MY MOTHER

We buried her Tuesday.

Mary Haggerty with two of her brothers 1925

She was called Mary. So was her mother. It was a common name for girls a hundred years ago when people venerated the Holy Family and named their children accordingly. Mary Elizabeth Haggerty, was born the youngest of four in September, 1924 with three older brothers, one named Joseph. They were protective of her. That’s what boys did in those days. They’ve all passed on and now so has Mary. Few have ever touched as many people as meaningfully, as profoundly, as she did over her ninety-six-year lifetime.

Mary Haggerty 1942

She became Mary McLaughlin in 1942. Her boyfriend, Mac, came back to Boston briefly on leave from the US Navy. She said later that she didn’t really want to elope with him but he was persistent and she gave in. Mac recognized what a gem Mary Haggerty was and he didn’t want to lose her. She was exceedingly pretty and he knew other men would do their best to win her.

Mac

 Elopements like Mary’s were common during World War II, and Mac sailed off a day later. As Mrs. McLaughlin, she moved several times to various port cities on the east and west coasts —wherever Mac’s ship was sent. She’d find a secretarial job and a room. When his ship was deployed to England she waited for him. After D-Day when his ship was deployed to the Pacific, she waited for him in San Francisco. She had her first child in 1946 and seven more after that until 1963. It was the baby boom.

Mary McLaughlin with her first child 1946

 Mary had been a single girl for eighteen years. She was a wife for thirty-five years before Mac died in 1977. She was a widow for forty-three years. She was a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother for fifty-four years. Her eight children called her Ma. Her twenty-nine grandchildren called her Ma and so did all their spouses. Her forty-two great-grandchildren called her Ma, and eventually that’s how she thought of herself: as Ma.

Mary with some of her family 2014

 As matriarch for an extended family of more than eighty people, she endeavored to pass along the faith she had inherited, and did so by embodying it. Shortly after being widowed, she used Mac's life insurance to buy an old farmhouse in Lovell and fix it up. She recalled many happy summer days in the country with her own grandmother and wanted the same for her grandchildren. For thirty-two years, she provided those memories before finally going into assisted living five years ago at ninety-one.

In assisted living 2016

In the year 2000, Ma invited her children to accompany her on a trip to the Holy Land. All were deeply affected by the experience of walking the paths Jesus Himself walked two thousand years before. Whenever they heard gospel readings after that, they could remember being in each of the places where His preaching and His miracles actually took place.

 

With five of her children 2014

As Ma went into hospice at ninety-six, her extended family opened a forum on Whats App where her many offspring posted remembrances of what she left them: her love and her faith in God, both of which she lived out seamlessly. One said:

 

“Ma we owe everything we have to you, the way we conduct ourselves, treat other human beings and our belief in god is all owed to you. Through your pure kindness, hard work and patience you’ve made us all good human beings who will teach our kids and grandkids forever after you meet God.”

With a few family members

 Another said:

 

“It’s amazing to reflect on all you have taught me and our family about love. You taught us all with your whole life — by the way you lived, by the conversations you had, and in all of your relationships with us. You taught us in big and small ways. These have impacted my life in important ways at various times. I know they will continue to do so long after today.”

Mary Haggerty in the middle around 1930

 Another said:

“When we would visit, I remember Ma would let us kids into her bed early in the morning. With her eyes closed we would say prayers, then she would tell us stories. They always started with a blueberry patch. When my children wanted to read the same book for the thirty-fifth time, I closed my eyes and started into the same blueberry patch stories. Love you Ma.”

Ma's 90th 2014

 Another said:

“As a kid when I asked you why you moved to Maine, you spoke of making memories for your grandchildren similar to your own childhood — of a grandmother in the woods. I think you achieved that goal and more. You certainly made an imprint on all of us, Ma. While I wish those woods were a little closer to Massachusetts, I’ll never forget all the time spent with you up there! Though I’m on the tail end of the grandkid lineup (somewhere in the 30s I believe), I felt no less special. I think you made everyone feel that way. You have a unique gift to draw others in and make them feel genuinely loved. Your sincere love for others, simple joy, and obvious faith are what I’ll always admire most about you.”

Some of the photos on Ma's refrigerator

 All the grandchildren commented on the refrigerator in Ma’s kitchen which was completely covered on two sides with wallet-sized, school pictures of them and their many cousins. Several also mentioned the giant freezer in the basement. Mary and Mac had each grown up poor during the Great Depression and threw nothing away that wasn’t thoroughly worn out. Mac sometimes went hungry as a child so, after they married and children came, they purchased a huge chest freezer. Mac kept it full bygoing food-shopping every Saturday. He negotiated with bakery managers to buy day-old bread — fifty loaves at a time — for a nickel each. He made sure his children would never know hunger as he did. After Mac died, Ma brought that freezer with her up to Maine.

With brother Joe Haggerty in Galway, Ireland 2009

 One grandchild said: “I still think of you when I smell bacon, as that’s usually the smell that woke me up in the morning in the Blue Room. I remember drinking orange juice from your recycled juice glasses and making sandwiches to take to Kezar [Lake] made out of bread that was in your freezer (probably) longer than I’d been alive. I, too, remember crawling into your bed and praying along to the radio rosary. I’ll admit I thought the rosary was painfully boring, but I loved snuggling in close with you in your warm bed. And now, many of my daily rosaries are offered for you!”

Christmas dinner at my house

 All who loved Ma worried that, during Covid, she might have to die alone. Her daughters looked for a hospice that would allow loved ones to visit, and finally found one nine days before she passed. As the testimonies poured in on What’s App, they were read to her. She heard the above tributes and many others like them as she waited for Jesus to call her home. Two of her daughters were holding her hands and praying with her as she passed on to eternal life. For that, we’re all grateful.

With her brother Joe around 1940

 Few are as prepared for death as Ma was, and for the past few years she wondered aloud why she was living so long. During that time she told some of her children what was most important to her besides her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. First of those things was her church work, like serving on the building committee for the Elizabeth Ann Seton Church; serving as secretary for the Church Council; volunteering at the Dinner Bell (the local soup kitchen); working at the Lighthouse Pregnancy Crisis Center whose mission was to provide practical, life-affirming, alternatives to abortion; and serving as Eucharistic Minister and taking it to shut-ins. 

With one of her 42 great-grandchildren

 For decades she was very active with the Pro-Life Movement at many levels, believing strongly that: “We have to promote the dignity of the human person and the Sanctity of Human Life.” Born a Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrat as so many of her generation in Massachusetts were, she had to leave the Democrat Party when it became the party of abortion. She became a Reagan Democrat, and eventually a Republican. The Party had changed, not her. For years she haunted pro-abortion Democrats like Congressman, then Senator, then Presidential candidate, Paul Tsongas. Then she haunted his counterparts in Maine. Ma never relented in her fight against abortion. 

Nearly all families are touched by alcoholism, but especially the Irish. All her ancestors came from there and do did Mac’s. She understood what damage alcoholism did to families and she became active in Al Anon, a program for anyone who loves an alcoholic. She sponsored many in both Massachusetts and Maine and started an Alateen program in Fryeburg. Through these organizations she touched hundreds of others in whatever community she lived.

Being as involved as she was in so many activities meant a lot of driving on rural roads in western Maine. Ma liked to get where she was going quickly and was often pulled over for speeding, even into her eighties. “I’d roll down the window and smile sweetly at them with my white, old lady hair and they’d let me go,” she said. More than one grandchild remembered being with her when she went too fast for the slippery conditions and she’d yell, “Hold on kids!” as she went into the ditch. She damaged her cars a few times but no one ever got hurt. It was like she had divine protection.

Two great-granddaughters were named for Ma and there are just too many moving grandchildren posts to list here, but one more:

 

“I was just thinking about all the special memories I have of you as I was holding Danny and putting him down for a nap. Many are of your house in Maine and all the great times we had there- I loved your fridge full of pictures! That’s what I thought of first. It was always fun to find yourself and see all your cousins (and there are a lot of them)! The best was climbing out the kitchen window to the sun porch- that was a pretty big deal to a kid. The fire wood chute was also exciting! Could I fit down it? I wished we had one in our house. I remember your aloe plant in the upstairs hall and how we would use it for sunburns. I remember crawling into bed with you in the early morning and I thought your mattress was soooo comfy! I enjoyed playing card games with you in the dining room. I remember all your braided rugs. The creaky stairs. It was fun picking carrots from your garden and finding glass bottles in the woods for your collection. Swimming, hiking, and being with cousins was the best! Watching tv with you as you crocheted on your chair. Lately, I’ve really enjoyed our phone conversations and I’m going to miss them a lot. You have such wisdom and faith and I’ve learned so much from you. “You sound so happy!” — that’s what you would always say when we spoke. It’s been so nice sharing stories about the kids with you. How did you ever remember all the grandkids’ names?  Probably because you prayed for them all every night. I told you last week Luke didn’t realize (because he’s so absent minded) that he put his clean underwear right over the dirty ones and you laughed and laughed! It was the best. I hadn’t heard you laugh like that in a while!”

A daughter who was with Ma near the end reported several things she said. Among them were:

 

I need Jesus.

I need the Eucharist.

I need to see my children.

I'm so happy.

I love seeing your face.

I feel the love.

Jesus I love you above all things.

 

And one of the prayers her daughter said with Ma during her last days included a quote from 17th century scientist and mathematician Blaise Pascal:

“Reflect on death in Jesus Christ, not without Him. Without Jesus Christ death would be dreadful, alarming, a terror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is fair and lovely, it is good and holy, it is the joy of the saints.”

THE FRYEBURG CANAL ON THE SACO RIVER

Promotion for Barrows' book on Fryeburg History 1938

Exactly two hundred years ago, a group of local farmers in Fryeburg, Maine changed the course of the Saco River with oxen and hand tools. First, however, they had to dig through bureaucratic red tape put in their path by Massachusetts government from which they requested help. Frustrated by that and the state’s refusal of funds, they dug a canal by themselves at their own expense. It was completed in 1820, the same year Maine finally broke from Massachusetts and became its own state.

North Fryeburg farmland today

After rising near Crawford Notch in New Hampshire, the Saco River enters Maine in Fryeburg. Although the town is only about ten miles square, the Saco meanders through it for thirty-six miles. Early settlers cleared land and farmed, but the most fertile land in the northern part of town flooded nearly every spring. It was so bad, farmers petitioned the Massachusetts legislature (which governed Maine at the time) for flood relief in 1786. For the loss of a grist mill, nine houses, numerous animals, and much produce, Fryeburg was granted a tax abatement of 200 pounds. 

Saco River today

That was temporary relief and farmers wanted something permanent. They next petitioned the Massachusetts to fund a canal for flood control in 1812. They had a good idea about where and how to dig it because at one point near the center of town, the meandering courses of the river were only four-and-a-half miles apart. A canal there, through mostly sandy soil, would cut off seventeen miles of river through the fertile intervale in north Fryeburg. The plan was sound and would eventually relieve much of the flooding, but Massachusetts would not give them any money — only permission. So farmers wanted to dig it on their own.

More rich North Fryeburg farmland

First, however, they had to indemnify themselves against legal liability for whatever damages their canal might cause, for along with state permission to form a corporation called “Proprietors of the Fryeburg(h) Canal,” the state attached — to both the corporation and three dozen individual proprietors — legal responsibility for damages in perpetuity. So, the farmers went back to the state in February, 1816 for relief of this endless liability. Massachusetts responded in June, 1816 by limiting it to four years. Only then did the farmers feel safe enough to break ground in earnest.

Old River upstream from Hemlock Bridge

The sequence of actual construction is a bit confusing to this writer. One account said the digging of the first phase began in 1812; others say the digging began 1816 or 1817, but all agree the canal was finished in 1820 with the assistance of Mother Nature. It’s hard to say exactly where that construction started and some say it was done in segments over an eight-year period between 1812 and 1820. The most comprehensive account I have found so far is in John Stuart Barrow’s Fryeburg, Maine: An Historical Sketch published in 1938.

Fryeburg before canal showing two ponds in the center
Library of Congress map

There were two ponds within the four-and-a-half-mile stretch of land across which the canal was planned. One, called Bear Pond, was situated about where Canal Bridge crosses the present course of the river and it was completely drained by the canal. Nothing is left. The other, called Bog Pond, was larger and the canal drained most of it too, but a small segment remains to this day off Bog Pond Road between Route 5 and Menotomy Road.

Old Course of Saco near Hemlock Bridge

According to former Fryeburg Historical Society President Diane Jones, the digging began behind what is now the Al Barton farm in West Fryeburg. She told me her late husband, Ed Jones, together with the late Phil Andrews, found what they believed was the beginning of the canal. None of the many accounts I read about or heard about contradict this. For those who said the first segment was dug between what is now the Old Course of the Saco and Bear Pond, the Jones/Andrews claim is as good as any about exactly where. I went down there last week, but vegetation is so thick in the many old oxbow riverbeds, I could see little. I’ll go back after leaf drop in the fall and check it out again.

Old Course of the Saco in Fryeburg Harbor

Canal construction began with a narrow ditch — either in 1812 or in 1816 — and leading into Bear Pond. One account from Bill Vinton of Lovell said that a man could step across it in certain sections. Then came a freshet (river flooding) in 1820 that widened the ditch into the wider canal we see now and drained Bear Pond, then proceeded to Bog Pond and beyond to connect where the main course of the river below Hemlock Bridge now flows. Another account says there were two separate phases and the second phase was dug between the ponds a few years after the Bear Pond phase, and the 1820 freshet widened and deepened that part as well to complete the course of the Saco River as we know it today.

From Canal Bridge where Bear Pond used to be

Today’s course is the river with a sandy bottom so many canoers enjoy. There’s little water left now in the Old Course of the Saco — which is what the 17 miles of river cut off by the canal has been called. There is more water where tributaries still flow in but not enough to use a canoe or kayak until the “Fryeburg Harbor” area where the Cold River flows in from Stow and the Kezar Lake outlet enters from Lovell. Even there the old river is slow-moving and choked with weeds, especially in late summer. Snapping turtles like it and they grow very large, but no one would want to float a tube or swim in it.

Winter dawn on today's Saco River

Indians had traveled the winding Saco River in Fryeburg, possibly for nine thousand years or more. Archaeologists believe they farmed its fertile, intervale planting corn, beans, and squash beginning about three thousand years ago. In the late 20th century, amateur archaeologist Helen Leadbeater excavated two significant Indian settlements, one at Fryeburg Harbor and the other at Lovewell’s Pond. That pond is only a short canoe ride from the Saco as it flows south out of Fryeburg at the southern end end of town. She amassed her huge artifact collection primarily from these two sites.

She also investigated the entire shore of Lovewell’s Pond and, based on the patterns of where she found artifacts, she surmised that Indians often portaged across a two-mile stretch of what is now Fryeburg Village from the Weston’s Bridge area to the northern shore of the pond. That shortcut would eliminate about two dozen miles of paddling through north Fryeburg for those traveling express from settlements in Conway, New Hampshire to other encampments along the river’s course all the way to its mouth in what is now Saco/Biddeford. 

There are many different spellings of Pequawket

The Pequawkets were part of a subgroup of Abenaki Indians called Sokokis who settled Fryeburg in historic times. They also included the Ossipee, after whom both the town in New Hampshire and a tributary of the Saco flowing from the Ossipee area are named. The Pequawkets and the Ossipee traveled up and down the rivers between the coast and the White Mountains regularly. Captain John Smith and Samuel Champlain both had contact with the Sokokis at the Saco River’s mouth in the early 1600s. The section of Maine’s Route 5 between the Fryeburg/Brownfield area and Saco, Maine is still called the “Sokokis Trail.”

The first white man thought to have entered what is now Fryeburg was likely Darby Field in 1642 on his way to Mount Washington. He described an Indian village of about two hundred and was probably referring to Pequawket — now Fryeburg. We know Captain John Lovewell arrived in 1725 from Dunstable, Massachusetts to fight Pequawket Indians at the pond named for him. Some historians claim Lovewell came to take Indian scalps, but other sources say he was retaliating for Pequawket raids into Dunstable and nearby Andover, Massachusetts. Lovewell died battling Indians in Fryeburg after which most of the Pequawkets retreated to St. Francis on the St Lawrence River.

John Buxton's "Ambush at Lovewell's Pond"

The man destined to have the most impact on Fryeburg was Colonel Joseph Frye of Andover, after whom Fryeburg is named. A surveyor by trade, he knew of the fertile Saco intervale the Indians prized and persuaded the Province of Massachusetts to grant him the land in return for his service in the French and Indian War.

Cumberland and Oxford Canal

During the late 1700s and early 1800s centuries there was a lot of canal digging in Maine and New England, mostly for two purposes: transportation and power. The Saco River canal for flood control was relatively unusual at the time. As it was completed though, a huge transportation canal project nearby was being planned called the Cumberland and Oxford Canal which was opened to traffic in 1832 from the outlet of Sebago Lake to Portland Harbor on the coast. Canals for water power were dug along the Androscoggin River in Lewiston for powering its textile mills.

Back in the 1970s an older Lovell, Maine citizen told me how her grandfather shipped barrels of apples to England from Lovell in the 1800s. First he took them by wagon over the hills of Sweden, Maine to the northern tip of Long Lake in Harrison Village. There they were loaded onto specialized canal boats for transport down Long Lake, through the Songo Lock to Sebago Lake, then across it into the Cumberland and Oxford canal on the lake’s southern end. From there it was onward to inner Portland Harbor at Stroudwater.

There the apple barrels could be loaded onto ships bound for England, or they could remain on the specialized canal boats for transport along the Atlantic seaboard to the Port of Boston. These specialized canal boats were designed to drop a keel and erect two hinged masts, enabling travel along the coast in good weather.

When coal-driven steam power was introduced, however, both the power function and transportation function were gradually undermined. Steam power made railroads possible and they proved cheaper and faster than transporting goods by canal. Steam power also replaced water power for mills of all kinds: saw mills, grist mills, fulling mills, and textile mills. In Lewiston, water-driven turbines were replaced by steam turbines.

Recent shot of Saco at flood stage near Canal Bridge

The Saco River was the biggest obstacle to travel between the old settlements of Fryeburg, Maine (1763) and Bethel, Maine (1769) over an Indian trail which, today, Route 5 largely follows. Bethel is located on the Androscoggin River; Fryeburg on the Saco. Indians preferred rivers for transportation, but they sometimes traveled overland between river systems. Excellent farmland on the intervales of both rivers which first drew Indians, then attracted Bethel’s and Fryeburg’s early white settlers, Colonel Frye being one of these.

Frye had fought Indians and their French Allies in 1757 at the Battle of Fort William Henry and elsewhere as commander of the Massachusetts Militia during the French and Indian War. For that, he obtained a land grant now comprising the town bearing his name. Like fellow French and Indian War Colonel George Washington, he was surveyor by trade. Both also became generals when the American Revolution broke out, but Frye, being much older, saw little service in it compared to Washington.

Joseph Frye cellar hole today

It Massachusetts made its grant to Frye in 1762, he built his home in the center of town just above the Saco’s intervale. All that’s left of it now is a cellar hole in the woods at the end of a dirt road just off Route 5 north of the Fryeburg Fairgrounds. The road is marked by a brass plate set in a stone beside the paved highway. Frye knew the Saco intervale’s rich soil and huge potential for farming when he sought to acquire his land grant, but apparently not so much about the regularity of its annual floods and the bane they would be to farmers.

He soon learned after settling there himself but he died in 1794 before the canal was dug. He’s buried in the Village Cemetery but other members of his family lived to see the canal completed in 1820 — very close to his original home on Frye’s Hill. The Fryeburg canal stopped much of the flooding in north Fryeburg, but didn’t eliminate it entirely. I can remember twice that my brother Dan, when living on the McNeil Road in North Fryeburg at the edge of the intervale, had to use a canoe to get around for a few days.

ALWAYS WITH US

Substance abuse and mental illness have plagued us throughout history. Public attitudes and efforts to mitigate them have varied over the ages. Last week’s column spotlighted the recent “homeless encampment” at the Portland, Maine City Hall with concentrations of people plagued by these issues and such is the case with nearly all homeless in cities across America. During my lifetime I’ve witnessed widely different societal strategies for these chronic, human problems.

Tewksbury State Hospital in Massachusetts was mysterious to me as a young boy growing up a mile away in the then-rural town by that name. When my mother allowed me to ride my bike to the Red Roof variety store to spend the quarter my grandmother gave me each week, twenty-five cents purchased  two Superman comic books and a Hershey bar with almonds. I’d sit on a well cover outside the store eating my chocolate bar and gaze at the fortress-like, 19th-century complex across a broad field.

It was surrounded by high, brick walls behind which taller, red-brick, administrative buildings loomed near the main gate. Behind those were various wards in smaller, separate brick buildings sprawling over many acres and housing individuals who had themselves become wards of the state. All the wards were connected by tunnels allowing traffic between them without traipsing through winter snow. Surrounding the walls was a working farm of over 800 acres including a piggery, a dairy farm, greenhouses, barns, and vast cornfields.

Established in 1852 as an “alms house,” its mission changed as the state took on more societal burdens. It morphed into an insane asylum; it treated alcoholism, unwed mothers, paupers, patients with congenital birth defects, quadriplegics, and many others. Annie Sullivan, better known as “The Miracle Worker” as Helen Keller’s teacher, spend several years there as a child. Her brother, Jimmi, died there and is buried in an unmarked grave.

Later, as an undergraduate at nearby University of Lowell, I’d work inside those walls on every men’s ward for more than two years as a full-time orderly on the 3-11:30 shift. The alcoholic ward treated street people from Greater Boston. After discharge, some made it with the help of churches and private charities but most relapsed and returned again and again. Many, if not most, had co-occurring mental illnesses — but they weren’t on the streets. They weren’t in jails. They were provided with food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, guidance, and vocational training if they were inclined to take it.

Just prior to my employment there in the 1970s, Massachusetts had begun to implement a different strategy. It would provide halfway houses with trained staff to counsel, administer psychoactive drugs, and help reintegrate patients into communities. The mentally ill were released from the hospitals, but the above-described services were never provided to the extent needed. Many former patients refused to take their meds and there was no way to make them.

Fifty years hence, our jails are filled with untreated, mentally-ill substance abusers. Others live on the streets, eat in soup kitchens, sleep in homeless shelters, doorways, under bridges, and in parks. They are used to push a political agenda as we witnessed this summer at Portland City Hall. Institutionalization had been the practice during most of the 20th century and it had flaws. Defects with the subsequent, de-institutionalization model, however, are before us every day in cities across the country. In Portland, people are camped out in parks, panhandling on street corners, and crashed out in downtown doorways.

My wife did her undergraduate internship for social work through the University of Southern Maine and worked with the homeless at the now-closed Preble Street Resource Center under its founder, Joe Kreisler, for a year. We both agree that neither of the above, historical approaches work well and there is no perfect model. “The poor you will always with you,” said Jesus Christ, posing a challenge to our humanity. We can measure ourselves by how we deal with them.

My suggestion is a modified institutional approach. Round up the homeless and care for them institutionally even when it’s against their will, then offer them a step-by-step strategy to earn re-entry into society. Play out their tethers gradually and pull them back quickly when they relapse — much the way probation officers do for jail inmates when they’re adequately funded. Most importantly, allow them to keep trying. Such an approach would be more expensive, but more humane than releasing them into our streets to fend for themselves.

As an old selectman told me decades ago when appointing me General Assistance Administrator for my town: “We have the poor, and the poor have us.” And so it goes.