Margaretta Thurlow

Seeing Her Future in a Seed Packet

Margaretta Warren

1938

The new seed packets beckoned to her from the kitchen table; Margaretta Warren hurried through the breakfast dishes, eager to get out into her garden on such a beautiful morning. With only two at home, she and her father, the dishes were few. Yet washing them involved filling a kettle with water from the hand pump, then putting it to boil on the woodstove. The kitchen was already too hot from the morning’s cooking so she threw open the door to let in the fresh spring air.

For the thousandth time, standing before the iron sink, rinsing the plates and silverware and scrubbing the frying pan, Margaretta wished for a sink window. If it were up to her there would be one! No doubt different amenities would occur to other women, such as running water and electricity, but on this particular morning all she wanted was to have a look at the bright grass and the new leaves.

She’d been home for almost a year now since her graduation from the University of Maine last June. Sometimes those years at Orono seemed far away from her life now, keeping house for her widowed father, bringing his lunch to him every noon. Ralph Warren was an engineer, operating and maintaining the stone-cutting machinery at the Donan Quarry just down the road from their house (about 19 Fernalds Neck Road.) After all the years that he went to sea as engineer on fishing boats and for Eastern Steamship Lines it was nice to have him working so close to home.

The rough granite taken from the quarry was trucked over to Union to be dressed and finished, resulting in a fine gray building stone. Fernalds Neck granite had been used in Camden on the Village Green and for the library steps, and even in some of the University buildings at Orono. That had been a nice connection to Lincolnville, though Margaretta wasn’t sure which buildings contained the stone from home.

At the age of twelve Margaretta's world had been turned upside down when her mother, Hattie Warren, developed liver cancer. The operation that was performed at Knox Hospital came too late to help, and in March 1928 Hattie died. The family gathered for her funeral; in the spring she was buried in the family plot in Youngtown Cemetery. Hattie’s long ordeal was over, but Margaretta, the youngest of her five children, was left without a mother to guide her through the next crucial years of her life.

In the turmoil and uncertainty of her mother’s illness Margaretta had not attended high school. Now her Aunt Anna Harkness, Hattie’s sister, and her husband, Orris, invited her to come live with them in Veazie where she could go to Bangor High School. The family had rented out their farm, 188 Fernalds Neck Road, and moved to Veazie a few years earlier so their daughter, Elizabeth, who was eleven years older than Margaretta, could go to the University of Maine and still live at home. It was a good solution; Margaretta could live with family who cared about her while going to high school. . . . She didn’t know a soul at first, and just finding her way around was a chore.

But the years passed, and almost before she knew it, she was graduating. It was 1930, and she came back home. Her father, who had been working at the quarry since Hattie died, was living alone for the first time in his life. In the process, he’d learned to cook.

Before long he’d taught Margaretta to make biscuits and rolls. When she got stuck cooking something she called her sister, Lucy Knight, who lived near Lincolnville Center for help. She tended the house, doing the cleaning and washing just as she’d watched her mother do. Some of the neighbors had Delco battery plants to power a washing machine, but not the Warrens. Margaretta used her mother’s glass washboard and hand wringer on wash day, hanging the laundry out on Hattie’s lines.

Her favorite part of her mother’s work was the garden. The first spring she came back she planted the plot that had grown up in weeds since Hattie’s death. When her cousin Elizabeth saw it, she asked her to plant one for her too. She sent away to the Burpee Seed Company for both of them, and Margaretta happily planned their gardens.

Margaretta had been keeping house for her father for nearly two years when one day, out of the blue, Elizabeth offered to lend her the money to go to the University. That fall, 1932, Margaretta enrolled at the University of Maine at Orono.

And then, once again she was back on Fernalds Neck Road, a young woman with a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture. At least she was back for now, she thought, hanging the dishtowel to dry over the stove. The dishes were washed, wiped and put away, her household duties done for the moment. As she picked up the packets of seeds she looked hard at the name, “W. Atlee Burpee, Doylestown, Pennsylvania.” Not for the first time she silently promised herself that one day she would find out where these Burpee seeds came from. But first she better get these in the ground.

Read more about Margaretta in Staying Put in Lincolnville, Maine: 1900-1950

Several years ago, Margaretta Warren Thurlow, who passed away in 2009 at the age of 97, recorded her reading of Henry Van Dyke's The Story of the Other Wiseman. It was her favorite Christmas story, and hearing her voice once again should be a treat for all who knew her. Whether you knew Margaretta or not, settle back with the family and listen to a charming story read by this unique woman who lived through most of the 20th Century.

Click here to listen to Maragretta read Henry Van Dyke's The Story of The Other Wise Man.