Thanksgiving today tends to be a family affair involving a great deal of overeating and lolling about on the couch afterward. Not so a century ago. A host of community diversions, from concerts to shooting contests to dances, drew people out of their homes. On Thanksgiving Day 1904, these events also included a sports scam that burned Queen City boxing fans.

Hundreds of people began celebrating the night before by attending one of the competing Thanksgiving-eve balls held by the Bangor Fire Department’s rival beneficial organizations, the Union Hose Co. Relief Association and the Firemen’s Relief Association.

The two groups, which were holding their 25th and 20th annual Thanksgiving galas respectively, had battled it out before the City Council over who would get to use City Hall. The Firemen’s Relief Association won. The Union Hose Co. had to settle for the Bangor Auditorium.

Both groups boasted that Pullen’s Orchestra would play that evening, but having provided enough musicians to make up two orchestras, the popular Pullen appeared in person to direct only at the Hose Company’s event.

Thanksgiving Day broke cold and gray. Snow began to fly as the morning wore on. That didn’t keep more than 50 sportsmen from traveling to Hampden for the Bangor Gun Club’s “big trap shoot” scheduled for 8:30 a.m. The reporter for the Bangor Daily Commercial got to reminiscing, saying “in the olden times Thanksgiving seemed not [a] holiday without a turkey shoot, and a trap shoot with suitable prizes is a good substitute.”

Those misty “olden times” seemed to be about 20 years before when “old-timers” recalled a turkey shoot being held in Bangor at the Watson farm on Stillwater Avenue. The sport involved tying a live turkey to a stake about 40 rods away so shooters who paid a fee could blaze away.

“…while the turkeys lasted, there was great sport,” it was recalled. Public opinion apparently had ended this pastime, around Bangor anyway, by 1904.

The newly formed gun club had “a fine range in Hampden with five traps and a neat little shooting house.” Some of the old-timers showed up on Thanksgiving Day to vie for such prizes as a revolver, a box of Bristol cigars and a pair of mounted plover. Some great shooting was expected, and the reporter blamed the poor marksmanship that actually occurred on the driving snow. A huge bonfire and plenty of hot coffee helped maintain everybody’s spirits, however.

Community events and other diversions abounded that Thanksgiving day. Bangor High School alumni played the school’s football team at Maplewood Park. Several churches held services. The Clara Turner repertory company performed in the afternoon and evening at the Bangor Opera House. Matinee dances were held at the Ancient Order of Hibernians’ Hall and at the Memorial Parlors. The YMCA held an open house with a schedule of sports events at night.

But the oddest event by far that day was the heavyweight prizefight between Sandy Ferguson of Chelsea, Mass., and Charley Haghey of Lowell, Mass., in the afternoon at the Armory. There hadn’t been a heavyweight battle in Bangor for a long time, so the fight crowd would be looking forward to seeing these two “knights of the ring” slug it out, surmised the Commercial’s reporter. Ferguson, well-known on the fight circuit, had been in Hampden for the past 10 days in training and appeared in good condition.

A new rule barred young boys from admission unless accompanied by a parent, something that would be appreciated by “the better class of sports.” But this new restriction, plus the fact the bout was on a holiday put a damper on attendance. The result was disaster.

Fewer than 100 spectators paid the admission price for the 12-round fight, and Ferguson demanded to see the money before going in the ring.

“It was flashed to him. He eyed the long greens and licked his chops and expectorated dryly and his seconds tied on the mitts,” wrote a Bangor Daily News reporter, who had developed an obvious dislike of the 6-foot-3-inch pugilist. He continued: “Mr. Ferguson showed considerable surplus adipose tissue, something like a Thanksgiving porker.”

The Commercial’s man added, “A known quitter with a big yellow streak in his makeup, [Ferguson] has by no means an enviable reputation.”

The fight lasted less than a round. After two or three “love taps,” Haghey went down for the count.

“The crowd was dazed for a moment, and then when they realized that all this cost a good cold dollar or dollar-fifty they vented their feelings in hisses and hootings. For a few moments it looked like a case of roughhouse, but nothing serious happened,” said one of the papers.

And nobody got his money back either. At one point Ferguson said he would fight anyone in the audience, but the 200-pounder got no takers.

The fight was “the rankest fake for an exhibition of boxing ever seen in Bangor, and this is quite a sweeping statement,” wrote the NEWS’ man.

The Commercial’s reporter added a touch of history: “The biggest fake in a pugilistic line since Young Symonds laid down to ‘Twin’ Sullivan in the Norumbega was perpetrated Thursday afternoon.”

The NEWS scribe apparently followed the men as they left the building: “The last seen of Messrs. Ferguson and Haghey they were arm-in-arm heading for a place with swinging doors from which sounds of ribald jesting and the low humming of the slot-machine were floating out on the stillness of a Thanksgiving afternoon.”

The two were doubtlessly giving thanks in one of the Queen City’s illegal liquor dens for all the Bangor fight fans they had duped on this holiday afternoon.

Wayne E. Reilly has edited two books of Civil War era diaries and letters including “The Diaries of Sarah Jane and Emma Ann Foster: A Year in Maine During the Civil War.” He can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.