Hidden thorns
Local genealogist sheds new light on childhood of Kate Douglas Wiggins
Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
For Thelma Eye Brooks of Waterville, untangling the twisted roots of family trees is nothing new. After all, she has been a genealogist for 34 years.
But while researching her newly published genealogy book, "Calais Maine Families: They Came and They Went" (Heritage Books, 2002), she had to smile wryly.
"Our memories of childhood are not always what they seem. They are often what we were told in our younger years," Brooks said. "I found an example of that in the autobiography of Kate Douglas Wiggin."
Wiggin was a nationally renowned, turn-of-the-last century, children's author with strong family roots in Calais. A pioneer in the kindergarten movement, she is perhaps best remembered for "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," a charming children's story first published in 1903 and still being read by youngsters today. (A worn, 1962 second edition was last checked out from the Hubbard Free Library in Hallowell, in July 2002.)
"Rebecca" was made into two Hollywood films: The 1922 screen version was filmed with Mary Pickford; the 1932 version starred Shirley Temple.
"People don't always recognize her name, right off. But when you say 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,' they recall it," Brooks said.
In her later years, after her notable career, Wiggin wrote a glowing memoir, "My Garden of Memory: An Autobiography" (Houghton Mifflin, 1923), written shortly before her death in that same year and published posthumously.
Brooks' research, however, uncovered thorny discrepancies in Wiggin's rosy "garden of memory," departures from fact that remained unchallenged in Helen Frances Benner's biography, "Kate Douglas Wiggin's Country of Childhood," (University Press, 1956)
The real story of Wiggin's early childhood provides a fascinating, 19th-century glimpse of Maine's domestic, political and literary history.
What Wiggin erased from her life story, or more likely, what her mother never told her, were the sordid details surrounding Wiggin's derelict father, Robert Noah Smith, and the bitter circumstances of her parent's 1858 divorce.
"I think the mother never told her," Brooks speculated. "And she must have sworn all her relatives to secrecy. I don't think Wiggin would have told a lie. From what I've read, I just don't think she or her sister ever knew. Wiggin's mother had seven sisters and two brothers, and her father had seven siblings. What fascinates me, is how word of the divorce never got out over the years with that many relatives around."
Brooks, 77, is past-president of the Taconnett Falls Chapter of the Maine Genealogical Society in Winslow. Born and raised in Calais, she spent eight years researching the genealogy of that town's early citizens.
The quiet adventure had her sleuthing archives all over the country, including New Brunswick, Washington, D.C., Boston and Salt Lake City.
"I've looked at every court record between 1850s and 1860s in Calais — 50 to 60 books. By accident, while scanning the Calais court records looking for divorce items at the Maine State Archives in Augusta, I found the divorce papers of her parents," she said.
"Then, I did a little research and read Wiggins' autobiography. That got me to look up more about the divorce. I wondered why it was hidden.
"To my knowledge, nobody has published this fact — until now."
FAMILY COVER-UP
Wiggin was born Kate Douglas Smith, Sept. 28, 1856, in Philadelphia, Pa., but she was raised in Portland and Hollis. She wrote often of the state she loved.
Her mother, Helen Dyer Smith, grew up in a fine house located on Town Hill in Calais, built by her successful businessman father, Jones Dyer III.
"Like her seven sisters," Benner wrote, "she was lively, attractive, and beautiful."
Wiggin's maternal grandmother, Lydia Knight and her paternal great-grandfather, Jones Dyer Jr., were among the first Calais settlers.
"Knights and Dyers were the earliest families — among the first nine families in Calais," Brooks said.
Wiggin had good reason to be proud of her family tree.
Her paternal grandmother, Hannah Wheaton Smith, was descended from the family who organized Wheaton College in Massachusetts.
And, her paternal grandfather, Noah Smith Jr., who moved his family from Providence, R.I., to Calais in 1830, was perhaps the most notable scion on Wiggin's family tree.
A member of the Maine House of Representatives from 1850 -'53, he was elected Speaker of the House in 1854 and Secretary of State in 1858.
A strong Maine Law and antislavery man, he resigned from the latter post when elected Secretary of the U.S. Senate (1858 -'60). Later, he served as Legislative Clerk of that house and had official business with President Lincoln shortly before Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.
Despite his illustrious political ties, Smith Jr.'s fifth child, Robert Noah Smith, fell far short of family expectations.
The young attorney that Wiggin's mother married in Calais in 1852, and the father that Wiggin never really knew, was, according to her mother's divorce decree, an adulterer, wife abuser and drunk.
"He was the black sheep of the family," Brooks said.
In 1858, Helen Dyer Smith filed for divorce in the Supreme Judicial Court at Machias. The divorce was granted in October 1858, when she was about five months pregnant with Wiggin's younger sister, Nora Archibald Smith, born in Portland, Feb. 21, 1859.
Even by today's standards, her lawyer husband's 144-year-old indiscretions would raise eyebrows. But in the mid-1850s, the scandalous behavior surrounding the couple was a disaster that threatened to cast a dark shadow on his highly placed Maine family.
In the divorce decree, Helen Dyer Smith swears that she "always behaved herself as a faithful and affectionate wife." Then, she testifies:
". . . that the said Robert N., . . . in the month of January 1858, did live in adultery with a certain lewd woman and common prostitute called and known as 'Fanny Jones' for about one week, frequenting and dwelling for that length of time in a house of ill fame at said Bangor kept by said Fanny Jones, and by a certain other lewd woman and common prostitute called and known as 'Kate Harding'. . . . "
Reportedly, her husband's adulterous sprees continued through late May, when he sent to Bangor for Jones and arranged to meet her in Beddington, outside of Bangor. Then, he brought Jones to Calais and traveled about the county with her for several days, finally ending up at her house in Bangor.
Wiggin's father returned to the Bangor "house of ill fame" in June, "and made it his home and boarding and lodging house," according to the decree. He continued to travel around the county with Jones until early July.
"Your Libellant further represents that said Robert N. was drunken in his habits, and at times abusive, and quarrelsome," the decree states.
The record also states that he failed to appear in court three times. His wife sued for custody of her 2-year-old daughter, Kate, and won. No financial settlement is mentioned, however.
"I think what his wife stated in the divorce papers was true. She couldn't have libeled herself and gotten away with it. She was divorcing a lawyer," Brooks said. "There were divorces but not many in that time. It was not a frequent occurrence. In those days, if the husband left the wife, it took two years for the wife to get a divorce for desertion. It was hard to get a divorce then, judging from other cases and court records," she said.
Robert Noah Smith's siblings, one of whom was a minister in Philadelphia, lived upstanding lives, she added. One brother, Seth W. Smith, signed a peace treaty with the Passamaquoddy Indians.
"I think they all kept the scandal under wraps for family reasons," she said.
ROSE-COLORED LENSES
Wiggin's father died Dec. 29, 1860, only two years after the divorce. An obit in the Machias Union reported he was killed in a railroad accident in Springfield, Ill., at age 32, Brooks said.
Researching his death to learn more about the accident, however, was beyond the scope of her book, she said.
"Wiggin's autobiography says that he died on a business trip out West, when she was age 3. There is no mention of accidents," Brooks said.
Benner's biography also states, that after Wiggin's father died, her mother took the family to Portland. However, Brooks discovered she was already in Portland before he died, when her second daughter was born in 1859.
"She (Wiggin) never knew that her parents were divorced. She only knew what her mother told her. Wiggin was really 4 years old when her father died," Brooks said.
The early death of the father made it easier for Wiggin's mother to hide the divorce from the children, Brooks speculated.
In 1863, Wiggin's mother married a distant cousin, Dr. Albion Bradbury, and the family moved to Hollis, a little village 8 miles from Portland, to live in her stepfather's elm-shaded home.
"Kate Wiggin was likely too young to remember anything about her father," Brooks said.
Yet in her autobiography, Wiggin claims to have remembered waving goodbye to her father in Philadelphia, at age 3, when he was heading West.
Brooks doubts that ever happened.
Wiggin also writes that her father was educated at Brown and took his legal degree at Harvard.
The truth is, said Brooks, he never attended. "He isn't listed in any of the Harvard record books. I could find no evidence he went to law school. He never graduated from any college. Instead, he became a lawyer in Calais, probably by studying under another lawyer, which is how some men became lawyers without a law degree in those days."
"The Annals of Calais and St. Stephen," written by Rev. Knowlton, is the only real history written of Calais, Brooks said.
Knowlton describes Robert Noah Smith as: "an erratic genius, and an eccentric adventurer. His whole nature was adverse to the patient, persevering toil of lawyer life. Hence, he left town, after much travel both in this country and Europe, and after many a strange adventure, he came to an untimely end. . . ."
"His carousing lifestyle or divorce is not mentioned in any of the books I have researched about Wiggin's life," Brooks said.
The irony deepens when we read biographer Benner's description of Wiggin's inherited traits:
"From her mother came her happy nature and something of her attractive personality, though a share of her father's brilliance may have added a kind of magnetism to that charm."
If the truth be known, Robert Noah Smith's greatest attribute was to have fathered an extraordinary, gifted daughter.
Lynn Ascrizzi — 623-3811, ext. 731 lascrizzi@centralmaine.com