Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Streams of northern Winslow

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Vassalboro resident Nate Gray, of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, at the Webber Pond Dam, the beginning of Seven Mile Stream. (The Town Line file photo)

by Mary Grow

And Seven Mile Stream

As promised last year, this article finishes the story of mills and dams in 19th-century Winslow, or as much of the story as your writer has found, before moving south to Vassalboro’s Seven Mile Stream.

The previous account left off before describing the Pattee Pond outlet stream in Winslow, which runs north from the pond to join the Sebasticook River. A short distance after the stream leaves the pond, Wilson Brook (Wilson Stream to Henry Kingsbury, in his Kennebec County history) crosses under Albion Road to join from the east.

On Wilson Stream, Kingsbury wrote, “three miles from the river,” Ezra Crosby built a sawmill in 1807. He sold it to Ephraim Wilson, who 30 years later sold it to Amos Foss. The 1856 Kennebec County map shows a sawmill on Wilson Brook and three Wilson houses in the area, but no Foss property.

a water-powered grist mill

Where Pattee Stream joins the Sebasticook, Kingsbury described a series of mills over more than a century. Stephen Crosby started in 1780 with a sawmill and a grist mill, “worn out before 1830.” Joel Larned ran a successor sawmill for 25 years.

Zimri Haywood’s plaster mill ran from about 1845, “grinding Nova Scotia stone brought up the river on the old fashioned long boats,” to about 1870. Abijah Crosby next built a shingle mill. Fred Lancaster and Charles Drake bought from Crosby “and put a circular saw in the mill, which is one of the few now [1892] running in town.”

Like many other area towns, Winslow had in 1892 a Bog Brook, which was probably the Pattee Pond outlet stream, or perhaps one of its tributaries. Bog Brook ran through Ebenezer Heald’s 300 acres, which Kingsbury said – probably incorrectly –were granted in 1790. Heald used Bog Brook water power to run a sawmill and a grist mill that “served their day and generation and peacefully passed away before 1810.”

Jefferson Hines built another grist mill on Heald’s site, and John Nelson added a shingle machine. Not far upstream, Asher Hines and Thomas Smiley had a double sawmill. That, too, wore out, and the mill their sons built to replace it was aging by 1832, when, Kingsbury wrote, a flood destroyed both these mill complexes.

Edwin Carey Whittemore’s history of Waterville includes excerpts from a report on the Plymouth Company’s grant to Heald (also called Ebenezer Hale), of Ipswich, New Hampshire.

This document says Heald’s 300-acre grant was approved April 16, 1767. It had the “usual conditions:” the grantee was to build a house and clear at least five acres for agriculture within in a year.

In addition, Heald was directed to build, on the brook that ran through his new property from “Petises [Pattee] Pond” to the Sebasticook (here is the evidence that Bog Brook was the pond’s outlet stream) “a good and sufficient saw mill” by Dec. 25, 1767; and within three years to add a grist mill on the same brook.

Each mill dam was to have a fishway. Fish were to be available free to the Plymouth Company and to local residents.

In October 1766, the Plymouth Company had given Timothy Heald (or Hale), of Ipswich, New Hampshire, four lots northwest of the Sebasticook and two lots on the south, “reserving all mill privileges.” In June 1767, they hired Timothy Heald to lay out 54 50-acre lots, all or most presumably in what is now Winslow.

July 7, 1768, they authorized Ezekiel Paty (Pattee) to “take up” two 50-acre lots; and further authorized him and Timothy Heald to manage the settlers’ affairs and to prevent trespasses.

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Water powered paper mill

Returning to Vassalboro, the 1869 list of dams and dam sites first cited in the Nov. 30 article in this series says there were six in a mile and a half stretch on Webber Pond’s outlet stream. “These are now nearly all lying idle.” Two “drove paper mills, and one a sash and blind factory.”

The 1869 report did not enumerate these dams. Kingsbury did, and Alma Pierce Robbins talked about some of them in her Vassalboro history.

The outlet stream is called Seven Mile Stream or Seven Mile Brook. It winds from the southwest side of Webber Pond, where the outlet dam and boat ramp are located, to the Kennebec River, turning south and then north and joined by several tributaries.

The stream was “from the first a useful water power,” Kingsbury said. He and the 1904 Vassalboro Register (found on line) so often duplicate each other word for word that your writer does not presume to say who plagiarized whom or whether each plagiarized the same source; both cite an Oct. 20, 1766, petition to the “honorable Committee of the Kennebec Company in Boston.”

This petition, signed by 55 men, asked the company to build them a grist mill, or give them permission to build one, near the mouth of Seven Mile Brook, so they would not have to carry their grain to Cobboseecontee to be ground. The Register writer believed this mill was built, the earliest grist mill in Vassalboro.

Robbins quotes from a 1790 land transfer agreement with references to a mill (grist mill? — not specified), a dam, a sawmill and an iron works “that belong to the sawmill.”

Kingsbury wrote that James Bowdoin – not a signatory to the 1766 petition — “built a grist mill west of the road” (“the road” was probably Riverside Drive, now Route 201) before 1812, when he sold it to Joseph Stuart.

This mill was the biggest between Augusta and Waterville, Kingsbury said, with three runs of stones; it often operated “day and night.”

Subsequent owners were Thomas Carlton, Hiram Lovejoy and from 1827 Ephraim Jones – under his management, “wood carving was also done here.” (So wrote Kingsbury in 1892. The Register says “wood sawing.”)

After 1829, Abiel Fallonsbee (Kingsbury) or Fallowsbee (the Register) owned the mill for nine years. Then George W. Hall bought a quarter share and “Augusta parties” the rest, until Thaddeus Snell bought the whole.

“The stream now flows unhindered through its ruins,” Kingsbury concluded. “Down the stream was the old Sturgis grist mill, silent and dismantled long ago.”

Seven Mile Stream powered sawmills as well as grist mills. In 1799, Robbins said, Paul Brown built a sawmill at the mouth of the brook, to which his son William succeeded. She wrote that this mill became “Baker’s mill,” run by Eugene Baker in the 1800s.

Kingsbury was probably describing Baker’s mill when he listed a sawmill built on the site of the early mill at the mouth of Seven Mile Stream around 1871 by “A. S. Bigelow and others.” A. L. Baker took over in 1887, and in 1892 it was the only mill operating on the stream.

Area residents Ira Daggett Sturgis and Joseph Southwick were involved in lumbering in the upper Kennebec Valley and the lumber business in Vassalboro and Augusta. An on-line site calls Sturgis “a Vassalboro farmer turned lumber baron” and says in 1847 he and his half-brother, John, bought and started “manufacturing” in Southwick’s old sawmill on Seven Mile Brook.

The 1904 Register and Kingsbury listed a sawmill farther upstream that was started in or before the 1820s by Benjamin Brown, Captain William Farwell and John Howard (the Register) or John Homans (Kingsbury). Brothers James and George Robbins bought it in the late 1820s; James sold it in or soon after 1841. The 1830 John Gardner tannery was near this mill.

Still farther upstream, close to Webber Pond, was a sawmill run first by Coleman and later by Foster.

Seven Mill Brook powered two paper mills, Kingsbury said. George Cox and “Mr. Talpy” built one well downstream that burned in 1841; they then bought the Robbins sawmill and made it the second paper mill. George Tower and Daniel Stanwood ran it until about 1870, when it closed. Kingsbury said the ruins were visible in 1892.

After the 1841 fire, “Bridge and Sturgis” built on the paper mill site a “three-story machine shop.” Here “sash, blinds and doors were made for a time.” Charles Webber took it over (no date given), and in 1892 the building was standing, but Kingsbury said nothing about its being in use.

Generations of Timothy and Ebenezer Healds

Timothy Heald is buried in Fort Hill Cemetery, on Halifax St., in Winslow

There were, of course, generations of Timothy and Ebenezer Healds. Here are genealogical summaries from the on-line sites WikiTree and Find a Grave, complete with contradictions.

Timothy Heald #1 was born June 7, 1696, in Concord, Massachusetts, and died there March 28, 1736. He married Hannah Wobby in 1721. He was a blacksmith, who died young “from hot metal in his eye,” according to Find a Grave.

Timothy #1 and Hannah had either four or six sons and maybe one daughter. Their oldest son they named Timothy (#2).

WikiTree says their youngest son was Ebenezer #1, born in 1736 in Concord, after his father’s death. Find a Grave lists four sons (no daughters) born to Timothy #1 and Hannah between 1723 and 1732. None is named Ebenezer.

Find a Grave says Ebenezer #1 was born June 26, 1767, in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, son of Timothy #2. WikiTree has no Ebenezer among Timothy #2 and Elizabeth’s children. Yet another source, time.graphics, says explicitly Lieutenant Timothy, Jr., and Elizabeth did not have a son named Ebenezer.

WikiTree and Find a Grave both say Ebenezer #1 died in March 1818 in Winslow. He married Elizabeth Heywood (born May 20, 1764, died in 1816) on Oct. 15, 1782. The oldest of their six sons and two daughters was Ebenezer #2.

Ebenezer Heald is buried in Barton-Hinds Cemetery, also in Winslow.

Timothy #2, known as Lieutenant Timothy Heald, was born was Oct. 14, 1723, in Concord, and died Aug. 18, 1785, in Winslow, Maine. He married Elizabeth Stevens in 1748.

Timothy #2 and Elizabeth had two sons and a daughter; they named their older son Timothy (#3; one source calls him Captain) and their younger son Josiah, according to WikiTree.

Timothy #3 (son of Timothy #2 and Elizabeth) was born May 24, 1749, in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, or May 20, 1749, in Townsend, Massachusetts. He died May 11 or May 17, 1817, in Winslow.

Timothy #3 married Abigail Cragin on Feb. 16, 1779, in Winslow. They named the first of their 17 children Timothy (#4; born in 1779 and died in 1810). Abigail died July 18, 1857, at the age of 95; husband and wife are buried in Winslow’s Fort Hill cemetery, according to Find a Grave.

WikiTree says Ebenezer #2 (Ebenezer #1 and Elizabeth [Heywood]’s oldest son), was born in Clinton Oct. 14, 1783, married Lucy Warren in Clinton on Oct. 3, 1806, and died Nov. 1, 1860, in Marshalltown, Iowa. Ebenezer #2 and Lucy named none of their six or seven sons either Timothy or Ebenezer.

Find a Grave says Lieutenant Timothy Heald (#2), born in 1723, came to Winslow and is buried in Fort Hill cemetery. Wikitree says the Ebenezer who was born in 1736 (Ebenezer #1, Lieutenant Timothy’s younger brother) was the one who came to Winslow in the mid-1760s.

Ebenezer in Winslow was a farmer, a lieutenant in the militia and holder of several positions in Clinton: first treasurer in 1795, the year the town was incorporated, and town clerk from 1809 to 1812 and in 1816.

This source says he is buried in the Barton Hinds cemetery, aka the Crosby Farm cemetery, on Eames Road in Winslow.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971)
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Winslow, Hollingsworth & Whitney

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Hollingsworth & Whitney paper mill, in Winslow.

by Mary Grow

In addition to the historic mills on Outlet Stream and smaller flowages in Winslow, Kingsbury mentioned two larger mills on the east bank of the Kennebec in the 1890s.

One he described as a new “large steam saw mill…on the historic grounds of Fort Point,” covering most of the “palisade enclosure of old Fort Halifax.”

Fort Halifax in 1754.

Old Fort Halifax was built in 1754 to deter the French and their Indian allies from attacking British settlements along the Kennebec River. After the ouster of the French from the area in 1763, the fort’s buildings were dismantled or allowed to fall down, until only one blockhouse survives, now the centerpiece of Winslow’s Fort Halifax Park. (See the Jan. 28, 2021, issue of The Town Line for more on this historic site.)

A deteriorating blockhouse at Fort Halifax, in Winslow, after the ouster of the French from the area in 1763.

The grounds went through a succession of owners and uses. The Maine Memory Network’s on-line site includes an item donated by the Winslow Historical Preservation Committee with an excerpt from the April 18, 1873, Waterville Mail commending an effort to preserve the remaining blockhouse, after “many years of talk and neglect.”

The Ticonic Water Power Co. then owned the buildings and had leased them to “Dr. Crosby” of Waterville and “J.W. Bassett and A.T. Shurtleff, of Winslow, for the purpose of preservation.”

Another on-line source says the Ticonic Water Power and Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1868 and “acquired the water rights and property adjacent to the Ticonic Falls.” In 1874, the Ticonic Power Company “became the Lockwood Company.”

The Lockwood Company is primarily associated with the mills in Waterville, just south of Ticonic Bridge. However, an on-line history of these mills says that in 1865, Waterville resident George Alfred “achieved the complex task of assembling water and property rights on both sides of the Kennebec River” in Winslow and Waterville.

Ownership of water rights let Alfred build a dam at Ticonic Falls, finished in 1869, the site says. It goes on to discuss the Waterville mills, built by Amos D. Lockwood, an engineer from Boston and Providence, who was familiar with water power.

On the Winslow side of the river, Kingsbury wrote that Edward Ware leased the land on Fort Point from the Lockwood Company and built a lumber mill in 1890. The building was more than 300 feet long, equipped with “all modern appliances for cutting lumber,” Kingsbury wrote. Logs came down the Kennebec from up-river timber operations and were made into lumber, shingles and lath, mostly shipped to Boston.

Your writer found the beginning (only) of a New York Times article on line, headlined “Lumber Ordered for Gray Gables,” with the dateline Boston, Sept. 30 (no year given). The first sentence reads: “Twenty-five thousand feet of spruce lumber has been ordered to be shipped from the sawmill of Edward Ware, at Winslow, Me.”

Gray Gables, Wikipedia says, was an elaborate house in Bourne, Massachusetts, built in 1880 and in 1890 bought by past and future president Grover Cleveland. He named it Gray Gables and used it as the summer White House during his second term, 1893-1896.

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The second large Winslow mill was under construction as Kingsbury finished his history in 1892. He wrote that Hollingsworth and Whitney was building Kennebec County’s “largest pulp and paper mill…on the east bank of the Kennebec, at a cost of three quarters of a million dollars.”

The University of Maine’s on-line Digital Commons provides a history of Hollingsworth and Whitney, written in October 1954 by company president James Lester Madden as the company merged into Scott Paper Company.

Madden wrote that the first Hollingsworth in the paper business was Mark Hollingsworth, from Delaware, who started in 1798 as a foreman in a Massachusetts mill.

In 1835, Hollingsworth bought a Revere Copper mill in South Braintree, Massachusetts, and converted it to a paper mill that was run until 1852 by his sons, John and Lyman. In 1852, another son, Ellis, came home after three years in California and took over the South Braintree mill.

In 1862, Ellis Hollingsworth formed a partnership with Leonard A. Whitney, Jr., owner of a “paper mill and bag factory” in Watertown. Whitney’s factory, Madden said, “produced the first machine-made paper bags in this country.”

Hollingsworth and Whitney’s first Maine venture was the purchase of a mill in Gardiner in 1876. Ellis’s son Sumner Hollingsworth was in charge.

In 1875 the company hired a “dynamic” sales manager named Charles Dean. After both founders died in 1881, Dean “was instrumental in incorporating the present [1954] company in 1882.” Sumner Hollingsworth was its president until his death in 1899, when Dean succeeded him and headed the company until he retired in 1911.

Hollingsworth and Dean had the Winslow mill built between 1891 and 1893, Madden wrote. He commented, “To move from Massachusetts to the wilds of Maine for a woodpulp and paper mill was a daring move in the 1890s.”

The original estimated cost turned out to be half the actual cost of $800,000, he said (see Kingsbury’s figure above). Because the 1893 financial panic made banks hesitant to lend, even to a company with a good record, Dean financed part of the building himself. The Winslow mill was “a high quality, very low cost producer,” and he was soon repaid from profits.

The mill had two paper machines and a pulp mill; its daily capacity was 30 tons of groundwood pulp and 20 tons of paper. Madden said the initial 150 employees worked 11- and 13-hour days for an average hourly wage of less than 15 cents.

“Under Mr. Dean’s leadership,” Hollingsworth and Whitney was the first paper company to go from two to three shifts, a change that was considered “very radical,” Madden wrote.

To guarantee a supply of wood, the company began buying forest land in 1895. By 1954, Madden said, it owned 550,000 acres in the Kennebec watershed.

He described additions and improvements at the Winslow mill in the first two decades of the 20th century (the last two paper machines were added in 1913 and 1916) and the building of a pulp mill in Madison, and praised the company’s products and reputation.

Madden said nothing about World War I. By World War II, he wrote, the Winslow mill was the only supplier of “Tabulating Cardstock” in the country. Production was quadrupled to meet the military’s need for “cards to operate tabulating machines.”

After Scott Paper sold to Kimberly-Clark, the Winslow mill was closed in 1997.

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Kingsbury listed another 10 mills on lesser streams and brooks in Winslow before 1892.

Again, a map of Winslow is helpful. As explained last week, the town is bounded on the west by the Kennebec River. On the south it is bordered by Vassalboro, on the east by China.

There are two ponds in Winslow. The smaller, Mud Pond, is in the southeastern corner of town, with its eastern shore in China (according to China tax maps and most others found on line; one on-line map shows the boundary deviating from a straight line to follow the shoreline, putting the whole pond in Winslow).

A connecting stream runs northwest from Mud Pond to larger Pattee (or Pattees or Pattee’s) Pond, which lies east of the Sebasticook River. The Pattee Pond outlet stream, and streams that join it from the east, drain northwest into the Sebasticook.

In addition to the streams associated with these two water bodies, contemporary maps show one stream, Chaffee Brook, flowing west into the Kennebec. Chaffee Brook passes under Route 201 a short distance south of the Carter Memorial Drive intersection.

The first dam Kingsbury mentioned was on the brook named for John Drummond “near the river road” (Route 201).

Your writer found no Drummond Brook in contemporary Winslow; she guesses Drummond Brook is now Chaffee Brook. Just north of Chaffee Brook, Chaffee Brook Road goes west off Route 201 to the bank of the Kennebec. On the south side of Chaffee Brook Road sits Drummond cemetery.

(Chaffee Brook Road leads to the Kennebec Water District’s Chaffee Brook pumping station, which is being upgraded. Area residents who have seen the crane on the river bank and the platforms in the water are looking at the project.)

Drummond built a grist mill with two runs of stones, Kingsbury said. In 1822 he sold it to Josiah Hayden (probably the younger of the two Josiah Haydens in last week’s article) and built a sawmill (presumably sharing the grist mill’s water power). Kingsbury said as forests were cleared, the flow in this brook diminished until it could not provide adequate power after about 1840.

Of the next mill he described, Kingsbury wrote: “Frederick Paine had a plaster mill on Clover brook that did business from 1820 to 1870.” (On-line sources say plaster mills ground lime and gypsum into powder for building materials, including plaster and cement.)

Your writer suggests Clover Brook might be the 19th-century name for Bellows Stream, which flows north into Pattee Pond roughly parallel to the Kennebec and about midway between Winslow’s east and west boundaries.

The apparently nameless stream between Mud Pond and Pattee Pond, eastward of Bellows Stream, powered two mills, presumably on dams, by the first half of the 1800s. This stream flows north and then northwest from the north end of Mud Pond, under Route 137 (China Road) into the east side of Pattee Pond

The upstream mill was John Getchell’s sawmill, operating by 1795. It later became Isaac Dow’s shingle mill.

Half a mile downstream, a man named Alden had a sawmill that “ran down and was rebuilt by Esquire Brackett, who lost his life in it in 1840, by a blow from the saw frame.” Later, Jacob Brimner ran the sawmill (the 1856 map of Kennebec County shows a sawmill on this stream and a Brimner house not far upstream). Later still, a shingle mill ran until around 1870, Kingsbury said.

The Pattee Pond outlet, Pattee Stream, flows from the north end of the pond into the Sebasticook. For lack of space, your writer postpones a description of mills in this northern and northwestern part of Winslow to next week.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Winslow resident Katherine Alexander publishes new book

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A newly published book by local Katherine Alexander, of Winslow, They Shall Run and Not Be Weary: The Story of an Eighteenth Century German Family’s Voyage to the New Land, tells the story of her family who traveled from their 18th century home, in Massenbach, Germany, to America. This is a great book to read for anyone 18 years and older who wanted to learn more about the hardships families went through to get to a new land. This journey should never be forgotten as we are all benefiting from the strength and courage of families like the Fridbergs.

Join the Fridberg family as Widow Maria Barbara and her four children brave hardship and overcome the obstacles to traveling from their village of Massenbach in what is now Germany to the city of colonial Philadelphia in 1742.

Travel north on the Rhine River to Rotterdam, in Holland, cross the English Channel to Deal and nally sail with them as they begin the treacherous journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Meet their traveling companions from their village and the friends they make along the way. See in all its reality what shipboard conditions were really like and how the Fridbergs kept their focus, full of the hope their life in the New Land would grant them.

Area food pantries: people helping people

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Text and photo by Roberta Barnes

It is that time of year when people need help shoveling their walkways and heating their homes, but something that everyone needs at all times is nutritious food. Illnesses and accidents do not care about age, occupation, or gender. Misfortune can hit individuals or families at any time. Businesses and companies can go out of business. At unexpected times, individuals or families can be in a situation where resources have been stretched beyond the point of trying to eat balanced meals.

Neighbors, relatives, and others in the community have been helping for decades, but sometimes people are struggling themselves or do not know that a person or family needs help. The nice thing is that there are nonprofit organizations formed and supported by the community, who can help in our community, and our State, those that do not have the nutritious foods needed to keep their body and mind functioning during this stressful season.

Last week, several local food pantries in China, Jefferson, Windsor, Vassalboro and Winslow took time to talk with me. These volunteer-driven initiatives are located in spaces where businesses have closed down, in renovated town garages, and in churches. Some even operate mobile trailers that can be moved to different locations.

Each of the volunteers who spoke with me expressed compassion and a willingness to give without judgement. They are able to operate thanks to generous donations by local businesses, farms, and individuals, plus countless hours by volunteers. Their work is filling a need by helping supply needed nutritional foods.

How and when you can receive needed food varies with location. Some pantries are open one or two days a week, others are open only once or twice a month. In some locations the space is too small for people to walk into the area where the food is safely stored. In those cases, once a person checks off the list of food needed, volunteers bring those foods to the person’s vehicle. Other organizations have a space large enough that clients can walk through in single file and do their own shopping.

I heard from Jefferson food pantry, located in St. Giles church (207-315-1134), and Windsor food bank in a section of the Windsor Town Hall garage (207-445-9030), that in the case of an emergency situation they have delivered the needed food to a home. All organizations distributing food in Maine are focused on helping people in their communities have the food they need to stay healthy.

In October 1929 when Wall Street crashed and 15 million people were unemployed by 1933, there were no safety nets in place.

Today we are lucky to have help in place. But getting nutritious foods to the pantry locations, correctly storing perishable foods, and safely handling all foods, requires numerous steps from many different people.

Donations and volunteer work are the most important aspect in providing these additional safety nets, and in continuing to keep them available for those people who at certain times cannot buy food, or are having trouble with other basic needs.

The Federal Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, began with donation efforts of surplus foods, such as cheese, by the USDA in late 1981. Foods from this program are given to each State based on the number of unemployed persons and the number of people with incomes below the poverty level. It is then given to the organizations that directly serve the public and submit all the correct forms. The receiving and passing out of these foods requires detailed paperwork completed by volunteers. This is just part of the effort that goes on behind the scenes that many people do not see.

In 1981, the Maine nonprofit organization Good Shepherd Food Bank was formed in Auburn through donations of individuals, retailers, and large food companies in Maine. The small grassroots effort has grown, expanding to Hamden and delivering foods to organizations throughout Maine that are contracted with them.

Good Shepherd’s purchasing power and relationships with wholesalers allow these organizations to use the donations they receive to purchase food at a fraction of the cost they would pay through standard retailers. Five dollars can result in thirty pounds of food. Because safely handling and storing perishable foods is important, annually each organization is inspected to be sure all foods are handled safely. Everything is carefully monitored and that requires accurate paperwork.

Donations made to Good Shepherd Food Bank and other organizations come from many sources. One of the donating companies, Hannaford Bros. Co., established a reclamation center to facilitate the process of distributing products to Good Shepherd and other food banks. In certain stores you may find programs inviting customers at the register to donate money or buy boxes of food staples for local pantries.

Speaking with volunteers in Windsor, I heard about a food bake sale that resulted in major funding for Windsor Food Bank Inc. Farms in some communities also donate various veggie and protein foods that are properly packaged, from late July sometimes into November.

When China Food Pantry was established in 1992 (1320 Lakeview Drive), it started by connecting with local stores for over-stocked and other foods that could not be put on the grocery shelves even though they were still safe to eat. With stores being willing to donate some foods, similar pantries in Albion, Palermo, Windsor, Jefferson and Vassalboro quickly followed. The volunteers in these locations drove to pick up food in various locations, including farms and Good Shepherd in Auburn. Today Good Shepherd delivers to those contracted with them.

The joy that pets of all sizes can bring into a home is obvious. Pets also are great listeners, help with depression and loneliness, can relieve stress, increase your physical anxiety, help you see the beauty around you and much more. But pets need pet food to continue to help the people they live with. Some of the volunteers shared with me that they will personally go to retailers and purchase pet food that can be picked up with the other needed foods at the organization’s location.

While I was not able to connect with all local organizations providing food at no charge, The Town Line’s website has a list of pantries and phone numbers here. You can also find the location by calling or dropping into the town office in your community.

In Vassalboro, there is the Vassalboro Food Station on Rte. 32 open on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to noon. The Winslow Community Cupboard also distributes food at The Mill, in Vassalboro, Wednesdays 4 – 7 p.m. and Sundays 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Winslow Community Cupboard also serves people in communities other than Winslow, which you can see by visiting their website. They are at the Winslow Congregational Church, 12 Lithgow Street, the second and fourth Thursday each month from noon – 3 p.m., and from 5 – 7 p.m.

As you are reading, these organizations require many volunteers to make all of this happen. Being a volunteer or donating can be extremely rewarding as you see the thankful faces of those receiving. If you would like to donate or volunteer, either contact your local food bank, food pantry, community cupboard, or town office.

Roberta Barnes is a freelance contributor to The Town Line.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Dams and Mills

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Building Two of the Olde Mill on Main Street in Vassalboro. (photo by Sandy Isaac)

by Mary Grow

The list of old dams on China Lake’s Outlet Stream started last week with dams in Vassalboro, as far downstream as the North Vassalboro dams described below.

In following weeks, your writer plans to finish summarizing the usefulness of Outlet Stream with descriptions of dams and mills in Winslow, between the Vassalboro line and the Sebasticook River; discuss two larger mills on the Kennebec, in Winslow; share rather scanty information about dams and mills on lesser streams and brooks in Winslow; and describe some of the industries supported by Seven Mile Stream, a/k/a Seven Mile Brook, in southern Vassalboro.

Readers who are tired of dams and mills might want to ignore these history articles until 2024.

* * * * * *

In his Kennebec County history, Henry Kingsbury started the North Vassalboro mill story with the arrival of Dr. Edward Southwick, who came from Danvers, Massachusetts, early in the 1800s, bought water rights from John Getchell and by 1820 was running “the largest tannery in New England.” The sheds to store the tree bark used in tanning covered over an acre, Kingsbury said, and “His business was the life of North Vassalboro.”

In her Vassalboro history, Alma Pierce Robbins quoted George Varney’s Gazeteer of the State of Maine as the source for naming Jacob Southwick, not Edward Southwick, as the tannery owner. Kingsbury said Edward and Jacob were brothers, and Jacob had a tannery at Getchell’s Corners (which was one of Vassalboro’s commercial and industrial centers for most of the 19th century).

Peter Morrill Stackpole and his son-in-law, Alton Pope, started their “wool carding and cloth dressing mill” (Kingsbury) on Outlet Stream in 1836 (Robbins).

John D. Lang (1799-1879) was brother-in-law to Stackpole (Kingsbury; Lang’s wife was Anna Elmira Stackpole [1800-1879]), and “an experienced mill executive” (Robbins), who came from Rhode Island and invested capital. Lang, Stackpole and Pope created, by 1836, the woolen mill that Kingsbury called North Vassalboro’s “chief industrial pursuit” for the rest of the century.

They also had a sawmill, which burned in 1848. Peter Stackpole was killed that November during the rebuilding.

(See the Oct. 19 issue of The Town Line for the Lang family’s agricultural contributions.)

Lang bought the Southwick tannery around 1850, and the next year built the first brick mill building on the site. According to Kingsbury, “A brick kiln was built, and after the brick were burned the walls of the mill were built around it.” The remains of the tannery were burned.

This mill was on the west side of Main Street, between the street and Outlet Stream, on the north side of Oak Grove Road, which runs west off Main Street and across the stream.

Kingsbury and Robbins wrote that the mill’s moment of international fame was in 1851, when one of its products was awarded a gold medal at the London World’s Fair.

Robbins said the prize was for “finest Broadcloth or Cassimere in the World.” The fabric was a “beautiful blue color,” mixed by brothers George and Jonathan Nowell.

(The senior George Nowell [1777-1868] moved to Vassalboro in 1806 and later to Winslow, where he farmed. He and his wife, Winifred [Parker] Nowell, had 10 children, according to Kingsbury, including sons George [1818-1904] and Jonathan [1820-1897].)

Jonathan Nowell worked at the mill for 40 years. Robbins called him “a dye mixer,” and Kingsbury said he was “boss of the dyeing works.”

The old Stackpole and Pope mill building on the dam, Kingsbury said, was moved to Main Street, where it served first as a “dry house,” then as a boarding house and by 1892 as a “dwelling and a hall.” (“Dry house,” in this context, might mean the building was used to dry materials used in the woolen mill. It was probably neither a saloon without liquor nor a recovery house for addicts.)

In a major renovation in 1861, Kingsbury said, a 47-by-200-foot building was added to the 1851 one, so close he referred to the two buildings as “practically one.” The result was “the largest woolen mill in New England,” in 1861 and still in 1892.

In the second half of the 19th century, the North Vassalboro mill had several different owners and names. Kingsbury said Lang and Boston partners organized the North Vassalboro Woolen Manufacturing Company before 1856. By 1892, he said, “Boston people” were the only owners. Robbins called the business the Vassalboro Manufacturing Company, until the mill was sold to American Woolen Company in 1899.

To Robbins, one of the significances of the mill was its effect on the population of North Vassalboro. In the 1850s, she wrote, Vassalboro Manufacturing Company began advertising for workers in newspapers in England and Ireland.

“Thus the family names in Vassalboro began to change. Nearly every other family had one or more ‘foreigners’ boarding with them,” she wrote. Immigrants from Canada joined those from England and Ireland.

The contribution to North Vassalboro’s economy was significant. When architectural historian Michael Goebel-Bain, of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, wrote the application for listing on the National Register of Historic Places in March 2020, he included census figures. They showed the mill had 180 employees in 1860; 263 in 1870; 300 in 1883 and “close to 600” before it closed in 1955.

Goebel-Bain pointed out that expansion of the mill was often in response to wartime demand for cloth. He cited new buildings in 1861 and 1863 and expansions in 1917 and 1943.

The historian pointed out that there were also contractions as demand dropped. In November 1888, he wrote, the mill closed briefly, because its owners owed $90,000 to a “Boston cotton mill owner” named T. W. Walker. Walker put up another $75,000 and bought and reopened the mill.

And, Goebel-Bain added, if there were a major drought, Outlet Stream might drop too low to provide power, forcing a – usually short – halt to production.

* * * * * *

Goebel-Bain’s application was for a Vassalboro mill historic district. He described nine separate buildings and one “structure” that were worthy of preservation, plus two related but non-historic buildings on the 6.8-acre parcel.

Parts of the 1851 building survived, Goebel-Bain wrote, but they were “indistinguishable as an entity” because of the many changes and additions between 1861 and 1943. He listed the period of historic significance as 1861 to 1955.

Goebel-Bain divided the buildings into categories, describing the single-story brick office building; a 444-foot section of mill with towers and many original windows; other mill sections; and the single-story Dye House, first built in 1894 and completed between 1903 and 1911. The 444-foot section, he observed, has the same roof height from one end to the other, but “due to the sloping lot two stories are visible at the east and four stories at the west end.”

The contributing structure is described as a 90-foot tall smokestack, built around 1894 of “hollow, glazed structural tile.” Goebel-Bain added, “The associated boiler house and boilers were removed in 1981.”

The application described some of the many physical changes during the life of the woolen mill. Goebel-Bain wrote that a canal from a dam “800 feet north” used to run “directly under several mill buildings and ended as an exposed tail race.” Many of the walkways between buildings “by enclosed corridors and in many cases more substantial connector buildings” had been demolished.

Additions were made at intervals in the 19th and 20th centuries. Goebel-Bain found that one building started out as brick, two stories high, built between 1861 and 1863; acquired a third story, also brick, in 1894; and by 1906 had a wooden fourth floor.

Despite the changes, Goebel-Bain found the mill complex historically valuable. He wrote, “The common characteristics typical of mill construction include brick walls, large window openings, open floor space, heavy wood framing, exterior stair towers, and flat roofs. All or many of these features exist across the major buildings.”

He saw the Vassalboro buildings as an example of “slow-burning construction,” common in mills: construction methods that would hinder spread of fires in buildings with mainly wooden interiors.

Goebel-Bain concluded: “The largest and most significant buildings remain and collectively form a district that has integrity to reflect is [sic] industrial development from 1861 to 1955.”

The Vassalboro mill was added to the National Register of Historic Places on Oct. 5, 2020.

Lombard log hauler exhibit locations

The Lombard log hauler, one of only six remaining, at its home at the Redington Museum, in Waterville. (photo by Roland Hallee)

Local readers who would like to see a Lombard log hauler (introduced in the Oct. 26 issue of The Town Line) will have two local opportunities.

The Fall 2023 issue of the Maine State Museum’s Broadside newsletter reports that when the museum reopens in 2025, a new exhibit will showcase its Lombard log hauler. Museum officials are also helping the Waterville Historical Society upgrade its Lombard log hauler display.

The projects are funded by a grant from the Bill & Joan Alfond Foundation.

Readers might also want to visit the Maine Forest and Logging Museum, in Bradley, northeast of Bangor (website maineforestandloggingmuseum.org), or the Maine Forestry Museum, in Dallas Plantation, with a mailing address in Rangeley (website maineforestrymuseum.org). The Forest and Logging Museum’s website advertises its Lombard log hauler; the Forestry Museum’s says it has a variety of equipment and tools.

Both websites list 2024 event schedules.

The Forestry Museum is closed for the winter, reopening in June 2024. The Forest and Logging Museum is hosting Santa Claus on Dec. 9.

Tannery owner Jacob Southwick

Tannery owner Jacob Southwick was involved in other businesses in the village near the Kennebec that began as Getchell’s Corners, was called Vassalboro in Kingsbury’s time and is now Getchell Corner. Kingsbury wrote that he had a pail factory an “ashery” and a plaster mill on a brook there.

(Wikipedia says an ashery made hardwood ashes into lye, potash or pearlash. Lye was an ingredient in soap; pearlash, made by kiln-baking potash, was often exported to Britain to be used in making glass and ceramic materials.)

Around 1825, Jacob, his father, Dr. Edward Southwick, and others started Negeumkeag Bank at Getchell’s Corners, with $50,000 capital; it lasted about 15 years. After it closed, Kingsbury said, the “queer old strap, wrought iron safe” went to another tannery the Southwicks owned in Burnham.

By 1836, Kingsbury said, one of the places for posting notices of town meetings was the Jacob Southwick and Company store.

Jacob was a selectman for two years in the 1820s. In 1843, he was innocently involved in what appears to have been election fraud. Whether deliberate or accidental is unclear.

The story is told in an 1843 report of the Maine legislature’s Committee on Elections, reviewing returns from the newly-created Fourth Senatorial District. The district included Augusta and eight nearby towns.

Votes were cast for a total of 11 men, plus “all others.” Four men got more than 3,300 votes each. Three more were closely grouped in the 2,600s. Jacob Southwick was one of four men who each got fewer than 550 votes.

However, the committee found that many voters had marked four names on the ballot, when the instructions said to vote for no more than three. This conduct they condemned as illegal, disorderly and corrupt.

The report concluded, “That a great evil would result from permitting the voter to determine, not only for whom he may vote, but for how many, must be obvious to all.”

The committee therefore rejected numerous ballots, including 323 from Vassalboro – one of the higher numbers, exceeded only by Augusta and Hallowell – and declared the new senators to be none of the four top vote-getters, but the three in the second tier, John Hubbard, Jacob Main and John Stanley.

John Hubbard was Dr. John Hubbard, of Hallowell, later governor of Maine. Jacob Main was from Belgrade; David Stanley was from Winthrop.

Main sources

Goebel-Bain, Michael National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Vassalboro Mill (March 24, 2020), supplied by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Enjoy a wonderful “Reverse Advent Calendar”… as you help food-insecure neighbors

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Throughout the centuries, families at Christmastime have delighted in their Advent Calendar. Now you can use your “Reverse Advent Calendar” to give back to your community – feed and love food-insecure children, seniors, and adults in Central Maine – and share the many blessings of the holiday season with others.

SIMPLE DIRECTIONS: As you go through the Christmas season, have your Reverse Advent Calendar by your side! For each day of the season, note the food item suggested for that day, and consider purchasing some or all of the items as a donation to Winslow Community Cupboard food pantry. (If you have children, consider involving them!

Then, after you’ve gathered your items, box or bag them up, and deliver them to Winslow Community Cupboard food pantry, 12 Lithgow Street, Winslow, at one of these three times:

Friday, December 22, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Friday, December 29, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Saturday, December 30, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.

We hope you enjoy and are enriched by your Reverse Advent Calendar!

Local scouts honor veterans at parade

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Vassalboro Scouts at the Waterville Veterans Day Parade. Front row, from left to right, Tiger Scout Kasen Maroon, Wolf Scout Beckett Metcalf, Tiger Scout Greyson Malloy, Wolf Scout John Gray, and Wolf Scout Lux Reynolds. Second row, Tiger Den Leader Shane Maroon, Dragon Scout Lila Reynolds, Asst. Cubmaster/Wolf Den Leader Chris Reynolds, Webelos Scout Anthony Malloy, Arrow of Light Scout Christopher Santiago, Arrow of Light Scout William Vincent, Webelos Scout Henry Gray, Asst. Scoutmaster/Cubmaster Christopher Santiago. (photo courtesy of Chuck Mahaleris)

by Chuck Mahaleris

Anthony Fortin of Augusta

In Waterville, Scouts from Vassalboro, Winslow, Windsor and Augusta marched in the Veterans Day Parade with some of the Cub Scouts from Windsor leading the pledge of allegiance at City Hall. Windsor Pack #609 Cubmaster Shawn McFarland said, “This was our first parade and first community event. I am so proud of these Littles! Thank you everyone.” The pack, which became official this month after several years of non-operation, is also going to be marching in the Gardiner Parade of Lights. Christopher Santiago is a leader for both Scout Troop and Cub Pack #410, in Vassalboro, and said, “Vassalboro Scouting came out to thank our veterans and marched in the Waterville Veterans Day Parade alongside its Charter Organization, American Legion Post #126. A great job by our scouts and their families who braved the cold on this important day. Thank you Veterans!”

In Augusta, members of Scout Troop #431 served lunch to veterans at American Legion Post #2 and in Litchfield, Scout Troop #672 took part in a flag retirement ceremony with members of American Legion William R Bold Post #181, Litchfield.

Augusta Troop 631

Pack 609 Tiger Cub Brody Dyer holding a handmade sign

EVENTS: Festival of Wreaths to benefit Winslow Community Cupboard Food Pantry

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by Dave Carew

The Festival of Wreaths – a raffle-benefit for Winslow Community Cupboard food pantry – will be held on Friday, November 24, from noon to 8 p.m., and on Saturday, November 25, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., at Winslow Congregational Church, 12 Lithgow Street, Winslow. Admission to the event will be a $1 donation; raffle tickets will be 50 cents each. Food and beverages will be available for sale and there will be a very special appearance by Santa Claus!

Featuring more than 50 wonderful Christmas and holiday wreaths, the raffle-benefit will seek to raise urgently-needed funds for the food pantry, which has served more than 20,087 food-insecure households in Winslow, Waterville, and surrounding towns so far in 2023.

According to Operations Manager Bruce Bottiglierie, Winslow Community Cupboard – which also operates a Mobile Food Pantry that directly serves locations in Waterville, Skowhegan, Fairfield, and more than a dozen other local towns – has experienced a 39 percent increase in the number of households needing food-pantry service this year. The Festival of Wreaths is sponsored by Healthy Northern Kennebec.

For more information, please contact Bruce Bottiglierie, Winslow Community Cupboard, at 207-616-0076 or WinslowCupboard@Gmail.com.

Construction Updates China Road Construction – Winslow Ongoing Work

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Eastwood Contractors will continue a $2.4 million stormwater contract on the China Road.

Work will continue in front of Cumberland Farms, tying into a large box culvert with a 48-inch storm drain that will proceed east on the China Road to the Cushman Road and continue down the Cushman Road.

Because of the depth and size of the pipe, work continues on this project. Contractors will occupy both eastbound lanes with two-way traffic maintained in the westbound lane.

Every effort will be made to minimize disruption to the affected businesses. This work is to eliminate a flooding problem that has existed in this area for a long time.

Waterville-Winslow Ticonic Bridge Construction Look Ahead

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Lane Closures:

The bridge will be closed from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., from Sunday, November 19 -Thursday, November 23, for work requiring access to the entire bridge. During this time, all vehicles will be required to follow the posted detour route. Message boards will be used to warn drivers. Pedestrians should continue to utilize the posted detour route during these times.

Thursday, November 23, not a definite for closure 7 p.m. – 6 a.m. Announcement will be made as the date gets closer.

Drivers are encouraged to proceed cautiously, observe signage in the work zone, and obey reduced work zone speed limits.

URGENT SAFETY REMINDER:

It is unlawful and unsafe to traverse the river via the rail bridge. Pedestrians have been observed doing so and are reminded of the dangers of such activity. Pedestrians must utilize the Two Cent Bridge for foot traffic.