Pearl McFarland

Pearl McFarland is Washburn McFarland's son (of Lakeview Farm I think). I think the farm was on the side of McFarlands Hill overlooking Eagle Lake. The landscape was probably denuded back then, in that case the lake would have been visible from the farm. Pearl must have ordered a million caps, I see them in antique stores all over and somehow I have ended up with a tube of them.

My father, Jack Clark, volunteered to fight the Bar Harbor Fire of 1947. In his own words he tells of the night he witnessed the burning of the Pearl McFarland Farm on or about the night of October 21. “During the Bar Harbor fire of 1947, I was at McFarlands Hill, near the top, when the fire came roaring out of the woods along Norway Drive, swept up the West side of McFarland's Hill to the ridge. You can’t imagine the number of fire trucks from all over lined up on that hill. The idea was to try to keep the fire from crossing Eagle Lake Road to protect the Town of Bar Harbor. I was in front of a small house along the road with the Pearl McFarland house and farm buildings behind it, near the edge of the woods, I think. It was about 10 o’clock at night the flames reached us. The trucks hosed the small house and saved it, but the farmhouse and buildings went up in flames quickly. It was windy, the air was full of embers that started new fires on the lake side of the road, too many for us to put out. The fire kept going, burned a large part of Bar Harbor and did not stop until it reached the ocean at Otter Creek.”