Suse brushed away a tear as she rocked in her old chair at Etta’s home in Searsmont. She longed to go home, but apparently it was not to be. How she loved that old house in Belmont. What stories she could tell, if anyone wanted to hear them. No need to feel sorry for herself.

She thought back over the years that had passed, oh, so quickly. She was nearing eighty-seven years of age, and couldn’t believe how fast the years had flown. Mose had been gone for twenty-two years now. How she missed him! So many of her loved ones had passed away to the other side.

Suse had been born in 1836 as Susan Marie Shea in the “Keag’, South Thomaston, Maine. She had learned early in school that her home had been part of the town named by the Indians, “Wessaweskeag”, which people through the years has shortened to “Keag”. But most people just said that they lived in the ‘Gig’.

Suse had been named after her mother, Susan (Elwell) Shea. Her father, John Shea, was of Irish descent. Looking back, it seemed to Suse that grief had followed her all of her life. Suse was born as the first daughter in her family having one older brother. When she was twelve years old, her fourteen-year old brother, William, drowned in New York Harbor, running a ‘warp’ line from the schooner ‘Coral’ on which he was working, to a wharf where he was overrun by another schooner.

The Indians were numerous in South Thomaston, coming to the Coast to fish. Suse had become friendly with some of the tribe. As a young girl, Suse yearned to know more about healing and care of the sick and aged. Her friendship with the Indians allowed her to observe, to question, and to learn the natural healing ways. They had taught her about healing herbs, how to pick and preserve them, and how to make medicines.

One day she spied a blond white man among the group. Suse recalled that she thought the man, whose name she had learned was Moses Morse, to be quite attractive. He had come down with the Indians from a town that she’d never heard of, called Montville. She often appeared on the shore at the same time that Moses did. Their friendship blossomed, so much so that they took out marriage intentions on Valentine’s Day, 1855.

In the early days of their marriage, Suse and Mose, as she called him, lived in Belfast, where Mose had a job working in the carriage shops, where fine-quality carriages were manufactured. Frederick Horace was born in Belfast in 1856. Frank Alden was born after they had moved to the Moody Mt. Road in Searsmont. Mose had farmed and fished in Montville, where his mother still resided. There was a farm in Belmont owned by Widow Susan Poor, which they purchased. Their first winter in Belmont, the widow and her daughters shared part of the house. They worked hard, paying off the farm, receiving the deed in April 1867. Etta May, John Wilbur and Ada Laura were born after the move to Belmont.

Moses traveled back and forth from the farm home in Belmont to his widowed mother’s home in Montville. Mose’s father, John Lane Morse, had been active in the fledgling town of Montville, serving in several town offices when he was struck down in the prime of his life, and died at the age of forty-six years. Suse was never quite sure what his cause of death had been. Mose, being the youngest son, was devoted to his mother and younger sisters. He would get her firewood out, fit up the old house for winter, and prepare, plant and harvest her garden in season. He felt obligated to keeping his mother comfortable, until his eldest sister, Eunice, took her to live in Belfast with her and her husband, John Cochran. Their aged mother, Betsey Hannah Morse, died in Belfast in April 1873, aged ninety-one years.

Fred and Frank had gone to Massachusetts as they came of age, to make their fortunes. Frank returned to Maine to live. Suse had purchased three sewing machines for her and her daughters, making vests for a wholesale company which engaged farm women to earn supplemental income. Mose was a carriage-maker by trade. He also made fine-quality barrels in his cooper shop, as well as lime casks for the lime industry in Rockland, and other coastal towns.

Mose was known far and near as a horse-trader and dickerer, as well as being a farmer and cooper. Suse chuckled to herself as she remembered how exasperating Mose could be in his dickering habits. She recalled when his mother passed away, Mose had taken one of his horses to Halldale in Montville to meet with his elder brothers, Kendrick and Ezekiel, and Kendrick’s son, Thomas, who had come down from Detroit, Maine to dispose of the property.

Until she moved to Belfast, their mother had lived in the old log cabin built by her husband many years before. It had been modified to make a comfortable home for her, but since she’d left to live with Eunice, it had become very ramshackled, to the point that it was falling down. The floors were about gone, but Mose stayed in the cabin for nearly a fortnight while they settled things.

When Mose had moved to Belmont, he had taken his livestock, and most of the machinery that he’d kept in repair. There was little left on the old farm, but he dickered and traded with the neighbors with the remainder of the estate. His brothers had profitable farms to the North, and it was left for Mose to clean up the farm, which they sold to a neighbor, Asa Hall. Mose loaded up an old hay wagon with the remnants of tools, machinery, and household goods, hooked a pair horses to the wagon, tied three more horses behind that he’d dickered for and headed for Belmont. On the way home, he was asked by an old neighbor who had seen him arrive with one horse, “Mose”, where did you get those horses?” to which he replied with a wink of his eye, “Never ask an Indian where he got a horse!” Suse had welcomed him home with open arms, but had been more than a little upset at him for being gone so long, causing her worry.

Suse brushed away another tear, as she recalled that her young sister, Elvira Jane had died in 1865, at the ‘Gig’, at the age of twenty-one. Because of the distance, Suse hadn’t seen much of her family since she had married. Tragedy seemed to follow the family.

Word came up from South Thomaston in 1873 that her mother had passed away. Oh, how Suse missed her mother! It didn’t help much that Father had remarried to Mary Ann (Clark) Atwood, seventeen years his junior. After Father’s marriage, Suse’ brother, John Shea, came to Belmont to live with her and Mose. John and Mary Ann just did not get along.

One year later, in 1874, her brother, Frederick, died in Hallowell, Maine. He was twenty-one years old. Father told Suse that a Whip-poor-will, a nocturnal bird associated with predicting death, sang all night when Frederick died. It was a superstition that Suse believed in.

A year and a half after Frederick’s death, his twin sister, Ada Laura Bachelor, died from complications of childbirth, at age 22. She had only been married two and a half years. It seemed that the Shea family was falling apart.

Then, once again, in March 1884, a letter came up from South Thomaston that Father had died. The letter informed Suse that she would have to come to South Thomaston to sign papers, to settle the Estate for Father’s younger wife. Her son, twelve-year old John, harnessed the horse and hitched him to the sleigh. It was early Spring, and the highways were still packed with snow, as they drove down through Lincolnville Centre, over the turnpike to Camden, through Rockland on to South Thomaston, with sleigh-bells ringing in the crisp, cold air. It was quite a rode for the young man and his mother.

On arriving at Father’s old home, the Probate lawyer met with them, and told Suse that it was not only she, but her brother, John, would have to sign the papers. Young John took the route back, pushing the horse as hard as he dared. He then harnessed up a fresh horse, got Uncle John onto the sleigh, and back to South Thomaston they went. It was a trip that he never forgot.

Suse’s son, Fred, who had gone to Massachusetts to make a living, had a successful Ice Dealer business, delivering ice to homes for refrigeration in the kitchen ice boxes, as well as to stores and businesses with greater ice needs. Fred married in May of 1879 to nineteen-year-old Cordelia Hall, daughter of Edward and Eunice Hall. They soon were the parents of Maud, born 1880, Gertrude, born 1881, Fred, Jr., born 1884 and Horace born 1885. Then tragedy seemed to follow Fred and it had over the years to Suse. She received word that Fred’s ten-month-old baby, Harry died in September 1888. Charles and a stillborn twin were born two months after Harry’s death. Charles was not quite three months old in February 1889 when Fred’s wife, Cordelia also died. She had never rallied from the hard childbirth, and was but twenty-eight years old.

Fred struggled to raise his children. He married Isabella Grant in 1890. When nine-year-old Horace died in 1895, and Isabella also passed away, Fred wrote to his mother, asking her if she would come to Massachusetts to bring the children back to the farm in Belmont.

Suse recalled that she got on one of the Eastern Steamship boats in Belfast, traveling down the coast to Boston, where Fred met her. He took her to his home in Jamaica Plain. She gathered together four small children, who did not remember their grandmother, with the meager collection of clothing, cloth diapers, milk for the baby, and once again boarded the Steamer to go home. She remembered thinking that when she got them back to the farm, there would be plenty to eat with fresh milk and vegetables for the youngsters.

The little ones were apprehensive, and were sick all of the way back to Belfast. It could have been seasickness, or just the nervousness of traveling with an unknown Grandmother, to an unknown farm in Maine, without either parent. They clung together. They were Maud, Gertrude, Fred Jr. and little Charles. There was no time to grieve. Children need care.

Suse’s daughter Ada, who had been named after her sister, Ada Laura, married Ed Howard, who lived next door to the farm in Belmont. Ada and Ed’s firstborn son was born prematurely. He died a week after his birth in March 1895, about five weeks after Horace’s passing. Two beautiful babies gone in such a short time! Ada had two more sons, Edward ‘Colby’ and Dudley.

On Valentine’s day, 1895, John married seventeen-year old Jennie Levenseller, bringing her home to live, with the boisterous household. It was ten days after John’s marriage that Fred’s nine-year old son, Horace died. John and Jennie’s family quickly grew.

Frank had married Nettie Whiting from New Hampshire. He and Nettie also had a growing family, William, Frank, Jr., Georgia, David Raymond, who died in 1896, aged 2 months, and Ruth. As Suse rocked, recalling her full life, she was amazed at just how much tragedy she had lived through, as well as the joys of life. .

Etta married Fred Batchelder in 1884. Fred had always been good to Suse. Etta and Fred had four daughters, Susie Marie, named after her grandmother, Laura Margene, Julia and Lottie Etta. In January of 1902, Etta’s eight-year-old daughter, Julia, died of ‘toxemia’. Etta grieved for little Julia for the rest of her life. Laura married Irvin McFarland, whose only infant son, Walter died in 1909, aged three months.

Suse’s son John had told her that his father, Mose, had confided to him in early March, 1902, that he was dying. Mose had developed tuberculosis, and Suse was aware that he was not doing well. Mose, who had been working at the Chenery farm in Belmont, had walked home for dinner. He was nearly eighty years old, but even at his advanced age, he had been supervising the building of a stone drainage walls at Chenery’s on a hot March day. Mose’ age and expertise were appreciated by Horace Chenery, as he rebuilt and improved the stone walls on his property.

Several of the children were gathered around the dinner table, including Frank’s four-year-old daughter, Ruth. As they enjoyed the home-cooked dinner, with the chatter that comes from a bunch of children, Ruth called out to Suse that Grampa’s head had dropped down, and he was sleeping. Suse checked on Mose, who was not sleeping, he was dead. It was the twenty-second day of March.

Suse’s brother, sixty-one-year old John, had been a great help to her after Mose’s death. He did the barn and outside chores, as well as assisting the boys in keeping firewood in the wood box. In the Fall, when he had been helping his nephew, John, chop firewood in the back woods, a limb came down, striking him on the head. He had a bad gash, which Suse dressed and tended. The wound seemed to be healing well, as he continued with the outside work. He enjoyed sitting on the front step in the sun, taking in the beautiful scenery of the twin Levenseller Mountains across the field. Then Brother John became sick, and his jaw and muscles were very painful. He had developed tetanus, most commonly called ‘lockjaw‘. John suffered much, passing away in January of 1903, less than a year after Mose had died.

In 1906, Frank’s daughter, twelve-year-old Georgia, married her fifteen-year-old boyfriend, Frank Dickey. Suse shook her head, all these years later, at the young marriage. It was three years before Georgia and Frank had children, Clifton and Vesta.

Fred, Jr., one of the children that Suse had brought back from Massachusetts, married Emma Kent from Rockport, Maine. Their first daughter, Clorinda Cordelia, named after his mother, died in Jan. 1906, at the age of ten months. They eventually raised a large family, Marion, Maud Evelyn, Susan Marie, Leona, Mildred, Laura, Fred, Arlene, Charles, Ethel, Virginia And Rodney.

Fred Jr.’s sister, Maud, who had married Joseph Boyea and moved to Lindsay, Victoria [South], Quebec, Canada, died in July of the same year of childbirth complications, leaving a three-year-old daughter, Catherine. Suse never saw Maud after her marriage.

Gert, the second daughter of Fred, married Edgar Marriner. They had a large family, Katherine, Avis, twins, Edgar and Evelyn, three-week old Etta, who died in 1907, Charles Kenneth, Leverne, Clifton, Hattie Irene, five-month old Horace who died in 1913, an unnamed baby in July 1917, and Madelyn Marriner.

John and Jennie’s family was growing. Susie, named after her grandmother, was born in 1895, followed by Bertha, Hazel, Clarence, Everett, Amon and Lester. In 1907, thirty-year-old Jennie was expecting her eighth child. Jennie was underweight and pale. She’d had some problems during her pregnancy. She was six to seven months pregnant in July, when she went into labor. She bled profusely. Suse had always been called out as a midwife in the neighborhood, but she didn’t like the progression of Jennie’s delivery. The infant son was born on the seventh of July. Jennie didn’t rally, as life seemed to drain from her, and she passed away two hours after delivery. The tiny motherless baby struggled for life, and died the eleventh of July, on the day that Jennie was buried in the family plot in East Searsmont, about two miles from home. A grieving John and some of the neighbors tearfully carried the small bundle back to the cemetery, burying him in his mother’s arms.

Suse dozed a bit in her chair, recalling that Amon, who was but two years old when his mother died, had polio, as did Ada’s son Dudley. Suse was determined to have the boys walking, but Ada thought that the treatments were too harsh. Suse would have Clarence and Everett walk Amon around the home and yard, until he would beg to sit down. The treatment apparently worked for Amon, as he eventually walked. Dudley did not fare so well, and was crippled all of his life, as his case was much more severe.

The older boys worked in the woods with their father, John. Because of Amon’s condition and age, he spent many hours with Suse and his younger brother, Lester. Suse told the boys many stories of her youth, of her family, and of all of the children who had come and gone in the old house. She would take the boys, Amon and Lester, into the woods behind their home, to gather herbs, roots and plants for medicinal use throughout the year. It was the practice that she was taught from the Indians of her youth.

John’s young daughters had a friend, Mary Elizabeth Butler, who lived across the woods in Searsmont. The girls visited back and forth, with the girls having sleep-overs at each other’s house. A little over a year after Jennie died, thirty-six-year old John married fifteen-year-old May, as she was called. Suse told the children that John had brought home another child for her to care for.

One of the greatest losses that Suse recalled, was of Fred’s son, Charles, that she had brought back from Massachusetts. Charles had always lived with Suse and Mose, being three months old when his mother died. He had been a very loving child, being very close to his grandmother. He had not been as strong as the other children, and was just a small child when he came to live with them. Charles developed the dread disease, tuberculosis, suffering from the effects of the disease. Charles told Suse that he’s seen the trees leave out in the Spring, but he wouldn’t see them fall. Charles slept in the cold open bed-chamber over the kitchen. He was twenty-one years old when he succumbed to the disease in June 1910.

As Suse rocked in the old chair, it seemed to her that death had been a frequent visitor to the Morse home. She contacted her niece’s husband, Hollis Rackliff, and ordered a gravestone for the family plot in East Searsmont. He brought up a large ornate marble gravestone, hauling it all of the way from South Thomaston with a team of horses. He had engraved the names of Moses, Jennie, John, as well as her own name and birthdate on the face of the monument. Charles’ name was engraved on the back. It won’t be long now, she thought, until she would be interred with those that she loved so much.

Two years after Charles died, Frank’s wife, Nettie, passed away from pneumonia. Suse could see in her mind’s eye, a row of gravestones of her family. The family monuments had come up from South Thomaston.

In all of life’s tribulations, Suse had always felt safe in the comfortable old farm home. Then one day in March, 1913, John and May had taken a load of lime casks that John had made in his cooper shop to Rockland. The children, including John and May’s three-year-old daughter, Faustena, were home with Suse when someone smelled smoke. Many, many years later, Faustena told her grandmother that she’d been playing with matches in the bed-chamber over the kitchen, dropping one down by the crack in the chimney. Faustena was angry because she was not allowed to go with her parents to Rockland. Her grandmother did not believe that she was old enough at the time to have done such a deed.

The main attic of the house was all afire. The neighbors formed a bucket brigade, which had little effect on the fast-moving fire. They brought in teams of horses and oxen, with which they pulled the ell and woodshed off from between the house and the barn. With the aid of a growing group of neighbors, with more buckets of water, the barn was saved, though badly scorched. Suse recalled that barrels from the cooper shop across the road were dragged into the house. In the excitement, dishes were thrown into barrels, and the barrels thrown out of the windows, breaking their contents. Pictures were grabbed from the walls and saved. Most of the household goods were destroyed. Amon, Lester and Faustena were taken to Ada’s where they stayed with Dudley. Thankfully, there was no loss of life.

Suse kept busy as neighborhood midwife. She was called to “lay out the dead” for burial, and was even occasionally called by Dr. Tapley of Belfast to do home operations, sometimes on the kitchen table of a home. Suse was well-known as an herbal nurse, a trade she had learned from the Indians of her youth at South Thomaston.

Fred, Jr. and Emma had moved his family of eight up from Rockport, Maine, bringing all of their belongings on a hay rack. They arrived in Belmont after dark, spending their first night at the farm with Suse and all of the resident children. Faustena entertained all of them well into the night, singing, “It’s a long way to Tipperary!” Fred Jr.’s daughter, Evelyn, emphatically told Suse that Mama said that babies came in the doctor’s black bag. The next day Fred and Emma moved their family down to a little house owned by his father, Fred, Sr., across from Greer’s Corner Schoolhouse.

All of the neighborhood children attended the one-room Greer’s Corner School. Clarence came home one day, and told Suse how he had played Santa Clause at the Christmas party. He had red clothes and a cotton beard. As he bent over a candle, his beard caught fire. Fred Jr.’s little ones were dumb-founded as they ran home and told their mother that Santa Clause wasn’t Santa Clause, but was cousin Clarence.

Suse recalled the day the Fred Jr.’s older children, then only eight and ten years old, came up across the field to tell her that Emma needed her to come down quickly. Clarence harnessed the horse, helped Suse on to the pung, with the children piling on the back, and driving her down to Fred Jr. and Emma’s home. The three-week-old baby, Charles Bradford, was dead in his make-shift crib. The children were not even aware of what was going on, but for the rest of their lives, remembered the pounding of a hammer as a small coffin was made from a strawberry crate. The baby was buried in the back yard, with Suse saying a few words over the tiny grave. A few days later, the Town officials came to the door, telling the family that the baby’s death had to be recorded, and that he should be buried in the family cemetery plot. These many hears later, Suse’s memory was sometimes blurred. She didn’t recall if little Charles was buried with his uncle of the same name in the family plot in East Searsmont, or if he was still buried on the home farm. She thought that he had been buried on the back side of the cemetery plot.

John’s young wife, May, had been a doting mother, taking Faustena everywhere she went. She sold Larkin soap to the neighbors, to earn points for prizes. May earned several pieces of furniture, one of which was a Larkin drop-leaf desk. She also commissioned an artist to do a large framed portrait of John, taken from a 1911 photo, in which John had served on the Waldo County Superior Court Jury.

May also developed tuberculosis, with the symptoms of bleeding, coughing and strangling for breath. She slept nights on the cold ground under the apple tree, waiting for John to come home. She also slept on the cold porch during the winter months. Suse believed that cold air was beneficial to those suffering from the disease. It may have helped the strangling cough.

Suse could see that May was failing. One night John told Bertha to wake twelve-year-old Amon to harness Dan, the horse, to take the wagon to Searsmont to bring May’s mother, Martha Butler, back to be with her daughter. Amon had a way with the spirited horse. Amon later told Suse that it was a wild ride to Searsmont, as he held the lantern to light the way. Martha was a large woman, and Amon recalled that they had difficulty getting her into the wagon. That night, in June of 1917, nearly ten years after Jennie had died, twenty-three-year old May died, leaving seven-year-old Faustena without a mother. May was buried in the family plot in the cemetery in East Searsmont. Suse regretted that she had never gotten around to place a marker on the young bride’s grave.

Fred had married a third wife, Susan Lincoln Nichols, by whom he had three daughters, Emily, Marion and Dorothy. They were living in Malden, Mass. Suse never met Fred’s new wife and children. Four months after May’s death, Suse received word from Massachusetts that her eldest son, Fred, had died in October, 1917 at at Boston, Mass. Hospital, aged fifty-seven years. .

Suse was often called out to tend the sick. In 1917 and 1918 the flu epidemic was raging. News came to the vicinity that hundreds of soldiers were dying at Fort Dix, New Jersey. John’s daughter, Bertha, had been boarding with George and Carrie Sylvester, working at a restaurant in Belfast when she contracted the flu. She came home to Belmont to her grandmother, Suse, to take care of her. Bertha got progressively worse, and died at home, in November 1918, not quite twenty-two years old.

Suse remembered the sad day in 1919 when news came that her great-grandson, Arnold, the five-year-old son of her grandson Will, had been run over by an electric car in front of the school in Portland. The boy had been playing in the playground across the tracks from the school. When the afternoon bell rang, in his haste to get to the school, he slipped and fell on the tracks as the electric car passed. His legs were nearly severed. He was taken to the hospital and died before his mother and father arrived. Will had been an engineer on the railroad, working and living in Portland.

So much tragedy, and it seemed that it just continued. The influenza epidemic raged on. In February of 1920, Fred, Jr.’s four-year-old daughter, Arlene, died of the flu. Fred, Jr., who had been working in the quarries in Rockport, Maine, also had the flu. Three days later, word was sent to Suse that Fred, Jr. had died of the disease.

Suse’ son, John, married for the third time in April 1922 to Cora McFarland Vose. He left the family farm and moved to Knox to live on Cora’s large farm. John’s daughter, her namesake, Susie, had married Jephtha Buck in 1912. Jephtha and Susie lived with John’s family and Suse on the farm. Gram Suse had spent her lifetime taking care of children, tending to the sick, rejoicing in the births of her family, friends and neighbors, and grieving the many losses. Hers had truly been a life of caring for others, though she didn’t think much about it. It had all come naturally.

As the years went on, her grandchildren were marrying, raising their own families, and moving on. As she got older, Suse began to feel as though she was in the way at the old farm home. She couldn’t do the work that she one had. Life was quickly passing. She had stayed awhile with Ada, Ed and Dudley. Ada’s son, Colby, had married Erva Miller and moved to Searsmont Village.

Etta and Fred had invited Suse to stay with them. As Suse rocked in her old chair that she had brought from the farm, with her arms folded as though cradling an infant, Etta stepped into the parlor to check on her mother. Etta told Suse that it had been snowing very hard since the day before. It was looking very much like a blizzard. “I’m so very tired!”, Suse said as Etta went about doing her housework. Suse closed her eyes. She missed Mose. They’d had a good life together, working the farm, and raising so many children. She and Mose had loved all of them.

It all had been so long ago, or was it? Was that Mose’ voice she heard? There they all were, waving to her from the golden shore, with Jesus and the angels welcoming her home, saying, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of the Lord.” There would be no parting here, no tears, and no grief. What a happy homecoming!!! It was Thursday, the thirteenth day of March 1924 at seven in the evening. The day had cleared, but the snow was blowing and drifting. Suse had recently passed her eighty-seventh birthday.