6 NANCY C. HAINES
When Mary Briggs Haines gave birth to her fourth daughter, Nancy, in 1840 in Hallowell, Maine, she already had seven children between the ages of 1 and 11 in her household to care for. She would have been challenged to give her newborn the attention and care that she deserved. Somehow the challenge was successfully met and Nancy in turn would grow to be a capable helper to her mother as even more members were added to the family over the next 8 years. Nancy would marry a future celebrity and in her relatively short lifetime of only 38 years start to raise one son and two daughters of her own who would continue the growth of the family line.
Until she married, Nancy worked as a domestic in her parents’ home. In January 1861 in Maple Grove, Nancy married Warren Crosby Plummer (1834-1910) a printer from Presque Isle who had been born in Nobleboro, Maine. Whatever future they were planning together would be greatly impacted by an event occurring 1,300 miles to their south only three months after their wedding. The attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, began the Civil War and men like Warren Plummer would be called to the service of their country.
Warren joined the 15th Maine Infantry Regiment as an enlisted man on October 22, 1861, in Fort Fairfield. The regiment was organized in Augusta and mustered for a three-year enlistment. The regiment travelled by train to Portland and was transported by ships to Louisiana in 1862. In July, 1862 he was promoted to 2nd lieutenant in Company C. Later, the regiment served in Texas, South Carolina, the Shenandoah Valley, and then occupation duty in Georgia and South Carolina. On February 11, 1863, Warren was promoted to 1st lieutenant. Although the regiment did not lose many men in combat, it lost a high fraction of its soldiers to sickness. Of the total of 348 men lost during the war, 340 died of disease. The regiment was active until July 5, 1866, although Warren mustered out on February 17, 1865. He served his country for almost three years in a grueling environment. The Story of the Maine Fifteenth is available online at https://archive.org/details/storyofmainefif00shor/page/n5/mode/2up
After the war, Warren and Nancy relocated from Presque Isle to Titusville, Pennsylvania, where he continued to work as a printer and editor. Titusville is known as the birthplace of the American oil industry and Warren would have been very busy working in a rapidly evolving environment and culture. They had a son, Edward, born about 1867, but he passed away before 1880. Daughters Evangeline (1872-1905) and Beulah (1876-1953) were born in Titusville. Sadly, though, wife Nancy Haines Plummer passed away before 1880, leaving Warren alone to care for their young children. Under the circumstances of living in and covering the news of a wild oil drilling area, Warren could not have been a good father as well as an effective printer. He arranged for Ben and Margaret Wales in Woodcock, Pennsylvania, to board the girls and Warren became a boarder himself in nearby Meadville.
Warren Crosby Plummer had some special attributes which would lead him to become a national celebrity. He became the editor of various newspapers in Maine, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota. He was a gifted and motivational orator referred to by various newspapers as the “silver tongued orator of Aroostook County,” the “Dakota hustler,” “Parson Plummer,” and repeatedly given the honorific title of “Colonel.” He was elected to two terms to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1875 and 1876 as a Democrat. Years later, he became a stump orator for Republican candidates and spoke critically of the corruption of Tammany Hall in New York City. His speeches were highly regarded and he travelled throughout the country giving lectures. From 1891 through 1894, he was a presidential appointee serving as a receiver in the land office in Minot, North Dakota. His daughter Beulah supported his lecture activities. His papers from 1868-1905 are archived in the Houghton Library of Harvard University.
By 1900, Warren moved to Fort Fairfield to live with Beulah’s family in his declining years. Later, at 75 years of age and his body suffering from the pounding it took during his service in the Union Army, Warren would benefit from a “soldiers’ home” with more services than his family could supply. Almost fifty years earlier, the federal government had purchased such a site in 1866 in Chelsea, Maine, later referred to informally as Togus veterans home. It was the first national home for disabled volunteer soldiers to open in the country. The number of veterans living there peaked in 1904 at just over 2,800. Warren was admitted into Togus on May 8, 1909 and passed away there on February 15, 1910. His remains are in Togus National Cemetery. At the time of his passing, many publications across the country wrote glowing commentary of “Colonel” Warren C. Plummer.
Evangeline Plummer
Nancy and Warren’s daughters lived through struggles, too. Evangeline and her sister, Beulah, lost their mother at young ages and spent time boarding with non-family members. How Evangeline supported herself in early adulthood is unknown. Eventually, she left Pennsylvania. In the last decade of the 19th century, she lived in Wells, Minnesota, and visited “relatives” in St. Paul. She also visited Fort Fairfield and became acquainted with Harold Frederick Haines who happened to be her maternal first cousin. Harold was the oldest son of Evangeline’s uncle, Fred M. Haines. Notwithstanding their close blood relationship, they were married in Victoria County, New Brunswick, on April 19, 1900. Victoria County is directly across the Canadian border from Fort Fairfield. There are many stories through the decades about couples from Fort Fairfield wanting to be married but, knowing that their parents would not approve, eloping to nearby more accommodating officials across the border willing to perform their wedding ceremony without such concerns. Perhaps this wedding was an example of that practice. Two months later, Evangeline and Harold were lodgers back in St. Paul in the home of Dr. Marens Tessler who had immigrated to the United States from Russia ten years earlier.
Moving eastward, on January 29, 1901, Evangeline gave birth to Warren Plummer Haines in Berlin Mills, New Hampshire and, on August 14, 1902, to Frederick McKenzie Haines in Fort Fairfield. Another child was born to them in 1903 but died six months later. Evangeline’s grief ended on January 13, 1905, in Fort Fairfield as she passed away at age 32 leaving her husband, who was then farming on the Maple Grove Road in Fort Fairfield, with two boys ages 4 and 2. In 1908, Harold would marry Lula Johnston in Victoria County, New Brunswick, to provide his existing sons with a better home life. Harold and Lula would have seven children of their own, only five of whom would survive infancy. For details of Harold’s second marriage, see the Fred Haines family story.
Evangeline’s sons did not limit their vocations to farming as their father had. Warren had a wide-ranging career for having only an eighth grade education. He worked as a secretary-treasurer for Production Credit, bought the general store at Fairmount, and purchased potatoes at the Fairmount railroad siding for S. Nightingale & Co. He married Cecile Ham (1902-1946) who was a resident of Houlton at the time but who had attended Fort Fairfield High School at one time before becoming a graduate of Houlton High School as well as the University of Maine in 1926. Like Warren’s parents, he married Cecile in Andover, Victoria County, New Brunswick. She died at the Pratt Diagnostic Clinic in Boston in 1946. At the time of its establishment in 1931, it was the world’s largest clinic of its kind. It became part of what is called Tufts Medical Center today. By 1950, though, Warren’s economic circumstances had worsened. He was living with his parents and working as a farm hand for his father. About 1952 he moved to Seattle, Washington, and worked for Boeing Airplane Co. as a shop clerk. He also lived in Oregon during his 27 year career with the company. In 1979, he moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where other family members had retired. He passed away there in 1999 at age 98. Warren did not have any children.
Warren’s full brother Frederick was married at age 19 to Geneva Marceline Bourgeois (1903-1991) in 1922. Guess where the wedding took place. Perth, New Brunswick. Perhaps the fact that Geneva was born in Perth and had family living there was the dominant reason for the Canadian location of this wedding. The couple rented an apartment on Main Street in Fort Fairfield and Fred was a self-employed potato buyer-shipper. Their only child, Harold Frederick Haines (Sr.) (1922-2007), was born in Perth instead of Fort Fairfield likely due to Geneva having closer and greater family support in the neighboring town in Canada. Harold graduated from Fort Fairfield High School in 1939 and in 1943 became employed by New England Telephone and Telegraph in Presque Isle where two years later he met Ethelyn Kelley who would become his second wife in 1946.
Before marrying Ethelyn, though, Frederick married Maxine Kelley who grew up in Woodland, Maine. Very little has been found about this relationship, although at least one child was born to them, Richard Haines (1945- ). He married Sherry Lee Buxton in 1968, studied agricultural engineering at University of Maine, had two children and lives in Caribou. There is a possibility that a second child was born to Frederick and Maxine, Judy Haines, but perhaps did not survive for long.
After his marriage to Maxine ended, Harold and Ethelyn were married in Presque Isle and rented an apartment on Academy Street. By 1950, Harold’s parents, Fred and Geneva, had relocated to the Portland, Maine, area where Fred was a receiving clerk for a wholesale grocery company, Hannaford Brothers. Harold worked for the telephone company for 35 years and was a member of the Telephone Pioneers. He was active in Masons, Order of the Eastern Star, and the Anah Shriners. He and Ethelyn had four children:
· Lynn Haines (1947- ) married Jerry Tweedie and lives in Houlton, have 3 children and 2 grandchildren:
o Stacy Tweedie married Daniel Austin and they have children Zoe and Rider
o Kara Tweedie
o Jeremy Tweedie
· Linda Haines (1947-2013), Lynn’s twin, married Jim Ledger and passed away in Auburn, Maine.
· Harold Frederick Haines, Jr., born 1951 in Calais, married Tonia King (1955). He and Tonia were divorced in Bangor July-August 1983, joint custody awarded of two children, Ryan and Kori
· Susan Haines (1948-2000) married Terrence Gross, and passed away in Bucksport, Maine. They had three children, Jason, Kris, and Erik. Jason and Pamela Gross have two children, Jordan and Brandon.
One of the highlights of Harold’s family’s life was summertime fun at their camp on St. Froid Lake in northern Aroostook County. Haines family members had owned property on St. Froid Lake since about 1912. In 1959, Harold bought a lot and built a camp near the other Haines owned properties. Over many decades, the St. Froid Lake scene provided frequent opportunities for Haines and Cushman family members to stay connected even if they may have moved to various places outside of Aroostook County. Harold died in 2007 in Bangor and Ethelyn died in 2015 in Houlton.
Beulah Plummer
Like her sister did, Beulah would return to Fort Fairfield and gain a husband. She married Albert Theodore Hoyt (1875-1952) on June 22, 1899. It was not a marriage that would last. They lived on a farm on the Houlton road and later on the Dorsey Road raising three children: Charles Parsons Hoyt (1902-1967), Thomas Henry Hoyt (1907-1992), and Evangeline P. Hoyt (1909-2010). Farming during the 1920s was especially financially challenging and it would become even worse as the years of the Great Depression approached. By 1930, Beulah was divorced and living in Watertown, Massachusetts with her three children. The children had jobs. Charles was an advertising clerk for a soap factory, Thomas was a bottler for a beverage company, and Evangeline was a typist for a lawyer. The home also had a “roomer,” Erwin E. Hannon.
Charles’ life had its ups and downs. Charles had married Sarah Young in 1928, the first of three wives that he would have, but she was no longer living with him in 1930. At the time of his wedding, he was a sales manager for Lifebouy Soap Company. By 1940, however, he was a janitor working in an apartment building in Boston. In July 1949 he visited his father in Fort Fairfield and proudly stated he had been working for the US Government in the Arab Peninsula and he would be returning there for another 18 month assignment. In 1951, he married Ernestine Laney in Boston, but she filed for divorce in 1953 and had to file a lawsuit in August, Maine, because she could not locate Charles. His last wife married him in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1957 when he was working as a warehouseman. He died in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1967.
By 1940, Beulah was living in her son Thomas’s home. Thomas had a higher position at work, now a manager of the bottling and soda water company with an annual income of $2,500. He had married Isobel Marjorie Johnson (1909-1987) about 1935. They had three children:
· Richard T. Hoyt (1936-1998) born in Framingham, Massachusetts who had one child
· Gary Hoyt born in 1937 who married Marcia Moody and had four children: Thomas C. Hoyt (1965-2000), Barbara Hoyt, Kenneth Hoyt, and Daniel Hoyt
· Donald Hoyt (1945- ) who has two daughters: Kiley Hoyt and Darcy A. Hoyt
Beulah’s daughter Evangeline married the “roomer” Erwin Hannon and they had two boys:
· Peter Erwin Hannon (1938-2011). He and his wife Carol had two children: Deborah and Gregory.
· Paul N. Hannon (1941-
Research of the life of Nancy C. Haines and her descendants of Nancy C. Haines reveals her challenging living environments during her short life as well as the varied pathways taken by her descendants in four or more generations. Her widower husband, Warren Crosby Plummer, was the most famous character in her story and he witnessed their two daughters struggling to make their own families secure, in the process becoming self-reliant. This story is not complete, but it has included parts of six generations of Nancy’s descendants. The search continues for more of her descendants.