While the Horror Hill Lane’s origin remains an unconfirmed story, the story of Monica is apparently well known to the locals. Stanley came to Lubec from Lima Peru to work at the Peacock Cannery [to learn the business?], leaving his wife, Monica, behind. While here, he had a stroke, so Monica came to take care of him. As things happened, it was at the time when the canneries were in decline, so Monica and Stanley’s supervisor at Peacock, Eugene, opened a chocolate shop together. As is often the case in such ventures, the founders had a parting of the ways. Eugene’s chocolate shop is called Bayside Chocolates on Water Street [the old Cannery Row]. Monica’s shop is on the way out of town in Stanley and Monica’s home towards the Maine mainland. Both shops seem to be thriving…
Speaking of famous Lubec partnerships, that takes us back to 1897 when Prescott Ford Jernegan, a Baptist minister, and Charles Fisher, both from Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard came to Lubec and founded a company that extracted gold from seawater using a secret electrolytic process. They built a number of "accumulators" that regularly produced gold dust.
“The inlet to Mill Pond accommodated 240 accumulators of which sixty were pulled up each week. Thus each box was under water a month before its turn came to be examined. During that time the water, chemicals, and electricity had time to work their magic.”
an "Accumulator"
Investors from New York and Rhode Island poured money into the enterprise but then:
Apparently, nothing more elaborate than a cast iron pot was at the heart of this fantastic device. It was later learned that Charles Fisher, an accomplished diver and the brains behind the operation, had in fact planted the so-called “magic”- the small quantities of gold extracted by the accumulators – in them. At regular intervals, just prior to the accumulators being raised from the water, he would, under cover of darkness, salt each box with the gold. This gold was sent to New York and proved to be enough to convince investors that a fortune was to be had…
Alas, late in July of 1898 rumors began to circulate that all was not well at Klondike and work was suspended on July 29. Both Jernegan and Fisher had unexpectedly vanished with no credible explanation as to their whereabouts. When it became known that both men were missing plant workers and townspeople congregated at North Lubec demanding information from the unfortunate administrators who were left holding the bag, apparently unaware of the swindle. In fact, Reverend Jernegan was at that time sailing, under an assumed name, to France with his family and proceeds from his gold extraction scheme. Fisher’s whereabouts remained unknown, although rumors of his fate circulated for years afterward…
Come to think of it, I haven’t noticed any Baptist Churches around town…
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