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Go To: Home : Participating Schools
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Greenville Middle School
Greenville Middle School : Lake Lore
Do you know anything about Moosehead Lake? We know the basics, but
we’re going to learn more. We’re the class of 2011 at Greenville Middle
School, part of Union 60. We will be interviewing residents and experts
who know stories about Moosehead Lake. This information will be posted
on this site. We hope we will learn more so that we can share the
information with you. |
Written by Henry Hersey (grade 7)
Heard from: Linda McBrierty
Linda McBrierty read in a book
This is a folk tale of a family called the Meservey's in 1835. It all started one day when the mom of three kids was cooking bread on a fire. The dad of the family and two of the older boys were out working. The mom went outside to check her bread on this nice summer day and she saw a group of Indians. She ran inside and hid with her baby girl. After a little while the Indians were gone, and she went outside to check the bread. The bread was gone. The Indians took the bread. They must have smelled it when they were hunting.
A few weeks later her husband and two sons were out working again. The Indians came back and left them a bunch of fish in return for the bread they had took. Indian Hill is that name because of what the Indians did at that time.
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Tommy Roberts has lived here all his life. He was born and raised here. He works as a forester and is still living in Greenville, Maine today. When he came out of high school he worked as a logger on the log drive for the last two years in 1975. They used the Katahdin as a tow boat to pull the booms. The Katahdin pulled the wood to the east outlet. Of course there was more then one log drive at that time. Every company painted there wood a different color and the loggers would pick out there color for there company, as the logs drifted along the river. There were a lot of different experiences that happened on the log drive. Tommy Robert's father was a logger too. He went to the Greenville High school. When he got through school there were a lot of jobs in the woods. He decided to become a deckhand on the Katahdin pulling booms to the East Outlet in the summer only.
One of these story is very unusual. One time on Sandbar Island. Tommy Roberts and his crew went to pick up a boom. They always saw a lot of animals swimming in the water such as deer, bear, moose, and they even saw a red squirrel one time.On their way they saw a moose swimming in the deep water. So, what they did is they took the Boom Jumper (a little boat in case there were any problems on board) and drove the little boat up to the moose. There were about four men with him. One of those men's name was Freddy Munster. When they were really close to the moose Freddy Munster sat on the moose and rode it in the water.
Another story that happened on the lake. One day while towing a boom from Spencer Bay. The weather was very calm and foggy. It was an unusual weather. It was so foggy you couldn't even see your hand in front of your face. The crew on board couldn't park the boat on Wilson pond it was way to foggy. So, they decided to call it a night. They anchored the boat and went to bed. When they woke up in the morning the boom was wrapped all around the boat.
These stories are true but hard to believe. Hopefully these stories interested you as much as they did me.
Written By:
Milli Ehringhaus
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This story was told by Mr. Fenn himself. rewritten by David Shea. 24 years ago Mr. Fenn first moved to Greenville. He hunts and fishes. He told a story about flint. flint is a green color. Flint would make arrowhead and a Axes. he also told a story about the chef. The chef name was kineow. The women and kids would paddle from their camp to mouse mountain. where they would hide from the wars and threats. He told us that The women would sometimes be called squaws.
from
David
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Teller: Joe Munster
On Kineo Mountain there are Indian burial grounds. The Indians did not want white people on there grounds. So when white people would go on Kineo to camp out for the long fishing trips, it would feel like the Indians were pushing down their hearts to scare them away.
One day Joe Munster and his brother were around the woods. They saw a 350lbs moose. Joe's brother bet him he couldn't catch the moose with his bare hands. So then Joe went out and caught the moose. After he dragged it out of the woods he let it go.
When some one would die from the log drive. The crew would take that persons lunch box and hang it in a tree in remembrance of them.
Joe's exact words:
“Always remember where you come from and who you are because History repeats it self.”
Written By: Haylie Genoa |
By: Tristan Richards
Heard from: Janet Chasse
Nickname:
Janet Chasse: Heard from her grandparents.
My grandmother came from the Mayo family. When she graduated from college she worked at some camps. Sometimes she would ride her horse to long pond to see her dad. She would also carry a little pistol in her pocket because she would be riding her horse through the woods all by herself. Then she got there all she had to do was slap the horse and then it would return to the camp she came from on its own. Also one time when she got older her brother George got a new rifle for Christmas. He was 13 and he went out hunting with his friend. He came back saying that his stomach hurt and wasn't feeling good. They called a doctor and he said that George had appendicitises. He had surgery right on their kitchen table because they couldn't get him to a hospital. He died while he was having surgery and my grandmother heard her mom scream and she said she would never forget the sound.
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Skeletons in the Closet
Bill Folsom, my grandfather of Rockwood, Maine claims that this is a true story.
Most of you don't know this, but Maine is the first dry state. By that I mean Prohibition became law around 1857. But, it never became a completely dry state as the northern Maine woods was to big and the law enforcement agency to small to keep alcohol from being made and smuggled in. Now this story is about two brothers who knew that mens desiring a refreshing taste was away for them to get rich.
Now going back one hundred and twelve years ago. To 1895. Two brothers Nelson, a teamster and Henry, a hotel proprietor. Decided to go into the bootlegging business. They thought that they could buy whiskey, rum, gin, and other other alcohol leg lay in Canada smuggle it across the boarder via woods roads and other routes that were not manned by boarder agents and/or revenue agents.
Nelson's job was to get the illegal alcohol. He would go to Canada and arrange for wagon loads of the stuff to be delivered to such and such a place on the Maine Canadian border at such and such a time where he Nelson would meet him with an empty wagon and they trade wagons and trade wagons. Nelson would return to Moosehead with the contraband.
Henry's job was to store the alcohol and sell it to thirsty lumberjacks. He owned a chain of hotels from dover to Jackman. But, in 1895 our transportation system in the Moosehead lake region was vastly different from what it is today. to get from dover to Greenville most people took the Bangor and piscucataquis (B and P) railroad. To go from Greenville to Rockwood most people took a steam boat like the Katadin in summer an in winter took the Canadian Pacific (CP) to summerset Jct. then took the Maine central to Kineo docks in Rockwood. To go to Jackman they would continue on the CP.
Henry had a hotel in Jackman a hotel in Greenville and one in Dover. For a few years they had a good thing going and both were considered nice, successful, upstanding business men. They were well liked and well thought of. However, as is human nature, they began to think bigger and the idea of getting richer became part of their larger schemes.
If they could get more alcohol, and get more thirsty customers at their hotels they would soon be rich enough to retire. There was no shortage of Lumberjacks coming and going in the area and they'd were always thirsty for daemon rum. Also there were many city slickers who came to the woods looking for adventure, fun and rum. They could count on Henry and Nelson to fulfill their wants and needs.
By 1905 Henry hoped to build hotels at the confluence of the north and south branches of the Prescott near saboomik, Kineo, and Sugar Island. He tried to by land where there were no existing or buy the hotel outright where one already existed. The Soboomook House, Kineo House were not for sale. So he purchased land from Levi Folsom on the east shore of North bay of Moosehead Lake.
He was in the process of preparing the cellar hole for the foundation of a Hotel to Rival the Kineo Hotel when there was a call from the sheriff that his brother's dead body had been found in the woods just across the border west of Penobscot Lake.
In the fallowing year Henry underwent great financial difficulties. For two reasons, #1 was that he no longer was able to provide the alcohol that helped make his hotel business successful. #2 Was because the authorities were unable to arrest anyone for his brothers death, so Henry hired a private investor gator to solve the murder. The investigation was so costly that he had to sell off the land and some of his hotels.
The murder is still unsolved, but the fact that the hotels were run as successful businesses well into the 1960's showed that Henry and Nelson could have lived a long and prosperous life. There is still physical evidence of the hotel foundations in the Moosehead lake area. There is also the historical record of the murder of Nelson.
For more information check with the Jackman and moose River historical society. And/or Greenville historical society.
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George Wescott was in his early 60s from Rhode Island and he came up to go deer hunting in the 1980s out by Rum Ridge. He was hunting with two friends Ester and Bill Wallis. They went hunting during the day and it started snowing. It was 30ºF. George got wet and cold got hypothermia. He became lost and confused. So his friends reported him missing after he didn't return to the truck. So the game wardens set up a search and searched for week. There was an area surrounded by roads and they thought he wouldn't pass any roads but he did because he had hypothermia. Then he was wondering for a couple of three days and on the fourth day he found a cabin broke in and stayed there eating tuna and peanut butter. After a couple of days he left. He walked by the pond because he knew eventually he would come to civilization. He kept on stumbling and falling because he couldn't feel his feet he had frostbite. He found another stayed there then left. He found a two person sail boat and went all the way down Wilson Pond to the south side. He found a road and walked down it and met a guy named Pete Peterson from a telephone company. He gave him a ride to the hospital. Greg saw him waiting in the hallway with a wool blanket on. He said he was George Wescott. Greg knew he was missing for 20 days so he thought he was crazy. He took him into the ER took off his boots and his feet were black so he knew it was him. The news came and found out in less than 24 hours. They move him to the Mass General Hospital in Boston and had one foot amputated and half of the other. Many people thought he was just doing all of this to sell his restraunt in Rhode Island. That is the story of George Wescott.
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