Romancing Weld

A family's love affair with Weld, Maine extends into its second century

By Arnold Sturtevant

The year 2016 marks Weld, Maine's 200th anniversary. Silhouetted by each day's setting sun, her gorgeous lake-mirrored profile remains unchanged over the years. What a glorious creature she is! My family is not unique in having experienced love at first sight. This statuesque beauty has captivated many a heart into lasting faithfulness.

My forebears' love affair with Weld started in 1903. Joseph Gardiner Ham was a pharmacist. As many hard working entrepreneurs of his era, he sought to invest a portion of the fruit of his labor in rest and relaxation. He found that R&R in what was then commonly called "rusticating" ... defined as choosing a more simple, laid-back country lifestyle at the 'frontier' of man's earthly journey. Most of Wall Street's mega-rich who sought to rusticate in Bar Harbor, Maine didn't really get it: they just carried their lavish mansion/castle lifestyle with them, not having grasped the truth that a simple cabin in Weld could be far more refreshing.

Joseph found an effective way to achieve spiritual renewal through periodic breaks from energy-sapping demands of his business pursuits ... the town's first telephone switchboard, an insurance agency and Ham's Drug Store. His children had become adults. He had a son, Joseph Chandler Ham, and a daughter, Bertha Ham, who could now spell him. He and his wife, Emma, welcomed the prospect of relief from cleaning, dusting and maintaining the clutter of Victorian frills and fussiness that characterized their home life on Pleasant Street, Livermore Falls: the silver tea sets and place settings, the Irish linens, the ornate heavy furniture, oriental carpets that Emma's sea captain father brought back from far eastern voyages, large gilt-framed portraits (including Emma's father, Captain Chandler, glowering down from over the mantle), elaborate wall hangings, dark velvet drapes and frilly organza curtains, parian ware busts of attractive Greek women, bronze statuettes, batteries of bookshelves filled with seldom-cracked leather-bound classics, a heavy cast iron floor stand that supported a huge 20-pound dictionary ... and a basketball size, spinning world globe that was an appropriate metaphor for the Ham's fast-twirling, increasingly materialistic, success-oriented world.

Escaping such burdens (largely of his own making), and relishing the chance to avoid "all-work-and-no-play" dullness, great grandpa Joseph purchased a Weld cottage on May 2, 1903. He chose to pace his hectic 'city' life with a liberal dash of get-away-from-it-all recreation, happily achieving that longed-for state of well-being quite close to home.

Weld Maine was only 35 miles from the Ham residence, but in yesterday's less mobile era of the horse and buggy it seemed like a trek to the ends of the earth from the Falls to a crudely constructed, sparingly-furnished cottage ... a modest structure he simply, logically and descriptively called ... "Recreation." Brief refreshing intervals at the cottage retreat allowed him to chuck it all and revert to square one, freed from those things he had struggled so hard to attain ... liberated from the success he knew was capable of enslaving the very one who 'mastered' it. After all, overworked Joseph needn't have demanded, "Give me a break!" God had already willingly provided that break, having ordained the Sabbath day of rest from his labors. The Hams just learned the wisdom of observing the will of the Creator who prospered them in the first place. It is for this very reason that our family's pronunciation of the camp's name was Re-Creation... like a whole new life, a time to restore and refresh one's energy level to the point of being able to once again return to productive work.

By the time great grandfather Ham died in 1911, the horseless carriage had cut down commuting time between Livermore Falls and Weld. Chester (I knew him as Bamp) acquired a 'touring' car in 1907. Camp Recreation became much more accessible! Children filled the family cabin, its capacity often further tested beyond limits by Bamp's sharing of Weld's beauty with his many friends, especially members of an adult Bible Study group he conducted at First Baptist church in Livermore Falls.

One of Joseph & Emma's daughters, Charlotte, married a former Fayette farmer named Chester Sturtevant ... who at age ten plowed fields with a brace of oxen for 25 cents per 10-hour day, and later earned his way through Colby College by selling books door to door. By 1895, industrious Chet had set a straight furrow toward fulfillment of the American Dream by founding a bank in Livermore Falls. Lottie Ham was his first employee; and, as he liked to say in droll banker lingo, 'my interest compounded' to the point of marriage. The couple's investment in one-another produced a girl and three boys, one of whom, named Reginald (or Ren, as he was more commonly known), was to be my Dad. Chet and his father-in-law struck it off well together, forming an insurance company partnership, Sturtevant & Ham Agency; and they likewise partnered successfully in putting Camp Recreation to very good use: (two weeks after acquiring title, Joseph deeded an "undivided half part" of the property to his son-in-law).

As the children grew, they enjoyed inviting increasing numbers of their friends to Weld. Camp "Recreation" was a natural attraction for imaginative kids ... mountain climbing, water sports, and pirates & Indians were high on the list of favorite pastimes, just as they are today.

In 1914, at the onset of World War 1, the town of Weld's real estate tax on the Heirs of Joseph G. Ham, owners of both the camp and its 50 acres of land, was only $4.90: (based on a valuation of $50 for the land, and $125 for Camp Recreation): such little cost for so much joy! War and college interfered with Recreation time. Ren and Norm served in the U. S. Navy, and after the conflict all four children went on to college in the 1920's ... never losing their love for Weld. Even as they pursued the kind of love that leads to marriage, their courtships always maintained a Weld focus. It seemed human emotion soared highest from the vantage of a Weld mountaintop experience. Altitude enhanced attitude!

With Ren's and Norm's marriages and growing families ... (and Ronald's and Eleanor's marriages soon to follow) ... my father, Ren, recognizing the constraints of Camp Recreation, rented our own separate cottage on Houghton Beach from Bernice Shaw. The camp was big enough to accommodate our immediate family of four: Dad, Mom, my sister Joanne and me ... (sister Pamela had not yet been born) ... plus our pet spaniel, Corky. With the help of an umbrella tent, it even provided space enough for Mom's visiting sisters, my Aunt Gin and Aunt Mil.

A world view from the summit of favored Tumbledown did much to cement lasting relationships. For my Dad, Weld was sort of a litmus test of the prospect for marital success.

Of what lasting good was a woman who failed to share a deep passion for Weld? So it was that Laura Wing (my Mom) passed the test ... top of the class in Ren's candidates for fellow Weld-lovers!

When the real estate market tanked, severely depressed by the early 1930's, Bamp and Barma decided it was a good time to purchase a cottage big enough to sleep the growing family. Barma liked the prospect of a full-blown 2-story house in Wayne, Maine....