Aunt Miggs recalls memories of Brewer childhood

If walls could talk or the echoes of an earlier time could be recorded, the sounds of a large, vibrant family would be heard within my Aunt Marguerite (Doyle) Connor’s childhood home at Eastern Mill Pond in Brewer.

In those days, the house was home to James and Florence Doyle and their 10 children, all communicants of St. Teresa’s Catholic Church. Marguerite was one of my mother’s most cherished childhood friends and became a part of my family by marrying my mother’s brother Leo Connor. Today, she lives at St. Xavier’s on Somerset Street in Bangor. Although she has lived most of her 86 years in the Bangor area, Orrington, and Bar Harbor at the Malvern Belmont Estate, she still considers Brewer home.

Aunt Miggs (the nickname Marguerite has had for most of her life) has vivid memories of Brewer as a child. In many families, such memories are lost, but Miggs has ensured that those times will live on by carefully recording them on paper. And, as a backup, her son Robert Connor, who now lives in Fairfield Glade, Tenn., has spent the last 25 years compiling a family history – stretching back to Scotland, Ireland and England, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, Boston and Rumford – and tracking both his mother’s side of the family, the Doyles and Dinsmores, and his father’s side, the Connors and McIsaacs. Their stories complement one another.

Miggs’ parents were James and Florence Doyle. Her father came to Brewer from Summerside, Prince Edward Island, to work at Eastern Fine Paper Mill and he met Florence Dinsmore, a young woman from Harrington, who also worked in the mill. They fell in love, she converted to Catholicism and they got married.

On a recent snowy Sunday afternoon, Miggs shared some of her memories.

“There were 10 children in our family,” she said, rattling off the names. “Marjorie, Ralph, Norman, me, Paul, Jim, Fern, Philip… . How many is that? Eight? Oh, how could I forget Florence and Pauline.”

Miggs was baptized at St. Teresa’s. “I made my first communion there, was confirmed, and Father Driscoll married me and Leo when I was 17, almost 18. I intend to be buried there as well,” she recalled.

Miggs remembers the original St. Teresa’s before it burned down. “They rebuilt the church across the street from the burned-down structure. St. Teresa’s rectory stands today where the old church used to stand.”

She attended St. Teresa’s Catholic School in Brewer. She remembers that the principal was Sister Ernestine, and she was tough. “All the nuns were. The boys were required to wear neckties and if they misbehaved, Sister Ernestine would grab the boy’s tie and start pulling until she got the desired behavior she wanted.”

Miggs graduated from John Bapst High School. She remembers her childhood as a better time for children to grow up in. “The policemen saw to it that all the kids were off the street at 9 p.m.,” she noted.

Migg’s father, James Doyle, managed a department at Eastern Fine Paper.

“He worked the Eastern Mill dam and had to make sure the water was just right. It was the water supply for Eastern Fine Paper,” she said. “Every night, Dad was always coming upstairs and checked out the children in their various bedrooms, and he always said, so we could all hear it, ‘Florence, did you ever see such a beautiful sight in your life.’ Oh, he loved the kids. He was always close to all of his children, and later his grandchildren.”

With no Coast Guard icebreakers plying the river in those days, the Penobscot would freeze solid in winter. Brewer youths would meet up with their friends from Hampden and Bangor on the other side and skate from Hampden all the way up to the old bridge, which connected Brewer’s State Street to Bangor’s Broadway.

“We’d skate up the river, and the wind would be awful in your face, but when you turned and skated back down the river, the wind would just push you all the way home,” she said.

“We had a library over Epstein’s and a movie theater over the drug store next to Epstein’s. They were silent movies,” Miggs continued. “We went every week to see the serials and see what Pearl White was up to. They had a piano player who was just great.”

During her childhood, many people were still using horses as their primary means of transportation and commerce. A grocery store at the corner of Elm and South Main dispatched a horse and buggy to deliver groceries around the city .One day, Miggs and her girlfriend Gert decided to sneak a ride on the delivery wagon and climbed aboard before the driver came out, but inadvertently startled the horse and it took off at a gallop, crossing over the railroad tracks and up Elm Street, and past her mill pond home.

“I shouted to Gert to jump off, but she was too frightened to, so I jumped off in a snowbank.,” said Miggs. “Gert? Oh, she was just fine. The horse knew where he was going even if we didn’t. He reached the barn where he lived and went in and stopped.”

Growing up next to the dam, my aunt’s family raised pigs and maintained a garden to supplement their diet. One spring, there was a quick thaw and flood and the waters rose above the bank and swept through the dooryard, smashing the pig pen and sweeping the small piglets into the stream, bound for the mighty Penobscot River. All the kids were pressed into the rescue work, and eventually all of the pigs were saved and returned to the yard.

In time, Miggs had six children, Patricia, Bob, Paul, Mary Ellen, Carol and Connie. The twins came when she was 42 and a grandmother. Today she has 18 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren, with another one on the way.