Seamstress celebrates 103rd birthday at Windham party

By Ed Pierce

On Oct. 15, 1922, direct dial phone service without a telephone operator was introduced for the first time in New York City and closer to home, the Bisbee Family of Gray welcomed a daughter, Mariam Bisbee, who was born at home that day. On Wednesday, 103 years later, Mariam Bisbee celebrated her birthday with friends and relatives, and she shows little signs of slowing down.

Mariam Bisbee displays a cake marking her 103rd birthday
during a special party and celebration with friends and family
at Ledgewood Manor in Windham on Wednesday, Oct. 15.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE

During a party and celebration at Ledgewood Manor in Windham, Bisbee recalled growing up on her parent’s poultry farm on Whitney Road in Gray. Both her mother, Eleanor, and her father, Will, had been schoolteachers before Mariam was born and they had hopes that she would follow them and become a teacher. Mariam’s actual first name is Eleanor but because it was also her mother’s name, everyone called her by her middle name.

By the time Mariam was 6, she had learned to operate a sewing machine, and it came in handy as she made a lot of her own clothes and for her sister, Elsie.

In 1939, she traveled to New York City to attend the World’s Fair and learned about new inventions such as television and air conditioning for the first time. Upon her return to Maine, Mariam’s parents sent her to Brooksville to live with her aunt while she attended the Castine Normal School for teacher training.

‘The intellectual part there was less challenging than at a high school,” she said. “I spent one awful year teaching all grades at a one-room schoolhouse in a place in Maine called Atkinson,” she said. “I didn’t enjoy it at all and wanted to do something else.”

She returned home and found another job as a seamstress at a dress factory. Both her and her sister continued to live with their parents at the family home in Gray until 1970.

“That’s when we moved the carriage house in the property over an old cellar hole and my sister and I lived there until she passed at the age of 86,” Mariam said.

She never married because as she puts it, “nobody ever asked me.”

Leaving the dress factory, Mariam found another job as a seamstress working for Maine Medical at an osteopathic hospital and stayed there until she retired. But retirement was boring for Mariam, so she got another job working at the Maine Wildlife Park in Gray.

She continued driving until she was 98 and attended the Congregational Church of Gray where she made many friends, some of whom were at her 103rd birthday party in Windham.

Alison Ashley of Buxton is Mariam’s first cousin twice removed and says she has a wonderful sense of humor.

“She had a cat named Baby and something that nobody may know about her is that she can shoot a shotgun and a rifle,” Ashley said. “I think she would shoot her rifle right up to the age of 98. She’s not a fussy person she just goes with the flow.”

Mariam stayed alone in her own home until July at the age of 102 1/2, when she moved to Ledgewood Manor. She never drank, never smoked and spends much of her days now reading, doing crossword puzzles and playing word search games.

“I read for fun,” Mariam said. “If it’s got print on it, I’ll read it, even if it’s a medicine bottle. And I like chocolate a lot.”

Having made many friends at Ledgewood, she says the food is good there and for the first time, she’s learned to play bingo. She’s become so adept at bingo, she won a fancy quilt while playing there that now covers her bed.

“I love my family, and I love my church family,” Mariam said. “I guess I just enjoy being around people.”

She admits the secret to longevity is very simple.

“Just keep breathing,” Mariam said. “I tell everyone who asks me, my advice is to just keep breathing.” <