A Maine Christmas in the Wild above Allagash Falls.

In 1871, Joseph and Helen Russell Jalbert moved from neighboring family farms in St. John Plantation, west of Fort Kent, Maine. Traveling by horse and wagon to Allagash Village, they boarded a horse-drawn towboat that ferried them ten miles up the Allagash River. The couple portaged their few tools and home goods and loaded them aboard a second towboat. Three miles upriver, in the area now known as Michaud Farm, the couple established a farm on 160 acres given to them by Helen's sister Susan Russell McClennan, wife of Finley McClellan.

Distances upriver were measured from Finley's farm. Downriver, from his farm to Allagash Falls, the three miles of river braiding among the islands were named after him, Finley Bogan.

Joseph and Helen raised twelve children on the farm, including their first son named Samuel, who died of scarlet fever at four years old.

Settlement Families:

McClellan, Finley and Susan (Russell)

Jalbert, Joseph and Helen (Russell)

O'leary, Daniel and Annie

Jalbert, Fleurent and Margaret

Moir, Thomas and Betsy

McKinnon, George

Dean Rhodes wrote the following interview with Sam Jalbert. Bangor Daily News published it in the December 24-25, 1960, Weekend Edition.

Sam Jalbert of the St. John Road is capable of buying bananas and putting his teeth in the banana bag while eating, and of putting the peelings back in the bag and throwing it away, [including] his teeth.

He can also carry a 160-pound deer on his back several miles and not have to rest afterward. He can play "Our Waltz" on the mouth organ (harmonica).

"Christmas was like wash day here — Monday," he said, when asked to comment on the holiday in his native Allagash. "We believed in Santa Claus, though no one had ever seen him. No one would ever dress up like him. They'd tell us he lived in the clouds and climbed right down the stovepipe. He'd get as small as he'd like, or as big as he'd like."

“We didn't expect a present. We didn't know what a present was. We'd get molasses doughnuts — that was about 66 years ago. They'd make us hang up our stockings. Then they'd say Santa Claus had brought us some doughnuts.

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"The place we lived in, there was just about five other settlers, up the Allagash River where Michaud Farm is now. The first civilization was Dickey, 25 miles away. (Note: Allagash Village was actually thirteen miles downriver.) There was no gol darn such a-thing as a telephone and only a winter tote road — horse tracks — used by lumberjacks to get their supplies up through in winter. There was four or five feet of snow off the road.

"In the summer there was no road. Then they'd use a growed hollow pine, shaped like a canoe (Note: dugout canoe) to get their supplies. Once I saw two of the McClellan girls go clean down to Dickey and pole up with a load of supplies near where we lived. There wasn't much variety — tea, molasses, salt pork, and beans.

"We had a few cattle for butter and milk and we'd make a garden. Then we'd go hunting. All we had for a gun was an old shotgun my father used to load with a ramrod. He would load it with rags and black powder and the bullet was about as big as a nutmeg. When a bullet went through a moose, you could see grass on the other side.

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"By Christmas, it would get as much as 45 below zero. One year my brother Joe took and ate the doughnut out of Frank's stocking. He got up in the night. There was 14 in the family. Joe washed the stocking that night so it would be clean for Frank. Then he told Frank Santa Claus didn't have enough doughnuts to go around and that he'd washed his stocking in place of it. Joe swallowed it down like milk.

"People up there in those days never heard of such a-thing as a Christmas tree. We didn't know what a Christmas tree was. Them was the days we lived off caribou and moose meat — all kinds of fishing. We lived off the fat of the land.

"We'd go out with an old piece of alder rod and get more trout in five minutes than you get now in two weeks with Silver Doctors, Jock Scotts, and Queen of the Waters (Note: these are streamer flies).

"I never saw a Christmas tree until I was grown and married. Oh, we saw trees in the woods, but not decorated.

"All of us had nicknames; there was one called Moose Muffle, and Sty, and Pete Gravel, Cornet, Ta-Door, and Sharky. They called one of my brothers Sucker Mouth. He'd suck his thumb and feel his ear until he was 18 — yes, you couldn't break him of it. Ned, we would call Timmie.

"One spring my oldest married sister came down sick in the night and found a baby and the day before they had opened up a barrel of pork. So they told us the baby came in the pork barrel.

"I can remember from about four years old. That's when mother died. I remember her just once. She was at the end of the table. I remember my father well. He cut logs in the woods with a pair of oxen and a couple men.

"One settler had a little more than the rest and he left. But before he did my father used to work all day clearing land for him, and he'd come home with two loaves of bread. We didn't know what social security was.

"Some woodsmen would stay in the woods from August to April and let their whiskers grow. Then when one got a shave, his face where his whiskers hadn't been would be as brown as a duck's foot. And his chin would be as white as snow. You wouldn't know him.

"No we didn't sing no Christmas carols at Christmas. Of course we'd sing old lumberjack songs, but not because it was Christmas."

He commenced to sing in a minor key:

"And on some frosty mornings
We'd shiver with the cold.
The ice was so thick upon our picks
We'd scarecly tend them hold..."

"To think how nice it used to be in the spring of the year, it almost makes me miserable," Sam said.