Bucksport, Maine

 From Dick Thurston;


I was born in Bucksport, Maine in 1931.  I graduated from Bucksport High 
School  in 1949. Although we moved to Florida in 1957, I will always carry 
many fond memories of my younger years growing up in Bucksport.

Taken from Cannom Placements at Ft. Knox

Following graduation from high school, I moved to Massachusetts to go to 
school. Following that, I enlisted into the U.S.Coast Guard. After being 
assigned to the Boston District's "Port security Unit" and with a steady 
income of $93.50 a month, I talked June into marrying me.
Our life together is another story to be told later.A fun, enjoyable story.


While living in Florida, a neighbor asked me if the founder of Bucksport,Maine, also founded Bucksport, S. C.  He said he understood that Col. Jonathan Buck was the founder of both towns. I can not find any  documentation proving this fact. Bucksport, Maine has a population of approximately 4,500 residents. (He was not right, but he was close. I added the connection story 
at the end of this blog.)

This is the reason we moved south

..
For anyone planning a vacation trip to New England, I highly recommend
spending a few days in the Bucksport area. You will be glad that you did.
Take a walk on the waterfront at the marina. From the Marina, enjoy the 
view of Fort Knox across the Penobscot River. Get a good look at the  new 
"Narrows Bridge", now in use with an observation room on the top of one 
of the towers. For you RVers, there is a very nice campground,"Shady Oaks",
 in Orland, two miles heading north on route US-1.

FT. Knox from Bucksport Dock

Monument to Col. Jonathan Buck
Buck's Tombstone with the leg 




Generations have puzzled over the legend
of Col. Jonathan Buck: which came 
first, the monument or the witch’s curse?




Ironically, Bucksport’s founder, a regional Revolutionary War hero, has 
achieved national prominence not for his service to his town and country, but 
because of the image of a woman’s foot and leg which appears on his memorial.

Attempts have been made to remove the image,
but it has always returned. Over the years, people knowledgeable about
monuments have explained that the image is the result of a natural flaw in
the stone, perhaps a vein of iron which darkens through contact with oxygen.

Town of Bucksport,Maine

New "Narrows Suspension Bridge"

Lobster with grandson Nathan
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 Now here is some information that you may not be aware of ! There is another town named "Bucksport",and it is located in the State of South Carolina, just west of Conway,S.C.

."Bucksville,

South Carolina, was founded by and named for: Captain Henry Buck (born 2 April, 

1800, at Bucksport, Maine; died 1 October, 1870, at Saratoga, New York), 

who came to South Carolina in 1888 (`the pioneer lumberman of the state,'

 according to Hemp-hill). Although born at the North and opposed to Secession, 

Henry Buck was loyal to his adopted State during the War for Southern 

Independence. He was a very prosperous man, owning some three hundred

slaves and many ships. Edmund Kirke said in Among the Pines (published in 

1862) that Henry Buck's ves-sels traded `to nearly every quarter of the globe, 

to the Northern and Eastern ports, Cadiz, the West In-

dies, South America, and if I remember aright, California.' "Kirke further wrote 

of Henry Buck's slaves: `a more healthy, and to all appearances happy set of

laboring people, I have never seen. Well fed, comfortably and almost neatly 

clad, with tidy and well-ordered homes . . . cared for in sickness by a kind and 

considerate mistress, who is the physician and good Samaritan of the village.'

"Edmund Kirke was an ardent and militant abolitionist. Probably he never had 

visited one of the mill villages of his native New England. Mrs. Henry Buck,

the `kind and considerate mistress . . . physican and good Samaritan,' was born 

Frances Norton Norman, daughter of Joshua S. and Sarah Jane Norman, of an

old established Conway, South Carolina family. She married Henry Buck on 

26 May, 1838, died 1 October1885."