Each trial consisted of 2 trips over a carefully measured course that ran 41.65 knots at sea from Cape Ann, Massachusetts to Cape Porpoise, Maine. The battleships would circle for a few hours at Cape Ann to give their boilers time to build up a head of steam before screaming across the starting line at top speed.

The stakes were high for the first trial in May of 1893. Philadelphia shipbuilder Edwin S. Cramp had a contract to deliver a cruiser that could maintain an average speed of 20 knots per hour for four consecutive hours. Every quarter knot by which the requirement was exceeded was worth another $50,000 from the Government.  Members of the Naval Board of Inspection looked over every bolt and rivet from stem to stern and remained on board for performance assessment. Edwin S. Cramp himself supervised the trial and Capt. R A Sargeant took command of the vessel. A ship’s company of no less than 400 men were required for the trip that cost approximately  $30,000.

May 22, 1893 was a beautiful calm day. Thousands of giddy spectators decked in Sunday finery turned up at Cape Ann to witness the start of the race. A reporter for the Boston Daily Globe described a carnival atmosphere that spread all the way up the coast to Cape Porpoise. The trial was a triumph. After just under four hours - with a clock stop in off Cape Porpoise to get the massive vessel turned around – the armored cruiser New York averaged 21 knots per hour earning her shipbuilder a $200,000 premium.  

Several trials were conducted each year from 1893 through 1907. The Biddeford Journal posted expected times of arrival and no matter the weather, the folks in Cape porpoise were watching from Crow Hill when the battleships came into view.

The October 2, 1895 trial of the Steamer St Paul for a coveted US Mail Carrier contract seemed doomed from the start. She got under way to build steam at 9:45 am but shipbuilder Cramp didn’t like the way her boilers were running. To make matters worse she had been sitting in brackish water in the Delaware River during a long drought and her bottom was foul. At the last minute Cramp decided to put off her official trial and proceed with a preliminary run.

Not far out of Cape Ann the boilers began to “prime” and the boat’s speed perceptibly decreased. “Priming” meant that the water in the boiler was not made into steam rapidly enough. Bubbles containing a large percentage of water were carried into the cylinders with steam.

Eight miles from the finish line in Cape Porpoise the steamer was further delayed when the captain of a local lumber schooner refused to yield right of way.  The schooner was directly in the ship’s path. Captain of the St Paul ordered the whistle blown for her to sheer off but the Cape Porpoise lumberman held steadily on. The big racer barely avoided cutting the schooner in halves.

The official trial was run the following day after brackish water was cleaned out of the boilers but even then she beat her 20 knot per hour minimum by only .50 knots. The St Paul was immediately taken to New York and placed in service on the line. Despite a slow start she proved to be a splendid transatlantic mail carrier.

August 20, 1902 spectators at Cape Porpoise were treated to a full scale war game. The Blue Squadron, commanded by Rear Admiral Higginson was charged with defense of the U.S. coast from Cape Cod to Portland against attack from Admiral Pillsbury’s White Squadron.  

Higginson’s fleet consisted of nine battleships, seven torpedo boats and a converted yacht, the Mayflower. The White fleet was ordered to attempt to reach Portland, Rockport, Portsmouth, Salem or Provincetown without getting caught by a superior vessel.  

The War Games were an exciting spectacle for the people of Cape Porpoise, who this time came down off Crow Hill to get a closer look.

Blue Squadron Cruisers, Brooklyn and Olympia, the Mayflower and the torpedo boat Shubrick arrived off Cape Porpoise just before 3 pm. The larger vessels remained well off shore, but the torpedo boat ran in and anchored near the cape for about a half an hour. The fleet proceeded eastward after that but not before the torpedo boat Shubrick steamed in and put a marine ashore.

A familiar event at Littlefield's Yard

Most of the ships launched on the Kennebunk River before 1840 were built at the Landing. By the time the river locks were constructed in 1849, Clement Littlefield, in company with George Emmons, had already built some of the largest vessels launched on the river.

Mr. Littlefield was making hay in a grass plot on Chase Hill Road, adjoining his home in 1887 ,when correspondent Jules Righter of the Biddeford Journal made his acquaintance. The reporter was hoping to learn about the early days in Littlefield’s shipyard.

“I came here when I was 16-years-old and went to work, learning my trade, at the Landing up there,” the retired shipbuilder said, pointing upriver. “When I was 21 years old I had acquired sufficient proficiency in my trade so that I was made foreman of the yard, where I was at the time. Shortly after that I bought this field down here and had a shipyard of my own. This was a splendid place, you see. We could haul our lumber over to this high ground and then chuck it right down over the bank to the craft we happened to be working on. Out there down by the railroad track, and up here on the bank, where you see that stone, I had a steam mill where we used to cut all of our lumber.”

“How did you get your lumber?” asked the correspondent.

“Our big sticks came in from the country. Many a time have I seen the road blocked with teams loaded with lumber. There used to be a great deal of rivalry between the different teams. Our planking and light timber used to come in from the South — Southern Pine and the like. It came by ship. We would unload the timber right into the water and then duck it so that it wouldn’t be carried away by the tide. You can see some of the dock piles down there to the right of the coal shed now,” Littlefield responded.

The reporter then inquired about the workmen hired by the various yards, asking, “You used to employ more men down here than at the Landing, didn’t you?”

“Oh yes;” was his response. “Up there we only had about 20 men at work on a vessel at a time. Down here we used to employ over 100. Sometimes we built two or three vessels at a time.”

When asked about the consumption of rum by his employees, Littlefield replied, “Up to the time when I came down here rum was a common thing for the men to have in their chests. But after I had been here at this yard for a few years, the temperance movement started and from that time on we didn’t have it.”

The Emmons & Littlefield Yard began operations in the early 1840s. Shipbuilders David and Abner Clark and George Christenson all learned their trade under the tutelage of Clement Littlefield before opening shipyards of their own. The year 1856 was a tough one for area shipbuilders. D&S Ward in Kennebunkport folded on Oct. 21, 1856, and the Emmons & Littlefield Yard was assigned the following day. Landing shipbuilder Nathaniel Lord Thompson, who had contracted the yard to build ships for him since 1854, purchased what was left of the failed business in 1858 and sold part of the property to the Clark brothers.

As master carpenter, Clement Littlefield built ships for N.L. Thompson and for his son-in-law David Clark for many years after selling his business. He also took on construction work around the Kennebunks.

Andrew Walker wrote about one such project in his 1882 diary.

“During the past summer Charles Parsons has had a wharf 119 feet in length by 40 feet in width built at the head or mouth of the Mousam River, but a short distance from his sea-side cottage. The wharf was built by Clement Littlefield in 23 working days. In its erection he drove 75 piles and then planked it on the inside and filled in solid with about 4,000 loads of rock and earth. The beach in this vicinity was formerly called Hart’s Beach. Mr. Parsons has recently renamed it Parsons Beach and the new wharf, Parsons Wharf. Mr. Parsons thinks the wharf may be used as a landing for vessels laden with coal and as a shipping place, to which farmers may haul wood and lumber which they wish to send to other places.”

Clement Littlefield and his wife, Mary Thompson, raised an extended, multi-generational shipbuilding family at their home in Lower Village and occasionally housed employees of the Emmons & Littlefield Shipyard. According to a new sign at the corner of Chase Hill Road and Western Avenue, that home is soon to become “The Shops at the Grand.” No assurances can be offered by the developer that any of the original structure will survive the renovations as the building is in pretty rough shape. Its historical significance should be acknowledged before the circa 1808 house becomes a memory.

The Silent Partner aka The Organ Grinder by Abbott Fuller Graves 1894

“The Silent Partner”, by renowned Boston and Kennebunkport artist Abbott Fuller Graves, goes on the auction block next Thursday. From the fate of its involuntary title subject to its theft and subsequent recovery by the Santa Rosa California Sherriff’s Department, the 116 year old painting has an intriguing history.

By the time the heart-wrenching picture was completed in November of 1894, Abbott F. Graves was a household name in New England art circles. Best known for his artistry with flowers, Graves was making a good living for his family selling paintings and conducting his own school of art. His botanical design “The Eden” had appeared in Thomas Strahan & Co’s 1893 line of wallpapers and the painter had just finished illustrating a book, “Wildflower Sonnets” by Emily Shaw Forman, his second. He had illustrated New Castle, Historic and Picturesque by John Albee, in 1884.

Graves displayed a growing interest in painting the human condition; the drama of simple country people engaged in their mundane daily lives.  On September 23, 1894 it was reported in the Boston Daily Globe, “Mr. Abbott Graves has taken a studio in Studio Building, which he has fitted up with an eye to the artistic and attractive arrangement which the instincts of an artist suggest. His sojourn at Kennebunkport, ME, the past season resulted in his securing some charming sketches of that picturesque locality.”

The first public exhibition of the painting was announced on Nov 11, 1894 in the Globe:  “The Boston Art Club will give its 51^st exhibition, from Jan 18 to Feb 16, 1895.”

“Mr. Abbott Graves of the Studio building has just finished a large canvas which he entitles “The Silent Partner.” The picture is an original composition and surprisingly artistic; in fact the best piece of work in this line which the artist has accomplished. It represents the interior of a tenement, an Italian organ grinder sitting upon his instrument, the tambourine girl resting upon the floor with her hands to her face, both bemoaning the fate which has deprived them of their active partner, the dead monkey. The composition is well managed and the color scheme admirable.”

Preeminent Graves biographer, Joyce Butler recalls a story about the monkey in the painting, told to her by Miss Dorothy Buhler, whose father, artist Augustus Buhler, occupied a studio in the same building when “The Silent Partner” was painted. 

“Graves “got” the dead monkey from an organ grinder. After completing the painting, Graves paid a “man on the street” to dispose of the animal’s body. It was not “done successfully” and the remains were traced to Graves causing him “some difficulty with the authorities.”

Comic actor, singer and playwright, Francis Wilson, who would later become the first President of Actor’s Equity, was moved by Graves’ new painting. The plight of the organ grinder whose grief is clearly combined with consternation over the loss of a business asset, reminded him of his own lean years as a player in a minstrel show.  

“It is rare that an artist nowadays paint a pivotal picture – one that will turn the minds of people, make them reflective and more considerate of the common phases of life,” wrote a reporter for the Boston Post. “Surely Abbott Graves has touched a chord of nature which makes the whole world kin in a work that is destined to make a national reputation for him. Graves is an artist and is known far and wide for his flower paintings, but he sees and studies all sides of life, and in this recent work, entitled “The Silent Partner,” has struck the most pathetic incident that he has ever undertaken.”

 “No wonder,” the reporter continued, “that the comedian, Francis Wilson, when he saw it, was impressed with its sad and touching pathos. Several days after having visited Graves he returned and remarked: “Mr. Graves, ever since I saw that picture it has haunted me. Whatever your price, I want it.”

Wilson still owned the painting in 1899 when it was exhibited in Chicago and Boston.

Almost 100 years later the “The Silent Partner” was in the news again but this time with a new name. An Abbott Graves painting identified by the owners as “The Organ Grinder” was stolen July 11, 1997 from a private home in Sebastolpol California. Nothing else was taken by the art thieves. 

 A report in Maine Antiques Digest valued the stolen painting at over $100,000 and a reward was offered for its safe return.  Detective Jose Avilla of the Sonoma County Sherriff’s Department handled the case.  In 2001, your “Old News” columnist reported the theft and posted a photograph of the painting on the Abbott Graves page of mykennebunks.com. After an unfruitful investigation the painting was declared a loss and Allstate Insurance Company paid the owners $65,000, the maximum amount allowable under the policy.

 Last winter the Santa Rosa, California Sherriff’s department got a phone call from a man who claimed to know the whereabouts of a Graves painting titled “The Organ Grinder”.  He anonymously returned the painting to the Allstate Insurance Company, who in turn sent it to Mo Mansur of Insurance Asset Recovery, LLC, in California,  in hopes that some value could be realized from the painting.  Mr. Mansur shipped the painting to Shannon’s Auction House in Milford CT to be listed on their website for auction sale on April 29, 2010.  They assigned it a surprising sales estimate of $10,000 to $15,000.

 International Interpol agents in London England, who frequently scan the internet for stolen art, had not received an update about the status of the painting when they came across the auction listing. They contacted the sellers demanding proof that the painting had been legitimately recovered. 

 Mr. Mansur in California, being aware of the mykennebunks website listing, contacted your columnist with the rest of the story.  After the discovery of the previously mentioned newspaper articles, it was concluded that the legitimately recovered painting was actually Abbott Graves’ famous work “The Silent Partner.” 

Meanwhile, Kennebunk Historian and author, Joyce Butler, an Abbott Fuller Graves expert, had already contacted the auction house about the erroneous name associated with the painting. 

It is our most fervent hope that next Thursday, a museum buyer or private Abbott Graves collector will bring “The Silent Partner” home to New England. We would also appreciate learning about the next chapter in the history of this poignant painting. Please email Sharon Cummins at sharonlynn@roadrunner.com

Mr. Atwater Kent to the rescue

Kennebunk Beach had its usual array of summer sojourners in August 1914 but the fresh sea breezes were tainted by the scent of trepidation. Even though President Woodrow Wilson had quickly tried to balance declarations of war in Europe with his own declaration that the United States would remain neutral, the specter of war was omnipresent. As a diversion, the manager of the Atlantis Hotel invited aviator Victor Vernon and his family to stay at the hotel for free if he offered tourist rides on his new-fangled, Curtiss Flying Boat, The Betty V.

Before World War I, aviators were fearless pioneers. Some might even call them reckless. Vernon had been a car salesman for the American Automobile Manufacturing Company only a few months earlier. When the company went into receivership, Victor, who had seen a plane land on the water the previous summer, went to Hammondsport, N.Y., took a few flying lessons from a Curtiss test pilot, and purchased the newest model “hydro-aeroplane” money could buy. He had given just a few exhibitions flights on Lake Erie when he disassembled his Flying Boat and had her shipped by railroad to Portland, Maine.

Little more than a decade earlier, the Wright Brothers had made their first 20-minute flight. The Curtiss Flying Boat was touted the world over as “the sportsman’s vehicle of the future,” and “a marvel of engineering.” The mahogany-hulled, hydroplane was as beautiful as she was fast. Equipped with a 90-horsepower motor she could reach speeds of 60 miles per hour on the water and 75 mph in the air. Vernon anticipated making a fortune flying passengers over Kennebunk Beach with the Betty V.

The Atlantis Hotel, advertised as “a hotel of the very best class,” was built in 1903 in the Spanish mission style. Private bathrooms were available for those willing to pay extra; a rare luxury in 1914. Victor Vernon offered rides from Middle Beach where privileged hotel guests could watch him take off and land from the veranda. His best customer was Atwater Kent, who owned a cottage near St Ann’s by the Sea, in Kennebunkport. Kent had made his fortune by inventing an automobile ignition system that could be engaged from inside the car. He loved any cutting-edge thing with a motor and couldn’t get enough of the Betty V. He showed up day after day to fly with Vernon, sometimes with Mrs. Kent and sometimes alone.

“During Mr. Kent’s first ride with me,” Victor Vernon wrote in his memoirs, “a wave top broke over the Betty V when landing and dampened the magneto. The motor stopped and we started drifting toward a rocky section of the beach near our point of operation. I shouted to Mr. Kent what was most undoubtedly the trouble, but he, an electrical expert, already knew and offered to climb up alongside the motor, remove the magneto cover, clean and dry it out and replace — no easy job in a pitching, rolling ‘boat,’ and not good for his flannels, either. He did an expert job just in time as when I cranked the motor and she caught with welcomed roar, we were only a few feet from huge, jagged boulders and rocks stretching out from shore into deep water and being swept by the waves. He was the highest priced, but unpaid mechanic ever voluntarily serving under similar circumstances, I’m sure.”

After several weeks at Kennebunk Beach, Victor received a phone call from the Chairman of the Labor Day Celebration Committee, Bar Harbor, Maine. He was offered $500 to fly there in time to make an exhibition flight on Labor Day. All his expenses were to be covered. With the economic uncertainty of war looming Vernon accepted the offer, even though no such flight over the ocean had ever been attempted. Nationwide newspaper coverage of the flight made Victor Vernon a household name.

“Victor Vernon made an over-water flight of 150 miles yesterday from Kennebunkport to Bar Harbor,” wrote a reporter for the Lowell Sun on Sept. 4, 1914. “The hydro-aeroplane flight made at 2,000 feet took 2 hours – 32 minutes of actual flying time. Three stops were made; the first at Port Clyde for supplies, a second at Rockland and the third at Northeast Harbor, which the aviator mistook for Bar Harbor.”

By 1916, American participation in World War I seemed probable. Vernon was approached by the Signal Corps, which at that time was the aviation branch of the U.S. Army. The U.S. Air Force had not yet been organized. He accepted the position of chief civilian instructor in its new aviation training program. During the war, Victor Vernon tested Flying Boats built by the U.S. Navy to patrol for U-boats and deliver torpedoes.

A front door phobia

Chicago’s Sears Tower had two arrivals from Kennebunkport on Memorial Day 1981. Only one was invited. Frank Handlen, your “Old News” illustrator, had sold 14 paintings meant to grace the walls of Sears Corporate Headquarters. Around the time the crate was delivered, Danny Goodwin, Kennebunk High Class of ’74, appeared at the west side of the 110-story building in a handmade spandex Spiderman costume. He intended to scale what was then the tallest building in the world.

As a boy growing up on Fishers Lane in Cape Porpoise, Goodwin writes in his recently published memoir, “SKYSCRAPERMAN,” he loved to climb trees. “So much so the police tried to arrest me for climbing one of the tallest in Portland, Maine. But despite their use of a cherry picker, they weren’t able to catch me.”

Goodwin was 25 years old and about 20 floors up when a Sears security guard angrily held a note up to the window demanding he descend. Spider-Dan, who was climbing up the window washer track, stuck a suction cup over the note and proceeded up the side of the building. Ambulances, hook and ladder trucks and helicopters were dispatched to the scene. At the 35th floor, Dan became aware that a window washing machine was descending the track in his path and that the window next to him had been removed from inside the building. Using suction cups equipped with stirrups, he scooted horizontally away from his would-be captors. Some six and a half hours and 1,450 feet into the climb, Dan duct-taped an American flag near the top of the Sears Tower.

“It was my way of thanking my father for fighting in the Korean War,” he writes.

Meanwhile, his father, Dale Goodwin, was back in Cape Porpoise, completely unaware of Danny’s plans until he was contacted by a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Though proud of his son’s courage, Dale was grateful he hadn’t known about the stunt ahead of time.

“If I’d known he was going to do this I would have been a nervous wreck,” Dale Goodwin told a reporter for the Biddeford Journal Tribune.

Brenda Buchanan, a correspondent for the York County Coast Star, talked to local folks about the feat.

“That’s Danny for you,” they told her in unison, “always looking for another adventure. Danny Goodwin — daredevil, track star, mountain climber, skier, gymnast and stuntman. Danny Goodwin — bohemian, dancer, dreamer, wanderer, always looking for something to be afraid of, climbing the cliffs over the ocean because there was nothing higher to climb.”

Well, Danny had found something higher.

As soon as he reached the top of Sears Tower he was taken to jail overnight on charges of disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and criminal damage to property.

After celebrity appearances on Johnny Carson and the Today Show, Dan pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. His fine was only $35, but Fire Commissioner William Blair threatened dire consequences should Goodwin ever attempt to climb another building in his jurisdiction.

That was a challenge Danny couldn’t resist. On Veteran’s Day he scaled Chicago’s John Hancock Center while the gathering crowd below chanted, “Let him climb. Let him climb.”

Enraged, Commissioner Blair ordered his firemen to wash “Spider Dan” Goodwin off the side of the building with a fire hose. The defiant climber clung to the building 300 feet off the ground. Unwilling to be responsible for the death of a beloved comic book hero, the Mayor of Chicago ordered Blair to shut the water off and Spider-Dan finished his ascent. Damages to the building and other expenses reportedly totaled $16,000.

This time, the sentence was a year’s probation.

When asked what possessed him to take such risks, Spider-Dan replied, “I have a new idea, a new concept for fire rescue. I needed a forum to present these ideas to the public.”

In his memoir, Goodwin writes that he was motivated to climb buildings by two life-altering experiences. After witnessing the MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas, he was haunted by the reality that firefighters had no way to rescue victims trapped on the middle floors of a skyscraper fire.

And then, a few months after the fire, Dan sustained serious injuries in a car crash. During his recovery from the accident he vowed never again to be dissuaded from his dreams.

Spider-Dan climbed the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York on Memorial Day, 1983, nearly falling to his death when the window washer track pulled away from the building. Mayor Edward Koch was not impressed.

“These stunts endanger participants, police officers and onlookers,” he said to the press. “And it cost taxpayers $4,235 just in police department man-hours and equipment.”

Somehow, Dan Goodwin always evaded authorities long enough to finish his intended climbs. Until July 1983, that is. Dan was escorted away from the Bald Head Cliff by officers of the York (Maine) Police Department.

“But three days later, he returned, after notifying local newspapers,” Brenda Buchanan wrote in the Boston Globe. “He told the officers who met him at the bottom of the cliff that he was determined to make another ascent.”

Unlike police forces in Chicago and New York City, York’s finest were able to take Spider-Dan into custody when he was just a couple feet up the cliff.

Goose Rocks Beach Idyl

Goose Rocks Beach was already a summer resort in 1873 when the Kennebunkport Seashore Company subdivided Cape Arundel to make way for opulent shingle-style “cottages.”  From the beginning, Goose Rocks was a casual place for parents to relax while their children discovered the meaning of life.

Daniel Dow of Newton, MA built the first summer cottage at Goose Rocks in 1865.  The King’s Highway house was constructed on land owned by Kennebunkport farmer, Elbridge Proctor.  Dow’s younger brothers, Sewell, Edward and Orlando and his sister Clarissa Fuller joined the family each summer.  One year in the early 1870s, when just a handful of cottages stood at the beach, Daniel Dow’s adolescent son Francis made coming of age memories at Goose Rocks that his wife Eugenia later shared with the Biddeford Journal. 

Francis and his older brother Billy were five years apart.  Their single uncles were chronologically adult but one would never know it from their youthful antics.  When eight girls, in assorted sizes, took the Lowe cottage next door for the summer, the boys were taken aback.  They might as well have been asked to cohabitate with creatures from outer space. 

The Dows owned a big canvas sailor’s hammock strung under a clump of Spruce trees in their yard.  Once the girls moved in it was never empty.  One by one they availed themselves of it without so much as a pretty please.  Mother suggested that the girls might be hoping for an opportunity to get acquainted but the boys were outraged at the intrusion.  After a week of restraint, Uncle Ed went out early one morning and drew the hammock up as taut as a fiddle string.  One by one the girls made their way to the hammock and one by one, they were ejected by the booby-trapped swing.  The boys watched from their hiding place behind the wild roses.  “Edward and Orlando rolled on the grass in silent unholy glee,” remembered Francis “and we boys crammed things in our mouths and covered our head to smother our wild shrieks of laughter”. 

Their plan worked.  The hammock was empty once more but somehow it no longer held any appeal.  They missed watching the girls and started feeling guilty for the prank.  Francis and Billy watched the girls from afar for a while.  Amazingly, their uncles were always at hand just when one of the girls needed rescuing.  Ed courageously dragged the oldest girl out of the undertow and from that moment on he was by her side. 

 George T. Emmons owned a farm at one end of the beach.  He kept an angry bull called “Old Shorty” in a pasture near the sea wall.  The bull escaped often and Goose Rocks regulars knew to run for cover while George’s dog Nero corralled the beast home.  One morning, the girls were lounging in the sand when Old Shorty charged them with Nero at his heels.   Uncle Sewell appeared out of nowhere with his rifle and stepped between the bull and the most ample of the ladies.  She had modestly refused to discard her red cape and slumped to the sand, resigned to her fate. Sewell shot the bull in the leg and rescued himself a devoted summer companion.  After pulling a girl with mischievous eyes and dark bobbed hair out of a sinking boat, Orlando was the next to desert the boys. 

 One moonlit night, Billy and a fiery, freckle-faced redhead walked off down the beach together leaving Francis alone.  He felt abandoned by his brother and bewildered by the events of the summer.  As he stood at the water’s edge contemplating his plight he became aware of the littlest neighbour girl standing close behind him.  “Are you lonely?” she asked.  Francis nodded.   Her voice was so soft and sympathetic.  “Isn’t the moonlight wonderful?  I wonder how it looks around the western bend; I have always wanted to see it, but I suppose it wouldn’t do for me to walk down there alone.”   “It certainly wouldn’t,” Francis assured her.  “Would you mind walking down there with me?” she hesitated- adding, “You are so very brave”.  Well, he could hardly let her walk the beach alone.  She took his arm which he did not remember offering.  Francis felt he could go on walking forever with that little hand on his arm. 

 Too soon, the girls went home.  The Dow boys went back to school in Newton, MA., as they had every September before.  But that summer everything had changed. 

Thanks to Goose Rocks Beach historians, John Pinel and Barbara Barwise for verifying the historical plausibility of Francis A. Dow’s account. 

Read the original account from the Biddeford Weekly Journal (very long)

Read other old newspaper articles about Goose Rocks Beach