The Lougees’ Story Continues

 Note:  Unless other noted, all inserts are from Madge Baker’s book, Woven Together in York County, Maine – 1865-1990.

 Circumstances on the Lougee farm were changing.  In 1897 Myra, as Almira Fogg Lougee was known to everyone, divorced David Gilman Lougee.  She moved with their second son, Arthur Fogg Lougee (age 8), to her home town of Limerick leaving their firstborn, David Gilman Lougee Jr. (age 9) with his father.  Fortunately Myra’s farmer father had been successful enough to leave her a legacy when he died in 1885 which she used to purchase a small house where she made a home with her son, Arthur, her mother and intermittently her other son David Jr.

Arthur graduated high school in Limerick in 1906 and though he had dreams of going to college and of being a professional baseball player, like so many young men before him, he assumed the role of head of the household and went to work at the Limerick Mill.       

In Parsonsfield  Big Dave, his father Gilman, his son David Jr., and Florence Tarbox, a local woman hired to do the housekeeping and nursing were on the farm together in 1900.  After Gilman died in 1902, Big Dave and Florence married.  The household expanded by one when their daughter, Hazel, was born in 1904.

We are told that:

Although Little Dave loved his life, it was to be a short one.  In 1909, after spending more than a month in Portland in the hospital, he died from an intestinal blockage.  He was only 21 when he was sadly laid to rest beside his antecedents in the farm cemetery.

In 1911 Arthur F. married a Limerick classmate, Berniece Townsend, and moved in with her and her widowed mother in the living quarters above the E.F. Townsend & Co. store which they owned and ran.  To their family they added a son, Arthur Townsend (born 1913) and a daughter, Alice Jane (born 1925).   

After their son, Arthur T., went away to school at Phillips Andover Academy in Andover, Massachusetts Madge Baker’s book tells us that he said “he knew he had no interest in being either a farmer living on the edge of survival, or a small town shopkeeper.  So there was nothing to go home for.”  He never returned again to reside in Limerick.  He studied at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston where he met Laura Barr whom he married in 1937.  From time to time they would visit his parents in Limerick but only on holidays and weekends.

This photo of David Gilman “Big Dave” Lougee is undated.

After Big Dave’s death there was no one to tend the farming enterprise which previous generations had built.  Florence began selling off the farm in pieces.  When her and Dave’s only child, Hazel, died in childbirth in 1933 she sold all but one bit and moved away. 

1933 was a significant year in the life of Big Dave’s son, Arthur Fogg Lougee, as well.  After working at the Limerick Mill since high school Arthur was out of job together with all the other employees when the mill went into receivership after the national banking crisis early in 1933.  It was time for a career change.  When the new Casco Bank and Trust Company opened a bank in Limerick he was elected one of the founding directors, becoming branch manager in 1935.

The photograph shows Arthur Fogg Lougee with his mother, Myra, and his daughter, Alice Jane at age 11.  The occasion was the celebration of the 300^th anniversary of York County, Maine.  Myra had donned her wedding dress for the occasion and the others had on family heirlooms.

But the Lougee story in Parsonsfield was not yet over.  Madge Baker tells us that, after serving in the navy during World War II,  Arthur Townsend Lougee looked for a place to settle and support his family but did not consider either Parsonsfield or Limerick as options.   He was hired by the Ford Motor Co. as Art Director of Ford Publications and the family moved to Detriot, Michigan.  Her book goes on to tell us:

Berniece died shortly thereafter but Arthur F. continued the search for potential sellers of the Gilman Lougee farm property.  When he saw the opportunity to purchase the old stone house which had been built by Gilman’s stone mason brother Albion K. P. Lougee, he negotiated the sale for his son in 1949.  Once they had the stone house, the Detroit-based family started returning to the farm every summer and Arthur T.’s father continued to assist his son in reacquiring Gilman’s farm until his death in 1960.  Madge Baker’s book tells us:

In 1997 Laura Barr Lougee died, joined in death by her husband Arthur T. Lougee eight years later in 2005. Their youngest son Arthur James “Jim” Lougee, who had made his home in Parsonsfield as well, died in 2017.   Their final resting place is with those Lougees who had gone before.  For now the farmstead first established in Parsonsfield, later lost and regained, remains in the Lougee family held in trust by Arthur T. and Laura’s surviving son and daughter.   

Photos from Find a Grave.

The family cemetery is listed in the Cemetery Records, Parsonsfield, Maine reproduced by Ancient Landmarks Society of Parsonsfield, 1991 as the Lougee-Foss-Mudgett Cemetery.  The book states that it “is on the north side of North Road 2.4 miles northwest of East Parsonsfield at the Cornish line and just east of the stone house shown in the background.  It is surrounded by a stone and iron fence with an inscription on the stone under the iron gate:  ‘Deacon G. Lougee killed by this stone September 1788’ ”.

PRESENT AT STATEHOOD - 1820 Porter, Part 2

 A Tale of a Settler and a House

The History of Porter written by William Teg in 1957 has the following entry in its “First Settlers” chapter:

Having bought the land in 1794 John and his wife, Sally, moved to Porter from Farmington, New Hampshire in 1796 with their infant son, Benjamin. After the move they would add seven more children to their family. 

The French homestead was located on what is now called the Gilman Road as shown on the 1858 map of Porter, indicated by the red arrow below.

The 1820 Census below enumerates the French household, 3 of whom it was reported were engaged in agriculture:

1 Male 10-15 years – John Jr., age 14

1 Male 16-18 years – Aaron, age 18

1 Male 18-25 years – Jacob, age 22 (Benjamin, age 24,married in 1818)

1 Male 45 years and over – John, age 45

1 Female under 10 years – Lucy, age 9

1 Female 10-15 years – Kezia, age 11

2 Females 16-25 years – Sally, age 20, and Mary, age 16

1 Female 45 and over – Sally, age 46

1 Male 10-15 years – John Jr., age 14                           

 

John died in 1836 and Sally survived him by 20 years before her death in 1856.  They are buried in what is now called the French-Gilman cemetery located near their homestead farm where their old stones have been lovingly replaced by the one below.

The 1875 map of Porter shows that the farm passed to their youngest daughter, Lucy, who had married Jesse Bickford in 1849.  Jesse and Lucy had one daughter, Veldima, born in 1852. 

Lucy died in January 1878 at the age of 66.  Their daughter, Veldima,  married W. Frank Gilman in 1882 and the couple set up household with her father, Jesse.  To their union seven children were born, three of whom died in infancy:                    

Lucy E. – died September 1886 at 6 months

Cora M. – died December 1888 at 2 months; and

George W. – died April 1888 at 10 months 

The 1900 Census enumerates the other four children along with their parents, Frank and Veldima, and their grandfather, Jesse.  They were Arthur (born 1882), Viola (born 1883), Jesse (born 1886) and Herman (born 1890).

The photo below, dated July 1909, shows the Jesse Bickford farm.  The original part of the house built in 1804 by John French was a log cabin. 

Jesse Bickford died in 1910, joining his wife in the French-Gilman cemetery.

Frank and Veldima Bickford Gilman remained on the farm joined in 1918 by the beginnings of another generation when their son, Arthur, married Olive Gray as shown on the 1920 census.

Frank died in 1940 and Veldima died in 1944, when they also joined family members in the French-Gilman cemetery – the last generation to do so. 

Arthur and Olive Gray Gilman had one child, a daughter, named Dorothy Janet born in 1921.  Dorothy “Dottie” married Clayton Locke (born 1917) in 1946 after she had completed her college degree and he had completed his time of service overseas in World War II.  They, like other generations before, set up household as a married couple sharing her childhood home with her parents.  They had two children, Paul (born 1949 and died 2010) and Patricia (born 1953).  This photo taken in 1959 shows the homestead looking much the same as it does today.

Clayton and Dottie became involved in the newly formed Parsonsfield-Porter Historical Society and served as officers of the Society for many years, Clayton as its President and Dottie as its Treasurer.  In their dotage, again like generations before, their daughter Patty and her husband Dennis Parker, came to live with them on the homestead farm until their deaths – he in 2013 and she in 2016.  They are interred in the Kezar Falls Burial Ground.  Patty and Dennis continue to live on what was the original John French homestead – present not just at statehood but still standing 200 years later.