Hello My name is Horatio Macomber Sawyer.
I was born in Pejepscot Claim Maine, now called Danville. Good thing they changed the name as I had a hard time pronouncing it and even more spelling it. I only remember growing up in New Gloucester and moving from the last house on the east side of the Gray to Lewiston road in New Gloucester on the comer of the Morse road and into the first house on the same side of the same road in Gray, just south of the Mayall Road about 1880.
There I met my soon to be wife, Addie Staples who had come from Roxbury Maine with her sister Mary to work in the woolen mill. I was the proprietor of the North Gray store from 1891 until my death in 1945. Folks used to come and sit around the stove and talk over town
affairs. My store had a little bit of everything a person needed, from coffee to molasses, clothes and candy, yard goods and hardware.
I was also the postmaster for the North Gray Post Office from 1894 to 1906 which was in my store.
Addie and I had two sons, Perley Clair and Ralph White. Perley .moved to Gray Village and was a gentleman dairy farmer and a business man, owning a milk hauling business and owning Gray Garage. He and Jennie had two sons and a daughter. Ralph stayed at home and ran a dairy farm. I remember a story about each of my sons.
I had a telephone in the store and after I has sent Perley to Danville Junction to get some grain with the horse and buggy, a nosy lady rang me up and told me that she had just seen Perley driving the horse for all it was worth. I thought before answering her by saying “he shouldn’t be too long getting back then”. She hung up on me.
Young Ralph was outside the store and an older gent gave him a nickel
to watch his horse as he was too lazy to tie him up. Now a nickel could but a good sized bag of candy those days. When he came out the horse was gone. He lit into Ralph and said “I paid you to watch my horse”. Ralph said “I did until he got out of sight!”
One of my grandsons became a NASA engineer. Two of my grandsons ran Gray Garage a Chevrolet dealership. I can’t name the boards and town offices that my descendants have given their time to, from selectmen, school board, historical society, fire department, cemetery, the water board to name a few.
I am proud of them all.
Written by Robert Sawyer, Gray Maine
