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They would stop their bean dinner preparations in the kitchen
and would come cast their ballots.
Hearty food was necessary. The weather often played a
big part in Town Meeting. March weather could howl, and
Isabel’s diary recalls details of blizzards, heavy winds, and
whiteouts. On the morning of that 1959 town meeting,
Isabel says that “I am very sure that I came out of hibernation
a little early. 10 degrees when I got up, and at 9 AM only
about 20 degrees and snowing hard.” Three years earlier, on
March 17, she records “20 inches of snow in some parts of
Maine, and I guess that’s us … the kids were bug-eyed with
excitement. Went to bed by kerosene lamplight. Certainly
was a humdinger, lots of accidents.” All this was nothing new:
On March 9, 1931, Ellen Lawrence wrote that “They had the
Town meeting, not so many out as usual. They went over
the road with the tractor and down through our dooryard …
couldn’t get through the drifts …”
Accoutrements and Activities
After its construction, the Town House was outfitted and
residents were paid for its care and maintenence. Receipts
through the years note payment for maintaining the wood
floor, mowing the grounds, painting, supplying stove wood,
filling oil lamps, repairs, and supplying janitorial services
(billed to the town by Chester Lawrence, 1937). Supplies
were bought, too, and Dick Baston commented that
selectmen tried to be fair in their purchases by patronizing
businesses in both Walnut Hill and East North Yarmouth!
Charlotte Lawrence 1908–2003, niece of Chester,
remembered the Town House in a 1977 interview. There
were “unpainted wooden benches with sawdust on the floor.”
Spittoons were placed around the room. Oil lamps were set
in brackets along the walls, and there was a woodstove in the
corner.
The stove was vented by a chimney in the building’s large,
open room (see photo, p. 5). Sometime later, the Town House
was altered and the front section of the building was walled
off, creating a selectmen’s office to the left and a kitchen to
the right. Two corresponding chimneys were installed for
stoves to warm the crowd during those cold March meeting
days. Dick Baston remembers that these stoves had to be well
fed. “I’d go to Meeting with my father, when I was a boy of 10
or so, and I’d be underfoot. ‘Go get a stick of wood,’ he’d say
to me. That would be my job.”
On election day, voting booths were set up in the main
hall, Charlotte remembered. She recalled casting her first
vote at age 21 at the Town House in 1929.
Dick Baston recalls
that the town
always tried to be
fair by purchasing
from both East
North Yarmouth
and Walnut Hill
businesses.
In 1923 it was decided to “allow the Selectmen to let the
Town Hall to such parties and for such occasions and for
what price they judge to be right.” As a result, said Charlotte,
many lively events were held at the Town House—card
parties, dances, and minstrel shows. From an insurance bill
dated 1924, we know that the Town House was outfitted
with a piano!
Susie Sawyer lived next door in the former Chase house
with her parents Herbert and Minnie and four siblings. In
a 1937 diary, she records going to the movies at the Town
House several times during the summer. Horror and drama
were on the bill—she and “Millie Millard and Mary and Ed”
saw the 1934 Black Cat with Béla Lugosi and Boris Karloff. The
Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923, with Lon Chaney Sr.) was
shown on another night. Dot and Bill Hayward remember that
George Crichton ran the projector for Town House movies.
But of course, the Town House’s purpose was for official
business. Selectmen and other town officials used it as an
office, although in later years this was somewhat sporadic
and dependent on where they lived. According to town
historian Ursula Baier, Tax Collector and Treasurer Ernest
Allen and Town Clerk Carle Henry worked from their
The GAZETTE 7