Mead Haskell Baldwin: Brother, Son, and Soldier

By Jazmine Aldrich

History is made up of the stories of individuals: their choices, their experiences, and their relationships. These stories can be abstracted with time – that is – until we reconnect with the traces they left behind. They become more than a name: they are someone who lived – in a different time than us and under different circumstances – but who nevertheless experienced the ups and downs that make up a life.

This brings me to the story of Mead Haskell Baldwin. While I could never tell you every detail of his life, I will introduce you to some of his experiences as a young man, which I learned about through the records left by he and his family.

Mead Haskell Baldwin was born on September 28, 1891 in Baldwin’s Mills. He was the second son of Willis Keith (W.K.) Baldwin of Baldwin’s Mills and Lill Mead Ferrin Baldwin of Holland, Vermont. Mead was also the younger brother of then-five-year-old Harold Ferrin Baldwin. The only two children of W.K. and Lill, one gets the impression that Harold and Mead were brothers by blood but friends by choice.

Harold and Mead travelled the western Canadian provinces and United States together as young adults. The brothers worked as surveyors in western Canada towards the end of 1910, and spent Christmas of that year in Los Angeles, California, returning to Baldwin’s Mills in May of 1911. When at home, the young men occupied themselves with running the various family businesses, including the sawmill, general store, and post office while their father was away.

By 1913, Mead had left home and completed a business course at the Eastman National Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York; he then pursued work as a bookkeeper in Minneapolis, Minnesota – where he remained until July 1917 when he voluntarily enlisted with the American Expeditionary Forces.

During the First World War, Mead served with Bakery Company No. 343 – a supply unit of the United States Army’s Quartermaster Corps. Mead’s baker training was given at the Dunwoody Institute in Minneapolis, beginning August 1, 1917. He served from October 1917 until March 1918 at Fort Riley, Kansas. Following a brief period at Camp Merritt, New Jersey, Mead’s unit landed on French shores on April 15, 1918 and remained overseas for the next fourteen months. Mead was discharged at Des Moines, Iowa on June 19, 1919; he then returned to Minneapolis to reintegrate into civilian society.

In a heart wrenching letter to the United States Veterans’ Bureau in 1926, W.K. recalls that Mead “reached home [Baldwin’s Mills] in August 1919, broken in spirit. […]. The buoyancy of youth had changed to moroseness or melancholy.” Little more is known of his postwar life in Baldwin’s Mills until tragedy struck the family two years later. On February 17, 1921, less than a month after Harold had married Ruth Stevens May, Mead’s life came to a sudden end following several weeks of suffering from what would likely be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder in today’s terms.

The Baldwin family shocked: W.K. Baldwin – by then serving as the Member of Parliament for Stanstead – returned to Baldwin’s Mills from Ottawa. In the month following Mead’s death, he offered to fund one third of the costs associated with building permanent highways from Baldwin’s Mills to Coaticook and Stanstead, as well as funding their maintenance for a decade – all in memory of his late son.

The community mourned the loss of Mead, recalling in the Sherbrooke Daily Record his “sterling manhood and worthy qualities.” Letters of sympathy poured in from near and far. Mead’s former fiancée, Helen Wilma Kielgas of Duluth, Minnesota, recalled him to Lill as “the kindest and most generous of men, one who intentionally hurt no one, one who was a true friend, idolized and loved his mother.”

Mead’s death marked his loved ones and his community; while his is a difficult story to tell, it is a testament to the love that endures long after someone is gone.