“He was a good and kind neighbor. If you needed anything, he was always there to help solve the problem.”
Here in Maine, that’s about the highest compliment a man can receive. And that’s what everyone says about Ken Cole, who recently passed away.
“He just knew everything about the outdoors, about what you could eat and not eat from the wild; I was so upset one time when there was a class being organized. Mr. Cole was going to instruct it, you know, about wild foods. And then they couldn’t have it because there weren’t enough signed up. It upset me so because I really wanted to take that class.”
“One time – probably more than once – he did a program for the Historical Society on edible plants, and it was so interesting, but then everything he talked about or wrote about was interesting. He was a really special person.”
“They’ve always been good neighbors and would always help out if they could. And they lived very simply, you know. Nothing fancy.”
I listened to my peers talk about Ken Cole. He, too, was my neighbor, living way down off the Land of Nod Road, several roads from where I grew up on the Chute Road. Like a favorite tree, or other landmark, he was just “always there,” and he surely will be missed. I’ll not have the chance again to check something out with him.
He was always Mr. Cole to me. Call it old-fashioned respect, or the way I was raised, but I couldn’t bring myself to call him “Ken.” It was as though he were the teacher and I was the student.
Mr. Cole was also someone on whom I could depend for a critique of something I had written, especially if there was an error, and I always appreciated this opportunity to set the historical record straight.
The house in which Mr. Cole was born, has always been called the Ma Smith House. I never knew why, and so I tried to research the place. A number of years ago, I wrote about this house and within a few days of the publishing of the article, Mr. Cole was at my desk with neatly typed pages in hand and the comment that there were a number of errors, and “I just had to set the record straight.” And so he did.
His original text is in the “house files” at Windham Historical Society. Here’s what Mr. Cole told us about his birthplace:
“This big white house – the Ma Smith House – was started in 1749 and finished in 1752. There was a 10’x10′ log fort across the road from the house, built of upright logs buried 6 ft. into the ground and extending 15 into the air. The remains of these logs still showed when the area was excavated in the early 1930s.
“Joshua Lowell purchased the house and 100-acre lot in 1773 and John Lowell became the next owner. John’s son Urban Lowell stayed on the farm and bought it from his father in 1841. Urban’s oldest child was named Abbie. She inherited the property in 1890. She was a school teacher and the school where she taught was torn down to make room for the Park Danforth building.
“When she stopped teaching, she married a hired hand and shoemaker from her farm, by the name of Moody. She persuaded a couple named Charles and Nettie Smith to come and live on the farm and run it, and promised they would own the property, after her death. The Smiths agreed.
“In 1919, Abbie Lowell Moody died and the property went to the Smiths. The Smith couple had only one child, a daughter who died in childbirth. The baby girl was adopted by the Smiths. Her name was Caro E. Smith.
“Caro Smith had a son born at the old homestead while she was married to Kenneth Cole, Sr. Due to divorce proceedings, the court allowed baby, Kenneth Cole, Jr., to be raised by his grandparents, the Smiths.
“Ma Smith, as she was known, ran a tearoom and banquet hall on Roosevelt Trail from the early 1920s until she was hit by a car in 1938. She sold the tearoom, and in 1939, it burned. She got her nickname from an advertisement for the restaurant, which said, ‘We don’t know where Ma is, but we’ve Pop on ice.’ (bottled soda used to be called soda pop).
“On Sept. 17, 1936, the property was given to Kenneth Cole, Jr. with the promise he would take care of the Smiths until their deaths. Caro Smith had remarried and was given part of the property with a new house on it. Ma Smith died in 1952 while she and Charles were living with Ken and Lena Cole, in a new home they had built where the tearoom used to stand. Charles Smith continued to live with the Coles until his death in 1955. The old homestead was rented during this time, until it was sold to a neighbor, Walter Pulkkinen, who restored it and lived there until 1965. Many people have owned the property since then.”
When Kenneth Cole retired by his position as National Director of Volunteer Training for the Boy Scouts of America, he returned to Windham and what was left of old lot #36 and built a new home, just a little way from where he was born.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
