The Wrack

Just added to the historic photo archive is this o…

In this week's York County Coast Star, Shelley Wigglesworth reports on the passing of Alexander Bacon Brook — "Sandy" — who owned and edited the paper from 1957 to 1977. The remembrances collected there reflect Brook's life as a newspaperman, but readers of the era also knew he loved York County's unspoiled environment. Here's a passage from an editorial he wrote in the paper — as Joyce Butler says in her history of Laudholm — "when preserving Laudholm Farm was still a dream"…

Uncle Nat called me last night and we had a delightful conversation. I chanced to ask him about a large pump that I noticed in the Sheep Barn while I've been working down there over the last two weeks. It turns out that it was the back-up pump for the hydraulic ram and was located down at the Mill. This pump was used if the rams malfunctioned or broke. The pump is a one-cylinder gas pump that Nat believes was manufactured in Vermont… quite an impressive looking piece of machinery.

A small envelope in the Laudholm archives holds two postcards dating from the early 20th century. They were passed along to Mort Mather by Ellie Carberry perhaps around 1992.

The gazebo beside the farmhouse, as iconic as any building on the Laudholm campus, was suffering from aged wood. The very structure was weakened to the point where something had to be done.

August 31, 1986, was for celebrating the new Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve.

From the Laudholm Trust historical archives (October 10, 1985): Mort gave a report on the computer. It has 10 mga bites of memory and will eventually hold our files on membership, businesses, foundations, gifts, and others. He is currently training Susan Sullivan and setting up the files for memberships. We have just begun and it will be a while before we see the benefits. …

A Laudholm Farms promotional booklet from about 1920 was reproduced several decades later and is now scanned for sharing online. Enjoy.

Once English colonists settled this land, it was home to only four families: Boade, Symonds, Clark, and Lord. Here is an abbreviated list of key historical events leading up to the dedication of the Wells Reserve…

1641    Henry Boade family moves to the site.

1653    King’s Highway is established past Boade’s house to the mouth of the Little River.

1655    Boade sells the property to the Symonds brothers. William Symonds becomes sole owner by the end of 1657.

1677    King Philip’s War. Symonds family flees to nearby garrison. Indians burn the farmhouse to the ground.

Those who've studied Laudholm history know that the current barns were built in the first decade of the twentieth century, after a 1902 fire burned the old barns to the ground. Some may recall that the fire "was started by burning, wind-blown shingles from a fire at the Goodwin farm a quarter mile away." *

A couple of years ago, Charles Lord became curious about where the Goodwin farm stood, so he asked his father's sister what she remembered. She pointed him "just up the road."