Bishop Deeley announces priest assignment

Fr. Kuzia

Bishop Robert Deeley has announced priest assignments. The three appointments include one assignment to St. Michael Parish, in Augusta.

Effective September 1, 2022, Fr. Anthony F. Kuzia, CM, is appointed as parochial vicar at St. Michael Parish (St. Mary of the Assumption Church, Augusta; St. Augustine Church, Augusta; St. Joseph Church, Gardiner; Sacred Heart Church, Hallowell; St. Denis Church, Whitefield; St. Francis Xavier Church, Winthrop).

Fr. Kuzia currently serves as administrator of Our Lady of the Lakes Parish in Oquossoc. A native of Ansonia, Connecticut, Fr. Kuzia was received into the Vincentian community in 1969. He earned a master of divinity degree from Mary Immaculate Seminary in Northampton, Pennsylvania, before making his final vows on June 13, 1974.

Fr. Kuzia was ordained to the priesthood in the Mary Immaculate Seminary chapel on May 29, 1976. Since his ordination, Fr. Kuzia has served as a parochial vicar at St. Michael Church in Derby, Connecticut; a faculty member at St. John Kanty Prep, in Erie, Pennsylvania; a superior, consultor, vocations director, and treasurer for the New England province of the Vincentian Order; a pastor of Holy Trinity Parish, in Lisbon; a vicar for priests for the Diocese of Portland; a pastor of St. Peter and Sacred Heart Parishes, in Concord, New Hampshire; a pastor of St. Patrick Parish, in Pelham, New Hampshire; and a parochial vicar of St. Stanislaus Parish, in New Haven, Connecticut.

In addition, Fr. Kuzia was responsible for supervising the construction of the DePaul Provincial Residence, in Manchester, Connecticut, and the current Holy Trinity Church, in Lisbon Falls.

Local residents named to Simmons University dean’s list

The following local students were named to the 2021 fall semester dean’s list at Simmons University, in Boston, Massachusetts. To qualify for dean’s list status, undergraduate students must obtain a grade point average of 3.5 or higher, based on 12 or more credit hours of work in classes using the letter grade system.

Allyson Cunningham, of Augusta; Kaili Shorey, of Vassalboro, Abigail Bloom, of Waterville, and Maddie Beckwith, of Winslow.

Area residents named to University of New England dean’s list

The following students have been named to the dean’s list for the 2021 fall semester at the University of New England, in Biddeford. Dean’s list students have attained a grade point average of 3.3 or better out of a possible 4.0 at the end of the semester.

Olivia McPherson, of Albion; Valerie Capeless, Zinaida Gregor, Jessica Guerrette, Brooklynn Merrill and Julia White, all of Augusta; Sidney Knox, of Benton; Alden Balboni, Kierra Bumford and Tyler Pellerin, all of Oakland: Sarah Kohl and Olivia Roy, both of Sidney; Julia Steeves and Dawson Turcotte, both of Skowhegan; Lauren Boatright, Noelle Cote and Richard Winn, all of South China; Libby Breznyak and Lauren Pinnette, both of Waterville; and Juliann Lapierre and Justice Picard, both of Winslow.

Area residents named to dean’s list at University of New England

The following students have been named to the dean’s list for the 2021 fall semester at the University of New England, in Biddeford. Dean’s list students have attained a grade point average of 3.3 or better out of a possible 4.0 at the end of the semester.

Olivia McPherson, of Albion; Valerie Capeless, Zinaida Gregor, Jessica Guerrette, Brooklynn Merrill and Julia White, all of Augusta; Sidney Knox, of Benton; Alden Balboni, Kierra Bumford and Tyler Pellerin, all of Oakland: Sarah Kohl and Olivia Roy, both of Sidney; Julia Steeves and Dawson Turcotte, both of Skowhegan; Lauren Boatright, Noelle Cote and Richard Winn, all of South China; Libby Breznyak and Lauren Pinnette, both of Waterville; and Juliann Lapierre and Justice Picard, both of Winslow.

The University of New England is Maine’s largest private university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study-abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of flexible online offerings. In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. We are the state’s top provider of health professionals and home to Maine’s only medical and dental colleges, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care programs, and nationally recognized degree paths in the marine sciences, the natural and social sciences, business, the humanities, and the arts. Visit une.edu

Tristan Morton earns second of four medals

Fr. Skehan pins Tristan with the second of four medals “Parvuli Dei”. (photo courtesy of Chuck Mahaleris)

Tristan Morton of Pack #603 was recognized by the Catholic Council on Scouting at a Mass in St. Mary Church, on Wednesday, April 27. The Mass was led by Father John Skehan and attended by the students of St. Michael School, in Augusta, where Tristan attends the fourth grade. After blessing the award, Fr. Skehan pinned Tristan with the second of four medals “Parvuli Dei” that follow Catholic Scouts as they mature in the understanding of the church and their faith. Reverence is one of the 12 moral elements of Scouting. Pack #603 is chartered at the American Legion Post #205, Augusta.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: French-Canadians – Part 1

St. Augustine Church in Augusta (photo by Eric Austin)

by Mary Grow

Augusta

Two distinctly non-British peoples who came to live mainly in Augusta and Waterville, the largest manufacturing centers in the central Kennebec Valley in the 19th and early 20th centuries, were French-Canadians who came south from Canada’s Québec Province, and Middle Easterners, especially Lebanese and Syrians.

This article will talk about French-Canadians in the Kennebec Valley and specifically in Augusta. The next article in the series will be about French-Canadians in Waterville and Fairfield and, if space permits, Middle Eastern immigrants.

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Wikipedia says the first European to visit what is now the Canadian Province of Québec was the Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano, whose expedition in 1522 or 1523 was authorized by King Francis I, of France. Successive French explorers followed, and in 1608 Samuel de Champlain founded Québec City.

The area was a French colony from then until the British conquered it, a victory recognized by the 1764 Treaty of Paris. The province has been under British rule ever since, in varying forms.

However, relations with the British government and with the rest of British Canada have been stormy at times. The Catholic Church has been important in the province, and French remains the official language. French-Canadians brought a distinctive culture and formed separate communities when they came to Maine.

Le Club Calumet’s on-line history (see box #1) says there have been French-Canadians in the area that is now Maine since 1611. Around 1830, improvements to the route called the Kennebec Road or the Canada Road facilitated north-south movement.

An on-line genealogy of a family whose ancestors followed the Kennebec Road describes it thus: “The road begins in Beauce, Québec, then in Maine in the Jackman area and follows the Kennebec River through Skowhegan, Waterville, southeast to Phippsburg, Maine.”

Another on-line source calls it “a system of water and portage routes linking the Chaudiere River in Québec to the Kennebec River in Maine” and says it “served as the primary transportation corridor between Canada and Maine until the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1853.” Used for thousands of years by Native Americans and since the 17th century by European missionaries, traders and other wanderers (and occasionally soldiers), it remained in primitive condition until the 1830s.

By then the Kennebec Road was used mostly by “drovers taking livestock to the market in Québec City,” the source says. A few people lived along the route, though, and as they became more numerous they got the clout to demand improvements, especially after Maine became a separate state in 1820.

Between 1828 and 1835, the source continues, Maine state officials added “a customs house, postal service, a stage line and roadhouses. A ten-dollar ticket would buy a two-day stage coach ride from Québec City to Skowhegan.

“Construction of the state capital (1829) and the Kennebec dam (1834) in Augusta drew French Canadian workers with their families to Maine. A cholera epidemic in 1832 and the depression, famine and rebellion of 1837 [against British monarchical rule] hastened this migration.”

Urban jobs were not the only attraction for French-Canadians. Robert P. Tristram Coffin, in Kennebec Cradle of Americans, described 19th-century Maine loggers:

“Yellow and brown mustaches and many more black ones, for a great many of the men were ones who had stemmed from ‘P.Q.,’—the Province of Québec, – who had followed the Maine rivers down from the forests of the St. Lawrence, who spoke Canuck, and who handled their slim symphonies of curving wood and steel, their axes, as if they were attractive and tender young women.”

In a later chapter titled Yankees from the Province of Québec, Coffin described French-Canadian mill workers. From the early 1800s, and especially from the 1860s, large mills making cloth, paper and other products were powered by the Kennebec and needed workers, and many of those workers came from Québec.

In mill towns and cities, Coffin saw the French immigrants as a separate group in the second half of the 19th century. He imaginatively described the original Yankee home-owners moving uphill away from the river as French families settled near the mills – and moving farther as the French multiplied and prospered and they, too, claimed more living space.

Each riverside town and city had its Frenchtown, he wrote. “Two nations keeping apart, eating their different foods, having their own ways, their own schools, their own barbers and bakers.”

The Yankees considered the French-Canadians foreigners, Coffin wrote, even though they had been on the continent longer than most of their detractors. He praised them as holding onto the values of the “most civilized of all the Europeans,” describing them as family-loving, religious and hard-working.

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Thomas J. Lynch, contributing to Kingsbury’s Kennebec County history, traced the first French Catholic influence in the Augusta area to September 1646, when Father Gabriel Druillettes, a Jesuit, opened a mission to the Abenakis. The Mission of the Assumption was in a log cabin on the east side of the Kennebec, about three miles north of the Cushnoc trading post.

Lynch saw Augusta’s St. Mary’s Catholic Church as the successor to the Mission of the Assumption, even though by the time the Kennebec County history was finished in 1892, it was “restricted to the English-speaking Catholics of the city” and there was a second Catholic church for the French-speakers.

In the 1880s, French immigrants found jobs in the Edwards Manufacturing Company’s cotton mill at the river end of Northern Avenue. The Franco-American community formed near the mill in the north end of the city, an area variously called Sand Hill, Cushnoc, Cushnoc Heights or simply “the hill.”

The mill owners provided housing for some of their employees, and in 1887, in response to French-speakers who wanted services in their own language, provided space for a French Catholic church on Washington Street, which runs north off Northern Avenue part way up Sand Hill. The company sold one lot for $600 and donated a second lot.

St. Augustine Church’s website says most of the parishioners in the late 19th century were from rural parts of Québec and New Brunswick. Whole families worked in the mill, including “children as young as ten years old.”

Working hours were long, and non-French neighbors were often unfriendly. To the French-speaking families, “Sunday was a day to worship God and rest, beginning with attending Mass, followed by getting together with friends and relatives, as well as getting ready for next week’s labor.”

Bishop James Augustine Healy

Bishop James Augustine Healy, who served in Portland from 1885 to 1900, came to Augusta to bless the cornerstone for the new church on Aug. 28, 1888, and it was built that year. Kingsbury called the wooden building “second to none in the city in the beauty and richness of its interior decorations.”

“Folklore has it that the parish was named after Bishop Healy,” the website says. The parish at that time consisted of 160 families.

The church was accompanied by a school, taught from 1892 by the Ursuline Sisters and from 1904 by the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary. Rev. Telesphore Plante served as pastor from October 1887 until he retired Nov. 27, 1889. His successor was Rev. Arthur Hamel, who serve until he moved to Lewiston in 1907.

Under Rev. Hamel’s guidance, the website says, the construction debt was reduced; the church’s interior was redecorated; and the parish cemetery was opened in 1894, “with a solemn blessing by Bishop Lafleche of Trois-Rivières [Québec] with permission extended by Bishop Healy.”

The parish women’s organization, “Les Dames de Sainte Anne,” was organized in 1897. The website credits its members with raising thousands of dollars for “the betterment of the parish” and for “scholarships and other school-related activities.”

Construction of the present granite church building began in 1913, on land donated by Edwards Manufacturing. By then, the website says, the parish included 2,783 people from 553 families. The first service in the new church was the December 1916 Christmas Mass.

Le Club Calumet, Augusta

Le Club Calumet

On Sept.21, 1922, two dozen members of Augusta’s Franco-American community met “in the basement of Morin’s Shoe Store, on Water Street,” and organized Le Club Calumet, called on its website, calumetclub.com, “one of the foremost of Augusta’s civic organizations.” Its motto is “Unis pour toujours” (United forever); its headquarters is at 334 West River Road (Route 104), in Augusta.

The organizers’ goal was to give the Franco-American community more of a voice in city affairs. The website quotes: “The purpose of Le Club Calumet shall be for the propagation of the French language and intellectual development, by means of music, literature, education, and anything else the club shall judge beneficial to the interest of Franco-Americans.”

The club sponsors multiple activities open to the public, including at 8 p.m., on May 21, Comedy Night with The River Comics (ticket information is on the website). A Hundredth Anniversary Dance was held May 7, and a hundredth anniversary celebration is scheduled for Sept. 22 through 25.

Club members have always supported education for local Franco-American youngsters. In 1922, the club’s Calumet Educational & Literary Foundation website (calumeteducationfoundation.org) says, the club “appointed a committee to encourage students to continue their education by enrolling at Cony High School.” Now scholarships and grants are offered for education beyond high school; the website does not say whether aid is still limited to students of Franco-American heritage.

Since 1957, part of the scholarship money has come from the club’s “birthday dollar program,” started at the suggestion of Irenee Pelletier: club members pay one dollar into the education fund on their birthdays. The calumeteducationfoundation.org website has information on making tax-deductible donations. The website says for 2020-21, the foundation provided 20 scholarships with a total value of $107,000.

Augusta’s historic Colonial Theater, revisited

Colonial Theater

In the Feb. 4, 2021, issue of The Town Line, the Colonial Theater on Water Street, in Augusta, was described as an individually-listed historic building within the downtown Augusta historic district. Built in 1913, after a fire destroyed its predecessor, and rebuilt again after another fire in 1926, its style was described as “Beaux Arts and Georgian Revival…[with] Art Deco features.”

The 2014 historic register listing called it “an eclectic example of early 20th century design by a noted architect.” The architect was Harry S. Coombs (1878 – 1939), based in Lewiston.

The 2021 The Town Line article drew on Keith Edwards’ article in the Dec. 2, 2019, Kennebec Journal describing work to restore the historic building. Edwards’ follow-up article in the May 5, 2022, Kennebec Journal was headlined “Colonial Theater to host its first show in 53 years in downtown Augusta.”

Edwards described the theater as “in the midst of a major renovation project to bring it back to life.” For the May 6 show by Las Vegas magician and mind reader Kent Axell (a Manchester, Maine native, Edwards wrote), seating capacity was 300; Edwards quoted executive director Kathi Wall as aiming for 1,000 seats.

The theater website, colonialtheater.org, says more than $3 million of the estimated $8.5 million cost has been raised so far. In April 2022 the National Park Service awarded the theater $160,229 that will be used to restore windows and exterior doors.

The website has information and illustrations about the theater’s history and the restoration plans, as well as an on-line donation button and contact information.

Main sources

Coffin, Robert P. Tristram, Kennebec Cradle of Americans 1937.
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Local residents named to Simmons University dean’s list

The following local students were named to the 2021 fall semester dean’s list at Simmons University, in Boston, Massachusetts. To qualify for dean’s list status, undergraduate students must obtain a grade point average of 3.5 or higher, based on 12 or more credit hours of work in classes using the letter grade system.

Allyson Cunningham, of Augusta; Kaili Shorey, of Vassalboro, Abigail Bloom, of Waterville, and Maddie Beckwith, of Winslow.

Local residents receive Academic honors at Northeastern

Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts, is pleased to recognize those students who distinguish themselves academically during the course of the school year. The following local students were recently named to the University’s dean’s list for the Fall semester, which ended in December 2021.

Augusta resident Mandy Cooper, majoring in business administration.

Augusta resident Lauren Murray, majoring in economics.

Chelsea resident Michael Nicholas, majoring in mechanical engineering/physics. In addition to achieving distinction through the dean’s list, Nicholas is a member of the University Honors Program.

To achieve the dean’s list distinction, students must carry a full program of at least four courses, have a quality point average of 3.5 or greater out of a possible 4.0 and carry no single grade lower than a C- during the course of their college career. Each student receives a letter of commendation and congratulation from their college dean.

St. Michael student in Augusta uses “Principal for a Day” to help innocent of Ukraine

St. Michael School Principal Kevin Cullen, standing, with “principal of the day” Natania. (contributed photo)

AUGUSTA, ME — When Natania, a first grader at St. Michael School, in Augusta, was informed she would get to serve as “Principal for a Day” on Tuesday, April 5. Her first thought was to use her newfound “power” to effect positive change.

“She decided to give everyone a dress down day for a donation of $2 or more per person,” said Principal Kevin Cullen. “All of the proceeds would go to the people of Ukraine. Amazing.”

On Tuesday, Natania was welcomed into each classroom with a “Good Morning, Principal Natania” as she made her way around the school collecting donations.

“In total, we raised close to $800 for the people of Ukraine,” said Cullen.

Marianne Pelletier, superintendent of Maine Catholic Schools, even called Natania to thank her for her efforts.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Wars – Part 12

The Civil War left China, like Albion and other towns, deeply in debt, paying to outfit the soldiers and compensate their families.

by Mary Grow

Civil War

The United States Civil War, which began when the Confederates shelled Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, and ended with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, had the most impact on Maine, including the central Kennebec Valley, of any 17th or 18th century war.

Nonetheless, your writer’s original plan was to write only a single article about the Civil War. As usual, she found an oversupply of material that she hopes will interest readers as it interested her; but she still limits coverage to two articles, for three reasons.

The first and most important reason to downplay Civil War history is that unlike, say, the War of 1812, the Civil War is already familiar. Citizens who know nothing about the Sept. 13, 1814, bombardment of Fort McHenry (which inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the national anthem) recognize at least the names of battles like Bull Run and Gettysburg. Many people can name at least one Civil War general; few can name one from the War of 1812.

A second point is that numerous excellent histories of the Civil War are readily available, including books specifically about Maine’s role.

And the third reason is that this war is recent enough that some readers undoubtedly have memories of their grandparents telling stories of the generation before them who fought in the Civil War.

Any reader who would like to share a family Civil War story is invited to write it, attach photographs if available and email to townline@townline.org., Att. Roland Hallee. Maximum length is 1,000 words. Submissions will be printed as space permits; the editor reserves the right to reject any article and/or photograph.

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Maine historians agree that the majority of state residents supported President Abraham Lincoln’s decision to fight to preserve the Union. Those who initially disagreed, James W. North wrote in his history of Augusta, found themselves a small enough minority so they either changed their views or moderated their expression.

By 1860, the telegraph was widely used. News of Fort Sumter reached Augusta the same day, followed two days later by Lincoln’s call for 75,000 three-months volunteers, including one regiment from Maine.

On April 22, North wrote, the Maine legislature, in a hastily-called special session, approved enrolling 10,000 soldiers in ten regiments for three years, plus “a State loan of one million dollars.”

Augusta had filled two companies by the end of April. Other Kennebec Valley companies joined them; they camped and drilled on the State House lawn. The Third Regiment started south June 5, 1861; those soldiers were promptly replaced by others from other parts of Maine, volunteers succeeded by men paid bounties and in 1863 by draftees.

North wrote that the first draft in Augusta was held July 14 through 21, 1863, starting two days after the New York City draft riots began, with news arriving hourly. In Augusta’s Meonian Hall, eligible men’s names were drawn from a wheel by a blindfolded man named James M. Meserve, “a democrat of known integrity and fairness, who possessed the general confidence.”

The process began with selection of 40 men from Albion. Augusta followed, and, North wrote, the initial nervousness gave way to “a general feeling of merriment,” with draftees being applauded and congratulated.

Being drafted did not mean serving, North pointed out. Physical standards were strict; out of 3,540 draftees, 1,050 were “rejected by surgeon for physical disability or defects.” It was also legal to pay a substitute or to pay the government to be let off.

Augusta remained a military hub and a supply depot through the war, centered around the State House and Camp Keyes, on Winthrop Hill, at the top of Winthrop Street. There were large hospital buildings on Western Avenue, North wrote, which were so crowded by 1863 that the Camp Keyes barracks were also fitted up as hospital wards. The trotting park between the State House and the river was named Camp Coburn and hosted infantry and cavalry barracks and enlarged stables.

North described the celebratory homecomings for soldiers returning to Augusta when their enlistments were up, like the one in August 1863 for the 24th Regiment. The “bronzed and war-worn” men had come from Port Hudson, Louisiana, up the Mississippi to Cairo and by train to Augusta, a two-week trip. Greeted by cannon-fire, bells, torch-carrying fire companies, a band, state and city officials and “a multitude” of cheering citizens, they marched straight to the State House, enjoyed a meal in the rotunda and “dropped to sleep on the floor around the tables, being too weary to proceed to Camp Keyes.”

Historians describing the effects of the Civil War on smaller Kennebec Valley towns tend to emphasize two points: the human cost and the financial cost.

Ruby Crosby Wiggin found as she researched the history of Albion a record saying that “out of 100 men who went to war from the town of Albion, 45 didn’t come back.” She listed the names of more than 150 Albion soldiers, six identified as lieutenants.

By 1862, Wiggin wrote, the state and many towns offered enlistment bonuses. In addition, towns paid to equip each soldier. Total Albion expenditures, she wrote, were $21,265; the state reimbursed the town $8,033.33.

Wiggin concluded, “No wonder the town was heavily in debt at the close of the Civil War.”

The China bicentennial history says almost 300 men from that town served in Civil War units. The author quoted from the 1863 school report that said attendance in one district school was unusually low, “the large boys having gone to the war.”

The Civil War left China, like Albion and other towns, deeply in debt. The China history says when the State of Maine began tallying municipal costs and offering compensation in 1868, China had paid $47,735.34 to provide soldiers. The state repayment was $12,708.33, and town meetings were still dealing with interest payments and debt repayments into the latter half of the 1870s.

China town meetings during the war were mostly about meeting enlistment quotas, and, the history writer implied, by 1864 voters were tired of the topic. In July and again in December 1864, they delegated filling the quota to their select board.

When the late-1864 quota had not been filled by February 1865, voters were explicit; the history writer said they agreed to “sustain the Selectmen in any measures they may take in filling the quota of this town.”

The Fairfield historians who wrote the town’s 1988 bicentennial history found the list of Civil War soldiers too long to include in their book and noted that the names are on the monument in the Veterans Memorial Park and in the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) record books in the public library across Lawrence Avenue from the park.

Of Larone, the northernmost and likely the smallest of the seven villages that made up the Town of Fairfield for part of the 19th century, the history says, “Larone furnished her full quota of ‘boys in blue’. These averaged one for every family, three-fifths were destined never to see their homes again.”

Millard Howard, in his Palermo history, wrote that “The Civil War was by far the most traumatic experience this town ever experienced.” Of an 1860 population of 1,372, 46 men, “or one out of every 30 inhabitants,” died between 1861 and 1865.

Looking back from the year 2015, Howard wrote somberly, “No other war can remotely compare with it.”

He listed the names of the dead, with ages and causes of death where known. The youngest were 18, the oldest 44. More than half, 26, died of disease rather than wounds; Augustus Worthing, age 31, starved to death in Salisbury prison, in North Carolina.

Sidney voters spent a lot of town meetings in the 1860s talking about the war, according to Alice Hammond’s town history. As early as 1861, they approved abating taxes for volunteers.

As the war went on, voters authorized aid for volunteers’ families and monetary inducements to enlist for residents and non-residents, with preference given to residents. At an 1863 special meeting, they authorized selectmen to borrow money as needed “to aid families of volunteers.”

Hammond noted that Sidney was debt-free before the war, “but in 1865 it issued bonds for $24,000, a debt from which it recovered very slowly.”

Alma Pierce Robbins found from military records that 410 men from Vassalboro enlisted for Civil War service. From census records, she listed the 1860 population as 3,181.

As in other municipalities, voters approved wartime expenses. Robbins wrote that $7,900 was appropriated for bounties and aid to soldiers’ families in 1861. The comparable 1863 figure was $16,900. Perhaps for contrast, she added the 1864 cost of the new bridge at North Vassalboro (presumably over Outlet Stream): $1,057.82 (plus an 1867 appropriation of $418.62).

In Waterville, General Isaac Sparrow Bangs wrote in his chapter on military history in Reverend Edwin Carey Whittemore’s 1902 centennial history, recruiting offices opened soon after the news of Fort Sumter. A Waterville College student named Charles A. Henrickson was the first to enroll, and, Bangs wrote, his example “proved so irresistibly contagious at the college that the classes and recitations were broken up” and the college temporarily closed.

Henrickson was captured at the Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861. He survived the war; later in the Waterville history, Chas. A. Henrickson is listed among charter members of the Waterville Savings Bank, organized in 1869.

These Waterville soldiers became companies G and H in the 3rd Maine Infantry, Bangs wrote. After drilling in Waterville, they went to Augusta and were put under the command of regimental Colonel Oliver O. Howard. On June 5, Howard was ordered to Washington, “carrying with him, as Waterville’s first contingent, seventy-four of her boys into the maelstrom of war.”

Bangs spent years verifying the names of 421 men who either enlisted from Waterville or were Waterville natives who enlisted elsewhere. The names are included in Whittemore’s history.

Bangs added that the Maine Adjutant-General’s report says Waterville provided 525 soldiers. He offered several explanations for the discrepancy, pointing out the difficulties of accurate record-keeping.

Waterville paid $67,715 in enlistment bounties, Bangs wrote. Henry Kingsbury, in his history of Kennebec County, put the figure at $68,016 and said the state reimbursement was $19,888.33.

Linwood Lowden wrote in the history of Windsor that more than one-third of Windsor men aged 17 to 50 fought in the Civil War, most of them in the19th and 21st Maine infantry regiments.

Like other towns, Windsor paid bonuses to enlistees and, Lowden wrote, $2,663.87 “in aid to soldiers’ families…from 1862 through 1866.” He added that Windsor first went into debt during these years.

Camp Keyes, Augusta

A history of Camp Keyes found on-line says that the 70-acre site on top of Winthrop Hill, on the west side of Augusta, had been used as, and called, “the muster field” since before Maine became a state in 1820. It was still available, although the militia had become less significant, when the Civil War broke out.

On Aug. 20, 1862, Maine Adjutant General John L. Hodsdon designated the field one of Maine’s three official “rendezvous areas” for militia and volunteers and named it Camp E. D. Keyes, in honor of Major-General Erasmus D. Keyes, a Massachusetts native who moved to Kennebec County (town unspecified on line) as a young man. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1832 and fought in the Civil War until 1863, when a superior removed him from command, claiming he lacked aggressiveness.

(The other two Maine rendezvous areas were Camp Abraham Lincoln, in Portland, and Camp John Pope [honoring General John Pope from Kentucky], in Bangor.)

Thousands of Civil War soldiers from Maine passed through Camp Keyes. It also housed Maine’s only federal military hospital, named Cony Hospital in honor of Governor Samuel Cony.

After the war, the site remained a militia training ground. The State of Maine bought it in 1888. In 1893 the militia became the National Guard and continued to use the training ground, with Guard headquarters in the Capitol building until 1938.

The on-line site gives an undated description: “Small buildings were constructed of plywood for mess halls, kitchens, latrines, store houses, and lodging for senior military officers. Companies pitched their tents on pads that had been built.”

Main sources

Fairfield Historical Society Fairfield, Maine 1788-1988 (1988).
Grow, Mary M., China Maine Bicentennial History including 1984 revisions (1984).
Hammond, Alice, History of Sidney Maine 1792-1992 (1992).
Howard, Millard, An Introduction to the Early History of Palermo, Maine (second edition, December 2015).
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Lowden, Linwood H., good Land & fine Contrey but Poor roads a history of Windsor, Maine (1993).
Marriner, Ernest, Kennebec Yesterdays (1954).
North, James W., The History of Augusta (1870).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971).
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902).
Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964).

Websites, miscellaneous.