| ◄ |
Edwin J. Kalloch Edwin was a son of Lore A. Kalloch & Eliza (Hart) Thorndike, Grandson of Benjamin Kalloch & Esther Libby |
► |
Edwin Kalloch house - N. Warren, Maine
|
|
|
Veteran Woodsman Is Honored
——
E. J. Kalloch, 92, Is Given Axe
Special Despatch to The Press Herald
Union, Aug. 23 —Edwin J. Kalloch of Warren who will be 92, on Dec. 26 this year, was guest of honor this afternoon at the finals in the wood chopping contests conducted the past four days at the Fair by Perry Greene of Augusta, champion woodchopper of the world. The oldest active woodsman in the state, Mr. Kalloch was presented with a three and a half-pound axe made by Emerson and Stevens, of Oakland, his name, Edwin J. Kalloch, in gold on its handle.
Mr. Kalloch, rare for his years, erect in carriage, keen of eye and ear, is of pure Scotch descent, and is the oldest active woodsman in the state. Fifty-five years ago, he was hunter and trapper in Aroostook County, for 10 years, until the beaver became protected. In those days, he was a dead shot, and he still has Winchester 45 rifle, which he used at that time. It stands in the corner of the living room in his home, the muzzle protected by a cloth, the barrel in perfect condition. On the wall of that room is a pencil sketch of the log cabin which he occupied in the woods for many years, the sketch by a partner of that time.
Mr. Kalloch’s axe used by him in cutting and splitting up his six cords of wood the past Winter and Spring, has a three foot handle of native white oak, which he put in himself.
He was born at North Warren, the son of Lore and Eliza Thorndike Kalloch.
At one time he was motorman on the Augusta-Gardiner Railway, and in 1893, his hand was on the controls of the first car taken from the car barn at Glencove, for the Rockland, Thomaston and Camden Street Railway. In addition, he drove the first electric car ever to come to Warren, for that same company after the lines were extended. The lines of the company have since been discontinued, the tracks taken up, the Warren branch discontinued the Fail of 1925.
Mr. Kalloch remembers as a boy the steamboat which went through the locks of the old canal, originally, the General Knox Canal by the rapids of Georges River, into White Oak Pond.
When the Civil War started, a remark made by his great-grandmother, Miriam Breck Hart who lived to be 100 stands out in his memory. Mrs. Hart had become blind the latter part of her life, and consequently had not read of the war. A grandson told her about it after it had been going on for a time, and the staunch, old lady, with the indomitable American spirit, said: “I knitted for the soldiers who founded our Country and now I shall knit for those who fight to save it.” It was she, who living as a girl on the outskirts of Boston at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, heard the signal gun of the war fired at Lexington.
"It does not seem possible to me now," says Mr. Kalloch, “that I have actually talked with some one living at the time of the Revolution.”
In an Informal talk the other day with Perry Greene, Mr. Kalloch found many subjects on common ground, among them the ‘ton timber' used years ago in the making of ships.
