He was listed as a Musician in the U.S. Army when he enlisted from York County, Maine, during the Spanish American War.

I asked Farmer Gary, who reads a lot of military-history books, if that meant he was a drummer. “Bugler, probably,” was his reply. That makes sense.

From the start, I’ll confess to not (yet) finding a place for Augustus in our family tree. But the more I dug around, the more it became clear his story was worth telling.

Augustus Vayo was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, on December 15, 1862. He was just 10 years old when his family immigrated to the U.S. They lived on Gooch Street in Biddeford, Maine.

There was work at the mills. The 1880 census listed Augustus as working in a cotton mill. He was 18. His younger brother, Abraham, worked there, too. Abraham was just 12 at the time.

In 1892, Augustus married Mary Brennen.

Two years later, Augustus was a naturalized citizen.

Remember learning about the Spanish-American War back in history class? It began in April of 1898. Early the next month, Augustus enlisted in the U.S. Army: First Regiment, Company G. He received a “bounty” of $24.

By mid-May, the volunteers were mustered to Camp Powers (named for Maine’s governor) in Augusta:

Augustus spent the rest of the war in Georgia, where he helped prepare food for the troops. A cease-fire was declared on August 12. The war officially ended four months later.

Augustus received an honorable discharge on November 15, 1898.

This next part of the story gives me pause. After finding nearly annual newspaper reports that Augustus was arrested for drinking (and charged $1), I got to wondering about the temperance movement. Indeed, Maine was the first state in the union to prohibit the sale of liquor, starting in 1851.

There’s quite a story to be told of the history of Maine’s attempt at forced abstinence. Augustus and his wife, Mary, were even arrested in 1905 and charged with smuggling whiskey in from Boston on the train. That same year, police kicked in the Vayo’s door while Mary was asleep. No liquor was found on the premises.

That same year, Maine’s Liquor Enforcement Commission was granted the power of warrantless search and seizure. It became quickly apparent, while reading archived court reports, that a vengeful acquaintance could easily demand a charge of drunkenness be made. Even when the arrest party was found innocent, the newspapers still crowed about all the “drunks” in court that week. (The homeless were also arrested and labeled as “tramps” in the papers.)

That said, there’s no indication liquor was part of Augustus’s horrific death.

He was just 50 years old. Mary had been in the hospital for an operation; she’d returned home after the procedure just a few days prior.

Early the morning of February 3, 1913, Augustus got up to get a glass of water for Mary. It was about 1:15am and very dark in the room, but he didn’t light a lamp. That is, until he stumbled and dropped the glass. When he lit the kerosene lamp, the chimney broke off; in an instant, Augustus’s night clothes were engulfed in flames.

The headlines screamed:

Mary couldn’t get out of bed to help her husband when she heard his cries for help. The more he screamed, the deeper he inhaled the enflamed air. A neighbor upstairs ran down to help; a patrolman on the street quickly got a doctor and then covered the burns with flour. They gently wrapped him in a blanket and took him to the hospital.

Augustus succumbed to his burns later that afternoon. He was buried two days later.

Nearly four months later, Biddeford’s Board of Municipal Officers voted to pay for Augustus’s funeral expenses. After all, he’d served in the Spanish American War.

Besides, there was no one left to pay. Mary died a month after Augustus. Her death certificate listed the cause as heart disease. Perhaps that was what the operation was meant to fix. Her obituary stated she never recovered from the shock of her husband’s horrific death.

Augustus and Mary Vayo didn’t have children. Their story stopped in 1913.

I still don’t know if they belong somewhere on our family tree. But I do know their story belongs in the collection of memories shared about Vayos who have gone before us.

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