Your Daily Giant 7/8/2013

 

 

 

 

Today's Daily Giant comes from the Lewiston Evening Journal, July 25, 1907 pg 2. A report of unusually large skeletons found in Maine is given. "It is likely that the visitors of the Tercentennial, either at Bath or at Popham, may have the privilege of seeing skeletons of two of the magnificent specimens of physical manhood such as the American Indian of the days Sebenio, Samoset, Nahanada and Sansoa really were. Which, being interpreted, is that when James Perkins dug the cellar of his house at Popham Beach, on the knoll next north of the Riverside Hotel, the skeletons unearthed, who were, in life from six to seven feet in height, giants in fact. Mr. Perkins took the jaw bone of one of these Indians and placed it on his own face. It completely encased his jaw and he is a pretty good sized man. Mr. Perkins gathered all the bones of these two skeletons together and placed them in a barrel and reinterred them so. It is proposed to dig up the barrel and have the bones set together to illustrate what manner of inhabitants Weymouth and Popham discovered in the earliest years of the 17th century when they arrived in this section of Maine." This bio is from the Penobscot Maine Maritime Museum, "Captain James E. Perkins was born in 1867 and grew up in Popham Village, on the shore of Atkins Bay at the mouth of the Kennebec. His view of the world was shaped by the river and its bustling maritime activity. Steamboats that serviced coastal and island communities, Boston-bound vessels carrying passengers and freight, work boats and pleasure craft made the Kennebec a busy thoroughfare. Perkins was hired at age 15 as first mate on the steam tug Adelia and in 1889, at age 22, became the youngest captain on the Kennebec when he took the helm of the Percy V. He navigated the river for more than three decades as captain of a succession of steamboats: Damarin, El Dorado, Island Belle, Winter Harbor, Islesford, and Sabino." Perkins was also an accomplished portrait photographer and the Penobscot Museum has 530 glass plate negatives of his work. Perkins was reported to have been keenly interested n the history of Maine and had a love for his community, he passed away in 1935. I have contacted countless museums and historical societies on the trail of this mystery but the reality is that the sheer volume of reports makes it a long and painstaking process to hunt down information regarding these finds. I have been in touch with Penobscot Museum and hopefully I can learn more about this matter. Records, diaries and family accounts will eventually add to the body of evidence needed to fill in the gaps of a phenomena alarmingly ignored by those whose job it is to dig for the truth.