Remembering Lubec: Stories from the Easternmost Point

by Ronald Pesha

For over two centuries, many a helmsman felt a surge of deliverance upon first spotting the Quoddy Lighthouse, guardian of the easternmost point of the United States. During the foggy summer months, residents of Lubec take comfort in the symphony of tolling bells and crashing surf along the rocky Maine coast, where Native Americans once hunted seals and generations of fishermen tugged their boats ashore. In this collection of articles, historian Ronald Pesha revives the events and people of Lubec's past, uncovering stories such as the eighteenth-century naval hero and founder of the U.S. Coast Guard, Hopley Yeaton, and the nineteenth-century Lubec signature quilt. From the Quoddy Belle's California gold mine expedition to the colorful history of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Cat Food house, these tales from Lubec history will delight all readers.

160 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2009

Reviews

[John Galluzzo]

Lubec, Maine's history is told through West Quoddy Lighthouse, its sardine canneries, school days, local families, the building of the Roosevelt Memorial Bridge to Campobello and more.

That said, I don't often get angry at the Coast Guard. But this book made me mad as hell.

It's not Ron Pesha's fault. After all, as he says, since he's from "away," he can be no more than a chronicler and researcher of the local history of Lubec, although I think he has obviously short-changed himself. He writes as if he was there all along.

The situation is this one: the Coast Guard visited Lubec in the mid-1970s and exhumed the remains of Hopley Yeaton, the captain of the first revenue cutter and known as the Father of the Coast Guard, from his family farm for reinterment at the Coast Guard Academy in New London.

Good God! Why?!

Is a memorial monument not enough for the Academy? Would anybody look at it any differently if they knew that Yeaton was not actually buried at the Academy, a place he had absolutely no connection to other than the fact that more then a century after he died New London became the learning ground for the young men and women who were training for duty in a service that a century later grew out of the service with which he once sailed?

Yes, they got their permissions from family members - whatever that means two centuries after his death - but it left a void in Lubec. I can tell you one thing. If the Coast Guard ever gets the notion of moving the body of Captain Joshua James from my hometown, the bulldozers will have to go through me.

Coast Guard history is spread across the country, and each duty station can be a learning station for the men and women who serve. I've introduced hundreds of Coasties to Joshua James' gravesite over the past two decades. The men and women who serve at Jonesport should have the option of visiting Hopley Yeaton's gravesite where it originally was in Lubec, understanding him in his context, his surroundings, rather than meeting him in New London.

Sorry Coast Guard, you got this one completely wrong. And sorry, Ron. You did excellent work.

[Mary Clarke]

A worthwhile read

Plenty of interesting information for travelers to the area, just a little unorganized and jumpy in presentation. Glad I purchased it on kindle, good price.

[Mike Ehlers]

A copy of this was in every room of the B&B we stayed at in Lubec, Maine recently. Nice local stories, but probably had more meaning to those from the area.