by Mary Grow Waterville, now a city, started as the part of Winslow on the west bank of the Kennebec River. In the 1902 centennial history, editor and writer Edwin Carey Whittemore traced Winslow/ Waterville’s origin from Native American settlements onward. He wrote that the territory of the local Kennebec (or Canabis, or other spellings) […]
by Mary Grow This article brings readers to Fairfield, northernmost of the four municipalities in this series on the west bank of the Kennebec River. Fairfield is across the river from Benton and Clinton (subjects of the June 13 and June 20 articles). Fairfield is one of the two towns in the series outside Kennebec […]
by Mary Grow China Planning Board members began discussion of two proposed new town ordinances at their July 9 meeting. Chairman Toni Wall expressed the hope that they would be ready for submission to town voters by the Nov. 5 state and federal election day. One ordinance is tentatively titled a Mass Gathering Ordinance. The […]
Over half a million dollars in miscellaneous payments by Mary Grow China select board members met for barely over a quarter of an hour July 15, using the time to hear reports from town employees and spend more than half a million dollars. The spending came first, when they approved two weeks’ worth of bills: […]
by Mary Grow Guest speaker Jeannette Wood Scates shared excerpts from her recent memoir, There Wasn’t Always Peace in the Valley, with an appreciative audience at the Palermo Library’s 22nd annual board meeting, held July 14 at the library. The valley is Hostile Valley in eastern Palermo, where Scates and her three older siblings grew […]
by Mary Grow Of the town and city names your writer has explored in this subseries, none has yet been as frustrating as the Town of Albion. Sources agree on names and dates. In 1802, Freetown Plantation was incorporated, including most of present-day Albion and the northern end of what is now the separate town […]
by Mary Grow Two road projects dominated discussion at the Vassalboro select board’s June 27 meeting. Town Manager Aaron Miller summarized Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) plans for work on two stretches of Route 32 (Main Street) this summer. Longer-range, board members shared information on replacing the Mill Hill Road bridge over Seven Mile Stream, […]
by Mary Grow China select board members held a short special meeting Friday afternoon, June 28, to pay end-of-fiscal-year bills (a little under $66,000 worth), make a few more local appointments and do minor business. Most of the appointments were reappointments left over from the board’s June 17 meeting. Business including authorizing Town Manager Rebecca […]
by Mary Grow China select board members and a dozen South China Village residents spent almost an hour and a half of the July 1 select board meeting discussing the South China boat landing. The landing at the south end of the east basin is one of three public boat launches on China Lake. The […]
by Mary Grow The next town north of Windsor is China, which, like Windsor, began life as a plantation and did not acquire its present name for some years after the first Europeans settled there. A dominant feature of the town is what is now China Lake, earlier known as Twelve Mile Pond because it […]