Tombstone Tuesday ~ Officer Charlie Chase

Grave of Charles K.D. Chase 

1877-1958

Buried in the family plot of his first wife,

Artena Maud Carney

Evergreen Cemetery

Portland, Maine

Charlie Chase was a familiar figure around Morrills Corner, in Portland, his policeman's beat. After his first wife died in 1949, he courted and married another recent widow, my great great aunt, Catherine "Cassie" Hamilton Bustin.*  She outlived him by 7 years, and is, herself, buried with her first husband, Thomas Herman Bustin, in Pine Grove Cemetery in Falmouth, Maine.

*Ancestry.com. Maine Marriages, 1892-1996 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2003.

Original data: Maine State Archives. Maine Marriages 1892-1996 (except 1967 to 1976). Maine. Index obtained from Maine Department of the Secretary of State, Maine State Archives,

Tombstone Tuesday ~ Capt. Andrew Leighton

In the West Cumberland Methodist Cemetery 

In memory of

Capt. Andrew Leighton

who died

June 16, 1830

AEt. 68.

Andrew Leighton, my fourth great grandfather, was born in Falmouth (now Portland) Maine on June 7, 1762, the son of Joseph Leighton and Mercy Hall. In 1780, he married Mary Weymouth of Gray, Maine, and, with her, had 12 children.

In 1790, he was living in North Yarmouth and in 1808 was elected a Captain in the 6th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia.

Capt. Andrew laid out the county road from Falmouth to Portland, and was a prosperous lumber trader, dealing in ship's timber.

In 1800, he built and operated the Leighton Tavern on the Gray Road in West Cumberland, which was the stage route from Falmouth to Bakertown (now Lewiston).



Captain Leighton died in North Yarmouth on June 16, 1830.

In 1971, the tavern was moved to Schooner Rocks, in Cumberland Foreside and restored.

Matrilineal Monday - Bertie McCain Smith

My maternal great-grandmother, Bertha A. McCain

Bertha A. "Bertie" McCain was born on January 10, 1882, in Florenceville, New Brunswick, Canada, the fifth of five children of John McCain (1835-1896) and Harriet A. Harnett (1839-1905).

Bertie, her mother Harriet, and her sister Bess

The 21 year old Bertie, on January 24, 1903, married Wylie Herbert Smith (1874-1952), a 28 year old young man from Elgin, New Brunswick, a 1901 graduate of Acadia Divinity College, and soon to be Baptist preacher. Their first child, a daughter, Evelyn Augusta (1904-1978) was born a year later.

In 1905, she and her young family moved to Maine, settling first in Portland, where their second child was born a year later, a daughter Harriet Cheney (1906-1985), later to Norridgewock, in Somerset County, and then back to Portland.

Bertie died at her home on February 24, 1930. One daughter was married and the other, my grandmother, delayed her planned wedding until later that year, allowing for a proper mourning period.

She is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, in Portland, Maine, alongside her husband.

George's Purple Heart

TODAY IS PURPLE HEART DAY

George Dalton Libby's Purple Heart

George was posthumously awarded many medals for his bravery in the early days of the Korean War.  You can read more about him here and elsewhere.  He is my first cousin 1x removed.  I helped his immediate family replace his medals after they were lost.