Fort Kent gift preserves St. Francis history

ST. FRANCIS – Annie Dow was 80 years old in 1985 when she started the St. Francis Historical Society, wanting to document and preserve the history of her hometown, nestled along the St. John River in extreme northwestern Maine.

She died last summer, at 95, seeing her dream well on its way. Her daughter, Jean Dow-Gibson, and a handful of local people are carrying on the dream of the former schoolteacher. The small group, forever hampered by too much work and too little money, has made many inroads, both historical and concrete, to fulfill Dow’s dream.

On Monday night, the town of Fort Kent lent a hand by agreeing to turn over to the historical society in a lease arrangement the St. Francis railroad turntable. Dow-Gibson, who was on her way early Tuesday morning to a job in Portland, may not know of the gift.

“We really hope to get the turntable, clean it up and make it workable,” Dow-Gibson said Monday. “It’s a big part of the history of the town, and it’s right next to our site.

“Again, this will take money to do, and a number of volunteers to help,” she said with a frown. “We are only a small group, despite having a large number of members, to do all the work.

“We are forever short of money, and we have to keep on raising money for these historical projects,” Dow-Gibson said. “We have done so much, and there is still so much to do.”

The turntable in an important aspect of St. Francis’ history since the town was the northern Maine terminus of the rail line built in the early 1900s. The Bangor and Aroostook Railroad stopped here, one town short, by not extending to Allagash, of reaching the end of Maine near the Canadian border.

The turntable, a large revolving disk, had a set of tracks on it. When a train reached St. Francis, the engine would be detached from the cars it was pulling and then move onto the turntable. The turntable would be mechanically turned 180 degrees, and the engine would change direction and push cars back to the Fort Kent terminal.

The turntable is located to the rear of a 1-acre lot the St. Francis Historical Society owns along Route 161, the only road in and out of town. The parcel is across Route 161 from the St. Francis Town Office.

“The preservation of the history of St. Francis was my mother’s dream,” Dow-Gibson, a resident of Allagash, said. “I am doing this for her.”

The small group, which includes Dow-Gibson, Adeline Jandreau, Sylvia Ouellette, Gene Perreault and Fred Hafford, have done a lot through the years with meager funds. Fund-raisers are an annual labor for the group.

Along with purchasing the 1-acre lot in 1987, the society members have constructed a society building, which they put on a foundation this past year; acquired and are working to refurbish a railroad caboose given them by the B&A railroad; erected a veterans memorial on the site; and collected historical data and artifacts.

In the yard of the historical society site is a horse-drawn, all-steel hay rake.

While the group has acquired small grants to do some of the work, their fund-raisers, including a roast of state Rep. John L. Martin held some years ago, came up with most of the money that paid for part of the lot and building.

The society recently had a quilt show to raise money to help pay for the foundation of their historical home. Some of the quilts displayed were 100 years old, Dow-Gibson said.

The members want to install a heating system, and the basement area would house their computer system. The donated computers will be used to store genealogy and other historical information.

“It’s always a matter of money,” Dow-Gibson said. “We are hopeful of acquiring nonprofit status, and that would help us qualify for grants.”

The small community of about 650 people, which once had a population of about 1,500, is located along the river in the area where the St. Francis River, the international border with Canada, flows into the St. John.

Ancestors of the hardy wood workers of the town also were loggers, interspersed with a large number of farmers.

Even in 1831, nine farm lots were noted near the confluence of the St. Francis and St. John rivers by state employees John C. Dean and Edward Kavanaugh, who were making a census round of the northern Maine woods. Their notes include names such as Kelly, Abernathy, Plourde, McPhee, Pelletier, Depery, Thibodeau, Blanchette, Brann and Lazore.

Dow-Gibson said the town was established in 1859. In 1986, St. Paul’s Congregational Church, which has had more than 50 pastors, celebrated its centennial. The white-spired church still stands, with its own cemetery.

One of the chores of the historical society is developing a history of the town’s schools, Dow-Gibson said. There were many, including Emerson, Lincoln, McKinley, Lowell and Jandreau schools, before construction of the present St. Francis Elementary School in the 1960s.