I must find Sangerville some day, because there must be something special in the waters there. How else do you explain two knights from a town of only 1,270 in southern Piscataquis County?

All I know is that Sangerville is west of Dover-Foxcroft and that is west, indeed.

In a barroom argument (are there any other kind?) last week, someone suggested that Sangerville is the only town in Maine with two residents who were knighted.

Knighted? Both of them should be the subject of movies.

Born first in Sangerville (Feb. 5, 1840) was Hiram Maxim, who not only invented the machine gun, which allowed the slaughter of millions in World War I, but flew an airplane 10 years before the Wright brothers ever saw Kitty Hawk.

He was the son of a Maine farmer and successfully avoided formal education other than an apprenticeship with an East Corinth carriage maker. He invented an automatic mousetrap to clean up the Abbott gristmill.

That was just the beginning. This genius became chief engineer for the U.S. Electric Lighting Co. by 1878. His list of inventions, rivaling Thomas Edison’s, include the curling iron, magno-electric machines, eyelet and riveting machines, bombs, torpedo guns, steam and gas engines and, oh yeah, the airplane.

By 1890, he was firing 600 rounds per minute from his new machine gun into Lake Wasookeag in Dexter. The typically up-to-date War Department dismissed the gun claims as “incredulous.” Our boy Hiram took himself and his gun to England, where it won him a knighthood from Queen Victoria in 1901. He was wise enough to stay in England, where he died in 1916, quietly at the age of 77.

Not Sir Harry Oakes. Harry went out in a hail of gunfire and flames in Nassau on July 8, 1943. But not before this Sangerville native got his knighthood from King George on June 8, 1939.

Oakes was born on Dec. 23, 1874 in Sangerville and stayed long enough for the town to claim him, before the family moved to Foxcroft to gain entry to the “best high school in Maine.” Oakes chose to complicate his life with education and told classmates at Bowdoin that he would make a fortune but die a violent death with his boots on.

Right on all counts.

At 23, after dabbling in medical school, Oakes joined the Yukon gold rush. At Swastika (honest to God), he met the very salty Roza Brown, described as “strikingly ugly, smelly and followed around by a pack of snarling dogs.” (Sounds like my prom date). She may have been gamy, but she pointed him to an available claim at Kirkland Lake.

Since the claim cost money and Oakes was down to his last $2.65, he had to organize a new company to get the claim. Working in 60 below zero weather, Oakes and his partners established a mine that eventually produced $60,000 a day (a day!) in gold.

Our boy Harry got sick of all that money (and probably Roza), and decided to take a world cruise. There he met a quiet, shy woman named Eunice MacIntyre, 24, daughter of a government official, 6 inches taller and 26 years younger than Oakes. But love is often blind, especially where a few hundred million is involved.

Harry returned to Ontario for just one more winter when the New Little Woman said, ” I don’t think so.” They fled to Nassau, with a favorable climate in both atmospherics and taxation. Fueled by his gold mine, Harry started a bus service, an airline, waterworks and golf course and donated $40,000 to St. George Hospital in London. In 1939, King George VI awarded him a baronetcy for his troubles.

He didn’t get to enjoy it for very long.

While the family was back in Bar Harbor, someone visited Harry, put four bullets in his head, bashed his head in, then set him on fire. Harry made somebody very mad. His allegedly close friend, Harold Christie, was in the next room during the shooting, bashing and fire but told police he never heard a thing.

In what the Sangerville library Web site terms the “most disastrous and incompetent police investigations on record” the cause of death was ruled to be blows from blunt instruments and never you mind about those four holes by his ear.

It wasn’t old pal Christie who went on trial, but Oakes’ son-in-law, Alfred de Marigny. He was acquitted by a Nassau jury in two hours. Marigny, free to sing, told police that Oakes was involved with some very heavy dudes, including the Duke of Windsor, in money laundering. There was no telling where the money went. Oakes’ fortune of $300 million dwindled to a mere $12 million when the will was probated.

Who killed Sir Harry? The answer (and four bullets) may be found in the millionaire’s crypt in East Dover Cemetery in Dover-Foxcroft, where he was buried a short distance from his Sangerville birthplace.

I must go to Sangerville, while there is still time. I will try the local water. It’s never too late. Think about it.

Sir Emmet of Camden.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.