Former Students the Frost Sisters Recall the Lincoln School
It started with a grade school textbook, Nations Overseas, copyright 1948.
“If you want my name, look on page 3.” Written in the careful hand of a child, still speaking across the decades.
Curious, I flipped to page 3 with its figure caption “How the Mercator map distorts the size and shape of lands in high altitudes”—and there, in the margins, another scrawled note: “Page 79.”
The child, presumably a former student of the Lincoln School in Mariaville, Maine, was playing a game. They wanted the reader of the future—me, Jessica Bross, in 2026—to play with them. So of course I did.
A dozen or so prompts later that had me turning from page 81 to 44 to 120 and on, eventually led me to the index, where I spied this sweet signature: Florence Frost.
Fellow reader, Florence Frost is still alive. She’s 84 years old and lives in Hancock, Maine next to her older sister Rachel. Their younger sister Lillian lives not too far away in Franklin. And not just Florence, but all three women, attended the Lincoln School for at least part of their primary schooling.
This is their story.
Meet the Sisters Frost
Sisters Rachel (b. 1937), Florence (b. 1942), and Lillian (b. 1948) Frost—at time of writing, 89, 84, and 76 years old, respectively—grew up together in their paternal grandparents’ house in Mariaville, Maine, a now roughly 160-year-old farmhouse built c. 1863 that once shared land with the eponymous Frost Mill.
(L-R) Sisters Rachel, Florence, and Lillian Frost in the dining room of the Mariaville, ME farmhouse where they grew up.
The Frost Mill, named for the women’s grandfather Henry Frost, was a wood mill that specialized in turning, among other treasures, children’s toys and rolling pins. The mill employed area workers who ran the lathes and bagged the round discs, for example, that would become yo-yos, or the paddles popularly sold in North Carolina as Fli-Backs. Since sisters Rachel, Florence (who went by Flossie back then, after her maternal grandmother Floss[1]), and Lillian, along with their brothers Robert and Clayton[2] and parents Wyman and Bernice, lived in one half of the house their grandfather had inherited from Nathan Jordan[3], they were more than familiar with both the mill and its dangers. Fingers and other body parts could be lost quite easily around that heavy machinery, so most of the times they dared to peek inside, Gramp Henry would send them away with a stern look. Only when he wasn’t around would Lillian dare ride her tricycle around inside the mill and accept root beer barrel candies from the workers. The girls also liked playing in the sawdust piles. Even so, Florence says, “We always respected the machinery.”
The Frost farmhouse was—still is—located at 2185 Mariaville Road, though the mill has since been demolished. It’s currently owned by Nate Frost, Robert Frost’s son, and Nate’s wife Nancy. As it was when the Frost sisters lived there, the farmhouse is just .5 miles from the Lincoln School. Older sister Rachel attended first through eighth grade at the Lincoln School, from approximately 1943 to 1950. The other two students in her grade were Louis Austin and Ronald Dority. Florence, five years younger than Rachel, went to the Lincoln School until seventh grade. In 1953, the girls’ mother sadly passed away from multiple kinds of cancer. Bernice was just 44 and had always eaten well and never smoked. When Wyman Frost remarried, the family moved to Ellsworth. The youngest daughter, Lillian, therefore only attended first grade at the Lincoln School. While Lillian’s memories of her mother are limited, she recalls Bernice’s unparalleled chop suey (a dish akin to macaroni goulash in the Northeast) and sour pickles.
Family tree showing how Rachel, Florence, and Lillian Frost are related to Nathan Jordan.
Memories of the Lincoln School, Mariaville
Despite their age gap, all three sisters had the same teacher at the Lincoln School, at least for some periods of time: Mrs. Mildred Haslam[4]. Mrs. Haslam lived in Waltham and would have driven to Mariaville to preside over the one-room schoolhouse that served, on average, 10-12 kindergartners through eighth graders. She taught all grade levels and all subjects with the help of the older students who acted as tutors for the younger pupils. Florence in particular recalls helping kids sound out stories in their early-reader books featuring Dick, Jane, and baby Sally. The teacher’s desk sat at the west side of the room, in front of two blackboards. Windows behind her desk looked out over a field and into the woods. The students’ desks were scattered around the room facing hers. Some were freestanding and could be picked up and moved closer to the woodburner on especially cold winter days. Others were bolted to the floor.
You entered the schoolhouse through the south-facing door, which opened into a vestibule for coats. Two further vestibules beyond the coat rack room contained a small library (east vestibule) and a place for students to deposit their sack lunches and/or get a cup of water (west vestibule). Water was ferried in a bucket from a spring off nearby Morrison Farm Road by the “janitor”—a role assigned to the oldest boy, usually a 7th or 8th grader; at one point it was the girls’ older brother Robert—and dumped into a tall ceramic crock with a spigot at the bottom. Students could drink from this crock using flattened paper cups that opened into cones. As Florence notes, “It was good fresh water!” The janitor’s other jobs included sweeping the school floors, fetching wood from the wood shed for the woodburner (the wood would have been bought/supplied by the town of Mariaville), and starting and stoking the daily fire—labor for which he in turn received a small sum.
Class ran from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. for the kindergartners and until 3 p.m. for first through eighth graders. All students enjoyed two recess periods a day as well as a lunch break. The sisters Frost typically brought sandwiches from home in their sack lunches: peanut butter and jelly for Florence; cream cheese and olive butter for Rachel. Their older brother Robert loved to snack on his mother’s popcorn balls, but she’d quit making those by the time she had five children to care for. At recess, their favorite game was Haley Over. Students would divide into two teams, one on each side of the schoolhouse. One member of the team with the ball would throw it as hard as they could, hoping to make it over the schoolhouse. If they did, and a member of the other team caught it, members of the throwing team then had to avoid being “tagged” by the team who’d caught the ball.
As there was no school bus back then, the sisters walked to the Lincoln School every day and in any kind of weather. “Snow day? Are you kidding?! No such thing,” Florence testifies, though she remembers the day it was so cold the janitor kept adding wood to the woodburner until it glowed red hot. Mariaville resident Roland Edgecomb was too good at his job and kept the roads plowed free and clear. Just like students today, students of the Lincoln School had summers off. Though they truly loved school, Rachel, Florence, and Lillian nevertheless enjoyed every minute of these long breaks, which they spent playing with each other and other kids in the community.
That, in fact, is how Lillian lost part of one finger! One summer day when she was four, she was walking beside a neighbor boy, merrily chatting as the boy pushed a manual lawn mower up a ramp on her grandfather’s property. Rachel had mowed the lawn that day and asked Florence to return the mower, but she wouldn’t do it, so the neighbor boy was doing the girls a favor. At some point, the boy lost control of the mower, and as it started rolling back down the ramp, the blade clipped Lillian’s right ring finger. It must have hurt terribly, but her strongest memory from that day is getting to ride on the front bench seat of the Hudson between her parents home from the Bangor hospital. (She rode to the hospital on her mother’s lap, towels wrapped around her hurt hand.) The youngest child, Lillian was always relegated to the backseat—but not that day!
Rachel, the only Frost girl to graduate from the Lincoln School, doesn’t recall any kind of graduation ceremony. The only grammar school diploma that still exists for any of the Frosts named here belonged to Wyman Frost (see below). It is believed he also attended the Lincoln School. Florence and Lillian continued primary school in Ellsworth, with Lillian also attending schools in Amherst, Machias, and Northeast Harbor for a time. Two of the schools Lillian attended in Ellsworth burned down in consecutive years unrelatedly.
A grammar school diploma for Wyman Frost, dated June 24, 1921.
Later Life, to Today
After high school, all three young women went off to college. Rachel and Florence received education degrees in Machias and became teachers themselves. Rachel taught in Sherman, Maine. Florence taught for nine years at Kittery, where she saw her salary double from $5,000 to $10,000 in less than a decade. After that, she says, no one wanted to hire her because they’d have to pay her too much! Lillian studied business at Beal and went to work as a typesetter for the Ellsworth American newspaper. She also sold subscriptions to the paper and labeled each paper for delivery. All three women left their jobs when they married their sweethearts and became mothers, though Rachel would go on to serve six years as a missionary in Chile and Florence would transition into retail, working variously at Woolworth’s, Ames, and Zayre department stores. Lillian devoted herself to the special needs of her youngest son Thomas, who was born without a brain, until his death at 11 1/2. Today, though their remaining kids and grandkids are spread across the country, the women are happy to still call Downeast Maine (and each other!) home.
The sisters Frost agree: They are glad to know the Lincoln School is being preserved—both the building itself and the history of those who walked its floors. Their main concern was whether the updated retreat space will have a bathroom, since in the 1940s and ‘50s, all the schoolhouse had was a double drop-toilet, basically an outhouse attached to the building’s rear and accessible from the main classroom. Students raised their hands to ask the teacher’s permission to use it, and held up one or two fingers to indicate which function they needed the toilet for… “so everyone knew!” Florence jokes, laughing.
The answer, by the way, is yes! We have plans for the old library to become a modern bathroom that will serve the writers’ retreat classroom. Want to contribute to this project? We’re accepting monetary gifts to support the schoolhouse renovation here.
This article was derived from an oral history taken from Rachel, Florence, and Lillian (née) Frost and conducted by Jessica Bross on 13 July 2026 in Mariaville, Maine.
[1] The girls’ maternal grandmother was named Florence (Norton) Wardwell but went by Floss. When our Florence/Flossie worked in retail as an adult, she would meet people from the Penobscot area and ask, “Do you know my grandmother, Florence Wardwell?” They would say no, until she added, “Floss?” The answer always came: “Oh, of course I know Floss!” Floss lost her first husband Elijah Heath prematurely and married Ray Wardwell the same year her daughter Bernice married Wyman Frost. Ray Wardwell was “Grampy” to the girls even though he was not their biological grandfather.
[2] Clayton’s birthday was March 3; Lillian’s birthday was March 5. If someone asked her when her birthday was, she’d say, “When Clayton’s cake is all eaten up.” It never took five children long to eat a cake. Florence was born on December 16 and came home from the hospital the night before Christmas. “I was Rachel’s and Robert’s and Clayton’s Christmas present that year!”
[3] Per the family tree featured here, Nathan Jordan and Priscilla Dunham begat Elizabeth Jordan, who married Henry Frost. Henry Frost built the Frost Mill after a career in carpentry on Mount Desert Island.
[4] Mildred Haslam left the Lincoln School for a time to teach at another school, but later returned. Other teachers the sisters had in her absence included Mrs. Wessel from Brooksville (she can be seen in a school photo of the time wearing a corsage Bernice Frost made for her), Miss Drew (who once said Clayton, whom she did not get along with, “had a pain in his arithmetic”), Mrs. Richards, and the girls’ Aunt Ellen. Ellen was an Austin from Brooksville. She married Uncle Merle Frost, their father Wyman’s brother, when she was 19, and they were married for 70 years before he died in 1991. Ellen passed two years later. Fun fact: Because the girls’ mother’s sister also married an Austin, they had Austin cousins on both sides of the family!
