Life on a Tidal River

Text by The 7th Grade Maine Studies Students of the William S. Cohen School.
Images provided by Bangor historical journalist Richard Shaw.

Introduction

Bangor has had a history of famous people who have lived there. Hannibal Hamlin, Stephen King, Charlotte Blake Brown, and John B. Curtis are among this group of noted Bangorians. Each did are are doing things to make themselves famous, and they changed history for the better. Hannibal Hamlin was a famous attorney and politician. Stephen King is a well known author of horror. Charlotte Blake Brown was a early woman prominent doctor. And John B. Curtis is a distinguished business man in history because of his invention of chewing gum. These eminent people of Bangor have had a large impact on our society.

Charlotte Blake Brown

Charlotte Amanda Blake Brown was one of the first female doctors to practice in the West Coast of America. She was a very motivated woman and did many great things despite the lower amount of rights woman had back in the late 1800s. The public’s opinion of women pursuing in the medical field was mixed. But she still pursued her dreams and inspired many others.

Charlotte was born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania in December 22, 1846. She was the first child of this new family to Charles Morris Blake and Charlotte Farmington Blake. After her birth there were three more children. Her parents were originally from Brewer, Maine and had some relatives in Bangor. Since her parents were both medical missionaries, she moved quite a lot in her childhood. In 1849, Charles, her father, moved to California for the Gold Rush. The rest of them family went as well. But it didn’t take long for her them to move once more, this time to Chile in 1854 to 1857 for a mission trip.

When they returned to the United States, Charlotte attended Bangor High School in Maine. She stayed with relatives that were close in the area. After graduating from Bangor High School, she attended Elmira College in New York. During the Civil War era, her father served in the Union Army. While she was treating his injuries, she found her interest in the medical field. After Charlotte graduated from college, she moved to Arizona. She then met her soon-to-be husband Henry Adams Brown, a banker who also worked as a nurse. Charlotte and her husband moved to Napa California so she could to work as a nurse near her father who was also in California at this time. There she started a family of three children: Adelaide in 1868, Phillip in 1869, and Harriet in 1872.

Shortly after Harriet was born, Charlotte left her children with their grandparents in California, but with her husband’s consent. She then made her way to Philadelphia for a short period of time to study gynecology at the Women’s Medical College. When she graduated in 1874, she started to practice in the Bay Area back in California. After that she applied back to San Francisco Medical Society in 1875, but unfortunately was denied because of her gender. This was an example of the many struggles of women back in the 1800s, so then she worked as a physician and missionary for the Chinese community. In 1875 she and eleven other women founded the Pacific Dispensary Hospital for Women and Children in San Francisco. It was located on Taylor Street, and health care was free. They only charged for prescribed medicines. It had an all-female staff, and it only served women and children.

Along with her career in the medical field, Charlotte had many accomplishments. She wrote for 18 medical journals, invented a device that sterilized milk, and was one of the first female doctors to practice her work on the West Coast of the U.S. She was the cofounder of the San Francisco Hospital for Children. And one of her biggest accomplishments was doing all this as a woman during this time. Not only did she become a nurse and attend good colleges, she also founded a hospital. After her many challenges and accomplishments, she died on April 19, 1904 in San Francisco at the age of fifty-seven due to challenges with her intestine. One of her children, Adelaide, followed in her mother’s footsteps. She became a physician and practiced caring for the women and children.

Charlotte had a major impact on women and many other people before and after she died. She inspired many other women to follow their dreams, and not stop just because people said she was a female. And as a Mainer, many people from around this area will look up to her for many more years to come.

John B. Curtis

Bangor was, and still is, very important in the history of Maine and the whole United States. We had many people who helped Bangor to become important the way it is today. John B. Curtis was one of these people that helped the great city of Bangor become better-known. Curtis was an American commercial businessman and was mainly known for his chewing gum.

John Bacon Curtis was born on October 10,1827 in Bradford, Maine. He worked as a “swamper” for five dollars a month when he was just a young boy. He would rough out the roads in the woods. While doing this, he noticed sap on a fallen spruce. His father would take the strips of the resin and bring them home for his family and friends to chew. At age nineteen, John had little schooling but had a great idea to make a company and make the resin into chewing gum and sell it.

In the 1840s, chewing gum was not popular and not socially acceptable. Some people would sell the resin just to earn extra money, but Curtis wanted to travel and sell his gum all around the world. Two years later, he and his father began a business and moved to Bangor which was a much larger area to help make the business successful. Step-one was to collect spruce resin. Curtis hired farm boys to go out in the woods and gather the sap. Scraping the resin from the trees was painstaking work, and bits of bark, twigs, and leaves were often mixed in with the sap. Once the resin was gathered, the rest was done in Curtis’s kitchen.

The resin was thrown, twigs, bark, and all, into a big black kettle and boiled on their Franklin stove. After cooking to the consistency of molasses, it was strained to skim off all remaining bark and twigs to then leave the cooked resin. To cool, it was poured onto a slab and rolled until about a quarter-inch thick. To market, it was cut into half-inch wide strips, and finally into three-quarter-inch inch pieces. The entire batch was dusted with cornstarch so, when shipping, the gum didn't stick to the paper wrapping.

The first batch was sold at two sticks for a penny and packaged twenty pieces to a box. Curtis later went door-to-door in Portland looking for merchants to sell the new “State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum.” The first to manufacture chewing gum commercially, Curtis & Son made over $5,000 in the first year, which was a huge success by the late 1840's.

Throughout the years, Curtis & Son was doing really well because it was one of the only chewing gum companies. While John’s father stayed home and continued to make the gum, John traveled and sold his gum all around the world. They later had over 200 employees that would package and turn out eight hundred boxes a day. Curtis himself invented most of the machines used in the factory. Some of the spruce gums Curtis & Son made were called "American Flag," "Yankee Spruce," "White Mountain," "200 Lump Spruce," "Licorice Lulu," "Trunk Spruce", "Sugar Cream," "Four-in-Hand," and "Biggest and Best."

In 1872, Curtis decided to take up cleaning up houses. He worked on jobs that ranged from $50,000 to half-a-million dollars. He later bought a shipyard and built 10 large ships. He also owned a ferry business that went from Portland to South Portland until 1896. He was even in the silver and coal mining business in Maine. In 1880, Curtis was in the farming business near Gothenburg, Nebraska. Here he owned over 1,500 acres where he raised Hereford cattle. In 1878, Curtis bought the largest and most expensive house in Deering Center, Maine. During the last months of his life he took an interest in ancient Egypt and the pyramids. In his will, he donated to the town of Bradford for the construction of their library. In his honor, the library is named the John B. Curtis Free Public Library and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Hannibal Hamlin

Hannibal Hamlin was a very well-known and respected politician in both Maine and national history. He was born on August 27th, 1809 in Paris Hill, Maine. It is about 35 miles west of Augusta. He lived to be 82 years of age, dying on July fourth, 1809 in Bangor, Maine. Hamlin was well-respected in the world of politics and had become very successful. He gave the small, quiet, and less-prominent state of Maine a voice in our busy world, and a strong one too.

Hannibal Hamlin grew up in a wealthy family, and, during his childhood, he lived in a three-story white house. Many fellow students at school looked up to him as a leader due to his natural leadership skills and great talents. Hannibal Hamlin was physically fit, athletic, and was a very enthusiastic reader. He attended many public schools during his childhood and eventually went to Hebron Academy, a small independent college preparatory boarding and day school for boys and girls in grades six through high school.

When Hannibal Hamlin was still young, he really wanted to become a lawyer. However, his desire was diverted to other important matters. One time he had to stop studying because his brother had become sick, and he was forced to run the family farm while his father and mother took care of his brother. The second time he was forced to stop studying was when his father died, which compelled him, under his father’s will, to stay home and take care of his mother until he reached the age of 21. When he turned 21, Hannibal left his home to study the law at the offices of Fessenden and Dubois, under Samuel C. Fessenden, an abolitionist who wanted a permanent end to slavery. The federation made Hamlin an abolitionist and started his new career. He set up his own place to study law and then eventually became the town lawyer of Hampden, Maine.

Hannibal Hamlin was elected several times to various public offices. He served in the U.S. Congress for most of the years between 1836 and 1857 both in the House and Senate. He then became Maine governor in 1857 but left after just six weeks to return to the U.S. Senate. What could be considered his greatest accomplishment was becoming the 15th Vice President of the United States under Abraham Lincoln's first term. However, for his second term President Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson as his Vice President.

Hannibal Hamlin was very important in putting Maine on the national map. He was known as one of the best congressmen the state ever had. He was also involved in his Maine community and spent as much time in Maine as he could. Hamlin retired to Bangor and passed away there. His final resting place is in the Mt. Hope Cemetery.

Stephen King

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine on September 21, 1947. He graduated from Lisbon Falls High School in 1966, and he is a graduate of the University of Maine. Stephen taught English at Hampden Academy from 1971 to 1973. He is currently 70 years old and living in Bangor at 47 West Broadway.

Stephen King became famous by publishing many books, and, soon after, many of them were made into movies. Some of his books are set in Maine, including IT which was recently made into a successful feature film. This book is based in a town called Derry, which was supposed to represent the city of Bangor, Maine. Creating his books set in Maine forms a personal connection between himself and Maine. Stephen King has had an impact on our society by making Maine famous through his literature.

King had to face a lot of challenges in his life in order to become successful. His parents split up when he was young. In 1991 an angry man broke into his house and threatened his wife with a fake bomb. And, in 1999, he was nearly killed by a van while he was taking a walk. Stephen King is also a very generous man and is very active in the community. He has funded recreation programs in Bangor, Maine, educational institutions, library rebuilding programs, and poverty alleviation measures. He also has a large impact on kids' lives. When his own children were young, he helped coach youth sports. He also visits schools and libraries and reads kids his stories.

Many of Stephen King's readers recognize Maine because he is from Maine and has become a well-known author and because many of his books are set in Maine. Mr. King is a great example of the people of Maine. By him giving back to the community all the time, he shows that Mainers aren’t selfish and always try help the community in some way, such as funding a library or donating to the homeless shelter. He also faced many challenges in his life, but he still became a very successful man. This shows King’s readers what the people of Maine are like: always try to help out and never giving up despite the possibility of failing.

Conclusion

Bangor, Maine has had some very influential people in its history. All four of the people showcased in this document have helped others to recognize Maine and the city of Bangor as great places because they all have worked hard in their lives. They achieved many great things and have worked to shape the lives and cultures of both Maine and the nation. This shows that Maine has a tremendous history of important people across many time periods, and today, Maine and Bangor are still producing tremendous leaders.

Resources

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Beahm, George. The Stephen King Companion. Andrews and McMeel, 1989.

Burnham, Emily. “Happy 70th Birthday, Stephen King.” Bangor Daily News, Bangor Daily News, 21 Sept. 2017, bangordailynews.com/2017/09/21/arts-culture/happy-70th-birthday-stephen-king/.

DeFord, Deborah. Maine, the Pine Tree State. World Almanac Library, 2003.

Frazier, Thomas B. "Stephen King." Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, 2013. EBSCOhost, libraries.maine.edu/mainedatabases/authmaine.asp?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.ursus-proxy-10.ursus.maine.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,uid&db=ers&AN=90669718&site=eds-live.

“Hannibal Hamlin, 15th Vice President (1861-1865).” U.S. Senate: Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, U.S. Senate, 9 May 2017, www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Hannibal_Hamlin.htm

King, Tabitha, and Marsha DeFilippo. “The Author.” StephenKing.com - About the Author, stephenking.com/the_author.html.

Nguyen, Regina. “FoundSF.” Women's Liberation Origins and Development of the Movement - FoundSF, FoundSF, www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Charlotte_Blake_Brown.

“Stephen King Biography.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 28 Apr. 2017, www.biography.com/people/stephen-king-9365136.