THE POTATO IN AROOSTOOK. 101 



this is one-half. Doable the amount is 714,306 bushels. Our next 

 point of inquii'}' is as to the consumption for starch. 



The amount of starch made in the count}' south of Presque Isle 

 was 1,240 tons. As to the product above, the onl}' means at com- 

 mand was to take the return made up for the Secretar}' of State, 

 and work from that. The person who made it up told me it was 

 obviously inaccurate, and therefore I have revised it. The return 

 for the south part of the county was found to be 50 per cent short 

 of the actual production. By revision, therefore, we have the pro- 

 fluct of North Aroostook as 2,424 tons. These tons reduced into 

 bushels, at nine pounds of starch to a bushel, gives 814,223 ; adding 

 potatoes marketed, l,528,62y ; an estimate of one-eighth is conceded 

 for the amount reserved for seed and feed, 218,376 ; total, 1,747,005. 

 A method of proof was adopted, in this wise. A careful summary of 

 the towns of Mars Hill, Blaine, Bridgewater and Monticello showed 

 an average of 53,250 bushels. Reckoning that as the product 

 of thirtv-five towns, we have 1.873,750. Hence we are not far out of 

 the way. A bin to hold the crop would need a dimension of 130 

 feet each wa}', or of cars 3,407 in a train nearly two and one-half 

 miles long. 



That I may most forcibh' impress upon your minds the rapid 

 growth of the county, and the magnitude of the work that has been 

 done in bringing that wilderness of 1.800 square miles to its present 

 condition of productiveness, I can state that the time from the first 

 carrying in of the first seed potato by the Anglo Saxon race, to our 

 section of the State, till to-dav, does not vet fill out the limit of one 

 lifetime. 



In the person of Mrs. Christiana W. Putnam of Houlton, a ven- 

 erable matron of 83 vears, the mother of seventeen children, eleven 

 boys and six girls, all of whom but one lived to grow up, we have 

 one who was born before the foot of a Saxon settler had trod these 

 wilds, and who, with her parents, came at the age of nine years to 

 live in what is now the town of Houlton. From her life we gathered 

 interesting details of the earl}' time. 



Her mother, her sister Sally, twelve years old, and herself came 

 overland in the company of Judv Samuel Cook from Alfred, York 

 County. They rested at the old Elm Tavern at Portland, on that 

 eventful day next after "the sea fight far away ;" That "thundered 

 o'er the tide ;" and standing on the steps, with childish eagerness 

 and curiosity, she saw the solemn march of the soldiers as, with 



