Sears Island, Maine, and my Mom, Marjorie Bennett

This two-mile long and one-mile wide island is close to the mainland of Searsport Maine. The Wabanaki American Indians called it Wassumkeag which means shining beach or bright sand beach. When the island was discovered by European explorers before 1775 they named it Brigadier's Island. Regardless of its moniker, this land has historically been an uninhabited or sparsely populated island.  

The island, today and in the days when my mom lived in Searsport, was separated from the mainland as a barrier island due to its tidal bar.  When the tide came off  Penobscot Bay, it was an island; when the tide rolled out, she could walk or stroll to the island but, of course, had to be alert to the tides and the daylight so as not to get marooned overnight. 

I don't believe there were any farmhouses there when my mother was, but were in generations before her time in Maine. Actually, in the first 1790 census six families lived or squatted here among the birch and maples of Maine. Now visitors can find stones marking the cellars of long gone homes.  In 1917 a gas-powered piece of farm equipment created a fire that destroyed the few Sears Island farm buildings. 

During prohibition, the island was a secluded way to the smuggle liquor off the waters of the Bay. Perhaps this even occurred when mom played on the island - in the daytime, thank goodness - when she was still under the age of 10.

Mom and her brothers used to love to go to Sears Island to camp, swim, gather shells, picnic, snowshoe and horseback ride.  Hiking might be an adventure to people today, but in mom's day hiking was a mode of transportation - her mode, a means to an end. I believe the island is about 2 miles from her home on Turnpike Road in Searsport.  Since she walked to neighboring towns often, such as Stockton Springs to roller skate, the trek to Sears Island was a fairly short half-hour walk for her. Today there is a causeway to and from Sears Island, but no further.  Once on the island, people walk, bike or ride horseback to see more. 

LtoR: Albert, Gerry and Marjorie Bennett

Some sounds mom would hear were the waves lapping along the shoreline, whispering and swirling winds and leaves, and the unique bantering of sea gulls...and silence, blessed silence. 

The island waters in her day were known for abundances in lobsters, clams, scallops and such. No wonder I like seafood (but not fish particularly). Although I have been very near to Sears Island, I did not walk in her footprints of long ago. My grandmother and my great grandmother also walked and played on this island. I should have.

Love you Mom!

Ruth Ridgeway Cator Fowler Ultimately Dies as a result of Bootlegger Auto Crash in DC

Ruth and two of her Cator children

On July 7, 1929, at the age of 33, Ruth Fowler died of pneumonia following an auto accident approximately two weeks earlier.  Ruth's sister "Aunt Elvie" (Mrs. Elva J. Ridgeway Trammell) relayed the story to the family and Mary Alice Cator told it to me many years later:

In 1929 my husband's grandmother, Ruth Alice Ridgeway (Cator) Fowler lived with her husband George and her three daughters by her first husband, my husband's grandfather Charles Conrad Cator, Jr. 

The Fowlers resided at 204 F Street NW in Apartment 2.  He worked in "autos."  Georgetown University has a law center campus here now.

George Fowler and Ruth had been driving around one of the street circles in Washington DC when revenuers, chasing bootleggers, slammed into their car.  Ruth struck her head very hard. She was taken to Providence Hospital but refused to stay there.  Ruth was brought home on a stretcher to their apartment on F Street.

The accident took a lot out of her. One of Ruth's friends cared for her at home for two weeks even though that friend was suffering from a cold.  While recovering, Ruth contracted the cold or the flu. Her system failed to be able to handle the overwhelming accident and illness simultaneously and she worsened.  Ruth was taken back to Old Providence Hospital in Washington DC where she died.

Grandmother Ruth had no children by her then husband, George Fowler, but Grandmother Ruth and Granddaddy Charlie Cator Jr.'s children were still underage.  Bernice (in the flowered dress) was born in 1915, was only 14; Evelyn was 12; and Mary Alice Cator was just 11.  It is said that the three girls spent a short time in a local orphanage before being moved to live with their father, Charlie Cator, in Washington DC.  This meant that Charlie Jr and his 2nd wife Florence were now parenting 6 daughters including Jerri (Florence's daughter), and both Dorothy and Cora Cator, children of Florence and Charlie Jr.  All were living at 910 G Street, SE in DC.

About Prohibition and Washington DC

During Prohibition, people, states and political sides referred to themselves as "wet" or "dry." During this American experiment in trying to be freed from alcohol, the efforts were quickly unraveled. 

In the book, Prohibition in Washington, D.C.: How Dry We Weren't it was stated that bootleggers routinely, week after week, brought 22,000 gallons of whiskey, moonshine and the like to DC's 3000 speakeasies.  The bootleggers traveled about town with their clandestine goods, the revenuers raced after and tried to detain and arrest the bootleggers and confiscate their illegal goods.  Prohibition began to fade in 1933. 

It is interesting to note that drinking was not illegal. Enforcement was aimed at banning or barring the making, selling and shipping of alcohol for consumption.*

* http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2012/12/five-interesting-facts-about-prohibition%E2%80%99s-end-in-1933/