Agatha Ellen Hersom

   FamilySearch ID: KW8H-HTQ. Find a Grave ID: 183549193.

  Events

• Census, 5 Apr 1930, East Millinocket, Penobscot, Maine, United States. ¹

• Census, 4 Apr 1940, Medway, ME. ²

• Census, 5 Apr 1950, Belfast, ME. ³

• Newspaper Article: The Lewiston Daily Sun, 9 Jan 1954, Lewiston, ME.
3 CHILDREN DIE IN MEDWAY FIRE
Brings State's Total to Eleven in Three Fires
MEDWAY, Jan. 8 (AP) -- Three sleeping children were killed by flames that roared through their one-room home in this small village late tonight. The deaths brought to 11 the number of children killed in Maine fires in the last five days.
The victims, children of Mrs. George Pinkham by a previous marriage, were Connie D., 2, Michele Lee, 3, and Maurice Gordon, 5.
Constable Paul H. Farrington said Mrs. Pinkham's husband told him this story:
The three children were sleeping and their mother was visiting a neighbor. Maurice became uncomfortable in his bed. Pinkham left to get his wife.
As the couple approached their small home arm-in-arm a few minutes later it was a mass of flames.
"There wasn't anything we could do," Mrs. Pinkham sobbed. "We couldn't even get near the kids."
Her husband said "The flames were terrific. I tried to get close but it was impossible."
Farrington said he was one of the first to reach the scene "and it was hopeless, just hopeless. Those poor children were trapped."
A fourth child of Mrs. Pinkham, also by a previous marriage, was attending a schoolboy basketball game in a gym 300 yards away. The boy, Alec Lyons, 10, returned from the game and found his home in ruins.
Pinkham is employed by the Great Northern Paper Co., which is building a new plant in East Millinocket, about two miles from this Penobscot County community.
Eight other children perished last Monday in two separate Maine blazes 20 miles apart.
Five children of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Whitcomb were trapped in their home at Old Orchard Beach. And three youngsters of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Metzger died in their cottage near Sebago Lake the same day.
Mr. and Mrs. Pinkham escaped uninjured from tonight's fire.
Their oldest child, a boy, was attending a schoolboy basketball game when the blaze broke out.
The flames flashed through the small wooden structure quickly.
"By the time we got there, the place was gone. All we could do was recover the little bodies," a spokesman at the fire department in nearby East Millinocket said.
Medway is a tiny village about 60 miles north of Bangor.

• Obituary: The Times Record, 9 Dec 1980, Brunswick, ME.
BATH \emdash Agatha E. McDonough, 56, of 48 Heath Lane, died Dec. 8 at the Bath hospital.
Mrs. McDonough was born July 7, 1924, in Molunkus, the daughter of Fred H. and Beatrice Brewer Hersom. She attended schools in Medway and was a resident of Bath for many years. Mrs. McDonough was a member of the Mormon Church in Topsham.
She leaves her husband, S. Thomas McDonough; her mother; a son, Alec Lyons, all of Bath; four sisters, Arlene Grover of Brunswick, Lorraine J. Stilphen of Woolwich, Sherry Alexander of Sebasco, and Donna Wallace of Bath; four brothers, John Smith of Providence, R.I., Eugene F. Hersom of Bath, Gordon Hersom of Cundy's Harbor, and Frederick J. Hersom of Woolwich; and five grandsons.
A funeral service will be held Thursday at 1 p.m. at the David E. Desmond Funeral Home, 638 High St. Interment will be in Oak Grove Cemetery. Visiting hours will be Wednesday from 2 to 9 p.m. at the funeral home.

Agatha married Maurice Herbert Gordon Sr., son of Darius Hanson and Ruby Geneva Merry, about 1948. (Maurice Herbert Gordon Sr. was born on 25 Feb 1921 in Thorndike, ME,^{4 5} died on 25 Jun 1976 in Freeport, ME and was buried in Webster Cemetery, Freeport, ME.)