LETTERS: Albion is the best town

To the editor:

I just wanted to say, how happy I am to live in Albion. I love this beautiful town. I’m so pleased to see the village bustling again. A few years ago Main St. was desolate. Now the village is full of people, new living spaces, and several new businesses are thriving. I’m just so pleased. The village is still small, quaint, & has all the country charm that I moved from China to Albion for.

I am so grateful for the wonderful people that run this town. A few weeks ago I had an issue that (to me) was important, but truthfully could’ve waited. But me, being me, went knocking on the town office door even though it was clearly closed. I should not have been surprised, but I was, when the door opened. I was given the info I needed right then and there. I then made contact with the town road commissioner. He answered my call, even though he was actively working on a job site. Within an hour he called me back with the info I needed. The state was not as helpful, but that’s neither here nor there.

By the end of the day, when realizing what a pain I am (lol) I went to bed thanking my God for the people in and the town itself of Albion.

Thank you to every town official and every town resident who make this beautiful country town the most perfect place to live.

Danielle Foster
Albion

Maine Farmland Trust awards grants to local farms

Ironwood Farm, in Albion, owners Nell Finnigan, left, and Justin Morace. (internet photo)

Maine Farmland Trust (MFT) announced the award of six matching grants totaling $300,000 to Ironwood Farm, in Albion, and five other farms across the state upon their completion of MFT’s Farming for Wholesale program, a two-year program that offers up to 100 hours of individualized business planning and technical assistance to farmers who are seeking to grow their operations. The six farms will implement business plans focused on scaling up for wholesale by investing in equipment and infrastructure to streamline their production, improve their ability to sell to wholesale markets, and make their businesses more profitable.

The 2022 grantees are Apple Creek Farm in Bowdoinham; Bahner Farm in Belmont; Bumbleroot Organic Farm in Windham; Farmer Kev’s Organics in West Gardiner; Ironwood Farm in Albion; and Pumpkin Vine Family Farm in Somerville.

Each farm was awarded $50,000, and will match the grants with $50,000 of their own investments, introducing a total of $100,000 of new funding to grow their businesses. All six farms participated in MFT’s Farming for Wholesale program and worked with business advisors to research and define robust business plans that focused on scaling up for wholesale markets. These grants are competitive and applications undergo an extensive review process by a committee of MFT staff and industry consultants.

In their business plan, Nell Finnigan and Justin Morace of Ironwood Farm, an organic diversified vegetable farm in Albion, planned to scale up their best crops to help them grow sales to a level where they can support full-time, year round employees who are paid equitably, as well support a living wage for the farm owners. Finnigan and Morace plan to do this by using grant funds to construct new vegetable-handling facilities and cold storage.

Pumpkin Vine Family Farm, in Somerville. Anil Roopchand, center, with children Kieran, left, and Sarita. (The Town Line file photo)

Another award recipient was Anil Roopchand and Kelly Payson-Roopchand’s Pumpkin Vine Family Farm, a goat dairy and farmstead creamery, in Somerville. Their business plan identified a need to increase the size of their goat herd, as well as the capacity of their on-farm infrastructure, so their farm can sell products to diverse markets, including expanding their ability to provide wholesale goat milk to other local creameries. As a result, Roopchand and Payson-Roopchand plan to use grant funds to buy new equipment, as well as investing in an expansion of their barn and a manure pit.

Learn more about MFT’s Farming for Wholesale program here: https://www.mainefarmlandtrust.org/farm-viability/workshops/.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Natural resources – Part 1

Brick making operation in Brewer.

by Mary Grow

As the preceding articles have at least partly shown, pre-European inhabitants of the Kennebec Valley lived off the land, using natural resources to provide food, shelter, clothing, transport, decoration and other necessities and frivolities.

The first Europeans, arriving in small (by our standards) ships, had no choice but to imitate the Native Americans. They got food by hunting and fishing, built wooden shelters and grew crops suited to local conditions. However, they quickly branched out in two directions, monetizing many natural resources and adding imported and manufactured items.

Monetizing applied to wild animals, notably the sale of beaver and other furs to European traders; to fish, especially migratory species, a trade being revived in the 21st century; to forests, as land was cleared not only for houses and farms but for a lumber industry that covered much of Maine and continues today; and even to the ice that formed in the Kennebec River every winter and was exported globally (see the article on lumber driving and ice harvesting on the Kennebec in the May 14, 2020, issue of The Town Line).

The Kennebec Valley offered other natural resources that Europeans developed. Linwood Lowden, in his history of Windsor, mentions one of the most common: rocks.

After a would-be farmer in the Kennebec Valley cut down trees, hauled away the wood and dug out the stumps, he was usually left with a field full of rocks. Nuisances, yes, but, Lowden points out, useful: big ones were “drilled, split and removed to be used as foundation stones.” Smaller ones lined cellars and wells or made stone walls as field or property boundaries.

Some, Lowden wrote, were immoveable: the farmer and his friends would dig a hole and bury such problem stones. Smaller ones that continued to surface as the fields were plowed went to the “stone dump,” the otherwise unused area in some corner on every farm.

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The invaluable USM Digital Commons on line includes Mining in Maine: Past, Present, and Future, published in 1990 by Carolyn A. Lepage and others. This source considers granite, limestone, slate, feldspar and iron among Maine’s commercially important minerals.

In 1836, the Maine legislature hired a Bostonian named Charles Jackson to survey the state’s mineral resources. Lepage wrote that he inspected mostly coastal areas and “major river and overland routes.” From this sample, he concluded Maine minerals were worth developing.

By 1836, Lepage wrote, Maine was already an international granite exporter. Hallowell was one of five granite centers (plus Biddeford, Blue Hill, Penobscot Bay and Washington County).

The rest of the 19th century featured continued exploitation of resources, especially along the coast, and a brief period of excitement about gold, silver and other metals after the Civil War (with no indication that the Kennebec Valley was involved). Granite remained important; in 1901, Lepage wrote, the value of granite produced in Maine exceeded that from any other state. Maine’s granite industry slowly declined in the 20th century, especially during and after the Great Depression of 1929-1939.

A Maine Geological Survey website emphasizes slate, used especially for roofing tiles, as another important mineral. This site mentions the “Central Maine Slate Belt” that runs from the Waterville area more than 70 miles northeast to Brownville Junction.

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Another natural resource common enough to be mentioned in many town histories is clay.

Clay, Wikipedia says, is a fine-grained soil that contains clay minerals. Clay minerals, according to the same source, are “hydrous aluminium phyllosilicate minerals, composed of aluminium and silicon ions bonded into tiny, thin plates by interconnecting oxygen and hydroxide ions.”

These minerals are plastic – they stick together and are flexible – when they’re wet, but become rigid when they dry. The material can thus be made into many things, from bricks for walls to dishes for the people inside the walls to eat from.

Wikipedia provides more scientific information, including noting that clay is commonly found where water bodies, like glacial lakes, let the soil settle to the bottom. Since much of Maine was once under a glacier, the prevalence of clay is to be expected.

An on-line source says Maine clay is not particularly suitable for ceramics, but is excellent for brick-making. Residents exploited clay deposits for building materials, for houses and for larger structures like mills and public buildings.

The all-brick Besse Building, in Albion.

In Albion, Ruby Crosby Wiggin’s history described a brickyard on the shore of Fifteen-Mile Stream, across from the Crosby sawmill (built in 1810 and operated into the 1880s). When George Crosby built the Crosby mansion in 1886 (see the June 11, 2020, issue of The Town Line for more on the stream and the Crosbys), he used bricks from the brickyard.

Wiggin listed specific uses: three chimneys, “a large brick oven and water heater in the kitchen,” “a large tank in the cellar which was used for the liming of eggs” and brick paving for the section of the cellar floor used to store potatoes. (Storing fresh eggs in a mixture of water and lime in a cool place was one of several ways to keep them edible before refrigeration.)

The front wall of the wooden ell added to the mansion in 1832 had a brick facing, Wiggin wrote. After part of it collapsed into the driveway some 50 years later, the remaining bricks were replaced with clapboards.

Wiggin mentioned another brickyard at Puddle Dock, in southern Albion, and yet another “along the clay flat beside Alder brook.” From the later, allegedly, came bricks used to build a brick schoolhouse.

This building was the town’s District 4 schoolhouse, shown on the 1856 Kennebec County map on the north side of what is now Route 202, opposite the north end of Quaker Hill Road. Wiggin quoted Henry Taylor’s memory of his father’s description of the building as “a brick schoolhouse with a wooden clock on the outside denoting the time, quarter to nine.”

No one seemed to know what significance, if any, that particular time held. A new District 4 schoolhouse off Quaker Hill Road was built around 1858, Wiggin wrote. She did not say whether any others of Albion’s 20 or so school buildings were brick, nor did she list owners of any of the brickyards.

The 1913 brick Besse building was originally Albion’s high school and now houses its town office (it is briefly mentioned in the Sept. 30, 2021, issue of The Town Line).

In China, various sources say there were at least three brickyards, along the north end of the east basin of China Lake; there might have been seven in the town, according to the bicentennial history.

The history describes how clay was turned into bricks. It was “shoveled into a circular pond; water was added; and the mixture was stirred with a long sweep propelled by a horse walking around the pond.” The resulting goop was put into a “hand-operated moulding machine” that could make six bricks simultaneously. The bricks were sun-dried and then kiln-baked.

Captain Nathaniel Spratt started his brickyard on the stream then called Wiggin Brook, which runs into the west side of China Lake’s east basin a short distance south of China Village, in the 1820s or early 1830s, according to Henry Kingsbury’s Kennebec County history. He ran it for 25 years; the bicentennial history says that in October 1834 he advertised in the China Village newspaper, the Orb, that he had 230,000 bricks for sale. Later owners were Samuel Benson and Zalmuna Washburn. The brickyard went out of business in 1865.

(The bicentennial history explains that two early Wiggin Brooks were named for the Wiggin [or Wiggins] family of early settlers, which included two Nathaniels, father and son, one of whom fathered 25 children. The west-side Wiggin Brook, later Broad’s Brook, flows under Neck Road; Kingsbury associates “Hollis Broad’s widow” with the Spratt brickyard. The other Wiggin Brook, now commonly Meadow Brook [or Hunter Brook or Starkey Brook] is larger and flows into the east side of the muldoon [swamp] at the head of the lake.)

There are numerous handsome brick houses along Neck Road, including one just north of the former Wiggin/Broad’s Brook.

On the east side of the head of the lake, the bicentennial history says Abraham Talbot, a former slave, operated a brickyard. The town comprehensive plan dates it tentatively to the 1790s (see the June 23, 2022, issue of The Town Line for more information on the Talbot family).

Neither Kingsbury nor the bicentennial history gives a name or location for a third brickyard.

One significant brick building in China Village was the double store on the west side of the south end of Main Street, facing east down Causeway Street toward the end of the lake. Built around 1825 by two residents, Alfred Marshall (the northern two-thirds) and Benjamin Libby (the southern third), it housed various stores and intermittently the local Masonic chapter, with the two sections changing ownership separately.

The Masons briefly owned the whole building in 1866, but they promptly sold the north section. In 1919 they reacquired that part; the entire building was the China Village Masonic Hall until 2006, when the organization finished building a new hall on the east side of Main Street and had the old building demolished.

The Fairfield Historical Society’s 1988 bicentennial history says nothing about brickyards, but it and other sources describe many significant buildings made of brick.

One of the earliest was William and Abigail (Chase) Kendall’s house, built in the 1790s at the intersection of Lawrence Avenue and Newhall Street, a block west of the downtown area that was for years called Kendall’s Mills. The history says the building later housed Bunker’s Seminary, founded about 1857 (see the Oct. 21, 2021, issue of “The Town Line); it served “as a Masonic Lodge and as a boarding house” before it was demolished in the 1890s.

An on-line history says that “The United Boxboard and Paper Company, a three story brick mill complex, was established in 1882 at the northern tip of Mill Island.” (Mill Island is the largest and westernmost of the islands in the Kennebec between Fairfield and Benton.)

This mill provided pulp for paper-making at “the company’s other paper mill at Benton Falls and the Hollingsworth and Whitney Company (later Scott Paper) in Winslow.” The northern end of the island is now the town-owned Mill Island Park, designed by Waterville dentist Steve Kierstead, with walking trails built by the town public works crew and remains of the mill foundations visible here and there.

On Aug. 21, 1883, the bicentennial history says, some of wooden commercial buildings on Main Street burned down. The writers surmise that the fire probably “stimulated the building of the first of the brick blocks” on the street.

The most elaborate downtown brick building is the former Gerald Hotel, opened on June 4, 1900. Designed by Lewiston architect William R. Miller (1866-1929) for Fairfield business magnate Amos Gerald (1841-1913), it is described as “a striking Renaissance Revival structure, with a sophistication of design and decoration not normally found in rural Maine.” The building served as a hotel until 1937, according to the history, and was considered “the most elegant, if not the largest” in New England.

After 1937 the building was for many years home to Northern Mattress and Furniture Company. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2013.

The original Lawrence High School, on High Street, opened in September 1907, is yet another significant brick building in Fairfield (see the Oct. 7, 2021, issue of The Town Line). It is now Fairfield Primary School.

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).
Lepage, Carolyn A., Michael E. Foley and Woodrow B. Thompson, Mining in Maine: Past, Present, and Future (1990) found on line.
Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964).

Area residents named to University of New England dean’s list

The following students have been named to the dean’s list for the 2021 fall semester at the University of New England, in Biddeford. Dean’s list students have attained a grade point average of 3.3 or better out of a possible 4.0 at the end of the semester.

Olivia McPherson, of Albion; Valerie Capeless, Zinaida Gregor, Jessica Guerrette, Brooklynn Merrill and Julia White, all of Augusta; Sidney Knox, of Benton; Alden Balboni, Kierra Bumford and Tyler Pellerin, all of Oakland: Sarah Kohl and Olivia Roy, both of Sidney; Julia Steeves and Dawson Turcotte, both of Skowhegan; Lauren Boatright, Noelle Cote and Richard Winn, all of South China; Libby Breznyak and Lauren Pinnette, both of Waterville; and Juliann Lapierre and Justice Picard, both of Winslow.

Area residents named to dean’s list at University of New England

The following students have been named to the dean’s list for the 2021 fall semester at the University of New England, in Biddeford. Dean’s list students have attained a grade point average of 3.3 or better out of a possible 4.0 at the end of the semester.

Olivia McPherson, of Albion; Valerie Capeless, Zinaida Gregor, Jessica Guerrette, Brooklynn Merrill and Julia White, all of Augusta; Sidney Knox, of Benton; Alden Balboni, Kierra Bumford and Tyler Pellerin, all of Oakland: Sarah Kohl and Olivia Roy, both of Sidney; Julia Steeves and Dawson Turcotte, both of Skowhegan; Lauren Boatright, Noelle Cote and Richard Winn, all of South China; Libby Breznyak and Lauren Pinnette, both of Waterville; and Juliann Lapierre and Justice Picard, both of Winslow.

The University of New England is Maine’s largest private university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study-abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of flexible online offerings. In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. We are the state’s top provider of health professionals and home to Maine’s only medical and dental colleges, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care programs, and nationally recognized degree paths in the marine sciences, the natural and social sciences, business, the humanities, and the arts. Visit une.edu

Albion, Palermo, Windsor, China talk merger (2022 April Fool’s story)

by Mary Grow

By 2024, central Maine might have a new town named Alpawich, combining the present towns of Albion, Palermo, Windsor and China.

The new town would have an area of 179.41 square miles, Maine’s largest town by far. Its population will be less than Augusta’s or Waterville’s, however.

The impetus for combining the four towns came from Palermo, as a proposal to merge with China to form a town to be named Chipal. Palermo officials had two motives:

  • The two towns share the village of Branch Mills, the West Branch of the Sheepscot River that runs through the village and Branch Pond north of the village (although China has only a small piece of the west shore); by contract, Palermo residents use China’s transfer station; combination into a single town government would simplify life; and
  • China, coming well before Palermo in the alphabet, beats Palermo in all kinds of lists, from apple sales through grant applications to zoos (neither town has one).

Windsor selectmen then expressed interest. Windsor too shares the Sheepscot, and alphabetically is more disadvantaged than Palermo.

A tri-town Combo Committee formed in the fall considered the issue alphabetically and recommended talking with Albion town officials. When the response was positive, the proposed town became Albchipalwin.

Too long, the members of the now-quadri-town ComboComm said. They proposed, and all four towns’ select boards accepted, Alpawich.

“We don’t mind being on the end,” China’s town manager said. “After all, we’re the largest town, in both area and population. You’ve heard of the tail that wags the dog, right?”

A Palermo Select Board member replied, “Hey, no problem if China thinks they run the show. We’ve shared their transfer station for years without throwing garbage at each other.”

Rather than submit the proposed merger to town meetings on different dates, the ComboComm recommended a referendum vote on state primary election day, June 14, 2022. The ballot question in each town will ask voters to approve the concept of combining with the other three towns and to appropriate a soon-to-be-determined amount to let the ComboComm hire a merger consultant.

The members of the four select boards have agreed that a simple majority in each town will determine whether the town becomes part of Alpawich; and that a membership of two out of four will create the new town (with an appropriately adjusted name).

ComboComm members and the consultant will design the new local government, deciding how many select board members will run Alpawich; how departments will be combined; and how costs of new signs, stationery and similar essentials will be divided.

As the internet replaces in-person interaction, committee members envision a single, central municipal building. The site remains undetermined.

Alpawich Hall would have municipal offices in the center. The educational side wing would be the k-8 school, plus a public library, historical society quarters and a museum, if local organizations express interest in consolidating. So far, they have not.

The medical side wing would house a clinic, a pharmacy, a veterinarian and insurance offices. The rear wing would be home to Alpawich Public Works and the Alpawich Solid Waste Disposal Facility.

For now, the existing transfer stations in China and Windsor would serve Alpawich residents. Fire and rescue units would be left as they are, to avoid increasing response time.

Proponents cite many advantages of consolidation. Combined contracting – with town attorneys and auditors, for example — and purchasing should save money. Their combined road mileage should attract lower bids from paving companies.

Some members of each select board also anticipate a larger town having more clout with state regulators, like the Departments of Environmental Protection and Transportation, according to a source who wished to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak on the matter.

County commissioners in Kennebec and Waldo counties have no idea what to do if Alpawich becomes reality. Albion, China and Windsor are in Kennebec County; Palermo is in Waldo County.

“Mostly the county lines run with town lines, like through Branch Mills,” one Kennebec County commissioner said. “Don’t know’s I’ve heard of a town that was in two counties.”

School administrators see many potential complications in the proposed change. Albion is in School Administrative District #49, based in Fairfield; China is in Regional School Unit #18, based in Oakland; Palermo and Windsor are in Regional School Unit #12, based in Somerville.

The RSU #18 superintendent is the least upset. “If there’s no more China, then there’s no more China in RSU #18,” he said. “They’re the geographic outlier. Talk about dogs and tails – they’re a detached tail.”

Assuming voter approval, the legislature would need to create the new town. Legislatively, since redistricting, China, Palermo and Windsor are in House District #62 and Albion is in District #63. The four towns are in four different state senate districts. “So if our reps pay attention to their voters, that’s four proponents in each house right from the get-go,” a committee member observed.

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IF YOU BELIEVED THIS STORY, YOU ARE AN APRIL FOOL!

Albion voters pass most of 57 articles: Reject marijuana licensing ordinance

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

by Steve Ball

ALBION, ME — On Saturday, March 19, in the Albion Fire and Rescue Building, the town government held its annual town meeting. There were 76 voting residents attending the meeting. Fifty-Seven Articles were decided. At the front of the meeting were the Selectmen; Brent Brockway, Board of Selectmen Chairman; Michael Gardner, 3-year term, and recently appointed Scott Cyrway, 2-year term. The moderator, Richard Thompson, called the meeting to order at ten o’clock.

Nearly all of the articles passed with little discussion or debate. The town’s budget was approved at $1,507,939.21, an increase of roughly $300, 000 from the previous year. Attendees voted in three members to the town’s planning board; Dennis McKeen, 5-year term, and Jana Atwood and Norman Lawrence as alternates to a one-year term. Also, attendees voted in four members to the budget committee; Sonia Nelson and Julie McKenzie were elected to three-year terms and Matthew Dow and William McKenzie III were elected as alternates for a one-year term.

The article concerning funding for town roads and bridges received much discussion. It was agreed by a majority to appropriate $100,000 from taxation, $280,000 from the Albion General Fund, and $50,000 from the State of Maine Local Road Assistance Program toward roads and bridges.

The one article voted down was to enact the Town of Albion Marijuana Establishments Licensing Ordinance. After discussion it was decided to use a written ballot for this article. This article received the most discussion during the annual meeting. The Albion Planning Board had spent several months drafting this ordinance to regulate the licensing of marijuana establishments within the town, but it was clear after discussion that there was a desire for more information. The article was voted down, 51 – against, and 20 – in favor.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Wars – Part 12

The Civil War left China, like Albion and other towns, deeply in debt, paying to outfit the soldiers and compensate their families.

by Mary Grow

Civil War

The United States Civil War, which began when the Confederates shelled Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, and ended with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, had the most impact on Maine, including the central Kennebec Valley, of any 17th or 18th century war.

Nonetheless, your writer’s original plan was to write only a single article about the Civil War. As usual, she found an oversupply of material that she hopes will interest readers as it interested her; but she still limits coverage to two articles, for three reasons.

The first and most important reason to downplay Civil War history is that unlike, say, the War of 1812, the Civil War is already familiar. Citizens who know nothing about the Sept. 13, 1814, bombardment of Fort McHenry (which inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the national anthem) recognize at least the names of battles like Bull Run and Gettysburg. Many people can name at least one Civil War general; few can name one from the War of 1812.

A second point is that numerous excellent histories of the Civil War are readily available, including books specifically about Maine’s role.

And the third reason is that this war is recent enough that some readers undoubtedly have memories of their grandparents telling stories of the generation before them who fought in the Civil War.

Any reader who would like to share a family Civil War story is invited to write it, attach photographs if available and email to townline@townline.org., Att. Roland Hallee. Maximum length is 1,000 words. Submissions will be printed as space permits; the editor reserves the right to reject any article and/or photograph.

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Maine historians agree that the majority of state residents supported President Abraham Lincoln’s decision to fight to preserve the Union. Those who initially disagreed, James W. North wrote in his history of Augusta, found themselves a small enough minority so they either changed their views or moderated their expression.

By 1860, the telegraph was widely used. News of Fort Sumter reached Augusta the same day, followed two days later by Lincoln’s call for 75,000 three-months volunteers, including one regiment from Maine.

On April 22, North wrote, the Maine legislature, in a hastily-called special session, approved enrolling 10,000 soldiers in ten regiments for three years, plus “a State loan of one million dollars.”

Augusta had filled two companies by the end of April. Other Kennebec Valley companies joined them; they camped and drilled on the State House lawn. The Third Regiment started south June 5, 1861; those soldiers were promptly replaced by others from other parts of Maine, volunteers succeeded by men paid bounties and in 1863 by draftees.

North wrote that the first draft in Augusta was held July 14 through 21, 1863, starting two days after the New York City draft riots began, with news arriving hourly. In Augusta’s Meonian Hall, eligible men’s names were drawn from a wheel by a blindfolded man named James M. Meserve, “a democrat of known integrity and fairness, who possessed the general confidence.”

The process began with selection of 40 men from Albion. Augusta followed, and, North wrote, the initial nervousness gave way to “a general feeling of merriment,” with draftees being applauded and congratulated.

Being drafted did not mean serving, North pointed out. Physical standards were strict; out of 3,540 draftees, 1,050 were “rejected by surgeon for physical disability or defects.” It was also legal to pay a substitute or to pay the government to be let off.

Augusta remained a military hub and a supply depot through the war, centered around the State House and Camp Keyes, on Winthrop Hill, at the top of Winthrop Street. There were large hospital buildings on Western Avenue, North wrote, which were so crowded by 1863 that the Camp Keyes barracks were also fitted up as hospital wards. The trotting park between the State House and the river was named Camp Coburn and hosted infantry and cavalry barracks and enlarged stables.

North described the celebratory homecomings for soldiers returning to Augusta when their enlistments were up, like the one in August 1863 for the 24th Regiment. The “bronzed and war-worn” men had come from Port Hudson, Louisiana, up the Mississippi to Cairo and by train to Augusta, a two-week trip. Greeted by cannon-fire, bells, torch-carrying fire companies, a band, state and city officials and “a multitude” of cheering citizens, they marched straight to the State House, enjoyed a meal in the rotunda and “dropped to sleep on the floor around the tables, being too weary to proceed to Camp Keyes.”

Historians describing the effects of the Civil War on smaller Kennebec Valley towns tend to emphasize two points: the human cost and the financial cost.

Ruby Crosby Wiggin found as she researched the history of Albion a record saying that “out of 100 men who went to war from the town of Albion, 45 didn’t come back.” She listed the names of more than 150 Albion soldiers, six identified as lieutenants.

By 1862, Wiggin wrote, the state and many towns offered enlistment bonuses. In addition, towns paid to equip each soldier. Total Albion expenditures, she wrote, were $21,265; the state reimbursed the town $8,033.33.

Wiggin concluded, “No wonder the town was heavily in debt at the close of the Civil War.”

The China bicentennial history says almost 300 men from that town served in Civil War units. The author quoted from the 1863 school report that said attendance in one district school was unusually low, “the large boys having gone to the war.”

The Civil War left China, like Albion and other towns, deeply in debt. The China history says when the State of Maine began tallying municipal costs and offering compensation in 1868, China had paid $47,735.34 to provide soldiers. The state repayment was $12,708.33, and town meetings were still dealing with interest payments and debt repayments into the latter half of the 1870s.

China town meetings during the war were mostly about meeting enlistment quotas, and, the history writer implied, by 1864 voters were tired of the topic. In July and again in December 1864, they delegated filling the quota to their select board.

When the late-1864 quota had not been filled by February 1865, voters were explicit; the history writer said they agreed to “sustain the Selectmen in any measures they may take in filling the quota of this town.”

The Fairfield historians who wrote the town’s 1988 bicentennial history found the list of Civil War soldiers too long to include in their book and noted that the names are on the monument in the Veterans Memorial Park and in the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) record books in the public library across Lawrence Avenue from the park.

Of Larone, the northernmost and likely the smallest of the seven villages that made up the Town of Fairfield for part of the 19th century, the history says, “Larone furnished her full quota of ‘boys in blue’. These averaged one for every family, three-fifths were destined never to see their homes again.”

Millard Howard, in his Palermo history, wrote that “The Civil War was by far the most traumatic experience this town ever experienced.” Of an 1860 population of 1,372, 46 men, “or one out of every 30 inhabitants,” died between 1861 and 1865.

Looking back from the year 2015, Howard wrote somberly, “No other war can remotely compare with it.”

He listed the names of the dead, with ages and causes of death where known. The youngest were 18, the oldest 44. More than half, 26, died of disease rather than wounds; Augustus Worthing, age 31, starved to death in Salisbury prison, in North Carolina.

Sidney voters spent a lot of town meetings in the 1860s talking about the war, according to Alice Hammond’s town history. As early as 1861, they approved abating taxes for volunteers.

As the war went on, voters authorized aid for volunteers’ families and monetary inducements to enlist for residents and non-residents, with preference given to residents. At an 1863 special meeting, they authorized selectmen to borrow money as needed “to aid families of volunteers.”

Hammond noted that Sidney was debt-free before the war, “but in 1865 it issued bonds for $24,000, a debt from which it recovered very slowly.”

Alma Pierce Robbins found from military records that 410 men from Vassalboro enlisted for Civil War service. From census records, she listed the 1860 population as 3,181.

As in other municipalities, voters approved wartime expenses. Robbins wrote that $7,900 was appropriated for bounties and aid to soldiers’ families in 1861. The comparable 1863 figure was $16,900. Perhaps for contrast, she added the 1864 cost of the new bridge at North Vassalboro (presumably over Outlet Stream): $1,057.82 (plus an 1867 appropriation of $418.62).

In Waterville, General Isaac Sparrow Bangs wrote in his chapter on military history in Reverend Edwin Carey Whittemore’s 1902 centennial history, recruiting offices opened soon after the news of Fort Sumter. A Waterville College student named Charles A. Henrickson was the first to enroll, and, Bangs wrote, his example “proved so irresistibly contagious at the college that the classes and recitations were broken up” and the college temporarily closed.

Henrickson was captured at the Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861. He survived the war; later in the Waterville history, Chas. A. Henrickson is listed among charter members of the Waterville Savings Bank, organized in 1869.

These Waterville soldiers became companies G and H in the 3rd Maine Infantry, Bangs wrote. After drilling in Waterville, they went to Augusta and were put under the command of regimental Colonel Oliver O. Howard. On June 5, Howard was ordered to Washington, “carrying with him, as Waterville’s first contingent, seventy-four of her boys into the maelstrom of war.”

Bangs spent years verifying the names of 421 men who either enlisted from Waterville or were Waterville natives who enlisted elsewhere. The names are included in Whittemore’s history.

Bangs added that the Maine Adjutant-General’s report says Waterville provided 525 soldiers. He offered several explanations for the discrepancy, pointing out the difficulties of accurate record-keeping.

Waterville paid $67,715 in enlistment bounties, Bangs wrote. Henry Kingsbury, in his history of Kennebec County, put the figure at $68,016 and said the state reimbursement was $19,888.33.

Linwood Lowden wrote in the history of Windsor that more than one-third of Windsor men aged 17 to 50 fought in the Civil War, most of them in the19th and 21st Maine infantry regiments.

Like other towns, Windsor paid bonuses to enlistees and, Lowden wrote, $2,663.87 “in aid to soldiers’ families…from 1862 through 1866.” He added that Windsor first went into debt during these years.

Camp Keyes, Augusta

A history of Camp Keyes found on-line says that the 70-acre site on top of Winthrop Hill, on the west side of Augusta, had been used as, and called, “the muster field” since before Maine became a state in 1820. It was still available, although the militia had become less significant, when the Civil War broke out.

On Aug. 20, 1862, Maine Adjutant General John L. Hodsdon designated the field one of Maine’s three official “rendezvous areas” for militia and volunteers and named it Camp E. D. Keyes, in honor of Major-General Erasmus D. Keyes, a Massachusetts native who moved to Kennebec County (town unspecified on line) as a young man. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1832 and fought in the Civil War until 1863, when a superior removed him from command, claiming he lacked aggressiveness.

(The other two Maine rendezvous areas were Camp Abraham Lincoln, in Portland, and Camp John Pope [honoring General John Pope from Kentucky], in Bangor.)

Thousands of Civil War soldiers from Maine passed through Camp Keyes. It also housed Maine’s only federal military hospital, named Cony Hospital in honor of Governor Samuel Cony.

After the war, the site remained a militia training ground. The State of Maine bought it in 1888. In 1893 the militia became the National Guard and continued to use the training ground, with Guard headquarters in the Capitol building until 1938.

The on-line site gives an undated description: “Small buildings were constructed of plywood for mess halls, kitchens, latrines, store houses, and lodging for senior military officers. Companies pitched their tents on pads that had been built.”

Main sources

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).
Lowden, Linwood H., good Land & fine Contrey but Poor roads a history of Windsor, Maine (1993).
Marriner, Ernest, Kennebec Yesterdays (1954).
North, James W., The History of Augusta (1870).
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.

ALBION: Meeting held to decide on way forward for Albion school

A group of approximately 40 Albion residents listen to a presentation by Kara Kugelmeyer (left and below). (photo by Steve Ball)

by Steve Ball

ALBION, ME — A group of Albion residents have been working to figure out what options are available to town residents in light of the recent decision by the MSAD #49 School Board to consolidate the elementary schools of Clinton, Benton and Albion. Consolidation would result in closing the Albion school. Closure of the town’s school is yet another loss for Albion and could have, as moderators said during this meeting, long term consequences for the town.

The group, led by residents Kara Kugelmeyer and Billie Jo Brown-Woods, moderated an information session for interested people in Albion following the annual town meeting on Saturday, March 19, in the town’s fire and rescue building.

The MSAD #49 School Board, the primary decision making body for the district, is made up of members from the towns of Fairfield, Clinton, Benton and Albion. Board members come from member towns with the numbers of voting members being allocated according to population. This results in the MSAD #49 board having two members from Albion and Benton, three members from Clinton and six members from Fairfield.

As explained, it has not been uncommon for small towns across the State of Maine to suffer school closures resulting from cost cutting efforts and attempts to improve administrative efficiencies in schools. These actions have generally been done to reduce the tax burden for an area or to accommodate shrinking student populations. The consequences of a school closure, Kugelmeyer explained, on small towns like Albion, can be stark and have long term impacts on the town’s economic viability and sense of community.

Kugelmeyer and Brown-Woods led the information session for over 40 interested town residents during which they laid out options for the town with possible consequences for each option. It was clear from the number of residents attending the voluntary meeting and the emotion expressed during the session that, for many, a closure of the town’s school would mark a potentially damaging inflection point in Albion’s history from which the town might not be able to recover.

The new consolidated school will be built in Benton, across from the current Benton Elementary School. Kugelmeyer and Brown-Woods stressed that not all aspects of the new school would be bad. There would be improved facilities and a greater number of school activity offerings for students, more than what Albion’s school offers.

Closing the Albion school and sending students to the new school, however, would not necessarily result in cost or tax savings to the residents of Albion, according to Kugelmeyer. Additionally, students would possibly have up to a two hour bus ride per day. Kugelmeyer cited studies looking at other small towns that have experienced school closures showing that the closer a home is to a school, the higher the home value, and the farther away, the lower home values tend to be. “Towns soon become a less desirable destination for new families looking to settle,” Kugelmeyer expressed. All of this affects the tax base for a town.

Kugelmeyer stressed the options available to the residents of Albion are few, but any action must be done soon. An option would be to vote “No” on the referendum to close the Albion and Clinton schools being put forward in November. While this is the easiest option for Albion residents, for the referendum to fail would require that a majority of voters of Fairfield, Benton, Clinton and Albion vote “No”. This would not mean, Kugelmeyer added, that the MSAD #49 board would bring this referendum up again. She commented that it is unlikely this referendum will fail as it largely benefits the towns of Fairfield and Benton, where the new school would be built.

The second option would be to withdraw from the MSAD #49 District. While this course would require more work by the town and its residents, this option, according to Kugelmeyer, would potentially be in the best long-term interest of Albion residents. The Withdrawing Option could mean saving the Albion School or establishing Albion as a “School Choice” town, allowing Albion students to attend any school in the local area, including MSAD #49 for all grades.

It was clear from the discussion by the moderators and the audience that the School Choice option appeared most appealing. But this would mean the town must form a committee to withdraw from the MSAD #49 District, hire a lawyer, draft a Withdrawal Agreement, and begin the process to withdraw within the next month.

While nothing was voted on or positively decided during this information session, it was clear the Town of Albion is quickly coming to a point of a decision that could mean the closure of the Albion school.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Wars – Part 11

Sir John Harvey

by Mary Grow

Aroostook War

Many historians don’t take the Aroostook War seriously. Several sources call it the Pork and Beans War; Wikipedia says the nickname is based on either the local lumbermen’s or the British soldiers’ staple food.

Some of the local histories cited earlier in this series don’t even mention the war. Alma Pierce Robbins gave it one dismissive sentence in her history of Vassalboro: “The ‘Aroostook War’ of 1839 made no impression upon official Vassalboro, perhaps because it proved to be ‘no war’.”

At the time, though, according to other historians, like James North and Louis Hatch, it was taken seriously by prominent people on both sides, discussed in the United States Congress and the British Parliament. Hatch wrote indignantly that the men who thought they would have to fight deserve recognition:

“Patriotic sons of the Pine Tree State left their homes and firesides in the most inclement season known to our rigorous climate and marched through the deep snows of a wilderness, two hundred miles, to defend our frontier from foreign invasion, when the Federal government was needlessly procrastinating and turning a deaf ear to the cries of suffering and oppressed pioneers in the upper St. John valley.”

The Aroostook War was a step in the boundary dispute between the northeastern United States and eastern Canada that was summarized in The Town Line, March 10, 2022, issue. At issue were about 12,000 sparsely-inhabited square miles claimed by both countries. After years of diplomatic disagreement and competing claims on the ground, both sides sent armed forces to the St. John Valley.

North and Hatch said one early precipitating action was the June 1837 arrest of Mada­waska census-taker Ebe­nezer S. Gree­l­ey, who was acting under authority of the Penob­scot County Com­mis­sioners, by New Bruns­wick Gover­nor Sir John Harvey.

In August, recently-elected President Martin Van Buren obtained Greeley’s release. Greeley finished the census.

However, Canadian loggers continued to cut timber in American-claimed woods. An on-line DownEast magazine article by Will Grunewald lists two other of the region’s assets: the Aroostook River basin had valuable minerals and good farmland the Americans could use, and the British wanted to maintain a land connection between Halifax on the coast and Québec.

On Jan. 24, 1839, North wrote, the Maine legislature ordered 200 men under Penobscot County Sheriff Hastings Strickland to go north to “arrest the depredators and secure the cut timber.” Hatch added that the legislature allocated $10,000 for the expedition.

Some of the group were arrested and jailed in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Hatch continued. Later in the month, he wrote, Americans arrested two Canadians and brought them to Bangor, where they were not sent to jail but “held in custody in the Bangor House and fared sumptuously.”

The trespassers had prepared themselves with “arms forcibly taken from the government stores in Woodstock,” North said. But Strickland’s troops brought a brass six-pound cannon that outgunned them in an initial encounter.

An on-line New England Historical Society article gives a livelier account, crediting the Canadians’ defeat to an attack by a black bear. The Cana­dians shot the bear – another on-line site calls it the only combat fatality in the whole war. The gunshots sent the two sets of armed men fleeing in opposite directions.

The Canadians recovered, and on Feb. 12 again captured some Americans. After an impressive two days of hard riding, Strickland reported to Augusta.

Gov. John Fairfield

Maine Governor John Fairfield asked New Brunswick officials if they supported the locals. Harvey ordered the trespassers to put back the arms they’d stolen; but he also promised to resist “any hostile invasion” and put his militia on stand-by.

Harvey’s claim of territorial jurisdiction and the Americans’ arrest of a British official led to further troop mobilizations on both sides. The Maine legislature promptly appropriated $800,000 and drafted 10,343 Maine militia.

Historian Ernest Marriner wrote in Remembered Maine that the draft “was scarcely necessary because volunteers poured in from all the towns.”

North wrote that one 50-man company “marched all the way from Augusta to the Aroostook, with the exception of a short ride from Bangor to Oldtown over the railroad.”

More than 2,000 Maine troops went to Aroostook, North wrote, and “The bustle of arrival, equipment and departure of troops, at Augusta, wore a decidedly warlike aspect.” General Isaac Bangs, in Edwin Carey Whitte­more’s Water­ville history, implied that all 10,000 men went north for three months, and emphasized the snow they encountered. Several sources commented on the inadequacy of the uniforms given them.

Gen. Isaac Bangs

Public opinion was strongly with the troops. Bangs called the populace “aroused” and the legislature “indignant.” The outrage, the New England Hist­orical So­ci­­ety site says, was “led, as usual, by the press.” The writer quoted from a belligerent editorial and said war correspondents accompanied the militiamen.

On the national level, Congress appropriated $10 million and authorized 50,000 soldiers. The New England Historical Society article says both sides built frontier forts, “sometimes within sight of each other.”

United States Secretary of State, John Forsyth, and British Minister in Washington, Henry Stephen Fox, proposed a mutual stand-down, North wrote. Harvey was willing, Fairfield and the Maine legislature were not. About the same time, however, prisoners were paroled on both sides.

On March 5 or 6, 1839 (sources differ), Major-General Winfield Scott, United States Army, and his entourage arrived in Augusta. Their assignment, quoted by several writers, was “maintaining the peace and safety of the entire northern and eastern frontiers.”

Scott asked Harvey, a friend since 1812, to guarantee no more use of military force against Americans in the area, and Fairfield to guarantee the same in regard to Canadians. Harvey agreed again on March 23. Fairfield, whether tired of quarreling or overawed by Scott (one source says the general stood six and a half feet tall), accepted on March 25. The Maine troops went home, except for a few allowed to remain to repel trespassers.

The New England Historical Society article lists two human casualties of the war, neither on the battlefield. A farmer was accidentally shot during militia firing practice, and a soldier died of measles.

This section of the border between the United States and Canada was settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, negotiated by Secretary of State Daniel Webster and British Envoy Alexander Baring, the first Lord Ashburton. It was signed August 9, 1842, and after exchange of ratifications took effect Nov. 10, 1842.

* * * * * *

Ruby Crosby Wiggin named two Albion men who participated in the Aroostook War in her history of that town.

One was Rev. Joseph Cammet Lovejoy (1805 – 1871), brother of abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy. A document titled “Historical Sketch and Roster of the Aristook [sic] War” said that he served as a chaplain from Feb. 23 to April 25, 1839, enrolling in Augusta and being discharged in Bangor.

Wiggin’s other story (previously summarized in the Sept. 30, 2021, issue of The Town Line) is that of Wayne (Maine) native J. Belden Besse, born Oct. 15, 1820. Wiggin said by 1839 he was “a soldier stationed in that [Aroostook] County).”

Besse caught typhoid and after he recovered came back south alone, on foot. He stopped in Albion and later married tanner Lewis Hopkins’ daughter Isabelle and founded a locally-influential family.

A Fairfield Historical Society list found on line names 17 men from Fairfield, and a possible eighteenth, who served in the Aroostook War. One was Colonel Nathan Fowler, described in the Fairfield bicentennial history as owner of the 19th-century hotel at Nye’s Corner, which was also the stage stop and home of the post office.

Bangs’ chapter in the Waterville history similarly lists 60 men from Waterville and Fairfield who went north in Captain Samuel Burrill’s company, serving from Feb. 25 to April 19, 1839.

Waterville historian and Colby College Dean Ernest C. Marriner seems to have first met the Aroostook War through the diary of William Bryant, who came to the Nye’s Corner village, in Fairfield, in 1817. In his 1954 Kennebec Yesterdays, Marriner wrote that like many other diarists, Bryant focused on family and local events, but he paid brief attention to the northern boundary in February 1839.

Marriner said Bryant wrote of 200 men already gone north “to fight off trespassers,” another 1,500 started on the way and 8,000 more to be drafted to follow.

The diarist then reported that his wife was mending their oldest son Cyrus’s stockings “and washing them with tears. But Cyrus has returned home and got clear of the draft this time.”

This account seems to have piqued Marriner’s interest, because his 1957 Remembered Maine gives the Aroostook War a full chapter. He began semi-seriously:

“Maine once fought a war in which no one was killed and no battery fired a shot, although snipers took pot shots at the enemy without inflicting serious damage. Today it seems unthinkable that a single state of the Federal Union should make war against a foreign nation, but that is just what the State of Maine did….”

After recapping the history of the events in northern Maine, Marriner turned to General Scott’s initial discussion with Governor Fairfield. According to Marriner, Scott assured Fairfield that if he wanted a war, Maine people would give him one “fast and hot enough”; if Fairfield wanted peace, Scott would try, with “no assurance of success.”

Fairfield opted for “peace with honor” or “peace without dishonor.” In Marriner’s opinion, Scott got it for him.

Marriner then asked whether Fairfield’s political opponents, who blamed the governor for the war and labeled it “Fairfield’s Farce,” had a valid point. In hindsight, he concluded, they did not. He quoted another Maine historian who credited Fairfield with “forethought,” “wisdom” and “statesmanship.”

General Winfield Scott

Winfield Scott (June 13, 1786 – May 29, 1866) was born on a plantation near Petersburg, Virginia, and began a career as a lawyer. By 1807, he was a cavalry corporal in the Virginia militia. When President Thomas Jefferson expanded the national army, Scott used a friend’s influence to become a light artillery captain in May 1808.

Gen. Winfield Scott

Wikipedia describes his first four years as rocky, to say the least. He quarreled with his commander, was court-martialed for that and for a discrepancy in his recruiting allowance (blamed on careless record-keeping, not theft) and in 1810 was suspended for a year and fought a duel.

He used his suspension to practice law and study “military tactics and strategy,” and rejoined the army in time to become lieutenant-colonel of an artillery unit sent to Canada in the War of 1812.

Briefly a British prisoner in the fall of 1812 (when he and then Colonel John Harvey became friends), Scott served with distinction through the rest of the war. He was promoted to major general and awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor.

After varied assignments, including the 1839 peace-making mission to Maine, in 1841 Scott was made a major general and commander-in-chief of the United States Army. He led the successful invasion of Mexico in the Mexican-American War.

By the time Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated March 4, 1861, several Southern states had already seceded from the United States. Lincoln sent a messenger to ask if the Virginia-born general would ensure his safety during the inauguration.

Wikipedia quotes Scott’s reply proposing to put cannons at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue if necessary and “if any of the Maryland or Virginia gentlemen who have become so threatening and troublesome show their heads or even venture to raise a finger, I shall blow them to hell.”

Scott was by then in his seventies, too old for active command, and Lincoln did not always heed his advice. He resigned his command in October 1861 and died four and a half years later in West Point, New York, where he is buried.

Main sources

Fairfield Historical Society, Fairfield, Maine 1788-1988 (1988).
Hatch, Louis Clinton, ed., Maine: A History 1919 ((facsimile, 1974).
Marriner, Ernest, Kennebec Yesterdays (1954).
Marriner, Ernest, Remembered Maine (1957).
North, James W., The History of Augusta (1870).
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.