DAMARISCOTTA, Maine — The crimes of James Cullen were deemed too terrible by locals for them to let the legal system run its course, so a group of Aroostook County natives in the Mapleton area lynched him, which according to County legend stands as the only known lynching in New England.
That was in 1873. Now, a coastal Maine playwright who grew up in the Mapleton area is reviving the story for the stage.
Griff Braley, artistic director of the Damariscotta-based Heartwood Regional Theater Company, has put Cullen’s story to paper and over the weekend will begin casting for a full-length production of the original play “The Legend of Jim Cullen.”
Cullen, according to Braley, was a young New Brunswick immigrant lost in poverty, anger, lust and ignorance. Mired in destitution, his transgressions started with the theft of a pair of boots in Mapleton. The local sheriff caught up with Cullen and told him to go home and never come back again, but an ice storm mired Cullen in a shack. In the middle of the night, Cullen killed the sheriff and his deputy, which led to Cullen’s lynching.
“This story is part of the oral tradition in northern Maine,” said Braley, who was raised in the town of Chapman Plantation near Mapletown, and is a descendant of some of the region’s early settlers, including people involved in Cullen’s lynching. “The story is pretty much all true. There are certainly aspects of it that are very easily proven out.”
This isn’t the first time Cullen has been researched and written about. In 2000, Dena Lynn Winslow published a book titled “They Lynched Jim Cullen: New England’s Only Lynching,” which is for sale on the Maine Historical Society’s website. In 2006, Braley, who is a drama teacher at Lincoln Academy, wrote a shorter version of the play and staged it as the school’s one-act submission in the Maine Drama Festival. Braley has revived the project in the past couple of years and is planning a lavish production that includes live music and the use of cutting-edge multimedia that will include period and contemporary images.
“This story is very much a part of my family history and very much a part of Aroostook County lore,” said Braley, whose great, great, great grandfather knew Jim Cullen. “In 1873 there were a lot of towns in the area that were just about to incorporate. This happened at a really important moment in history.”
To kick off the play, Heartwood Regional Theater Company will host a workshop on Friday that is open to the public and will include an open discussion about the history behind the play as well as readings of certain passages. The free event is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday at the Parker Poe Theater at Lincoln Academy in Newcastle. Open auditions for the play are scheduled for the following day from noon to 3 p.m., also at the Poe Theater. More details are available on the Heartwood Regional Theater Company’s website.
Braley said the project has revealed some interesting history aside from Cullen’s story. He said life in the Mapleton area in the late 1800s was hard and the residents rugged.
“A central question for me has been why did this happen?” said Braley. “It doesn’t seem to be racially motivated and it was not about integration. It was just sort of this sudden eruption of evil in this sort of simple time. The motivation has been really difficult to discern.”
Heartwood Regional Theater Company’s staging of “The Legend of John Cullen” is scheduled for sometime in July or August.
Mr. Braley:
My grandmother was a sister to Jim Cullen and what you are portraying as an accurate account is far from the truth. I have met with the author Dena Lynn Winslow who came away from my accounts passed down by the family with a different slant on the story.
Perhaps you should do a bit more research before you go trying to revive something that was never proven plus you have some of the details wrong right from the beginning.
Putting on a play about an innocent man is a travesty and injustice to the many relatives left behind. Don’t you have other subjects you can use for play material besides bringing up something like this which is full of fallacies and cover ups?
benoddway: Now that you have opened that door people are going to expect you to come up with proof to disprove it other than the same words that started the story…”because someone told you”….. as it has been a legend for many years and you saying this today is the first time I have ever heard or read anyone defending this story and I grew up in Aroostook County and still live here…I think you should write your own book and then maybe turn the story and the old legend around? The readers would be more apt to read the book and the source if it came from a relative.
I’ll use your words: “It’s a legend” which is precisely what it is. The people who participated in the lynching know that side of the story but you will never hear much about it as there were people there who were well known and respected at the time and had no business lynching a man without a trial. Those people are now dead and gone but it wasn’t talked about for fear of publicity getting out that they were involved.
Richard Graves, an optometrist from Presque Isle, wrote a book about it and was going to have a “look alike contest” at the Northern Maine Fair a few years ago. When he heard that some of the facts in the book were not accurate, the contest never took place.
I find it hard to believe that you have never heard or read about anyone defending this story as it has been in the public light many times in the last ten years.
Yes, Mr. Cullen was a bully; he intimidated a lot of people with his size and his arrogant manner but there is a lot of doubt that he ever participated in the crime he was accused of by a bunch of men who wouldn’t come forward and who didn’t want to admit they broke the law by lynching him.
No, I am not going to write a book but I know the true facts about it. Mr. Braley was accurate when he said “it was a sudden eruption of evil……..why did this happen?”