Sheldon ‘Sheba’ Merritt of Jonesport
JONESPORT – Every once in a while, Jonesport Shipyard has a visitor, whom we know as ‘Sheba.’ He has brought us items from when Bert Frost owned the yard and talked a lot about the boats that he has known over the years. It took us three telephone calls to figure out what his real name was, Sheldon Merritt and what he knew I wanted to document.
My first question was how he got his nickname? He replied, “I don’t know. I’ve had it all my life.” Sheba along with Velton Peabody’s book “Ancestors and Descendants of Solomon Peabody and Lydia (Alley) Peabody” added the following. His mother was Lorna May Urquhart, who was born in Jonesport on 13 December 1923. She married Shirley Grover Merritt in Jonesport on 13 July 1943. Shirley was born to Walter Harvey and Mattie May Merritt in Addison on 5 March 1921. Lorna went to school in Jonesport and then went to work at the Underwood’s sardine factory and later for Gray’s Shellfish in Jonesport. They later owned a store together for a short time.
Sheba said that they grew up on the Indian River Road. He was born on 10 February 1952, one of eight children. He had two brothers, Shirley Grover, Jr. (1946), and Alberton Harvey (1949) and five sisters: Julia May (1944), Evelyn Marie (1947), Arlene Frances (1955), Cathy Elaine (1957), and Florence Marlene (1958). Sheba said, “I had two brothers, one died. He was in Vietnam.” This was Shirley Grover, Jr., who served with the U. S. Marines 1st Division 3rd Battalion. During his seven years of service, he earned a purple heart and 12 other medals. Unfortunately, he got cancer from Agent Orange and died after a nine-year battle at the hospital in Machias in 2004. His wife, Phyllis Marie Woodward, taught English at Jonesport High School and was a pastor at a local church.
When Sheba was young the family moved from the Indian River Road to downtown and then to his current home on outer Main Street. The current house came by barge from Head Harbor he thought in the 1940s, like several other homes in the town. They moved in the late 1960s. At that time, the walls were covered in cardboard and the cabinets were crates. There were two bedrooms upstairs. One had five girls in it and the other three boys. Downstairs was the living room, which doubled as their parents’ bedroom and the kitchen. Then his father went to work to renovate the entire house.
Sheba and his brother Alberton started out cedar shingling houses when he was a young teenager. He said, “He was a good woodworker, but he is quite ill now. He worked for Freddy Lenfestey for a while.”
When asked if he ever lobster fished, he said, no, but he has always had a love of boats. He added, “The first thing I remember Bert Frost built me a toy skiff. She was a beauty. I don’t know what became of her. My father worked for Frost for 38 years. He apparently was the boss over all the other workers. At one time that was a busy shop. They had a day shift and a night shift. He was more or less the overseer then. He helped Bert a lot. The first one they built went to Stonington. A fellow on Beals moved to Stonington. He came back and got the first Frost boat and went back to Stonington. Tuddy Urquhart got the second one.”
Sheba did not remember any of the boat’s names but did remember that Bert built two 55-foot offshore draggers, which were stored at Billings. Then he remembered, “The boat shop got on fire. There was a boat inside. It was a cabin cruiser, and the lumber building burnt up. That was in the mid-60s. My father, he would help build the first shop. Then my father went up to Mount Desert Island to help build that new schoolhouse they have got now. Bert, he didn’t know whether they were going to build back or not. He later called my father, “I want you. We’ve got to build another boat shop. So, he came back and worked for Bert. Bert was a good man. He had a big heart. Sing, he could sing.”
Sheba never went to high school explaining, “I went as far as eighth grade. I said well, Sheba, old boy you might as well get done and go to work and that’s what I did.”
This is when he was shingling houses with his brother, but then his brother went into the service, and Sheba went out on his own. He said, “The first 15 years I painted. I worked down on Roque Island for five. Beautiful place. I came back and started building buildings. East Bay over to Beals. I built that building. People told me I couldn’t build it alone. I said, ‘Well, I’d never bid on a job I can’t do.’ I shingled almost every roof in this town once. I built the Sardine Museum for Ronnie Peabody. That was quite an outfit. You would swear to God you were walking right into a sardine factory. The only thing it didn’t have was the sardines, had all of the machinery. I helped build a couple of lobster pounds around here. One was for Herman Backman.”
When asked how you built a pound he said, “Well, what you do, you get a great big steam shovel was what we had. You dig holes, put these posts in them and you backfill the post and then you go around it with like 2 x 6s. About three or four of them, then you plank it up. Then you backfill around them. We put threaded rod right through it so it wouldn’t pull apart.”
When asked if he knew who worked with Bert Sheba said Roger Beal, Jr., Elmer Farnsworth, Avery Kelley, Pete Ivan Lamson and his brother-in-law Vincent F. MacLean. Vince was a boatbuilder and fisherman from Milbridge and had 24 brothers and sisters. He married Sheba’s sister Julia in Milbridge on 29 June 1964. Sheba added, “Probably the best one he had was Wandell George Beal. Bert and them boys built the TUCKAHOE. She was close to 50 feet. Well, she went ashore, stove her keel right out of her. They hauled her up at Frost’s, and Wandell and a young guy by the name of Arnie Smith took the keel out and built a brand-new keel for it. Amazing. I used to visit a lot of boat shops. I loved it.”
He said that he visited Clifford Alley, Richard Alley, Alvin Beal, Calvin Beal, Jr., Lovie Beal, Wayne Beal, Willis Beal, Doug Dodge, Ernest Libby, Jr.
Sheba also built miniature lighthouses. He said, “My mother wanted a lighthouse, and I told her I don’t know a thing about lighthouses. She said, ‘Well, you are going to learn.’ I built her one, built all of my sisters and brothers one, overall, I have built 230 lighthouses in the past 25 years.”
Over in West Jonesport there was Oscar and Frank Smith, who were boatbuilders. Sheba said, “I saw one that they built, the front of the trunk was rounded. Now the diamond windows in the boats…the first one ever done there was…He is a brother to Alvin. [Sheba could not remember, but it might be Floyd]. Old Freddy Lenfestey, he was something else. He used to make them round steering wheels. He was clever. He used to like to play jokes on people as did Lovie. Well, he used to have a five-gallon bucket to sit down on, even when he was working on the boat he’d be sitting on that bucket. I can see him now, humped over. Then there used to be a boat shop down Kelley Point, a fellow by the name of Maurice Dow built there.”
Maurice was from Roque Bluffs and built a number of boats in the early 1900s, including several sardine carriers. I believe after leaving Jonesport he went to Biddeford and worked building a schooner during World War I.
One can tell when some is pleased where they are and Sheba is certainly one of those persons. The farthest south he has been was Marblehead, Massachusetts when he shingled a girlfriend’s house many years ago. He has been to Canada a couple of times, which was when he was coaching men’s league softball for 22 years. He only played once when a player was late, but his teams certainly won a lot of trophies. However, his true love has always been Jonesport and always will be.
