Many of this column's over 735 articles have begun with my mentioning how I got started researching local history through the Milton Giles family. Well, this is another one which I wrote back in late 2003. I’ve edited it a little for this current use in the Boothbay Register. Milton Giles's oldest of nine sons – Red, born 1912 – was the biggest help, telling me a lot about "old timey things" from 1986 to 1996 when he died. 

Frederick Giles 

One story had to do with the creation of Mountain Meadow Pond, a pre-subdivision name for Appalachee Lake or Pond. Red's father Milton told him that his father, Frederick Giles (born 1843), created the pond by sinking it. I’ve got to admit that I wasn't sure but Red was putting me on about his grandfather's exploits. Red told tall tales but eventually he'd always separate legend from fact. I came to believe the swamp story – in the same category as Clem McCobb's moving a well (another story Red told) – sounding outlandish but perfectly understandable once you heard the details.  

According to Red, the pond had been a swamp, and Frederick's assignment was to transform it into a pond. He did the job by hauling rock with oxen and dropping the rocks onto the swampy vegetation, thus weighing it down and sinking it. The oxen wore swamp shoes that spread the load on their hooves, but Frederick himself had trouble not sinking during the job. 

Dexter Hodgdon 

Dexter W. Hodgdon was the iceworks developer who Frederick Giles assisted with his employees. Dexter was born in East Boothbay in 1847 and, typical of a Boothbay guy, went to sea when he was young, mostly to the Caribbean. It was typical that boys as young as nine went to sea, though usually coastwise rather than crossing the Atlantic. Later, not yet of age to enlist in the Civil War, he served as a seaman on brigs carrying supplies for the Union Army. Leaving the sea after the war, he taught at West Harbor, next ran a grocery store at the Center, then another at the Harbor, finally living there permanently at the intersection of Eastern Avenue and Montgomery Road.  

Dexter became interested in the ice business in 1876—a slightly early date. Most of the ice businesses in town date to about 1880. Dexter bought 15 acres at Wallace's Point (the erroneous name, used then by the assessors, for Wall Point). The April 6, 1928 Boothbay Register reported: "By constructing three dams he made a lake of over 10 acres, which is now known as Lake Appalachee. He operated other ice privileges including nearly all the ponds in Boothbay Harbor, also at Southport, Edgecomb, and other localities, shipping the product mainly to New York, Philadelphia, Virginia, and the South." 

Sinking the Swamp 

Dexter cut ice early in 1877 at Mountain Meadow, but I don't believe he'd built ice houses. They came by 1878 when he increased the parcel to 65 acres. Years after Red Giles told me the sink-the-swamp story which I’d been skeptical about, I found complete corroboration in the November 22, 1879 Boothbay Register. Dexter was grappling with the pond's attempt to become a swamp again: "D. W. Hodgdon has at last succeeded in clearing his Mountain Ice Pond entirely of the floating island, which rose from the bottom. When he commenced to build his dam, what is now the pond was a morass grown over with bushes, their roots interlaced and matted together and resting upon a bed of sand or gravel, which, at some former period of the world's history had undoubtedly been the bottom of the pond. Mr. Hodgdon first tried to remove it by cutting it in sections and hauling it out on the shores or floating it into parts of the pond where the water was too shallow to cut ice, but this was found to be a slow and expensive project. This season he tried sinking it by placing rocks upon the mass and the plan was found to work well. The whole pond is now a sheet of clear water with a capacity of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of the best ice."