Radio Script #764

Little Talks on Common Things

April 14, 1968

It is a long time since anyone has seen wolves in Maine. but they were very common in the middle of the 19th century. Professor Charles Hamlin, who was a scientist on the Colby faculty during the Civil War, recorded that one night in a house on the Air Line Road from Bangor to Calais he was kept awake by the howling of wolves. Another traveler in a sleigh on the same road told of being chased for miles by a pack of ravenous creatures.

In 1901 the Bangor Commercial had a story about Maine wolves. The paper pointed out that many persons then of middle age could remember when the northern and eastern sections of the state were full of those animals. The Commercial reporter had encountered an old trapper named Mat Hitchcock, who told the gruesome story of what happened to his fellow trapper, Pierre Loubet in 1853. Mat said it was a good year for traps and they had accumulated a fine stack of pelts. They had plenty of meat, because both deer and moose were abundant. Suddenly they noticed that the game had disappeared. Not even rabbits were to be seen, and Mat reminded Pierre that they hadn’t seen a deer for some time. One evening, as the two were playing High. Low, Jack beside the fire. they heard a mournful howl that brought them to their feet. “It’s wolves”, shouted Pierre. “We’d better stay inside.”

On the following nights the howls grew louder, and it was clear that the wolf pack was both getting nearer to the cabin and was increasing in numbers. At first the two trappers considered moving their camp to another site, but Pierre insisted that the wolves would move on as soon as there was no more food for them in the vicinity. By this time the trappers’ own food supply was getting low. So Mat went to the nearest settlement to replenish the larder, leaving Pierre at the camp. Mat carried both axe and rifle, but had to use neither. Though wolves followed him, they did not attack. After three days at the settlement, Mat started back for camp, accompanied by two other men who wanted to set traps in the area. Let us now continue the story in Mat Hitchcock’s own words: “We were about 25 miles from camp when we heard the first howl of a wolf, and as we neared camp there were wolves all around us. When I first caught sight of the cabin, I was startled to see the door wide open. I yelled to Pierre but got no answer. Then two or three big wolves slunk out of the cabin and scurried off into the woods.

“Inside was a horrible sight. Pierre had evidently been attacked by a whole pack of the animals, but we never learned how they got into the cabin. Pierre had apparently fought them as long as he could, then crawled on to the high bunk out of their reach. There he died of his wounds, one arm hanging over the edge of the bunk. The hand of that arm was completely gone.

“We buried Pierre in the snow, then started to take vengeance on his murderers. During the next four days we killed fifty of the beasts and frightened the rest away. For fifteen years after that I never saw or heard of a wolf in the Chamberlain Lake country.”

As I have said, the Bangor Commercial printed that story in 1901. Only two years earlier, in 1899, the Commercial recorded a more recent visit to Maine by wolves. The story started this way: “Wolves, long extinct in the Maine woods, are back in considerable numbers in the lake region north of Moosehead. So few wolves have been seen in Maine for many years that woodsmen had come to believe they were gone forever. But we have had reports within the past two weeks of wolves seen in the area between Northeast Carry and Chesuncook Lake. One sportsman told us he had shot a buck deer in that region, only to find, when he retrieved the kill, that it had been badly torn by the teeth of a wolf. The marks were not to be confused with those made by any other animal. Old-time trappers and hunters are well aware of the peculiar tooth marks of a wolf.

“Another hunter heard the howling of wolves near West Branch one night. Lumbermen working at a sugar camp found the carcass of a deer, badly mutilated, on a tote road near their camp. It was obviously not the work of bears, for they were already hibernating, and the big buck was too large to become the prey of a bobcat. It was surely the work of wolves. Perhaps wolves have again been attracted to the Maine forests this year because of the extraordinary abundance of deer.”

The return of wolves was not the only thing attracting readers of the Bangor Commercial 60 to 70 years ago. In 1909 they read in its columns the story of the coming of the telephone to the Maine woods. At that time, nearly 60 years ago, by no means did every home have a telephone, and the instrument was especially rare in the rural parts of Maine. The Commercial thought it thrilling news. therefore, to tell how that means of communication had reached the lumber camps. The story said: “Travelers have lately noticed wires strung along the trunks of trees. These connect at the dams or streams down which the logs are floated. When a sudden jam of logs occurs, the man at the head of the dam gets a phone call informing him of the obstruction. Formerly his only way of learning of the jam was by relay of shouters. Men stood on the riverbank at intervals near enough to be heard by the men nearest them.”

The story continued: “These instruments. so new to the Maine woods were leased by the local lumber companies from the Western Electric Company, which supplies all phones and materials used by the Bell System throughout the country.”

The Commercial, interested to see just how the telephone worked in the woods was able to report: “Recently we witnessed the application of the telephone to logging on the West Branch of the Penobscot. At one point in the stream a big boulder offered obstruction to the steady flow of logs. A man holding a telephone instrument attached to the tree-strung line saw logs beginning to pile up at the boulder. Turning the crank for three long rings of the phone, the man was answered by one on duty at the dam. The latter was told to keep the dam closed to logs until the jam at the boulder had been broken. He was also told to hurry dynamite to the scene of the jam. Then, when the jam had been cleared, another phone call ordered the gates opened. Before the coming of the telephone, all that would have taken several hours.”

The Commercial made it clear that freeing log jams was not the only use of the telephone in the Maine woods. It said: “Perhaps the greatest boon of the forest phones is the constant war against fire. Watch towers on high points in eight Maine counties are now supplied with telephones, and at the least sign of smoke, they soon summon the fire fighters to the scene of the blaze.”

Did you ever hear about the Wild Men of Somerset County? A lot of people knew about them at the turn of the century, and as late as 1905 they made stories in the newspapers. One paper had this to say about them: “Somerset’s wild men, the notorious Brown and Tuttle families of West Athens, are coming once more into the limelight. For a generation or more the town of Athens has harbored these nondescript human specimens, receiving each year from the town of Cornville, where they are legal paupers, the cost of supplies furnished them. In return for Athens’ hospitality these humans, little better than animals, have favored the neighborhood with brawls, disturbances, and repeated violations of the statutes. At a recent town meeting in Athens, public sentiment found expression in a vote to remove the entire tribe to Cornville. Naturally that town made vigorous protest. Cornville’s glad to pay Athens for the privilege of being rid of the obnoxious tribe. But if Athens can somehow succeed in removing this nuisance, the day of their removal will be a day of glad rejoicing. But we suspect, for the wild men it will mean only more fun. The appearance of a sheriff has always filled them with wild delight and a summons to appear before a grand jury was considered an invitation to a party. When that happens, all hands pile on to an old cart or sled and gaily trek to the Skowhegan jail.”

The story concluded thus: “The colony now numbers about thirty persons. Though they give some outward appearance of family organization, their genealogy would be very hard to trace. Their abodes are single-boarded shanties, grouped together on half an acre of land. The cracks between the boards are stuffed with meal sacks. and there is only a dirt floor. Prevailing all is the nauseating atmosphere of filth. Anyhow, while Athens and Cornville seek to shunt the wild men on to each other, the rest of the county sits back and enjoys the fun.

While we in Central Maine have been conscious of what the Maine Central R.R. did to bring prosperity to our region, the people of northern Maine have been equally aware that Maine had another railroad system just as important and, in fact, financially better managed than the Maine Central. Because a prominent base of that other railroad was Bangor, the papers of that city never let their readers forget the progress of the Bangor and Aroostook.

An interesting story appeared in the Bangor Commercial on July 21, 1899. It told of the Bangor and Aroostook branch line to Moosehead Lake. This is what the Commercial had to say: “Work on the B&A’s gigantic operations near Shirley is nearing completion. Up the line north of Bangor were several big trestles, and other places where the road took a devious course to avoid obstructions. At these points great gullies have been filled. the old wooden trestles replaced by steel and granite. At one place a deep ravine has been completely filled. covering a huge granite culvert, thus enabling a train to go over a high hill. Rock cuts have been pierced thru the hillsides to eliminate the devious curves, straighten the route. and shorten the running time.”

The story concluded: “This work on the B&A branch to Greenville is especially rewarding. More and more people are coming down from the big cities at night to reach Moosehead by comfortable sleeper. They now ride smoothly over the B&A, one of the finest roadbeds in New England.”

Year: 1968