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The Great Rangeley Lakes of Maine in Days of Yore

October 31, 2011 - Rangeley-For more than 150 years the beautiful Rangeley Lakes region of western Maine has been visited by sportsmen and tourists alike. Settlers arrived in 1815. And as early as the 1840s wealthy men from Boston, New York, and Providence came to the Mooselookmeguntic and Rangeley Lakes region armed with fishing rods. Since the 1870s, sportsmen’s guides have been compiled and sold to these same folks.

In 1796, James Rangeley, Sr., of Philadelphia, and several business partners from Massachusetts purchased vast tracts of land in the Rangeley area, and settlers followed in the early 19th century. Although many believed that the area was first settled by Squire James Rangeley, Jr. in 1825, J. Sherman Hoar maintained that his ancestor Luther Hoar actually came from concord, Massachusetts to the area in the summer of 1815, along with a wife and eight children (see Pioneer Days of Rangeley, Maine, J. Sherman Hoar, Rangeley, 1949). Luther Hoar had scouted the area for a possible home site the previous fall, and had made a deep pit in the ground to store potatoes. The family arrived that summer, with a baby girl named Eunice in tow, and Luther built a campfire and “prepared for the first of many nights in the open. A bitter disappointment awaited these hungry, tired pioneers. When Deacon Hoar went to the pit, he found it empty. The potatoes were gone! During the winter, the Indians had discovered them and had fared sumptuously on the first fruits of Luther Hoar’s industry,” as their descendant wrote (Hoar, p. 8)

In July 1816 fourteen-year old Joseph Hoar walked to the nearest town, Madrid, and fetched a mid-wife for his mother, expecting a baby once again. He came back with an older woman known in Rangeley folklore as “Old Mis’ Dill” who was the first to be buried in the new settlement, moving there with her husband the following year.

Luther Hoar “was a powerful man,” recalled his grandson Freeman Tibbetts. “Grandfather Hoar used to put a bushel of corn on his back and walk to Strong. It was twelve miles to Madrid; from Madrid to Phillips was six miles, and from Phillips to Strong was six miles more, and he walked there and back in three days and carried a bushel of corn besides.” Luther did not forget his relatives back in Massachusetts, and used to ride a horse almost every year to visit them. Tibbetts remembered the last time he journeyed there: “He come home and rode into the barn. His wife she come out to see him. ‘How do you feel?’ says she. He was a-hanging’ up his saddle when he answered her. “Fine,” says he, and with that he dropped at her feet – stone dead” (Hoar, p.10)

Eventually other pioneers came to settle at Rangeley, including families named Rowe, Thomas, Kimball, and Quimby. In 1825 Squire James Rangeley, Jr., a member of an old Yorkshire, England family, arrived on the scene from England and built a home that was nothing short of a mansion for its place and time. It was made of plastering, clapboards and solid brick, contained a giant kitchen with a brick oven, and had four rooms, two on each floor, each with an old fashioned brick fireplace. It stood in town for all to marvel at for at least 50 years before what was left of it (after years of decay and dismantling) burned to the ground in the great Rangeley fire of August 1876.

Squire Rangeley, who one old-timer described as “He was an Englishman-he was funny,” employed many of the men in town to build his home and then upkeep his property. He also hired many of the girls in the area as domestic maids. Rangeley paid the men $12 a month, which was not too shabby for the time and started out this “hired girls” at 50 cents a week before paying them $1.50 after a year’s time.

The squire had great plans for developing the area, but after a sawmill and gristmill were built, and before a ten-mile road had been finished, he realized the extreme difficulties of transportation to the outside world. After the death of his 19-year-old daughter Sarah on Christmas Day 1827, Rangeley finally decided to pack up his family and move on. By 1841 they were residing in Portland. The squire eventually sold the township of Rangeley and they moved to Virginia, where his family also owned land. In Virginia he owned about 150 slaves and became a colonel in the Confederate Army. The Rangeleys never returned to merry ol’ England and their descendants still resided in Henry County, Virginia as late as the 1950s.

Another family that had a deep impact on the region was the Barretts. Thomas and Charles Barrett arrived here in the early 18802 and established a boatbuilding concern. They built and repaired rowboats, and Tom Barrett built the first “Rangeley boat,” a narrow and low open boat that was specifically designed to maneuver the famous Rangeley Lakes. “Rangeley boat” and “Barrett” became synonymous with generations of Rangeley fishermen. The firm was still going strong as late as the 1940s. The old Barrett shop still stands in the town on the shore of Rangeley Lake.

According to Stephen A. Cole, the author of The Rangeley and its Region, the Famous Boat and Lakes of Western Maine, the Barretts arrived on the scene at the most opportune time. “During the 1880s the sportsmen and tourist trade there burgeoned, grand hotels were built, new sporting camps were established, modes of transportation were increased and updated, and publications wrote frequently of the Rangeley Lakes as a holiday destination.

Matthew Jude Barker, Discover Maine, October 2011


Lakes: Rangeley
Regions: Rangeley


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