On May 14, Rose and Arnie Bragdon of Sherman entertained family members from Delaware — Sarah Twitchell English, who is in her 93rd year, her daughter, Carla Willey and Carla’s son John. Sarah is a granddaughter of Henry Harrison Gould, who is Rose’s great-grandfather.
Rose and her cousin, Carla had made contact with each other about a year ago through a family search Internet site and had been hoping to meet sometime. Sarah was born in Patten, but when she was a teenager, her parents, Carl and Gertrude (Gould) Twitchell moved from the area.
This was Sarah’s first trip back to northern Maine, close to 80 years later. Carla’s son John kindly offered to take a week off and drive his mother and grandmother to Maine so they could visit family in Madison as well as the Sherman area.
After the guests arrived and everyone got acquainted; it was time for lunch. Arnie had made baked beans in the ground and the traditional potato salad, red hot dogs, and homemade bread were served with them.
In the afternoon, Rose took her cousins to see some of the places Sarah remembered from her childhood in the town of Patten. The former Henry Gould farm north of the village was the first place of interest because it was where Sarah was born. The next stop was the cemetery where Sarah visited the graves of her grandparents and great grandparents on the Twitchell side of her family. Traveling back through town she saw more places she remembered: The Patten Drug Store where one of her aunts had worked and also Richardson’s Hardware.
The last stop in town was to see the former home of Judge Smith, which was later owned by her mother’s sister and brother, Mabel and Walter Gould and then by her cousin, Leonard “Humpy” Gould.