How the Kyle & Spear Store Helped Launch Dreams at the Fort
The Atlantic Ocean.
In the small, coastal village of Alma, New Brunswick, a graduate of the Fredericton Business College worked as a grocery salesman while living with his farming parents, Hamilton and Ella Kyle, in 1911.
It wasn’t long before Sedgewick Kyle married Fannie Cooper, and the couple ended up in Fort Fairfield, Maine, a much larger town over 200 miles northwest of Alma. Sedge, as his friends called him, cut up meat at Hopkins Brothers on Main Street, a popular market, and he and his wife rented a house on Presque Isle Street. It’s not too far fetched to think Sedge dreamed of something other than a rented house and living paycheck to paycheck.
Hopkins Brothers in the 1890s
Meanwhile, another young man, studying business at a Maine college, was called back to the family farm in Limestone, just north of Fort Fairfield. The oldest of the seven children, Forest Spear was the son whom his father, Fred Spear, depended on in times of stress. It’s unclear what Fred’s difficulties were, whether financial or personal. He was considered a successful farmer and was also a bank president. His wife and Forest’s mother, the former Helen Noyes, was ill with cancer around the same period.
The Fred and Helen Spear farm in Limestone. Forest, extreme left, on a horse.
But Forest was determined not to continue working on the same farm as his three younger brothers. He needed a challenge. In 1912 he purchased what many considered an older, rundown place on the Center Limestone Road in Fort Fairfield. That same year he married a Fort girl, Fern Lundy, on Christmas Eve in Houlton, and a year later their only child, Helen Mae, was born.
Forest L. Spear
Forest got busy upgrading their property. He had a large barn moved from a nearby field—using horses, ropes, logs, and men—and attached it to another barn. He also built a machine shop with a forge, a garage with a second story apartment for hired workers, and converted an older building into a slaughterhouse.
Vegetables and grains were produced on the farm, as well as milk from cows, and cattle raised for local meat markets. He had plenty of room for livestock in the barns, and hired men hauled water all day from Hacker Brook, which bordered the farm, to water them all.
The Forest and Fern Spear farm, 1940s
Sedge continued working as a meat cutter at Hopkins, and his family continued to grow: three sons, Floyd, Burpee, and Leonard were born, and eventually a daughter, Geraldine.
And then things changed for Sedge. In late 1925 he quit his job at Hopkins and traveled to Portland “to look into one or two jobs of which he has had offers,” the Fort Fairfield Review stated. But in early 1926, Sedge and his family had instead purchased a house back on lower Main Street in Fort.
Part of Main Street, early 1900s.
In July the Review announced that the exterior of Mrs. Stella Perry’s commercial property on Main Street had received “a new coat of paint.” The property contained the H. C. Buxton’s Drugstore and the new Kyle & Spear Meat Market.
With their combined business education and practical experience, Sedge and Forest had formed a partnership. Forest supplied much of the store’s meat, eggs, and other farm items, while Sedge managed the retail end. Forest wouldn’t have to worry about where he could sell his products, and Sedge didn’t have to worry about working for anyone else.
The former Spear slaughterhouse in the 1960s
Forest had to employ more men to work in the slaughterhouse, which was easy to do in those days. Some day laborers could have used the extra income, especially during slack times. One such man was Elmer Dean, a teamster on his father’s farm on the Goodrich Road. Elmer married in the latter 1920s and eventually owned his own farm, but he told his children that he had worked in the Spear slaughterhouse when he was young.
The attic wheel with chains
The building contained a walk-in freezer and, in the attic, a large wooden wheel wrapped with a chain to manually lower or raise meat in the main room below. In one far corner of the building was a small, standing desk next to a window that Forest used for his calculations and records.
Hens in one of the former Spear pens, 1970s
Forest and Fern’s daughter, by now a young teen, was known for her singing voice. Helen participated in high school musical programs and sang solos in other places like the Aroostook Grange. Another young lady would accompany her on piano.
Perhaps Forest needed extra help with the increase demand for his produce. Or perhaps Helen’s dream for her future got creative.
With the advent of Kyle & Spear, Helen and Forest struck a deal. She would take care of the laying hens in the barn, earning enough “egg money” from the store to buy what she really wanted: an upright piano. And Forest wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else having to take care of his flocks.
A Spear farm egg basket
Each morning before school Helen fed and gave water to the hens and collected the fresh, warm eggs in the nesting boxes. She placed the eggs in a metal basket and carried them back to the house where her father or another worker would deliver them to the store. Each afternoon after school she’d do the same. Store customers would pay for the eggs, and Helen would receive part or all of that money.
The large barn contained at least two hen houses, safe from outside predators such as weasels and foxes, and warm enough through the long, cold winters. Plenty of eggs could be collected through the sunnier months when most hens would produce an egg a day.
In the stores the price of eggs was somewhere between 50 and 60 cents a dozen. Depending on how consistent her chickens produced, Helen could have earned enough funds for a modest piano in about two years.
In 1927, Kyle & Spear advertised every week in the Review. Doran’s Market tried to keep up with ads for Swift’s sugar-cured hams, “strictly fresh eggs,” and Western and local meats. But Kyle & Spear kept promoting what they specialized in best: local meats and fresh vegetables and fruits.
It’s unknown which Mrs. Murphy was making the head cheese kept in stock. Head cheese wasn’t really cheese at all but a meat jelly used in sandwiches that was made from meat cooked from the head of a calf or a pig (not the bones, brains, ears, etc….just the meat parts). The cook might have been one of several Mrs. Murphys who lived on the Murphy Road in Fort Fairfield that decade. Whoever she was, she was an enterprising lady.
Other ads during the year boasted of “stall-fed native beef, none better” which probably came from the Spear barns. Veal was another popular item and fresh fish—trout, salmon, lobsters or other seafood—was available sometimes twice a week. The store also promised its customers “delivery to any part of town on short notice.”
In May, the store advertised fresh strawberries, cucumbers, spinach, tomatoes, lettuce, and celery in addition to various cuts of meat. In July, the expected watermelon was for sale and salmon from the Restigouche River in New Brunswick.
Baldwin apples, the most popular variety in New England, were featured in the fall at $2.95 a bushel. Kyle & Spear also had plenty of suggestions for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners: turkeys “dressed right,” geese, fowl, chickens, mincemeat, and the “finest imported currents.” Raisins, dates, figs, and a “new crop” of walnut meats. Canned pumpkin for pies, peas, Chase and Sanborn’s Coffee, and Fancy Bay State Wingold flour.
By 1928 or 1929, Helen had purchased several piano books. She probably also purchased her new Henry F. Miller piano by then—from Boston.
The mahogany instrument, a popular brand with professionals, sat in the front room of the Spear farmhouse, where company relaxed in stuffed chairs and where Helen could be called upon to play and sing.
With piano lessons from a local teacher and with her continued solos and violin performances, Helen was determined to pursue a dream that most farm girls back then would not have thought possible. After graduation, she planned to study at the New England Conservatory of Music. Adding piano to her list of accomplishments was another plus for acceptance into the Boston school.
1920s Miller upright piano
Around this time, Kyle & Spear joined the new Independent Grocers Alliance that had spread rapidly throughout the US since its inception in 1926. Stores operated as franchises, but the store owners could receive marketing help and access to a steady supply chain. By 1930, over 8,000 stores had joined the IGA.
During the Depression years, food advertisements in the Review were rare, but the Kyle & Spear store flourished. As Forest used to say, “People had to eat.” Rumor had it that he was one of the few farmers in the area who “actually made money” that decade.
This $5 check made out to Kyle & Spear in 1935 would be worth about $105 today. Orin Russell was a Fort farmer.
Sedge had a Frigidaire freezer installed for the meat department and kept the store open until 11 p.m. on Saturdays. Entire families would drive or walk to Main Street on Saturday nights for shopping, visiting with friends, going to movies, and eating treats like foot-long hot dogs for five cents. Other businesses such as Abraham’s Clothing Store also stayed open late to take advantage of the crowds.
Helen Spear, 1938
Meanwhile, Helen had been accepted at the conservatory and received a diploma for voice in 1935. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in 1938. Her senior yearbook entry described her as “one of the more serious minded students of the class, yet has real talent and fine determination.”
After college, although she visited her parents often and performed for local benefits, Helen mostly lived in New York City where she sang professionally. The family story is that Joe Holt, a city civil engineer for the Rapid Transit System, saw her singing in a nightclub and fell in love. They married by 1942.
An ad in 1940
Sedge’s children also pursued their dreams. His son, Burpee, for example, learned the meat cutting profession from his father and married Evelyn Ireland in 1939. With his experience at Kyle & Spear, he obtained a job at a large chain store in New York State in the early 1950s. His brother, Leonard, eventually became Fort’s town manager.
Forest, due to health issues, retired from farming in the mid-1940s, and Sedge had to acquire his meat supplies elsewhere. Forest, however, managed to outlive his doctor and pursued his retirement dream of fishing in the ocean off Florida in winter and in Hacker Brook every spring.
Sedge retired in the 1950s and took a quieter, outdoor job as caretaker of Riverside Cemetery in Fort. Another meat cutter in town, Hector F. (Cook) Cyr, bought the business from Sedge. Cook later closed his Main Street properties and concentrated on building one of the first area IGA Foodliners in 1962.
All of these ambitions—from Cook Cyr to Helen Spear to Burpee Kyle and others—were connected in some way to Sedge and Forest’s dream back in the 1920s, a dream that they pursued and profited from with hard work, experience, and determination.
Drawing of the new IGA on Presque Isle Street, 1962