Edmund Muskie

Rumford is a town in Oxford County, Maine, United States. The population was 8,472 at the 2010 census. Rumford is home to both an important paper industry and the Black Mountain of Maine ski resort. Originally called New Pennacook Plantation, the township was granted in 1779 to Timothy Walker, Jr.... and associates of Concord, New Hampshire. Both Pennacook and Rumford are former names of Concord, from which many early settlers arrived. The first pioneers, however, were Jonathan Keyes and his son Francis in 1782 from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Incorporated in 1800, the town would later annex land from Peru and Franklin Plantation. Located in the foothills of the White Mountains, Rumford is the site of Pennacook Falls, called by historian George J. Varney "the grandest cataract in New England," where the Androscoggin River drops 177 feet over solid granite. Bands of St. Francis Indians once hunted and fished here, where salmon spawn in the 13-acre pool below Upper Falls, a barrier that fish cannot pass. Indians also came here to trade furs brought from the lakes region.
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Jane Gray Muskie was the wife of U.S. senator and 1968 vice presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. Edmund Muskie's 1972 presidential campaign collapsed after his emotional defense of his wife, following the Canuck letter incident, which involved a scathing editorial in the conservative Manchester... Union-Leader newspaper. The editorial alleged that Jane Muskie enjoyed excessive drinking and telling dirty jokes. After Edmund Muskie died in 1996, Jane Muskie retreated to private life. She died at only 77 quietly at her home in Bethesda, Maryland, on December 25, 2004, after a bout with Alzheimer's disease.
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