Albion Eagle Scouts

From left to right, Matix Ward, Nash Corson and Preston Roy, of Boy Scout Troop #446, in Albion, were each awarded the Eagle Scout rank in a ceremony held on July 5, 2024. (contributed photo)

by Chuck Mahaleris

The town of Albion is celebrating its bicentennial this year with alumni gatherings, a frying pan throwing contest, parade, fun run and plenty of food. Among the festivities and pageantry, residents and guests are learning more about what makes their community special and of her rich history. A special ceremony honoring three young men who made Eagle Scout, the highest rank in Scouting, took place recently at the Albion Middle School to recognize Troop #446 Eagle Scouts Matix Ward, Preston Roy and Nash Corson. All three are Albion residents.

State Representative Scott Cyrway and Albion Selectmen Jason Dow and Michael Gardner praised the accomplishments of the trio. A slide show highlighting their camping and high adventure experiences captured the attention of all attendees. Lorna Ward was the guest piano accompanist. “I was very impressed,” Alissa Roy said. “It was a very nice ceremony.”

Each of the three Eagle hopefuls had to give leadership to a significant project to benefit the community. In March of this year, Nash organized a blood drive for the American Red Cross and coupled it with a food drive to benefit the Albion Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry. “I wanted to help save lives by collecting blood,” Nash said. “My goal was to have 22 people come out. On the day of my drive, we had 46 donors come and collected 25 units of blood. We had so many people come to donate we had to schedule them for different blood drives as the Red Cross ran out of space to have them all that day. I extended my project to run throughout the month and …ended up having 15 more who donated on other days….I collected approx 60 items for my home town food pantry.”

In January, Matix led volunteers in building a picnic table and hiking trail for Thurston Park, in China. Preston, who completed his project in 2022, led a team to construct new side stairs for the Albion Public Library and revamped the wheelchair ramp as well.

Nash Corson is the son of Alyssa and Michael Corson, of Albion. Nash is 18 and in September will be going into his senior year at Lawrence High School, in Fairfield, and also his last year at Kennebec Valley Community College where he is working towards earning his welding certificate. His mother Alyssa said, “Having watched Nash grow and mature throughout his Scouting career, I can say that Scouting has benefited him immensely and he would not be the driven young man he is without the family and backbone that Scouting has given him.”

Preston, 17, is the son of Alissa and Chuck Roy, of Albion. In 2022, Preston shot a 232-pound, 10-point buck during Youth Deer Hunting Day introducing him to the “Biggest Bucks in Maine Club.” Preston is going into his senior year at Lawrence High School.

Matix is 19 and the son of Elizabeth and Matthew Ward, of Albion. He is going to be a sophomore at the University of New Hampshire where he is majoring in mechanical engineering. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School.

“Matix gained leadership skills, a love for nature, lifelong friends, and a commitment to his community through Scouting,” Elizabeth Ward said. “Through volunteer work, Matix has shown a strong commitment to serving his hometown.”

The ceremony was held on July 5, 2024. While 2024 marks the two hundredth anniversary of Albion, these three Eagles have helped shape her next two centuries.

Cassidy’s birthday book drive to support Local Little Libraries

Peyton Belyeu checks out the books in the ShineOnCass Lending Library, where free books are available to kids attending summer and after-school care programs at Alfond Youth and Community Center, in Waterville. Photo in background is Cassidy Charette. (photo courtesy of Monica Charette)

by Monica Charette

ShineOnCass Foundation invites the community to join “Cassidy’s Birthday Book Drive” to help shine a light on childhood literacy and inspire reading. The ShineOnCass Foundation, named and created in memory of Cassidy Charette, will collect children’s books during the month of August to help fill the shelves of local Little Free Libraries. Volunteers will deliver donated books on what would be Cassidy’s 27 birthday on August 31.

A registered Little Free Library, located at 93 Water Street, in Waterville, is among more than a dozen “take a book, share a book” free libraries located throughout central Maine. ShineOnCass Foundation is collecting books for Little Free Libraries during the month of August and will distribute donations on Cassidy Charette’s birthday, August 31. For a list of local Little Free Libraries, visit shineoncass.org. (photo courtesy of Monica Charette)

A Little Free Library is a “take a book, share a book” free book exchange in communities nationally and internationally. Thousands of Little Free Libraries, owned and supported by volunteer stewards, are located in communities in over 120 countries. More than a dozen Little Free Libraries are located in central Maine, including a ShineOnCass Lending Library for children at the Alfond Youth and Community Center in Waterville. A list of local Little Free Library locations can be found on the ShineOnCass website, shineoncass.org.

“Our mission is to make books accessible for kids, expand their knowledge, and inspire future readers,” says Monica Charette, Cassidy’s mother and executive director of the ShineOnCass Foundation. Cassidy, a 17-year-old Oakland resident who died in a hayride accident in 2014, was an avid reader, youth mentor, and a lifelong community volunteer.

“We believe expanding literacy access to local families is a meaningful way to celebrate the day Cassidy was born, by giving back and sharing her love for reading with kids.”

New and gently used books for children and young adults can be donated all month at Camden National Bank, at 51 Main Street, in Oakland, or at 258 Kennedy Memorial Drive, in Waterville. Books will be distributed to Little Free Libraries on Cassidy’s birthday on August 31.

For more information about Cassidy’s Birthday Book Drive or the ShineOnCass Foundation, visit shineoncass.org.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Albion

Monument erected in Albion for Elijah Parish Lovejoy, an Albion native. On November 7, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy was killed by a pro-slavery mob while defending the site of his anti-slavery newspaper, the St. Louis Observer. His death both deeply affected many individuals who opposed slavery and greatly strengthened the cause of abolition. (photo courtesy of Maine: An Encyclopedia)

by Mary Grow

Of the town and city names your writer has explored in this subseries, none has yet been as frustrating as the Town of Albion.

Sources agree on names and dates. In 1802, Freetown Plantation was incorporated, including most of present-day Albion and the northern end of what is now the separate town of China.

Ruby Crosby Wiggin wrote in her 1964 history of Albion that in March 1803 plantation residents petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to create a town. They received three separate approvals, Wiggin wrote, by the House and Senate plus the Governor, and on March 9, 1804, the Town of Fairfax was incorporated.

On March 10, 1821, the Maine legislature approved changing Fairfax’s name to Lygonia (Lagonia, Ligonia). On Feb. 25, 1824, the name was changed again, to Albion.

So said Wiggin. And Henry Kingsbury in his Kennebec County history. So says Wikipedia. And the on-line Maine an Encyclopedia, which adds that Albion is the old name for England. And a website called FamilySearch. And a website called greenerpasture, quoting Wikipedia. And a website called mainegenealogy.net. And a website called heirloomsreunited, which skips Freetown Plantation, naming only Fairfax, Ligonia and Albion.

Some of these sources describe boundary changes, especially in Fairfax; the early 1800s saw multiple land transfers. Some name inhabitants — early settlers, famous people, heads of household listed in the 1790 and 1820 censuses.

Your writer found not one source that explained any of the four names, and not one that explained why the area had four successive names anyway.

* * * * * *

Freetown was a not uncommon name for an early Maine settlement, presumably expressing the settlers’ belief that they had moved beyond the reach of government. But the men who established Freetown promptly asked to live in an incorporated town, and the 1802 Freetown Plantation became the March 1804 Town of Fairfax.

Wiggin had a theory. She wrote that Freetown’s first town meeting, starting at 10 a.m., on Oct. 30, 1802, was held at John Leonard’s house, which she located on the west side of current Route 202 close to the Unity town line, in the northeastern corner of town.

Leonard and Asa Phillips, who was chosen town meeting moderator, “were neighbors in Winslow [incorporated in 1771] before coming to Freetown Plantation,” Wiggin wrote. She surmised that after “something like five years” in this unincorporated area, they were ready to again “enjoy the same privileges their former neighbors in Winslow were enjoying.”

The Oct. 30, 1802, meeting only chose local officers, Wiggin said. A second plantation meeting, on March 28, 1803, included an article to “petition…the General Court [the Massachusetts legislature] for an incorporation of this plantation just as the [boundary] lines now run.” Wiggin said nothing about a name for the incorporated entity.

She wrote that this area’s settlers mostly came east from the Kennebec Valley or north from Jones Plantation (later China). Neither she nor any other source your writer found gave a date for the first land claim more specific than “before 1790.”

Wiggin and Kingsbury agreed the first settler(s) are not known. Kingsbury added that the “weight of evidence seems to point to the Rev. Daniel Lovejoy” (a Congregational minister who moved to the west shore of Lovejoy Pond before 1790, according to Kingsbury).

Wiggin disagreed. Referencing family papers, she said Daniel Lovejoy was only about 14 years old when his father, Francis, and the rest of the family settled on what was then Fifteen-Mile Pond; Francis, therefore, has a stronger claim to the “first settler” title.

(Francis Lovejoy’s most famous grandson was abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy. Two previous articles in this history series have been about the Lovejoy family, in the Aug. 13, 2020, and Feb. 1, 2024, issues of The Town Line.)

Kingsbury went on to list six families he said were in Albion when the 1790 United States census was taken, naming four (plus Lovejoy): Crosbys, Libbeys, Prays and Shoreys.

Wiggin wrote: “Although the Shoreys, Prays and Libbeys were here very early, we believe that there were others who were here even earlier.”

She said the 1790 census report divided present-day Albion between Hancocktown (another name for Hancock Plantation, mentioned in the June 20 history article as including present-day Benton and Clinton) and Jones Plantation (now China).

Men Wiggin was sure were in Albion by 1790 included Bela or Belial Burrill, Jonah Crosby, Jr., and Robert Crosby, Samuel Davis, Thomas Fowler, Nathan Haywood and Francis Lovejoy.

Kingsbury said Robert Crosby’s homestead was “near the foot of the pond,” and in 1892 part of the land belonged to his grandson, Ora O. Crosby.

Wiggin identified Robert Crosby’s first grant by its 1964 owner, and implied it was at the southwest end of Lovejoy Pond by referring to two dams; an 1811 or 1812 sawmill on a stream; and the “new road completed in 1961” (Route 202?) that runs over the mill site.

(The “new road” also crossed “the spot where the old workshop used to set [sic] at the top of the hill.” Here, Wiggin wrote, the “curved pieces on the arms of the Christian Church pews” were probably made – “at least the patterns for them used to be stored under the workshop bench.”

(The Albion Christian Church, she wrote later in her history, was organized Jan. 1, 1825, at “the home of Brother Robert Crosby.” She listed the nine founding members as Elder Samuel Nutt; Robert and Abigail Crosby; Luther and Ethelinda Crosby; William and Demaris Crosby; and Franklin and Lovina Barton. Luther, Demaris and Lovina were children of Robert and Abigail, she said.)

At least three families who lived in what eventually became the north end of China are included as early Albion settlers: the Burrills, Washburns and Wiggins.

Anecdotes about two of these men illuminate the frequency of the boundary changes mentioned in last week’s account of early days in China.

Wiggin wrote that Nathaniel Wiggin (March 16, 1750 – Sept. 15, 1823) built a log cabin on a hill northeast of the head of China Lake. The 1790 census listed him as a Jones Plantation resident; when Freetown’s first town meeting was held in 1802, he was a resident there. “Thus, he lived in Jones Plantation, Freetown, Fairfax and possibly Lagonia without moving from his home place.”

Japheth Washburn is quoted in the China bicentennial history as writing (in a Jan. 14, 1850, letter) that before the 1818 incorporation of the Town of China, “my Dwellinghouse was in Winslow – across the road, directly opposite, stood my store, in Albion, and 40 rods south, stood my Potash, in Harlem [later China].”

(Washburn was referring to his potash works, where he would have poured water through wood ashes and boiled down the leachate to a solid mass, potash or potassium carbonate. Potash was an essential ingredient in soap, one of many products commonly made at home in 19th-century Maine.)

Kingsbury and Wiggin both named more Albion families who arrived by the early 1800s. Their lists partly duplicate each other. Neither includes a settler named Fairfax.

* * * * * *

Wiggin summarized, without explanation, the March 1821 name change: “the name of the town was changed to Lagonia, or ‘Lygonia,’ (both spellings were used) but some of the residents were still not satisfied and in August of that same year another meeting was called to see if they could get it changed back again to Fairfax, but to no avail.”

Voters at a special meeting in December, 1822, did not pass an article to go back to Fairfax, she wrote. In January, 1823, a five-man committee was elected to draft a petition for the selectmen to present (presumably to the Maine legislature) requesting the name Richmond; apparently nothing happened. On Jan. 8, 1824, voters chose a seven-man committee to petition the legislature for Fairfax, again without success.

Lygonia – the most common spelling – was the name of a British province in southeastern Maine from 1630 or 1639 or 1643 (sources differ) to 1658. It encompassed a roughly square area bounded on the southwest by a line that ran about 50 miles from the coast near Kennebunkport almost to the New Hampshire border; on the northwest by a line that reached the Androscoggin River, enclosing most of Cumberland and part of Androscoggin counties; and on the northeast by a line slanting back to the coast near present-day Brunswick.

The coast was the province’s southeast boundary. Lygonia covered 1,600 square miles, by one estimate, including the present Sebago Lake region and the coastal and riverine areas that were the first parts of Maine to be settled.

Wikipedia, whose writer supplied the 1830 date, says Lygonia was a grant from the Plymouth Council for New England to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Gorges named it in honor of his mother, Cecily (Lyon) Gorges.

(Gorges [1565, 1567 or 1568 – May 24, 1647] was a Plymouth Company member and recipient of royal grants covering much of what became Maine. Though he was influential in Maine’s early history, his story is outside the limits of this series.)

In 1658, Lygonia became part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Your writer found no connection between this Lygonia and the inland Lygonia that succeeded Fairfax.

* * * * * *

Citing town records, Wiggin wrote that at an April 5, 1824, meeting, Lagonia voters were asked to accept the name Albion for their town, and agreed. Again, she gave no explanation for the action or the name.

As previously mentioned, Albion is an old name for Britain. Wikipedia offers a scholarly article on the origin of the word (from early Celtic, via ancient Greek), referring to sources from the sixth century B.C. into the Christian era.

“By the 1st century AD, the name refers unequivocally to Great Britain,” the Wikipedia writer says. However, it was soon replaced by words that led to the Roman word “Britannia” and related names.

An on-line Encyclopedia Britannica article says “Albion” is the earliest name for “the island of Britain,” as distinct from Ireland and other islands that make up the British Isles. “The name Albion has been translated as ‘white land’; and the Romans explained it as referring to the chalk cliffs at Dover (Latin albus, ‘white’),” the article continues.

More recently, the Wikipedia writer says, English explorer Sir Francis Drake christened California “Albion” when he visited there in 1579, during his voyage around the world. When the provinces of Québec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were united as the Canadian Confederation in 1867, alternative names “briefly suggested” for what became Canada were “New Albion” and “Albionoria” (translated as “Albion of the North”).

Your writer cannot connect any of this information with people in Lygonia, Maine, choosing a new town name early in 1824.

Historian Ruby Crosby (Bickmore) Wiggin

Headstone of Ruby Crosby Wiggin in Willey Cemetery, in Benton.

Historian Wiggin’s full name is Ruby Crosby (Bickmore) Wiggin. An on-line genealogy (managed by Roger Keith Crosby, who last updated it two years ago) says she was born in Albion on Dec. 5, 1908, daughter of Merlon Linley and Pearl Eleanor Bickmore.

Pearl Bickmore was born in Calais in 1887, to parents whose first names are not recorded in the on-line genealogy, and was adopted by Ora Otis and Hannah Buzzell Crosby.

Ruby married Raymond Kenneth Wiggin (Jan. 29, 1907 – Nov. 2, 1998). Raymond Kenneth Wiggin was the son of Elmer Ellsworth Wiggin (1868 – 1953); who was the son of George Martin Wiggin (1835 – 1905); who was the son of Ezra Wiggin (1803 – 1894); who was the son of Nathaniel Wiggin, Jr. (1777 -1860); who was the son of Nathaniel Wiggin (born March 16, 1750, in New Hampshire; died Sept. 15, 1823, in China).

Ruby Crosby Wiggin died in Clinton, June 8, 1996.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964).

Websites, miscellaneous.

EVENTS: Albion bicentennial photo contest underway

Albion town office. Photo source: Town of Albion Facebook page

Albion bicentennial photo contest is open to anyone, but photos must be taken in Albion.

There are four categories: people, animals, still life and landscape in three age groups, 12 years old and under, 13-20, and over 20.

All submitted photos must be in printed form and matted. Photos no larger than 5×7. Mat will be pinned up so when it is returned the mat may be damaged. Pictures may be in color or black and white. The photos must be taken by the entrant, and entries are limited to one entry per category.

Cash prizes will be awarded to first, second and place place in each age group and each category. All first place winners will be entered in a grand prize contest with the winner’s photo to appear on the front cover of the 2025 town report.

Photos must include name of entrant, phone number, address and location of photo taken. The town of Albion reserves the right to use the photos on their website.

Entries must be submitted by Thursday, July 18. Entries may be dropped at the town office or with Pam Wallace and Miranda Perkins at the Besse Building on a designated date to be announced later. Questions may be emailed to pllwallace@gmail.com or acbmperkins@gmail.com with subject “photo contest”.

Albion gold cane presented to Donna Bessey

Donna Bessey

On May 31, 2024, Donna Bessey received the Town of Albion’s Boston Post Cane, recognizing her as its oldest citizen at age 95. Albion Selectman Paul Flynn gave a brief history of the Boston Post Cane before presenting her with the cane and a plaque. Also representing the town were Selectmen Michael Gardner and Jason Dow, as well as State Senator Scott Cyrway and Town Clerk Jeannie Doore. Many friends were also present to celebrate the occasion.

Donna moved to Albion in 1949 when she married Leland Bessey. They met while attending Thomas College, in Waterville. Together, they had a successful dairy farm in Albion for many years. In addition to helping on the farm, Donna also worked in various secretarial/bookkeeping capacities in the area – for example, at North Wayne Tool Company, in Oakland, and for the District #3 Superintendent of Schools.

After selling the farm, Leland worked for the U .S. Postal Service, in Albion, and Donna continued to work in the school department. She eventually retired from H.L. Keay’s store, in Albion, in 1992. Donna and Leland enjoyed a wonderful retirement together, celebrating 74 years of marriage, until Leland’s passing in March 2024. As an avid animal lover with a great sense of humor, Donna expressed her secret to longevity as simply “Wag more, bark less”.

Nathan Choate earns rank of Eagle Scout

Stephanie Drake Choate, left, pins the Eagle Scout medal onto her son Nathan’s uniform. “It was so special to have it at Mount Merici Academy. We are so proud of you, Nathan,” she said. (photo by Chuck Mahaleris)

by Chuck Mahaleris

Nathan Choate

Nathan Choate, of Albion, received the Eagle Scout medal during a ceremony conducted by China Troop #479 in his honor on Friday, May 10, at Waterville’s Mount Merici Academy.

The town of Albion in March presented Nathan with its 2023 Spirit of America Foundation Award in “recognition of his outstanding and commendable community service to the Town of Albion.” His Eagle Scout Service Project revitalized the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Monument.

Nathan is the son of Michael and Stephanie Drake Choate, and lives in Albion. He attends Erskine Academy, in South China. This project required more than 200 hours of labor shared by scouts and scouters as well as Albion residents. Colby College Lovejoy land grant provided the funding needed for the effort. Hilton Drake and Stephanie Drake Choate’s ancestors and the Lovejoys were two of the five founding families in the town of Albion, formerly known as Freetown Plantation, in 1790.

Elijah Parish Lovejoy attended Waterville College (now Colby) and is well known as one of the first martyrs to freedom of the press and the abolitionist movement, killed in 1837 in Alton, Illinois. Colby’s language arts building bears his name. The Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award of Colby, established in 1952, is awarded to a journalist who continues the Lovejoy heritage of fearlessness and commitment to American freedom of the press.

During the ceremony, Lee Pettengill, who serves as the Chartered Organization representative for Troop #479, in China, and was the Master of Ceremonies for the event, led Nathan in the Eagle Scout Charge. “I charge you to be among those who dedicate their skills and ability to the common good. Build America on the solid foundation of clean living, honest work, unselfish citizenship, and reverence for God; and, whatever others may do, you will leave behind a record of which every other Scout may be justly proud,” Pettengill said.

Natha had completed all of his requirements and passed his Eagle Scout Board of Review last October.

Flynn announces legislative candidacy

Paul Flynn

Paul Flynn, of Albion, has announced his candidacy to represent Winslow, Albion, Unity Plantation and Freedom in the Maine Legislature. He has been an Albion resident for 33 years. Upon graduating St. Joseph’s College, in Standish, he and his wife Kate have made Maine their home.

“I have been an entrepreneur, owned and operated Freedom General Store, in Waldo County, am a Licensed Maine Real Estate Agent, currently operate Freedom Coin Company, in Albion. I also serve as the Pastor of The Freedom Congregational Church in Freedom.”

Service to the community is a big part of his life. “I have coached baseball at every level of Fairfield PAL, was the Lawrence Jr. High seventh grade baseball coach, and assistant coach at Lawrence Sr. High School.

“I have served on the boards of The Mid-Maine Chamber of Commerce, Big Brothers-Big Sisters, St. John Church Finance Commission, served as a Eucharistic Minister, and am currently a selectman in the Town of Albion.”

He continues, “I decided to run for this office because I feel like our communities have lost their voice in Augusta. Every business has a ‘Help Wanted’ sign in the window. Families and small businesses are struggling to pay the light bill. Bureaucrats are pushing to replace families with government. I’ve had enough, and I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines saying, ‘someone should do something.’ I’m at a point in my life where I’m ready to be the “Someone,” so I’m asking for your support as I start this journey.”

In conclusion, “I’m not interested in partisan politics, but I am interested in being a voice for the people. I’ll look forward to meeting you on the campaign trail over the next six months.”

EVENTS: ShineOnCass animal baby shower set for May 5 in Albion

Photo of Cassidy Charette, who was a long-time volunteer at Hart-to-Hart Farm, in Albion.

Haddie Bickford pets one of the new baby calves at last year’s ShineOnCass Animal Baby Shower & PJ Party at Hart-to-Hart Farm in Albion.

Children dressed in their pajamas will welcome baby lambs, goats, calves and other newborn animals also wearing pajamas, on Sunday, May 5, at the ShineOnCass Animal Baby Shower & PJ Party, at Hart-to-Hart Farm & Education Center, in Albion. The annual event for children features educational stations that include learning how to milk a cow, fetching eggs from the chicken coop, spinning lamb’s wool, and participating in goat yoga. Children will be able to hold, and have photos taken with, the newborn baby animals.

Hart-to-Hart Farm & Education Center is a family-owned and operated organic dairy farm that offers spring and summer day camp educational programs for children. The ShineOnCass Animal Baby Shower is held each year in honor of Cassidy Charette, an Oakland teen who died in a hayride accident in 2014, who was a longtime summer camper at Hart-to-Hart Farm.

Families attending the free event are asked to bring food and pet items to donate to Humane Society Waterville Area in memory of Cassidy, who was also a shelter volunteer.

Sierra Veilleux snuggles a newborn goat at last year’s ShineOnCass Animal Baby Shower & PJ Party at Hart-to-Hart Farm, in Albion.

There will be two sessions offered: 10 to 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 to 2 p.m., with limited capacity of 80 children per session. Pre-registration is required at shineoncass.org or hart2hartfarm.org. For more information, email shineoncass@gmail.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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ShineOnCass announces scholarship

Cassidy Charette, a longtime summer camper at Hart-to-Hart Farm. (photo by Monica Charette)

The ShineOnCass Foundation announces a new $1,000 ShineOnCass Community Ser­vice Scholarship to be awarded annually to one area high school senior who makes service and kindness part of their everyday life. The scholarship is created in honor and memory of Cassidy Charette, a longtime volunteer in the central Maine community and former Messalonskee High School student, in Oakland, who died in a hayride accident in 2014.

Qualified applicants for the scholarship must live in the school district of Lawrence, Messalonskee (RSU #18), Waterville, or Winslow high schools; be accepted into a 2-year associate degree program, or 4-year college/university; and demonstrate their commitment to service in their community. Deadline to apply for the ShineOnCass Community Service Scholarship is April 22, 2024.

The newly-created ShineOn­Cass scholarship is in addition to the foundation’s annual $4,000 ShineOnCass Memorial Scholarship in Memory of Cassidy Jean Charette, originally established by Cassidy’s Messalonskee High School Class of 2016.

To apply for the ShineOnCass Community Service Award, or to learn more about other scholarship opportunities offered by the ShineOnCass Foundation, visit shineoncass.org.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: People for whom ponds are named, Part 3

by Mary Grow

Dutton Pond

A small pond shared between Albion and its southern neighbor, China, has been known as Dutton Pond for as long as your writer has lived in China. But the map of China in the 1856 and 1879 atlases of Kennebec County names it Pickerel Pond.

Pickerel/Dutton Pond is on the north side of Dutton Road. Dutton Road branches off from Pleasant View Ridge Road, which goes east from Route 202 at the four corners southeast of China Village, on the northeast corner of China Lake’s east basin. At the top of a hill, Pleasant View Ridge Road turns sharp right (south); Dutton Road plunges down the other side of the hill, still heading east, passes the south end of Dutton Pond and crosses into southern Albion, where it becomes Libby Hill Road.

On the 1856 and 1879 maps, C. E. Dutton owned the house on the north side of the corner where Dutton and Pleasant View Ridge roads diverge. Diagonally across Dutton Road, in the southeast corner of the T intersection, was a schoolhouse.

Charles E. Dutton was neither an early settler in China nor a native of the town; he probably arrived in 1851 as a teenager (see below).

According to the Find a Grave website, Dutton was born Dec. 8, 1839. Henry Kingsbury, in his Kennebec County history, wrote that Charles was the son of Coffran Dutton and grandson of Jonathan Dutton, “who moved from Montville to Vassalboro, and in 1839 lived where Melvin Applegate now resides.” If Jonathan brought his family, Charles was born in Vassalboro.

Kingsbury continued, “In 1851 they [three generations again?] moved to China.” He next wrote that Charles Dutton married Annis W. Barlow, who was born in Freedom, Maine, Sept. 6, 1846 (or 1847, according to an on-line genealogy).

The China bicentennial history portrays Dutton as an educator first and foremost. Kingsbury listed him as a China selectman, elected in 1873 and serving seven terms, four of them as board chairman.

School District 7, in northern China, was named the Dutton district. The 1856 and 1879 maps each show a schoolhouse (the history says there were three consecutively), and apparently another was built for the 1886 school year. The Dutton district school was closed in 1902.

Each China school district had a school agent, usually elected by town meeting voters, whose responsibilities included allocating funds and recommending how many school terms to have for how long each year and what teacher(s) to hire. School agents were responsible to the town’s school committee (until 1857 and from 1863 to 1870) or to the school supervisor.

(China had a maximum of 22 school districts, rearranged repeatedly. School was usually held two terms a year, a shorter one [between a month and three months] in summer and a longer [two to four months] winter term. Dates were not standardized; and a district might skip or shorten a term, especially if money were tight.)

The China history includes Charles Dutton on a list of people who taught many terms, “usually with favorable comments.” Kingsbury wrote that he taught 27 terms, “nearly all in the town of China.” One term mentioned in the history was in the winter of 1872-1873: Dutton taught algebra in the China Village school, close to his home.

Dutton must have been China’s supervisor of schools in 1878, because he reported in 1879 that there were too many different textbooks in use – 20 geography texts, for example, some “so old that they listed only the first thirty-three states in the United States.” (The 34th state, Kansas, was admitted Jan. 29, 1861; it was followed by West Virginia in 1863, Nevada in 1864, Nebraska in 1867 and Colorado in 1876, for a total of 38 states by the end of 1878.)

At the March 1879 town meeting, voters accepted Dutton’s recommendation to appoint a five-man committee to look into consolidating school districts and standardizing textbooks. He and four other distinguished residents reported to a special meeting held May 5, 1879.

The history says nothing about districts, but it says voters approved the committee’s recommended textbooks and voted “to sustain” Dutton as he introduced them and disallowed all others. Dutton bought the books and, the history says, donated his commission to the students, who had to buy them in turn.

(Alas, by 1886 a new supervisor was again deploring the variety of texts; he recommended the town start buying and owning books for students. In August 1890, a state law “requiring towns to provide free textbooks” became effective. China spent $862 for textbooks in 1891and by the beginning of 1893 owned 1,730.)

In 1879-1880, Dutton was again supervisor of schools. The history related his dealings with a Colby College student whom he hired without examination, assuming him qualified, for another northern China district.

There were soon complaints that the young man “could not do arithmetic and was generally incompetent.” Dutton found the complaints valid and fired the teacher; district parents “relented and petitioned that he be reinstated.”

He came back, “but remained incompetent, and Mr. Dutton felt that the students’ time had been wasted.”

In the fall of 1879, supervisor Dutton visited the District 16 school in western China, where he found three students. The China history says he “promptly went to see some of the district parents, who told him they simply were not ready to have their children gone for five or six hours a day.” (Whether the children were too young, or were old enough so they were needed to help with fall work, the history does not say.)

Dutton unsympathetically ordered the school to stay open. The parents’ money therefore continued to be spent; and, the history says, “the students soon appeared.”

Dutton was a Mason. Kingsbury listed him as master of Central Lodge in China Village in 1864 and 1869, and of the village’s second Masonic organization, Dunlap Chapter, in 1875 and 1886.

He was active in the China Cemetery Association, organized in 1865 to manage the large China Village cemetery at the head of the lake (and since the 1940s the extension cemetery on Neck Road). The bicentennial history says he was president of the organization in the 19th century (citing Kingsbury, so before 1892) and from 1911 to 1921.

A list of members of Maine’s 17th legislature, in 1911, includes Charles E. Dutton from China.

Charles and Annis Dutton had four children. Find a Grave lists a daughter, Idella, born in 1869; twins, Arthur J. and Fannie A., born July 18, 1874; and a younger son, Everett E., born Jan. 26, 1887. All lived past 1950.

Idella married Fred H. Lewis (1860-1933), of China, and is buried with him in the China Village cemetery.

Charles Dutton died in China Sept. 5, 1922; Annis died in China April 5, 1926. Both are buried in the China Village cemetery; the same gravestone names them and their other three children.

Dutton Pond, shared between China and Albion, has an area of 57 acres and a maximum depth of 33 feet, according to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and to Lake Stewards of Maine.

* * * * * *

Evans Pond

China’s Evans Pond is south of Dutton Pond and entirely within the town. It lies on the east side of Hanson Road; Hanson Road runs roughly north-south east of China Lake, approximately half-way between Lakeview Drive along the lake and Pleasant View Ridge Road farther east.

The pond was named for an early settler – before the Revolution, Kingsbury wrote, and “contemporary with the pioneers” (the Clark brothers, who came in 1774) – named Joseph Evans.

An on-line source calls him Joseph Evans, Sr., born Nov. 23, 1740, in Dorchester, Massa­chusetts, to Richard and Zipporah (Blake) Evans. On April 28, 1766, he married Ame (also Ama, Amey, Ann or Anna) Payson, in Sharon, Massachusetts. She was born before July 22, 1750.

This source says Joseph “registered for military service” in 1777, but does not say from where – if Kingsbury is correct, from what is now China (which was Jones Plantation until 1796 and Harlem until 1818).

Kingsbury said he left his wife and children in the wilderness by Evans Pond while he served in the Revolution. (The first four of the Evans’ four sons and three daughters were born before 1775, this source says; another on-line site lists only one son.)

The seven-child on-line source says the Evans’ youngest daughter, Zipporah, was born in Vassalboro in 1781; married in China in 1802; and died in Houlton in 1854. Their youngest son, Nathaniel, Jr., was born in 1788 in China and died there in 1861.

This source puts Evans in Lincoln, Maine, in 1790. If so, he was back in China by 1797; the bicentennial history names Joseph and Nathaniel Evans among founding members of the First Baptist Church of Harlem, organized that year.

Nathaniel Evans could have been Joseph’s younger brother, born in Dorchester April 5, 1745; married in Vassalboro in November 1772; “registered for military service in 1777 [with his brother?]”; and died June 14, 1819, in Searsmont.

The China history says Joseph Evans was in Harlem in 1801 and 1802, and in 1801 a comparatively well-off resident: town meeting voters entrusted a pauper named Jack to his care. Evans was to receive “thirty dollars and the use of a cow” in return, prorated if Jack stayed less than a year with him.

In 1802, town meeting voters were asked to accept as a town road “the road between Joseph Evans’ dwelling and the lake [China Lake, presumably].”

The on-line source says Joseph died in mid-April 1826 and Ame sometime after 1830, both in China.

Kingsbury gave a paragraph to one of Joseph and Ame’s grandsons, Cyrenus Kelley Evans (May 13, 1816-Dec. 4, 1891). Find a Grave’s website has a photo of his gravestone in the South China Village cemetery that says his name was Cyrenius.

This Evans married Ephraim Clark’s granddaughter Asenath Clark (May 24, 1820-Oct. 9, 1911), thereby uniting two of China’s early families.

Kingsbury wrote that Evans “filled important positions in China and was twenty-one years justice of the peace.” The Find a Grave website says, “Mr. Evans filled important positions in China, and was twenty-one years of age when justice of the peace.”

A June 1870 on-line list of Maine magistrates says Evans was appointed a justice of the peace March 4, 1868, but does not specify whether that was his first appointment.

Evans Pond has an area of 19 acres and a maximum depth of only 14 feet, according to the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (as of 2000). Lake Stewards of Maine gives the size as 29 acres and agrees on the depth.

Main sources

Grow, Mary M., China Maine Bicentennial History including 1984 revisions (1984)
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892)

Websites, miscellaneous.