Searsport Maine's Dinosaur Mansions

When I visited Searsport Maine with my husband many years ago, we saw many old Sea Captain homes - grand estates built during the time of the Searsport Sea Captains sailing the high seas from China to Cape Horn, and more.  Each house has great history.  We stayed at a B&B that was the former home of my 4th Great Grandfather, Capt. Green Pendleton.  Each house was a desirable purchase back then, but not now it would seem.

Today I came across an article about the sale of the Capt. John Willard McGilvery home at 120 Main Street in Searsport in 2014.  John was the uncle of the husband of my third great aunt, Ann L. McGilvery...obviously a distant in-law.  But it is not him that interested me, it is the fate of his home in Searsport, and that of the many other sea captain homes in that small town.

This McGilvery home was originally built in 1874 for $5000 when the average Maine home was built for $100.  It is worth about $800,000 but is taxed at $400,000 and sold recently as a result of an auction at around the $200,000 mark.  The McGilvery home is on the National Register of Homes which should be of value, right?  Evidently not so.  Why such a disparity in prices?

The home more recently was the "Carriage Inn" B&B, with many guests in its three guest rooms, which may well have been haunted according to hauntedrooms.com .  

Maine artist Waldo Pierce lived there in mid 1900s and the house still has some of his murals on the walls.  Again, valuable in real estate or it should be.

The auction realtor Mike Miller said, “It’s a beautiful, beautiful home. If you like old houses, it’s a doozy but the market is inversely proportional to the cost of heating oil. The effect of that on a property like this is enormous. We call them dinosaurs. If you have 4,500 square feet of old house with horsehair plaster, you’ve got a problem.”   Ah, so heating cost and maintenance is the culprit!

This is a 13 room, 6,000 square foot house with horsehair plaster.  The home has 12 foot ceilings which eat heat!   Five fireplaces which do only some to heat and may well cause heat loss. 

So. someone got a bargain for the house (which still has the original pumpkin pine floors) and the carriage house with a studio apartment above it.  Amazing.  Oh, perhaps the new owner has rented this out the apartment to help defray the skyrocketed fuel costs!

No matter what, I will always marvel at the homes of the Searsport Sea Captains.

Thank you, Bangor Daily News for this article.

http://bangordailynews.com/2014/06/13/news/midcoast/historic-sea-captains-house-sold-in-searsport/

House photo:  https://www.hauntedrooms.com/product/carriage-house-inn-searsport-maine

Elmer Amos Keyser's Tin Lizzie

My brother-in-law had a great uncle who died while cranking his Model T Ford! 

I have heard jokes about people kicking the bucket when 

Times Dispatch of VA 1911 Ad

they cranked their Tin Lizzies, but this biography snippet is reality. The Tin Lizzies were manufactured from 1908 to 1927; I have no idea which model or year his was.  Some came with electric starters after 1919, so his likely was an older model.  And they all came in black about that time.

A Model-T has only two speeds - high and low.  And a Tin Lizzie has only rear wheel brakes.  And it has a spark, an important thing for it to have.

There is a lever next to the steering wheel which advances (lever down) or retards (lever up) the spark.  To start cranking, the Model T uses the lever up or retard position.  To not use the lever up position is to endanger one's personal space while standing in the path of a potential moving vehicle.  Vehicle kick.  Not good.

So, Great Uncle Elmer Amos Keyser would have set the car to retard mode (lever up).

There he would have turned the Magneto or Off or Battery switch.  That switch must ultimately be in Battery mode, unless the battery is dead; then the Magneto came in handy. 

As we all likely know, the hand crank is located in the front of the car (yep, step in front of your Model-T which is always in gear UNLESS it is remembered that the rear brakes must be fully set first!  A memory lapse means you get mowed down.  Bad start of a road trip,  Elmer Amos did not get mowed down.

And that crank is right below what could be a sizzling radiator.  Elmer Amos had to pull out a wire ring, the choke, at the lower left corner of this cold or hot radiator, all the while facing the car.

With the Magneto switch engaged properly, he would have pushed the crank in and given it a mighty turn!  He should have only needed to crank the engine one or two turns and a tad bit more till he had ignition.  Coils buzz. If the engine is warm it may start now.  Cold starting evidently could mean cranking it with his right palm only.  His fingers and thumb all needed to be on the same side of the crank.  

He likely would have quickly pulled up the crank and the engine should have powered up, so he could hop into the car and give the throttle some rev.  And the road trip begins.

Did I get all that cranking stuff right?  Hope so, but not sure!

However it should have occurred, Elmer Amos supposedly was struck in the head with the crank and ultimately he died.

On April 28, 1926 in Greenville Pennsylvania, at the age of 58, Elmer Amos Keyser died while hand cranking his Model T Ford at his farm, 5 miles west of Greenville.  The death certificate said he died of acute heart dilatation which lasted for 10 minutes.  It could have been solely from the exertion of a "cranky" car and a head injury caused by the crank itself when the Model T fought starting.  Family tradition "says" the switch was in magneto mode which would definitely indicate the car was not easy to start this time.  But it is more likely that head injury was combined with a final moment of heart disease erupting into the acute heart dilatation.  Sad.

He was born in West Virginia in 1867 , married his wife Annie White on April 3, 1889 in Belmont, OH, farmed in PA, and died there, and was returned to OH for burial.  His widow Annie died in OH three years later at age 62 of uterine and ovarian cancer.

Info on Cranking a Model T from:

http://www.barefootsworld.net/ford-t-4-beginners.html