A Personal History of Pleasant Valley Grange
Pauline Applin interviewed by Dianne Ballon
Goose Eye No. 5 (2025)
Interview
A Personal History of the Pleasant Valley Grange
Pauline Applin
Interviewed by Dianne Ballon
In 2000 and 2001, the Mahoosuc Arts Council sponsored the Oxford County Grange Hall Tour Project, a series of events at Grange Halls across Oxford County featuring storytelling, poetry, and musical performances. As part of the project, professional sound artist Dianne Ballon was engaged to record a series of interviews with representatives of participating Granges. The original recordings of these interviews are now in the collections of the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society.
The wide-ranging interview which follows was conducted by Ballon on May 18, 2001, with Pauline Applin of the Pleasant Valley Grange, No. 136, which was located in West Bethel, Maine. Pauline, who was born and raised in Skowhegan, Maine, and her husband, John, originally from the Wiscasset area, were both math teachers at Telstar High School and residents of Mason Township at the time of this interview. Both were longtime members of the Grange. The Pleasant Valley Grange was founded 150 years ago, in 1875, and disbanded in 2016. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.
Dianne Ballon: How did you come to the Bethel area?
Pauline Applin: We met in college and first moved to West Buxton, Maine, near Standish, because John’s first job was at Bonny Eagle High School. We lived there for three years and came here because John had maintained contact with the teacher placement service at the university, and when this area built what was then a new high school, Telstar High School, they were searching for teachers, and they particularly wanted someone who could teach advanced math. The university contacted him, and Elizabeth Lord, who was then math department head here in Bethel, also contacted him. He said, well, I think I’ll just ride up there and talk with them. When he came back he said it’s such a beautiful area, if they offer me the job, we have to go live there.
DB: How long have you been married, and did you raise a family?
PA: We’ve been married 37 years. I was thinking about it this morning. We have two daughters. We adopted two little gals. They were eight and five when they came to live with us. They’re now grown. One of them is in the Navy. She and her husband and their two children live in Norfolk, Virginia. Our younger daughter is working for General Electric at the headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
Becoming Involved in the Grange
DB: Could you tell me what Grange you belong to and how long have you been a Grange member?
PA: We belong to Pleasant Valley Grange, No. 136, and we’ve been members now for 26 years.
DB: How old were you when you first joined, and do you remember why you joined?
PA: I can’t tell you exactly how old I was. We joined because shortly after our moving here, we became very friendly with a rather large local family whose last name is Grover. One of the members of that family was also teaching at Telstar High School at that time, and we became very friendly with him and his wife. They belong to the Grange and they invited us to join.
DB: So up to that point you hadn’t known that much about the Grange?
PA: Hadn’t a clue. My husband had a little more of an idea because when he was growing up his family had moved from Wiscasset to a little town inland from Wiscasset called Alna, which is very rural, and he’d lived there for several years and had met people who belonged to the Grange because they were farmers. It was a big farming area then; it isn’t as much now. So he had an inkling of what the Grange was about. I had no idea.
DB: Are there aspects of the Grange that keep you there as a member? What do you enjoy about the Grange?
PA: I have to tell you, what impressed me about it when I very first joined—and I still feel this way—was the fact that anyone and everyone is welcome to join the Grange. There are no great expectations that you have to meet certain qualifications. The people we met came from so many different backgrounds. They had such a variety of talents. I was just very impressed with that. Age doesn’t matter, and even in the Grange ritual they talk about it being one of the very first fraternal organizations that welcomed women and gave them positions equal to those of the men. A woman can be Master of the Grange, no problem. So that’s what first impressed me about it, and I still feel that that’s one of the strengths of this organization.
DB: When you started, was there still a feeling of it having originated as an agricultural organization for farmers?
PA: Not a lot. Just about everyone who belonged when we joined had an outside job. Most of the people were very interested in gardening, and many of them still kept critters [laughs] because they enjoyed that. But, with the exception of one bachelor fellow who belonged then and has since passed away, no one else was able to earn their living farming. It’s sad, but it’s just the case.
DB: That is a sad commentary.
PA: In the state of Maine today you have to have a very unique situation to be able to earn your living farming.
DB: Do your recall whether any other of you or your husband’s family members ever belonged to the Grange at one time or another, and if so which Grange that would be?
PA: No one that I know of.
DB: On either side?
PA: On either side. I thought that John’s mother might have belonged, but he says that she didn’t.
DB: And are you a member of any other Granges?
PA: Yes, in this respect: If you take all seven degrees you not only are a member of your local Grange (which is called the subordinate), but you become a member of the county or Pomona Grange. So in our case, we belong to Oxford Pomona Grange No. 2, and that also automatically makes us members of the Maine State Grange and the National Grange.
DB: Do you have activities with other Granges? Does your Grange have activities?