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Continued: Raphael Newcomb Higgins Was born to Andrew Jackson Rowe and Cassie Evelyn Harford on Oct 28, 1910 in Georgetown. At three weeks of age his father took him up to the home of Ivana Higgins as the baby was unable to keep his formula down. Mrs. Higgins was a practical nurse and she soon got him straightened out, but his mother never came to take him home, so he was with the Higgins family until he was two years old. One day his mother came up to get her baby and took him home to an old farm on the now, Reid park road. He was a very unhappy little boy and cried all the time. Mr. Higgins was upset over her
taking him, so at 2 o'clock in the morning he harnessed up his horse and went over there to the farm to get him back. He told his wife that he knew that the child was crying. After he got to the farm he heard Ray screaming and by then his mother was glad to get rid of him.
Ray started school in Georgetown but he was unhappy there as Harry Heald teased him and made him miserable so Mrs. Higgins took him out and sent him to the Robinhood school until he was nine years old. She decided to send him to the Orphans Home in Bath which was a home for the children of war veterans . That would give him a chance to go to high school. His twin brothers, Alfred and Andrew had also been placed there after their mother died. Ray always came home to the Higgins farm
weekends and vacations. He graduated from Morse High in 1929. Mr. and Mrs. Higgins adopted Ray after he had his 18th. Birthday, as the pension that came from their father had stopped. Rays father, Andrew Jackson Rowe died when Ray was three weeks old so some time later his mother married John Thibodeau and had Maynard making him a half brother to Ray, Cassie died when Maynard was about a month old,
After graduation he went down to Rhode Island to go to Browne and Sharpe to be an apprentice to learn the tool making trade. He went for a year then because of the depression the company did away with the apprentice program . Ray then came home Ray delivered milk for the Oakhurst dairy, door to door, which proved not to be very profitable as people had no money to pay their bills because of the depression. He soon gave that job up and started digging clams as jobs were very scarce. Ray met Marjorie Hinckley while she was in nurses training, and by then he was in the business of delivering oil from Portland to Bath for the Clappison Co. which lasted for about a year. By then Marjorie had graduated from nurses training and they got married July .11,1934.A short time later he got a job at the Bath Iron Works where he worked as a leading man in the carpenter shop and was in charge of the launchings In 1942 Ray started to build a home for them at Sagadahoc Bay on a piece of property that was given to Marjorie by her mother .During the war years Ray drove a bus from Georgetown to the Bath Iron Works, transporting workers back and forth to work
In 1944 Ray and Marjorie bought a two family home at 4 Maple St in Bath, to be closer to work and also, so their two daughters, Roslyn & Marcia could go to a better school system than there was in Georgetown. The upstairs was always rented to help on the cost of running the house and mortgage payments. Marjorie worked as a registered nurse at the Bath Memorial Hospital which she graduated from. She did public health nursing for the last 4 years before she retired 1971.
Ray retired Oct.1 1972. and they moved back to their house at Sagadahoc Bay, Georgetown ME Ray kept busy clamming and doing a little fishing with his brother Maynard, until two years later when he went into a five year depression. He went through a very rough time as well as did Marjorie, who was taking care of him. He admitted himself into the Augusta Mental Hospital but that was not the place for him. Marjorie brought him home and cared for him. He was given numerous shock therapy treatments which seemed to calm him down temporarily. After he was finally put on Lithium he came out of the depression and managed to have a happy retirement
Ray fell down the front steps and broke his arm in 1997 and it was a decline in health from there on.. He was diagnosed with cancer of the bone marrow but was able to stay home with Marjorie doing the nursing care with help from the Chans home health care. He died on Jan. 27, 1998, and is buried along side of Marjorie's mother and father, Cleveland & Daisy Hinckley, in the cemetery behind the Georgetown Baptist church.
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