3 HENRY A. HAINES
The third child born to J. Wingate and Mary Briggs Haines was named Henry but sadly he died on September 29, 1831, in Hallowell, Maine, only three months after birth. Eleven and one-half months after his death, Mary gave birth to another son whom they named Henry A. Haines.
When he was fifteen years old, Henry moved with his family to the northern Maine township officially referred to as Letter D Plantation, Range 1 WELS (first range west of the eastern line of state), the township that would be incorporated as Fort Fairfield in 1858. The area was sparsely settled with less than 400 inhabitants at the time of their arrival and all were pioneers on the “wild frontier.” Besides it being a frontier town in the sense of it being on the edge of civilization, the town was also a border town, located on the international frontier opposite the British colony of New Brunswick. Today, the name of the local historical society, Frontier Heritage, smartly connects people with the community’s pioneer history. Other local institution names also connected to the pioneer past have been used such as Frontier Trust Company, formed in 1907, Frontier Fish and Game Club, and Frontier Little League formed in the 1950s, one of its teams being named “Pioneers.”
In the next few decades after Henry’s and his family’s arrival, though, the town’s rate of growth would be far higher than other communities in the state due to a heavy influx of settlers wishing to buy affordable and extremely productive land, mostly covered with marketable timber. By 1890, Fort Fairfield would have the third highest population of any town in Aroostook County and rank 27th in population among all of the communities in Maine. Henry was in the right place at the right time to have a secure and profitable future.
At age 18, though, he started his working career as a laborer. Five years later, he married Mary Frances Knight (1836-1914) of Presque Isle and they relocated to Van Buren, Maine, where he was a hotel keeper. Their first child, Adda “Addie” May Haines, was born there on March 11, 1856. Within a couple of years, the family moved back to Fort Fairfield where Henry was a “millman.” He would have learned about mill work from his father, J. Wingate, who built and operated a sawmill to fulfill a commitment he made to the state in return for 1,000 acres of land. In 1865, Henry took ownership of a sawmill at the “lower village on Fitzherbert Brook,” i.e., in the neighborhood now referred to as Puddledock through which Pattee Brook flows. He and Mary had two more children in Fort Fairfield, William Afton (1861-1925) and Ida Beulah (1866-1902). With his son, Henry bought the “mill privilege” in Puddledock in 1882 and rebuilt a gristmill. Henry died in Fort Fairfield at age 56 on March 7, 1889. His remains were buried in Riverside Cemetery, not in Haines Maple Grove Cemetery near his parents’ remains. His wife Mary survived him by 25 years, passing away on July 15, 1914.
William Afton Haines
Henry and Mary’s son, “Willie,” continued in his father’s footsteps as a “millman,” owning the lumber mill and gristmill business that he and his father had built up. He married Laura Hoyt (1867-1939) in 1893 when he was 31 years old and gave his family a comfortable lifestyle. In their early married years, they lived on Main Street in Fort with two servants in the household. Their first child, Frances Lubelle, was born on July 1, 1895, but lived only one month. Their only surviving child, Thelma Hoyt Haines, was born in 1897. By 1920, they lived in a house on the Dorsey Road with Thelma but, instead of two servants living with them, there was one nurse, an indication that one or more members of this small family was not well. Perhaps it was Willie who needed a nurse’s care as he died at age 63 in 1925 but, by then, he was living in Massachusetts. Widow Laura and daughter Thelma relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida, about 1930 and then returned to Massachusetts, sharing a home. Laura passed away in 1939 (age 71) and Thelma in 1975. There is no evidence that Thelma ever worked during her lifetime, probably made possible by the financial success of her father. Nor is there any evidence that she had a child.
Adda May Haines
Henry and Mary’s oldest child, Addie, was the most productive of their three children. At age 21, she married Lafayette M. Richardson (1854-1917) of Pennsylvania in 1877 and they had six children, two of whom had children of their own. Lafayette worked as a well driller in the oil fields around Kean County in western Pennsylvania. Four of their six children were born in Kean County but the middle two children were born in Fort Fairfield. Both of these children died in their youth in Fort.
Their oldest child, Harriet, married George Rupert Ervin who was born across the border from Fort in Andover, New Brunswick. They raised five children, three born in Fort Fairfield and the last two born in Houlton where George owned a clothing store and where they lived for most of their married lives. All five of these children married, settled in various parts of the country, and had children of their own.
1. Jerome Richardson Ervin (1901-1966), 2 children, Oregon
2. Rupert Lafayette Ervin (1905-1992), 1 child, Massachusetts and Connecticut
3. Leroy Richard Ervin (1907-1994), 1 child, Maine and Oregon
4. Dawn Evangeline Erwin (1916-2007), 1 child, Maine and Oregon
5. Mary Jane Ervin (1918-1971), 1 child, Oregon
Adda and Lafayette’s fourth child, Adelaide (1885-1974), married a Presque Isle man, Dr. Hugh Graham Pipes, a dentist. They were married only four months in 1911 when he was killed in a major train wreck in Grindstone, Maine. The passenger train that he was riding in collided with another train killing eight passengers and injuring another twenty. Eight months after this tragedy, Adelaide gave birth to Dawn Francis Pipes in Bradford, Pennsylvania. Adelaide would have no other children. Dawn, during her early years, would spend summers with her grandparents in Presque Isle and she later attended the University of Oregon. She married Kenneth Nye of Rhode Island and they raised one child, H. Graham Nye. After living for 66 years in South Kingstown, RI, she moved to Augusta, Maine, in 1998 to be nearer to her son, the father of two daughters.
Ida Beulah Haines
The third and youngest daughter of Henry A. and Mary Haines, like her sister, would have a short marriage which produced one child. Idah Beulah Haines wed Frederick Grant Field(s) from Washington County, Maine, in 1897 when she was 31 years old. The wedding took place in Boston. Fred was a nurse and served during the Spanish American War. Their only child, Henry Haines Field(s), was born in Fort Fairfield one year after they wed. The marriage ended in divorce on December 11, 1901. Fred remarried in 1906, but Ida did not.
Not much is known about Henry Haines Field(s) except that he had five children and worked as a cook in a woods camp in the 1930s. The five children were born in different Maine communities: Millinocket, Brewer, Fairfield, Bangor and one unidentified community, indicating that this family was highly mobile. Eventually, Henry and his wife, the former Phyllis Bean of Hartland, Maine, settled in Hodgdon. Henry died in 1957 in a Houton hospital. His children gave birth to at least six children of their own.
The sources of the above information include published obituaries, US Census reports, and scattered marriage and divorce records. Without the opportunity to interview surviving members of Henry A. Haines’ branch of the family, several living members of this branch have not yet been identified. These unknown people may be named Ervin, Ring, Reichert, Sokolof, Nye, Field(s), Chambers, Bell, Niles or Brewer.