The Dressers of Scarborough Maine

WILBUR FISKE DRESSER
(ABOUT 1900)

The Dresser Road in rural western Scarborough is about 8/10 of a mile long, and was home to the historical Dresser family (originally from Rowley, Massachusetts) for over 150 years, from about 1735 to 1891.

The earliest record of the road being named Dresser Road that I have found to date would be a property deed dated December 1880 from Dominicus Libby to Sarah Jane Temm.

A history of the Dressers of Scarborough:

Around 1735, Nathaniel Dresser (1683-1749) migrated north from Rowley, Mass with his wife Elizabeth (1689-1736) and his son Richard Dresser (1713-1783) to the fertile farmlands of Scarborough.  Elizabeth died shortly after arriving.  Nathaniel was killed by an Indian on Scottow's Hill near the home of Leonard Libby.  Neighbor David Libby killed the Indian that did the deed. Nathaniel is reputed by the Scarborough Historical Society to have been the last person killed by Indians in Scarborough (American Indian Wars: A Chronology of Confrontations Between Native Peoples, copyright McFarland, Jun 8, 2015, written by Michael L. Nunnally).

The same year that Nathaniel died, his son Richard married Mindwell Munson of Scarborough.  They had six children, most of whom moved to neighboring Buxton:

-Mary Dresser married neighbor Elijah Libby, but she died young, and had no descendants.

-Mindwell Dresser married neighbor Elijah Libby after her sister died.  No descendants there, either.

-Richard Dresser moved to neighboring Gorham and married Temperance Hamblin.  They settled in Buxton with two sons, Joseph and Richard, Jr.

-Mark Dresser moved to Buxton, married Nancy Holbrook, and had twelve children. 

-Paul Dresser also moved to Buxton, and married Sally Holbrook (sister to Nancy!), and had at least eleven children.  Paul's son, Alfred Metcalfe Dresser (1807-1870) married his first cousin Martha Andrews Dresser (Mark's daughter).  This meant that Martha and Alfred were double cousins.

-Wentworth Dresser (1762-1842) was the only one in his immediate family to remain in Scarborough.  He fought in the Revolution (Private, Captain Roger Libby’s Company; joined 1 October 1779; discharged 23 October 1779; service with detachment of Cumberland County Militia under Nathaniel Jordan, Esq., at the Eastward. (Vol IV, p. 969, Massachusetts Soldiers & Sailors in the War of the Revolution).  He married Sophia Holbrook (sister to Nancy and Sally, mentioned above).  They managed the farm on Dresser Road.  They had eight children, all but one whom relocated to other parts of Maine:

1. Daniel Dresser moved to Saco, and married Sarah Libby of that town.  Their only child, Ira Dresser, relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio.

2. Sarah Dresser-Dewey-Smith also moved to Saco, and had four children with two husbands (both from Vermont).

3.  Ira Dresser married Nancy Smart and also moved to Saco, where they had eight children. Ira was a clothier at Saco Clothing Store, according to this ad from 1856.

4.  Robert Dresser married Sophia Rose and moved to Portland, where they had nine children.

5. Lydia Dresser married John Blake and moved to Portland, where they had five children.

6.  Israel Dresser married Elizabeth Banks and moved to Castine, and later Brewer, Maine, and had well over a dozen children.

7. Joseph Wentworth Dresser married Eunice Deering (daughter to Samuel Deering of Gorham).  They had five children and relocated to Kansas around 1855.

8. Josiah C. Dresser (1816-1868) was the youngest child of Wentworth, and the only descendant of the Scarborough Dressers to remain in Scarborough.  He kept the Dresser Road farm going until his death in 1868.  He married Lydia W. Junkins, and had three children in Scarborough:

-Emma Dresser (1853-1872) died young at age 19.

MELVILLE DRESSER

-Melville Dresser (1851-1885) married Ella Smith, and remained in Scarborough, but had no children.

-Wilbur Fiske Dresser (1848-1925), pictured above, kept the Dresser Road farm going after the death of his father.  He married his neighbor Sarah Eliza McLaughlin (part of the Scotch-Irish clan that migrated to Cumberland County and were early county founders).

SARAH MCLAUGHLIN-DRESSER
(abt 1899)

Additional photos of Wilbur and Sarah from around 1912, courtesy of the Dresser Family:

Wilbur expanded the farm's business around 1893, and got into dealing hay, straw, ashes and bale ties.  He kept an office at 12 Moulton Street in Portland for some time, and was also named Postmaster of West Scarborough in 1888.  The following year, his mother Lydia deeded him the entire Dresser properties in Scarborough before she herself passed in 1896.

By 1896, Wilbur expanded his business enterprises into real estate, and became a successful broker in Scarborough and all around Greater Portland.  His company, W.F. Dresser & Sons was then located at 80 Exchange Street.  This company managed the purchase, sale and mortgage of a variety of Cumberland County properties from after the Civil War through to the end of the Depression.

80 EXCHANGE STREET
(OFFICES OF W.F. DRESSER)
BEHIND 'FOX BLOCK' (WHICH IS NOW 'TOMMY'S PARK')
(1924)

80 EXCHANGE STREET
(2012)

In 1896, Wilbur also happened to be the Administrator to the Will of my 2nd great grandmother, Sarah Jane Temm, four years after her death.  In 1920, he also sold some land on Gorham Road to her son, John Henry Temm, who was my great grandfather.

By 1891, Wilbur had started selling off his land assets in Scarborough to others.  That year he deeded the Dresser farm to George Wolfe, and in 1897 he deeded neighboring property to Florence Bennett.  He left Scarborough during that time, but still handled many land deals there for several years.  Wilbur's exodus from Scarborough around 1891 marks the end of a long era of Dressers living in the Town.

By the 1900 Census he and his family were living on Atlantic Street in South Portland, and then he was living on his Payne Road property in South Portland for 1910, when they had a live-in servant, Eugene Foye.  

To be closer to his burgeoning real estate business, Wilbur moved the family to Portland just prior to the 1920 Census, to their new home at 1181 Congress Street in the Libbytown district.  The house was razed many years later to make way for the 295 Overpass and ramps.

1181 CONGRESS STREET
(1924)

Below is a brief account of Wilbur's five children:

IRA DRESSER
(abt 1885)

1.  Ira Hunt Dresser (1879-abt 1957) worked as a farmer, then trucking and moving, and later as a building nurse, and lived on Outer Congress Street in Portland with his wife Mildred Grover.  No children.

WILLIAM WATSON DRESSER
(abt 1890)

2.  William Watson Dresser (1881-1946) became president of W.F. Dresser & Sons upon Wilbur's retirement.  In 1915, William was elected as exalted ruler of BPOE Lodge 188 in Portland.  His brother Perley followed him ten years later.  In 1917, William married Edith Skillin of Portland, but she died five years later, bearing him no children.  William kept the business going until his own death, at which time he was merely a lodger and widower living on Neal Street, and running the business out of 22 Monument Square starting in 1940.

PERLEY CHASE DRESSER
(ABOUT 1920)

3.  Perley Chase Dresser (1885-1960) also lived in Portland, and was treasurer of W.F. Dresser & Sons.  He married Alice Barbour, and had no children.  When his brother William died, he ran the family brokerage business until his own death in 1960, which signaled the end of the family real estate business, which had begun around 1895.  In 1925, Perley was elected exalted ruler of BPOE Lodge 188 in Portland, as his brother had before him, but held the post for over 25 years.

4.  Leon Wentworth Dresser (1894-1967) also lived in Portland, and worked as a bank teller at Chapman National Bank.  He later was a partner in Millett Fish & Dresser (later Millett Rittenhouse & Dresser).  He and Phyllis Trefethen of South Portland married in 1916, just before Leon got drafted into WWI.  When Leon returned from the War, they had only one child, Richard W. Dresser (1924-1973), who married Mary Libby and moved to Boston around 1949 to attend business school at Boston University - and apparently stayed in that area.  Richard had only one child.  Leon & Phyllis lived in South Portland until their deaths.

HELEN MAY DRESSER-McDONALD
(about 1929)

5. Helen May Dresser (1902-1996) married William McDonald and had a daughter named Ruth McDonald-Roberts (1932-2009) (who had children and grandchildren of her own).

Most of the old Scarborough Dresser family is buried in Dunstan Cemetery in Scarborough.  While only two of Wilbur's children (Leon and Helen) bore him any descendants, there are no living Dresser descendants in Scarborough.  Their presence in Scarborough lasted from around 1735-1899, and the road they lived on is still named for them to this day.

The Clukey Fire of 1949

The tragic story of George F. Clukey of Vinegar Road, Scarborough, is part of the eerier fabric of the Town of Scarborough.  Mr. Clukey was a neighbor to my grandparents, Frank and Emily Clarke, who lived around the corner from him on Payne Road.

On March 21, 1949, a terrible fire quickly consumed the single-story Clukey shanty house on Vinegar Road near the Payne Road intersection.  Mrs. Marjorie Clukey and her two daughters had reportedly escaped the blaze in time, but unfortunately, her husband, dump picker and WWII veteran George F. Clukey, perished in the blaze. 

On the evening of the 21st, Mrs. Clukey went to the police immediately after the house fire to file an arson warrant against her husband.  She testified to the police that there had been an altercation, and that George had been flinging kerosene all over the walls in a drunken rage, and that she had run from the house to get away from him, also stating that she didn't see him go back into the house.

Young children later exploring the burned building discovered his charred remains, along with the family dog lying dead next to his head.  George's wife Marjorie (along with her two brothers) identified the body only by witnessing the belt buckle and ring still stuck to the body

The fire left nothing but ash.  Mrs. Clukey and her two children had only the clothes on their backs, and stayed at a neighbor's house.  Mr. Clukey's death was ruled accidental.

MARJORIE CLUKEY
PHOTOGRAPHED AFTER THE BLAZE

My mother (then aged nine), and her parents remembered having been interviewed by police and the local papers not long after the fire.

Two days after the fire, the police arrested neighboring pig farmer Robert B. Curlew for setting the blaze, with the motive of being an "admirer" of Mrs. Clukey.  Mr. Clukey's body was then reexamined for potential evidence of manslaughter.

The suspicion of Mr. Curlew was triggered by none other than Mrs. Clukey, who had claimed she saw Mr. Curlew strike her husband and set fire to the home.  This was contrary to her testimony of the day of the fire whereby she claimed she saw her husband set fire to the home.

In her secondary testimony, she claimed that her husband was angry that Curlew had taken Mrs. Clukey for a ride in his truck to get slab wood, and that the altercation proceeded from there, with Curlew taking a one gallon glass jug of kerosene and hitting Mr. Clukey on the head with it, and then setting the house on fire.  Questioning revealed that Mr. Curlew had a romantic interest in Mrs. Clukey.

After many witnesses and neighbors were questioned, the county attorney obtained testimony that eyewitnesses had seen Curlew arguing with Mr. Clukey outside the Clukey house about an hour before the fire broke out, and that they heard a loud thud, screaming, dog barking, the fire breaking out, and the sound of Mr. Clukey breaking a window and yelling for help.  They also mentioned that Mrs. Clukey had brought her two children over to be watched by a neighbor prior to the argument.  The neighbors didn't help Mr. Clukey escape, since the authorities were not contacted at the time of the fire, but their eyewitness account helped the police determine that the death wasn't a suicide after all, and that Mr. Clukey wasn't likely the one to have committed the violence.

One week after the blaze, on the 28th, Mrs. Clukey was then deemed to be within suspicion of felony charges.  She was questioned repeatedly about the events, and about her recanting of testimony, while the pig farmer remained in jail.  It was at that point that they arrested Mrs. Clukey for being an accomplice to murder.

MRS. CLUKEY BEING BROUGHT TO JAIL
28 MARCH 1949

Mrs. Clukey's testimony included allegations that her husband had beat and neglected her and her children.  Two years prior, on February 14, 1947, she had filed a warrant charging her husband of non-support of his wife and child, and he was arrested by William Chase of the Scarborough Police.  Quite a Valentine's Day present...

Her testimony further alleged that she had planned the murder with Curlew for several weeks prior to the killing, and that her request for an arson warrant against her husband immediately after the fire was part of the strategy to make the murder look like a suicide.  She also admitted that, as her husband lay there with his head injury and Curlew spread the kerosene around the shack, she regretted her actions and swore to her dying husband that she wouldn't "marry Bobby."

She also admitted that Curlew had begun providing for her and her children months prior to the fire.  She viewed him as a nicer man to whom she was indebted.  The prosecutor in the case insisted, however, that Mrs. Clukey was merely leading Curlew on, giving him false hope of a marriage with her, in the hope that he would assist her with the killing.

Mrs. Clukey was held for a month in jail while awaiting the grand jury decision.  In the meantime, Curlew's case was continued five times, and took several weeks to resolve.  His case didn't come up for two months, not until May 23.  According to the prosecutor, a mere $60 would have paid for the divorce that would have extricated Mrs. Clukey from her marriage.  It's unlikely that she would have been able to afford it, though.  To that end, Curlew reportedly had offered to pay $2 per week for the divorce fund.

The jury in Curlew's case, which was difficult to secure given the popularity of the case and the number of 'talesmen' out there looking to tell lies, was sequestered for two days and nights in the Falmouth Hotel on Middle Street in Portland, as the case continued.  It was believed that the case would go on for at least a week.  Fifteen witnesses were called to testify against Curlew, including Robin and James Clukey (brothers of the deceased), Roy Chandler, Harry and Florence Richardson, and Harold and Louise Moulton, all neighbors of the deceased.

Among the witnesses was Mrs. Clukey herself, who quoted Curlew as saying to her, on the night of the murder "Don't worry about him, if he comes home drunk, you can hit him with a club or a jug or a gun butt and set fire to the place and make it look like a suicide."

The verdict came back quicker than expected.  Bill Curlew was given two to four years in the State prison, while Mrs. Clukey was given two years at the Skowhegan Reformatory.  Marjorie's two daughters were to be raised in foster care.  The 1950 Census has 4-year old Phyllis Clukey living with my cousin Leon Ahlquist and his wife Mary.  In 1958, nine years after the murder, Marjorie married Forrest "Boy" Tedford of Portland (originally from VT), and they lived at 92 Danforth Street in the West End.  For some reason they remarried in 1980.  Her husband Boy died in 1990, and Marjorie died in 2003 while living at 128 Grant Street.  It's unclear if she ever reunited with her daughters, or if they perhaps had been given different names due to the scandal.  Mr. Curlew died in 1990.

On Christmas of the year following the murder, George Clukey's parents and siblings posted the following "IN MEMORIAM" in the Portland Press Herald:

In February of 1950, about one year after the murder, the Town of Scarborough seized the Clukey property on the basis of back taxes having been owed since 1947 in the amount of $11.25.

Vinegar Road

As mentioned above, the site of the murder was in Mr. Clukey's shanty home on Vinegar Road in Scarborough.  Around 1800, the road was sardonically given its name due to the vinegar operations of Nehemiah Libby.  Libby had lived on the road (on the property later owned by George Pilsbury) and produced the town's vinegar.   He would use the road to transport his kegs to market, and took ownership of the road in this manner, which was met with much objection from the townspeople.  Those objecting to Libby's ownership of the road began calling it Vinegar Road as a joke (according to Libby Family in America (1881)).

In March of 1951, however, exactly two years after the Clukey murder, the Town of Scarborough elected to extend the road - making it expand from the Saco line to the Payne Road, and also to change the name of the road to "Holmes Road", which was already the name of the other part of the road.  I wonder if this name change was due to the scandal.  Hearsay from a Scarborough resident in 2011 tells the story that a property owner on Vinegar Road at the time had believed their home would be viewed as more valuable if the road's name was changed, but many local residents still referred to it as Vinegar Road for many years afterward.

Copycat Killing?

Shortly after the news of the cause of the fire was published, a Portland woman named Mrs. Madeline Ladrigan of Portland was found burned to death by kerosene in the cabin of woodsman Louis H. O'Brion off the Hardy Road in Falmouth.  The two were having an affair while the woman's husband was in Boston, and were drunk on whiskey and beer.

The Cumberland County Sheriff's office treated the Ladrigan case and the Clukey case as a double investigation.  The Ladrigan case was settled within a week, however, when the autopsy revealed the large amount of liquor consumed, and the kerosene stove having been on since she had been cooking dinner.

Whatever George Clukey did to his wife, he did not deserve to be burned to death.  It's a sad and eerie story, and will always be a part of Scarborough's history.

SITE OF FORMER CLUKEY HOUSE
BRIDGES ROAD
(formerly part of Vinegar/Holmes Road)
SCARBOROUGH, MAINE

SOME CHARRED REMAINS
FROM THE CLUKEY HOUSE
REMAINING AT THE SITE

CLUKEY GRAVE
FOREST CITY CEMETERY
SOUTH PORTLAND, MAINE

Sources:

The Libby Family in America

Maine Marriage Records

Maine Birth Records

U.S. WWII Army Enlistment Records

U.S. Census Records

Portland City Directories

Portland Press Herald Newspaper

The McLaughlins of Scarborough

Robert McLaughlin Jr. was a farmer on the Beech Ridge Road in Scarborough, whose family lived on this property from about 1740-1914, and who were early founders of Cumberland County.  He was listed as Scarborough's member of the State House of Representatives in 1855.  He is referred to hereafter in this article as "Robert Jr."

Robert Jr. and his wife, Eleanor, had two children, Sarah Jane and William, and three grandchildren through William.  The entire family living on the McLaughlin Homestead, according to available census records are listed below (and written in boldface when they are known to have been buried at the family graveyard on their homestead):

McLaughlins buried at McLaughlin Graveyard on Beech Ridge Road:

• Robert McLaughlin, Jr. (1784-1871)
• Eleanor H. Clements-McLaughlin (1792-1863), Robert's wife
• Sarah Jane McLaughlin (1828-1848), Robert's daughter
• William McLaughlin (1829-1880), Robert's son (referred to elsewhere in this document as "William 1829")
• Catherine Mitchell-McLaughlin (1834-1908) (William 1829's wife).  When William died, she moved in with her daughter, at 223 Payne Road South Portland, where she died.
• Eliza A. Mitchell (1825-1895) (Catherine's sister) was a tailoress.  She died a spinster in Saco, having lived with the Carpenter, Lord (at the "Saco House"), Foss and Stevenson families as a boarder.
• Betsey E. McLaughlin (1855-1870), daughter of William 1829 and Catherine.  She died as a teenager

McLaughlins buried at Dunstan Cemetery in Scarborough (whom it is believed were buried elsewhere first, and removed to Dunstan - unclear where there original burial location was, but they all died prior to the burials at the family cemetery on Beech Ridge Road, so it's unlikely this was the original location) - also included here are headstone notes from Ron Romano, Portland Historian and Author:

• William McLaughlin (1706-1782) the main patriarch of these McLaughlins (referred to in this article as "William 1706") [William’s stone features the smallest rising sun I've found in the Bartlett Adams collection, made by Alpheus Cary c. 1805-1807. It is featured in my book about Bartlett on pages 146-147.  So this is clearly backdated.  He was probably buried in the back yard with a piece of field stone in 1782… since no stone shop was around then. Then, over 2 decades later, the family got him a professionally carved marker from the Adams shop.]
• Sarah Jameson-McLaughlin (1715-1818), wife to William 1706 [Sarah’s stone is unusual for its lack of decoration.  Just lettering — by Bartlett Adams himself, carved around 1825 - 1828 (it is his classic later lettering style from the mid 1820s to his death in 1828)]
• Robert McLaughlin Sr. (1752-1823), son to William and Sarah, and father to the Robert Jr. listed at the top (referred to in this article as "Robert Sr.") [Robert’s stone is a match to Sarah’s — undecorated but lettered by Adams around 1825 - 1828. Given their identical unusual appearance i think the family had them both made at the same time.]
• Martha Johnson-McLaughlin (1760-1851), wife to Robert Sr. [Martha’s stone is post-Adams and i don’t know the carver, but it is special since it is what we call a purple slate. These were produced in our area only from about 1840 to 1860 and are typically undecorated and with a square top and deeply incised letters.]
• Nancy McLaughlin (1784-1805), daughter to Robert Sr. and Martha, who died before her 21st birthday [Nancy’s stone is another of Alpheus Cary’s.  He was in the shop 1805 to 1807 and this one fits perfectly within that range as Nancy died 1805.  My guess is the family got her stone and William’s at the same time (from the same carver, at the same shop). And while Nancy got a very simple pinwheel design, the family chose the rising sun for the patriarch William]
• William McLaughlin (1789-1837) Robert Jr.'s brother (referred to elsewhere in this document as "William 1789")
• Agnes Hasty-McLaughlin (1796-1884) William 1789's wife

Other McLaughlins of Scarborough:

• Martha McLaughlin (1791-??), Robert Jr.'s sister, unwed
• Mary McLaughlin (1797-???), Robert Jr.'s sister, unwed
• James McLaughlin (1819-1895) William 1789's son, a carpenter who relocated to New Jersey.
• Charles McLaughlin (1827-1886) William 1789's son - buried at Evergreen Cemetery.  Charles was a successful grocer, and started up Charles McLaughlin & Company grocers.

CHARLES MCLAUGHLIN
(1827-1886)

CHARLES MCLAUGHLIN & CO
STORE ON CENTRAL STREET
ABOUT 1880
This firm began business on Commercial Street, No. 163,
near the head of Union Wharf, removed to No. 84 (Thomas
Block ) in 1860, where they remained until December, 1879,
when they removed to the large and spacious store on Central
Street (head of Central Wharf).

William 1829 took over the farm from his father Robert.  He and his wife Catherine had four children:

• Betsey E. McLaughlin (1855-1870), buried at the family lot mentioned above.
• Sarah Eliza McLaughlin (1859-1917) married in 1878 to real estate broker Wilbur Fiske Dresser (1848-1924), of the Scarborough Dressers (who had been in Scarborough since the Revolution, and have a public road named after them), and in particular, son to Josiah Dresser of Scarborough (1816-1868).  As an aside, Wilbur was executor of the Estate of my 2nd great grandmother, Sarah Jane Temm.  Sarah and Wilbur moved to Payne Road, in South Portland, after the McLaughlin homestead was no longer with the family (around 1890), and they took Sarah's widowed mother Catherine with them.  They had five children:  Ira, William, Perley, Leon and Helen.  Leon and Helen each had children.  Richard W. Dresser (1925-1973) was son to Leon, and Ruth McDonald-Roberts (1932-2009) was daughter to Helen.  Each of these descendants had children of their own.  In later years, after Sarah died of uterine cancer, Wilbur lived as a widower with his son Perley in Portland, before retiring to Scarborough, where he died.  Most of this family is buried at Dunstan Cemetery in Scarborough.
• Katie M. McLaughlin (1868-1943) worked as a stenographer.  She married Capt. Fred Phillips of Portland in 1899.  She quitclaimed her interest in the McLaughlin estate to her sister Sarah in 1901.  She and Fred lived in Portland for the rest of their lives, and are buried at Dunstan.
• Ada McLaughlin (1869-bef 1880)

KATIE MCLAUGHLIN
circa 1878

SARAH MCLAUGHLIN
circa 1878

To dig back into Robert Jr.'s roots, I will take from the e-book History of Cumberland County published 1880 by W. Woodford Clayton, where there is a brief history of the McLaughlins from Beech Ridge (going back to Ireland).  Here is the excerpt pertaining to their time in Scarborough (which contains appears to be at odds with some records I've found):

William and Robert McLaughlin, brothers, of the stock of the Luster McLaughlins, emigrated in the same vessel to this country, and settled in Scarborough, then virtually, so far as the Indians were concerned, a frontier town.  William was born in 1706; his wife, Sarah Jameson, was born in Plymouth, Mass., in 1715, and died in Scarborough, Jan. 21, 1818. [Robert was never married.] William and Robert cleared the farm on Beech Ridge, in Scarborough, now owned and occupied by his great-grandson, Robert McLaughlin. This family, like the other settlers of Scarborough, had their share of  trouble from the Indians, who, both in their own interest and in that of the French, made many incursions into the town. In those days the alarms of danger were frequent enough; the McLaughlins were obliged many a time to leave their home and seek security with the garrison on Scottow's Hill; and it was not until the peace of 1763 that they were finally safe from the depredations of the savages.

William McLaughlin was a town warden in 1777. He died in 1782. His son Robert, born in Scarborough, July 18, 1752, died May 8, 1823; his wife, Martha Johnson, was born Feb. 16, 1761, and died at Monmouth, Me., June 9, 1851. [Missing Robert Jr. 1784-1871] They had three sons and six daughters. Betsey, the eldest, married Edward Sargent, of Bangor; Sally and Nancy were never married ; Catharine married Henry Vanschaick Cumston, of Scarborough, afterwards of Monmouth; William; James; Dionysia married Wiggins Hill, of Bangor; Ruth married Joseph Hasty, of Standish ; Charles was never married ; James went to Bangor, operated in real estate, became quite wealthy, and died there Oct. 14, 1872, at the age of eighty-two ; his wife was Almira Tilton, of Scarborough. Charles, the youngest of the family, settled in Louisiana and became a large planter ; he died Dec. 19, 1835, in his thirty-eighth year. William took to farming like his ancestors, and was known as a man of good judgment, of strict integrity, and correct habits. He married Agnes Hasty (whose mother, Rachel Deane, was a niece of Parson Deane), by whom he had three sons, James, Robert, and Charles; he died at Scarborough, April 11, 1837.  Of these sons, Robert resides upon the old homestead, which has thus been in his family for four successive generations, about a hundred and thirty years.

Now, the Robert underlined above is cousin to Robert Jr. of this article.  He kept the farm of his father (William born 1789) going until his own death in 1912.  This farm was nearby to the other McLaughlin property, owned by William's brother (Robert born 1784).  Robert Jr. of this article has been omitted from this 1880 publication entirely.  I've added him in above in brackets.

According to a series of typewritten sheets of research found at the Scarborough Historical Society written by a member of the Tilton family (the "Tilton Papers"):

William [the immigrant] and his wife Sarah suffered very much from the fear of the Indians, though never attacked by them.  They often had to leave their house and go to the garrison on Scottow's Hill.  Mrs. McLaughlin feared very much at one time that her young child might by its cries betray her to the Indians, the child having died she then thought its death was a punishment for her wicked fears.  Axes and all farming tools had to be carried into the house at night to secure them from the Indians.  A sister of Mrs. McLaughlin married John Porterfield who was saved by her dog from being taken by the Indians when she went in the spring for water.

Now also according to the Tilton Papers, a brother of Robert Jr. was one James McLaughlin of Bangor, who, after retiring from his law firm, Hill & McLaughlin, became a devoted gardener and founder of the McLaughlin Plum in the 1840s.  James and his horticultural creation are also mentioned in The Fruits of America, published 1856.

According to p. 187 of the Jamesons in America, published 1901, a Robert McLaughlin of Scarborough married Hannah McKenney, born 1739, daughter to Margaret Jameson.  Given the age, this Robert MAY have been a son to the Robert who was brother to William who emigrated from Northern Ireland with him.  I've bracketed the notion above that Robert never married.  I don't think there were any other Robert McLaughlins of marrying age in Scarborough in the 1750s.  I feel quite confident this is a son to this Robert.

I've compiled a family tree, using available records, with the assumption that my theories are correct (click to enlarge).  I've highlighted in yellow the people who are buried at McLaughlin Graveyard, and in green are people I have located in Dunstan Cemetery in Scarborough.

McLaughlin House
100 Beech Ridge Road (at the end of Dresser Road)
Scarborough Maine

McLaughlin House
100 Beech Ridge Road (at the end of Dresser Road)
Scarborough Maine
Owned by:
Robert McLaughlin (1784-1871)
his son William McLaughlin (1829-1880)
and his daughter Sarah McLaughlin Dresser (1859-1917)
(note, the writing in pencil at the top "OE Woodbury, 179 Lincoln Street, S. Portland"
refers to the photo studio, not the residence shown)

As for the property owned by William McLaughlin (born 1829, son to Robert born 1784, and first cousin to the Robert mentioned above) (see pictures above)...

In 1902, Sarah McLaughlin-Dresser (William's daughter) sold this 100 Beech Ridge Road property to Thomas Lessard, with a deed restriction for a burial ground to remain on the property, reading as follows:

Reserving, however, the Burying Ground on said farm with sufficient room to build and maintain suitable fence around the same with right to enter at any and all times to repair fence or for any other purpose.

The McLaughlin Property went through several hands afterwards:  Benjamin Shaw, Harriette Harmon, Bridget Sheehy, and finally in 1935 to Bill Temm, Sr. of the Temm family, which family had once owned the farmland across Beech Ridge Road back in 1864.  The property was divided up for Bill's heirs, but in 1998 the land that carried the deed restriction for the cemetery described it as such:

Reserving, however, to the Scarborough Historical Society, as well as the heirs of those buried therein, the right to access the old burial ground on the above-described property, said burial ground and right of access being more fully described in a deed recorded in the Cumberland County Registry of Deeds in Book 727, Page 169.

This small graveyard for the McLaughlins who lived and thrived there is maintained with much care by the current property owners, the heirs of Bill Temm, Sr., even as of the recent edit to this post in 2022.

Only seven members of this family have gravestones here (the names are in bold above), but as you can tell from the photos below, there is quite a bit of space where more unmarked graves might lie, and one would assume they may likely be the remainder of the McLaughlins who lived on Robert's homestead...

John Henry Temm

JOHN HENRY TEMM (1919)

John Henry Temm (born John Henry Brown) (1853-1936) was, according to legend, born into this world in a boat in Portland Harbor in 1853.  He grew up in his uncle Robert's "Brownrig Boarding Houses for Seamen," on Fore Street in Portland, known by many to be the "houses of ill repute".  When JH was 11, the entire family moved to what was later known as the Temm Homestead in Scarborough (described at length in the Temm blog post).

In 1874, at age 21, JH was tried in superior court for assault and battery, but it's unclear who the victim was:

Portland Daily Press
Jan. 15, 1874

In 1891 and 1892, he had an apparently regular dispute with Martha C. Phinney, over a horse:

Portland Daily Press
Oct. 31, 1891

Portland Daily Press
July 27, 1892

In 1895, at age 42, just three years after his mother passed, he married Hattie Morgan-Downey, of Portland (although I found no official marriage record).  Hattie and her parents had briefly lived on the Beech Ridge Road when she was a teenager, so this is likely how they knew each other.  She had lost her husband James Downey to tuberculosis in 1894, and then within a year married John Henry (who was 13 years her senior).  She and her two daughters (Annie & Maggie) moved into the Temm Homestead in Scarborough and started their own large family.  John Henry farmed on the land inherited from his parents on the northeast corner of Beech Ridge Road and Dresser Road, mostly a dairy farm.  A funny story told to me by my Uncle Walter was that John Henry would head down to the potato farm further down on Beech Ridge Road (land later acquired by his youngest son Carl), and when buying your potatoes, you had to put them on the large suspension scale which dangled above the ground, and you'd pay according to weight.  John Henry would routinely stick his foot under the scale and lift it, causing the weight to read less, so he'd get his own discount! 

John Henry was a gardener, a butcher, and a water gatherer.  They said that certain people had a gift for finding water.  If a branch from an apple tree fell, certain people could see a fallen branch, and determine where the water well is located underneath.  According to legend, John Henry was one of these people.  It's likely that he participated regularly in the agricultural fair which was held in Scarborough at Nutters Field on Pleasant Hill.

According to my Uncle Sonny Jim, John Henry was a nice man, and a hard worker.  Sonny Jim was raised by him, and worked the farm day in and day out until John Henry's passing.  Sonny Jim remembers that John Henry one night had wandered out of the house, in his sleep, and walked down to the creek in the back of the house (a creek that never froze in the winter, to hear Sonny Jim tell of it).  He came back from the creek, and went back to bed.  Apparently in the dark, on the way back from the creek, he had stumbled and cut his legs up quite badly.  He died not too long after, in April of 1936, of bronchopneumonia.

The path to the creek...
Probably the route of John Henry's fatal sleepwalking

The Creek is quite far below this edge

The beautiful homestead
of John Henry Temm
Scarborough, Maine

John & Hattie had eight children on the homestead.  John Henry would give the kids chores to do, including gardening.  One day John Henry gave the kids specific areas of the garden they were supposed to weed while he was out for the day.  The kids didn't like the weeding, however.  He came back, and asked Hattie if the kids had done the weeding.  She said that they hadn't.  He went and woke all the kids up, and by lantern light they went out in the night and weeded the whole garden!  According to Sonny Jim, nobody on that farm enjoyed a day's work.

John & Hattie's kids gave them 37 grandchildren, 96 great grandchildren, and hundreds of descendants afterwards, most of them living their entire lives in Scarborough:

Clifford Henry Temm (1897–1973)

Clifford was the first Temm in the US Armed Forces. Drafted for WWI, he never left the States and it was his brother Carl, drafted for WW2 who would be the first to fight overseas in Germany.  He worked as a carpenter and volunteer fireman.  He married Susie Finney in 1926 and had 3 children, one of which died in infancy, and no grandchildren.  He ran a pine shingle business with his son Ralph.  The house he bought in County Road Westbrook in the 1926 is still in the family.  In 1927 he bought a square mile of Portland which now houses portions of I-295 and what was once Shopping Center on Marginal Way.

Adelaide May Temm-Ahlquist (1899–1980)

Front Row: Althea, Adelaide, Toy, Francis. Middle Row: Robert. Back Row: Olaf, Clarence, Leon

 
Adelaide was named after her mother Hattie's sister Adelaide Morgan.  After graduating from Four Corners High School (later known as Scarborough High), Adelaide went to normal school and became a teacher.  She married Carl Erling Thorvald Ahlquist (aka "Toy") from Scarborough (who was born to a Swedish father and Norwegian mother), and they had 6 children and 21 grandchildren in their house on Beech Ridge Road.  Many of the children stayed on in Scarborough, but a few of them moved to the midwest.

Edwin Clinton Temm (1900–1900)

(died in infancy),
but the recent discovery of his burial has unearthed a new mystery...

Edwin Clinton Temm (1901–1964)

Edwin married Marion Dolloff in 1928.  In 1943 he married Isabelle Butler, and bought a home on the Pope Road in Windham, where Aunt Isabelle (the family genealogist) lived the remainder of her life until 2011.  Collectively, Edwin had 5 children and 12 grandchildren.

Emily Iva Temm-Clarke (1903–1999)

(12 children, 38 grandchildren, 84 great grandchildren)

My grandma Emily grew up on Beech Ridge Road in Scarborough, like her siblings, and attended school at Beech Ridge School, just down the road from her house.  Below is a picture of the Class of 1915, where she and her brother Bill appear.

Emily worked as a laundress and married Frank Clarke of East Haddam, CT.  They lived for a few years on Mussey Road in Scarborough, but settled in at Payne Road in 1925

EMILY AND BILL TEMM FEATURED IN THIS 1915 CLASS PHOTO
(courtesy of Scarborough Historical Society)

William Sanford Temm (1904–1975)

Bill Temm was married after both John Henry and Hattie's fathers.  He married Laura Barbour from Westbrook briefly in 1927.  In June of 1931 he married Alice Neault from Biddeford, born to French Canadian immigrants.  Alice and Bill (pictured above) and had 11 children and 23 grandchildren in their house on Beech Ridge Road right across the street from the old Temm Homestead once owned by his parents, on land once owned by the McLaughlins, who were founders of Scarborough and Cumberland County.  Bill's house is still in the Temm family.

Florence Ethel Temm (1905–1905)

(died in infancy)

Carl Albert Temm (1907–1974)

Carlie fought in WWII in Germany, and after the War, he and his girlfriend/housekeeper, Nellie Edwards-Varney-Guptill ("Nell"), lived on Oxford Street in Portland, before moving into their home and farm on Beech Ridge Road (down the road from his brother William).  They had no children together, but Nell's daughter Myrtle Guptill lived with them.  Carlie worked at S.D. Warren paper mill in Westbrook, and died of a heart attack in 1974 before he could retire.

TEMM FAMILY (1919)
Beech Ridge Road, Scarborough, Maine

TOP (L to R): John Henry Temm and his wife Hattie,

their children Adelaide, Clifford, and Emily

BOTTOM (L to R): Edwin, holding Carl

and another boy (possibly one of Hattie's grandsons,
Harold Dunn or Richard Brailsford),

and then William S. Temm on the far right.

SOME OF JOHN & HATTIE'S CHILDREN

(Clifford, Adelaide, Bill & Edwin, with spouses)

(ABOUT 1959)

An interesting note, I've been able to find marriage records for all the Temms and their descendants, except for John & Hattie's marriage (which was 1895 according to the 1900 Census).  1895 was actually a good year for record retention in Portland, so I'm not sure what happened.  I wonder if they ever were officially married?

According to the Town Report of Scarborough in 1922, John Henry suffered a fire at his homestead, and received $19.05 in abatement funds from the Town (which would be about $260 in 2012).

Most of JH Temm's kids and grandkids went to Beech Ridge School.  Here is a picture of the classmates of 1942, which include Temms and Ahlquists, all grandkids of JH Temm and family friend Myrtle Guptill (back center).

The Temms enjoyed the company of family friends Benjamin and Ida Shaw, who lived on the farmland property next door.  Ida passed on in 1928, while Benjamin died two years later.  Their son, Harold Wilson Shaw, died in 1932.  That left Benjamin's daughter, 45 year old Zelia Shaw, who never married, alone in the house.  She at this point moved next door into the Temm Homestead, then owned by John Henry's son Bill Temm, and stayed there until her death in 1969.  She was an honorary member of the Temm family.

ZELIA SHAW

John Henry's death certificate declared his father Marcus to be a Sea Captain.

TEMM GRAVESTONE
(front and back)
Forest City Cemetery
South Portland, Maine

(John & Hattie, with son Carl,

Clayton, a deceased infant son of Clifford Temm,

and Alfred, a deceased infant son of Bill Temm)

Here's the pedigree chart for John Henry Temm.

He was 50% German and 50% Scottish.  His mother was of Scottish descent, and had noble roots (Blair Clan).