To the aptly named Sherman, Maine goes “the undisputed honor of being the Banner Town in the United States” by summer 1865, according to late 19th-century historian May H. Spooner. And how had this small town located amidst the rolling hills in southwestern Aroostook County earned this distinction? By sending “113 soldiers” to help preserve […]
Perhaps his shame led William R. Bubar of Eaton Grant (merged with an adjacent township to form Lyndon in 1859) to assume a nom de guerre when he finally joined the war effort. At the request of my sweet wife, we attended the Kenny Rogers concert last December in Bangor. Rogers sang many of his […]
A chicken ratted out Lawrence Kelley. The son of Patrick and Rachel Whitenacht Kelley of Eaton Grant (which became the eastern half of the Aroostook County town of Lyndon in 1859), Kelley was familiar with farm animals, especially with which critters made a tasty treat. The knowledge came in handy when marching past Confederate farms.* […]
The shots fired by Confederate artillery at Fort Sumter in April 1861 echoed as far away as Golden Ridge Plantation in southwestern Aroostook County … … and still echoed four years later when the residents of Sherman — the town which the plantation became on Jan. 28, 1862 — took stock of the high […]
A Confederate ambush in the Shenandoah Valley shot a Black Hawk down in May 1862. Putnams helped settle Houlton, and to John Varnum and Elizabeth Putnam a son was born on April 28, 1838. Six years earlier a Sauk chief had led several Indians tribes in a brief and tragic war against the United […]
