fire was always just one mistake away. Houses, mills, even entire towns burned during this period, and while we sense the damage it did was very real, these incidents are not reported with the horror which they might be today. These things were far too common to be surprising. It was not until the installation of electricity in Bridgton, some parts of which did not see connections until the 1940s, that this sad fact of life gradually faded away.

These come from the Bridgton News of May 21, 1915:

Breezy Short Notes of Local Flavor

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Mrs. Perley Smith and children are on a visit to friends and relatives in Boston and vicinity.

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The big fire over across Long Lake on the South Harrison ridge, Tuesday evening, was the Sanborn cooper shop. It made a big fire and the report was rampant that it was the Randall stock farm buildings.

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The salmon have begun to take the hook at Long Lake and several good catches were made the first of the week. Frank Richardson is high line so far. He hooked and landed a salmon the first of the week that measured thirty inches from tip to tip and weighed over 16 pounds.

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Rather an amusing spectacle was witnessed a few days ago on the grounds where Howard E. Burnham has a crew at work putting up his bungalow. A roustabout, who happened upon the scene of action, was looking about and in some manner fell into the big mortar bin which was about half filled with plastering mortar, all ready to spread. He came out of the escapade a wiser and much subdued man.

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Claude P. Meserve isn’t letting the grass grow under his feet for a moment. He has the foundation in for his new garage and he has already started in on the superstructure. The building is to have a frontage of the entire width of the two lots on which were formerly the Corser dwelling house and the machine shop, and at present he is going to build about thirty-five feet, adding to the depth of the building as he sees fit. Much of the lumber taken from the old Bridgton House is being utilized in the new building.

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Mrs. Olive Bachelder, late Saturday afternoon, discovered an incipient fire in the grove of Dr. J.L. Bennett, at the foot of Highland Lake. She gave the alarm, and as there were several in the neighborhood, a crowd was quickly at the scene of the blaze and the fire was quickly quenched after it had burned over an area of some fifty square feet. There was a brisk north wind blowing and the dry pine spills made excellent kindling, and had the fire once got under headway, it must have wrought sad havoc in the Shorey as well as the Bennett Grove and might easily have communicated itself to some of the buildings in the village. It might be easy to guess just how the fire started, but the writer not knowing for a certainty lets that pass with the admonition ‘not to let it happen again.’

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The funny man of the Portland Express Advertiser, not taking into consideration that the mechanical plant of the News has just passed through a baptism of fire and water, and discovering the omission of a dollar sign in one of the ads, seizes the opportunity to remark as follows:

The Quadrupedal Ladies of Bridgeton

“Women, it takes but an afternoon to earn a beautiful pair of 4 shoes.” – Bridgton News

The Boston Globe, falling upon the same item, likewise chortles:

But Don’t the Bridgton Ladies Wear 11-2s?

“Women, it takes but an afternoon to earn a beautiful pair of 4 shoes.” – Bridgton News

All of which goes to show that a one-inch advertisement in the News circulates, and is read, in all parts of the country.”

Till next time!

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