B A C K   T H E N

Dog, Squash & Composition

SRichmond Island, Cape Elizabeth. Charles Jordan and a load of squash. (Sharp focus alone does not a worthy photo make; this fifty-cent fleamarket photo prevailed over thousands of images thanks, in large part, to the small dog's impeccable sense of composition.) There were a “skinny million” Cape Elizabeth Jordans, and several Charles Jordans are listed as farmers from Cape Elizabeth and Spurwink in the 1890s. Richmond Island was the site of an ancient English fishing station.

Cities typically supported nearby truck farms, due in part to the ready supplies of stable and privy offerings. In the ’80s, Cape Elizabeth was said to be the nation’s leading cabbage-growing town, annually producing some 6,000 tons from small fertile valleys between outcroppings of ledge. Much went to Providence, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Also produced were 6,000 tons of squash. Winter lettuce and cucumbers were supplied to Boston-area “hot houses.”1 It was claimed that this unusual productivity was due to salt air and the many tons of seaweed used for fertilizer; not mentioned were the heavy applications of phosphate and excreta.2

Maine farmers and shippers of country produce...will rejoice in the recent breaking up of a powerful gang of swindling commission merchants and bogus produce dealers...in Boston. The full history of the operations of the conspirators in this gang would fill a volume...They have had money in abundance and the benefit at all times of able legal advice as to safe methods of stealing and escaping punishment. Osmer W. Roper was the leader of the gang...Roper and [Henry W.] Colson came originally from Stockton in this state. Their confederate, Cassius Clay Roberts, was at one time chairman of the Board of Selectmen in Stockton, and swindled the town out of $20,000 by forged and fraudulent issue of town securities. Roper, Roberts, and others of the gang were the owners of the McGilvery Block in Stockton, in the burning of which insurance companies were defrauded...The method of the conspirator...was to adopt a firm name closely resembling that of some well-known and reputable Boston produce commission house, and by offers above the current market prices tempt consignments from farmers and country shippers ...The confiding countrymen who shipped them carload after carload of produce never again saw the color of their produce or of the money promised...A helper of the produce swindlers in their operations was the “National Loan & Trust Co.,” a swindling, bogus banking concern of which Roper was the chief inspiration...Colson was a partner with Roper and James W. Harris in the swindling firm of Burbank & Co., and in the American Co-Operative Dairy Company...James W. Harris ...has a checkered career of criminal adventure...it is said, his wife robbed his safe of $21,000 in cash and absconded. He has operated of late at times as Dr. Harris, pile doctor...

—The [Bangor] Industrial Journal, July 24, 1885.

Text by William H. Bunting from A Days Work, Part 2, A Sampler of Historic Maine Photographs, 1860–1920, Part II. Published by Tilbury House Publishers, Thomaston Maine. 800-582-1899.