by Mary Grow Vassalboro Cemetery Committee members are satisfied with their plans for summer maintenance work. Four members who met May 19 expect the annual professional help from Grave Stone Matters, in Hoosick Falls, New York, from July 10 to 14. Joseph Ferrannini is scheduled to repair stones in the large North Vassalboro Village cemetery, […]
by Mary Grow Vassalboro’s annual town meeting for 2025 will be in two sessions, eight days apart and in two different locations. On Monday, June 2, voters will assemble in the Vassalboro Community School gymnasium, at 6:30 p.m., to talk about and vote on articles number one through 41. On Tuesday, June 10, polls will […]
by Mary Grow First, here is an update on last week’s article about lawyer Sanford A. Kingsbury, who supposedly practiced in China. Readers may remember that in 1835, he was opening mills on Kingsbury Pond, in the plantation named after him, some 50 miles from Waterville (and another five miles or so from China). Apparently […]
by Mary Grow At their May 19 meeting, China select board members were presented with a proposal to have Hometown Heroes banners in town. Resident Jacinth Allard, who was unable to attend the meeting, had proposed to Town Manager Rebecca Hapgood that China join other area towns – Clinton and Benton were mentioned – with […]
by Mary Grow With their 2025-26 budget recommendations in final form and forwarded to the town office, Vassalboro School Board members had time to catch up on other business at their May 13 meeting. A main item was updating the Vassalboro Consolidated School building, opened in 1992. Tom Seekins, from Portland-based Energy Management Consultants, was […]
by Mary Grow Vassalboro select board members got satisfactory news about town finances at their May 15 meeting. Auditor Ron Smith, head of RHR Smith, Auditors, in Buxton, said the audit for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2023, is done, and the audit for the year that ended June 30, 2024, will be […]
by Mary Grow Winslow wasn’t the only small town in this section of the Kennebec River valley with its own 19th-century lawyer(s), though no other seems to have been as conspicuous as Eleazer Ripley (see The Town Line, May 8, 2025, page 10). Or maybe many were, and appear less known and important now only […]
by Mary Grow Vassalboro Planning Board members approved the only application on their agenda at a brief May 6 meeting. Keith and Lise Marlowe had applied for an addition on the back of their cottage, at 148 Park Lane, in the Three Mile Pond shoreland zone. Architect Tobias Gabranski, from Bath, and builder David Tyrol, […]
by Mary Grow China Road Committee members spent their May 8 meeting talking about two roads and a parking lot in the northwestern end of town and a bridge in Branch Mills, on the eastern boundary. The roads are Maple Ridge, which runs from Vassalboro northeast through China into Winslow, and Neck Road, which dead-ends […]
by Mary Grow In his Kennebec County history, Henry Kingsbury wrote that Winslow lawyer Lemuel Paine once had a partner whom Kingsbury called “General Ripley, the hero of the battle of Lundy’s Lane, Canada.” This man was Brigadier General Eleazer (sometimes Eleazar) Wheelock Ripley, and he deserves recognition in two spheres, as a useful citizen […]