Staff Writer
The baking of cookies, breads, rolls was Mary Shaw’s life for more than 90 years.
A resident of Fields Lane in Fort Fairfield, Shaw, known as “Dollie,” has lived in the farming community all of her life. Throughout most of her adult life, she was known for her baking of delicious foods that she liberally and generously distributed to family, friends and neighbors.
“I love to cook,” she said during a recent interview. “I used to cook every day.”
But Shaw had to give up her favorite hobby when she was 92, because of her increasing arthritis and her tendency to burn herself when she used the stove.
“That’s what I miss most of anything,” Shaw said.
Shaw will reach the age of 95 next month and continues to live on her own with the assistance of several of her nine children and “good neighbors.”
Besides her cooking, Shaw is known for her quick wit and eagerness to help others. Shaw describes herself as a faithful woman. Although she can’t attend Mass, she watches it on television and reads her Bible, which has a prominent place on the coffee table.
“You only have one life to live and if you can’t live it decent, you shouldn’t live it at all,” said Shaw.
Shaw was born Jan. 3, 1913 in Fort Fairfield in a family of five brothers and five sisters. At age 11, she started working for a family in the town and there she got her start at cooking.
She dropped out of school at the seventh grade and married when she was 15 to her husband Joseph. A Canadian by birth, Shaw’s husband managed a farm in Fort Fairfield. There, she and her husband raised their children.
“I pulled mustard, I picked potatoes,” she recalled. “I worked all day and half the night.”
While the farm had animals to tend, she didn’t bother with any chores other than collecting “good, fresh eggs,” for cooking.
During part of her working life, she worked at what was known at the time as the A&P potato processing plant in Fort Fairfield, where she picked out bad potatoes on the packing line.
‘That was hard work,” Shaw said. “You’re not kidding.”
But through it all, Shaw kept cooking and building a reputation for her good taste. She baked cookies for her daughter Carolyn Adams to take into the District Court where she worked. Truck drivers, coming to load potatoes at the farm at Robert Shaw’s, her son, still come in looking for some of Shaw’s cooking.
Her favorite cookie is the molasses cookie. Another favorite is the dingbat cookie, a concoction made of dates, coconut and Rice Krispies.
Shaw’s daughter, Carolyn, has copied her mother’s recipes and compiled them into a book for her daughters.
“Now she’s making me bread,” said Shaw, with a laugh.
Carolyn told a story about her mother’s Pyrex bowl that she used in cooking. “She wore a hole in the side after years of beating (batter),” said Shaw’s daughter.
A tenant of Fields Lane since 1974, Shaw is the only remaining original occupant. She credits her longevity of living on her own to her good neighbors. When Shaw was in her 80s, she cooked for sick neighbors and others who needed her cheerful help.
“I like it here,” Shaw said.
In addition to her children — Joyce Milbury, Alice McCarthy, Richard Shaw, Mary Giberson, Christine Merrithew, Judy Foster, Carolyn Adams and Robert Shaw — she has 22 grandchildren, 51 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.
Throughout the years, Shaw said she seen changes in families and children and how expensive living has become.
“We didn’t have a lot of money, but we still got by,” said Shaw.
