The vaguest hint of a gold strike turns wise men foolish. Not just in faraway places like the Klondike or California and not just in a simpler time. More than 2,500 amateur prospectors from six states descended on Ogunquit, during the chilly month of March 1960. Armed with kitchen colanders and frying pans they rushed to the mouth of the still icy Josias River upon hearing the news that gravel dredged from Perkins Cove had already yielded some quantity of gold.

The Ellis C. Snodgrass Co. of Portland had been hired to enlarge Perkins Cove. After hauling out thick layers of mud, clamshell and drag dredges hit gravel on the old river bed. The town parking area was in need of resurfacing, so representatives of the Ogunquit Village Corporation instructed Irving Pickering, engineer in charge of the project, to have the gravel dumped in piles on the parking lot. Pickering became intrigued by the texture of the material. This fine alluvial sediment consisted in part of disintegrated rock that had been flowing down the Josias River from Mount Agamenticus for eons. It reminded him of the gravel in which he had once found tiny flecks of gold.

Following a hunch — on St. Patrick’s Day, a Thursday — Irving borrowed the only gold pan in Ogunquit from local rock hound, Frederick E. Kemp Jr. Almost immediately, he sifted out a gold nugget the size of a coffee bean. After panning the rest of the day he collected a half a thimbleful of gold dust. His total take for the day was only $8, but back at his office he jokingly put up a sign over the door that read “Klondike Town Hall.” Fred Kemp got word of the mother lode and quickly retrieved his gold pan from Pickering. He and 200 other eager early birds were at the municipal parking first thing Friday morning.

Police Chief Chris Larsen was alarmed by the crowd and immediately banned all prospecting on town property. Ogunquit Village Corporation Manager, Percival H. Wardwell, reversed the chief’s decision the following evening when Ogunquit business owners pressured him to let the tourists come and spend money in their shops. There was still snow on the ground but the story had been reported by the Associated Press. Ogunquit merchants were not about to miss a rare opportunity to open the season on the first day of spring. “Let them prospect to their hearts’ content,” Wardwell ordered.

Sunday morning, 2,500 prospectors appeared at the parking lot and along the banks of the Josias River. They came for the day from as far away as New York. They brought homemade prospecting tools and wives eager to shop in the village.

In true prospecting tradition, nobody wanted to say just how much gold had been collected. Hoping to maintain the gold fever, some locals insisted they had found “a pretty good amount of the stuff,” but their claims lacked specificity. The following weekend, a couple hundred prospectors were back. There was some talk of trying upriver once the ice melted but nothing ever came of it. It was reported in the Lewiston Daily Sun that “the claims in the parking lot gravel were scarcer than parking spaces on a hot August day.” Disgruntled prospectors complained that the only similarity between Ogunquit and the Klondike was the weather. Most of the money made during the 1960 Ogunquit Gold Rush ended up in the pockets of local merchants who had the good sense to stock up on pie plates and cocoa.

Gold has been found in Maine over the years in the Sandy River, the Swift River, and in the Saint John River, but never in quantities sufficient to make it profitable to mine. That hasn’t stopped myriad businessmen from trying to drum up interest in its promise.

On June 9, 1837, a Maine newspaper announcement read, “A gold mine was lately discovered in Albion, Maine, the gold of which was imported from Mexico, especially for the purpose. The land sold at a very high rate in consequence of this discovery; but is not so valuable now.”

On April 8, 1880, a reporter for the Lewiston Evening Journal cautioned readers against investing in the many exaggerated claims in Bluehill and Acton, Maine. “We wish to remind our readers that it is not yet determined whether any of our Maine mines will yield gold or silver in sufficient quantities to make it profitable,” he wrote. They did not and many investors were embarrassed.

In 1897, a great deal of money was invested on a mysterious process that promised to extract gold from the seawater near Lubec and Cape Porpoise. (see Nov. 2009 Old News, “Cape Porpoise Gold Rush”)

No matter how many times someone claims to have discovered profitable quantities of gold in Maine, there are always plenty of wise men at the ready with their pie plates and garden hoes.

Less than 100 families lived in Wells when blacksmith, Louis Allain arrived from France around 1684.  The colonists probably received him with some trepidation, given the alliance between his countrymen in Canada and the Indians that had plagued them, off and on, for a decade.  Little did they know that Allain would one day use their acquaintance to spy for the Governor of l’Acadie.

French Protestants or Huguenots fled religious persecution in France during the reign of King Louis XIV, many of them settling in New England.  Louis Allain’s indentured apprentice, Anthony Coombs, was a Huguenot.  Louis, himself may also have represented himself as such to the people of Wells.  He would later prove his loyalty lay in his pocketbook. 

At thirty years old, Allain was already a man of means.  He purchased ½ of Samuel Storer’s Cape Neddick-built brigantine, Endeavor, in August of 1685.  A month later, he purchased a mill on the western bank of the Little River, lots on both sides of the river and the home of William Frost. 

Territorial tensions grew between the colonists from France and England and between the Indian tribes allied to both monarchies.  Allain decided to move to Port Royal, Nova Scotia, leaving Anthony Coombs behind to protect his Wells property.  In 1687 he obtained permission to build windmills along the river that has since been known as Allain’s River.  He raised a family there and his fortunes grew. 

Within a few years Louis owned a grain mill, a saw mill, a store and several coasting vessels that made regular trading voyages to the English city of Boston.  He and his partner shipped lumber and flour from their mills in Port Royal and brought back Boston goods to sell to their Acadian customers.  Andre Faneuil, the wealthy Boston Huguenot whose fortune financed the building of  Faneuil Hall, traded regularly with the Acadians, even as Governor William Phipps burned Port Royal in 1690.  When the legality of their trading arrangement was questioned, Allain and other Acadian businessmen declared their allegiance to the English King.  At the same time they were supplying the French Navy with mast timbers.   

Indians attacked the villages along the York County coast in 1703.   It was a horrible year for Wells.  Thirty-nine of her inhabitants were either killed or made prisoner.  The following Spring Colonel Benjamin Church led an expedition through Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and the Bay of Fundy, collecting French prisoners and Indian scalps for bounty along the way.  Under orders from Massachusetts Governor Dudley, he left Port Royal unscathed.  Some people of Massachusetts, including Puritan minister Cotton Mather, suspected that Dudley was trying to preserve illegal trade between Boston and Nova Scotia. 

Feeding prisoners of war became expensive for both the French and the English and an agreement was made to exchange prisoners in 1705.  Allain and his business partner, who were fluent in English and familiar with Boston, were sent to seal the deal.  According to the September 10, 1705 issue of the “Boston News-letter”, Allain arrived in Boston on the 20^th of August under a flag of truce, with the signed agreement.  He returned to Port Royal at the end of September carrying a few French prisoners back as a show of good faith.  A January 1706 report in the same paper indicates that he sailed again for Massachusetts a few months later.  “On Thursday last the 26^th day of December there arrived at Nanguncket [Ogunquit] near to Wells in the Province of Maine, A Flag of Truce from Port-Royal with 34 English Prisoners. 

E.E. Bourne writes in his “History of Wells” that Lewis Allen came to Wells under the Flag of Truce and was authorized to trade prisoners.  The people of Wells were immediately suspicious of the Frenchman’s motives and searched his pocketbook.  In it, they found incriminating instructions for Allain to report to the French Governor of Acadia any efforts underway to fortify Wells against the Indians.  “If any enterprise was afoot that he should join L.A. the two first letters of his name, close together.  If it was only in agitation, place them at some distance; but if nothing was in motion, then to sign a cross.” 

Allain was clasped in irons and sent to Boston to be dealt with.  In a surprising twist that Bourne does not reveal, Governor Dudley released Allain.  He made some excuse about owing Louis his life and sent him back to Port Royal to continue his lucrative lumber and flour trade.   

Anthony Coombs, whose indenture expired, had long since deserted Allain’s Wells mill on the Little River.  Louis hired his “trusty and well-beloved friend Lewis Bane of York,” [who had represented the English in treaty negotiations at Port Royal] to recover his title to the Wells property.  Bane eventually bought the property from him in 1720 and Louis boldly appeared at the courthouse in Biddeford to acknowledge the instrument May 9, 1733.  When he died in Port Royal several years later Louis Allain was one of the richest men in town.

Barak Maxwell was the richest, most influential man in Ogunquit.  Before the American Civil War he was heavily invested in shipbuilding and the rum/molasses trade with Cuba.  In 1855 Maxwell had a 265 ton brig built at his Ogunquit shipyard and named her the “Betsey Ames” in honor of his beloved wife.  Captain Richard C. Bartlett owned a 1/8 share of the Ogunquit brig and furnished her captain’s quarters comfortably enough to entice his wife Hannah to accompany him on many voyages.  

Hannah Bartlett was aboard her husband’s vessel on October 17, 1861, when the commissioned Confederate privateer schooner “Sallie” fired 12 pound canon shot in her direction.  The Betsey Ames was carrying a cargo of machinery, apples, onions, cabbages and corn meal from New York to Cardenas, Cuba in spite of the military threat to all merchant vessels during the Civil War.  She also had several passengers onboard including a young Scotsman and his American bride.  The Scotsman recorded the attack for posterity.  

He wrote, “About 9 am she fired at us, her shot falling short about a quarter of a mile.  Captain Bartlett then ordered all sail to be made, but the breeze shortly after died away, and the now suspicious schooner made upon us and fired another shot which also fell a little short of our vessel.”  The fourth shot passed alarmingly close to the side of the “Betsey Ames”.  Captain Bartlett realized he could not outrun his opponent and ordered the sails taken in. Henry Lebby, the privateer’s captain, boarded the Ogunquit brig around noon with a motley 7 man prize crew to sail her to Charleston.    

They made the South Carolina coast in 6 days but spent another 4 days tacking in circles trying to locate Charleston Harbor.  Finally another crew was sent from Charleston to pilot the prize brig in.  The lady prisoners were detained at a local boarding house and men spent a few hours locked up at the Charleston city jail before being released.  

Brig “Betsey Ames” was condemned and sold to John Frazer & Co, a Charleston commercial enterprise.  She was renamed the “Mary Wright” and Henry Lebby was appointed as her master.  On the following March 2, she successfully ran the Union blockade made for Liverpool England, arriving at Liverpool April 2.  Through some covert arrangement with Bushby & Co. of Liverpool the “Betsey Ames”/”Mary Wright” was registered as the British brig “Lilla” on April 24, 1862.     

Great Britain was officially neutral in the American Civil War but it was well known to the Union that she secretly supplied the Confederacy through the port of Nassau in the Bahamas, without regard to their blockade.  

U. S. gunboat, steamer Quaker City captured the brig “Lilla” off the Bahamas on July 3 1862 and sent her into Boston for investigation.  She was bound for the City of Nassau, loaded with a cargo of saltpeter, copper and 37 packages of medicine.  An Englishman presented himself as her captain but it was later revealed that Henry Lebby of Charleston, SC had acted as her master until the gunboat came into view.  

Convoluted paperwork found onboard the Brig “Lilla” was composed to obscure the fact that Charleston parties actually still owned her.  Representatives of the British Busby & Co. could not or would not show evidence that they had ever paid for the vessel and the “Lilla’s” first mate testified in court that the crew’s wages had been paid in advance by Fraser & Co. of Charleston. 

The First Circuit Court of the United States finally ruled that Bushby & Co. of Liverpool had tried to deceive the court.  The “Lilla” and her cargo were condemned as a legitimate prize of war.  Claim for the vessel, her tackle, apparel, and furniture was filed July 30, 1862 by Barak Maxwell of Ogunquit on behalf of his interest, that of Richard C Bartlett and the Mercantile Mutual Insurance Company.  The brig “Lilla” was sold by the U. S. Marshalls to a Samuel Knight for $9275.  Proceeds were restored to the Ogunquit parties after the deduction of a salvage fee to be paid to the crew of the gunboat “Quaker City.” 

Business at Barak Maxwell’s ship yard had already declined by the beginning of the Civil War.  In 1855, the Betsy Ames was built for about $34/ton.  By 1860 the same size vessel cost more than $65 /ton to build.  Business did not improve after the war and in 1880 Barak Maxwell dismantled his steam saw mill and sold it to James Buffum.  Tourism became the principal industry in Ogunquit as it did in many of the shipbuilding towns on the Maine coast.

Something was amiss with the cosmos during the third week of July 1926. The temperature hovered near 100 all up and down the eastern seaboard and as far west as Ohio. All but convicted murderers were released from the stifling prisons in North Carolina where temperatures reached 107. Hundreds slept out in the open on the Boston Common.

Just before sunrise on July 18th a blinding bluish light filled the cloudless Maine sky from Dexter to Saco. The flash was immediately followed by an explosive sound that awakened the whole City of Portland. Professor Charles Hutchins of the Physics Department at Bowdoin College confirmed to the press that a meteor had exploded over the crook in the Androscoggin River.

Hours earlier a 14 year old boy had witnessed the bursting of a large bright light in his grandfather’s Vermont cornfield. On the morning of July 18th he collected a handful of porous meteor fragments layered with quartz that he found lying on top of the plowed earth. Robert Dunklee, the boy’s father, telephoned authorities at the Harvard College Observatory and promised to send the rocks to Cambridge by express mail.

The scientists, who had just received a call from Professor Hutchins at Bowdoin, were puzzled. Meteors did not typically contain quartz. Furthermore, it was way too early in the season for these incidents to be part of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. Seven unexpected fireballs had also been documented the previous November and December. One that exploded over Hornell, NY was reported to be the size of a freight car but no fragments of that celestial body were ever recovered.

At 3pm on the afternoon of July 18th the people of Portsmouth and Kittery observed a huge dusky cloud approaching from the northwest. Within five minutes the worst summer storm in their history was upon them. Vivid lightning struck. Torrential rain flooded the streets. Golf ball sized hail swirled into Portsmouth. Some of the hail was actually tiny stones coated in ice. The stones were smooth, polished white quartz like those one might find on a beach. The nearest beach with all white quartz stones was Rye Beach some 8 miles to the south. Hail that fell on Kittery was strange, too; 5 1/2 inch disks of ice indicating 3 separate freezes inside the cloud.

Terrific wind hurled the rocks and the hail in a circular motion breaking hundreds of windows. Thirty minutes later the storm had lifted leaving destruction in its wake. Farmer’s crops were flattened and some of their cows were dead. Storekeeper’s goods were ruined by the water that poured through broken windows. Banks of frozen rocks and golf ball hail had to be shoveled out of dining rooms. There was not enough glass in Portsmouth to repair 1/3 of the broken windows and it hadn’t even rained in Dover, NH.

Meanwhile, the railroad station at Brockton, MA had been destroyed by lightning. 500 seats at Fenway Park were lifted away from their bolts and deposited by a 100 mile an hour gust of wind into the center of the grandstand, twisted and broken. A 90 foot steeple was blown off the Asbury Methodist Church in Springfield, MA.

The damage was still not completely repaired on July 22, when a great brown cloud appeared high over Portsmouth. This time it came from the Southwest in dirty whirlwinds. Though it lasted but 10 minutes the second storm effected a larger area. A Dover, NH house lost its roof. At Gray Lodge in Kittery, Phyllis Gray was giving a bridge party on her front lawn. One of her guests didn’t have time to get up off the lawn pillow upon which she was lounging. She was rolled 100 feet across the grass. Wind swept through York Beach with a force that picked up men, women and children, swirled them in the air and then dropped them banged and bruised on the sand. Several York Beach cottages were blown from their foundations. The bell tower at The Nubble was blown off its base and moved 4 feet to the edge of a deep cliff. Two lifeboats at the Ogunquit lifesaving station were splintered. Three houses were destroyed at Wells Beach.

In Kennebunkport, author Booth Tarkington had put out in his three-ton motor boat, the Zantu seeking relief from the heat. He was accompanied by his secretary Betty Trotter and Captain Harry Thirkell. When they were near an island 6 miles from shore, a fire started on the boat. Tarkington and Thirkell sustained minor burns extinguishing the fire but that was the least of their problems. The ignition wires had burned through and the craft was disabled. Betty and Captain Thirkell began the long row to shore for assistance leaving Tarkington to guard the anchored Zantu. Just as the dingy was reaching shore, storm clouds darkened the sky. The Zantu was buffeted about until her anchor rope parted. Tarkington, headed out alone into the dark open sea, set paper fires in a bucket to make his vessel more visible. His last scrap of paper was burning when Captain John Peabody finally spotted him and towed him back to shore through convulsing waves.

Temperatures in southern Maine dropped from 104 F before the storm to 72 F immediately after. Freak Week on the east coast resulted in 160 deaths and over $1,000,000 in damages. The sudden storms were called cyclones in 1926 newspapers but in retrospect they were more likely tornados.

The obstacles sculptor and medalist, Victor David Brenner, had to overcome to see his design for the Lincoln penny — finally minted in 1909 — were minor compared to challenges he faced in his native Lithuania before emigrating to America.

Near the end of his career, Clara Whiteside, wife of well known artist Frank Reed Whiteside, interviewed Victor Brenner at his Ogunquit studio overlooking Perkins Cove.

He had been born Viktoras Barnauskas in Shavli, Lithuania, in 1871. At the age of 13 he began an apprenticeship in his father’s metal shop and quickly displayed a precocious gift for engraving. At the tender age of 16 he went into business for himself.

Victor arrived in New York in 1890 with no knowledge of the English language, but his superior engraving skills quickly earned him a comfortable living. After eight years, he felt creatively unsatisfied by the work. “I gave in to the discontent that was troubling me — threw up my work and sailed for Paris,” he told Clara. There he studied with accomplished medalist, Louis Oscar Roty, and entered Academie Julian. Upon his return to New York, his artistic talents were recognized by well-placed numismatists who encouraged his concentration on commemorative medals.

Brenner’s proposed design for the Panama Canal service medal was selected by President Theodore Roosevelt, whose flattering likeness was to be depicted thereon. While the President posed for the artist, the two men developed a comfortable rapport, so much so that Victor felt within the bounds of propriety to suggest that the Indian head on the United States penny be replaced by his sculpture of President Abraham Lincoln.

Roosevelt was persuaded, much to the chagrin of the Chief Engraver at the U.S. Mint, Charles E. Barber, who tried every unctuous trick in the book to discredit Brenner and the quality of his work. Nonetheless, a Victor David Brenner design for the new coin was finally approved by the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, with one minor change. The name “Brenner” that appeared on the reverse of the coin was reduced to VDB. By the time the first coins were released to the public on Aug. 2, 1909, the administration had changed.

The new Secretary of the Treasury, Franklin MacVeagh, saw the finished coin and believed, as did some vocal members of the public, that the foreign-born artist had given too much prominence to his own initials on the back of the coin. A decision was made to stop the minting. The vindictive Chief Engraver Barber advised Secretary Macveagh that it would be technically impractical to reduce the size of the initials on the die and convinced him that the most prudent course of action would be to remove Brenner’s initials altogether.

The public rushed the Treasury Department for the limited first minting and by Aug. 9, 1909, the supply of Lincoln pennies bearing the artist’s initials had been exhausted. The price of the coins went from 3 for a nickel to 25 cents apiece. Recently, one such penny, of the rarer San Francisco minting, was valued at more than $6,000.

Victor David Brenner’s initials were re-introduced on the front of the Lincoln penny in 1918 just after Charles E. Barber retired from the U.S. Mint. During the same year what could arguably be described as Brenner’s masterwork — the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain, also known as A Song to Nature — was unveiled at the entrance to Schenley Park in Pittsburgh, Pa. The magnificent 30-foot public sculpture in bronze and granite portrays a reclining Pan being serenaded by a graceful female companion. Carla Whiteside’s enlightening article was widely published in 1920, but it did not reveal the circumstances that led to Brenner’s departure from the motherland. Numismatic expert, David W. Lange, uncovered the particulars in his 2005 book, “The Complete Guide to Lincoln Cents.”

Victoras Barnauskas’ work so exceeded that of his rival engravers in Lithuania that they resented the number of commissions the teenager took from them. He was accused of counterfeiting. The police, frustrated in trying to obtain evidence of the crime that had never occurred, came into his shop and asked him to duplicate an official seal. Unaware that it was illegal to do so, young Viktor made a perfect copy and was thrown into jail. With the help of some friends he managed to escape and fled to the United States.

When Victor Brenner died in 1924, at just 53 years old, his name was well known. The controversy over the temporary removal of his initials from the Lincoln penny brought him more notoriety than if he had been allowed to sign his whole name to the design.

The Marginal Way, a gentle footpath that follows the breathtakingly beautiful coast for a mile and a quarter between Perkins Cove and Ogunquit Village, is treasured by residents and visitors alike. It is open to the public thanks in great measure to F. Raymond Brewser’s foresight and tenacity.

Brewster, an architect, grew up in York on Chase’s Pond Road, near the woolen mill of Josiah Chase Sr. He moved to Ogunquit as a young man and devoted himself to civic improvements of his adopted village, serving as postmaster and overseer of the Ogunquit Village Corporation. He also designed and built the Ogunquit Grammar School.

Coastal lots were being divided up and sold to summer cottagers at an alarming rate. Brewster made it his business to protect as much shoreline as possible for public use. His childhood neighbor, Josiah Chase Jr., owned a great swath of oceanfront property from Perkins Cove to the mouth of the Ogunquit River. Brewster asked his friend, on behalf of the Ogunquit Village Corporation, to donate the land to the town.

Josiah Chase Jr., born in 1840, was York’s only commissioned officer in the American Civil War. After graduating from Bates College, he studied law in the offices of Judge Sewall Strout and then practiced independently in Portland. A democrat, he served as Deputy Collector of Customs for the District of Portland from 1886 to 1890, during the first administration of President Grover Cleveland. When he returned to his family homestead in York, his neighbor Frederic Raymond Brewster was still a boy. In 1895, Chase helped to establish the York Shore Water Company, an organization he would direct for the rest of his life. He also served two terms in the Maine Legislature but was defeated in his bid for the U. S. Senate.

Josiah Chase had started buying Ogunquit shore land in 1887 and filed subdivision plans with the York County Registry of Deeds during the decade that followed. It was his intention that the Marginal Way be kept as common space for the subdivision, but his friend Mr. Brewster kept after him to preserve public access to the shore. Josiah Chase finally deeded the Marginal Way to the Ogunquit Village Corporation in 1925, just three years before his death.

Brewster petitioned the town in 1942 to erect a bronze tablet at the entrance of Marginal Way to commemorate Josiah Chase’s gift to Ogunquit. Five years later, a plaque was installed but the dedication ceremony was overshadowed by a threat to local tourism. Beach and water pollution surveys, conducted by the State of Maine in 1946, identified serious problems in Ogunquit. The State Health Department closed the beach for five days in July of 1947, due to unhealthy water quality. “There used to be sewer pipes running down Israel Head Road and right out to sea,” said Helen Horn who now serves on the Marginal Way committee and the town’s sewer district.

Overseers of the Ogunquit Village Corporation voted to have a $30,000 “purification system” constructed to address the problem. One of the pumping stations needed to be located on the Marginal Way. Townspeople insisted that not more than $8,000 be spent on its construction. All the bids submitted for building a little house to hide the pumping station exceeded the budget.

Ogunquit overseer Grover S. Perkins designed a disguise for the pumping station and Winfield C. Littlefield was awarded a contract to build the 23-foot lighthouse replica for $6,795. Construction began in May of 1948 and the picturesque lighthouse was completed in time for the opening of the tourist season. State inspectors were so impressed by Ogunquit’s town-wide purification design that they encouraged other coastal communities to imitate the system.

The Marginal Way was extended further into the village in the 1950s. Rights of way were donated to the town, some more willingly than others. The world renowned footpath is now paved and dotted with landscaped benches. Unbeknownst to the tens of thousands of tourist that photograph it each summer, the lighthouse pumping station at the foot of Ontio Hill Road still functions as originally intended.

As a member of the “lost generation,” landscape and figure painter Henry Strater was frequently interviewed about his relationships with literary icons, Earnest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce. He was frustrated that he had achieved more notoriety for his friendships than for his art.

At the dedication of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in 1953, Strater explained that he had built the museum to showcase his own contemporaries in the visual arts. “The works of writers are reproduced by the thousands,” he told the appreciative crowd, “whereas an artist makes only his original.”

Henry Strater, who was known to his friends as “Mike,” was a bit of a rebel during his years at Princeton. He started a movement to alter the undemocratic system of social clubs at the school and he protested American participation in World War I. Classmate F. Scott Fitzgerald modeled the rebel-pacifist character, Burne Holiday, in “This Side of Paradise,” after Mike. “I taught Scott not to be afraid of the devil or the dark,” the painter once said of his influence over Fitzgerald.

Strater was a writer then, too. During his freshman year he won out against some pretty stiff competition to edit the Daily Princetonian. Robert Taylor of the Boston Globe once asked Strater how he chose between visual and literary arts. He responded, “I had to answer the question, did I want to spend the rest of my life looking at a beautiful typewriter, or did I want to spend the rest of my life looking at a beautiful woman?” He chose beautiful women, repeatedly.

Strater’s draft registration card lists him as a conscientious objector, but in 1917 he volunteered for Red Cross service in France. While on leave near the Swiss border he fell and injured himself, ending up on crutches. After suffering the humiliation of being treated like a war hero by women in the streets of Paris, he signed up for the Belgian Army in an effort to legitimize the perception.

While awaiting transport back to the States after the war, Strater studied art at l’Ecole Julien in Paris. He continued his artistic training at the Hamilton Easter Field School of painting in Ogunquit, during the summer of 1919. Strater spent the next five years honing his skills in exotic places. He and his first wife, Margaret Connor, travelled in Europe where they frequently dined with author James Joyce and met Earnest Hemingway at one of Ezra Pound’s afternoon teas.

Strater and Hemingway became very close. They boxed, fished and philosophized together for years. In 1936 the two men had a falling out over a 900-pound marlin. Mike had landed the giant, but when Hemingway allowed a photographer from Time Magazine to mistakenly assume he had caught the fish, the friendship fell apart.

After Hemingway died in 1961, Henry was flooded with questions about his former friend until he told a reporter for the Boston Globe to spread the word that he was “Hemingwayed out!”

Mike’s passion for competitive tuna fishing near his summer home in Ogunquit was rivaled only by his love for beautiful women. When not busy painting or fishing, he gleefully offered his services as judge of the annual Miss Ogunquit bathing suit pageant. Henry Strater and all three of his wives spent and worked tirelessly for the betterment of Ogunquit area organizations including the library and York Hospital. The Straters were also active supporters of the Ogunquit Art Association.

The more famous his “lost generation” literary friends became, the more fervent was Henry Strater’s wish that visual artists of the same era be similarly recognized. On Sept. 18, 1951, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art was incorporated. Henry Strater purchased the land on Shore Road and hired Charles Worley Jr. to design the museum. Jarvis Shibles of North Berwick was hired to oversee construction, which began in September of 1852. The 3,600 square foot building was completed halfway through the following summer.

On July 8, 1953, the Portsmouth Herald published a description of the new museum. “The low simple lines of the building give an unobtrusive yet modern appearance. The white pine pillars supporting the terrace roof were cut by Henry Strater and Joseph Weare from the old Weare woodlands.”

Mike and his fellow trustees filled the four exhibit rooms with works by Strater and his peers. A large Ogunquit crowd turned out for the dedication ceremonies on Aug. 1, 1953. Henry H. Strater gave the museum to the people of Ogunquit in memory of his parents, Adeline Helme and Charles Godfrey Strater. His realized dream is, to this day, one of Ogunquit’s crown jewels.

Appointments to positions in the District of Kennebunk Customs House were unabashedly political throughout its 113 year existence.

The First Congress of the United States under President George Washington authorized the collection of duties on imported goods in 1789 in response to an urgent need for federal revenue. Customs districts were established during the same session. The ports of Arundel and Wells were annexed to the district of Biddeford and Pepperelborough. During the decade that followed, the volume of international trade on the Kennebunk River grew to such an extent as to justify a port of entry there.

The District of Kennebunk was approved by Federalist President John Adams in 1799, but the official appointment of Jonas Clark as Collector of Customs was delayed by the election of Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican administration. President Jefferson wrote to his Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatan, in August of 1801. “Is Jonas Clark, proposed as collector of Kennebunk, a Republican? His having been nominated by our predecessor excites a presumption against it;” wrote the third President of the United States, “and if he is not, we must be inflexible against appointing Federalists till there be a due portion of Republicans introduced into office.” Gallatan believed that Clark might well be a Federalist, but that his unmatched qualifications made him nonetheless worthy of the position. Jefferson eventually signed the appointment, but the partisan wrangling did not end there.

Federalists believed the shipping embargoes instituted during Jefferson’s second term were unconstitutional. Deputy Collector of Customs, Seth Burnham, seized the brig Stranger in 1808, when he suspected that her owner intended to disobey the embargo. Most vessels loaded cargo at the wharves in the port where their departure for southern U. S. harbors could be monitored. The brig Stranger was being loaded in Cape Porpoise Harbor from where she could easily put to sea. Owner Thomas Perkins II protested the seizure in a letter to the editor of the Newburyport Herald claiming that his rights had been violated only because he was known to be a Federalist. “If a man lived near the high road in the woods,” he wrote, “he ought to be cast into prison because he was in a convenient situation to murder the passing traveler.”

The Customs House was located in Kennebunk Village until 1815. After the War of 1812, the second floor of the Kennebunk Bank building in Arundel (Kennebunkport) was leased because it was nearer the wharves. The bank had been incorporated in 1813 and a beautiful brick building constructed in spite of the depressed local economy. The government lease helped to keep the bank afloat for a while, but its charter was revoked in 1831 and the federal government purchased the building for less than half what it had cost to build.

West Indies trade had already declined. From 1800-1810 duties collected on rum-laden vessels amounted to $500,000. During the year 1836, only $6,997 was collected but the Customs House appointments were as hotly contested as ever.

When John Cousens was appointed Collector of Customs in 1853 he nominated his brother Enoch as his deputy. Many Kennebunk businessmen signed a petition opposing his confirmation and sent it to the Secretary of the Navy. On July 8, 1853, Kennebunk diarist Andrew Walker wrote “Enoch Cousens was confirmed notwithstanding all the efforts that have been made by his opponents to prevent his confirmation.” There were only a handful of entries in the impost book during the Cousens collectorship. The officials occupied themselves by successfully lobbying for a lighthouse installation on the pier at the mouth of the Kennebunk River. Both brothers were recalled and their lighthouse was dismantled during the next political shift in the White House.

The prudence of maintaining a Kennebunk district was debated nationally in 1872 but politics influenced the district’s survival. Kennebunk Customs collected just 15 cents between the years 1890 and 1894. The Kennebunkport Library Association took over the second floor of the once impressive customs building in 1898. Collector George Cousens tried to resign in 1902 for lack of work but the government refused to accept his resignation and re-appointed him in 1906.

Kennebunk Customs District was finally discontinued in 1913. The library association expanded into its first floor quarters and requested that the government transfer ownership of the building to the town of Kennebunkport as a library. The federal government refused. Abbott Graves purchased and renovated the property in 1920. He deeded it to the association in 1921, on condition it be named for his deceased son, Louis T. Graves.