Joan Jackson smiles among pine trees on the shore of Damariscotta Lake. During her childhood in Jefferson, outdoor fun revolved around the lake, which Jackson loves deeply to this day, she said. (Molly Rains photo)
Joan Jackson knows Jefferson inside out, upside down, and along nearly every single road.
The strength and support of the Jefferson community is what has kept Jackson, a former postmaster and longtime volunteer, deeply intertwined with the town and its happenings throughout her life, she said.
Jackson was born to two lifelong Jefferson residents, Miles Amos “Amie” Fish Jr. and Melissa (Turner) Fish. Her birth came as a total surprise to her parents, who had just seen her brother John Fish enter the world five minutes earlier at Miles Memorial Hospital in Damariscotta and hadn’t been expecting twins.
Jackson and John Fish were the fourth and fifth children of eventual six-sibling family, making for a busy household throughout Jackson’s childhood.
“When I hear a screen door slam, I say, ‘Oh, my goodness’ – how many times a day my mother must have heard that sound,” Jackson said.
Jackson said she couldn’t imagine not being a part of a large, bustling family.
“You do learn how to, hopefully, get along, and that the whole world doesn’t revolve around you, and you learn how to share,” she said.
Miles Amos Fish was a “plumber, carpenter, and a jack-of-all-trades,” Jackson said. Before having her children, Melissa Fish was a school teacher who had graduated second in her class from Cony High School and gone on to Farmington State Normal School, now the University of Maine at Farmington. She worked as a teacher even during the first few years of her marriage, something Jackson noted was highly unusual at the time.
Melissa Fish had a photographic memory and was a kind but firm “grammarian,” Jackson recalled. She was a deep believer in the importance of academics and made sure her children took their studies seriously: While the girls of the family were responsible for washing dishes, they were released from that chore upon entering high school, when they were then expected to work on homework after dinner instead.
Eating and doing chores as a family were important parts of her mother’s approach to raising the siblings, Jackson said.
“My mother always used to say, ‘Wash and wipe together, live and fight together,’” she said.
With six children, the family had to stretch their dollars.
“There was not a lot of money. There was nothing extra,” Jackson said.
To entertain themselves, the siblings took advantage of free resources like the Maine State Library’s “bookmobile,” which stopped at Jefferson Village School with library books during the school year, and a free library that operated out of the First Baptist Church during the summer months. Jackson also attended Sunday school at the church, which the family lived right behind, and participated in 4-H.
But, along with the other children of Jefferson, the childhood activity that Jackson loved most was spending time at Damariscotta Lake, from boating and swimming in summer to ice skating in winter. She recalled catching fireflies in pickle jars and listening to the sounds of whippoorwills, which have since become less common, in the evenings.
“Most everything really centered around the lake,” Jackson said
The annual arrival of summer visitors was a highlight for Jackson, bringing the excitement of new faces into the fray. Jackson’s father worked on some summer cottages, opening them up before their inhabitants arrived for the summer, she said. As a result, her family knew quite a few summer visitors.
“These people became like a second family,” Jackson said. “I’ve always appreciated the people that have cottages here on the lake, and I’ve never let anybody dis the summer people. They were a very important part of my childhood, and they’re still a very important part of my life.”
One of Jackson’s best friends, Barbara McNutt, is a “summer person” with whom Jackson has been close for nearly 70 years now. Every summer, “we always just pick up where we left off,” Jackson said.
Like all of her siblings, Jackson attended Lincoln Academy, where she was a member of student council, magazine drive, safety council, and Tri-Hi-Y, a girls’ organization. She was also determinedly well-behaved, receiving only one demerit in all four years for passing notes, Jackson recalled, with classmate Richard Hatch.
Jackson wanted to be a good student to make life easier on her mother, she said. Miles Amos Fish had died of lung cancer at the age of 54, when Jackson was in eighth grade. The loss of her father left Jackson striving to “not make any trouble” for her mother, who was left a single parent to her six children.
Throughout high school, Jackson babysat and worked at Damariscotta Lake Farms as a waitress in the summer months. After graduating, she enrolled at Gorham State University, now the University of Southern Maine.
However, another tragedy was soon to follow. On New Year’s Eve in 1966, Melissa Fish died from a brain tumor at the age of 57. The loss of her mother shook Jackson deeply and left her feeling alone in the world.
Losing her mother prematurely, Jackson said, gave her a sudden bittersweet appreciation for the care Melissa Fish had shown her children. She felt regret, she said, for not expressing her gratitude to her mother more openly.
“I say, I wish I could have my mother for one day, one day so that I could thank her for everything she did, because her whole life was her children. We always came first. And that I could have thanked her … Whatever she did, day in and day out, it was always for us kids,” she said.
In Jackson’s family, saying “I love you” and being openly emotional was “not the norm” during her childhood, she said. Thus, being “a good kid” became the only way Jackson knew how to express her gratitude to her mother.
Jackson was partway through her second year of college when her mother died. The loss made it difficult for her to move forward with her studies.
“I would guess I was kind of floundering, and I wasn’t studying hard enough,” Jackson said.
She dropped out of university after taking an initial semester off and moved to Boston, then Portland, to work.
At the age of 22, Jackson reconnected with a figure from her childhood: Fred Jackson, another Jefferson resident eight years her senior who had been in her older brother’s class growing up.
Fred Jackson was quiet, intelligent, and hardworking, Joan Jackson said. The two fell in love and were married in 1970. While they were on their honeymoon, they had a foundation poured for their first house together on Egypt Road in Damariscotta.
At the time, Joan Jackson had been working as a clerk at First National Bank. But during the first summer of her marriage, she found herself in a new, unexpected job: cooking at a takeout restaurant that she, Fred Jackson, and Phil Hatch were running for the summer.
At Riverview Takeout – now the site of what Jackson referred to as the “half-a-million-dollar bathroom” in Damariscotta’s municipal parking lot – the newlyweds and Hatch served up burgers and crab rolls. The best part of every day was eating the leftover crab at the end of the day, Jackson said, but the work was hot and cramped. After that one summer, the couple did not return to the takeout food business.
The Jacksons eventually returned to Jefferson, renovating the Fish family’s childhood home. Joan Jackson and Fred Jackson would have four children together: Joseph, twins Joshua and Justin, and Jennifer.
The family briefly moved to Farmingdale when Jennifer, their youngest, was in grade school, because of concerns over the state of Jefferson Village School, Jackson said. But she and Fred Jackson would later return to their hometown, where Joan Jackson has remained ever since.
Joan Jackson’s deep Jefferson roots coupled with the precise memory she inherited from her mother made her a prime candidate for the office of Jefferson postmaster, which she took over in 1987 after working in the post office for eight years.
As postmaster, Jackson enjoyed connecting residents with each other and helping share her intricate knowledge of the town with newcomers.
One resident summed up Jackson’s influence on the community with the statement that “Everybody I know in Jefferson I met at the post office,” Jackson laughed.
Jackson has traveled on every main road in Jefferson and nearly all private roads, she estimated. When traveling in other states, she has bumped into people with connections to Jefferson and surprised them with her precise knowledge of its inhabitants’ addresses.
Though Jackson retired from the post office in 2008, she keeps her finger on the pulse of the town. Jackson has served on the planning board since 2017, the budget committee from 2016-2025, and was a member of the school committee from 2011-2016, she said. She also served on the committee of Jefferson Community Day, which Jackson said she would love to see restarted.
In 2018, Jackson was awarded with the Spirit of America Award for her contributions to the Jefferson community.
When volunteering at elections, Jackson said, she often surprises new residents by telling them who used to live in their home.
Jackson and Fred Jackson were divorced late in life. Before he died in 2020, they both enjoyed spending time with their grandchildren. Joan Jackson continues to welcome her adult children and her young grandchildren to the family home on Damariscotta Lake and said she is exceedingly proud of her family.
She now cleans cottages, continuing her lifelong commitment to “taking care of people,” she said. Jackson has also volunteered on the board of the Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association, which became Midcoast Conservancy, and organized litter cleanups along the lake.
Jackson continues to get together with her sisters, and enjoys theater, particularly shows at The Waldo Theatre and performances by Heartwood Regional Theater Co.
She said she wanted to encourage young people to volunteer and be active members of their community.
“As a young child, growing up – especially with my father dying young – the community supported us,” Jackson said. “My theory has always been that if you’ve gotten, you give back.”
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