The Dec. 18 storm hit all of Maine hard. Roads and bridges washed out, hundreds of thousands lost electricity and heat, many were cut off from towns or services and several people died. The so-called “grinch storm” generated a lot of media coverage and the word on everyone’s lips was “resilient.”
Maine people pride themselves on being resilient. We always have been. After all, Maine’s earliest settlers were living in the wilderness far from cities and towns. These early settlements hugged the coastline, rivers and lakes which formed our major routes of transportation. Once inland we were surrounded by forests and survived through lumbering and clawing out a living on small farms.
As I write this column, I have to confess we didn’t lose power, though the crossroads around us did. We lost our cable, which meant no television, landline or internet. I can live without the first two, but I sorely missed the internet. We didn’t flood or suffer damage to trees or roofs. We were lucky. But I know people who suffered great damage, had roofs collapse, flooding, no heat or power and lost food, including the Christmas groceries.
Think about our rural ancestors in such a situation. In a storm such as this they had to cope, often all by themselves with no outside means of communication or public services. They had one advantage in that they didn’t depend on electricity. They burned kerosene lamps, heated and cooked with wood, and knew how to batten down the hatches to survive.
I live in the family farmhouse, the last of my family line that will. I grew up in the 1950’s and I can remember when we didn’t have electricity or running water, though we had an old-fashioned pump, and no telephone. I can remember when a hurricane washed out our road so traffic couldn’t get through. We were temporarily isolated. Our Maine farm wasn’t the only one by any means. While many farms had electricity and running water, those in outlying areas often didn’t, even in the 1950s when the rest of the country was prosperous, so it was like we were living a hundred years earlier. We did have a car. Our ancestors depended on four-legged horses or shank’s mare back then.
All this has me musing about our ancestors’ lives when a medical emergency meant coping on their own. I wonder how many people died because of the lack of trained medical care. It was usually our female ancestors who were the “nurses” who tended the sick, sometimes dying themselves from contracting an illness from husband or children.
As we enter 2024, it might be a suitable time to remember how our ancestors lived, what they endured, and how far our lifestyles have progressed since our great-grandparents’, grandparents’ and even parents’ times.
I hope all of you survived the storm with minor damage and that your loved ones were safe. May this new year be a better one for us all.
Columnist Nancy Battick of Dover-Foxcroft has researched genealogy for over 30 years. She is past president of the Maine Genealogical Society, author of several genealogical articles and co-transcribed the Vital Records of Dover-Foxcroft. Nancy holds an MA in History from UM and lives in DF with her husband, Jack, another avid genealogist. Reader emails are welcome at nbattick@roadrunner.com.
