A Window on the Past – Jesse Dyer, Jr., active in Pleasantdale, Knightville and Ligonia neighborhoods
By Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo
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One fascinating person in South Portland’s past was Jesse Dyer, Jr. He was part of a line of South Portland Dyers who were mostly active as farmers and grocers, not to be confused with the Dyers who were shipbuilders.
Jesse Dyer, Jr., was born in 1823 on the family farm in Cape Elizabeth, son of Jesse and Mary Dyer (Jesse, Sr. was also born in Cape Elizabeth). Jesse, Jr., was an unusual person for his time in that he seemed to change careers every 10 years or so. It was far more common in the 1800s for people to stay in one field. He started working at a young age and was, circa 1840, putting up telegraph lines between Boston and New York. He then worked as a section boss on the Portland, Saco & Portsmouth Railroad, and then took a job with the Kennebec Railroad where he worked through the 1840s and into the early-1850s.