The people of Arundel were for the most part in support of American independence from Great Britain. King George III had levied taxes that threatened Arundel’s maritime trade economy. When 400 buildings at today’s Portland were burned by Captain Henry Mowat on October 18, 1775, the threat of war was too close to home to be ignored.

More than a month before the declaration of independence was signed Arundel citizens voted to “engage their lives and fortunes” to support independence. And that they did. Arundel boys were lost at Quebec, Halifax, Valley Forge and Lake Champlain as well as in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition of 1779.

Coastal Cape Porpoise residents, who were engaged in seafaring trade with merchants from Essex County Massachusetts, were particularly vulnerable. In October of 1780 three vessels were captured just outside Cape Porpoise Harbor and their captive crews were carried to Penobscot. The following year three more vessels met the same fate just outside the harbor though a few crewman made it to shore.

A bold attack inside Cape Porpoise Harbor was described in a New-England Chronicle article on October 3, 1782. On the morning of August 8, 1782 sheep and cattle were grazing on the islands as usual and two Newbury Massachusetts vessels were safely anchored in the harbor. One was a large sloop loaded with lumber and fitted out with a canon to protect her cargo. The other was a wood schooner that sailed with her.

An enemy brig of 16 guns suddenly appeared outside the harbor. She sent in a boat with 3 dozen men to capture the armed sloop but the men were surprised by the sloop’s American canon and landed the boat on Goat Island instead. The brig then sailed into the harbor and fired upon the Newbury sloop while an enemy top-sail schooner fired at her from just outside the harbor. The sloop’s crew was forced to evacuate and the enemy took possession of the two American vessels, sending the schooner off to Penobscot. The sloop was driven ashore by a sudden breeze as she left the harbor and was burned by the enemy where she lay at the southwesterly point of Goat Island.

James Burnham Jr., Captain of the Arundel militia, called his men to Trotts Island. From there he successfully advanced on the enemy, still at Goat Island, by ordering his men to wade across the channel under a hail of fire from the top-sail schooner. Wind and tide conspired to keep the Brig from escaping the harbor but she managed to get out just before nightfall by towing and warping her way. The Arundel Militia exchanged fire with the enemy for five or six hours and suffered the loss of one life, that of Captain James Burnham who at the close of the engagement took a musket ball to the chest. According to a witness whom the enemy had taken some time before, and who was on board the schooner during the battle, over 25 of the enemy were killed.

When Charles Bradbury wrote about the battle of Cape Porpoise in 1837, he relied heavily on the memories of his older neighbors to piece together the harrowing events of August 8, 1782. Some of his details varied from the contemporary account and he added a personal story. “Samuel Wildes, who was partially deranged” wrote Bradbury “paddled into the harbor in a small canoe and ordered them to give the vessels up and leave the port.” When he refused to board the brig he was fired upon seven times causing him an injury that lamed him for the rest of his life.

Regardless of his mental health, Samuel Wildes, Sr. had a right to be incensed by the enemy. He knew that his 16 year old son, a privateer crewman, had been imprisoned in England for 15 months. What he didn’t know was that Samuel Wildes, Jr. was at that moment two days out of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Benjamin Franklin had negotiated the release of all American prisoners and they were on their way home.

Most of the British forces had already left Penobscot by August 1782 but the loyalists stationed there were infamous for raiding coastal Maine harbor towns for sheep, cattle and coasting vessels laden with badly needed supplies. Most notable was Loyalist, Richard Pomroy and his 16 gun Brig Meriam.

A few weeks after the attack at Cape Porpoise, the Meriam was cut out of her anchor at Penobscot by Captain George Little in his American Navy sloop Winthrop. The Brig Meriam was triumphantly sailed into Boston Harbor on Sept 16, 1782 along with 3 other prizes. Among them were, privateer schooner Hammond commanded by a Penobscot Loyalist named Doty and an unnamed Newbury wood schooner that was a recent prize of the Brig Meriam.

A letter from the Governor, published in the Massachusetts Archives, relates to the success of Little’s six week cruise. It says “I considered that he had most essentially prevented the depredations on that coast by capturing & sending into this Port near the whole of the armed force they possessed at Penobscot.”

Definitive proof that Cape Porpoise was attacked by loyalist brig Meriam and schooner Hammond, has not been found but if the Governor was correct in his assessment of the remaining Penobscot forces the circumstantial evidence is strong.

For sources see www.mykennebunks.com/revolution.htm

Wells minister, Rev. George Burroughs was hanged as a witch during the Salem delirium of 1692. A century later, Widow Elizabeth Smith of Arundel was accused of witchcraft at the York County Court of Common Pleas and Sessions in Biddeford.

Rev. Burroughs was probably a hothead and a show off who liked to impress his neighbors with feats of amazing strength. According to testimony at his trial he could lift a molasses barrel with one finger.

George might not have been a perfect husband, either. When his second wife died her funeral expenses went unpaid. As the preacher at Danvers, Massachusetts he was embroiled in a turf war within the Salem religious hierarchy and could not get them to pay his salary. John Putnam, the keeper of the coin at the Danvers church, also allowed him to buy two gallons of rum on account. Burroughs skipped town with a new wife, leaving word that his salary would easily cover the bills he had with Putnam. A debt charge was filed against him in Salem.

Burroughs preached in Portland, Maine until the Indians drove his family south to Wells during King Williams War. They were living in Wells on April 30, 1692, when John Putnam’s 12 year old niece, Ann and George’s former maid, Mercy Lewis, accused the minister of witchcraft. The girls testified that he had appeared to them in a vision and admitted to killing his first two wives. Three constables were sent to Wells to deliver the accused to Salem. Burroughs was confident that the preposterous charges would be dropped once he appeared before Judge Jonathan Corwin who owned considerable acreage and mill rights along the Mousam River. Emerson W. Baker, of Salem State College, proposes a connection between Maine land dealings by the likes of Judge Corwin and the escalation of the Salem witch mania, in his article “Maine, Indian Land Speculation, and the Essex County Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692”

Burroughs offered to show the authorities the shortest route back to Salem through the woods to South Berwick. The constables were apparently compelled by some magic spell to follow his advice. Along the way a lightning storm spooked their horses and caused them to rush through the trees at a high-speed trot. The path they traveled- thenceforth known as Witchtrot Road- eventually led them out of the woods and on to Salem, but the constables were convinced that the minister had caused the storm with witchcraft. They testified to that effect at his trial. Judge Corwin and his brother in-law, Judge Hawthorne found Rev. George Burroughs guilty of witchcraft and he was hanged August 19, 1692.

One hundred and four years later witchcraft hysteria visited the good people of Arundel. John Hilton was walking home one evening when Widow Smith appeared on the road six yards ahead of him. The ox goad he was carrying started slipping through his hand by some power that he decided must be witchcraft. He caught up to the old woman and tried to strike her with the stick. Instead of injuring her he somehow received a violent blow to his own lower back.

John was in a state of insanity when he got home. His father in-law, Eaton Cleaves confined the young man and asked Widow Smith to visit him. While she was in his presence John spoke rationally but as soon as she was gone he was again insensible. The widow, in an effort to make peace, shed her own blood as an antidote to the bewitching but John’s condition did not improve.

Things got really ugly when the women of the family got involved. John’s sister Elizabeth Smith, his wife Sarah and nieces Dolly Smith and Molly Hilton tried to do away with the widow by concocting an incantation of their own involving home grown herbs and some of John’s bodily fluids. When that didn’t kill the old woman they told her “she ought to have been long ago in hell with the damned; that they would let loose the man whom she had bewitched to kill her.”

John Hilton did escape confinement. He violently beat Widow Smith with a stick and almost choked her to death. Nearby, his niece egged him on. “Kill her, Uncle John,” she cried. The witchcraft delusion spread throughout their Cleaves Cove neighborhood causing one house to be entirely demolished.

With this bizarre case before him at the Biddeford court, Justice Wells refused to hear any arguments about magic spells. According to a November 17, 1796 article published in “The Eastern Herald and Gazette of Maine,” he told John Hilton’s family that the difficulties and the dissention in their neighborhood arose from their ignorance, not the poor old woman’s witchcraft. The accusers were convicted of assault and battery. Each was required to pay $100 bond that would be returned to them if they kept peace with the Widow Smith until the following August.

What a difference a century makes. In Salem, it had been the Judges and the religious leaders who fueled the fires of hysteria. The wise Biddeford Judge put a quick end to the Arundel witch hunt by making it clear that accusing someone of witchcraft would be expensive.

Al Mingalone, Paramount Newsreel Cameraman of Pelham Manor, NY was given a risky assignment on September 28, 1937.  He was to film Old Orchard Beach Country Club golfers while dangling from a cluster of 28 four-foot hydrogen-filled balloons tethered to an automobile bumper.

In an article Mingalone wrote for Yankee Magazine in 1986, he explained his acceptance of this dangerous assignment.  “In my job I covered pilots, acrobats, soldiers and athletes.  I once rode on the back of a motorcycle to film a bicycle race; I straddled a periscope in the open ocean to film a submarine going under. This time my boss thought it would make a great story if I balloon jumped and filmed from the air while another

Camera man filmed me from the ground. I was making $75 per week, and he offered me a $50 bonus; with a wife and four kids to support, I couldn’t turn him down.” 

Father James J. Mullen of St. Margaret’s Church in Old Orchard Beach blessed the balloons before the experiment began.

Two rolls of film were already in the can when Mingalone decided he needed a slightly higher filming position. Two balloons were added.  As soon as the cluster of balloons was released Mingalone shot upward. The 100-foot safety line, his only connection to mother earth, held for a moment and then snapped. Locker-boy Thomas Bowman chased the escaping clothesline into a potato field across the road. The line was all but in the boy’s grasp when he stumbled.  The cameraman floated away in a strong northeast wind.

Mingalone rose 2,500 feet into a rain cloud. Al’s partner, Phil Coolidge and Father Mullen jumped into an automobile and followed Mingalone toward Saco. Two miles later they spotted the drenched cameraman descending to 600 feet from the added weight of his soaking wet sweater.  Father Mullen, who just happened to be a sharpshooter, grabbed the rifle Paramount had supplied for just such an emergency and fired off two shots at the balloons. His first shot missed but the second punctured two of the hydrogen bags. Much to the holy man’s relief Mingalone started to sink earthward.

While the men on the ground were doing their part to rescue the photographer, he was formulating an ill-conceived plan of his own. With scissors in his teeth he began to climb the 15 feet up his harness ropes to the ring that held all the balloons. His intention was to cut a few balloons free to speed his descent but when he had almost reached the ring his hands went numb from the cold causing him to drop his 12-pound Bell and Howell Camera.  Loss of the ballast sent him upward again only this time he was hopelessly tangled in his harness ropes. 

Father Mullen and Phil Coolidge had lost sight of Mingalone. Sirens wailed, spectators speculated, York County was abuzz. Finally someone in the crowd spotted Al floating at 200 feet over the Alfred Road in North Kennebunkport. Father Mullen jumped out of his car, dropped to one knee and fired the shot that brought the cameraman gently back to earth.

He landed in George Goulet’s cornfield on the Limerick Road near what is now Clearview Estates. About an hour after his harrowing 13-mile flight began the Goulet brothers pounced on Al Minalone in a thistle patch to keep him earthbound while they cut him out of the harness.

Uninjured and apparently unfazed by his aerial stunt Mingalone returned that evening to Old Orchard Country Club for a round of bridge with Father Mullen.  The story was covered by newspapers nationwide. 

1937 was a big year for Mingalone.  He had filmed the Hindenburg disaster in May.  It was the footage he took while aloft in Maine that won him a National Headliners Club Award on July 10, 1938. 

Mingalone had been one of Paramount News’s premier newsreel cameramen since 1928. He documented history for the short films played before every movie in theatres throughout the country until television made the newsreel redundant. 

As a celebrity, he posed for several Camel Cigarette ads in the 1930s claiming that he grabbed his meals as they came.  “Getting the picture always comes first! With Camel’s help my digestion always stands up under the strain. I smoke Camels right around the clock – they don’t jangle my nerves, irritate my throat or tire my taste.” 

 Al covered many political campaigns during his career. Truman was his favorite president.  “He was one of the best guys to be with,” Mingalone once said. “He talked like you and me and called a spade a spade.”  Albert Mingalone died in Hackensack, NJ in 1991.

 Mingalone’s 35mm footage remains in varying states of preservation and is owned by SPPN Images Inc. in California; the world’s largest private film library. The entire Paramount Newsreel collection is being digitized.  Award winning reel 6519, which includes Mingalone’s balloon ride to North Kennebunkport and an interview with the flying photographer will certainly be on my YouTube.com watch list.     See http://www.mykennebunks.someoldnews.com/mingalone.htm