Downtown Bucksport is lined with the legacy of its founder, Colonel Jonathan Buck: the mill site whose predecessors he helped develop, a stone chiseled with words of affection for his town, the stately library bearing his name.
And, where Main Street becomes Route 1, a granite monument that’s fueled the myth of a curse for more than a century.
That’s because of an outline resembling a woman’s leg that appears on the monument, which legend says appeared as a curse from a witch Buck had condemned to death — never mind that witch trials never happened in Maine, and the last one in New England was decades before his birth.
“It’s very popular among tourists, I can tell you that, even though the stories behind the foot on the stone are not true,” said Larry Wahl, a member of the town’s cemetery committee.
He doesn’t buy in, “but a lot of people do,” he said. “And they love it.”
Since the early 1900s, the monument has attracted variations on the legend, fed real suspicions and drawn many spectators. But the leg shape’s appearance may well have begun long before Buck, or anyone, lived along the shores of the Penobscot where the granite likely formed.
Buck, who settled the town in 1762, was buried with a simple headstone when he died in 1795. His grandson had the monument installed in 1851 to honor Buck’s role as father of the town, according to Gary Bagley, president of the town’s historical society.
Almost 50 years later, the story of the curse appeared in a newspaper and spawned more articles in following years that fed the myth.
“It’s totally poetic license,” Bagley said. Some people in town still believe it, he said, though he doesn’t think it’s discussed much these days.
Growing up in Bucksport in the 1950s, he was told that the monument was thrown into the river and replaced three times, only for the leg to reappear each time on the stones — though there aren’t purchase records for additional monuments.
The answer could lie across the river itself.
The leg shape facing out over Route 1 looks similar to patterns of circular, “amorphous-looking blobs” in the granite of Mt. Waldo, a quarry across the river in Frankfort, according to Myles Felch, a curator at the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum in Bethel. Its color and texture also resemble Mt. Waldo granite.
Historical society members believe Mt. Waldo was the source of the monument’s stone, though records don’t say for sure.
Such “blobs” can form when molten material ascends through the Earth’s crust, according to Felch. It sometimes gets stuck in place, exerting force on non-molten material around it and dislodging pieces. In the hot magma, these other rocks can begin melting.
The leg looks like such a rock that broke down “considerably” and diffused into the molten material around it, Felch said. The dark outline of the foot appears to be many small grains of mica.
He’s not certain, but sees a familiar pattern to other rocks in the area west of Bucksport, he said. Stone was generally quarried locally at that time.
Some tales say the foot only appeared after the monument was installed, or disappeared when washed and then reemerged.
One of the first widely circulated national stories, published in the New England Magazine in 1902, described the woman turning to Buck at the gallows to prophesize its appearance.
“You will soon die,” part of her speech reads. “Over your grave they will erect a stone, that all may know where the bones of the mighty Jonathan Buck are crumbling to dust. But listen! Listen all ye people — tell it to your children and your children’s children — upon that stone will appear the imprint of my foot, and for all time long, long after your accursed race has perished from the earth, the people will come far and near and the unborn generations will say, There lies the man who murdered a woman.”
More recently, local historian Emeric Spooner countered in a retelling that the tale was penned by a bored newspaper reporter waiting for news in a local murder case, then picked up by the Associated Press.
A 2019 BDN story said it wasn’t noticed for several decades, emerging as the stone weathered.
“I don’t know,” Felch said of the leg appearing or reappearing. “That seems like lore.”
Based on his observations, it doesn’t seem like something that would appear later, he said. He hasn’t sampled the stone, but the pattern likely continues inside it, he said.
It doesn’t appear to be polished, either, he said, though that process can enhance how colors appear.
The monument isn’t just attractive to the paranormally curious. Felch has visited it on local geology field trips, where groups have drawn similar conclusions about its likely origin.
“I would be a little skeptical of the myth, but it is nonetheless kind of an interesting story,” Felch said. “Except for the young woman, of course.”
Not everyone enjoys the myth and the historically unsupported shadow it attempts to cast on the town’s founder, whose descendants still live in the area.
In 2007, the local Daughters of the American Revolution rededicated the monument to help reclaim the Revolutionary War hero’s image, and a plaque beside the monument described him as “honorable and industrious,” highlighting his role in founding and growing the town.
Earlier this summer, another historical society member declined to discuss the myth with a reporter.
“We get a lot of interest in that, but it’s simply a flaw in the granite,” said Bagley, the society’s president. “But that’s kind of boring compared to the idea of a witch’s curse, I guess.”
