The Saco River Valley

For the antiquarian and antiques hunter, the Saco River Valley is a difficult critter. It is easily identified in full length on a map. It may be reached with ease. Once reached though, it vanishes. Oh the valley is there and one is there too; in one's auto and on "The Right Road" and in the right villages with the Saco River always just "over there" and: From the very ocean tip entrance to the river at Biddleford Pool onward, inward and "up" the river to Fryeburg, North Conway and the Presidential Range of the White Mountains is a vast… modernized, commercialized, re-civil engineered and atheistically… tacky… mess… of landscape, towns, third rate shopping centers, residential development and abandoned 20th century nothings that… rarely give a hint of antiquarian anything. "Wading through" this is the best term for what the antiques hunter does. Around each bend is not a colonial cape farm homestead undisturbed but, more likely, a crummy halfway there and half empty… strip mall… plopped down right where "the cellar hole used to be" but appearing to be in a sandy soil nowhere. Side roads, pieces of old road and village centers do not hint of colonial pioneer settlement. It is only at the Fryeburg upper end that the villages begin to be villages and not small gatherings of buildings driven by at fifty-five. Lost heritage… except to the keen and trained eye… is what one finds and sees when touring the "Saco Valley Settlements".
Oddly, the weight of the lost heritage is offset by the weight of the best book on the subject: G. T. Ridlon's SACO VALLEY SETTLEMENTS AND FAMILIES. HISTORICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, GENEALOGICAL, TRADITIONAL, AND LEGENDARY. Published by the author, Portland, ME, 1895. This bible size doorstop of a tome… 6 ½ pounds and 1250 printed pages… truly gets under the soil and into the river of the heritage of the whole valley AND may also be used a guide book for the colonial settlement of the rest of Maine (to 1790). The photographs of the book I have included with this post make the tome appear manageable. It is not. The bulk of the actual book is further bulked up by the bulk of the contents being a mind boggling weave of family names, dates and places that, unless being pursued for a one-family great, great, great grandfather's French and Indian Wars homestead family heritage… will overwhelm the reader. One will never understand the tome if one …attempts… the tome from a causal genealogical impulse. The best proof of this is that a great deal of the family data is available in modern single family name off prints taken verbatim from the book and published by the, now closed, Tuttle Co., Rutland, Vermont.
I have three copies of the whole giant book; one for sale in the rare book stock, my copy and… my grandmother's copy. She lived in Bethel, north and "up the notch" from Fryeburg. As an antiquarian there, she "HAD TO HAVE A COPY". That is where I first saw "it" or "one". She kept hers out like it was a Bible; flat on the dining room sideboard top often open to a page she was reading or examining …thereby making the appearance as if she was reading a Bible. If one looked at the page she was "on", one would see that it either related to the general history of the settlements up the valley OR the general history of the things (objects), tales or legends of the valley. THAT, as described in the title as "TRADITIONAL, LEGENDARY" is the true user value of the tome. Between and before the genealogical iota IS SCATTERED hither and thither fine antiquarian reading and antiques hunter tidbit. One would not suspect such fine scattered reading and one must "poke into" the book to discover it but once denoted, this scattered reading is found and followed with delight. A "In A Pillow Case to Dry" antidote, a "A Gineral Meetin" chapter, a "Garter-Loom" description and a "Colonial Relics" photographic illustration is what my grandmother "USED" the book for. Today this book is just as useful and… CHARMING… for the antiquarian as it was for my grandmother… and ME when I first "read it"; that is… "read around in it" like I STILL DO. The key word is charm.
Yes, yes we may all find modern expertise, clear color photography and "every fact is correct" assurance in our …a little too good "current material on the subject". THIS TOME is from the oldest era when there was no expertise and, at the 1890's date, antiquarians were "curiosity" collectors and their reference heritage just a little past the "I REMEMBER", "MY GRANDMOTHER" and …the garrets were still full of …"it". Charming for the book captures the charm of THAT view of "antiques" and never anticipates in any way the modern two lane fast lanes of "EXPERT" and "COMMERCE". Nope, old Ridlon just kept gathering hand written notes on any old Saco Valley anything he liked… for a quarter century… and then… paid to have it printed himself. Charming that is too for it leaves us with a singular reference book that DOES scratch the antiquarian's itch in a most pleasing way. It gives the Saco Valley it's heritage as if it is the music of a valley breeze.
There is no reprint of the whole book and it will never be cost effective to make one. Old copies are vended in the $250.-350. dollar range. Most people don't know the book exists and those that do are unaware that it has fine "old school" antiquarian content. The core interest in the book for the past fifty years has been it's rich genealogical lists.