Edited interview with Peggy Boone (PB), niece of both George and Clarence Goodeill. Conducted by Joe Manning (JM), on February 7, 2007. Transcribed by Seunghee Cha and edited by Manning.

JM: When did you discover these pictures?

PB: I had them long ago. Somebody had called from Eastport and told me they were in an exhibit there. I have them hanging in my house.

JM: How are George and Clarence related to you?

PB: Both of them are my uncles. They were my mother's brothers.

JM: You told me that George became like a father to you?

PB: Right. I started living with him and his wife Edna when I was four months old. They loved my mother Lorena dearly and took me as a favor to her.

JM: How did that wind up happening?

PB: I was born in 1949, the seventh child of my mother, Lorena Goodeill Clossey. At the time of the delivery, she was a single mother. She was very sick with eclampsia, required a C-section, had five - maybe six - other children living at home, and was very poor.

JM: Had she been working?

PB: She worked seasonally in the fish cannery in Eastport.

JM: So when she became sick, is that why George started taking care of you?

PB: He had helped her a lot financially. He owned a grocery store in Robbinston, about 15 miles away. He used to bring down boxes of food to her for the kids. George and his wife Edna kind of fell in love with me, I guess. So I ended up living with them.

JM: And what happened to your mother at that point?

PB: She worked and tried to take care of her other children. And then she died, when I was 11, and she still had four other children living with her.

JM: And so you were living about 15 miles from your mother.

PB: Initially as a baby, I lived in Robbinston, but then George and Edna moved to Eastport and they lived next to my mother.

JM: Did George still run the store in Robbinston?

PB: No. I guess it was after the Depression, and he decided to give that up. He did odd jobs. For a while he worked at Guilford Industries, which was a woolen mill. And he delivered fish, and he worked in a gas station in Medway and used to come home on the weekends. He always worked, but there wasn't really a lot of work, and he had left school in the 5th grade in order to take care of his siblings. His mother had died in childbirth. He worked at the cannery when he was a child, but I don't know at what age he started. Later, his father loaned him some money and he went to Calais and bought some nuts and Christmas candy from a man named Frank Beckett, and then went from house to house selling it. He had a business mind from an early age.

There wasn't anything that he couldn't do. He was very innovative. He used to run a hot dog stand every Fourth of July in Eastport. And he used to take that hot dog stand to the Machias County Fair and to Woodland on Labor Day. He invented an electric potato peeler. He just took all kinds of old parts that he had and put them together. I remember the side of the machine was made out of some kind of metal sandpaper. The peeler consisted of a bucket lined with the metal sandpaper. It was on a metal frame and underneath there was a motor that thrashed the potatoes against the metal sandpaper, thus scraping the peelings. This was all made from spare parts that he had collected. We used it on the Fourth of July to peel many 50 lb. bags pounds of potatoes for French fries. He was really clever.

JM: Did he actually sell them to anyone?

PB: No, he didn't. There was no way of disposing of the peelings. They just dropped on the ground. I remember a health inspector complaining about this one Fourth of July. But he was ingenious. There wasn't much that he didn't know, and not many subjects that he couldn't carry on a conversation about.

JM: Did you refer to him as your father?

PB: I always did and will.

JM: What was his wife like?

PB: Edna was a dear, loving person, a beautiful lady. She was the ideal wife and mother. She had come from poverty, too, and had lost her mother at a very young age. She worked in George's store in Robbinston. She and Lorena were great friends. The arrangement with me seemed to work perfectly with Lorena, Edna and George. There were no power struggles - just lots and lots of love.

JM: Did you refer to Edna as your mother?

PB: Yes, but I knew she really wasn't. It was no secret or anything.

JM: Carlene, George's daughter, was your first cousin, but did you feel as though she was your sister?

PB: Yes. I still do. She is a blend of George and Edna - kind, personable, loving, unselfish, intelligent.

JM: Did George ever talk about working in the cannery as a child?

PB: No, he didn't. But I remember him telling me that he had to quit school in fifth grade to feed his younger brothers and sisters.  I sensed that he had liked school and wished that he could have continued. However, there was never any resentment about having to work to support others. This was just an expectation, and others, including two of his older sisters Violet and Lottie, had done the same thing. Later in his life he emphasized the importance of education, stating that was the only way to get ahead. He also told me that a person never gets ahead by working for someone else, advice evidenced by his own business ventures. I never heard him say anything negative about anybody in his family or out of his family. And as far as I know, he had a very excellent relationship with his father. I think he was devastated when his mother died. He was serious about taking care of his younger sisters and told stories about working as a child and using the money to feed and care for his siblings. It seemed to be the family thing to do, for the eldest siblings to care for the younger ones.

JM: How did those sisters turn out? Did they get along alright?

PB: They did. They were all best friends. They seemed like happy people. I think they all began working at a very young age. The older ones took care of the younger ones. I've seen pictures of them as children, and their hair is all curled, and they seem to have nice clothes.

JM: Did you know Clarence very well?

PB: I did not. I remember when he died, but I was really young then. From what my brothers and sisters say, he was really a nice guy, and he was really popular and well liked, outgoing, and very athletic.

JM: Do you know what he did for a living?

PB: I know that he had trucks, and people delivered chum (fish waste used for fertilizer) from the fish factories for him. He was interested in boxing, and they used to have boxing matches at his house on Franklin Street. He was deeply admired by George and his sisters. His son Dale has four children, three girls and one boy, and they all went to the University of Maine, and they all majored in electrical engineering.

JM: You told me a story when I first talked to you about George helping you with your algebra homework.

PB: He could help me do that even though he quit school in fifth grade. He told me that he had been a good student in school and that my real mother Lorena, as well as the other sisters, had been excellent students.

JM: Did you just automatically go to him thinking that he would be able to help you?

PB: Sure. He could figure a lot of it out in his head.

JM: What else can you tell me about him?

PB: He had a really good sense of humor. He could always see the humorous side of things. At one point when he had the convenience store in Eastport, he took shoe polish and wrote a sign on the window of the store that said: ‘Beware of the eagles flying low. They might hit you in the head.' Somebody from the Bangor Daily News took a picture of it, and then it was published. This was at the time the Pittston Oil Company was trying to build a refinery in Eastport but was facing arguments from environmentalists. He was for the refinery, having lived through the economic downfall of Eastport's cannery business. His hero was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he also greatly admired his wife Eleanor. He often spoke fondly of each of them and was a strong Democrat.

JM: Did you do a lot of things with him? Or was he always working?

PB: As a younger child, he used to let me follow him around as he did errands and odd jobs. He loved children, was extremely patient, and seemed to welcome and enjoy my presence. He was always working, but I worked with him at the store, from the eighth grade on. I used to work there in the summer. He just worked so hard, almost all the time.

JM: But he lived to be 86.

PB: He had a stroke, and he finally died of kidney failure. He was elderly the first time he was ever admitted to a hospital - Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. I was with him and remember him being in a wheelchair, and they asked him what he did for a living. He told the nurse he was a clam digger. Like I said, he had quite a sense of humor.

JM: Did you go to college?

PB: I went to the University of Maine, in Orono.

JM: What did you major in?

PB: I majored in English and French - B.A. in English; later, an M.L.S. in Library Science.

JM: And now you're a school librarian?

PB: Yes.

JM: Were you a teacher before?

PB: I was. I've been a middle school teacher, and a high school English and French teacher. When I see kids at school and I hear of these abuse cases, I think about what might have happened to me if George and Edna hadn't taken me in. I think there was a couple that wanted to adopt me. It was a minister and his wife. Oh, my goodness, what would have happened to me? How would my life have been different if I had ended up with them? You know, it's kind of scary.

JM: Do you think you're anything like George?

PB: I work really hard, and I think I have a really good sense of humor.

JM: Did he try to teach you to do things, like those he did with his hands and his ingenuity?

PB: No. It was the fifties. Back then, girls did girl things and boys did boy things.

JM: Tell me more about George.

PB: He was just a real generous, likable person who worked really hard. He was really dedicated to his family. He loved Eastport, and he loved Washington County. He was a great father and a great husband.

JM: I've begun to realize that it's important to find out about the lives of these kids. Many of them turned out to have normal lives, not necessarily privileged lives, but people who were loved and cared for by their children, and are part of someone's fond memories. I wonder what Mr. Hine would have thought about this.

PB: I think there are two ways of looking at child labor. I know it wasn't right, and I'm glad that it's changed. But on the other hand, what would these people have had if they hadn't worked? What would the quality of their lives have been like? It seems like everyone was doing it. It was kind of the thing to do if you lived in the area at that time. I don't think they knew any different. The whole structure of society is different today. If they were young now, George and his siblings would be able to go college for free and consequently have greater economic opportunities. The greatest thing George and his family had was love - something not drained by child labor or guaranteed by educational opportunity.