Special Report: How a Chinese stowaway spawned an enduring family on MDI
TREMONT - June 19, 2021 - The Coughs of Mount Desert Island have been around for eight generations and at the same time own a significant “from away” historical asterisk.
How can that be?
Because they are scions of the first Chinese to settle in Maine and the first to be naturalized as a US citizen.
That would be Daniel Cough, stowaway, entrepreneur, father to nine and patriarch of an extended family which now stretches from Bar Harbor to West Seattle. “The last time we counted in 2007, there were 176 of us,” said Richard ”Dickie” Cough of Bar Harbor, a fifth generation offspring.
Daniel Cough no doubt had to employ his plucky best after he was discovered by Captain Sylvester Lord of Ellsworth in 1856 whose merchant schooner was anchored off Amoy Island (Xiamen today) across a strait from Taiwan where I grew up.
Amoy has a striking similarity to MDI, both being surrounded by bay-like waterways with smaller outlying islands. Was this some cosmic magic at work?
The history got fuzzy as it remains unclear whether Lord made Cough a cabin boy or whether Cough stowed away on his ship. Most accounts have him as a stowaway, upping its narrative ante.
Either way, Daniel no doubt made himself useful, and Captain Lord “took him under his wings.”He likely learned considerable English on the journey back to Maine and a lot about seamanship.
By the time the schooner docked at Rockland, according to the flimsy, extant records, Daniel Cough made up his mind to stay in Maine. Once on MDI he cut his hair queue which was required of all men by the ruling Manchu dynasty and thus ending any possibility of returning to China. The Bar Harbor Times reported that he was then given a piece of land by Lord in the McKinley section of town (now Bass Harbor).
He built a house. He opened a store. He married a local gal. Thereafter, his legacy on MDI was prodigious.
Joseph Cough is a member of the Bar Harbor planning board. His wife Erin is on the town council. Their son Caleb was recently elected to the Warrant Committee. Bryce Cough runs a package delivery business in Bar Harbor and his wife Jennifer is on the cruise ship committee and recently ran for town council. Dick Cough is vice president of the BH Historical Society and former member of the town’s Design Review Committee.
But the majordomo was hotelier Bernard “Sonny” Cough, who died in 2007 and left a large footprint on the modern Bar Harbor.
He was a quiet hotel owner who amassed more than 10 properties but did not engage in the bitter rivalry between the Walshes and Withams, owners of most of the hotels in Bar Harbor.
He served three terms on town council, the planning board for 20 years and was acting town manager for a short time. He was president of the chamber and winner of the Cadillac Award for outstanding service to his community. His son Dickie won the award 2006. They were the first and only father/son winners. He was also a founder of the College of the Atlantic, and a director of the Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.
In 2018, the Cough family trust donated more than $1.2 million to the Jesup Memorial Library, the Mount Desert Island YMCA, the YWCA, and the Bar Harbor Food Pantry.
None of it would have happened had Daniel Cough picked the wrong ship. Even worse, had he boarded a vessel in 1856 headed for, say, Charleston, SC, he might have led quite a different life under slavery.
The 1988 Thanksgiving issue of the Bar Harbor Times stated that Cough came from Canton (Quangdong), but other sources had him as a Fujian native. Not that it matters except to be historically precise. Here was a Maine patriarch who had a seat at the table with as much legitimacy as any European blue blood.
But he couldn’t escape his heritage entirely. China Hill, a 167-foot mountain, slightly northeast of Mt. Gilboa in Tremont was named for “Daniel Cough, a Chinaman, who owned it, but would not live there because he thought it was haunted,” according to The Dictionary of Maine Place-names” by Phillip R. Rutherford, published by Bond Wheelwright Co. in 1971, p. 69.
Daniel married Elvira Higgins (1845-1897), daughter of Zacheus Higgins and Martha (Stanwood) Higgins, on Jan. 17, 1870 in Tremont, Maine. She already was 25, and Dickie Cough surmised that “she was destined to be a spinster until she married Daniel.” Sonny Cough was quoted by the Portland Press Herald in 1995 as saying, “You have to wonder. It could not have been a particularly good marriage.”
Elvira Higgins was born on MDI, but their son Ezra was born in Old Town, so the Coughs may have lived elsewhere before settling in Bernard. Daniel Cough became a U.S. citizen in 1874 and died on January 1, 1906. He never got to vote.
The interacial couple were more of a curiosity than targets of overt bigotry like that on the West Coast. The Ellsworth American published the following letter on July 8, 1871:
"A ‘Heathen Chinese’ sells Yankee notions in close proximity to this seat of learning, and most of the party visited his premises to see ‘his baby’ and to get a drink of lemonade. ‘John Chinaman’ has an American wife, marrying her at Eden; and the fruit of this union of the Mongolian with the Caucasian is a boy baby which is six months old; and the youngster excited the crowd."
The couple had nine children, but only three survived childhood, Adoniram Bird Cough (1872-1949), Arno Cough (1874-1943) and Ezra Raphael Cough (1876-1944). Only Ezra bore children (four boys survived. Another boy and two girls died in infancy).
Barbara Cough of Portland, great grand daughter of Daniel Cough, recalled her father and grandfather talking affectionately about Daniel Cough to dispel false notions about whether he was abusive to Elvira toward the end of their marriage.
Barbara Cough, who is the only Cough to continue the Chinese line of succession when she and her wife adopted two Chinese girls and were subjects of an article in the New York Times, referenced the influence of the King’s Daughters, established in 1891 to shelter girls and women, as a source for such characterizations.
One can’t imagine the immeasurable pain of losing six of her children before adulthood and how it must have affected Elvira’s state of mind, Barbara Cough said.
“He was a strict man.”she said. But the King’s Daughters were also acutely protective of a Christian woman married to someone “who was not one of them.”
Daniel Cough most likely met few other Chinese if any during his time in Maine. Twelve years after his marriage, the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted and was not fully repealed until 1965. Portland historian Gary Libby wrote that the Chinese population grew slowly during that period. There were 162 Chinese in all of Maine as late as 1920. Most were in Portland operating laundries.
One tea merchant, Ar Foo, was so comfortable in his own skin he marketed his ethnicity in his ads.
Chinese immigrants found it easier, indeed propitious, to use anglicized names because their Chinese names were often mangled anyway.
The SWH library archives stated that Daniel Cough’s Chinese name was “Kao fu.” It was alternately pronounced kow or ko, according to lore. Great, great great grandson Dickie Cough surmised that Daniel eventually gave up trying to get folks to say it correctly. So it came that he took its present day pronounciation and the name Daniel.
(My own Chinese name Li kun was translated into “Lincoln” by the nice folks at US Immigration Services in 1959.)
It’s unclear how much Daniel Cough benefitted from the Rusticators who started to visit MDI in the 1840s. Catering to tourism, however, became a huge part of the Cough family DNA.
The father and brother of Sylvia L. (Young) Cough, Sonny’s wife of 58 years, worked a total of 70 years for Acadia National Park and both retired as the head of maintenance. She died in 2014 at 89.
Sonny had the vision to see the impact of the automobile on American tourism. He bought his first property, the Shore Acres cabins in Salisbury Cove in the early 60s and then acquired the Cadillac Motor Inn on Main Street. He built the Atlantic Oakes Hotel in 1971.
Since his death, his family has sold most of the properties, including Bayview Hotel to Kimberly Swan for $5.4 million in 2019. Swan then sold six townhouses on the property to the College of Atlantic for $2.2 million. The family has one remaining property, the Atlantic Eyrie Lodge.
Like many big families, they don’t agree on all issues. Jennifer Cough ran for town council on a pro cruise ship agenda, while Dickie Cough, who owned a tour guide business, hopes the town will limit the number and size of the ships.
Asked if any family members resent the interracial history of their forebears, Dickie Cough said resolutely, “no.”
He wears his heritage like a badge of honor and is eager to talk about it. “After all, we’re all immigrants.”
QSJ partners with non-profit newsroom for investigative reporting projects
SOMESVILLE - As a regular reader of The Quietside Journal, you’ve become accustomed to my reporting. I try to “go deep” on issues, especially as it affects life on MDI. Today, I’m excited to announce a unique partnership between the QSJ and the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting (MCPIR), publisher of The Maine Monitor.
QSJ is free for subscribers. But I need help to broaden the effort. I have this pandemic-induced, sinking feeling that Maine is about to get hammered by pro growth forces with little regard for its natural beauty. So if you like what QSJ is doing, please help by supporting my new partner.
Launched in 2009, MCPIR has worked to fill the void when newspapers could no longer produce the type of investigative reporting on vital issues with regularity. From the start, MCPIR’s nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom has highlighted climate hazards threatening Maine: changing landscapes, altering industries, threatening native species and straining state and local budgets.
The inaugural project for the QSJ/Maine Monitor partnership is a deep examination of Maine’s growing aquaculture industry and the potential impact to our coast.
Regulators are reviewing applications from five industrial-scale aquafarms looking to build factories in Maine – including in Frenchman Bay. Will these be cutting edge industries that will bring jobs to areas of Maine that are struggling? Or are they potential polluters of the pristine coastline? It’s vital that experienced reporters dig into each of these reveal what Mainers need to know as lawmakers and regulators deal with a barrage of competing interests.
Our first stories in this partnership will be published later this summer.
The Maine Monitor is in the middle of its spring appeal. The staff is trying to raise $40,000 before the end of the month to unlock two matching grants. If you’re interested in joining me as a supporter of MCPIR, here’s a link to Monitor’s donation page: https://www.themainemonitor.org/donate/
You can also mail a donation to:
The Maine Monitor
P.O. Box 284
Hallowell, ME, 04347
To subscribe to the Maine Monitor, click here.
Lincoln’s Log
SOMESVILLE - Somes-Meynell Sanctuary Director Billy Helprin never ceases to amaze us with his first-hand observations. Here is his video of a recent confrontation and chase when a hostile loon attempted to invade the space of a resident loon on Echo Lake.
The chase occurred onApril 14.
”Both birds were in all-out wing rowing locomotion (kind of like a much quicker, head always up, "butterfly" human swimming stroke),” Billy stated. “They moved up the west side of the lake, zig-zagging back and forth, with the pursuing bird several lengths behind, matching every direction change. This went on for an astonishingly long time and distance considering this effort by both birds is equivalent to an all out sprint - as fast as a loon can move across the water's surface."
”Re-tracing the approximate path, the chase covered about 0.8 miles/1.3 km in about 4 minutes. The pursued bird continued to the north another tenth of a mile before stopping, after the chaser gave up. I stopped filming after I thought they were too far off to be seen on screen.
Hitty’s on track for banner season …
CRANBERRY ISLAND - Chef Cezar Ferreira said business is booming again at Hitty’s Cafe here, where he sells as many as 200 sandwiches a day during the height of the season between Memorial Day and Columbus Day. He didn’t open until July during lat year’s pandemic, but he is now exceeding his 2019 numbers. QSJ enjoyed his lobster roll which was priced at only $24.