A photo of a young Mildred Knowles Obrey circa 1917.
Mildred gave permission to record her recollections from when
she was a young girl growing up in South Berwick, Maine.
Mildred was born on June 9, 1908. Some of Mildred's
recollections were used in the award-winning
the historical fiction novel, Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the
Elegant Ride, by Jean Flahive.
Photo courtesy: Barbara Obrey Amergian & Timothy Obrey,
grandchildren of Mildred Knowles Obrey.
On September 3, 2004, State Representative Sally Lewin, and Seashore Trolley Museum volunteers, Edward (Ed) Dooks and Phil Morse visited Mildred Knowles Obrey, at her home in Eliot, Maine. The purpose of the visit was to record oral history recollections from Mildred from when she was a young girl growing up in South Berwick early in the 20th century. The 90-minute video/audio is a treasure trove of excerpts of daily activities. Here are portions of the transcript from the recording.
A resource for educators
Maine Historical Society has created companion lesson plans inspired by Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride - These State-standard-based lesson plans are for classroom use in grades 6, 7, and 8. The lesson plans and companion vocabulary and reading activities are available as free downloads through the Seashore Trolley Museum's website at www.trolleymuseum.org/eleganttide or Click Here.
The eight Social Studies/ELA units were also uploaded to the Maine Memory Network and are available with other statewide lesson plans for K-12.
The audiobook is now available Click HERE to go to the Audible page. the eBook is available Here
This blog post was created specifically to support the new lesson plan titled:
* Then and Now: Life in Maine
Objectives:
* Students will practice the skills involved in analyzing primary sources.
* Students will be able to describe life on an early 20th-century Maine family farm and how life has changed in Maine since the early 1900s.
* Students will be able to describe the differences between attending school in the early 20th century and attending school today.
This post is to provide supplemental information, images, and descriptions in support of research using the primary source from the collection of an oral history recording of Mildred Knowles Obrey in 2004 when she was 96 years old.
Transcript segments from the September 3, 2004 interview recorded at Mildred Knowles Obrey's home:
00:00:33.0
Mildred Obrey: Yes.
Ed Dooks: So, what was it like to grow up in the State of Maine as a little girl? What was your lifestyle like back then?
Mildred Obrey: It was wonderful. I came from a family of seven, and my oldest brother decided, along with my father, that because he didn't go - my oldest brother didn't go beyond high school, that every member of my family who could physically go, would go to college.
00:01:16.7
So, I had a great deal of freedom, because I had all these older brothers and one sister. And I was just, uh, an offspring that came ten years later, after everybody else had grown up.
00:01:41.1
So, I had a lot of freedom. I knew a lot of people in South Berwick. And one thing that I remember about the trolley cars was that my father worked for Kidder Press in Dover (NH), and he went up and down the Atlantic seaboard, setting up printing presses for the Kidder Press.
00:02:10.0
And my oldest brother was a molder at the Salmon Falls Foundry, and they took the trolley at 5:00 in the morning from the Congregational Church, which was just up the street about, oh, a sixteenth of a mile from my front door. And that was the reason we bought that particular house in South Berwick, rather, was because it was close to my parents and the people that were working in my family, to get transportation to Dover.
00:03:00.0
So, every morning, my brother and father took their dinner buckets - and they were the most wonderful dinner buckets you ever saw. In the bottom, if it was cold, my mother put in hot, hot tea. And then there was a tray that went on the front, and then she could put in a lunch for them that would keep warm from that hot tea underneath, and they would go off with that.
00:03:39.7
In the summer, she would put ice in there, and they could have a cold meal if it were a real hot day. And they would go on, get onto the trolley and come back at night at about 5:00 at night. It never came in on time, but that was all right. Nobody minded that at all. Mother just went on her merry way, preparing the food for supper.
Map of the Portsmouth, Dover & York Street Railway with
fare zones as of 1911. In 1911, the PD&Y was the
Western Division of the Atlantic Shore Railway.
O. R. Cummings' 1964 book, "Trolleys to York Beach."
00:04:14.2
So, then, in 1917 was a horrible flu epidemic. And I remember my mother said, "Go on up to the church and see if your father - you can see the trolley anywhere because he isn't home on time." And she waited. And then she'd send - when it got dark, she would send my brothers up, who were in high school at that time. And no Dad, no brother (Merle).
00:04:57.1
And mother was getting rather panicky. And soon my brother Merle and my brother Bert came down with my father, and mother said, "Where have you been?" He said, "We were all ready to take the trolley when one of the men that was with us in Dover fell dead from the flu at our feet." And he said, "We had to take care of him. He was a good friend of ours. We had to take him and make sure that everything was done right by him."
00:05:42.0
And that was, I guess, probably one of the most traumatic things that ever happened, trolly-wise, to me. And then my brother Merle, who had been in that particular group, caught the flu, and he lived down in what was called "The Landing" in South Berwick. And I remember going down to visit him, and there was a wreath on the door of every other house down the whole street, which meant somebody was dead [or had died] in t[hat house on] the street.
News circa 1918 promoted ways to protect oneself during
the flu pandemic. PWM collection
00:06:28.4
So, that was my 1917 connection with the trolley. And P.S., my brother died from the flu that winter.
00:07:04.9
Okay. My father always wanted me to know what was going on, and he would take me on the trolleys to Dover or to Portsmouth (NH). If there was anything of any value that he thought historically that I should see, I went by trolley to there.
00:07:29.5
And then, I was - as I told you before, I was a "stickybeak" [busybody], and I would - I would meet people on the trolleys, and I'd find out something about them, and then I'd go calling on them, and I would see some marvelous things.
Sarah Orne Jewett's sister, Miss Mary, lived right in the center of the town. Her house is still there. And there was a big bandstand in the center of town, and every Saturday night, which was shopping night - not Fridays or anything. Saturday night was shopping night.
00:08:22.5
And we would go up to hear the band concert and do all of our shopping. And then I would see the people who were going back to Eliot or Portsmouth or Dover who had been over to South Berwick, shopping, on the trolley.
And as I got older, I rode the trolleys here and there and everywhere by myself - well, with my friends, and we would take trips. We'd walk to Dover, and then - which was four miles over - we'd go into the tea room in Dover and have ice cream. We'd shop up and down the streets of Dover, and we'd take the trolley back to South Berwick again.
00.09.27.0
And then, as we got older, we decided that we could go walk to Dover, have lunch, then walk to Portsmouth, down to Dover Point to Portsmouth. And then we'd take the trolley back home.
By this time, I was pretty well grown up - I was 12 years old - and I thought I was somebody, I can assure you. and then every summer there would be a trolley that had no doors on it, no windows, and it was an open trolley. You probably have one of those down there. (Meaning at the Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport)
00:10:20.3
And we - our church - would hire the trolley to take us down to York Beach [Maine) for a picnic. And there was a friend of ours, of the church, who would allow us to have her cottage for the day, and what fun we used to have. We'd go out, walk around the trolley as it moved along. and it was oodles of fun.
Ed Dooks: So, you walked on the running board of the trolley?
Mildred Obrey: Yes
Circa 1920 open trolley car at York Corner. This would be the
type of open trolley Mildred Obrey would have ridden with
her South Berwick church group on a picnic trip to York Beach.
You can clearly see the two running boards that are for
passengers to use to step upon to board the trolley.
Image from the O. R. Cummings Collection
Ed Dooks: Tell me: What was it like? Tell me about how the trolley operated? What do you remember about riding the trolley?
00:11:11.4
Mildred Obrey: Well, of course, I rode the pull, drag, and yank.
Ed Dooks: You rode the what?
Mildred Obrey: Portsmouth, Dover, and York. (P, D & Y)
Ed Dooks: What did you call it?
Mildred Obrey: The pull, drag, and yank. (P, D & Y)
And they would start "boom!" And I remember there was a - sort of a handle that came out, like this. And, uh, then he would do something with it, and it would go {makes hissing noise] and make sort of a funny, little noise, and then it would go "boom!" and we would go up into the center of South Berwick - a big ride from the Congregational Church up to the center of South Berwick.
The handle on the controller
of an open trolley car
at Seashore Trolley Museum
similar to what Mildred
mentions above.
PWM Photo
00:12:07.5
And then sometimes we got off and sometimes we went down even further. We went down to Hog Point, and then we would come back home again, or we'd go to Dover. This was in my high school years, some of it was, and that was oodles of fun to do that.
Mr. Gerrish, who lived right across from the Congregational Church in South Berwick, which is still there, and his home is still there, was the conductor. And every morning he used to go out with a leather bag, and that was where he had his chance and so forth. And he had a belt around the front of him with - where you would give him a dime and get a nickel back, and he would reach in that funny bag to give it to you. And -
Ed Dooks: We probably should take notes as we are doing this.
Phil Morse: Your father's full name?
00:14:04.2
Mildred Obrey: Forest Ayer Knowles.
Ed Dooks: And your mother's name was?
Mildred Obrey: Ida Maple Rogers Knowles.
00:14:27.8
Ed Dooks: Did you ride them a lot in the summertime? Did you do anything special with 'em?
Mildred Obrey: Well, this - this picnic deal was a big deal, and then hot weather, that open car was on most all the time, except late at night. It got kinda chilly, and they usually...Down at what they called the junction in South Berwick, there was a barn, a huge barn, where cars were stored. And they would change the cars at that time, at nighttime quite frequently.
The South Berwick carhouse was located at South Berwick
Junction. The carhouse, shown here, shortly after its
completion in 1903. The elevated tank contained water for
an automatic sprinkler system in the barn. There were seven
tracks and a two-story ell at the right which contained offices,
a crew's lobby, a power substation, and a second-floor
dormitory. A fire on November 16, 1918, destroyed a
good portion of the building. No trace of the building
remains today. O. R. Cummings Collection
Just a short distance from the South Berwick carhouse was
South Berwick Junction, where the tracks to South Berwick
village branched from the mainline between Dover and
Rosemary Junction. Nearby was Quamphegan Park, a
privately owned resort bordering Quamphegan Brook
and the Salmon Falls River. Boating, fishing, bathing, and
a dancing pavilion were among its simple attractions.
O. R. Cummings Collection
00:15:10.1
But in the summer, on warm, warm days, it was fun to go on that troll with the open - we - my father would be so tired that we didn't go out very much at nighttime. He, uh...My father was one of the biggest politicians I ever knew in my life. He would come home from work. We would have supper - and it was "supper" in those days. It was not dinner, it was supper. And all of us would sit around the big table in the dining room, and we all would tell him what we had been doing that day.
00:16:15.4
And we would listen to his political expertise because he read every newspaper he could put his hands on, and he was a devotee of Teddy Roosevelt. And I remember one night he came into the house, and he said to my mother, "Where is that brand-new tub, washtub, that I got for you?" She says, "It's out on the back porch, hanging on the wall where I always leave the washtubs." He says, "I'm going to take it." And he went off, up the street with this brand-new washtub.
00:17:10.5
And I said to my mother, "What is he going to do with that?" "Oh," she said, "you wait. You'll find out." She said, "Go out on the porch and sit there and wait." Well, I went out, and I sat there, and pretty soon I heard 'tha-rump, tha-rump, tha-rump-rump-rump.' And here comes my father down the street with Mr. Swayze, who lived across the street and had a bakery up where Flynn's Bakery is, and two or three other men who played cornetts and clarinets, and my father played the drums [laughter] and my oldest brother played the bass horn.
00:18:13.6
And they came down with this great, big sign that said, "Vote for Teddy Roosevelt." [laughter] And then they got on the trolley at the Congregational Church, and they - it happened to be warm - and they would yell, "Vote for Teddy! Vote for Teddy!" And I thought that was the most wonderful thing. My father was out politicking [sic] for Teddy Roosevelt. And I thought he was a wonder - Teddy Roosevelt was a wonderful man, and I thought my father was, too, I can assure you.
00:18:56.5
Ed Dooks: So, he would use the trolley car to go out there and campaign?
Mildred Obrey: Mm-hm.
Ed Dooks: And he'd ride up and down in the trolley car with his band?
Mildred Obrey: Mm-hm. [laughter]
Ed Dooks: What about the wintertime? Tell me about how the trolleys operated in the wintertime?
00:19:12.0
Mildred Obrey: You never knew, because we didn't have really very good snowplowing in those days. We had sidewalks in South Berwick, which was more than Elliot ever had, but we had the sidewalks.
Ed Dooks: How did they plow the snow?
00:19:53.1
Mildred Obrey: They had a snowplow on the front. Oh, how did they plow the snow? Eventually, they had a snowplow that was pulled by horses. It was a big one. But I do remember when they had - two - it would have two handles, a man would walk behind it, and the horses, horse, would be hitched to it, and he would come down the sidewalk and clean off the sidewalks and the road.
00:20:16.0
And-but I do remember when they rolled the snow, and this was a great, huge roller that would come down the road and would, uh, compact the snow so that the sleighs could go over it. So, you see, I go back a ways, don't I?
A team of horses pulling a snow roller. There is no
specific date or location noted in the description. Many of his
early 20th-century images were taken in Gorham & Yarmouth
From the J. A. Waterman Negatives Collection at
the Osher Map Library, USM, Portland, Maine.
Ed Dooks: You sure do. Okay, in the wintertime, the trolley cars were heated? Yes?
Mildred Obrey: Yes. They were used. I know that my father, um, went back and forth to Dover on the trolley car. Uh, we kids used to ride it places that we were going in the wintertime.
Ed Dooks: Where would you go?
00:21:13.8
Mildred Obrey: Oh, Hog Point.
Ed Dooks: Why would you go down there?
Mildred Obrey: Well, just to go see what was going on. We had friends that went to Berwick Academy and lived in the Hog Point area, so we'd go down there. and, um, we would go down to Hog Point, across the bridge, and go to Salmon Falls, which is now called Rollinsford (NH).
00:21:44.3
And, by the way, I was the only member of my family born outside of Maine. I was born in "Little Canada." So, when I went to school and was in the fourth grade - uh, first grade or kindergarten, which was not kindergarten. That's a whole story that's interesting.
00:22:13.4
They said to me, "Where were you born?" And I said, "Little Canada." So, they put me down as a Canadian.
Ed Dooks: So, where is Little Canada?
Mildred Obrey: Little Canada was a section of South Berwick by the bridge to Salmon Falls, down near the mill area, where the French people lived, so they called it "Little Canada." And that was the only place when my father started working at the Kidder Press, where he could get a rent that would, uh, get him onto trolley cars and so forth, on the train to go to Dover.
00:22:58.9
So, I thought I was born in Little Canada. I knew I was. And I was in the fifth grade at the old elementary school, in South Berwick when this teacher was - we had salmon-colored cards with your history on them, and she was doing something with them. And she said, "Mildred, I didn't know you were a Canadian." I said, "Well, I'm not." She says, "But it says you were born in Little Canada." I said, "I was. I was born in Salmon Falls, New Hampshire," and I told her the story of that. so, there you have my history in the early days.
00:22:57.1
Ed Dooks: What kind of activities did you do as a little girl? What would be your average day? Let's say fifth grade. What would you do? You'd get up. go to school.
Mildred Obrey: I'd get up - well -
Ed Dooks: Would - you would obviously walk to school, yes? Is that -?
Mildred Obrey: Yes. I was very close to the school, uh, the Landing School. There were - I think, all told, there were six schools in South Berwick, besides Berwick Academy.
00:24:29:1
And, um, I would get up in the morning at the age of four, because the teacher, Miss Sanborn, whose brother married Grace - uh, [Gladys Hasty Towle], who was married to, into the family. And she came down one morning before school started, and she said to my mother, "Mrs. Knowles, I would like to take Mildred to school." Well, Mother said, "She isn't old enough. She isn't five years old."
00:25:19.8
And Miss Sanborn said, "But she and the Baptist minister's son, Mark Kingsley, are two of the smartest little children in town, and I want them in school." And she says, "And besides," she said to my mother, who was in her 40s, you see when I was born, she said, "You and Mrs. Kingsley shouldn't have to be bringing up these small, smart children without some help."
00:26:02.4
So, every morning, I went down and met my friend, Mark Kinsley, who was four, and I was four, and we sat in with the first, second, and third graders, and that was my first education. And it was amazing. There were - and somewhere I have a picture of it - there were boys and girls in that class, in the first, second, and third grade, who were 12 years old at that time. It was interesting -
00:26:47.2
I did a whole segment on my education in South Berwick, and it got lost. [chuckles]
Ed Dooks: So, each class would have three grades?
Mildred Obrey: Yes.
Ed Dooks: About how many students would be to a class?
00:27:02.8
Mildred Obrey: There would be about, uh, probably five or six in a class. There were -
Ed Dooks: So, it would be like five first graders, five, second, graders, five, third graders. So, it would be a total of 15 kids in the class?
Mildred Obrey: Mm-hm, 15-20. That would be...And it was an interesting life because Mark and I absorbed all of the older kids' education as we sat there. We could both read. When we were four years old, we could read.
00:27:47.1
She was a - just a perfectly marvelous teacher. every morning, she went into the teacher's cupboard and she got her apron, and every morning her apron was a black sateen apron with a wide band of cretonne on the bottom of it. Every noon, we all went home to dinner, for lunch. And when she came back from lunch, she went into her closet and she took out her afternoon apron, which was a white linen apron with a beautiful crocheted border on the bottom.
00:28:44.6
And we learned early in the game that you dress differently in the afternoon than you did in the morning.
Ed Dooks: Why would she do that? Why would you dress differently from the morning from the afternoon?
Mildred Obrey: Because that was the custom back then. You changed your clothes in the afternoon, the ladies did, because you were going to have supper, which was the main meal of the day, at night, and you wanted to look as nicely as you could. So, this was what we did.
00:29:27.1
And, of course, that closet was fascinating to me, because it had the water bucket with the older dipper in it, and we were allowed to get a drink from there at recess time. And also at recess time we usually always had a lunch of some kind: candy, popcorn, apples, bananas, that type of thing.
Ed Dooks: Now, this lunch you'd bring to school yourself?
Mildred Obrey: Yes. No, no hot lunch programs. and one day, I was naughty, and I got put under the teacher's desk. Well, somewhere in the process, I was poking around, and I knocked a knothole in the desk out that had been plugged in. And I had long eyelashes at the time, and I would put my eyelashes in that, and the kids in the front row would all laugh and thought it was awfully funny. [laughter]
00:30:54.5
And finally, she got onto that, so she put me in the closet. And I couldn't have been in a better place, because when she opened the door to let me out, I'd eaten all the lunches and was sound asleep in the closet. [laughter]
Ed Dooks: Were they good? [laughter]
Mildred Obrey: They were very good.
Ed Dooks: Okay. Let's go back to the trolley cars again. [chuckles] Um, why would you and your family use the trolley car?
00:31:36.2
Mildred Obrey: Because we didn't have an automobile. You see, I was - I was born during the time when the first automobiles were, came into South Berwick. I lived in - we had moved from the land of, um, Little Canada down on the riverfront, and I was -
00:32:01.9
They would use it for Dover, trips to Dover for shopping primarily. And then, uh, later, during Worl War 1, my father, uh, left the Kidder Press and went to the Navy Yard. and, of course, you went by trolley to the Navy Yard.
Timeline (Includes index to all years/months/days) FirstWorldWar.com
WWI poster promoting the purchase of
War Bonds and Stamps.
PWM Collection
00:32:44.8
And, um, we also - let's see. Well, I guess Dad was the only one, because my brother, Merle, had died, and my brother, Herbert, was at the Naval Academy. My brother, Miles, did some, uh, he went to Dover because he belonged to what is now called the National Guard, but it was called something in those days. Camp something, camping, camp...I'll think of it, but I don't remember exactly what it was called. And he belonged to that.
00:33:28.1
So - and sometimes, just to get to, on time to work in the cotton mill in Salmon Falls. One of my brothers worked in the cotton mill in Salmon Falls. And, I guess, just to get from here- and, of course, Dover was a place we liked to go to for shopping. And Salmon Falls had some very good stores. There was a McNally's Store in Salmon Falls that my mother traded with.
00:34:18.1
And, uh, every day, McNally's went out a team with, uh, horses - sometimes two, sometimes one - to take orders. and then, in the afternoon, the orders would have been put up in the store and brought back so you had fresh food coming in. Otherwise, we, we, shopped right in the center of the town. But Mother rather like McNally's because she could run an account with them, and on Saturdays, my father would go in there, and he would pay the bill. On every Saturday, when he got his paycheck, he'd pay the bill.
00:35:14.7
And one Saturday, he came home with this big, beautiful, caramel-colored dish, which I have over here now, and it is filled with molasses kisses. And it has my mother's birthday. And, you know, he never, ever forgot her birthday and never forgot to fill it with molasses cookies for her.
00:35:57.4
Mildred Obrey: And Mr. McNally had it filled with, the first time, with kisses, because mother was such a good customer. and -
Ed Dooks: What were some of the things you would buy at McNally's?
Mildred Obrey: McNally's, uh, just, uh, eggs and - no, not eggs, because we raised our own, and that's a story all by itself, too. Uh, we had a lot of hens, so we had to - we sold the eggs. And I had an egg route, and I would - I had customers.
00:36:41.2
And then, every Saturday, I would go up to Varney's Grain Store and - um I don't know whether you ever remember George Varney, who was a great politician in the area, and his father was one of the first - or his grandfather was one of the first settlers in the town of South Berwick. And they would let me if I filled paper bags with the $0.50 worth of grain for people to buy - and it would be a bag about that high - uh, he would give me a bag of grain for my hens.
00:37:30:8
So, I earned grain for my hens at, uh, at the ripe old age of about 10 years - 10 or 12 years of age. I didn't sell the grain. I fed the grain I earned to my hens, and my hens produced eggs, you see?
Varney had a grain store, where he sold all kinds of grains, of all kinds. And originally - the Varneys had a grain mill down at, in South Berwick at one time.
00:38:04.6
Mildred Obrey: I didn't buy grain from him. I worked.
00:38:46.7
Because I had an egg route, you see, and I sold my mother's excess eggs. We had, right in the center of South Berwick, where 236 comes out into town, we had a farm. We had four cows, two horses, three pigs, and we had two gardens, where we raised all our vegetables. We had bees, and we had an icehouse, where we could always have cold things in the summertime, in a huge barn that was way down from our house.
00:39:52.2
And we were self-supporting, really, as far as food was concerned, for foods and that type of thing. And my mother canned everything that she possibly could. And I remember once a year my father and my brothers would go fishing and come back with fish, mackerel particularly, which she called "put down" in salt, and we would have mackerel all winter from the fishing.
00:40:30.2
And also, she canned eggs. That was putting eggs in a salt solution, and we would have eggs all winter. So, that...And it was a - it was a marvelous world.
Ed Dooks: So, you used the trolley to go do shopping to supplement what you didn't grow on the farm?
Mildred Obrey: That's right.
Ed Dooks: And what would you buy to supplement?
Mildred Obrey: Oh, we would buy candy, and we would buy popcorn and oranges and bananas. Oranges and bananas were a rarity. At Christmastime, in the toe of my stocking, I would have one big orange, and that was considered quite a luxury. And every Fourth of July we had a terrific picnic down in our backyard and invited everybody and his brother to it.
00:41:58.4
And we had a stalk of bananas hanging from our elm tree that we would just go and cut ourselves a banana to eat during that time. And then we had root beer. We had all sorts of things that were good.
Ed Dooks: And you'd go on the trolley to get this. Tell me about riding a trolley. You went - you wait for the trolley at the trolley stop, and then what would you do?
00:42:27.0
Mildred Obrey: I'd get onto the trolley, and I always had a little purse with some change in it, and I would give Mr. Gerrish maybe $0.10 because the ride to, uh, Salmon Falls was $0.10, I believe if I remember correctly. And, uh, I guess that was a roundtrip for $0.10, from the Congregational Church down into, um, Hog Point. Then I would walk across the street into Salmon Falls, and there they had a Hewdon's Dry Goods Store, and they had some wonderful gingham that I liked, and my mother would buy me gingham and make my own - make my own clothes for me.
00:43:27.4
She was, uh, she was an outstanding tailoress. She made at one time the uniforms for a whole company of National Guard people, made their uniforms. She was a marvelous seamstress. So,, we were self, self-supporting, I, I just can't -
00-44:01.0
I remember coming home from Berwick Academy one day, and I said, "I want to have a class ring." It was my junior year. And my mother said, "Well, can you earn it?" And I said, "Well, I don't' know." "Well, "she says, "Mrs. McLaughlin, across the street," who by the way, had seven children, "needs somebody to iron their clothes. And, she says, if you want to, she'll hire you to iron the kids' clothes." So, I ironed the kids' clothes.
00:44:43.9
Then there was not enough money for this ring that was going to cost me $26, and I had to save the money for it. I got a job at the movie theater -I'm in high school now - and I sold tickets to the movies, and then I could see the movies for nothing. And, by the way, Berwick Academy's basketball team played basketball in that movie theater. That was their first gym in South Berwick.
00:45:31.2
Ed Dooks: So, they had a big screen where the basketball court was?
Mildred Obrey: Mm-hm.
Ed Dooks: And the benches you would watch a basketball game on were the seats for the movies?
Mildred Obrey: Mm-hm.
00:45:41.7
Mildred Obrey: And Mrs. Drury played the piano all during the movies, and she would go [makes galloping sound effects] when the horse and the cowboys were, you know, riding around and all that sort of thing. And Fernando, who played - was a Spaniard, and he spoke very little English - he would play his banjo, and that was the music we had.
00:46:19.4
And on Saturday afternoons they always had a serial picture, and Pearl White was the actress. And we kids would save a nickel to go to that picture and see what Pearl White was doing. And the last episode of it, before I got polio, Pearl White was going to be run over by a train, and I used to worry about whether she got away or not, and my brothers wouldn't tell me. [chuckles]
0047:10.4
Ed Dooks: So, you never knew what happened to Pearl White, huh?
Mildred Obrey: I found out.
Ed Dooks: Okay? What happened? Don't leave us in suspense.
Mildred Obrey: Somebody came rolling in a car, one of those - whatchamacallits, those -
Ed Dooks: Handcars?
Mildred Obrey: - handcar, and rescued her.
Ed Dooks: Our hero. [laughte] Okay, tell me about the people who worked on the trolley car.
Mildred Obrey: The people who worked on the trolley cars - oh, there was a scandal. I shouldn't perhaps, mention it because one of my dearest friends was involved in that scandal, and the motorman and this dear friend of mine, who was many years older than I, fell in love, and he left his wife and went to live with my friend.
00:47:53.6
And she came from one of the very best families in the town of South Berwick, and Sarah Orne Jewett was her godmother, the author. I won't tell you any more about that, but that was a real scandal.
Sally Lewin: They still do today. [laughter]
00:48:40.7
Mildred Obrey: And everybody would say, "I wonder. I wonder what she sees in him?" And I never - I would look at him when he was driving his trolley on the old pull, drag, and yank, and I would wonder what she saw in him? So, the sad part of it all was that he got cancer in his neck, up here. And he drove that trolley for quite some time before he had to give it up, and that was - that was one.
00:49:27.3
And, of course, Mr. Gerrish was still the conductor. That was my neighbor. Those were...
And then, uh, and there were people that worked in the car barn that I didn't know very much about because they probably were some of the French people who lived down in the Hog Point area. And I didn't know too many of them, because they went to a parochial school, while I went to the public school.
00:50:11.6
And then most of them I would meet in grammar school. And, by the way, grammar school went up to the ninth grade, and then you went four years from there to Berwick Academy, but not everyone got there, to Berwick Academy, at the time.
Ed Dooks: What was the conductor's job? What would he do?
00:50:35.2
Mildred Obrey: He would - the conductor would, uh, move with the motor, motorman. He would move the trolley. when the trolley turned around and came back, they would move the trolley over to go in another direction, And that was - and, of, course, the conductor took the fares, and the motorman steered the trolley. Those were the two that I knew quite well.
00:51:15.7
Ed Dooks: What, what condition were the trolleys in? Were they well maintained? Uh, they always looked nice and bright and shiny?
Mildred Obrey: They were always clean. Um, I can't remember. Of course, in mud season, you'd get an awful lot of mud on the floor because it couldn't be helped, but they kept them clean. And the trolleys went at least once a day into the car barn to be cleaned and so forth, and they were, and the windows were clean, and you could see out of them.
00:51:49.4
They weren't comfortable because they had the wooden seats that you sat in. They were not, uh, upholstered seats. But you never seemed to mind it. You didn't expect to be a luxury, but it was a means of transportation.
Wooden seats in a trolley car, such as the ones Mildred
referred to above.
Image from Charles D. Heseltine Collection
Phil Morse: Did, did you ever, uh, peek into the car barn and see what was going on in the car barn?
00:52:14.7
Mildred Obrey: Oh, I had been in the car barn and seen them. I saw them move the car on the turnstile in the car barn, too. That was one, another thing that they did, so, uh, oh, yes, I knew the car barn quite well. And a friend of mine, who went to BU (Boston University) with me, married one of the men who had been sort of a headman at the car barn. And, uh, he - his name was Butler. And he had "Voice of America" during World War 1. [sic] [Voice of America actually started in 1942, during WWII] You know, the "Voice of America" over the radio?
0053:09.7
He was one of the Voices of America, and he had a great deal of equipment down there. But, of course, the - uh, I think the trolley cars were almost out of business by that time. They went into bankruptcy, and Mr. [Melon] was one of the, uh, people that were in power at that time.
[ Major losses in 1915 continued until, on March 17, 1923, operations were suspended for the trackage served by the former Portsmouth, Dover & York line. Tracks were pulled up and along with most cars, scrapped. ]
Ed Dooks: Do you know why the trolley company went into bankruptcy?
00:53:50.7
Mildred Obrey: People were getting automobiles, and you got around much faster by automobile. And when you started out, you knew what time you were going to start and when you were coming back, so people just weren't riding the trolleys like they had when I was very young.
00:54:22.8
My last trolley - big trolley ride. I went from South Berwick to Dover, and (then) from Dover to Exeter (NH), and from Exeter to Newburyport (MA), and from Newburyport to Amesbury (MA), where my father worked for Sturtevant making the tops to the Sturtevant sedan - or Franklin, rather, for the Franklin sedan people.
00:55:03.7
And those tops on those automobiles were made of wood, and my father was a marvelous wood maker, but he had to stay in Amesbury all week because he - there was no way he could go the distance that he had to go. And then I stayed in Amesbury one or two nights, then Saturday came and we went by trolley to, um - oh dear - Revere Beach, and he took me all around the beach at that time, and then I - we came home by train from Portsmouth. From Revere Beach, we went by trolley to Portsmouth, and then we came home by train because the trains were still running at that time.
00:56:04.7
And then Dad got a car. We got a Willys-Knight car. You've never heard of it probably, but it was a nice, little car, and he got a Willys-Knight car, and he would come home by car. And, uh, we used to go - at one time, we could go, starting out in South Berwick could go to Boston by trolley, if you knew how to connect to those various spots, because, for Newburyport, you could get to, to Boston by trolley and all around that area.
00:56:46.2
So, uh, but this was when I was - I was at Berwick Academy at that time when I did that trip by myself.
Ed Dooks: You have a picture of car number 16 there. Can you tell me about car 16? Do you remember it?
Mildred Obrey: Yes, This is it right here.
00:57:10.9
That was the pull, drag, and yank, and that was - that's what I remember about it, that we went - we went short distances primarily on this car, and also we would uh - we would use this, a bunch of kids would use this car for jolly rides. That was if we got bored. We could take, a ride on the trolley. And, um, then I remember the there was a trolley going down in the back of this house here, down to the Green Acre Bahá’à colony, which was not a Bahá’à colony at that time but was Mrs., Miss Farmer's home down there.
00:58:16.1
Um, well, it was not her home. It was a building that she had owned. And she used to invite people from all over. My friend Helen Glover's mother came down to the Bahá’à colony before it was a Bahá’à colony because she was trying to find out what kind of religion she herself would think was the best religion that was possible for anybody to have. And she finally settled on Bahá’Ãsm, and she settles, started a Bahá’à community here in Eliot (ME). You know about that, I suppose.
00:59:12.6
There's that whole street. I live on Moses, Gerrish, Farmer Road, which was named after Sarah Farmer, who started that religion. She had tried Unitarianism. She had tried Presbyterianism down here, all sorts of things. And the trolley used to go down in the back of [here] when I was in high school this was. And the man used to love (it) when the Bahá’Ãs finally got down there. The men loved it, because there's a, a beach down there and water, and they used to go swimming, sometimes in the nude...
01:00:07.6
And my father would come home and he would say, "Hmmm, saw a pretty good sight today." [laughter]
Ed Dooks: Did he ever go swimming with 'em?
Mildred Obrey: No, but I, uh, went to many of the Bahá’à lectures. I met some very fine people. And one of the dearest friends I had lived right across [there], and she was a Bahá’Ã, and she never, ever tried to make me a Bahá’Ã.
01:00:52.0
Ed Dooks: Okay, to wrap this up, can you give me one statement that you really think about trolley cars, when you think back on trolley cars?
Mildred Obrey: I think that trolley cars were a method, a means of our becoming a part of a world that was changing. We were able to see, by going these short distances that many times we went - we were able to go to a city, which was Dover, or to Portsmouth. We were able to go to beaches, which we - before cars, automobiles were - the common man could have them -
01:01:45.4
We were able to do all of those things that brought us into a world that was so different from anything that most people living in the countryside went through. And, uh, we had that marvelous high school, Berwick Academy, which was outstanding in those days.
01:02:16.7
My brother was able to go directly to, Berwick Academy his senior year, by just taking a test for Annapolis.
Ed Dooks: Let me go back to when the tape ran out. We were talking about what the trolley meant to America. Let me - let me have you tell me again: What did the trolley car mean to America?
01:02:38.6
Mildred Obrey: The trolley car meant to America, in the small towns such as South Berwick and Eliot and Kittery, it meant a, an opportunity to get away into - because we didn't have automobiles, you see? There were automobiles when I was a little girl, but my family didn't have one. And - but we went all of the places, and we used the trolley to get there. And I remember going to Boston as a little girl, and I remember the, uh, trolleys in the city of Boston.
01:03:27.7
So, it was a means of communication with a fast-moving world. Um, South Berwick had shoe shops, and these shoe shops had been making wonderful shoes for years, and then suddenly they learned how to make shoes by just having a mold to cut them, and they didn't have cutters for the lever, didn't need cutters anymore. The machines would have. And here were these people out of work, as it's happened today.
01:04:16.5
And then, suddenly, we've found that the mills - there was a cotton mill in, in salmon Falls, and a big woolen mill in South Berwick, which had made blankets for the Civil War soldiers. But that went out of business gradually.
So, it - it was a means of in between the automobile - the first ones that I saw, well, were the Pierce-Arrows that came in, with the wealthy people that came in, in the summertime. And there was the Hamilton House in South Berwick, which the Hamiltons came from New York, I believe it was, and they had a [person of color] chauffeur, John Long, and he was told by Mrs. Hamilton to come up to see Mr. Knowles and let me have a ride in the Pierce-Arrow.
01:05:33.1
So, I rode a Pierce-Arrow more often in the summertime than anything else, because I - if he were up in town shopping, he could take me up there, and he used to stop and gossip with my father and tell my father what was going on in Boston, and - because he knew my father's background. And then there was Mr. Karinski, who had a big car - huge car - and he came around about once a week with all these tins for, to sell.
[The term "tins" is slang, that, in this instance, is used to describe the vast assortment of items offered for sale that either was made from tin, such as toys or to describe the metal container with a lid, in which things such as cookies, cakes, tobacco were kept in.]
01:06:23.3
And he had clothes that he sold. and he would always stop to have tea that my mother made for him. He was Jewish. And my - he was an outstanding friend of my father's. And people in the town thought we were rather peculiar because my father sat on the front porch of our house and talked with a [person of color], and he talked with a [person of Jewish descent], and he was awfully glad to see them in the summertime when they came up. And they talked and they swapped experiences together.
01:07:09.9
That is - and then I was conscious that World War 1, or just before World War 1 - I was conscious that there was a Mr. Burley, who was one of the Burley Mills people, was trying to make an airplane. And we kids used to go there and watch him come down over the field with his wings flapping - no motor in it, you understand. But he was going to have an airplane. He was going - Charlie Burley.
01:07:53.0
Charlie's trouble was that you couldn't get any liquor in South Berwick, but you could go across the river to Salmon Falls and get a good belly full. [laughter]
Ed Dooks: Well, let me go back to - you mentioned you went to Boston, and you saw trolley cars in Boston. Describe the trolley cars in Boston.
01:08:15.5
Mildred Obrey: The trolley cars in Boston were very much - until the elevated [meaning the Boston Elevated Railway], you know, came in - were very much like this. They were apt to be not quite as long, and they were quite fast, and you could - sometimes, after Dad got a car, we would, um, go up to just outside of Boston and take the trolley car into the city of Boston. Do you remember that Sally?
Sally Lewin: Yeah.
01:08:55.5
Mildred Obrey: So -
Sally Lewin: Malden.
Mildred Obrey: And they went very, very fast. And, uh, they were kind of frightening for a country girl. And one day, my roommate and I at BU (Boston University) were sitting in one of those trolleys, and my roommate went like this. I looked and here was this old man, sitting. He had a hatpin. Do you know what I mean by a hat -? He had this great, long hatpin that the ladies pinned their hats on with, and he was sticking it in the rear ends of all the women that he could stick it in, and we thought that was hilarious. [laughter]
01:09:52.0
Ed Dooks: Okay. [laughter] Uh, just for the record here, let me have you state your full name and the year you were born.
Mildred Obrey: I was born, June 9, 1908, and my name is Mildred Blanche Knowles Obrey.
Phil Morse: Before the tape went on, you started, uh, telling a story about when you were - the first recollections of riding the trolley with your father, and you went down to Kittery or Portsmouth and took the ferry. Could you tell us that story, now that we have the tape going?
01:10:31.6
Mildred Obrey: Oh, yes. This was, um... There was a big Peace Pact that was signed at the Navy Yard in Portsmouth. I believe it was the ... Spanish American War [sic][we believe it was the Russo-Japanese Peace Treaty of 1905], I believe it was. and they were going to - they had a boat that had been at the Navy Yard. It had been used there for storage and all sorts of things. and then it was reconditioned and was going to sail to Annapolis, Maryland, to be at the Naval Academy.
01:11:22.4
And my father thought I should go down to that, so my father took me by trolley car to Portsmouth. And then, in Portsmouth, we took the ferry, because this was before Memorial Bridge was built in Portsmouth. Uh, we went across on one of the last trips out to it, across by ferry, to the Navy Yard, and we boarded the boat.
Ceres Street ferry landing in Portsmouth, NH, seen here as
the Atlantic Shore Line Railway (ASLRy) Ferry Landing,
originally was built by the Portsmouth, Kittery & York
Electric Railway (PK&Y) in 1897. The PK&Y would be
absorbed by the Portsmouth, Dover & York Street Railway
(PD&Y) in 1903 and in 1906 the PD&Y merged with and
lost its identity to the ASLRy. O. R. Cummings Collection
01:11:55.1
And there was a redhead sailor who carried me up the ladders and down the ladders, all over that boat, and told me all about the boat. Some years later, I was in Annapolis. My brother was teaching engineering at Annapolis at the time. And he had told me to go see the chaplain because he had - the chaplain had a message he wanted me to take back to my brother.
01:12:34.0
So, I went. I found out where the chaplain was, and it was down on this boat. I got down there, and it was the Reina Mercedes [USS Reina Mercedes] boat, and it was being used as sort of a jail for midshipmen who had broken rules. And I came down the steps to get into this, because the chaplain's place was way at the other end, and I slipped and I slid the whole length of that polished floor, with all the midshipmen who were behind bars clapping all the way down to the chaplain's.
01:13:29.5
And that was my last trip to the Mercedes, I can assure you. But, I, I went on the Mercedes when I was about four years old.
Ed Dooks: So, how old were you when you went to go visit the chaplain down there and you did a graceful slide down?
Mildred Obrey: Oh, let's see. I had graduated from BU.
Ed Dooks: Early 20s?
01:14:01.5
Mildred Obrey: I was (in my) very early 20s, mm-hm. And I thought this was a big, big time for me, and it was, I can assure you. I saw the Navy Yard like - the Naval Academy like nobody else, ever saw it, living today, I can assure you.
Ed Dooks: Okay. Any final thoughts on trolley cars?
Mildred Obrey: Yes. Again, my - my thoughts are: What a wonderful way to bring a group of people into a modern world, and they were a means of doing just that. Because here was my father, who had been a cowboy. Here he was, working on automobiles, and would travel only by train, and he was - this was just a wonderful, wonderful way of we young people that were growing up, uh, we thought nothing of going to Boston as young people.
01:15:29.7
The Congregational minister - and I went to that church - had a Ford sedan, and he would take us to Boston, up through Danvers, and we'd have to get out and trig the wheels so that he could - his daughter and I, so that he could get enough purchase [a means of exerting power] on the car to get up those hills in Danvers before the turnpike went through.
00:16:02.0
Now, the trolleys were still running then, you see, but we were in a new way of living. And, uh, I was not surprised at these things. We'd been through World War 1. Oh, I could tell you stories about that would make your hair stand on end.
01:16:27.9
And, uh, we had been, uh, through all sorts of - we'd been into my, uh, hmm...My senior year at BU was during the Great Depression. And I saw people jump out of five-story windows because they'd lost everything they had. It was something.
01:16:56.5
But you could adjust because you had lived during a period of time when people - when people had to go through the mills closing, the show shops running at just very, very little; the Navy Yard being an area that was the Godsend to this whole community area here. You had seen, during that period of time, the trolley playing a part in bringing a brand-new religion [Bahá’Ã]. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, he, uh, blessed this house when he came here [August 1912], and for a number of years, we had the post, the mast to the boat that he almost went overboard in, on the Piscataquis River.
01:18:00.7
And he told the river, the tides, to be quiet, and it quieted down/ So, we had all of that... we'd been through this whole period of time when it was exciting, fast-moving, and the trolley car had played a big part in our ability to get from here to there, to be a part of it.
01:18:41.0
I remember going by train to Boston. My uncle owned three houses in Boston, and he had a whole house that was empty. These were furnished housing, where he rented rooms, and so forth. So, we had the whole ground floor of this big house in Boston. And then going down to the market, the Faneuil Hall Market, when it was a real, honest-to-goodness market. And I was just a little girl, and I went along, and I was touching all the fruit in the market. And this man came over and slapped - not, just like this - the back of my hand. And he says, "Little girl when you pinch 'ah the fruit, pinch 'ah the coconut." [laughter]
01:19:49.7
Ed Dooks: Okay. what, what has this all got to do with trolleys? [laughter]
Mildred Obrey: Because we went by trolley down to that place.
Ed Dooks: Do you have any amusing anecdotes about trolleys?
Mildred Obrey: Any - do I have any? Many, yes.
Ed Dooks: Tell me. Tell me two.
01:20:13.1
Mildred Obrey: We, my first, um - friend, Ruth Gray, who, by the way, her father was the headmaster at Berwick Academy. Her mother was the Latin teacher of Berwick Academy. And Ruth came and the Grays came to South Berwick, and the first day of school I had been up to [Halsey's?] -
01:20:47.2
And we went - Ruth and I had been close, very close friends, from the third grade. I had bought that morning, with some money that I had earned, some candy. I didn't want to share it with anybody, so I went to the three-holer, and Ruth came in and she sat down beside me. And we started to talk, and I gave her a piece of my candy that I had bought.
01:21:33.5
And from that day until she died at the age of 22, we were just like sisters. We were together all the time, practically.
Ed Dooks: What did she die from?
Mildred Obrey: Childbirth. She married a young man from Dar-, who was a graduate of Dartmouth, had played on the Dartmouth, uh, hockey team, and then he had played hockey with the Boston Team, a hockey player. And they were married.
Ed Dooks: His name was?
01:22:18.2
Mildred Obrey: His name was Bot, B-O-T, Morrill Bot. And he had a very good friend whose father owned a mill in Waterville, Maine, and gave Morrill a good job down there. And Ruth was, got to be, got pregnant after the marriage, of course, and, uh, she died two weeks after her child was born, which was one of the great sorrows of my life, I can assure you because it was - a whole life had dropped out of my mind - thinking.
01:23:03.0
Interesting, I - when she was - she went to Colby Academy in New Hamp - in New London, New Hampshire, because her mother and father had separated, and he had become a chemist for DuPont in Delaware. And her mother taught Latin at the Colby Academy. So, whenever we had vacations, we were together.
01:23:36.9
And one summer we worked up in New Hampshire at a hotel, Bradford, New Hampshire. and that summer a circus came to town, and there was a fortune teller, so we decided to have our fortune told. I - Ruth said, "I'm going first." So, she went in first and had her fortune told. She was hardly in there before she was out again.
01:24:16.4
And then I went in. And the woman said, "I'll tell you. That's the most difficult fortune I've had to tell any young person. She said I made it up." And I said, "Well, what are you going to make up about me?" She says, "First, I want to tell you that your friend will never live beyond her 25th year." Then she picked up my hand and she said, "I don't know when you're going." [laughter]
01:24:55.6
Ed Dooks: So, she thought you were gonna stick around a while?
Mildred Obrey: She did -
Ed Dooks: Did you go on a trolley to get there?
Mildred Obrey: To get to Bradford, New Hampshire?
Ed Dooks: Yeah.
Mildred Obrey: No. My father drove me up in his Willys.
Ed Dooks: Okay, let's go back to the trolley cars, because, you know, we're looking for things - related to trolley cars -
01:25:18.6
Mildred Obrey: They were such a means of getting where you wanted to go. And then, sometimes, the automobile became very popular and the trolley cars beginning to - it was only in the cities that you found the trolley cars. But you knew all about them. You knew how to get on them. You knew how to get off them. You knew enough to mind your own business on them.
01:25:53.2
And, uh, it was - I guess I came home from Boston, and I missed those trolley cars to get from one place to the other because I didn't drive.
Ed Dooks: You mentioned you had - you wanted to mind - you learned to mind your own business while on a trolley. Why would you have to learn to mind your own business?
Mildred Obrey: Well, there was an awful lot of gossiping on the trolley cars, and I remember, coming home from Portsmouth, there was a woman that was trying to convert us on the trolley car to Baha'ism all the time. She would get up and tell us about it, and then she carried that on after the trolley went out of business, and you started going by bus to these different places. She did the same thing on the buses.
01:26:56.8
And if you saw her, you didn't get on that bus if you weren't in a hurry, because she'd drive - just like I am, she couldn't keep her mouth shut. So there you have it. But it was -
01:27:12.1
The trolley cars were that, that tie into the future that so many of us took and understood what to do because we got from there to somewhere else. And I was fortunate that I did get taken by people to many, many places. That is, for instance, this Congregational minister took me everywhere he went with his daughter, who also was Ruth, and she was my high, high school pal. And then, my whole life is built around her to some extent.
01:28:16.9
Time - these trolley cars were just, just great. They really were. Um, to get onto a trolley in Boston and go to Faneuil Hall Market when it was a real, honest-to-goodness market, and to get down to Filene's and Jordan Marsh's, Stearns, and all of those stores in Boston that you get [to] by trolley.
01:28:53.9
And then we lived - the first year that I was there, Ruth and I, she had been to the University of Delaware, and I had been to New Hampshire University, and she said, "Let's get out of those little colleges and go to a big one." So, we just wrote a letter to BU, nothing to it, and we got accepted. And we told 'em we had to have a job, so we got a job out at a house in, on Queenberry Street, which is out near the ballpark [Fenway Park]. And the ballpark was there then. Not when my father was there, but it was then.
01:29:44.1
And we would - because the distance was quite a lot from Queensberry Street into BU, which was near the public library at that time, we took the trolley most mornings to get there.
01:30:23.6
We kept seeing this marvelous, old, big, big Pierce-Arrow there with a chauffeur in uniform. He'd be there two and three times a week, sitting outside this apartment house. So, we decided we'd ask the chauffeur what he was there for. He'd always say, "Hi girls," to us when we went back. And we said, "Why are you here?"
Ed Dooks: Anything else? I guess we're done.
01:31:36.8
[END OF RECORDING]
We are still in need of funds for creating the interpretation programs that will tell this fascinating 100+-year-old story of the Narcissus. For information on donation options, scroll down this post and find the one that best fits your position. Fund 816 to help with the restoration and Fund 817 (PLI Education-Interpretation programs ) should be noted when making a donation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click Here for the post that has the short virtual 3-D video of the digital model of the Narcissus, with components added to the file from earlier this year (the gold leaf file had not been added yet).
Restoration work continues on the Narcissus. The Narcissus is more than 110 years old now and has so many incredible stories to share. The restoration of this majestic icon of Maine's electric railway history is but one of those incredible stories.
The Narcissus is featured in the national Gold Award-winning novel, Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride. The "Elegant Ride" is the Narcissus. Theodore Roosevelt was a passenger on the Narcissus on August 18, 1914, between Lewiston and Portland, Maine, while campaigning for the Progressive Party candidates.
Independent book publisher, Phil Morse, holding
the Gold Book Award Winner plaque for
the Middle Reader category for The Eric
Hoffer Book Award. Congratulations to
award-winning Maine author,
Jean M. Flahive
Seashore Trolley Museum Promo Video
The paperback edition of Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride can be purchased online through the Seashore Trolley Museum's store website. Books purchased through the Museum's website directly benefit the Museum and the Narcissus project.
Click Here to go to the Museum Store web page to order online
Click Here to go to the Amazon page to order the ebook or audiobook online
Paperback books are available at these local bookstores in
Androscoggin Historical Society, Lewiston
Eliot Historical Society, Eliot
Gray Historical Society, Gray
Kennebec Historical Society, Augusta
Letterpress Books, Portland
Maine Historical Society Store, Portland
Morph Gallery & Emporium, Kennebunk
New Gloucester Historical Society, New Gloucester
Roosevelt Campobello International Park, Welshpool, NB, Canada
Seashore Trolley Museum, Kennebunkport
Sherman's Maine Coast Book Shops, All Locations
Thompson's Orchard, New Gloucester
Winthrop Maine Historical Society, Winthrop
Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride
by Jean M. Flahive
Illustrations by Amy J. Gagnon
Listen to a 2-minute, 30-second, Retail Audio Sample of the Audiobook
Millie Thayer is a headstrong farmer's daughter who chases her dreams in a way you would expect a little girl nicknamed "Spitfire" would-running full tilt and with her eyes on the stars. Dreaming of leaving the farm life, working in the city, and fighting for women's right to vote, Millie imagines flying away on a magic carpet. One day, that flying carpet shows up in the form of an electric trolley that cuts across her farm. A fortune-teller predicts that Millie's path will cross that of someone famous. Suddenly, she finds herself caught up in events that shake the nation, Maine, and her family. Despairing that her dreams may be shattered, Millie learns, in an unexpected way, that dreams can be shared.
A resource for teachers
Companion curriculum State-standard-based units,
vocabulary, and reading activities for use in grades 3-8
are available online as downloadable resources through
Seashore Trolley Museum's website
www.trolleymuseum.org/elegantride/
Maine Historical Society has created eight companion lesson units in Social Studies and ELA that were inspired by Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride - These State-standard-based lesson plans for use in grades 6, 7, and 8 are easily adapted for use in grades 3-5. Vocabulary and Reading activities for grades 3-8 along with the eight lesson plan units are available free and may be downloaded through Seashore Trolley Museum's website www.trolleymuseum.org/elegantride/
Go to the Teacher Resource Page in the pull-down for more details.
A 60-second intro to Teddy Roosevelt, Millie, and the Elegant Ride by author, Jean Flahive
Click Here to watch the video on YouTube
Award-winning author, Jean M. Flahive
Please Consider a Donation to the Narcissus Project to help us tell the incredible story of the Narcissus through the interpretation portion of the Narcissus Project.
Here is an example of how donations to the Narcissus Project now will help with the interpretation portion of the project. The interpretation programming will include exhibits, displays, and education programming. In 2019, through generous donations to the Narcissus Project, we were able to conserve, replicate, and have high resolutions digital image files made of the original, 1910, 28.5-foot long, surveyor map of the elevation and grade of the 30-mile private right-of-way of the Portland, Gray, and Lewiston Railroad (Portland-Lewiston Interurban) Click Here
Thank You!
the crowd gathered in Gray, Maine on August 18, 1914.
Image courtesy of Gray Historical Society
The Narcissus as the Sabattus Lake Diner in Sabattus, Maine,
circa 1940. Photo by John Coughlin in the Kevin Farrell
Collection at Seashore Trolley Museum
L. Henri Vallee (right) and family members in the
Narcissus, when it was Vallee's summer camp in
Sabattus, Maine circa 1958. Photo courtesy Daniel Vallee
Inside the Donald G. Curry Town House Restoration Shop, the Narcissus is in the midst of major work as we strive to complete its restoration. We are now planning the interpretation portion of the Narcissus Project. Donations to the Narcissus Project may be used in the future to help tell the incredible 100-plus-year-old story of the Narcissus. Your donation to the Narcissus is helping to make the dream of the project's success, a reality.
See below for Donation options -
It starts with YOU
Your Donation Matters
Make a Donation TODAY
Please Help the Narcissus.
Donation Options to Help the Narcissus Project:
The New England Electric Railway Historical Society
is the 501c3 organization that owns and operates the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, ME, and the National Streetcar
Museum in Lowell (MA).
The New England Electric Railway Historical Society registered with the IRS (EIN# 01-0244457) and was incorporated in Maine in 1941.
Check or Money Order ***** should be made payable to:
New England Electric Railway Historical Society
In the memo: for a donation to the Interpretation programming
please write: PLI Education Fund 817
For a donation to help with the restoration write: Narcissus Fund 816
Mail to: Seashore Trolley Museum
P. O. Box A
Kennebunkport, ME 04046
Credit Card ***** donations can be one-time donations or you
may choose to have a specific amount charged to your card
automatically on a monthly basis. Please contact the Museum bookkeeper, via email at finance@trolleymuseum.org or by phone, at 207-967-2800 ext. 3.
Online Donations - may be made by using a Credit Card:
Click Here to make an online donation through the Museum's website - When at the Donation page: Fill in donor info, etc., when at "To which fund are you donating? Scroll down to "Other" and type in: 816 Narcissus, then continue filling in the required information.
Click Here for PayPal - to make an online donation: you can use email: finance@trolleymuseum.org and in the message box write:
For "Narcissus Fund 816" - if supporting the restoration
For "PLI Education Fund 817" - if supporting Interpretation programs
Donation of Securities ***** We also accept donations of
securities. You can contact the Museum bookkeeper, via email at finance@trolleymuseum.org or by phone, at 207-967-2800 ext. 3,
for brokerage account information for accepting donated securities.
BONUS ***** If you work for a company/corporation that will
"match" an employee's donation to an approved 501c3 non-profit
educational organization, please be sure to complete the necessary paperwork with your employer so that your donation is matched :)
Questions? ***** Please contact Narcissus project sponsor:
Phil Morse, narcissus@gmail.org or call 207-985-9723 - cell.
Thank You :)
Thank You for our Current Funding Partners
* 20th Century Electric Railway Foundation - 2020/2018 - Major Gift, 2017/2014 Matching Grants
* Renaissance Charitable Foundation (LPCT) by Fiduciary Trust Charitable Giving Fund
* Renaissance Charitable Foundation (LPCT) by Fiduciary Trust Charitable Giving Fund
* Mass Bay RRE - 2018 Railroad Preservation Grant
* Thornton Academy (Saco, ME) - Staff & Alumni - Matching Grant Challenge 2014
* New England Electric Railway Historical Society (Kennebunkport, ME) - Member Donations
* Amherst Railway Society - 2015 Heritage Grant
* National Railway Historical Society - 2016 & 2015 Heritage Preservation Grants
* Enterprise Holding Foundation - 2015 Community Grant
* Theodore Roosevelt Association - Member Donations
* John Libby Family Association and Member Donations
* The Conley Family - In Memory of Scott Libbey 2018/2017/2016/2015
* The W. S. Libbey Family - Awalt, Conley, Graf, Holman, Libbey, McAvoy, McLaughlin, Meldrum, O'Halloran, Salto, - 2018/2017
* The Hughes Family 2017/2016/2010
* New Gloucester Historical Society and Member Donations
* Gray Historical Society and Member Donations
* Gray Public Library Association - Pat Barter Speaker Series
* Scarborough Historical Society - PRR/PLI
* LogMein - Matching Employee Donation
* IBM - Matching Employee/Retiree Donations
* Fidelity Charitable Grant - Matching Employee Donations
* Richard E. Erwin Grant - 2017/2016
The Narcissus, with interior back-lit, stained glass windows is majestic.
Make a donation today to help restore the interior of this Maine gem.
Help Theodore Roosevelt's Maine Ride get back on track! Once restored,
you will be able to ride in luxury on this National Register Treasure at
Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine.
PWM photo
Please Consider Making a Donation to the project of the National Register of Historic Places member, Narcissus. We are currently raising funds to advance the restoration and to tell the incredible story of this Maine gem.
Various News stories during the summer of 2015 about the
Narcissus and its connection to Theodore Roosevelt. TR
was a passenger on the Narcissus on August 18, 1914.
Patricia Pierce Erikson photo
The Narcissus - July 31, 2015. Make a donation today.
Help Theodore Roosevelt's Maine Ride get back on track!
Once restored, you will be able to ride in luxury on this
National Historic Treasure at
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