Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home

SOUTH THOMASTON - Malcolm ‘Mac’ Putnam Jackson passed away Wednesday evening, February 28, 2013 at the Knox Center in Rockland. Born November 4, 1928 in South Thomaston, he was the third child of five born to Samuel and May Lillian Putnam Jackson. Mac was well known and respected in South Thomaston, “the ‘Keag” throughout his life. Mac’s mother died when he was five years old and the five children were raised by other family members. Mac and his sister Nathalie stayed mostly on the farm with Aunt Jenny and Uncle Cliff, but were both rather footloose during their childhood. Mac’s biological father Sam married again to Bessie Hamlin who already had five children and together they raised six more, making a total of sixteen siblings, half siblings and step siblings depending on your place in the family.

Only Malcolm and Paul have survived to the present from the first family, but Mac became the patriarch, and was loved and valued by all. When Aunt Jenny and Uncle Cliff passed on, it was agreed that the farm should belong to Malcolm, and all the family signed off any rights they might have.

He went to public schools in the Keag and Rockland. His first job at Tiva Johnson’s Garage in St. George prepared him for working as an Air Force mechanic on B29 Bombers during WWII in Texas and the Philippines. Home again in 1945 he joined the Finn Am family by marrying Dorothy Elizabeth Johnson in the Finnish Congregational Church in South Thomaston. They were married 67 years and were active members of the Finnish American Society and the Finnish Heritage House.

After leaving the service, Malcolm spent the next few years working at various jobs while raising his family. Over the years he has worked as a taxi driver in Thomaston, at the Knox Woolen Mill in Camden, and Dragon Cement in Thomaston. He finally landed a job making cheese and driving a tractor-trailer for White’s Creamery in Rockland. This led to a job with Dragon Cement trucking bulk cement all over Maine and New England until 1979 when he became a partner in a family business freezing and packing seafood in Rockland until he retired in the early 1990s.

Always busy, Mac managed to fill his spare time profitably. He raised broiler and layer chickens, along with rabbits and several other animals. He and his family ran a movie rental business out of a building on the property on Buttermilk Lane, and also worked at an antique, woodworking and used furniture business. For recreation he went scuba diving in the Weskeag River searching for old shipwrecks and lost memorabilia.

At one point Mac set out to make a map locating all the homes and farms that were in the ‘Keag in 1804, when his family’s farmhouse was built. This led to a rather complete accounting of everyone who ever lived in South Thomaston and Owls Head, and many others in Rockland and elsewhere in Knox County. He traced his own family history back to the Mayflower and published the wartime letters of his grandfather George Llewelyn Putnam who fought in the Civil War as well as other family histories. Genealogists all over the country used him as a reference. He was a long-time president of the Mussel Ridge and the Weskeag Historical Societies. At the end of his life the hospital staff referred to him as the “Mayor of South Thomaston and Owls Head.”

Predeceased by his son Thomas who passed away just three weeks before him, Mac is survived by his beloved wife of 67 years, Dorothy Jackson, his children, Ronald, Gerald, Paul and Daniel and their spouses; ten grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren who love and respect his memory and who will miss him dearly. Mac pursued life with passion and did nothing halfway. He lived for his family and his family was his life.

No services will be held at this time. In memory of Malcolm, his family asks that contributions be made to a charity of one’s choice.

Arrangements are in the care of Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home, 110 Limerock Street, Rockland.