Songs from a Cemetery

On a rainy day last April I was walking near the courthouse when I heard the most ethereal music coming from the cemetery behind it. I turned to see a few hazy figures gathered around a gravestone. They were singing a four-part harmony that sounded upbeat but yet offbeat, the closest sound I could compare it to with my untrained ears would be southern gospel. But these figures in the mist, clad in old fashioned clothes and hats, looked to be northern New Englanders rather than southern slaves.

The sound drew me nearer, into the cemetery itself, where I stood at a respectful distance, listening to these harmonies both pleasing and yet unusual. When the group finished, they turned to greet me. By now I could see evidence of modern dress on most of the singers. As I drew closer they appeared to be in solid form, and I became reasonably sure they were not spirits who would evaporate into the haze.

Once we started chatting I learned they were sacred harp singers, drawn to the cemetery to congregate around the gravesite of Supply Belcher to pay their respects. It was the sound of his compositions I had heard wafting from the gravestones behind the old courthouse on Main Street. This group of shape-note singers was led by an old-fashioned looking man named Aldo Thomas Ceresa from New York City. He explained that he was on a mission to find the gravesites of all the composers featured in the Sacred Heart songbook.

It was a memorable moment for me, to see this hometown evidence that local composer Supply Belcher’s music lives on. He has always been one of my favorite Franklin County subjects, and his life story takes up a long chapter in my book Remembering Franklin County. Belcher’s influence over two-hundred years later is indeed impressive. His work can be found recorded on several compilations of American music and even avant garde composers such as John Cage and Gloria Coates have embraced his work and been inspired by it.

And to think this talented composer lived right here in Farmington in the 18th century…

In my chapter on Belcher I concentrated on the role he played in early Franklin County history and neglected his formative years as a composer in Massachusetts. In my book I mention that Belcher studied with early American composer William Billings. Since then I’ve read that recent research shows that his connection to Billings was not as close as it had been assumed. Here are few more interesting aspects of Belcher’s life that did not find their way into my chapter on him:

Belcher worked as a merchant in Boston when he was around 20 years old. Maybe then he met Paul Revere, who later made the bell for the Farmington Academy.

Belcher was twenty-four when the revolutionary war broke out and was one of the Minutement who answered Paul Revere’s (or another rider’s) call to arms. He was mustered from Stoughton as part of the troops who fought the British at Cambridge.

After the war he purchased a farm in Stoughton where he established a tavern. Legend has it that much singing took place there.

He was a violinist and singer as well as a composer and is thought to have led Farmington’s first choir.

His “Ordination Anthem” was performed at the Hallowell Academy in 1796, and it was after this event that a local newspaper proclaimed him “the Handel of Maine,” and the title stuck.

Belcher was one of several talented composers who wrote music in New England during the Revolutionary War era and the early years of the republic. He helped to create an indigenous sacred music that still sounds vital and celebratory when sung today. But as the young country settled and became prosperous, subsequent generations looked back to Europe for their inspiration. American composers could afford more formal training, often studying in Germany far away from their home-grown traditions. Early shape-note singing and fuguing psalm tunes like Belcher’s were dismissed as crude and irreverent and nearly forgotten.

But not forgotten on that rainy day last April when the sounds of our early settlers were revived around a two- hundred-year-old gravestone in a New England village burying ground.

A Hero Receives His Reward

Pictured above is Stewart Goodwin holding a commemorative cane and Civil War sword once owned by Louis Voter. I didn’t know such a sword existed until after my book was published, but just recently I got to see it for myself. I wrote about Voter in the chapter called “Heroes and Villains.” In this tale of 19th century politics, he was most definitely a hero, defying his own political party’s corruption, and that’s what the wooden cane with a brass knob commemorates. The inscription reads “Honesty, integrity, uprightness and repudiating fraud. 1880.” In Remembering Franklin County I write about how Voter could have taken his position as state representative and enjoyed the power and status that entailed but chose instead to follow his conscience. A second inscription on the cane reads “I don’t believe in counting out,” a reference to the election fraud Voter helped to reveal, at his own expense.
Recently Stewart Goodwin was kind enough to dig through his attic to find the cane, and agreed to be photographed with this artifact that had belonged to his great great grandfather. Stewart also showed me a Civil War sword with an eagle head which was believed to belong to Voter, who had been a cavalry captain in the local Militia.
When I was researching Voter and the stand he took against corruption, I wondered if he ever got much recognition for the part he played in restoring justice and order to 19th century Maine. The cane is proof that he was honored for his deeds. I imagine it was presented to him in some sort of ceremony, and I wonder if it came from the governor’s office in Augusta, the town of Farmington selectmen or some other entity.
When it comes to historical research, every new discovery leads to more questions, and many will only be answered by speculation. But meanwhile, here it is: a tangible artifact. A cane presented to a real life character from my book, a cane that must have been treasured at the time and has been handed down within the same family in the same town for four generations.

Ancients Captured on Film

The two old men pictured above seem almost ghost-like, as if they come to us from a time so ancient it   couldn‘t possibly be captured on film.  Both men are dressed in black, black felt hats upon their white-haired heads.  They appear to be sitting in a general store, bags of cornmeal and boxes of matches on shelves behind them.  In the foreground is a wood stove, and John Stewart, on the right, seems to be warming his feet in front of it.  Stewart is a handsome man; even his eighty-odd years have not marred his intelligent gaze or striking features.  As ancient as Stewart looks, Cathers Drummond, seated on the left, looks even older.  His frame is more bent, his gray hair and beard even more scraggly, his eyes more distant.  He was, in fact, older than Stewart by seven years.

The photo appears on page 23 of my book, and when I first ran across it at the Farmington Historical Society, I knew I had to use it.  Luckily, I found a spot for it since Stewart was the grandson of John Church, an early settler who figures into my story of Supply Belcher.

The picture is remarkable for its slice-of-life quality, a rare approach to photography in the late 1800s.   Drummond and Church are not in some studio, are not posing stiffly, are not even looking at the camera.  It is an unusually informal shot for the times, revealing the old mens’ age and dignity in all its effortlessness.

No doubt the photographer felt the subjects worthy of an impromptu photo due to their venerable age.  Drummond lived to be 96 years old, and when this photo was taken, was no doubt considered to be the oldest man in Franklin County.  Stewart, by comparison, was a young 89.

Nearly a century had passed since Drummond had been born in Ireland of Scotch descent.  He had immigrated to a farm in New Portland, Maine when still a boy.  At the age of thirty, he married Irena Larrabee, a young woman of only eighteen.  Four years later, Amanda, their only child, was born.  Amanda grew up in New Portland, and when she was 21 she married Farmington physician Lucien Pillsbury.  It was no doubt considered a step up for the Drummonds, immigrant farmers, to marry into the well-established and well-educated Pillsbury family.  But however humble his beginnings, Cathers had begun to acquire a substantial amount of property by the time of Amanda’s marriage.  His investments in farmland and lumbering led him and Irena to move to Kingfield by 1860. In his 60s Drummond retired from active farming and lumbering.  He and Irena moved in with Amanda and Lucien in their house on Court Street in Farmington.  From there Drummond continued to manage his investments, including a building in downtown Farmington.

Irena died at the age of 81.  Cathers outlived her by another two years remaining active until a case of the flu weakened him and he died at the age of 95.

In the photo Drummond shares his spot at the woodstove with John Stewart, and the inscription notes that Stewart is the grandson of John Church.  Church had been an early settler, arriving before the town was incorporated and buying the property that soon became the commercial district.  You can read more about his contributions to Farmington in the chapter in my book about Supply Belcher.

Stewart was of solid Farmington stock on his father’s side as well, descended from the group of early settlers who had moved to Farmington from Martha’s Vineyard.  He continued the family tradition of carpentry as well as farming.  When he was twenty-two he married Abby Jones.  The couple had ten children, eight of whom lived to adulthood.  Stewart was a successful farmer, carpenter and investor, and like Drummond, gradually acquired a large estate.  His four daughters eventually married and moved west; one son died in the Civil War; another went to Colorado with the cavalry to fight the Indians but eventually returned to Farmington; Theodore stayed in Farmington and followed his family’s carpentry tradition.   In 1882 John and Abby celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.

When this photo was taken, Stewart was living at the corner of South and High Streets, in house that has since been torn down.  Real estate attorney and local historian Paul Mills speculates that the house was at the site of the  UMF’s Computer Center.

Drummond and Stewart would not have known each other growing up.  But they shared a work ethic and a talent for investing that enabled them both to find themselves in Farmington enjoying their old age.  After lifetimes that had spanned most of the 19th century, they were able to spend their days at the local general store, relaxing in front of a warm wood stove and reminiscing about the century of change they had witnessed.  Their age and wisdom earned them attention and respect, and on at least one occasion, the uncommon attention of a portrait photographer.

Old houses always need work. Right now my husband is on our side porch replacing a ceiling falling apart in chunks of paint and masonite.  But one thing in our colonial on Main Street that has remained in great shape is the mural in the library.  The colorful images are still full of vibrancy and remain a beautiful tribute to the history of the area.  Putting those images on the cover of my book was a natural.

The mural was painted in 1939 by Portland artist Roger Deering on commission from then-owner Evelyn Butler Ennis. The work takes up an entire wall of our room and depicts several scenes from early Farmington history.  The section we used as the cover illustration centers around a rider in cocked hat and knee breeches, a wooden sign that reads “Ye Trail to Hallowell” in the foreground.  This scene was designed to commemorate the beginning of a weekly mail run in 1793, a year before the town was incorporated.  The red carriage in the background takes us ahead in time to 1808 when the first stage coach line to Hallowell was established.  In the background is Mt. Blue, the silhouette that has forever been familiar to anyone living here.

I have a 1939 newspaper story from the Press Herald reporting on the new mural.  The writer notes that “Critics have called it the finest mural in Franklin County.”  It was probably just about the only mural in Franklin County, but nevertheless, it was a fine one.  And it remains so today.  If only our ceilings were in such good shape…