Changes are happening at Fairfield Center’s Victor Grange

The dilapidated house that was razed. (photo contributed courtesy of Barbara Bailey)

Although it is not the first in its 146 years of existence, it is probably one of the most visibly noticeable.

Submitted by Barbara Bailey

Victor Grange has taken on another challenge. Although it is not the first in its 146 years of existence, it is probably one of the most visibly noticeable. As people drive through the Fairfield Center area they will notice that the house next to the Grange has been demolished. The house had been in a state of disrepair for many years and needed to be torn down. After a long battle and lots of negotiations with many parties, this has finally been accomplished.

The boot scraper that was located at the front door of the house above. (photo contributed courtesy of Barbara Bailey)

In 2015 the house was taken by the bank in foreclosure after the owner passed away. The lack of size for the land and setback restrictions from both the stream and road limited its potential. The bank put it up for auction twice but it never sold.

This area is a busy part of the Fairfield Center, and the house was located in the same block as the Volunteer Fire Dept., two businesses, and The Victor Grange – all quite active. With the need for parking in the area and restrictions on this lot, it was suggested that the bank turn the property over to the town to be demolished and used as a parking area/green space. The town received the property in December of 2016.

After three-and-a-half years of the house continuing to deteriorate, no action by the town, and no money in the budget to proceed, Victor Grange proposed that the town turn the property over to them. They too wanted to create parking and green space but felt with the help of the community and Friends of the Grange they could accomplish it faster.

Map of what is now Fairfield Center in 1860. Here, the intersection with Rte. 139, Fairfield St. and Ohio Hill Rd. (photo contributed courtesy of Barbara Bailey)

Though the demolition was inevitable, it is important to recognize that this area has such a rich history. Through research, it was established that in 1860 the house belonged to H.S. Toby, the local blacksmith; this was evident with the front step which consisted of a large piece of granite with an elaborate boot scraper embedded in the stone. This stone has been moved to the Grange until permanent placement, possibly in the new green space.

The surrounding area also has an interesting history. Through deeds, hand-drawn plans, and receipts in the Victor Grange records we know of purchases of the store, the schoolhouse, and the conversion of the Grange Store to the ell of the present hall.

On the 1860 map, this area was known as “Fairfield”, not Fairfield Center as it is now. It was a bustling village made up of the Town Meeting House (where all town business was conducted), church, parsonage, one-room schoolhouse, hotel, two stores, doctor’s office, blacksmith, carriage, tanner, and sleigh shops.

The legend of the business owners at the time for the 1860 map above. (photo contributed courtesy of Barbara Bailey)

From 1874 to 1899 Grange rented the “Old Town Meeting House” for their meetings until the current hall was built. In 1878 The Grange purchased one of the village stores to run as a Grange Co-Op, where members could purchase supplies at bulk pricing. When renting the Town Meeting House was no longer an option, the decision was made to build a new hall. At that time, the Grange Co-op/store was rotated 90 degrees and attached to the new hall, for use as the entrance/foyer, stairways, kitchen, bathrooms, coat and junior rooms

In the 1960s the state removed the old dam and fire pond and rerouted the Norridgewock Road thus making many new changes to the layout of the land in Fairfield Center. This meant the water from the pond was redirected behind the Grange and the house next door, each losing land to the new state road.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Newspapers of Central Maine – Conclusion

Reproduction of The Orb from 1836.

by Mary Grow

Several of the small towns in the central Kennebec Valley have had local newspapers, and one – China – still does as of 2020. This writer has found no record of a newspaper published in Sidney, Winslow, Benton, Palermo or Windsor.

Vassalboro’s first local paper was The Clarion, which Dean Marriner calls “one of the most unusual newspapers ever printed in Maine or anywhere else.” The first edition was published in March 1886 by S. A. and N. C. Burleigh. S. A. was 15-year-old Samuel A. Burleigh, later owner and editor of the Sentinel in Waterville; N. C. was his eleven-year-old sister Nettie.

The first issue, Marriner wrote, was only four small (six inches by five-and-a-half inches) pages. It contained the publishers’ statement of purpose (“dissemination of truth and temperance” and “advancement of scientific and practical knowledge”) and advertisements from a dressmaker in North Fairfield (Hall Burleigh, Samuel and Nettie’s father, was a Fairfield native), a farm in Vassalboro and a Vassalboro woman selling a Davis Machine (Davis was a leading brand of sewing machine in the 1880s). Marriner added that ads cost 10 cents an inch, 45 cents a column or 85 cents for a whole page. An annual subscription was 20 cents.

By 1888, Marriner continued, the Burleighs’ monthly paper had four eight-by-10-inch pages, a circulation of more than 1,000 and ads from as far away as Belgrade. The annual subscription price was 30 cents, and the publishers were seeking local correspondents in Vassalboro, China, Winslow and Sidney. Recompense would be a free subscription, and the publishers would supply writing materials and pay postage.

When Samuel Burleigh entered Colby in the fall of 1881, the Clarion went out of business. Marriner wrote that Burleigh replaced it in September 1881 with a four-page non-partisan weekly named the Valley News, published by the Kennebec Valley News Company. The publisher was also the editor. Subscriptions were 50 cents a year. Numerous advertisers from Waterville helped support the paper, whose closing date is not listed in any source this writer found.

The Library of Congress (LOC) on-line newspaper directory lists a weekly Kennebec Valley News with the same Vassalboro-based publisher. It appears to be yet another paper, because the LOC has a copy of Vol. 1, No. 32, that is dated April 5, 1892.

The LOC also lists a monthly publication from Vassalboro named The Young America that first appeared in 1877. This writer failed to find any additional information.

Whittemore wrote in his history of Waterville that in 1898 the W. M. Ladd Company, whose owners bought the Waterville Sentinel’s printing equipment, began printing three weeklies from surrounding towns, the Vassalboro Times, the Clinton Herald and the China Tribune. This writer has found no other reference to any of those newspapers.

Fairfield has had two local weeklies, according to the bicentennial history, and Howard Owen, author of the newspaper chapter in Kingsbury’s Kennebec County history, added a third. According to Owen, before Benjamin Bunker started the Kennebec Democrat, in Waterville, in February 1887, he published the Pine Tree State in Fairfield for two years starting in 1880, and owned the Fairfield Journal (see below) until 1886.

The Fairfield history says the Fairfield Chronicle began publication March 1, 1872, in the village then called Kendall’s Mills (now downtown Fairfield). It continued until 1878, according to LOC’s summary. The LOC lists George H. Colby as editor and the publishers as Fairfield Chronicle Association, 1873-1875; George H. Colby in 1876, 1877 and 1878; and Colby & Small in 1878.

Joseph Griffin’s 1872 publication, The Press of Maine, found online, has a paragraph about the Chronicle, which he called the Fairfield Weekly Chronicle. Griffin dated the first issue May 1, 1872. The four-page, eight-column paper was what the trade called a “patent outside”; Griffin explained that the outside pages, one and four, came preprinted from Boston or New York and editor Colby composed and printed the local news and ads that filled pages two and three. An annual subscription was $2.50, Griffin wrote.

The Chronicle was succeeded by the Fairfield Journal, beginning July 2, 1879, and ending, according to the LOC listing, with Volume 52, No. 28, July 9, 1925. The LOC gives the publisher as Augustine Simmons. The Fairfield history includes an excerpt from the Dec. 17, 1901, issue describing the flood the day before.

Judge Augustine Simmons rates three pages in Sprague’s Maine history journal (found online), with his Fairfield newspaper experience covered in a single sentence. Elmer Sawyer wrote that Simmons was born Feb. 20, 1849, in Topsham; the family moved to Brunswick when he was three and he always called Brunswick home, though he lived elsewhere.

Simmons entered Bowdoin in 1867, but withdrew for lack of money after two years; he graduated in 1881, counted as a member of the Class of 1871. During his enforced break he taught, mostly at Anson Academy in North Anson. He also studied law with E. W. and F. E. McFadden in Fairfield and became a member of the Kennebec bar on Aug. 7, 1877. After that he edited the “Fairfield Journal “for less than a year (perhaps its first editor?) before going back to teaching and then practicing law in North New Portland over the 1880-81 winter and in North Anson from May 1881 to Oct. 24, 1917.

Simmons has the title “Judge” because he was Somerset County Judge of Probate from 1904 to 1912.

The LOC lists one 20th century Fairfield weekly newspaper, the Fairfield Free Press. The first issue appeared Nov.3, 1938; Ivers L. Greenleaf is named as publisher. This writer has found no other information.

The Clinton Advertiser was the first – and only? Owen says so, but see the Clinton Herald reference above – Clinton local paper. According to the LOC, from Oct. 14, 1886, to sometime around 1894 it was a weekly; it was published until at least July 29, 1909 (when the volume was number 32). The University of Maine’s Fogler Library index, however, says the Advertiser began publication in 1879 and closed in 1907.

Owen wrote that as of 1892, the paper was the smallest in Kennebec County. It was founded in June 1886, edited and published by B. T. Foster & Company. An annual subscription cost 50 cents. A Clinton history web site says Clinton’s Brown Memorial Library has bound copies of the Advertiser.

In Albion, Ruby Crosby Wiggin found a copy of the Albion Courier dated Oct. 7, 1878. The front page said the paper was a semi-monthly published by Bert Foster. The subscription fee was listed as 50 cents (annually?) or for six months 25 cents, payable in advance. Foster declared the paper was apolitical, non-sectarian and interested in local news, including accounts from neighboring towns.

Wiggin’s history has no other information about the Albion Courier. This writer found no other references.

China’s 19th-century newspaper was The Orb, published every Saturday by “an association of gentlemen” (quoted by Marriner from its initial issue) headed by China Village resident Japheth C. Washburn. The first two volumes of The Orb started with the issues of Dec. 5, 1833, and Dec. 6, 1834, respectively. The China bicentennial history says in the fall of 1835 Washburn organized a meeting to consider whether to discontinue publication and got enough local support to continue the paper until November 1836.

The paper’s goal was to be “interesting, useful and pleasing.” It covered agricultural and other local occupations; temperance; and religious, literary and political news.

A lengthy description in the China history says the paper had four pages, each with four or five columns of small type. The only illustrations were in ads. Readers found a mix of fiction and non-fiction: Washburn’s editorials were on page two, news (from the town, the state, the nation and the world) usually on pages two and three, ads mostly on pages three and four, frequently a poem and a moral or religious essay on page four, jokes throughout as fillers.

The Orb supported President Andrew Jackson and his party; the Dec. 13, 1834, issue contained the text of Jackson’s December 1 address to Congress. Washburn had no use for the opposing Whig party and frequently referred to them as Wigs, Marriner wrote. In 1836, the China history says, The Orb reported on the state and national Democratic conventions. The paper presented selective detailed information on state legislative sessions and Congressional activities, sometimes even quoting or summarizing debates.

Local items included births and deaths, meeting notices, and reports on fires, crimes and similar events. The China history comments that one unusual item, appearing intermittently, was “the list of addressees of unclaimed letters at the China post office.”

An annual subscription to The Orb was $2 discounted if paid during the first three months. Washburn reported 300 unpaid subscriptions at the beginning of the second year,perhaps one reason the paper had a short life. Owen adds another explanation: the lack of advertisers and of other jobs for Washburn’s printing press in an agricultural town. [Editor’s note: Reproductions of The Orb, Vol. 3, No. 37, dated September 10, 1836, are available at The Town Line’ s office.]

Main sources

Fairfield Historical Society, Fairfield, Maine 1788-1988 (1988).
Grow, Mary M., China Maine Bicentennial History including 1984 revisions (1984).
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Marriner, Ernest, Kennebec Yesterdays (1954)
Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964).

Vassalboro recovers lost piece of its history

A similar statue in Winslow with the rifle in hand (left), and the statue in Vassalboro missing the rifle (right). (The Town Line file photos by Isabelle Markley)

by Eric W. Austin

The two pieces of the missing rifle found by Nate Gray. (photo courtesy of Vassalboro Historical Society)

Looking up at the Civil War memorial statue standing guard over Monument Park on Route 32, in Vassalboro, you may notice something missing. Although the proud Union soldier stands tall, gripping the muzzle of a 19th century rifle, the bottom portion of the chiseled gun he holds is gone. Where it disappeared to has been a source of continuing mystery and speculation in the town of Vassalboro. But now, after more than 50 years, a part of this lost history has been found.

The commemorative statue was commissioned in 1905 by the town of Vassalboro from Hallowell sculptor William Tregembo for a cost of $1,075, according to a copy of the contract kept by the Vassalboro Historical Society.

The bottom half of the rifle was broken off and lost “in the late ‘60s or ‘70s,” said Janice Clowes, president of the Vassalboro Historical Society. It is unknown whether the incident was an act of vandalism or an act of God.

Nate Gray

Nate Gray

Nate Gray, an employee for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, stumbled upon several broken sections of the missing relic last week while investigating a blockage at the Outlet Dam, courtesy of a couple of nature’s impulsive dam builders.

“Beavers had plugged the gates at Outlet Dam,” he said. “I went to observe the beaver activity [and] while watching for the beavers, I happened upon the rifle pieces. I scooped them up and delivered [them] to the town office for safe keeping.”

According to Gray, “Local legend has it that some pieces [of the rifle] had been found in the past and kept in the former town office. Those pieces were lost or misplaced in the move to the new town office. True? Not true? We may never know. Time has a way of blurring past events.”

There has been some talk of restoring the statue to its former glory, especially considering Vassalboro will be celebrating its semiquincentennial anniversary next year.

“There have been a couple people looking into the possibility of finding grant money or fundraising to get the ball rolling,” said Vassalboro Historical Society president Clowes. “Vassalboro turns 250 in 2021, [and] I think it would be a great birthday present to the town.”

Contact the author at ericwaustin@gmail.com.

An alternative view of the rifle pieces found. (photo courtesy of Nate Gray)

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Newspapers of Central Maine, Part 1

by Mary Grow

In previous pieces there have been references to local newspapers, especially the Augusta-based Kennebec Journal. Both it and its sister publication in Waterville, the “Morning Sentinel”, have had long lives; but they are not and never have been the only newspapers in the central Kennebec Valley.

Here is a partial list of 18th and 19th century Augusta and Waterville papers, excluding monthlies and student and most other specialty publications. The Library of Congress list of newspaper holdings has others.

  • The earliest was the Eastern Star, Aug. 4, 1794 to sometime in 1795, published in Hallowell by Howard Robinson, the first of at least a dozen Hallowell papers started before 1830. Augusta was the northern part of Hallowell until February 1797.
  • The Tocsin, 1795-1797, was published by Thomas B. Wait and John K. Baker from Falmouth, who sold it to Benjamin Poor in September 1796.
  • The Kennebec Intelligencer, started Nov. 14, 1795, was published by Peter Edes (son of printer Benjamin Edes of Boston); it became the Kennebec Gazette in 1800 and the Herald of Liberty in 1810. The Herald of Liberty went out of existence in 1815 when Edes moved to Bangor.

An excerpt from an on-line source says the Tocsin and the Kennebec Intelligencer were the earliest inland papers in Maine. The first Maine newspapers were published in Portland beginning in 1792. Kennebec Valley staff members worked hard to bring local people news from London in 61 days and from the United States Congress in Philadelphia in 16 days.

  • Hallowell Gazette was a Federalist organ published by Ezekiel Goodale and James Burton from January 1814 to 1827.
  • Augusta Patriot, March 17, 1817, was published by James Burton and, perhaps because Burton vowed to avoid “personal invective, political rancor, and sectarian heat,” discontinued in less than two years for lack of readers.
  • Kennebec Journal, Jan. 8, 1823, was published by printers Luther Severance and Russell Eaton. It started as a Whig paper, with about 450 initial subscribers, and transitioned to the successor Republican party.

The Kennebec Journal had several owners in the mid-19th century, including briefly (1854-1857) James G. Blaine. Henry Kingsbury, in his Kennebec County history, describes Blaine’s management as “able and vigorous.” During part of the Civil War, the paper published a small daily supplement with current news, received by telegraph. At the beginning of 1870, Howard Owen, Charles E. Nash and Alden Sprague made the Daily Kennebec Journal the first successful daily paper in Augusta, while continuing the weekly version that Kingsbury says acquired subscribers state-wide.

  • Gospel Banner and Universalists’ Family Monitor existed from July 25, 1835 to July 16, 1836; Gospel Banner and Maine Christian Pilot from July 23, 1836 to July 15, 1837; Gospel Banner, a weekly, from July 30, 1842 to Nov. 4, 1897. Kingsbury lists a number of successive owners and editors, the majority Universalist ministers.
  • Maine Patriot and State Gazette, Oct. 31, 1827-December 1831, was published weekly by James Dickman, edited by Aurelius V. Chandler for three years and J. W. Bradbury in 1831, after Chandler resigned and moved south for health reasons. (He died on Dec. 31, 1830, in Charleston, South Carolina, at the age of 23.) This paper was started to support Andrew Jackson against John Quincy Adams in the 1828 election.
  • The Age, Dec. 23, 1831, was started after Maine’s capital was relocated from Portland to Augusta in 1827, to meet two needs: printing state documents and providing publicity for the state government. It was initially printed in the Maine Patriot and State Gazette’s facility, and, Kingsbury wrote, “absorbed” the Gazette. It was edited by part-owner Francis Ormond Jonathan Smith, former editor of the “Portland Argus”.

Early in his Augusta career, Kingsbury wrote, Smith wrote an article calling a Belgrade resident a deserter during the War of 1812. The Age’s publisher was tried for criminal libel and was acquitted, giving the paper valuable publicity.

In the early 1840s, according to Kingsbury, The Age and the Kennebec Journal made an agreement under which each published on three alternate days, creating Augusta’s first version of a daily paper. He did not say how long the arrangement lasted. From 1844 on The Age changed ownership frequently; an Augusta printer named Gilman Smith was the owner when the paper was discontinued during the Civil War.

  • Maine Farmer began in Winthrop in 1833 as the Kennebec Farmer. In 1844 Russell Eaton, Esq, bought it and moved it to Augusta, where it became the “Maine Farmer” and was published until 1900 (or later).

In her Albion history, Roby Crosby Wiggin describes and quotes from a Thursday morning, Feb. 27, 1851, copy of Maine Farmer, found by Albion residents remodeling an old house. The paper then had a circulation of 5,500 and cost four cents a copy. Annual subscription prices were $1.75 paid in advance, $2 paid within a year and $2.50 paid more than a year late. Anyone who signed up six paying subscribers got a free subscription.

Wiggin describes a variety of content – local news, national news, fiction, inspirational pieces and farming information and advice, all intermingled. Advertisers sold medicines and a medical self-help book; pickles; coffee; furniture; and coffins in a choice of pine, black walnut or mahogany with free cushions included.

  • The Washingtonian was a temperance paper started by journeyman printer Henry Green in 1840 and published “briefly,” Kingsbury wrote, at the height of the temperance movement in Maine.
  • Drew’s Rural Intelligencer, first published Jan. 6, 1855, was a weekly published by Rev. William A. Drew, a former “Gospel Banner” editor. A website offering a bound copy of the first year’s issues gives its subtitle, “Devoted to the Wants and Pleasures of Rural Life; both in Town and Country,” and says it mostly covered “agricultural and home craft pursuits.” In 1857 a new owner moved the paper to Gardiner, where it appeared until 1859.
  • Maine Standard was a Democratic weekly published from April 5, 1867, to April 5, 1881, described by Kingsbury as a successor to The Age. Its publishers for the first year were Thaddeus A. Chick and Isaac W. Reed, succeeded by others.
  • The New Age, which began publication in 1881, was a successor to the Maine Standard, and was also Democratic. The publisher is given on-line as Manley H. Pike and Company, a reference to artist and writer Manley Herbert Pike (1857-1910), who bought the Maine Standard in 1881. This writer failed to find a date the paper was discontinued; it was still being published when Kingsbury wrote in 1892.
  • Home Farm, 1880–1887, was published by Boardman and Hall and edited by Samuel L. Boardman. It was an eight-page weekly, subtitled “A journal of practical agriculture and home life.” George J. Varney’s article on the history of Augusta in the Maine Gazetteer calls it “an attractive sheet for a small price.”

(Samuel Lane Boardman [1836-1914] wrote books on history, including Peter Edes’ life in Boston and in Maine; on Maine agriculture; on Maine horse-racing, and on ornithologist George Augustus Boardman [1818-1901], who worked in eastern Maine and New Brunswick. One hopes that George was not Samuel’s father, because Wikipedia says George’s only marriage was in 1843.)

In Waterville, Kingsbury wrote that the first attempts to provide newspapers were short-lived. According to Kingsbury and to Henry C. Prince (who was editor of The Waterville Mail when he wrote the chapter on the press in Edwin Carey Whittemore’s 1902 history of Waterville), the early papers were:

  • The Waterville Intelligencer, started in May 1823 by William Hastings, a Baptist-oriented paper sponsored by Waterville College and devoid of local news. Its last issue was Nov. 26, 1828.
  • A successor named The Watchman, first published on Dec. 11, 1828, established by Hastings as an experimental political, literary and miscellaneous paper, and discontinued after its Dec. 30, 1829, issue.
  • The Times, a Whig paper started in June 1831 by John Burleigh, a failure by the fall of 1833.
  • The “Waterville Journal, Burleigh’s and Waterville College’s second venture, a non-sectarian religious paper that first appeared December 1833. Prince wrote that the college promised to help edit the paper and sign up subscribers, but “these promises not being fully met,” the paper folded after a year. (The Library of Congress lists a second Waterville Journal that began publication in 1878.)

In May 1841 (Prince) or 1842 (Kingsbury), Daniel Ripley Wing and William Mathews founded The Watervillonian, described as “a literary and family journal.” Prince quotes Mathews as sarcastically describing the paper starting with 400 subscribers and by filling its pages with dead authors’ works reducing the number to 250 in a year. The paper ceased publication after that first year; Mathews said the publishers earned $600.

Kingsbury wrote that Wing (Dec. 13, 1816 — Dec. 2, 1885) remained in the newspaper business the rest of his life, and Mathews’ later renown in literature “needs no comment.”

(Mathews [July 28, 1818 – Feb. 14, 1909], was a Waterville native who entered Waterville College when he was 13; he got his bachelor’s degree in 1835 and a law degree from Harvard in 1839. He supplemented his law business with the newspaper. A teacher, writer and lecturer, he lived in and around Chicago from 1856 to 1880 and in Boston from 1880 to his death.)

Mathews, Wing and Mathews’ brother Edward started the Yankee Blade in June 1842. A new part-owner moved it to Gardiner in August 1843.

In April 1847 Charles F. Hathaway (later to found the Hathaway shirt factory) started The Waterville Union. Prince says it failed after 14 weeks, mostly due to “stringent rules adopted and enforced” about payment for subscriptions and ads (it sounds as though Hathaway wanted his money on time).

Hathaway sold to Ephraim Maxham, who started The Eastern Mail (first issue July 19, 1847) and on Sept. 4, 1863, renamed it The Waterville Mail. Wing had been working for Maxham; in 1849 he bought a half interest in the paper and stayed with it until his death.

The Mail endorsed the first Republican Presidential candidate, John Charles Fremont, in the 1856 election, but it only later became a reliably Republican paper, Prince wrote.

In 1886 two of Daniel Ripley Wing’s sons, Charles G. Wing (or Charles Burleigh Wing, according to an on-line genealogy that says Daniel Ripley Wing’s wife was Ann Elizabeth Burleigh) and Daniel Frank Wing, bought the Waterville Mail from Maxham and made it one of Maine’s highest-quality local weeklies. It went through more ownership changes before folding in May 1906.

The first issue of The Waterville Sentinel appeared Wednesday, Dec. 1, 1880, published by M. A. Leger and E. O. Robinson, who believed Waterville would grow fast enough to justify two newspapers. In the next two decades the newspaper went through multiple ownership changes, and, Prince wrote, several changes in publication day – Wednesday in 1880, Friday as of February 1881, Saturday beginning in May 1884.

In December 1896 then-owner Samuel Appleton Burleigh of Vassalboro tried a bi-weekly appearing on Tuesdays and Fridays. The weekly publication resumed Friday, April 16, 1897. In November 1897 a section in French was added; it lasted a month.

The Waterville Morning Sentinel succeeded the earlier title in 1904, started by a group of Democratic politicians plus one newspaperman, Thomas F. Murphy, according to Wikipedia. As of March 3, 1904, it was published daily, Marriner said. It was the Morning Sentinel from 1961 to 1971, the Central Maine Morning Sentinel from 1971 to 1996 and is currently the Morning Sentinel. At some point it changed from weekly to daily publication.

On Wednesday, Feb. 18, 1887, the first issue of Ben Bunker’s unabashedly political The Kennebec Democrat appeared in Waterville. Three months after Bunker’s death in March 8, 1894, Augusta people bought the paper, moved it to Augusta and renamed it “The Maine Democrat”, Prince wrote.

The former Home Farm (see above) moved from Augusta to Waterville and reappeared as the Eastern Farmer at the end of September 1887. Varney says Boardman still owned it; Kingsbury says Hall C. Burleigh and the Wing brothers (who were publishing the Mail) took it over, found it a “financial incubus” and killed it, selling the list of subscribers to the Lewiston Journal in April 1888.

The owners of the Waterville Mail added the Waterville Evening Mail as the city’s first daily newspaper beginning on Jan. 29, 1896. Prince wrote that the four-page paper, still published in 1902, was primarily a source of local news, though world events were mentioned.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Marriner, Ernest Kennebec Yesterdays (1954).
Whittemore, Edwin Carey, The Centennial History of Waterville, Kennebec County, Maine (1902).

Websites, miscellaneous.

The first Thanksgiving – 400 years ago

by Gary Kennedy

The Wampanoag Indian tribe and the first Plymouth Colonists, in the fall of the year 1620, shared a feast that we know as Thanksgiving today. The Wampanoag Indians are also known as the Wȭqanȭak. In the 17th century they were a loose grouping of several different tribes. (Pequot’s, Narragansett, Iroquois, Powhatan, Nipmue and Abenaki). Most of the tribes were under the protection of the Narragansett’s, historically the tribes would have two homes. These tribes for the most part lived in the area that we know as Rhode Island. The first European settlement was established in 1635. The winter home of the Wampanoag people was called a long house and in the summer the tribes would move to the shore line and build very large dug out logs or a type of canoe. These could hold as many as 40 men. These would be great for military efforts, transportation and fishing. They built temporary abodes which resemble igloos, for their summer stay along the ocean. Much to their dismay the Narragansett’s and affiliates joined with King Philip against the Massachusetts colonist and suffered a devastating defeat, thus breaking up the tribes of that time. They retreated to the forest. This is just a capsule of history.

You can research much more of this very interesting history. In any case, the first official greetings for Thanksgiving was given by the father of our country, George Washington. The foods that were part of this festivity was dominated by meat sources, deer, turkey, goose as well as chestnuts, onions, potato, turnip, and some herbs and spices. Boiling and roasting was the cooking method. There might have been some fish. So it wasn’t as elaborate as today’s fare. However, its purpose remains similar to today’s Thanksgiving, an American holiday.

I should mention that this is the 400th anniversary of the original holiday of 1620. Unfortunately, we can’t celebrate it as we should, four centuries is a long time with much history both good and bad. Thankfully we tend to lean toward the good.

We think of family, food, football and fun. I refer to this as the four F’s. However, this Thanksgiving we will need to work on this a little harder as these are very hard times for America and the world. The entire world is not well and seems like it is never going to end.

However, Americans are a resilient people and have experienced hard times before and not only survived but prospered, coming together to solve the issues that try to tear us apart. As we come into the holiday season we should remember who we are and from where we came. We should acknowledge all the positives and embrace all the blessings of which we all are a part. We are Americans free to think and believe what we like without ramification other than self reflection. Happiness is just a thought, smile and deed away. Let your heart be your life force and bring you to that happy place where people glow because of you. It really is up to each of us, one at a time. This leads to a group, population, and a society.

The fixin’s are the turkey and all that is spread before you. Let’s be an example for the world and get through these trying times together. Let’s put Thanksgiving in our hearts and let it radiate for the world to see. Share the wonders of this time with others, especially those who have lost their way and/or have so much less.

The key word here is find a way to share. Believe me, you will feel so much better when you and yours give to those who have feelings of envy when they see what you have and wish they had. Don’t let a tear be shed this season even though we are having a difficult time with Covid. Remember, “it’s not what you have or take with you, it’s what you’ve left behind.”

May God bless you, your family and friends, your table and those whose lives you touch. God bless.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Notable women

Novella Jewell Trott

by Mary Grow

As background for this piece on a small selection of women of importance from the central Kennebec Valley, some historical notes might establish a useful timeline.

1) The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution says: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” It was passed in the House of Representatives on May 21, 1919, by a generous margin, and in the Senate on June 4, 1919, by a vote of 56 to 25, two votes more than the two-thirds majority required for a Constitutional amendment. The necessary 36th state ratification was Tennessee’s on Aug. 18, 1920.

The 89th amendment to the Maine Constitution, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex or ancestry, was approved by referendum, by about a five to two margin, on Nov. 5, 1963.

2) According to an online history of the Maine Medical Association (founded in the spring of 1853 after its predecessor, the 1820 Medical Society of Maine, disbanded in 1845), in 1900 Maine had 1,206 physicians registered, of whom 67 were women. In 1982, 1,300 of 1,952 Maine practicing physicians were Association members, including 75 women.

In September 2003, the Maine Medical Association elected its first female president, Dr. Maroulla Gleaton, a Palermo resident and board-certified ophthalmologist practicing in Augusta.

3) Maine’s State Teachers Association was founded in November 1859, in Waterville. It became the Maine Education Association (MEA) in 1867 (and inherited the Teachers Association’s treasury’s assets of $1.26); in 1882 briefly merged with the 1876 Maine Teachers Association (MTA) to form the Maine Pedagogical Society; became MTA for much of the 20th century; and in 1993 became MEA again.

The initial association’s all-male founders are described on the MEA website as “superintendents, principals, college professors and teachers in large towns.” The two-thirds of Maine teachers who were women were not included until 1862. Their dues when admitted were half the men’s dues – proportional to their pay, the website comments.

In 1881, while Nelson Luce, of Vassalboro, was the State Superintendent of Schools, one of his recommendations led to state laws that for the first time allowed women to be school board members and school supervisors. The MTA’s first woman president was Helen Robinson, elected in 1927.

4) The Maine legislature created the Maine State Bar Association on March 6, 1891, to promote the legal profession and propose legal reforms. Wikipedia calls Maine’s a “relatively progressive bar,” having admitted the first recognized black lawyer in the United States, Macon Allen (who practiced briefly in Portland) in 1844. The Bar Association accepted its first woman member, Eva Bean from Old Orchard Beach, in 1911.

Against this background, it is easier to understand the importance of women who succeeded in traditionally male professions and activities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

One of the employees in the Augusta-based E. C. Allen Publishing Company (see The Town Line, Nov. 12) was Woolwich native and former teacher Novella Jewell Trott (1846-1929). Joining Allen’s firm in 1881, she became an editor within two years, in charge of magazines called Practical Housekeeper and Daughters of America. An online site says she was responsible for all editing work, including reading submissions, choosing and improving material and composing her own articles. By 1894, Trott was an assistant editor for William Howard Gannett.

In 1893, Trott was one of seven women “of national reputation” who represented the Queen Isabella Association’s press department at the World’s Columbian Exposition, in Chicago, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America. A group of professional women organized the association in 1889 to honor Queen Isabella, of Spain, who financed Columbus, by commissioning a statue of her by an association member, sculptor Harriet Hosmer.

Florence Whitehouse

Florence Brooks Whitehouse (1869-1945) was born in Augusta and later lived in Portland. Her mother, Mary Caroline Wadsworth, was related to the family of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; her father, Samuel Spencer Brooks, was a wealthy shipbuilder and businessman, a hardware store owner with a reputation for integrity.

Educated in Augusta schools and at a private Episcopal finishing school called St. Catherine’s Hall, Whitehouse was unusually independent for her time. Online sources say she skipped college to study fine arts in Boston for several years; visited Europe and the Middle East; and spent the winter of 1892 on a sailing barge on the Nile River with members of the McCormick family (descendants of mid-Westerners Robert and Cyrus McCormick, inventors of the McCormick reaper). While in Egypt, Kingsbury wrote, she was a newspaper correspondent.

On June 21, 1894, Florence Brooks married Robert Treat Whitehouse, also Augusta-born, son of Vassalboro native William Penn Whitehouse, who was an Associate Justice (later Chief Justice) of the Maine Supreme Court. Robert Whitehouse was a Harvard-educated lawyer who wrote several law books early in the 20th century.

The Whitehouses lived in Portland and had three sons, born between 1895 and 1904. An online source describes the marriage as “egalitarian.” Florence Whitehouse wrote two romance novels with Middle Eastern settings, The God of Things: A Novel of Modern Egypt (published in 1902) and The Effendi: A Romance of the Soudan (1904), as well as short stories and plays.

According to an online biography by historian Anne Gass and Loyola University student Robert Pirages, Whitehouse’s activity in Portland’s Civic Club showed her that if women and children were to be treated justly, women needed a greater voice in public affairs.

In 1914, Whitehouse joined the Maine Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA), whose main goal was a state equal rights amendment. She soon became a leading speaker, debater and writer for the group. Gass and Pirages wrote that she had significant family support: her father-in-law had been advocating for women’s suffrage since 1874, and in 1914 her husband helped found and chaired the Men’s Equal Suffrage League.

In 1915, frustrated by state legislators’ inaction, Whitehouse founded and, for five years, chaired the Maine branch of the Congressional Union (CU), a national organization fighting for a federal equal rights amendment. CU was considered a radical group because of its tactics, which included picketing President Woodrow Wilson’s office. Whitehouse joined out-of-state protests; in Maine, not all her fellow suffragists could support CU. In 1917 she resigned from MWSA.

Whitehouse lobbied hard to persuade Maine’s national legislators to approve and state legislators to ratify the 19th amendment. When Governor Carl Milliken called a special session of the Maine legislature on Nov. 4, 1919, to act on ratification, Whitehouse and national suffragist Alice Paul were leaders in bringing about its passage, by a four-vote margin.

The CU became the National Women’s Party in 1916, and Whitehouse remained involved. She was also active in the Portland Chamber of Commerce and increasingly in state and national anti-war movements. Supporting the League of Nations and international disarmament, she chaired international cooperation committees for the Maine League of Women Voters and the Maine Federation of Churches, represented Maine’s Peace commission on the World Unity Council and was a member of the National Council on the Prevention of War.

Whitehouse was chosen a member of the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame in 2008.

Ninetta Runnals

Ninetta May Runnals (1885-1980) was born in Dover-Foxcroft, but earned both her bachelor’s degree and her professional reputation at Colby College in Waterville. Graduating in Colby’s Class of 1908 with a mathematics major, she taught at Foxcroft Academy in Dover-Foxcroft for three years and was Maine Central Institute’s Dean of Girls for another five years.

When Colby trustees decided in 1916 the college needed a dean of women, President Arthur Roberts invited Runnals to apply for the job. Two sources quote from his letter: the invitation was for “the coming year and the rest of your life.”

Runnals refused, because she wanted to complete her master’s degree in mathematics at Columbia University. After she received it in 1920, she told Roberts she would accept his still-open offer, provided that the position included a professorship and that the trustees gave the dean broader responsibilities. Her conditions were approved, and in 1920 she became Colby’s Dean of Women and an Assistant Professor of Mathematics.

Runnals held the deanship for 27 years, with a break (1926-28) to work at Hillsdale College, in Hillsdale, Michigan. In 1923 she became a full professor at Colby, and after 1928 she taught education courses as well as mathematics.

Colby had begun in 1813 as a Baptist institution, but shed its religious affiliation after Maine separated from Massachusetts. The college was originally located on College Avenue, in Waterville. The present Mayflower Hill campus was acquired in 1931.

Students were all men until 1871, when Mary Caffrey Low, of Waterville, became the first and for two years only woman enrolled. She was valedictorian of the Class of 1875, which by then included five female students.

Male and female students were “resegregated” in 1890, Wikipedia says, and when Runnals became Dean of Women the trustees had plans to create a separate women’s college. Knowing the men’s college would get the bulk of resources if the separation occurred, Runnals successfully fought the proposal.

In following years she brought about other changes that improved Colby and especially enhanced women’s education. Her causes included upgrading the women’s physical education program, fighting for equal salaries for women faculty members, leading a 1930s fund drive for the women’s union building on the Mayflower Hill campus (renamed Runnals Union in 1959) and helping plan women’s dormitories in the early 1940s. In 1938, she was the first female faculty member to be honored by the senior class dedicating the college yearbook, the Colby Oracle to her “[i]n hearty appreciation of her enthusiastic participation in and cooperation with the academic, administrative, and social life of Colby.”

Runnals retired on Sept. 1, 1949. She served on the Colby Board of Trustees for six years, and remained active in college business the rest of her life, especially supporting equity for women. Colby awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1929. In 1992 she became a member of the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame.

Runnals was a founder of the Waterville branch of the American Association of University Women. In 1973 a citation from the national AAUW recognized her promotion of women’s education.

Jean Gannett Hawley (1924-1994) became executive vice-president of Guy Gannett Publishing Company in 1953 (see The Town Line, Nov. 12). An online source says it was she who changed the company name to the more inclusive Guy Gannett Communications.

Hawley was educated at Bradford Junior College (since 1971, Bradford College), in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where an online biography says she was a music major and harpist. Another website lists her four honorary doctorates, including a 1959 Doctorate of Humane Letters awarded by Colby College, on whose Board of Trustees she served from 1960 to 1972.

Her online biographer commented that her job overseeing Gannett’s newspaper chain was “made more difficult by the absence of other women in similar positions.” Nonetheless, from her base in Portland she expanded Gannett’s business in television and computers, including adding television stations in other states.

Hawley was chairman of the Gannett Board of Directors from 1959 until her death Sept. 4, 1994. Her niece, Madeleine G. Corson, who had been the board’s vice-chairman since 1990, succeeded to the chairmanship on Sept. 27, 1994.

There is no photo of Jean Gannett Hawley available.

Main sources

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

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Augusta printers

by Mary Grow

Allen, Vickery, Gannetts

In addition to the nationally and internationally famous people profiled earlier in this series (James G. Blaine, Rufus Jones, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Senator George Mitchell), other central Kennebec Valley residents have made significant contributions beyond the local area.

E. C. Allen

An Augusta website gives Edward Charles Allen, known as E. C. Allen, credit for starting the publishing industry that gave Maine’s state capital the title “mail order magazine capital” from the 1870s into the 1940s. Allen and his successors created, printed and mailed magazines and other periodicals. Kingsbury wrote in his Kennebec County history that E. C. Allen Publishing was known throughout North America and its publications had subscribers in English-speaking countries all over the world.

Kingsbury said Allen was born on a farm in what was then Readfield on June 12, 1849 (his family’s part of town became Kennebec in 1850 and in 1854 took its present name, Manchester). He was educated in local schools and at Kents Hill Seminary and started an advertising and sales business when he was 16 that he continued after he moved to Augusta in 1868.

In 1869 Allen started writing, editing and publishing his first magazine, an eight-page monthly named The People’s Literary Companion. Two of his novels, published as well-received serials in the magazine in 1871, were titled Lillian Ainsley; or, Which Shall Triumph – Right or Might? and Light and Darkness; or, The Plots and Works of the Tempter.

One of Allen’s ideas was to offer new subscribers a gift, often a steel engraving. In 1871 he opened an art publishing business in Portland that provided engravings.

At first Allen worked with an Augusta printer. When his needs outgrew the printer’s resources, he rented a building and opened his own printing business. In 1879, he oversaw construction of the E. C. Allen Publishing Company building at the intersection of Water and Winthrop streets.

The 1886 Gazetteer of the State of Maine says the building was six stories high and 53-by-65 feet, with a six-story addition made of granite, brick and iron with two-foot-thick walls. Although, the account says, 16 printing presses, a bindery and other machinery ran constantly, the buildings didn’t shake.

Fire suppression was installed on every floor, the Gazetteer article says. The steam elevator could carry a five-ton load from the first to the sixth floor in half a minute. The rooftop steam whistle that signaled shift changes kept such perfect time that people set their clocks by it.

In 1880, Allen added a six-story office building across the intersection, with a tunnel under Water Street to connect it to the older building. It was demolished in 1987, according to Augusta’s Museum in the Streets.

A contemporary on-line site says after the publishing industry faded away, the first Allen building housed stores and offices until late in the 20th century, listing Farrell’s and the Village Shop, two clothing stores, as tenants until the late 1980s. By 2013 the building was in poor condition; a new owner rescued it and turned the upper floors into apartments, the on-line site says.

In 1885, Allen had about 500 people working for him. A friend described him as a respected employer who earned himself a fortune and paid his workers generous and steadily increasing wages.

Company publications included the magazines Golden Moments, Home and Fireside and Sunshine; at least one magazine for young people, Our Young Folks’ Illustrated Paper; printings of the Bible; and history books and biographies. Kingsbury’s history says within a month after James G. Blaine was nominated for president in 1884, E. C. Allen Publishing produced a 500-page Life of James G. Blaine (it sold 200,000 copies).

Kingsbury wrote that because of the volume of mail Allen’s company generated, Augusta had a first-class post office and its 1890 granite post office building (see The Town Line, Oct. 15). He gave examples: 1.2 million magazines and papers produced a month, most mailed to subscribers; an average annual postage bill of $100,000 for a 10-year period, and $144,000 one year; more than 1,600 tons of paper mailed in one year; and Allen’s personal mail that averaged 1,500 to 2,200 letters a day (and reached 12,000 one exceptional day).

Allen was involved in local banking and other businesses. He chaired the Augusta Board of Trade for three years, during which he led the enlargement of the capitol building.

He traveled extensively in Europe, mostly on business. Returning from his 24th trip in July 1891, he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia and died at the Parker House, in Boston, on July 28, at only 42 years old. After a funeral that Kingsbury wrote was the largest anyone could remember in Maine, he was buried in Forest Grove Cemetery.

Cover of The People’s Fireside Magazine with the photo of P.O. Vickery.

In October 1874 a printer named Peleg Orison Vickery (1836 or 1837-1902 or 1908) started Vickery’s Fireside Magazine, described as a magazine of light fiction and a mail-order catalog. This popular publication was followed in March 1876 by the Illustrated Family Monthly (closed in 1885); in 1881 by Happy Hours; in 1883 by Hearth and Home, also known as Back-log Sketches, a 16-page monthly by 1892; and in 1890 by Good Stories.

Personal information about Vickery is scarce on the web, with even his birth and death dates listed inconsistently. A Maine native, he came to Augusta when young and apprenticed as a printer before starting his own successful printing business.

In 1882, Vickery’s son-in-law John Fremont Hill (later a two-term governor of Maine, 1901-1905) became his partner and the business manager for Vickery and Hill. By 1892, Kingsbury wrote, the business had a full-time staff of about 75 people, significantly increased by temporary employees when needed. Vickery and Hill had branches in Boston, New York and Chicago.

One source describes Vickery as a politician as well as a publisher, and several say he served as Augusta’s mayor for three terms (1880-1882). His business interests included ownership for some years of the hotel called the Augusta House, according to Thelma Goggin’s 1969 University of Maine at Augusta history term paper titled One Hundred Thirty Eight Years at the Augusta House (available online through Digital Maine).

In 1895, Boston architect John C. Spofford designed the four-story Vickery Building at 261 Water Street to house Vickery and Hill. Wikipedia describes it as a masonry building with a granite – white Hallowell granite, another source adds — façade in Italianate commercial style and a handsome cornice topped by a parapet.

The Vickery building has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1984. After more than a century as office and commercial space, this spring it re-opened as a 23-unit apartment building.

The best-known Augusta publishers were William Howard Gannett (1854-1948) and his son and grandson.

Guy P. Gannett

William Gannett was the 12th of 14 children in a poor family. An on-line genealogy says he had to leave school when he was eight years old and start working, apparently in a toy store. The writer of the article described Gannett as self-educated and self-reliant, physically strong, intelligent, ambitious, willing to try new ideas, kind and charitable.

Partnering with a man named Morse, in 1887 or 1888 Gannett added to the retail business a magazine called Comfort that he intended as a vehicle to sell a nerve tonic he had invented called Giant Oxien. At that time magazines were printed in black and white; Gannett wanted color. In 1892 he commissioned the New York printers Hoe & Company to design and build, for $50,000, a color press that could produce Comfort fast enough to meet his needs.

Comfort’s first color issue was mailed in July 1895 to more than a million subscribers; later it had almost three million. It continued until 1942.

Augusta’s First Amendment Museum website quotes Gannett’s account of how he named the magazine: the word suddenly came into his mind, and he realized “…that’s it, for everyone wants Comfort.”

The Museum website reproduces a Comfort ad for Oxien Electric Plasters. The ad claims they cure a long list of maladies, from aches and pains, indigestion and “female disorders” to malaria, consumption (tuberculosis) and epilepsy.

The magazine’s ads, which invited readers to buy their products, were accompanied by advice columns, fashion updates and recipes, poems and romantic fiction and news articles. Gannett promoted circulation by offering subscribers gifts if they signed up other subscribers.

An online source says Comfort absorbed Allen’s People’s Literary Companion in 1907.

The Museum website says Gannett was fascinated by air travel. He learned to fly hot-air balloons and airplanes and knew Charles Lindbergh. Civic-minded, he financed the restoration of Fort Western, started Augusta’s Winter Carnival (a photo shows him as Carnival King in 1923) and donated 475 acres for a game preserve that is now the Howard Hill Conservation Area.

In 1878 Gannett married Sarah (or Sadie) Neil Hill, of Skowhegan. They had three children, Grace B., Guy Patterson and Florence L.

Guy Patterson Gannett (1881-1954), attended Augusta schools and Phillips Andover Academy, in Massachusetts. He left Yale after this freshman year in 1901 or 1902 (sources differ) to join and then succeed his father. In 1921, he founded Guy Gannett Publishing Company. The company was perhaps best known in Maine for its newspaper chain that included three Portland papers, the Kennebec Journal, in Augusta, and the Morning Sentinel, in Waterville.

Guy Gannett married Anne J. Macomber on June 6, 1905, according to an online genealogy. Other sources say the house William Gannett built for the couple in 1911 at 184 State Street, beside the Blaine House, was a wedding present. Consistent with William Gannett’s interest in air travel, the stucco Mediterranean-style house was up to date, with electric lights, an elevator, a central vacuum system and “the first automobile garage in the city.”

Guy and Anne had three children, Alice Madeleine (later Gatchell), John Howard and Jean (later Hawley).

John Howard Gannett was born Aug. 23, 1919, and spent his first years in the Augusta house, according to his obituary. He attended schools in Augusta, Portland and Cape Elizabeth (the family moved to Cape Elizabeth sometime after Guy Gannett bought two Portland newspapers in 1921); graduated from The Governor’s Academy (previously, Governor Dummer Academy), in Massachusetts, in 1939; and studied printing at Wentworth Institute, in Boston, until he joined the army in June 1941.

John Gannett married Patricia Randall, of Conner, Florida, on July 5, 1943, during his army service. The couple settled in Augusta in 1949, where John was a vice-president of Guy Gannett Publishing Company and general manager of the Kennebec Journal printing division.

John was interested in machinery, especially trains, including Maine narrow-gauge railroads, and boats. As Commodore of the Kennebec River Yacht Club, when local interest faded he led the club to donate its land to the city, where it became a park and the Eastside Boat Landing. In Manchester, he developed Cobbossee Marina, on Lake Cobbosseec­ontee, as a family home and jet-boat business.

After John retired from publishing, he and Patricia moved back to Conner, Florida. They spent three years as long-haul truckers before retiring again. Patricia died in 2012; John died July 16, 2020, at almost 101 years old.

Guy Gannett Communications was owned by a family trust from 1954 until it was sold in 1998. Since then, its properties have since gone through several changes of ownership.

John and Patricia Gannett also had three children, Terry Gannett Hopkins, Patterson R. Gannett and Genie Gannett (married to David Quist). In December 2015, the two daughters, Terry and Genie, bought the Gannett house, which had been the State Planning Office building, intending to establish a museum to honor their family business and their grandfather’s dedication to press freedom.

A quotation from Genie Gannett on the Museum website explains that they quickly realized all five First Amendment freedoms – press, religion, speech, assembly and petition – were inextricably related, and their project became the First Amendment Museum.

The website, https://firstamendmentuseum.org includes information on the museum’s past, present and planned future, an invitation to book a (masked) guided tour and an email address and telephone number.

[Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to correct the date on which Genie Gannett, Guy Gannett’s granddaughter, and her sister bought the Gannett family house to 2015, not 1915.]

Main sources

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

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Electricity and telephones

An Edison light bulb.

by Mary Grow

Many local histories find the arrival and expansion of electricity and telephone service noteworthy, especially in Maine’s smaller communities.

As most of us learned in grammar school, Benjamin Franklin is credited with discovering electricity in 1752, by flying a kite into a thunderstorm with a metal key attached to the wet string. His recognition that lightning caused sparks from the key was expanded and put to practical use by, among others, 19th-century British physicist Michael Faraday, whom a Wikipedia article calls one of the fathers of electricity (Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison share the title).

Faraday invented the electric motor in 1821, beginning a long series of practical developments that made electrical engineering, in Wikipedia’s view, “an essential tool for modern life.” Two early applications were the electric telegraph, which dates from the 1830s and expanded globally in the 1860s, and the first electric lights, in use by the 1870s.

The Fairfield bicentennial history gives 1886 as the year Amos Gerald created the Electric Light Company. (This was the same Amos Gerald who developed and electrified street railways; see The Town Line, Sept. 10.) In 1891, the company built a generating station on Mill Island. The William Connor house, on Summit Street, built in 1858, was the first to have electric lights.

The history further claims that Fairfield was the first Maine town to have electric lights; whether the reference is to private or public lighting is unspecified. Another note records a 1921 town vote to install streetlights in Shawmut; there is no indication whether other villages already had them.

Ruby Crosby Wiggin barely mentioned electricity in her Albion on the Narrow Gauge. The first lights were in 1920, she wrote, starting on the Unity Road and at Albion Corner and spreading town-wide in following years.

Alice Hammond, in her Sidney history, focused on the value of electricity to farm families. She wrote that Central Maine Power Company (CMP) extended its line from Augusta along Pond Road in 1925. Power reached Bartlett Road by 1927, part of River Road by 1933 and Middle Road by 1937.

The first night after the Wendell Bragg family on River Road got their house connected to the power line and lights installed, Hammond wrote, they turned on all the lights and went outdoors to admire the effect.

Electricity expanded Sidney’s dairy industry, as electric milking machines and milk coolers made large-scale production possible. Hammond wrote that Ernest Wyman was among the first farmers to buy a milking machine, and Dean Bailey had the first milking parlor, leading his cows to the machine instead of moving the machine from cow to cow.

Electricity was even more essential to the broiler industry, important in Sidney and much of the rest of central Maine from the 1950s into the 1970s. Multi-story chicken houses with thousands of chickens required lights, heat, and automatic feeding and watering devices.

Hammond paid special attention to electric radios, a new connection to the outside world after World War I. Six Sidney households had radios in 1925, she wrote, and neighbors would visit just to listen. There were 37 radios in town in 1928 and 65 by 1933.

In China, the bicentennial history says China Telephone Company manager E. J. Thompson asked Central Maine Power Company in 1920 to provide service to South China village. CMP agreed if residents would pay and would put up the necessary poles. They did, and in 1921 and 1922 houses acquired electric lights, water pumps and other amenities.

The Ladies’ Aid Society raised funds for the initial project and, the history says, supported South China streetlights for a few years. Town voters appropriated $100 for streetlights in 1923; skipped funding in 1924 and 1925; in 1926 and 1927 gave South China $100 and in 1927 added $75 for China Village street lights. Since 1928, when streetlights for the whole town cost $420, town meeting voters have routinely approved annual expenditures; the figure for 2020, included in the public works budget, is $10,000.

In Branch Mills, the village that is partly in China and partly in Palermo, the Village Improvement Society first explored replacing kerosene street lamps with electric lights in May 1919, Milton Dowe wrote. A four-man committee was appointed and apparently got in touch with CMP, without success.

By the spring of 1927, an enlarged committee negotiated an agreement with the company to run a line from South China, if Palermo would guarantee to pay $1,500 annually for five years. Committee member Harold Kitchen persuaded enough residents to sign up, some for $50 a year and some for less, to raise $1,200.

CMP offered to lower the guarantee if it could save money by using local materials and labor for the poles, Dowe wrote. The town bought poles and found a local contractor to put them up. CMP credited the final $100 when Palermo residents did the clearing needed to bring the line from Dirigo Corner to the village.

It was Aug. 8, 1928, that the electric lights were turned on in Branch Mills, Dowe wrote, and on Aug. 10 residents celebrated at the Grange Hall in the village.

Weeks Mills village had electricity by or soon after 1922, according to town records of pole permits. China Village, at the north end of town, acquired Central Maine Power service about 1927, the bicentennial history says. Earlier, local residents Everett Farnsworth and E. C. Ward shared power with neighbors from their noisy generators at opposite ends of Main Street.

Left, an 1878 Coffin phone. Right, a rotary dial phone.

Many of us also learned in school that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Actually, Wikipedia says, several other men could be credited as well, depending on definitions and whose story is believed; but Bell was the first to patent it, in 1876.

At first used primarily by businesspeople, the telephone began to appear in private homes (usually wealthy people’s) before 1880. Widespread household telephone service developed in central Maine in the first two decades of the 20th-century.

For example, Sidney historian Hammond, citing a 1976 book published by the Independent Telephone Pioneer Association’s New England Chapter, wrote that Sidney’s service started in 1901, when the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company set up a switchboard in Silas Waite’s house. The headquarters moved from house to house, ownership changed and lines and services were added over the years.

In 1908, John Field and Clyde Blake bought the business from New England T and T and made it the Sidney Telephone Company, a name it kept until 1965. There were 18 subscribers in 1908, 100 in 1941 and 250 by the late 1940s.

Hammond wrote that in addition to letting people talk with friends, the telephone system was a public address system and a fire alarm. To announce a town meeting, Grange supper or other event or to report a fire, the operator had a special ring that would let everyone on the service pick up.

In 1950, when Lewis Johnson bought the company and moved the switchboard to his Middle Road home and his wife Thelma became the operator, Hammond wrote that service became all day every day. Until then, only emergency calls were allowed at night and Sunday and holiday service was limited to an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Hammond’s history of Sidney has a photo of the Johnsons and their equipment.

In the winter of 1959-1960, Hammond wrote, Johnson converted from the crank phones to a dial system, building a separate building for the additional equipment. In 1965, Continental Telephone Company of Maine bought and incorporated the former Sidney Telephone Company.

Hammond added that Sidney had a second, smaller telephone company called the Farmers Line; she gives no dates. Some families started with Farmers and switched to Sidney Telephone; others used both services, she wrote.

In Vassalboro, the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company was operating by 1903; historian Alma Pierce Robbins found in town meeting records the company’s request to “change poles” on private land at Riverside in the southern end of town and to install a new line along the road from North Vassalboro to the Kennebec.

W. J. Thompson organized the China Telephone Company in South China in 1904 and was its general manager, president and head employee until illness forced him to retire in 1947. The company started with 29 subscribers, mostly businesses. Three public pay phones were available, in stores in South China and Weeks Mills and a private home at Dirigo Corner.

Thompson had two assistants. Howard L. Fuller was with him from 1904 and succeeded him as general manager in 1948, and R. C. Maxwell joined in 1906 and stayed with the company until he died in 1948. The bicentennial history says the three men and their families did everything from managing inventory and billing to repairing lines. Thompson was also president of the Maine Telephone Association in the 1920s.

According to the history, Maxwell used to collect bills door-to-door. When he was paid in produce, like apples or potatoes, he would substitute cash from his personal salary, $2.50 a day. The company’s first motorized vehicle was a motorcycle that did not survive Thompson’s handling; it was followed by a Model T and a Dodge touring car, both second-hand.

Starting with two lines, in South China and China Village, China Telephone connected more and more area residents. By 1923, according to a Maine Public Utilities Commission report, the company served people in all or parts of China, Palermo, Vassalboro and Windsor. The bicentennial history says long distance service was added– no date is given – via New England Telephone Company, in North Vassalboro.

The history says the company introduced dial telephones between 1959 and 1962 and in 1967 provided the first touch-tone telephones in New England.

Albion got its early telephone service from two competing companies, one based in Unity, which adjoins Albion on the northeast, and the other in Thorndike, which adjoins Unity on the northeast (both are in Waldo County). Wiggin told the story in detail in her history of Albion.

On May 31, 1905, she wrote, the Unity Telephone Company asked a special Albion committee for permission to put up poles and string lines throughout the town. The committee approved the request on June 21. On July 29, the Half Moon Telephone Company, in Thorndike, made a similar request, which was approved Aug. 15.

The Albion committee prescribed pole distances from each other and from roads, wire height and other specifications for both companies. Wiggin wrote that Half Moon got a head start, connecting three families’ businesses and houses in the fall of 1905, and charging them nothing. In 1906 Half Moon continued expansion and connected Albion with the exchange in Thorndike.

Unity Telephone started its construction in 1907 or 1908, Wiggin wrote. For some years the two companies competed; Wiggin wrote that in some places, Half Moon lines ran along one side of the road and Unity lines along the other.

People served by one line could not talk directly with people on the other. Some storekeepers signed up with both companies; if the two lines’ telephones were close enough to each other, someone in the store could allow cross-communication by holding them together.

Wiggin did not give the date at which Unity Telephone Company became Albion’s only telephone-service provider.

Main sources

Dowe, Milton E., History Town of Palermo Incorporated 1884 (1954).
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).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971).
Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Mail delivery – Conclusion

Augusta Post Office, built in 1886, depicted on a post card.

by Mary Grow

The previous article talked about postal service in the southern part of the central Kennebec Valley. This article completes the story with summary postal histories of Sidney, Fairfield, Benton, and Clinton, plus miscellaneous notes.

As mentioned in last week’s article (see The Town Line, Oct. 15), Henry Kingsbury found Sidney had six post offices at various times. Alice Hammond built on his information in her history of Sidney to provide additional information on several of them.

The earliest Sidney post office dated from 1813, when Stephen Springer became postmaster on March 13. It was on River Road, location unspecified.

The Sidney post office was probably toward the southern end of town, because Hammond wrote that the North Sidney post office opened in January 1854 toward the north end of River Road. According to Kingsbury, first Postmaster John Merrill served until August 1867, when Stephen Springer took over and served for almost 16 years. (With a 41-year interval between appointments, it was probably not the same Stephen Springer.)

Meanwhile, the Sidney Centre post office opened at Bacon’s Corner, on Middle Road, in 1827. (Google locates Bacon’s Corner at the intersection of Middle Road with Dinsmore and Shepherd roads, not far south of the James H. Bean School.)

Four years later, in 1831, the West Sidney post office opened for the first time. Hammond wrote that it had the distinction of being discontinued four times “for want of a proper person to run” such an undistinguished and unprofitable operation. (A contemporary map on line identifies West Sidney as the intersection of the south end of Pond Road with Route 127.)

Sidney’s fifth post office was named Eureka – Hammond gave no explanation — and was on the north end of Middle Road, toward the Oakland line. Opened in 1879, closed in 1886 and reopened in 1887, it closed for good in 1902.

The final Sidney post office, which operated only from 1891 to 1902, was named Lakeshore. Neither Hammond nor Kingsbury suggested a location; presumably the lake referred to was Snow Pond (Messalonskee Lake).

Hammond wrote that Martha C. Bacon was the first Lakeshore postmaster; Moses Sawtelle followed her, but she had the job back when the office closed permanently in 1902. Hammond’s history has a photo of former post office “pigeon holes” – rows of open-front wooden boxes that appear to be four or five inches square – in the Bacon house.

The Fairfield bicentennial history lists seven post offices serving seven villages: Fairfield, Fairfield Corners, Kendall’s Mills (now downtown Fairfield), East Fairfield, North Fairfield, Larone and Somerset Mills (now Shawmut). The Fairfield post office was established in 1807; in 1872, the name was changed to Fairfield Center.

The Fairfield Corners post office (1822 to 1882) was at what is now Nye’s Corner, on the Kennebec between Shawmut and East Fairfield.

The Kendall’s Mills post office is undated; the history says its name was changed to Fairfield in 1872. It was relocated at least twice before 1938, when the current building, which the history says cost $50,000, came into use in January.

East Fairfield is now Hinckley. The Fairfield history has an undated photo of a large three-story building with two-story and one-story annexes, identified as Palmer’s Store and the Hinckley post office.

The history gives no date for the establishment of the post office in the mostly Quaker North Fairfield settlement. It closed in 1908; a 1913 photo of the village shows the building and adjacent store.

Waterville Post Office, built in 1911, as seen in this 1960s photo.

There are no dates for the Larone post office, either. The history says after the village grew enough to rate mail service, two residents of nearby Norridgewock helped villagers petition successfully to get mail delivered by the stagecoach that ran from Waterville to Norridgewock.

The Shawmut post office was called Somerset Mills from 1853 to 1889, when it became Shawmut.

Clinton’s mail was carried after 1816 by a horseback rider going from Winslow to Bangor, Kingsbury wrote. The earliest of Clinton’s three post offices was established June 13, 1836, at East Clinton (after July 2, 1842, simply Clinton), and the rider began coming twice a week. About 1850, the stagecoach driver going from Augusta to Bangor became the mail carrier.

On June 10, 1825, the Pishon’s Ferry or North Clinton post office opened on the east bank of the Kennebec River opposite Hinckley. The third post office, at Morrison Corner, was established Nov. 10, 1891, Kingsbury wrote. (The contemporary Google map shows Morrison Corner as the intersection of Battle Ridge, Peavey and Hinckley roads.)

Benton separated from Clinton in March 1842, was Sebasticook for eight years and in March 1850 became Benton. According to Kingsbury, the first two of its four post offices also had a habit of changing their names.

Post office number one was established July 29, 1811, as Clinton; became Sebasticook May 11, 1842; and became Benton June 1, 1852. Post office number two opened Aug. 5, 1858, as East Benton; became Preston Corner on Dec. 28, 1887 (Daniel Preston was postmaster); and was changed back to East Benton May 29, 1891.

The other two post offices were at Benton Falls, opened May 31, 1878, and Benton Station, opened Jan. 27, 1888.

*  *  *  *  *

The rural free delivery (RFD) system began operating in Sidney and Vassalboro in 1901, Hammond and Alma Pierce Robbins wrote. Mail from Augusta was distributed to roadside boxes in those two towns. In 1902, Oakland and Waterville also began RFD service, with the north end of Sidney getting mail from both. As Hammond describes the expansion of the service in Sidney, service from Augusta replaced the Sidney and Sidney Centre post offices in 1901 and the West Sidney post office in 1902; Waterville replaced North Sidney in 1902; and Oakland took over Eureka and Lakeshore in 1902.

Ruby Crosby Wiggin wrote that RFD started in Albion July 1, 1903, with three mailmen, Charles Byther, Arthur Skillin and Elmer Wiggin. Each mailman was directed to ask residents on his route to buy and put up a mailbox. Historian Wiggin quotes mailman Wiggin’s account of the resident who scoffed at this new idea and promised to buy a mailbox after he saw Wiggin delivering the mail.

In Palermo, Milton Dowe wrote, a petition to institute RFD was circulated early in the 20th century; there was a lot of opposition, but the system was inaugurated on Nov. 15, 1904. The East and Center Palermo post offices were discontinued immediately; the one at North Palermo stayed open a few years longer.

*  *  *  *  *

Waterville, like Augusta, has a historic post office building, located at 1 Post Office Square, in the southern triangle of the X-shaped intersection of Main Street, Elm Street, Upper Main Street and College Avenue. The elaborate one-story masonry building, now housing commercial establishments, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 18, 1977.

Wikipedia says the Greek Revival building was built in 911; the architect was James Knox Taylor. Taylor was the supervising architect for the U. S. Treasury Department from 1897 to 1912, giving him credit for hundreds of federal buildings all over the country.

Waterville’s current post office at 33 College Avenue was officially named the George J. Mitchell Post Office Building by an act of Congress approved Sept. 6, 1995. (See The Town Line, July 23, for information on the former Senator.)

*  *  *  *  *

Current post offices in the central Kennebec valley in 2020, alphabetical by town or city, from U. S. Postal Service websites:

Albion: 36 Main Street. ZIP 04910

Augusta:

Augusta: 40 Western Avenue. ZIP 04330
Water Street: 295 Water Street. ZIP 04330

Benton apparently does not have a post office within town boundaries. ZIP 04901.

China:

China Village, 19 Main Street. ZIP 04926.
South China, 382 Route 3. ZIP 04358.

Clinton: 15 Railroad Street. ZIP 04937.

Fairfield:

Fairfield: 130 or 132 (sources disagree) Main Street. ZIP 04937.

Hinckley: 753 Skowhegan Road. ZIP 04944.

Shawmut: 117 Bray Avenue. ZIP 04975.

Palermo: 111 Branch Mills Road. 04354.

Sidney apparently does not have a post office within town boundaries. ZIP 04330.

Vassalboro:

East Vassalboro: 361 Main Street. ZIP 04935.

Vassalboro: 25 Alpine Street. ZIP 04989.

North Vassalboro: 847 Main Street. ZIP 04962.

Waterville: 33 College Avenue. ZIP 04901 (P.O. Boxes 04903.).

Windsor: 519 Ridge Road. ZIP 04363.

Winslow: 107 Clinton Avenue (in The 107 convenience store, by contract). ZIP 04901.

Main sources

Dowe, Milton E., Palermo, Maine Things That I Remember in 1996 (1997).
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).
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.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Mail delivery – Part 1

Rural delivery in the early years.

by Mary Grow

Intercolonial mail started in the early 1700s in the major cities on the east coast of the future United States, and had reached Maine’s coastal towns before the Revolution. The national postal service was organized during the Revolution, with Benjamin Franklin the first Postmaster General. Alma Pierce Robbins wrote in her history of Vassalboro that mail service reached the central Kennebec Valley in the 1790s.

Mail carriers, employees of, or contractors with the federal government, delivered mail to local post offices by boat; on foot; on horseback; by wagon, stagecoach, sleigh or other conveyance; later by railroad; and later still by truck or car. Spread-out towns with multiple population centers had multiple post offices. Most were in stores, some in private homes.

The early Pony Express.

Alice Hammond, in her history of Sidney, described two methods of mail delivery by stagecoach: if a post office were on a stagecoach route, the coach dropped off the mail, but for post offices not on a coach route, the federal government hired a responsible person to meet the coach and bring the mail to the post office.

Vassalboro had six post office in the early 1800s, Robbins wrote. Hammond found Sidney also had six, the first opened in 1813 and the sixth in 1891. The latter remained open for only 11 years. The Fairfield bicentennial history says Fairfield had seven.

Milton Dowe’s Palermo history says there were post offices in North Palermo, East Palermo and Center Palermo, in addition to the one in Branch Mills, the village shared by Palermo and China. Henry Kingsbury’s Kennebec County history lists four post offices in Benton, four in Windsor, three in Clinton and two in Albion. Until recently, Augusta and Waterville apparently had only one post office each.

Postal charges were initially determined by weight plus distance, according to the China bicentennial history. The 1799 charge for a one-page letter was eight cents within 40 miles; the fee increased progressively to 25 cents beyond 500 miles. New rates in 1845 were five cents for one page within 300 miles, doubled to 10 cents beyond 300 miles. At first the recipient paid the postage. In 1851 the U. S. Congress set up a two-tier system, charging less if the sender prepaid, and beginning in 1856 everyone was expected to pay in advance.

Initially the postal service was a government department (since 1970, it has been an independent agency of the federal executive department). Until postal service employees came under the civil service system, positions were political patronage jobs; consequently, a change in Washington, D. C., often had local consequences.

The presidency changed from one party to another in 1840 (Whig John Tyler succeeded Democrat Martin Van Buren), 1844 (Democrat James Polk), 1848 (Whig Zachary Taylor), 1852 (Democrat Franklin Pierce), 1860 (Republican Abraham Lincoln), 1884 (Democrat Grover Cleveland), 1888 (Republican Benjamin Harrison) and 1892 (Democrat Cleveland again).

A review of Kingsbury’s lists of postmasters in central Kennebec Valley towns shows no clear correlation between elections and changes in postmasters. At least eight new postmasters were appointed in the spring of 1885, after Cleveland took office, and more than a dozen in the spring of 1889, high but not excessive numbers. By the time Cleveland was re-elected and had time to undo Harrison’s appointments, if he wanted to, Kingsbury had published his history.

Ruby Crosby Wiggin, in her history of Albion, confirmed the political influence. From the time the Albion post office was established, probably in March 1825, until after 1914, a Republican national administration meant Republican local postmasters and a Democratic administration meant Democratic postmasters, she wrote.

The China bicentennial history says that in South China in the late 1800s, storekeeper Wilson Hawes was postmaster during Republican administrations, but when the Democrats were in power the post office moved westward to Tim Farrington’s store.

The list of South China postmasters in the history’s appendix correlates the postmastership with the presidential election, but it shows no switching back and forth. It says Farrington was appointed April 17, 1893, and Hawes April 12, 1897 (Hawes served until 1919). Democrat Grover Cleveland’s second term as president was from 1893 to 1897; Republican William McKinley succeeded him in 1897.

Augusta had one of the first post offices in the central Kennebec Valley, started in 1789 or 1794 (depending on the source). Charles Nash, author of the Augusta chapters in Kingsbury’s history, wrote that Postmaster James Burton was appointed Aug. 12, 1794, and that his house was where Meonian Hall stood in 1792.

(Augusta’s current Museum in the Streets website says Meonian Hall replaced the Burton House where the first post office opened in 1789. The Hall was an Italianate structure built by James North in 1856 and used for public events – Civil War rallies, plays and more. Frederick Douglass spoke there on April 1, 1864.)

Burton served as postmaster until Jan. 1, 1806, when he was “removed for party reasons,” Nash wrote. Among his successors was his son Joseph.

The Museum in the Streets includes a description of Augusta’s 1890 “Castle,” at 295 Water Street, one of the earliest buildings this writer has found built specifically as a post office. The website calls it “Richardsonian Romanesque” in style, 32,000 square feet, made of Hallowell granite, “with a corner tower, Roman arches, [and] a winding staircase.”

The “Castle” was the city’s main post office until the 1960s, the website says. Now called the Olde Federal Building, it has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974.

In Vassalboro, Robbins surmised that the first mail deliveries were probably by boat up the river. Stagecoaches took over early in the 1800s. In 1825, Robbins said, there were two mail deliveries a week from Augusta to Waterville. By 1897, a postmaster’s report said there were six deliveries a week.

The first post office in Vassalboro was at Getchell’s Corner, also called Vassalboro Corners (an important village from the town’s early days until the 20th century). Kingsbury wrote that the office opened April 1, 1796. Brown’s Corner, now Riverside, opened Jan. 18, 1817; in September 1856 it was moved from Brown’s store to where it stood when Kingsbury finished his history in 1892; and in January 1866 it was renamed Riverside. East Vassalboro’s post office opened March 26, 1827, and North Vassalboro’s March 22, 1828.

The village at Cross Hill in southern Vassalboro was first served by a Mudgett Hill post office established Feb. 2, 1827, near Three Mile Pond and from May 3, 1860, by the Cross Hill post office, located in a store. Nearby Seward’s Mills (as Kingsbury spelled it) had the Seward’s Mills post office from October 1853 until Oct. 30, 1889. The Mudgett Hill office was renamed South Vassalboro in or before 1859. The first postmaster, Kingsbury noted, had married Hannah Whitehouse, and his successors until 1892 all had the surname Whitehouse.

Benjamin Franklin
one-cent stamp of 1895.

Kingsbury wrote that Winslow’s first post office opened July 1, 1796, with Asa Redington postmaster. Kingsbury gave no specific location. The second post office opened April 18, 1891, at Lamb’s Corner; Lizzie Lamb was appointed postmistress May 20. (The contemporary Google map identifies Lamb’s Corner as the intersection of Route 137 [China Road] with Maple Ridge and Nowell roads, in southeastern Winslow.)

Kingsbury added that Lizzie (Furber) Lamb was the widow of Charles Lamb (1829-1883), whose parents settled in Winslow in 1821. Writing in 1892, he described her as running “the homestead farm.”

Whittemore’s Waterville centennial history says in the 1700s the town, part of Winslow until June 23, 1802, had sporadic mail service, with carriers traveling by snowshoe in the winter. Kingsbury wrote that when the Waterville post office was established Oct. 3, 1796, Asa Redington was the first postmaster there, as well as in Winslow. The two were evidently not the same establishment, because Kingsbury’s lists of successive postmasters are not duplicates. Winslow’s second postmaster was Nathaniel B. Dingley, installed in 1803; Waterville’s was Asa Dalton, installed in 1816.

Whittemore’s history says in 1806, Peter Gilman established a stage line between Hallowell and Norridgewock with a stop in Waterville, ensuring regular two-day-a-week delivery.

The history includes a reminiscence by William Mathews, born in 1818, whose family lived on Silver Street for at least part of his childhood. By the 1820s, the mail stage from Augusta arrived daily about 11 a.m., he wrote, announced by the driver’s blowing his horn. The mail stop was at Levi Dow’s Main Street tavern.

Palermo’s earliest residents had to get their mail in Wiscasset, Millard Howard wrote. Palermo’s first postmaster, John Marden, was ap­pointed in 1816. Later, Hiram Worthing served as Branch Mills postmaster for 47 years (except for two years during James Buchanan’s 1857-1861 administration); his son Pembroke succeeded him, and the job remained in the Worthing family well into the 20th century.

In Harlem, later China, the bicentennial history says Japheth C. Washburn was in charge of the mail early in the 19th century. Before 1810, his 10-year-old daughter Abra and eight-year-old son Oliver Wendell rode horseback through the woods to bring mail from Getchell’s Corner, in Vassalboro.

Around 1812, the history continues, the post office began contracting with adult mail carriers. That year the Vassalboro service was supplemented by a weekly Augusta to Bangor run, still extant in 1827 after the Town of China was created. In 1816, the history says, a mail route from Augusta to Palermo went through Brown’s Corner (location unspecified) and Harlem (later China). In 1820, two new routes were established, from Hallowell and from Vassalboro.

In 1837, the history says, three mail routes crossed the town: the driver of the daily coach from Portland to Bangor and the weekly horseman from Waterville to Palermo stopped in China Village, and three times a week the man driving a wagon or sulky delivered mail in South China on his way from Augusta to Belfast.

The China Village post office was established in 1818 in Washburn’s store, with Washburn the first postmaster.

South China had a post office from 1828, according to Kingsbury, first located in Silas Piper’s store with Piper the postmaster. Kingsbury wrote that Piper collected 13 cents worth of postage and earned 30 cents for his work during the first three months of his post
mastership.

The Weeks Mills post office was started in 1838, and was served by stagecoach for most of the 19th century.

Windsor’s first post office probably opened in 1822 at Windsor Corner, according to Kingsbury. He wrote that Postmaster Robert Williams’ commission dated from July 17 that year. South Windsor acquired a post office May 5, 1838; West Windsor, Sept. 8, 1873; and North Windsor, June 3, 1884.

While the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington railroad served Windsor, Palermo, China, Albion, Vassalboro and Winslow in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see The Town Line, Sept. 17, and Sept. 24), the government mail contract was an important source of income. Local histories give few details of mail service; there are occasional references to revenue, and Clinton Thurlow wrote that at one point, Weeks Mills got two daily mail deliveries by train, at 7 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Next week: more about mail service.

Main sources

Dowe, Milton E. , Palermo, Maine Things That I Remember in 1996 (1997).
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).
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.