Apparently a few years back, back in the days when Maine was truly part of the American frontier, a dispute raged among local homesteaders and people from away who claimed legal title to land Mainers had claimed with muscle, blood and sweat.
Predictably, the put-upon rose to defend their claims with humanity’s age-old standby… violence.
The dispute between the earliest settlers of Balltown, as Whitefield and Jefferson were once known, and folks who likely had never even set foot in Balltown, was recalled in one of the highlights of the Whitefield bicentennial celebration last weekend with the symbolic burning of an outhouse.
Two hundred years on, what was once a bitter, divisive and dangerous dispute was a family affair. Bring the kids.
We are encouraged by the cheerful spirit of Whitefield residents, who, by all accounts, spared no effort in celebrating their shared history this past weekend.
If we can, we would like to take a lesson from their example by considering how a white hot dispute is recalled nowadays in a celebration of community spirit.
