If you were a ball player on a town team 100 years ago, an “away” game in the mountains might mean a day of travel over winding country roads by horseback or carriage.
Baseball games were surprisingly well-attended. A regular-season game between “the Weld nine” and East Wilton on the Fourth of July drew 1,200 fans.
The ball games were often the centerpiece of a two-day event, as was the case when the Hartford team visited Weld. The Hartford boys arrived on a Wednesday afternoon and checked in to the Pleasant Pond House before playing a game. On Thursday morning the boys were treated to a boat ride around the lake and played two more games that afternoon before returning to Hartford.
If you were a public figure, western Maine afforded a temporary haven from the hustle and bustle of public life. In August of 1904 the Farmington Chronicle noted the arrival of U.S. Sen. Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana. During the summer of 1904, he was probably hard at work on a book, no longer in print but still in circulation, called “The Russian Advance.”
If you were a sport fisherman, western Maine meant big fish. The Rangeley area was well-known all over the country, especially for its trout fishing. An eight-pound trout pulled out of Rangeley Lake, stuffed and put on display in a storefront window in Ilion, N.Y., was the talk of that town a hundred years ago.
“Nothing has attracted more attention in years” noted a reporter for The Ilion Citizen. “It is the finest trout ever brought into Ilion.”
If you had left your home during the great out-migration after the Civil War, summer might mean rediscovering your roots. Like thousands of other rural Mainers, Augustine Ranger had left Weld and his family’s struggling dairy farm as a young man. After much travel, he settled in Columbus, Ohio, where the ground was more fertile and the weather more temperate. Gradually, he lost touch with his family in Maine, and by the time he was middle-aged he had ceased to correspond with them.
When his father died in Weld in 1892, Augustine didn’t even know. But at the age of 65, his health failing him, he decided that the summer of 1904 would be a good time to return home.
On a warm afternoon in August he arrived by carriage, unannounced, at Elm Ridge Farm in Farmington.
“This is Evander, I suppose,” said Augustine to the man who met him at the door, “but you probably don’t recognize me, do you?”
Evander said he did not.
“Well I am Augustine,” he said to his half-brother, whom had not seen him for 40 years.
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