History

Opportunity Farm for Boys was founded in 1910 by Lewiston resident, F. Forrest Pease. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Pease moved with his family to Maine as a boy and graduated from Livermore Falls High School. He completed a year of study at the University of Maine and then earned his living through a variety of trades.

Pease was a man of his time. A devout Christian who was deeply committed to social reform, he joined the dozens of men and women of his generation who took to the streets of the nation's cities to help those in need. Pease moved to New York City, where he spent several years reaching out to the homeless, alcoholic men living on the docks of the city's waterfront, and he spent a brief period as a worker in a nearby settlement house.

The more Pease learned about these troubled adults, the more convinced he became that they should have been helped in their youth. So many of the adults who resisted help, he commented later, might have been saved had they been served when they were still boys. With this very modern understanding that "early intervention is the best prevention," Pease returned to Maine to create a home for boys at risk.

Pease enlisted the aid of several prominent citizens from the Portland and Lewiston-Auburn areas. From the start, Mrs. William H. (Ida) Newell, a longtime resident of Lewiston and a dedicated philanthropist, was taken with Pease's plan, and she reached out to other community leaders to help. She recruited Portland resident Mrs. A. A. (Mary) Kendall, and together, the two women assembled a group of volunteers to help make Forrest Pease's dream a reality. (When Opportunity Farm Association was formally incorporated in 1912, Mary Kendall became the board of director's first president.)

These dedicated volunteers located and purchased a small, abandoned farm in New Gloucester, renovated and furnished the first home, helped hire a teacher and paid a number of the early bills. Forrest Pease became the Farm's first "superintendent," and he guided the enterprise from the day the first boy arrived in 1910, until he retired six years later.

From the beginning, Opportunity Farm was open to boys of all backgrounds-regardless of their family's race, religion, or financial status-who needed a safe place to live, to grow and to learn the skills necessary to make their way in the world, regardless of their family's background or financial status. The minutes from the first formal board meeting stated very clearly:

"VOTED. That the purpose of the corporation shall be to provide for boys, without regard to race or religion, instructions in being honest, obedient, industrious, frugal and self-reliant."

A superintendent was hired, along with a teacher who provided daily instruction to the boys. A manager ran the farm and supervised the boys as they learned to milk cows, churn butter, and plant crops. Each day was a combination of schoolwork, chores and recreation.

Daily Life

Daily life at Opportunity Farm is described vividly in a 1979 memoir written by historian Willard Wallace. Wallace, who went on to a long career as a distinguished professor at Wesleyan University, lived at the Farm from 1920-26.

Following the death of his father at sea, his mother had become too ill to care for him; she died while he was living at the Farm. Despite the sadness of his circumstances, Wallace recalled life at Opportunity Farm with fondness. He described the other boys and the staff, particularly Superintendent William Mayo and his wife. Wallace wrote:

On work:

"Opportunity Farm was a tightly organized institution and, to a large extent, self-sustaining….the larger and middle-sized boys carried on the barn and field work. In the winter they also felled trees for wood and sawed it into furnace and stove lengths, and kept the outside area of both farms orderly and clean - Mr. Mayo would not tolerate a lack of tidiness. The smaller boys, under the direction of Mrs. Mayo, were responsible for the housework. Although every boy made his own bed, the smaller boys washed and dried the dishes, and, in summer, helped with the weeding and the gardens, picking peas, beans and berries, and husking corn.

On play:

"The Mayos believed in work, but in recreation, too….The time for recreation was limited, but scarcely a day passed that I wasn't able to play at something. At the Farm I discovered basketball, which I had never seen played before…most of the boys learned to swim, usually at Sabbath Day Lake opposite a village of Shakers. Skiing was beginning to make an appearance…and, of course, we played marbles, mubblety peg, duck on the rock, hare and hounds, and pioneer and Indians."

On education:

"School was still school. On the other hand, it was decidedly more interesting than what I had been used to because there were six grades (third through eighth) in one room, and when I got tired of doing my own work, I could listen to the other grades reciting….if I was particularly careful not to reveal that I was listening."