by Mary Grow

Just one more article from those old China town reports before your writer forwards them toward a permanent home. It’s about time other towns had a few paragraphs, don’t you think?

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The warrant for the March 19, 1900, China town meeting, printed at the end of the 1899-1900 town report, had 27 articles. The first 14 were elections of town officials (done in a single article in March 1897, readers may remember from last week). Selectmen, town clerk, treasurer and others were unquestioned, but voters decided whether to elect a superintendent of schools or a road commissioner before choosing someone for either position. One or both of these positions remained optional for a few more years.

Another half-dozen articles began “To see what sum of money” voters would raise and appropriate for town functions, like road and bridge maintenance, support of the poor and schools. (This wording, in 2025, gives voters total freedom to raise any amount a majority agrees on.)

In a copy of the town report for the year ending Feb. 20, 1906, someone had penciled in amounts raised under appropriations articles. He wrote: $2,500, for road repairs and “breaking down of snow”; another $400 for state roads, with the state to refund half; $500 to support the poor; $700 for miscellaneous expenses.

There is no amount written for support of schools. In four subsequent articles, the anonymous recorder said voters approved $250 for “maintaining a free High School” (same amount as in the just-ended 1905-1906 year, when the state matched it); $150 to buy textbooks (in 1905-1906, a $200 appropriation was overdrawn by $126.02); $150 to repair school buildings (1905-1906’s $50 had not covered either that year’s expenditures or a prior deficit, and the account was overdrawn by $159.06, or more than the appropriation); and $25 for “writing books and other necessary school supplies” (1905-1906’s $25 was overspent by $14.87).

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Back to the March 19, 1900, warrant: the last article asked if voters would accept a $500 gift from Thomas Dinsmore, “the interest of said fund to be used yearly for the benefit of deserving poor.” There is no evidence of the fund in the town report for the 1900-1901 fiscal year.

However, in the report for the year ending Feb. 27, 1911, China’s resources include $500 in the Dinsmore Fund for Indigent Persons. This fund, at $500 or more, appears in reports your writer has through 1941.

(Thomas Dinsmore [1824 – 1916] was a leading citizen of Branch Mills [the village divided between eastern China and western Palermo], a noted philanthropist, founder of Palermo’s Dinsmore Library, donor of small bank accounts to local babies. See below for another gift.)

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By March 17, 1902, voters were presented with 30 articles. The first 14 let them choose town officers, starting with the meeting moderator; others asked for money for town functions.

Art. 25 asked if voters would give each of China’s G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) posts $10, “to help pay memorial expenses.” The China bicentennial history says the posts were James P. Jones, No. 106, in South China, and Amos J. Billings, No. 112, in China Village.

The China town report for the 1905-1906 year has two new headings in the financial section. The first is labeled “G.A.R.,” and represents a town appropriation of $25 (an amount that remained unchanged into at least the 1920s), divided equally between the two posts.

The second new 1905-06 financial account is for the Dinsmore Norton Cemetery Fund, showing a $91 bank deposit, to which was added $1.59 in interest on Jan. 6, 1906, and from which was subtracted a $1.50 payment to E. W. Haskell (no reason given).

The selectmen’s report for the previous year, ending March 10, 1905, said, “The Thomas Dinsmore ‘Norton Cemetery Fund’ has been received by the town and a small percent. expended, the remainder placed on interest.”

This fund started with voters’ approval at the March 14, 1904, annual town meeting of an article asking them to accept $100 from Dinsmore; for the selectmen to spend half of it “in repairing the burying ground on the margin of China Lake at Norton’s Corner, so-called, the coming season”; and for the rest to remain in a fund to be used to repair the cemetery “at the end of each succeeding decade.”

No Norton Cemetery is listed in the China bicentennial history index, or in either China or Palermo on relevant websites. Gregory Parker, of Albion-based Set in Stone, maintains many of Palermo’s cemeteries, and Palermo Historical Society President Will Armstrong asked him about it.

Parker found early 1800s Norton headstones in China’s Lakeshore Cemetery, which is between Lakeview Drive and the east shore of China Lake, almost opposite the west end of Alder Park Road. Moreover, he found a reference to the Alder Park Road intersection with Lakeview Drive being called Norton’s Corner.

The China bicentennial history lists Norton family members in Lakeshore Cemetery and confirms Dinsmore’s connection, without mentioning a name change or explaining why Dinsmore was interested. It adds: “Years ago cows grazed among the graves and kept the bushes down, but people thought this was disrespectful and the cemetery was fenced.”

The cemetery fund stood at $186.17 on Feb. 14, 1931, and was down to $57.81 by Feb. 16, 1932, after the decennial maintenance work was done.

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For years, town reports’ highway accounts listed by name people paid for work, supplies or both. For example, in 1883-84 the selectmen named 22 men paid for road work and/or supplies, some for building bridges and causeways, one for “blasting powder,” one for “breaking snow winter 1882-83” ($49.42).

The 31 men named in the 1886-1887 list each had his contribution described: “labor with road machine,” “rebuilding bridge,” “bridge plank,” “snow scraper” (three men earned a total of $6.86) and, most commonly, “labor on road.”

The report for the year ending March 7, 1901, had a total bill of $1,950.34 for road work and supplies in the summer of 1900, distributed among nine pages of payees’ names, totaling about 300 (with duplicates).

The names are not in alphabetical order; some seem to be grouped together in families. The lowest payments were 50 cents, and at least three-quarters were under $10. The highest was $81.30 to E. A. Dudley, for an unspecified contribution.

Frank Sproul got $22.98 for “plank and material” and another $30, unspecified; Leon Herbert received $52.62 for “plank.” Two men provided a “watering place”; A. R. Ward’s cost the town $1.50, H. L. Pinkham’s $3.

By the summer of 1903, the number of names was down to seven pages, around 235 names. The 1905-1906 report listed only about 85 names, covering three pages. The lowest payments were 35 cents to W. F. Hawes, for freight, and 60 cents to Arnold Small, reason unspecified.

In 1910-1911, the list was again seven pages, and the smallest payments were still under a dollar.

Some of the people paid for road work were women. None of their contributions was described. In 1899-1900, Lora E. Kellar was paid $1.55 and Mrs. Farnsworth $3.50; in 1900-1901, Eula Worthing got two separate payments of 50 cents each and Sarah Cotton was paid $2.00; in 1904-1905, Mrs. F. D. Robbins earned $1.25 and Mrs. E. M. Dowe $10.12.

A $400 state contribution to road work was mentioned for the first time in the report for the year ending March 4, 1904. The selectmen used it for “permanent roads,” apparently for short major reconstruction projects. The work needed to be approved by the county commissioners.

In 1903-1904 the selectmen described four projects in detail, starting with “The hill at Reed Farris’ on the Lake road was opened and filled with rock, a distance of thirty rods [less than one-tenth of a mile] long with a broad stone culvert at the foot….” By Feb. 20, 1906, the report was more summary: 55 rods [less than two-tenths of a mile] in northern China and 80 rods [a quarter-mile] in southern China had been treated similarly.

For a couple years early in the 20th century, weather was hard on roads, and on the road budget.

In March, 1903, the selectmen said a freshet in December, 1901, damaged hills and bridges, including destroying the Weeks Mills bridge; it had been rebuilt the summer of 1902. Other bridges needed work that the selectmen couldn’t order done “owing to our appropriation.”

The selectmen’s report for the year ending March 4, 1904, explained that the road appropriation was overspent because of “high water in the spring” (presumably the spring of 1903). “The bridge at China village was rebuilt new; the two bridges at Branch Mills replanked and railed, and the bridge at Sproul’s Mill repaired.”

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A question not explored last week was who funded China’s town government. Local taxpayers, of course; and state contributions to schools appear in the 1860s town reports and thereafter. There are occasionally interesting other contributors, mostly minor.

In the 1860-61 report, the list of resources includes “Cash of J. McCorrison,” in the amount of $198.40. The selectmen noted they had filed suit against him and his bondsmen.

The China bicentennial history expands on the story, starting with the selectmen’s concern about unpaid bills, some dating back a decade; and unpaid taxes; and especially about former tax collector Joseph McCorrison, who owed $2,792.41 in taxes collected and not turned over to the town.

Hence the lawsuit. By the spring of 1862, the amount was down to $2,594.01; March 1862 town meeting voters agreed to accept $1,200, plus interest, to be paid by September, 1863.

The 1863-1864 report says McCorrison had paid $250 in cash and he and his bondsmen owed $1,130. By March 10, 1865, he had paid another $617, and owed $333. The March 8, 1866, list of resources includes “Cash in hand of J. McCorrison, 333.00.”

Also on the list of China’s 1860-1861 resources was $70 from “Profits on Liquor.” A similar item in the 1862-1863 accounts read $47 from “Profits on liquors sold by Agent.” Liquor sales provided $40 in 1863-1864; after that, they are not listed in the town’s resources.

China collected fees for dog licenses, in the incomplete series of reports your writer has, in 1877-1878: $69.00, with no record of what the fee was or how many dogs were licensed. The item disappeared for some years; in the 1899-1900 report, however, “Refunded dog licenses” brought in $43.44, again without explanation. Dog license refunds continued to be recorded as income in future reports.

The selectmen’s report for 1882 lists $2 from John Taylor “for license,” unspecified. In 1884, D. (Dana) C. Hanson (a selectman in 1881 and 1882) paid the same amount for another “license.”

A “Telegraph tax” is listed in 1887’s resources. It brought in $3.65 that year; in 1890, $2.48.

Selectmen sometimes sold old schoolhouses. In 1900 or early 1901, Levi Hallowell bought one for $8, and D. (David?) LeMere bought another for $12.

In School Superintendent Gustavus J. Nelson’s March 6, 1901, report, he called for school consolidation in response to a steady decline in the number of students. (The topic of China’s 18th and early 19th century schools deserves further exploration.)

In 1904-1905, the town got $25 for the Dutton schoolhouse and $30 for the Chadwick Hill building.

The first recorded payment from the State of Maine for “damage to sheep” is in the 1901-1902 report – the town got $20. The next year, it was $74; in 1903-1904, $91; in 1904-1905, only $20; no record for the year that ended Feb. 20, 1906. The item reappears in the 1911 report, $5 from 1909.

The state porcupine bounty brought in $14 in 1904 (recorded in the 1905-1906 report).

Neither sheep nor porcupines appear in the lists of town resources in the next few years. But the report for 1907-1908 records $31 from the state for “damage by dogs” and the next year shows $252.60 “Received from State dog damage” – before that item disappears.

John Libbey

In the Dec. 18, 2025, article in this series, your writer noted that three China selectmen elected in March, 1864, did not list their names in the town report for the year 1864-1865. She found information elsewhere on Ambrose Abbott and Nathan Redlon, but none on John Libbey or Libby, and so reported.

Fortunately, Joyce and Maurice Anderson, from Oakland, saw the incomplete story and realized they, as descendants of the Libby/Libbey family, had records that helped fill the gap. In their collection is an 1882 book by Charles T. Libby, titled “The Libby Family In America (1602 – 1881)”; and from it, they copied:

“John Libby, born in Albion, 17 Sept. 1806; married 26 Nov. 1835 Hannah Libby…. He was a farmer and lumberman. Immediately after his marriage he moved to Houlton, where he lived until March 1849, when he moved back to Albion and after seven years settled in China Me. In March 1865 he sold his farm there and bought the Capt. John Winslow farm, in Albion, where he now resides.”

The Andersons concluded that this John Libby lived on a China farm from 1856 to 1865, and could plausibly have been elected a selectman in 1864.

The Find a Grave website provides additional information about the John Libbey (this source shows grave markers with the Libbey spelling, in Albion’s Maple Grove cemetery) who was born in 1806 in Albion. It says he was the son of Ebenezer Libby Libbey (1779 – 1857) and Hannah Stevens Smiley Libby (1784 – 1863); names his five brothers and three sisters, born between 1805 and 1830 (the youngest sister was named Hannah); lists the three sons and three daughters he and his wife Hannah had between 1838 and 1849; and says he died March 10, 1883, and his widow, who was born Dec. 26, 1817, died July 7, 1889.

Main sources

China town reports
Grow, Mary M., China Maine Bicentennial History including 1984 revisions (1984)

Websites, miscellaneous.

by Mary Grow

Following are more excerpts from an incomplete collection of China’s town reports, dating from the mid-1850s through most of the 20th century. This week’s selections will illustrate more of the changes in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Thanks to John Glowa, of China, and Phil Dow, of Albion, for providing these sources of information.

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A separate account for “Militia” appears in the financial sections of the 1863 and 1864 town reports. The cost reported March 10, 1863, was $14,556.64, almost twice the town’s available resources. The selectmen borrowed money.

As of March, 1864, the selectmen had borrowed more money to fill China’s volunteer quota per President Abraham Lincoln’s Oct. 17, 1863, call, a total of $11, 252.57.

Most of this money, the bicentennial history says, paid bounties to men who enlisted. Voters at several special town meetings argued over details. Ultimately, the history says, China paid $47,735.34 “to provide Civil War soldiers.” After the state began repaying towns in 1868, China got $12,708.33 back.

The militia account disappeared as of the 1864-1865 report. As summarized previously (see the Dec. 11 issue of “The Town Line”), the debt did not disappear for more than a decade.

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China’s Board of Health appears in the 1889-1890 report, costing $25.25 for Chairman E. M. Dowe, Secretary G. J. (Dr. Gustavus Judson) Nelson and member C. E. Dunton. The board’s report is on the very last page of the town report, dated – your writer hopes misdated – Feb. 27, 1880 (not 1890).

The China bicentennial history says the board was created two years earlier (see box). The 1890 report is identified as the third annual, and reports the greatest “prevalence of infectious diseases” since the board was organized. Turns out there were two diseases: the diphtheria at the Maine Insane Hospital in Augusta never spread into China, but a Branch Mills family had two cases of typhoid fever and early in February (1890, presumably, since it was on-going when the report was written) another family had at least one case of scarlet fever.

The report explained that since typhoid fever isn’t air-borne, that house was not quarantined. The other house was, and the school in that district was closed.

The report ended optimistically: medicine was progressing, and “it does not seem impossible to conceive that the time may come when the cause of every contagious disease may be known, and with this knowledge may come absolute protection from every infectious disease.”

Nelson’s report for 1894-1895, submitted March 2, 1895, describes a year with four “outbreaks of infectious diseases,” each “confined to the house in which it originated.” None was fatal.

The first was in mid-June, 1894, scarlet fever (“one of the most dangerous and one of the most contagious” diseases with which the board dealt) on Stanley Hill, in northwestern China. The house was immediately quarantined, and no one else was infected.

In October, in Dr. Nelson’s practice (probably in the China Village area in northern China), two people in one household got diphtheria. In November, there was another case in Dr. B. N. Johnstone’s practice, in extreme southern China.

In January, 1895, there was a third diphtheria outbreak in Dr. D. A. Ridley’s practice in Branch Mills, in eastern China. Nelson reported the disease took hold “in a large family in indigent circumstances,” and since segregating the sick people was impossible, nine people caught it; only two “nursing infants” didn’t.

Nelson called diphtheria “one of the most dreaded diseases of modern times.” He commented that although it is transmitted directly between people and can be carried on infected clothing, it also is generated by “refuse matter, damp, foul air and decaying vegetable and animal matter.”

(Contemporary on-line sources primarily discuss transmission from an infected person to others, and emphasize that diphtheria is almost non-existent in countries where vaccination is common. Your writer found one implied reference to Nelson’s list of causes: the Cleveland Clinic’s website says: “Diphtheria is very rare in the U.S. because of widespread use of the diphtheria (Tdap) vaccine and cleaner living conditions.”)

In 1899-1900, the board’s three members – Nelson, J. E. Crossman and C. J. Lincoln – were paid only $20.25, but expenses for vaccinations brought the total cost to $115.25.

In 1900-1901, the Board of Health cost China $151.70, after Palermo reimbursed the town $136.62 for one family (including medical attendance, supplies and digging a grave and burying a child; it sounds as though some of these expenses could have been listed under care of the poor).

The selectmen explained that the increased cost was due to a diphtheria epidemic, adding, “we have to rejoice that the results have not been more fatal than they were.”

There was a separate two-item Town Physician Account: China received $79.50 “from other towns for med. att.” and paid town physician C. J. Lincoln $50 for services to April 5, 1901.

The March 4, 1901, Board of Health report said the diphtheria epidemic started in May, 1900, and made that year the most demanding board members had experienced. The first case was a Windsor girl who attended Erskine Academy and boarded in South China. The second was a girl in the Hanson neighborhood, who died; she had attended Erskine and then the Lakeside school (other Erskine students had moved to other town schools by May, the report says).

Ultimately there were 22 cases in the spring outbreak and two more, unrelated, later in the year. Five were fatal. Nelson’s report said he and another doctor used Mulford’s glycerinated antitoxin “with excellent success”; whenever it “was used in the first stages of the disease,” the patient survived.

Nelson was also the 1900-1901 school superintendent. He reported that he promptly closed the first two schools where diphtheria cases were reported. Soon, nine of the 13 schools holding spring sessions were either ordered suspended or suspended themselves “from the attendant fright.”

At a special meeting May 26, the school committee closed all but the four operating schools until fall, canceling any planned summer sessions. Classes resumed the last Monday in August.

The next year’s reports from health and school officials indicated a normal 1901-1902 year. Nelson left the board of health that year, but he continued to earn town payments for “reporting births and deaths” and other medical activities through 1914.

(Nelson was on the school committee in 1912-1913, 1913-1914 and 1914-1915. Only the other two members signed the committee’s Feb. 13, 1915, report. Nelson died Feb. 17, 1915, aged 68 years, eight months and four days. He is buried in the China Village cemetery, with other family members.)

In their March 2, 1903, report, board of health members said the town had experienced three cases of typhoid fever, with no deaths; a fatal case of tuberculosis; one case of measles; and 22 cases of whooping cough. The board’s secretary added a rebuke: “I find physicians and householders in the east and southeast parts of the town have failed to report many cases of whooping cough as the law requires them to do.”

For the year that ended March 10, 1905, Board of Health expenses totaled $28.98, paid to the three members: one earned $15.48, the second $11.00, the third $2.50. In 1905-1906, members earned $30.35 and others were paid $73.35 for caring for two families; listed expenditures included $4.10 for “pillows and blankets” for one of the families.

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The initial collection of town reports that started this series has a gap from the year ending March 7, 1890, to the year ending March 10, 1900. Phil Dow’s contributions included 1894-1895 and 1896-1897. (The missing issues are no doubt available elsewhere; but when your writer started these history pages, at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, her rule was to work from home.)

By the 1894-1895 issue, and in the ones that follow, pages of vital statistics were added. By 1897 and in following years, the reports ended with the annual town meeting warrants.

The 1894-1895 issue lists the numbers of marriage intentions (20) and marriages (24), the number of births (27) and the number of deaths (also 27). It records names of residents who died between March 7, 1894, and Feb. 15, 1895, and (where information is available) adds age, marital status, place of birth, place of death and place of burial. The following years’ reports use the same format, of course with varying numbers.

Beginning with the report for 1901-1902, names of couples marrying and of babies born were also printed. Babies’ names were not always available; between March 27, 1901, and Feb. 5, 1902, for instance, 24 births were recorded, but only 19 names.

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The Monday, March 15, 1897, town meeting was summoned for 9 a.m. at the town house The selectmen were to be there at 8 a.m. to make any needed corrections to voter lists.

The warrant has only 11 articles. The first is to elect a moderator, the second to “choose all necessary town officers for the ensuing year.”

Art. 3 asks to raise funds – no figures are included – for supporting the poor, schools, road and bridge maintenance and “all other necessary town charges.”

Arts. 4, 5 and 6 ask voters’ decisions on how to maintain roads and bridges and “break down the snow”; to work the road machine; and to collect taxes. Presumably, the selectmen and other town officials proposed methods.

Art. 7 asks for money to buy town bonds or establish a sinking fund to liquidate them, “and if any, how much.” Again, there is no suggested amount in writing.

Art. 8 asks for $100 to repair a schoolhouse. (Under current town meeting rules, when an amount is in the article, voters may approve it or any lesser amount, but not a higher amount.)

Art. 9 asks if voters want to buy a lot and build a schoolhouse “on the pond road,” and if so, how much they’ll appropriate. Art. 10 requests another $100 to repair another existing schoolhouse.

Art. 11 asks voters to accept a relocated road through Weeks Mills “laid out by the selectmen” and to appropriate money to pay for the change.

The China Board of Health

The China bicentennial history says before China had a board of health, town officials sometimes dealt with severe and contagious diseases. The book cites two examples of instances in which residents apparently thought their elected leaders acted unwisely.

In March 1848, town meeting voters told selectmen “to pay Ambrose Sewall, a reasonable compensation for Furniture burnt, in consequence of being infected with the Small Pox – also to pay the expense of cleansing his house &c….”

Voters at the March 1851, meeting told those selectmen to “settle with” William Fairbrother for housing smallpox patients in his house. At a special meeting in May, they raised $25 to pay Fairbrother “for loss sustained by the burning of his house” (because it was infected?).

(No one on the 1848 select board was still serving in 1851, but the change was gradual. Voters were not upset enough to throw out either board wholesale.)

The first China Board of Health was appointed in 1887, as required by a new state law. Its members created bylaws and rules for dealing with contagious diseases and adopted them on Aug. 26, 1887. The history says they were “approved by a justice of the supreme judicial court” and published in the Waterville “Sentinel,” and an attested copy went into town records.

“The regulations prescribed measures to prevent the spread of scarlet fever, typhoid fever, smallpox, cholera, typhus, and diphtheria, including detailed instructions for disinfecting clothing, bedding, blankets, and mattresses and for fumigating rooms,” the history says. Fumigating a room required setting on fire sulfur (three pounds for each thousand cubic feet) in an iron kettle and keeping the room closed for 24 hours before airing it for several days.

Main sources

China town reports
Grow, Mary M., China Maine Bicentennial History including 1984 revisions (1984)

Websites, miscellaneous.