When Salem merchant shipper David Pingree, Sr., was lured in 1841 by the scent of spruce, cedar, and maple to buy land in the northern part of Maine, real estate transactions didn't involve brokers and points and fixed-rate loans.
In fact, a good
bottle of bourbon may have been the best bargaining tool.
"Most deed owners at that time probably had never even seen the land they owned," said Pete Lammert, a forester with the Maine Forest Service who has been around sawmills since the age of nine. Which is why, he points out, it was easy for them to part with their property. "It's been said that people in bars all across Exchange Street in Bangor would sell a township deed for a bottle of liquor."
That part of Maine, it seems, was experiencing good and bad times. On the one hand, this relatively new state — having just entered the union under the Missouri Compromise in 1820 — was enjoying the prosperity of its lumber.
In fact, by the
mid-1830s, according to the Bangor
Historical Society, Bangor (the Pingree's base) was home to more than
300 sawmills. Located at the head of Maine's largest river, the Penobscot,
Bangor was an ideal spot. Lumberjacks would harvest trees from the North Woods
and send them down the river to Bangor. From there, the logs would be transported
further south to large mills and cities along the eastern seacoast. Investors
and fortune hunters swarmed the area, which boomed with luxury residences,
a grand hotel, and a vibrant downtown — enough so that the city hoped
to one day bypass Portland and even Boston in size and prestige.
By 1837, however,
the tide turned. Although the population of Bangor continued to grow, according
to the historical society, the city experienced the first of several financial
panics. Part of that had to do with lumber milling and the harvesting of trees
in other forest-rich states like Minnesota and Oregon. Bangor's prosperity
in the lumber industry began to fade.
Still, it's not
hard to imagine that David Pingree, like Henry David Thoreau, who visited
the area for the first time just six years after Pingree's purchase, would
have been impressed with his sizable purchase.
As Thoreau said
in Maine Woods, "I began to be exhilarated by the sight of the wild fir and
spruce tops and those of other primitive evergreens, peering through the mist
in the horizon. It was like the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy."
Or perhaps, like a bottle of rum to a deed holder.