The Trail of the Maine Pioneer
By
MEMBERS OF THE MAINE FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS



This Edition of
THE TRAIL OF THE MAINE PIONEER,
published by the Maine Federation of Women's Clubs,
is limited to 2,000 copies, of which this is
(No. 265)

Mount Kineo

To the Women of Maine:

The one thing needful in history teaching, the thing so often missed, but without which there is no result worth while, is imagination. The process of tidal historical study, all up and down the scale from Kindergarten to University, must be through and through imaginative. Not to catalogue the features of the past, but to recreate the life that once informed those features, is the true aim of history in all its phases. To acquire the difficult art of calling up that life, of bodying it forth out of the strange and ambiguous things known as human documents, is a feat of the disciplined imagination as difficult as it is precious. — Professor Nathaniel W. Stephenson of the College of Charleston in an address before the American Historical Society, 1916.

I am asked to write you a letter of thanks and congratulation on the achievement embodied in this, your book, illuminating the trail of the Maine pioneer. No mission could be less a task.

You volunteers of this literary commonwealth have added epic prose to that far-flung verse which has put a halo over the trail of the pioneer since in the dawn of history Asiatic emigrants chased the westering sun across the Golden Horn. History was sung before it was written as Mother Goose and Santa Claus still are sung to those who have yet to acquire an alphabet.

The tidal sweep of races westward and yet "Westward Ho," reached the Gulf of Maine thirteen years before the anchor of the Mayflower dropped in Plymouth Harbor. Our own Pemaquid was discovered and settled before they hung Quakers on Boston Common and put witches on the high places of Salem. The first woman's club was established by Anne Hutchinson in Boston close to the time when Maine women were carried into captivity by the Indians at Berwick and Saco. It was near the day when Sir Ferdi­nando Gorges got his sailors on horseback that the first city government was organized in the Dominion of Maine. But the Spanish Conquest preceded the discovery of Agamenticus, while 'twas before Agamenticus was sighted that Capt. John Smith landed at Monhegan.

When Cortez and the drifting pilgrimages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries reached the Pacific, it was discovered that the successors of the Aryans crossing The Hellespont had surprised the sunrise close to the sun­set. Only a wide waste of waters separated California from the East Indies. But the primitive occupiers of the Eastern New World were led by King Philip as well as by Pocahontas, by the flintlock and the axe at Old York and Berwick as well as by the constructive spade and the beckoning pipe of friendly Samoset.

Just here, the tragic history of Maine begins. Just here heroes and heroines stain the forest glades with their blood while others sail up and down the uncharted coasts of the Gulf of Maine. Just here, ye women of Maine, do you illuminate our annals. Right here you kindle our imaginations by re-animating definite persons, marshaling them before us, not hand-made inanimates but animating leaders of universal democracy, consecrated by heroism unto martyrdom.

In meetinghouses, schoolhouses and cabins of York, Berwick, Saco, Rich­mond's Island and other isles and shores, this Colonial commonwealth was possessed in faith before it was made by works. History ever spills its ashes where father, mother and child kindle altar fires. 'Tis love that makes and belts the globe. 'Tis the imagination that conquers countless worlds and satellites. The Popham Colony died in getting itself born. The chief justice had his eyes on the throne in the north of Europe, not on the hearth in the east of North America. There was neither wife nor mother in the patrician commune of Sir John Popham.

Women of Maine, we salute you! Proud are we and beyond measure are we enriched by your diligent research and your poetic sensibility. You have enabled us to detect a fast fading trail which, but for you, might have been forever obliterated. The tang of the wood enriches the wine. Happily, your fine attention guarantees that the inspiring nectar shall not be lavished on the falling leaves. You have resuscitated Martha Smith of Berwick, as well as Capt. Waymouth of Pemaquid. In flesh and blood do you clothe Maine history. Necessary to the structure is the skeleton, but — man is a vertebrate plus. And does not the poetry which creates history, create histo­rians? Drab annals are essential, but the animating figures of real history invite literary art.

Having handed down to the last syllable of history and biography four­score, a noble group of men and women representing those who for sixty centuries have been chanting the canticles of Futurity, you women of the Federated Clubs of Maine deserve and receive our greetings and congratu­lations! We thank you very much for what you have done, but may we not beg you to achieve one more important work. Please come again into the wings and bring to the center of the stage a new book, completing the cycle of Maine history and biography. If you please, this book may be bound in pine tassels and adorned with wild flowers. And on the title page of Book III may the die cast something like this: "The Wit, Humor and Mirth of Maine."

Lewiston, Maine,

Pilgrims' Day, MDCCCCXVI.

In "The Trail of the Maine Pioneer," the club women of Maine offer a second book of Maine historical stories, a companion volume to "Maine in History and Romance." Like the first book, "The Trail of the Maine Pioneer" is a collection of prize stories resulting from a contest conducted by the Lewiston Journal in 1916 and open only to the club women affiliated with the Maine Federation.

The decision to publish this second series of stories in book form was made at Kineo at the annual meeting of the Maine Federation of Women's Clubs held in September, 1916, and in happy memory of which, a picture of Mount Kineo is made the frontispiece of this book.

Thirteen writers whose work is included in this volume are new con­testants; the remaining ten are old friends, whose stories in "Maine in History and Romance" are happily recalled.

To Mrs. Grace A. Wing, President of the Maine Federation, and her execu­tive board, Miss Fanny E. Lord, Mrs. Amos Clement, Mrs. Myrtle L. T. White, Mrs. Ezra H. White, Mrs. Elizabeth Porter and Mrs. Frederick P. Abbott, the committee is indebted for helpful suggestions and hearty co­operation.

The committee expresses its appreciation of the Lewiston Journal Com­pany, for conducting the prize story contest, for the gift of the copyrighted stories, the cuts, cover design, and for continued personal interest.

Special thanks are due the Federation prize award committee, Mrs. Robert J. Aley of Orono, Mrs. Fabius M. Ray of Westbrook and Mrs. Seth S. Thornton of Houlton, who carefully read the forty stories submitted in the prize contest and assisted in awarding the prizes.

To the public for the cordial greeting it has extended to our second book, to the authors of these stories, to the New England newspapers which have given liberal publicity notices, to the book sellers, who have assisted gratui­tously in the sale of the book, and all others who have helped the Maine Federation of Women's Clubs to make its second book, "The Trail of the Maine Pioneer" a success, the committee makes gracious acknowledgment.