In its best attended meeting ever, the South Bristol Historical Society packed the Parish Hall on Thursday evening for a presentation on South Bristol’s highly debated and controversial secession from Bristol in 1915.
It took four attempts and the fending off of a citizens’ referendum before South Bristol was finally able to secede, taking with it all the land from the corner of where Hanley’s Market now sits, to John’s River on the east, the Damariscotta River on the west, and the entire stretch of peninsula to Christmas Cove.
According to historical society speaker Stan Wells, and the many documents he placed on view for the audience, the first attempt at secession was in 1824, when petitioners asked for land from what is now the Darling Marine Center, all the way to Round Pond. At that time, Bristol included all of what are now Bristol, South Bristol and Bremen, as well as part of Damariscotta.
While the 1824 attempt failed, by 1910, there was considerable momentum behind the secession effort.
The three primary grievances of the secessionists were the conditions of the roads, which were described as being “the nearest thing to plowed fields”, the condition of the then wooden sidewalks in South Bristol Village, and lack of access to a high school, which was more than nine miles away, near to where the current Bristol Consolidated School now sits.
Other key arguments in favor of secession included that travel to the Bristol Town Hall over “nearly impassable roads” meant the “practical disenfranchisement” of a large number of voters, and that high school students had the choice of traveling across Johns’ Bay “which is open to the sea and very rough” to the Bristol School, or traveling by steamship to Lincoln Academy, boarding in Newcastle for the week, and returning home by steamship for the weekend.
This option was complicated by the fact that tax dollars would not, at that time, pay for attendance at Lincoln Academy.
Other complaints were that “The School on The Main”, the current S Road School House, “hadn’t been cleaned for two years”, needed new blackboards, and that now South Bristol residents had to hold a fundraiser to secure a new kindergarten desk.
While a 1911 petition to the legislature, signed by “Frank B. Wells and 102 others” failed, that was followed by seven petitions signed in 1913 by many members of the Gamage family and others.
It was then that things really started to heat up, and Thursday’s audience was treated to a lively reenactment of the 1913 legislative debate, with the key role played by David Andrews as Rep. George Irving from Caribou.
Andrews appropriately hammed up Irving’s testimony, which stated, in part, that “a coterie of wealthy men from great metropolises of the East have their eyes fixed upon Maine’s finest summer resorts, and these parties, with their stupendous wealth and mighty influence, like a great octopus are reaching out their tentacles and laying hold upon our most valuable assets…they come to this legislature by bill asking you to give them this island that they may fence it about and that they may establish here a miniature Eden, and by that I do not mean Paradise in Heaven upon Earth, but a little Bar Harbor.”
Thursday’s key note speaker, Stan Wells, grandson of 1911 petitioner Frank B. Wells, suggested that the testimony of Irving and others may have been directed at Sam Miles, who owned 200 acres on Rutherford Island, and whose wife, Isabel, later founded Miles Hospital.
Wells described Miles as a philanthropist and benefactor to the town, who ran summer camps for children from Boston and New York City, and who later brought Babe Ruth and other celebrities to the island in an effort to expand his philanthropic goals.
By 1915, the argument about whether the secessionist bill “ought to pass” or “ought not to pass” was being fiercely debated in the house by, among others, Rep. James Mulligan of Nobleboro, who was also the Damariscotta Mills Postmaster, and Rep. Asa St. Clair of Rockland, with St. Clair in favor of secession and Mulligan opposed. This debate was also reenacted for Thursday’s audience, with Andrews, looking all the part in a dark suit and bright bow tie, playing the role of Mulligan, and Cotton Damon playing St. Clair.
During this debate, Mulligan and St. Clair made thinly veiled references to the political posturing at hand as a game of poker, and exchanged heated accusations as to which of the two was more familiar “with a certain game of cards” than the other.
In the end, the 1915 South Bristol petitioners won unanimous approval for secession, but then had to fight off a citizens’ referendum signed by over 10,000 people from throughout the state, and which was later rejected on the basis of invalid signatures.
Wells noted that he and another Thursday night audience member were the grandchildren of two of South Bristol’s original three selectmen, and that current selectman Kenny Lincoln is a descendent of the third. Also in the audience was the granddaughter of the original town clerk.
Wells concluded his talk with the statement that after the four attempts at secession and the ultimate defeat of the citizens’ referendum on a technicality, “South Bristol has lived fairly happily ever after.”
It was an audience member “from away”, however, who brought the most appreciative laughter of the evening when he asked, “If schools and roads were the primary issues, maybe you want to reconsider?”
