The Life of Clara (Lermond) Overlock

By Isabel Morse Maresh -

22 Apr 2007

Ninety-two-year-old Clara had been ill for some time. Because of her age, and not being able to take care of herself, she had left the home that she loved, and gone to live with her daughter, Josephine. She had not gotten any better, and was brought to a Rest Home in Appleton, Me. This morning she was expecting a phone call from her son, Burnell. He called often to ask how she was feeling. Josephine lived nearby and visited as often as she could.   Burnell had often asked her to write her life story, but she had put it off. “Maybe someday,” she would tell him. Today would not be the day. She was so tired, but memories flooded her mind.

Clara was born in Appleton, Me. Aug. 18, 1873, the eldest daughter of Atwood and Sarah (Simmons) Lermond. She had been told that a baby sister had been born and died a year before she was born. Clara recalled joyful childhood days, playing with her four younger sisters in Appleton. Then it seem that her young life was filled with tragedies, one after another.

When she was ten years old, her baby sister, Lottie, just a year old, died. Less than a year later, her beloved mother, Sarah, died of consumption. Mamma was only thirty-five years old, leaving Clara, the eldest daughter, to care for her four sisters.

Their handsome Papa, Atwood Lermond, was devastated in the loss of his baby and wife. He was a farmer, eking out a living for his family. He relied heavily upon ten-year old Clara. Less than three years later, Papa, too, succumbed to the dread disease of consumption. He was aged forty-one.

The orphaned girls were sent to various homes of relatives and friends. Clara went to live with her aunt and uncle, Henry and Abbie Simmons in North Union, where she attended school. She was then sent to Waldoboro Village School for some advanced classes. After finishing the eighth grace, Clara took and passed the examination to be eligible to teach. In the Spring of 1889, at age sixteen, she taught school at North Union.

Alice, seven years younger than Clara, lived with Aunt Hattie Gleason. Allie, as she was called, was a lovely girl, beloved by all who knew her. She was a member of Seven Tree Grange. She developed a cough, but was generally in good health. On a beautiful Fall morning in 1897, Aunt Hatt called her to get ready for school. Receiving no answer, she went to her room and found her dead. Allie was only seventeen years of age.

Eunice was less that three years younger than Clara. When their parents died, Eunice went to live with the Reuben Howard family in Rockville. Eunice had completed her education and was awarded a Teaching Certificate in 1895. She longed for a higher education, but was plagued by the dreaded disease that had claimed her family members. She was very successful as a teacher, and loved by her students. Eunice died at the Howard home in May of 1900, aged twenty-three years.

In the Fall of 1889, Clara accepted a position to teach in Washington, Me., boarding at Will Light’s. Before her father had died, he had bought her an organ. She had taken lessons from Hattie Bartlett in Appleton. Clara could read music, and played quite well. It was 1889 when Clara had joined Medomak Valley Grange, where she met dashing Charlie Overlock.

When Charlie was six or seven years old, he had sneaked his father’s old fiddle to practice on. At a kitchen dance at his parents’ home when he was eleven years old, he joined his brother, George, fiddling for a reveling group of dancers. The tables and chairs had been moved to the sitting room to give the dancers room to glide around the kitchen floor. That was the beginning of Overlock’s Orchestra.

When Charlie met Clara, he bought her a new organ from Maine Music Company in Rockland. It was obvious that she and Charlie would be making music together for a long time.

Clara wrote in her diary, “The first hall where I ever played for a dance with Charlie was at Aruba Bruce’s ‘Summitt Hall’ on December 24, 1889. I don’t know if he had played there before or not.” They earned $1.50 that night to save to get married. Charlie was nineteen and Clara was sixteen. The next day Charlie and his brother, George, went to the Town Clerk’s to get Clara and him published for marriage.

On January 10, 1890, on a Saturday night, they took Charlie’s father’s team of horses to Stickney’s Corner where they were married by Hilton B. Wright, Justice of the Peace. They returned to Charlie’s home where the family was present to serenade them. Horns were tooting, and food was ready for a great reception.

In 1892, Josephine was born, following by Elliott Burnell fourteen years later. The children were a blessing to Clara, after losing so many of her family.

When her sister, Maud, five years younger than Clara, became sick with consumption, Clara, then married, accompanied her to a sanatorium in Pennsylvania for treatment. Three weeks after going, Maud died there, aged thirty-one years, leaving Clara the last remaining member of her family. Maud had worked in Pennsylvania for Mr. White for twelve years. He came here to Maine for the funeral, accompanying Maud’s remains back to Appleton.

In 1902, Charlie built a home in Washington, Me. for them and their family. Clara and Charlie lived a rich full life. Overlock’s Orchestra was much in demand to play at Grange and dance halls, Town Halls, Pavilions and even barns, for miles around. The Orchestra grew. It included fiddlers, organ, sax, trumpet and other musical instruments. There was rarely a week that they didn’t play somewhere, not only Saturday nights, often four and five nights a week no matter what the weather. As soon as Josephine was old enough to play the organ, Clara taught her to play. The first time she played on stage for a dance, her legs were so short that she couldn’t reach the pedals. Someone sat on the bench with her to ‘pump’ the pedals of the organ. She became an accomplished organ and piano player. Burnell became a drum player with the group, also starting when very young. They were often called back to a Hall to play week after week.

Clara kept the schedules and books of Overlock’s Orchestra. She was a very busy person. She was Town Clerk of Washington, Me. from 1928 to 1933. She was fascinated by genealogical research, in the days when everything was written by hand. She kept notebooks of hand-written records. She copied names and dates from the Town records while she was Town Clerk. She enquired of older folks their family histories, writing down the family stories that she was told.

Clara taught school in Appleton, Liberty, Union, and Washington, Me. having taught thirty-five years, and then was awarded a life teaching certificate.

She was appointed Justice of the Peace by Governor Barrows in 1936. Clara recalled that she had married many couples. She was active in the Grange, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which she was proud of. She served on the Washington School Committee after her retirement. She raised her children to become responsible, contributing citizens.

Clara was a well-known antique dealer. She was active in Community affairs, a Trustee of the Gibbs Free Library. She was a talented dress maker and milliner. And, she was a talented writer of poetry. Besides all this, she was a farm wife, making butter, putting food by for the winter, and all that was required of her.

Charlie, a talented fiddler, was also a farmer. He got his first auto in 1916, a Model T Ford. Clara had thought that a car was a luxury. It became the transportation for them to go to the dances. In 1923, Charlie traded cars at Waldoboro Garage, paying the difference with two cows.

After sixty-six years of fiddling at many, many dances, making friends wherever they went, and providing entertainment for many people, Charlie played his last dance in February 1947, at age seventy-six, at the Washington Grange Hall, accompanied by Burnell and the drums, and Josephine at the piano. Less than a week later, Charlie suffered a stroke. Burnell, an educator in Rhode Island called often to check on his father. Three months later, Burnell got the call that his father had passed away. Burnell lovingly called his father a ’Country Fiddler’.

Clara lived on in their home in Washington. She was never idle, her pen rarely laid down. She was a correspondent for the Camden and Rockland newspapers. She had contributed most of her life to the little Town of Washington where she had lived since she was sixteen years old. No, she never got around to writing her life story for Burnell. Her life was an open book. Someone else would have to put it in print. Though she was aged, her mind was as keen as it had ever been.