In Ye Olden Times: The Steamer Fawn

By Mike Davis
Special to The Windham Eagle

Howdy Neighbor!

My name is Mike Davis, the history columnist for the Bridgton News, and today I’m so pleased the Editor of The Windham Eagle has given me room as a guest this week to tell you all about the Steamer Fawn, the first steamboat ever to run on Sebago Lake, built at North Bridgton in 1847.

That spring the Fawn was built by the Sebago and Long Pond Steam Navigation Company. Since the 1830s there had been efforts considered to launch an inland steamer upon the Sebago Lakes Route, running from Bridgton down Long Lake, Brandy Pond and the Songo River to Sebago Lake, but it was not until 1846 that a company of Bridgton and Harrison men organized and began selling stock to residents up and down the lakes as far as Standish.

The S&LPSN Co. sold some $10,000 in stock at $25 a share, raising funds sufficient enough to lay the keel in late March of 1847. They had hired the New York boatbuilding firm Lawrence & Sneden to build for them a sidewheel steamboat, 25 feet wide and 90 long – just narrow enough to pass within the 26-foot wide Songo Lock, and theoretically short enough to negotiate the Songo’s many meandering gooseneck turns; twenty-seven turns in only six miles!

She was launched on June 5, 1847, captained by C.C.W Sampson of Harrison, and ran a thrice-weekly route, which became daily by 1849, from her terminus at Harrison Village down the lakes to Standish, stopping at North Bridgton, Plummers Landing, and Naples along the way.

At Standish she docked at the wharf opposite Chadbourne’s Lake House, which stood almost exactly at the terminus of what are now Routes 35 and 237 on Standish Neck, where the Portland Water District pumping station now stands. Here passengers were served by a line of stagecoaches running south to Portland, the southern half of the Portland to Waterford stage line which, from Harrison, took travelers off the boat up to Waterford and beyond.

The company had invested in this stage line, and it also bought out another running from Bridgton through Fryeburg to the White Mountains. This was the key to the Fawn’s financial success, for in those days before railroads any tourist up from Boston looking to access the White Mountains, landing at the wharf in Portland, had to take a bumpy, uncomfortable stagecoach ride over several days all the way to Conway New Hampshire.

But with the steamer Fawn running upon the lakes, they could instead ride inland as far as Standish, zip up the picturesque lakes route to Bridgton in less than four hours, and then go by stage as far as Fryeburg border by nightfall, to stay at the Pleasant Mountain House. From there they could strike off the next morning by stage and reach Conway faster, in far greater comfort and having enjoyed far better scenery, than anything the old stage line up the Saco River Valley could provide.

With the opportunities clearly shown, the eager tourist public of antebellum America responded. The Fawn ran for almost a decade, until 1856, and in that time, she attracted the patronage of some of the most famous tourists to come to Maine in this era. Among her many noteworthy passengers in this time we may count John Jacob Astor, the first American multi-millionaire; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who surely needs no introduction here, and famed Transcendentalist Mary Emerson, aunt and tutor of Ralph Waldo Emerson. So many are the humorous and fascinating stories of this time, so many the difficulties whose solutions proved novel or exciting, that I could well serialize the Fawn’s history across ten dozen newspaper columns – but in this I will spare you, for it will make a better book, and I do intend to properly publish this story sometime soon.

Initially the Fawn was a success, but ultimately the same driving forces that led to her creation, those of technological innovation and the eager tourist market, are the same which led to her collapse. Eventually steam-power was turned to locomotion, and the coming of the railroads at once robbed the Fawn of her twin advantages of speed and comfort.

While still just as beautiful, the prospect of reaching the White Mountains in a matter of hours by rail from Portland cut out nearly all her tourist traffic by 1853 – struggling on until 1854, she was put up for auction in 1855 and eventually sold to George Pierce of Otisfield. He kept her going a few years more in a highly diminished capacity until 1856, but in 1857 she was torn to pieces at North Bridgton, her boiler and engine works sold to steamboat builders in Greenville, Maine, and her wooden hull left to rot on the shore of the lake.

There are no photographs of the Fawn, there are no known engravings, and while it appears she was once painted, I have yet to find any copy of the portrait. I’m told she was once pictured on the china plates of the Lake House hotel on Standish Neck, which continued to exist until the early 1900s, but that hotel burned long ago and no one now living can tell me if even a single plate survived. If any Readers out there have seen any pictures of her, please write in and contact me via oldentimesmike@gmail.com.

Thanks, and until next time! <

Library displays Windham model maker's tiny trucks

By Kaysa Jalbert

Some hobbies keep us busy in the present, some prepare us for a challenge in the future, others are like creating a time machine to bring us into the past. Since 1988, Raymond Philpot of Windham has been restoring miniature metal trucks as a collector’s item, and from now until the end of April, four of Philpot’s model trucks are on display at the Windham Public Library.

Miniature trucks created by Raymond Philpot of Windham
reflecting Windham's past and history are on display on the
second floor of the Windham Public Library through the 
end of April. COURTESY PHOTO

What makes this display especially interesting for locals is that each of the items exhibited are replicas of vehicles that would have been seen in Windham's past. There’s a red snowplow from ML Rogers circa 1950s to 1980s, a vintage blue snowplow circa 1930s, a mustard-yellow Jim Rogers septic tank truck, and a blue George Emerson & Sons Enviropac trash truck from the 1980s.

“It has been great to hear from locals who recognize the vehicles, kids who love the bright shiny trucks, and adults who recognize the amount of work that went into the miniatures,” said Sally Bannon from the Windham Public Library. “I was thrilled when Mr. Philpot agreed to exhibit this collection. Library staff and patrons have always enjoyed his past displays, so I knew this one would be another winner.”

Philpot built each vehicle from scraps and pieces of metal toys such as Tonka and Buddy L and many of the pieces he finds are either on their way to the dump, available at a valid price at an antique shop or on eBay or given to him.

“I’m not really a collector, so I don’t buy things, but I collect them because I don’t want mother nature to take care of it,” says Philpot.

What he has come to find over the years is many of the trucks have already been collected, and what’s left are parts and pieces of “what looks like junk, broken old toys” that can be salvaged, he said.

What led Philpot to picking up on this hobby is his experience both as an auto mechanic and a Windham historian. From 1975 to about 2000, Philpot operated J & R auto body shop in Windham. Many of his regular customers were the ones to give him miniature parts. Additionally, Philpot has been part of the Windham Historical Society for much of his life.

“I’ve been involved with race cars, trucks, body repair and paint jobs. Always been automotive oriented since Day 1,” Philpot said, but in a way, he meant it.

Since his high school days in the 1960s, Philpot’s been involved with this type of work.

It was also in school, eighth grade to be exact, that Philpot became immersed in history and not global or U.S. history.

“I hated history, it was the worst thing that could have happened to me, that is, until I took a class on Windham history and that was it, I was hooked,” he said.

Philpot has been searching Windham History ever since. He’s had displays at the library in the past and at the Windham Historical Society. Additionally, his collection of old fire trucks has been put on display at the Windham Fire Department during the Fire Apparatus Day there.

Back around 1990, there was a Windham High School teacher who tried to start a hobby collectors show at Windham High School and Philpot had his trucks displayed there for the school year, but the show did not last as an annual event.

He says that he was inspired to start this hobby back in the late 1980s from a friend that was fixing up miniature automobiles that represented old trucks from across the U.S. and selling them at truck shows. The friend was copying the names of vehicles he’d seen back in the day instead of turning them into modern ones, so Philpot caught onto that and decided to restore them to look like cars from New England.

“I make them, I collect them, and occasionally I give them away to someone it has a meaning to,” he said.

Some of his miniatures have been given to the family of a late friend, and he said they are always greatly appreciated.

In total, Philpot has about 75 to 100 miniature trucks and gets to work on a new one maybe once or twice a year.

“The parts are scarce now, a lot of people are collecting them and selling them on eBay,” he said. “Some people think they are like gold and set a high price, but I’m not a collector, I just want to keep them from being put into the earth.”

Philpot’s model trucks are now on display on the second floor of the Windham Public Library through April 30. <