The previous article profiled William McCobb, who started a large waterfront business that dominated Boothbay Harbor from about 1770 to 1835. His main interests were selling goods, shipping and fishing. Upon William's 1815 death, his nephews, Joseph McCobb and Jacob Auld, inherited and ran the Auld-McCobb businesses while increasing William's vast real estate holdings.

However, only 10 years later, in 1825, Joseph died, leaving Jacob to carry on. Jacob himself died 10 years after that in 1835, but their families continued living in their double house, the 1806 brick house. With the deaths, the Auld-McCobb business shrank, splintered into specialized small businesses run by Joseph's sons, Arthur and Leonard, and others.

John Weymouth

In 1838, blacksmith John Weymouth, the new husband of Jacob Auld's widow Elizabeth, acquired her interest in key Auld-McCobb land, which he used for businesses, as had Jacob. He left his prior house and shop for the brick house and set up his new blacksmith shop at the old waterfront store site toward the south end of the By-Way.

Local men with resources ordinarily diversified, running many businesses. A particularly versatile man, John was also a builder, building the Congo church and a hotel, the Weymouth House, on the site of today's post office. Additionally, he started a shipyard near his blacksmith shop. The yard was in the vicinity of the By-Way ice cream and candy shops and McSeagull's. He built fine vessels in the 1850s, two brigs and a bark about 100 feet long, a ship of 164 feet, and two schooners about 70 feet. He left shipbuilding during the Crash of 1857, as did many men, and narrowed his role to blacksmithing and his hotel.

Toward the 1900s

The old Auld-McCobb buildings continued to pass through the hands of various merchants, though blacksmiths did continue at the Weymouth shop on the By-Way well past the 1880s. The last McCobb to carry on business at the old family site on the water was Leonard's son, "Bill Otis." At his 1908 death, that McCobb connection snapped. Two McCobb-Auld buildings a little more northerly became the Pask & Kenney livery stable and storage facility for carriages in one season and sleighs in another. The stable endured for 40 or more years into the 1920s.

The first tourist-summer colony boom was in the 1880s, but the By-Way was bypassed by the surge in new stores catering to tourists, such as gift shops, tea rooms and lunch spots. Perhaps the location was limited by its only road being private. However, during the second tourist boom in the 1920s, O. P. Swope, a real estate developer from Florida, decided to capitalize on this coastal community's opportunities. In 1927 he bought the undeveloped land at the new, partially built subdivision called Appalachee and the properties along the By-Way.

Town's first strip mall

According to the Dec. 27, 1927 Register, Swope planned to tear down the old buildings on the water and "replace them with a single story building along the whole waterfront, the building to be of log construction and designed particularly for summer stores." He intended to widen and straighten the By-Way, give it to the town for a public way, and create a wide sidewalk, "a promenade," on the water side.

Those plans necessitated that his nearly 100-foot long building be built on pilings over the water. Early 1930s photos also show a log trellis, or arbor, extending over sections of the sidewalk south beyond the new building's protective overhang, maybe to encourage shoppers in the rain.

If you walk along the bowling alley today, you'll count the five dormant doors (not including the current usable two) for Swope's shops. Despite the Depression in the 1930s, the shops, each with a picture window, were all occupied at different times by candy stores, apparel shops, novelty and gift shops, offices, a linen shop, Indian goods and a photography business. The By-Way shops often changed, but they were occupied.

The next incarnation

In the early morning hours of Jan. 7, 1945, the west side of Boothbay Harbor lost a swath of waterfront buildings to fire in the present vicinity of Fisherman's Wharf, nearly the same location as the big 1886 fire. Six businesses went up in smoke, including the bowling alley of Leslie Marr and his son-in-law Charlie Rowe. They'd bought it in July 1944.

By May 1946, Rowe and Marr had moved to Swope's long log building on the By-Way, named appropriately Romar, and they were open for business again as a bowling alley. Any number of us from 1946 to about 2010 spent many an hour there from teenage years forward, candlepin bowling, playing pinball machines, and meeting friends and prospective dates. We all have fond memories of Charlie and the place he maintained as a period piece for more than 60 years.