5. JOHN WINGATE HAINES
The second son of J. Wingate and Mary Haines to become a farmer was John Wingate Haines, born in Hallowell, Maine, on August 12, 1837. John did not farm near his family in Maple Grove. Instead, he bought farmland on the north side of the Aroostook River. Until 1867, there was no bridge over the river which made it difficult for John and his family to visit each other. Perhaps there was a ferry service or some individuals could have positioned canoes for their use to cross the river when desired. At certain times of the year, the river could be crossed without a bridge. In winter, the river froze over and in late summer, the river ran fairly shallow so it could be forded in certain places. Today, it is hard to imagine fording this river because the water level in the river has been raised above its natural level by Tinker Dam which was constructed in 1907.
The 1877 Colby and Roe map of Fort Fairfield shows the name “J. Haines” in Section 29 in the former Plymouth Grant township, the township directly north of what later became referred to as Township Letter D or Letter D Plantation. John’s property had frontage on the Aroostook River, not far east of the Caribou town line. The 1860 Agricultural Census report shows a “John Haines” owning 14 acres of improved land and 146 acres of unimproved land. The combination of 160 acres he owned, exactly one-quarter square mile, is frequently the land area that surveyors assigned to numbered sections on the township maps used by the state for selling land.
Plymouth Grant in the “District of Maine” where John bought his land was a 36 square mile township created by deed of agents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on January 19, 1807, for the benefit of the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, so that that town could use the proceeds of future land sales “to aid in building a breakwater to protect their harbor.” (Ellis, 1894, p. 26) The first settler in the so-called Plymouth Grant was Michael Russell who arrived there sometime before 1820, the year Maine gained statehood upon separating from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Russell was a British subject living in Canada and believed the place of his settlement was part of the British Empire. During the next two decades, he would find himself in the center of a serious international disagreement as Great Britain and the United States nearly came to war over the location of the boundary line. After the dispute was officially resolved in 1842, the pace of settlement in Plymouth Grant quickened, although it grew in population slower than the township south of it. In 1859, Plymouth Grant petitioned the legislature to change its name to Sarsfield Plantation. By 1867, Sarsfield Plantation and the former Letter D Plantation would be combined into a single township, Fort Fairfield. The motivation for combining the towns was to afford the construction of a bridge over the river that divided them. Finally, John and his family in Maple Grove could visit each other more easily.
John would marry three times and father ten children, only three of whom would have children of their own who would survive a year or more. His first wife was Elizabeth Davis (1845-1868). They had two children, only one of whom lived to adulthood, Harriet Erskine Haines (1864-1886) called “Hattie.” Her mother, Elizabeth, died when she was only four years old. On Hattie’s 19th birthday, she married Wellman Jenness Delano, a farmer in Easton, but it was a tragically short marriage. She died at age 21 on February 19, 1886, having given birth to one daughter, Respere Delano. The infant died at age 9 months, only eleven days after her mother passed away.
John Wingate Haines married his second wife, Margaret Findlen, on December 28, 1868, in St. Denis Roman Catholic Church in Fort Fairfield, a little over nine months after becoming a widower. Margaret’s parents were born in Wexford County, Ireland, migrated to North America and became very early settlers in the local area. Margaret’s brother, Joseph, was one of the local citizens that CH Ellis mentions in his History of Fort Fairfield. “He is a successful farmer, a reliable, influential, and much respected citizen of the town.” John’s choice of his second wife brought together two capable families but with different cultural backgrounds. Their children:
1. Daniel Wendall Haines (1871-1947), potato shipper and businessman in Fort Fairfield
2. Julia Haines (1873-1944), married and lived in Massachusetts
3. Myra Marjorie Haines (1883-1969), married and lived in Danvers, Massachusetts
4. Martha Haines (1875-1889), died young in Fort Fairfield
5. John Haines (1877-1889), died young in Fort Fairfield
6. Charles Henry Haines (1879-uncertain of year of death), lived in Cleveland, Ohio
7. Albert Leslie Haines (1881-1967), lived in Salem, Massachusetts, and worked as a brakeman on the Boston and Maine Railroad
8. Asa Haines (1884), died at 3 months
The family lost three members in 1889 of typhoid. Children Martha and John died in October and their mother Margaret passed away at age 44 in December leaving John alone to care for their four surviving children still living at home whose ages ranged between 8 and 16. Four years later, John married his third wife, Mary O’Connor Holly of Westboro, Massachusetts. In 1906, they moved off of the farm and resided in a house on Fort Hill Street. John suffered multiple strokes in April 1913 and passed away leaving a large number of descendants.
Daniel Wendall Haines
Dan Haines was a notable citizen throughout his life in Fort Fairfield. He served on the town’s Board of Selectmen, served the citizens of the town in the state House of Representatives, was president of the Fort Fairfield Rotary Club, and was a director of a fertilizer company and president of the Aroostook County Farm Bureau. The Fort Fairfield Review notice of his death had a flattering description of him: “Dan had a keen mind, a good sense of humor and a ready wit. Combined with his pleasant personality, they had won for him a very large number of friends throughout all of Aroostook County.”
Dan was married twice. At age 27, he married Nina Clark of Springfield, Maine, in December 1898. After ten years without having a child of their own, they adopted Claire who was born in Bangor on April 8, 1908. Claire’s path through life was more comfortable and less pioneer-like than that of many of her contemporaries in their rural farming community. She was graduated from Fort Fairfield High School and colleges in Boston. She became an “expert” golfer and instructed many of the early golfers at the newly constructed Aroostook Valley Country Club. She married Hubert Nevers of Patten and they made their home there. She taught elementary school until her first son, Richard, was born in 1933. Their second son, Gary, was born in 1936. Clair also was a Red Cross volunteer during World War II and maintained an active interest in Patten schools and athletics throughout her life. She passed away in Houlton in 1993.
Richard Nevers, a graduate of the University of Maine, married Elizabeth Brockway of Canada in 1957 in Orono, Maine. They had three children, Danane (married surname of Jaffe), Magaret (married surname of Billian), and Donald. In Richard’s early career, he worked as a department manager in the Boston area. Shortly after their marriage, though, they lived in Oklahoma while he served in the US Army. In 1996, the couple moved to Fort Pierce, Florida. Apparently all of these people are alive at the time of this writing.
Gary Nevers was born in Island Falls and was a graduate of Patten Academy and Burdette College in Boston. He loved basketball and played through high school and college and later became a referee and game official. He began his career with Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. in Boston followed by a 40 year career with American Optical Co. in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. The last 15 years of his career was working as an optician at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. In 1956, he married Carletta Pettengill and they raised two daughters, Jan and Kim. Kim married Brice Craven and they had two children, Scott and Laura Craven. Gary passed away in Hanover, New Hampshire in 2010.
Dan’s second marriage took place in 1946 in Portsmouth, NH, one year after Nina had passed way. His marriage to Marion Holt, however, was brief as he died on July 19, 1947, in Fort Fairfield only nine months after marrying Marion.
Julia Haines
Julia married Arthur Ellsworth Reed in Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1895. Their first child, Helen, lived only one day. On December 22, 1898, Julia gave birth to Arthur Haines Reed. According to the 1900 US Census for Wakefield, MA, at the date of the census Julia and son Arthur were living with her husband’s aunt. Arthur Ellsworth Reed was apparently absent from them temporarily and later the family lived in Danvers. Beginning in 1934, Arthur and Julia wintered in St. Petersburg, Florida. Arthur died in 1944 in Danvers. Their son, Arthur Haines Reed, married Marjorie Humphries (1900-1974), born in England, and they lived in Bloomfield and Lake Parsippany, New Jersey, most of his adult life where he had a vulcanizing business. At the time of his passing, however, he had been living in Boca Raton, Florida, for a year. They had one child, also named Arthur but with a different middle name than his father and grandfather: Humphries. At age 18 he was working in his father’s business. He then served in the US Army during World War II from July 1943 to April 1946 and may have suffered a disability. He married Joan Antoinette (1927-2020) and they had two children: Susan C. Reed (1948- ?) and Richard A. Reed (1949-?). Susan married Joseph Moscato and Richard married Dorothy I. Fallucca. Arthur Humphries Reed died suddenly at age 58 at the Boca Raton Community Hospital. Nothing further has been found about the possible descendants of this sub-branch of the John Wingate Haines family line.
Charles Henry Haines
Charles’ life story showed a willingness to move from place to place and he was responsible for more descendants than any of his siblings. By 1900, he had left his home in Fort Fairfield and was working as an attendant at the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane. In 1901 in Philadelphia, he married Prudence May Steele (1878-1958) when he was 21 years old. Moving back to Fort Fairfield for a few years, they had children and then moved their whole family to Pennsylvania. Even later, they relocated to Cuyahoga County, Ohio.
By 1910, Charles and Prudence had three children, Margaret Steele Haines (1902-1988, born in Fort Fairfield), Marion Ella Haines (1904-1994, also born in Fort Fairfield, and Lester Charles Haines (1908-1963, born in nearby Caribou, Maine). At the time, the family was living in Logan, Blair County, Pennsylvania and Charles was working as a motorman on a streetcar. By 1920, the family had moved to Cleveland and Charles was working as a meat cutter in a butcher shop. They also had two lodgers living with them in their rental unit. During World War II, Charles’ military registration card reveals that he was living in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1942 working in a public market. Inexplicably, on his registration card he listed his brother Daniel rather than his wife Prudence as the “person who will always know your address.” Charles’ date of death has not been determined with certainty. He may have died in 1945. Possibly, he may have died in Brooklyn, New York, in 1958, and by then have a different wife, Dorothy. His first wife, Prudence, eventually moved to Lakewood, Ohio, and passed away in 1958 in Lorain County, Ohio.
All three of Charles and Prudence’s children had families. Oldest daughter Margaret married John Gibbons Fenton, an accountant, in 1927 and they had two children. Margaret named her first child after herself and the second one after her sister. Having two Margarets and two Marions one generation apart in the same family story can be confusing to a casual reader. Daughter Margaret Jean Fenton (1929-2013) was born in Ohio and passed away in Laurelwood, Oregon, and daughter Marion Kirkby Fenton was born about 1934. Daughter Margaret was married twice. She married Charles Donaldson Glazzard in 1950 and their four children were born between 1954 and 1958): Charles, Eric, Kim, and Teri. She divorced Charles and in 1977 married Theodore Grady in Sacramento, California. They may have had two children together or Margaret may have adopted two of Theodore’s children by another mother: Margie and Ed. Margaret would have been age 48 when she married Grady. Without seeing birth records for these two children, we cannot conclude whether she was the biological mother of them. Nor do we have the birth dates and birth locations of the two Grady children. More research is warranted.
Daughter Margaret’s younger sister, Marion, married William Alfred Dexter in 1954 and they had three children: Kathleen Louise (1955), Karen Sue (about 1957), and William Scott Dexter (1968, born in Dallas, Texas). Marion and William Dexter divorced in 1979 in Dallas, Texas. All of their children married. Kathleen married Michael Ray Lehnhoff in 1977 in Dallas, Texas. They have a son, Charles Aaron Lehnhoff, born in 1982 in Kerr, Texas and he married Roseanne Aleman in Bexar, Texas, in 1985. Karen married Ben Ralph Shipman in Jefferson, Texas, on November 23, 1985. They have a son, Todd Matthew Shipman, born in 1990 in Jefferson, Texas. William Scott Dexter married Jennifer E. Weekley on 1992 in Dallas, but they divorced in 2011 in Collin, Texas.
The second daughter of Charles Henry and Prudence Haines, Marion, may have been married three times. Her first marriage to Howard W. Scanlon took place in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1925. In 1932, Marion married Edgar M. Robinson and one child was born to them, John Haines Robinson, in August 1934 in Lakewood, Ohio. In 1955, John married Barbara J. Bauer in Summit County, Ohio, and they had two children, Robert and Sarah.
Charles and Prudence Haines’ youngest child, Lester Charles Haines (in some documents written as Charles Lester Haines), married Genevieve Belle Boose in 1931 in Cleveland. Lester worked as an accountant and later as a salesman. They had one child, Donna Joan Haines (1936-2021), born in Lakewood, Ohio. Donna earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degrees and was a teacher and counselor at various levels as well as active in her church. She married David Eugene Lowman in 1959 (divorced before 1992) and they had three children who survived childbirth: Douglas, Dee Anne Louise, and Deborah Lyn Lowman, all born in Cleveland. Douglas married Cathie Vishnevski and they have two children, Alec and Grace. Dee Anne married Christopher Scranton and they have one child, Maximillian Lowman-Scranton.
Only four generations of the John Wingate Haines family line have been largely identified so far. The most recent generations of this line are almost completely unidentified. Research continues for possible members of the line with surnames such as Jaffe, Billian, Nevers, Barnard, Craven, Small, Moscato, Reed, Glazzard, Pancoast, Grady, Lehnhoff, Shipman, Dexter, Robinson, Carpenter, Lowman, and Lowman-Scranton.