VASSALBORO: Major decisions postponed during budget talks

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by Mary Grow

Vassalboro select board members held their second budget discussion on Feb. 10, taking another two and a half hours to review expenditure requests for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2022.

Major decisions were postponed for more consideration, and the decisions select board members did make are subjected to reconsideration as the budget develops. A still-pending decision that will affect several budget lines is what percentage pay raise to recommend voters give town employees.

Late in 2021 board members authorized Town Manager Mary Sabins to contract for a regional salary survey. Until they have the results, which Sabins expects soon, they are waiting to see what 2022-23 pay level seems appropriate.

The Feb. 10 special meeting began with a presentation by Holly Weidner, chairman of the Vassalboro Conservation Commission (VCC), with comments by Scott Pierz, executive director of the China Region Lakes Alliance (CRLA). The first draft of the 2022-23 budget has a request for $11,500 for the CRLA.

In past years, voters approved $7,500, until at the 2021 town meeting they added $398 (from another organization they decided not to fund) for a total of $7,898 for the current fiscal year.

Weidner explained that for $7,500, Vassalboro had a share of the CRLA’s Courtesy Boat Inspection (CBI) program: inspectors checked boats to make sure no fragments of invasive weeds were being imported. Inspectors were stationed at all three Vassalboro landings, protecting China Lake, Webber Pond and Three Mile Pond, she said.

If Vassalboro increased its appropriation, Weidner expected the VCC would work with CRLA and lake associations to add four more water quality protection projects on Webber and Three Mile ponds: Best Management Practices advice to landowners; a survey of gravel roads to see where road run-off impacts water quality; a demonstration project for the state-wide LakeSmart program; and monitoring and when necessary clearing Seaward Mills Stream to ensure alewife passage into Three Mile Pond.

Weidner’s letter to select board members estimated the four projects would cost a total of $3,000. She requested another $1,000 as Vassalboro’s share of the additional administrative costs.

When they reached the “Requests” section of the draft budget, selectmen recommended $9,000 for the CRLA.

They also endorsed Sabins’ recommendation to ask voters for $1,500 for the Vassalboro snowmobile club despite lack of a written request.

Other decisions made at the Feb. 10 meeting included:

  • Raising the proposed budget for legal costs from the current year’s $10,000 to $15,000.
  • Making Ryan Page’s codes enforcement position full-time, at a total cost to be determined when salaries are set.
  • Recommending $2,000 for supplies and equipment for the police department, less than Police Chief Mark Brown requested. Sabins said the draft budget does not include Brown’s request to make his position full-time; select board members did not object to the omission.

Numerous other budget items were discussed without decisions. As of Feb. 10, select board members were leaning toward two new proposals: per-hour stipends, instead of mileage reimbursement, for members of Vassalboro First Responders (treating them the same as volunteer firefighters); and an undetermined amount to begin development of a new park on town-acquired land between Route 32 and Outlet Stream, north of East Vassalboro.

Sabins said a state grant might be available for the park; but, she said, the one she investigated requires any park it funds to remain a park forever, and she would prefer not to limit future officials and voters.

Selectmen and audience members suggested different names for the park to honor the town manager, whose idea it is to use the streamside lot for fishing and other recreation.

Continued budget discussion is on the agenda for the regular Vassalboro select board meeting scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 17, at the town office.

The selectmen’s budget recommendations will go to the budget committee, which will begin meeting March 3. Disagreements between the two boards are often resolved before the warrant (list of articles) for the annual town meeting is approved; if not, town meeting voters make the final decisions.

Vassalboro’s 2022 town meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Monday, June 6. Local elections will be held Tuesday, June 14.

Other Feb. 17 agenda items include an update from codes officer Page on the former church on Priest Hill Road, in North Vassalboro, deemed a dangerous building and scheduled for demolition if owner Chad Caron does not correct the situation; and discussion of the 10-Year China Lake Watershed-Based Management Plan with China Lake Association President Stephen Greene.

For background on the Priest Hill Road building, see The Town Line, Jan. 13, p. 2. For background on the China Lake management plan, see the issues of Dec. 9, 2021, p. 1, and Dec. 23, 2021, p. 2.

Oak Grove School Foundation offers grants

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The Oak Grove-Coburn school today, serving as the Maine Criminal Justice Academy.

The Oak Grove School Foundation is accepting applications for grants to support the education and cultural needs of students and nonprofit organizations in the greater Central Maine area.

Recipients must be educational, charitable or religious organizations that are tax exempt under section 501(c)(3) Of the Internal Revenue Service code.

Grant requests should be received by April 1, 2022. Funding decisions will be made in May and shortly after the funds will be distributed in July. Recent grants have ranged $500 – $5,000. The OGSF has also provided seed money for initiatives that last up to three years.

Groups interested in obtaining application forms and guidelines should contact Joann Clark Austin, Oak Grove School Foundation, P.O. Box 150, South China, ME 04358-0150 or Susan Briggs at briggsusan@gmail.com. https://sites.google.com/site/ogsfoundationorg/.

Vassalboro planners approve three applications

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by Mary Grow

Vassalboro Planning Board members unanimously approved three applications on their Feb. 1 agenda, none intended to create environmental changes.

Robert Parise and his brother-in-law are buying the Riverside Drive (Route 202) business called RAPS. Parise told board members the new business, named Platinum & Core LLC, will continue the junkyard/scrapyard part of RAPS and discontinue used car sales on the premises, at least for now.

The other change planned is adding a fence about 225 feet long, running from the present building to the tree line, to better screen the property from drivers on the road.

Proposed business hours are 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, with possibly occasional Saturday hours. Noisy work will be done inside the existing building.

If Parise and his partner decide later to change the type of business, add another building or make other significant changes, they know they need to come back to the codes officer and probably the planning board.

Planning board members reviewed Parise’s application and approved it without conditions.

The second application was to change the name of the owner of the solar farm on Cemetery Street, in North Vassalboro. The license approved in June 2021 was issued to New England Solar Gardens (NESG); Owens McCullough of Sebago Technics, who made most of the 2021 presentation, explained that it should now belong to a wholly-owned new partner named Maine 1 Vassalboro Cemetery.

NESG has taken parallel actions with two other Maine projects, in Lewiston and Berwick, he said.

Board members were satisfied that the ownership would be the same, just with a new name; nothing would change on the land; and nothing had changed in local ordinances since June 2021 that would require them to review a new application.

The third applicant was Bryan Moore, looking for a renewal of his October 2019 permit to expand a non-conforming structure at 152 Park Lane, in the Three Mile Pond shoreland zone.

Moore presented a new building plan he said an architect had prepared. Although the appearance has changed, he said the new building still would be no closer to the water and would not exceed size limits for a shoreland expansion.

Planning board members approved a permit good for one year.

The next Vassalboro Planning Board meeting should be Tuesday evening, March 1.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Wars – Part 5

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by Mary Grow

Left, In 1780, at the age of 15, Samuel Downing joined the Continental Army. He served with the 2nd New Hamp­shire Regiment guarding forts on the New York frontier. Center, Lemuel Cook enlisted in 1781 when he was 16 years old. He served at the Battle of Brandy­wine, was present at the Surrender at York­town and was selected by Baron von Steuben to join the New York City campaign. Right, Born in Geneva, Switzerland, Albert Gallatin served as a volunteer under Col. John Allan, commander of the fort of Machias in Maine, according to his obituary. He later served three terms in the Pennsylvania House of Repre­sentatives. He also became the Secre­tary of the Treasury, served as the U.S. Minister to France and helped to established New York University.

The Revolutionary War ended in 1783 and photography was invented in the 1820s and 1830s, so most of the veterans of the war didn’t live long enough to have their portraits made. A handful of them did. In 1864, 81 years after the war, Rev. E. B. Hillard and two photographers embarked on a trip through New England to visit, photograph, and interview the six known surviving veterans, all of whom were over 100 years old. The glass plate photos were printed into a book titled The Last Men of the Revolution.

These are three of the Revolutionary War veterans who were over 100 years old when photographed.

Palermo, Sidney, Vassalboro

Palermo, Sidney and Vassalboro, like the central Kennebec cities and towns in the previous two articles in this series, had Revolutionary War veterans among their early settlers.

The grave of Isaac Worthen.

In Milton Dowe’s Palermo history, he identified Isaac Worthen (March 4, 1762 – March 1, 1841; later the name became Worthing), one of two brothers who moved to Palermo (then Great Pond Settlement) from New Hampshire, as a “hero of the Revolution.” An on-line search suggests he took the phrase from an article about Worthen, written by Samuel Copp Worthen (probably a descendant), in the Sprague Journal of Maine History, Vol. XII, No. 1, January-Mach 1924.

According to the article, Isaac’s father, Major Jacob Worthen, was a lieutenant in Captain Titus Salter’s company at Fort Washington, on Pierce Island at the mouth of the Piscataquis River, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The fort was designed by Capt. Ezekiel Worthen, Jacob’s father and Isaac’s grandfather.

Isaac Worthen was in Salter’s company by May 1777, when he was 15. The history article says he wanted a berth on the USS Raleigh, which was going to France to buy ammunition. Turned down as too young, he jumped aboard as the ship sailed; the captain let him stay and made him a marine effective Aug. 1, 1777.

Worthen served for the duration of the war in different companies. Millard Howard added in his town history that Worthen was a corporal in a militia unit before his 17th birthday; Dowe wrote that one of his posts was West Point, in 1780.

In 1782, he married Judith Currier and they came to Palermo, where, an on-line genealogy says, their son Jonathan was born in 1785. An on-line photo of Worthen’s gravestone in Palermo’s Old Greeley Corner Cemetery shows his name; the words “Marine Continental Marines Rev War” on four lines; and his dates of birth and death.

Howard identified another Revolutionary veteran, Sir John Bradstreet, who was “nearly 40 years old when he came to Palermo with his family in 1786” and settled at the north end of Sheepscot Pond. His descendants included Clair Bradstreet, who chaired the town select board for more than 40 years in the 20th century. Bradstreet and his wife Freda (Worthing) Bradstreet lived in the Worthing House, on North Palermo Road, now owned by the Palermo Historical Society.

Thaddeus Bailey (1759 – 1849) is identified in a genealogy found on line as a Revolutionary War veteran who lived in Palermo, Albion and Palermo again. Born in Newbury, Massachusetts, he enlisted at 18 as a private in the Massachusetts militia company that spent three days at Pownalborough in September 1777 “in the defense and retaking of a mastship in the Sheepscot River.”

In 1778, he was in a unit that enlisted from Lincoln County and served in Providence, Rhode Island. From June 30 to Sept. 25, 1779, he was a private in Colonel (later Brigadier General) Samuel Rogers McCobb’s Lincoln County militia regiment and participated in the unsuccessful attempt to oust the British from Fort George, in Penobscot Bay.

(General McCobb [Nov. 20, 1744 – July 30, 1791] was born and died in Georgetown, Province of Maine. He served throughout the Revolution, at least part of the time with the Lincoln County Militia. He was a captain at Bunker Hill, a colonel on Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Québec and in charge at Penobscot after the British finally left in 1784.)

After the war, Bailey returned to Pownalborough until 1795, when he bought 100 acres for $110 in Sheepscot Great Pond (now Palermo). He and his wife Mary, whom he married in 1783 and who died before 1810, had 11 children. Census records from 1810 through 1840 show him living in Albion; a record of Revolutionary War pensioners lists him in Palermo in 1841. His pension, which started May 3, 1831, was $30.65 a year, according to the genealogy.

* * * * * *

Alice Hammond claimed to have found another Isaac (besides Isaac Worthen) who enlisted as a teenager: in her history of Sidney, she said of Isaac I. Cowan (March 14, 1758 – July 19, 1828): “At age fourteen he went into the Revolutionary War and served three years.” However, by this writer’s reckoning Cowan would have turned 15 in March 1773, two years before the fighting at Lexington and Concord.

An on-line site lists yet another young volunteer who ended up in Sidney: Massachusetts-born Jabez Rollins or Rollings (about 1767 – Oct. 4, 1842, or Oct. 28, 1847 [sources differ]) joined the New Hampshire Line in 1782, when he was 15. After the Revolution, he was in a Massachusetts regiment from February through June 1787 and helped suppress Shay’s Rebellion, the website continues; but since Shay’s Rebellion, an uprising by farmers protesting economic hardship in western Massachusetts, was suppressed by February, his role must have been limited.

On July 15, 1792, Rollings married Lydia Haskell (or Harskell) in Bradford, Massachusets. By 1795, they were in Mercer, Maine; by 1780, in New Sharon; and from 1810 on in Sidney. They had at least five children.

Capt. Abiel Lovejoy

Captain Abiel (or Abial) Lovejoy (Dec. 16, 1731 – July 4 [probably], 1811) was one of Sidney’s best-known veterans; Hammond referred to him as “Squire Lovejoy, the old slaveholder.” Born in Andover, Massachusetts, he married Mary Brown, in Charlestown, in December 1758. He was part-owner of trading ships, and later owner and captain of a small fleet based in Charleston. Hammond wrote that his ventures extended north to “the Bay of Fundy and south to the West Indies,” and that Mary sometimes sailed with him.

In 1760, Hammond said, he bought land in Pownalborough; in 1761, he and Mary and their first two children moved to what became Dresden, where he was a merchant, a ferry owner, a shipbuilder and “involved in public office and in land transactions.” In June 1763, Hammond wrote, he was one of the first three men to receive land in Sidney (then Vassalboro) from the Kennebec Proprietors.

In 1764 Lovejoy, in partnership with Mary’s father Nathaniel Brown, bought “half a saw mill and adjoining land and a half interest in a dam” on what was later Hastings Brook. In 1776, the Lovejoys moved to a farm in Sidney overlooking the river.

Hammond wrote that Lovejoy was in the Massachusetts militia from 1755, and from 1758 to 1771 his assignment was in Lincoln County, in what is now Maine – hence, presumably, his interest in acquiring land there. She added, “He also served in the American Revolutionary War.”

But she gave no details of his Revolutionary service, instead listing wartime activities in Sidney: in 1777 petitioning for an extension of the postal service and in 1778 serving on a committee to choose the post rider; in 1781 becoming Justice of the Peace; and “between 1776 and 1798” holding many other local offices.

A detailed on-line source adds that in 1776 he was a member of the pro-Revolutionary Committee of Safety and Correspondence, and in 1779 on “a committee to settle with the women on account of supplies ordered to the soldiers [sic] families by the General Court.” He was also highway surveyor in 1776 and 1777; selectman in 1779 and 1780; in 1780 town meeting moderator in 1780; and town treasurer and a county convention delegate in 1781.

Apparently he was a delegate to the Massachusetts General Court during the Revolutionary years, too, because the on-line sources says he “had been elected year after year” before he was challenged in 1781 and 1782, partly on the ground that he was not a supporter of independence.

The unnamed author of the on-line piece disagrees, calling Lovejoy “a fiery American patriot.” Evidence cited includes Tory Parson Jacob Bailey (mentioned in the history article in the Jan. 13 of The Town Line) naming him an instigator of mobs that attacked Bailey and other Loyalists, and Lovejoy’s willingness to give officers and soldiers in Benedict Arnold’s 1775 army hard money in return for their already-depreciating paper currency.

“Captain Abiel Lovejoy lost some $30,000 this way and afterwards papered a room in the Lovejoy homestead with this ‘worthless money,'” the on-line account says.

The Lovejoys had eight children before they moved to Sidney, and Hammond wrote six more were born there. The family lived in an elaborate house and owned several slaves, three of whom were buried in the small family cemetery on their farm, which Hammond called the “oldest cemetery in Sidney.”

Hammond also wrote about the Reynolds family. Nathaniel Reynolds IV, Esquire, settled in 1779 on the south end of West River Road in what was then Vassalboro, with his family. He served in the Revolutionary Army and “loaned money to the government for the cause”; and five sons “were all Revolutionary soldiers,” Hammond said.

* * * * * *

One of Vassalboro’s pre-war settlers and veterans was Charles B. Webber (January 1741 – Nov. 20, 1819). Born in Old York, Maine, he fought in the French and Indian Wars in 1757 and 1759. During the Revolution, an on-line genealogy says he is recorded as serving as second lieutenant in the Second Lincoln County Regiment of the Massachusetts militia, which was organized in 1776 and sent to Riverton, Rhode Island, in 1777.

Webber married his first wife, Hannah Call, in 1761 in Dresden. In 1765 they moved to Vassalboro, settling in the Riverside area. The on-line genealogy says their second child, a daughter named Sarah, was the first white child born in the town.

The same website says Webber was Vassalboro’s first treasurer, in 1771, and served again in 1776, when he was also the third town clerk; in 1773 and from 1792 to 1796 was a selectman and in 1790 was one of the committee that laid out Vassalboro’s first nine school districts.

A search for Webber’s name in Vassalboro’s extremely valuable on-line cemetery database confirmed his burial site in the Webber Family Cemetery at Riverside.

One of Webber’s company commanders was Dennis Getchell (1723 or 1724 – early January 1792), who bought land in the Riverside area of Vassalboro in August 1770.

Getchell was born in Berwick and is identified first as a major, perhaps from service in the French and Indian Wars. He must have moved to Vassalboro as soon as he bought his land, because the website says he was elected selectman at the first town meeting, April 26, 1771, and many times thereafter.

On July 23, 1776, he was commissioned a captain in the Second Lincoln County Regiment, and led his 50-man company at Riverton in 1777. In 1786, he was elected a member of the Massachusetts General Court.

Amos Childs (July 5, 1764 – Feb. 19, 1847) was a Massachusetts native who spent at least part of his time in the Revolutionary force as a drummer. He served three years and was honorably discharged in 1783. On Nov. 1, 1801, he married Hannah Webber (born in 1780 in Vassalboro, Charles and Hannah [Call] Webber’s daughter) in Vassalboro; they had “at least two children,” an on-line source says.

Hannah died Feb. 14, 1860; she and Amos are buried side by side in the North Vassalboro Village Cemetery.

Main sources

Dowe, Milton E., History Town of Palermo Incorporated 1884 (1954).
Hammond, Alice, History of Sidney Maine 1792-1992 (1992).
Howard, Millard, An Introduction to the Early History of Palermo, Maine (second edition, December 2015).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Vassalboro school board hears variety of reports

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Vassalboro Community School (contributed photo)

by Mary Grow

Vassalboro School Board members heard a variety of reports at their Jan. 18 meeting, some touching on effects of the pandemic.

They did not talk about the 2022-23 budget – yet. When they reached the agenda item called “Items to be addressed by School Board at future meetings,” Superintendent Alan Pfeiffer told them “Budget, budget, more budget.”

One area affected by pandemic-caused partial virtual learning times and student absences is the nutrition program. The more students eat in the cafeteria, the better off the program is financially. In past years, Vassalboro Community School (VCS), like many other area schools, lost money on school meals.

So far this year, Finance Director Paula Pooler said, “We’re holding our own.” She commended Food Service Director John Hersey for expanding menu choices.

Hersey said he believes if more students were in school more of the time, the financial picture would be even better.

In reaction to lower test scores on national academic tests, VCS teachers and staff are initiating a variety of extra learning opportunities. Board members had questions answered about individual and small-group programs aimed at academic and social/emotional needs.

Assistant Principal Greg Hughes is planning a program that he calls Viking Camp for the middle three days of the February vacation week (which begins with the Presidents’ Day holiday Monday, Feb. 21). As of Jan. 18, details remained to be confirmed – including alerting Hersey that food will be needed, accomplished by the board discussion.

On other topics, Pfeiffer reported that applications for pre-kindergarten for the 2022-23 school year are open. A child who will be four years old by Oct. 15 is eligible to enroll.

The solar farm in which the school (and the town) invested appears to have saved about $12,000 on the electric bill in calendar year 2021, Pfeiffer said.

He thanked Special Education Director Tanya Thibeau for the connection that will bring former New Hampshire Chief Justice John T. Broderick, now an educator on mental health issues, to the area in March to address faculty and students at VCS and Erskine Academy, in South China.

Pfeiffer later reported that after an executive session discussion that followed the board meeting, he had agreed to accept another one-year contract as Vassalboro Superintendent of Schools, despite the difficulties of the past and current years.

The next regular Vassalboro School Board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday evening, Feb. 15.

Vassalboro select board hears grant requests from firefighters, library

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by Mary Grow

At their Jan. 20 meeting, Vassalboro select board members got preliminary requests for money, federal or local or both, from town organizations. Further discussion was postponed until 2022-23 budget deliberations begin in earnest in February.

Two requests were presented at the meeting.

  • From the volunteer fire department, special funding to replace 20 SCBAs (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus), some 30 years old. Spokesman Michael Vashon reminded the audience that a firefighter inside a burning building depends on a SCBA to stay alive. The Federal Emergency Management Agency counts any older than 10 years as obsolete, he said.

The department has not requested taxpayer funds before because members keep hoping to get a grant. Grant awards are based on the number of calls, Vashon said; Vassalboro has few, compared to, for example, Waterville. Another grant application is pending, with results not expected until June at the earliest.

  • From the library, a $7,500 increase in town funding to cover, at a minimum, staff raises plus an inflation adjustment, and, if select board members and voters concur, up to $30,600 in additional money to cover raises, adjustments, more hours and more staff time for program development.

In addition, select board members talked about how to allocate federal ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) money. One possibility is giving bonuses to town employees and members of the fire department and rescue unit who worked through the pandemic.

Town Manager Mary Sabins reminded them that the Vassalboro Sanitary District is also asking for ARPA funds.

The only decision made was a unanimous vote to appropriate $4,200 in ARPA funds for training fees for three new Rescue Unit members.

Select board members have scheduled a budget workshop for 12:30 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 8.

In other business Jan. 20, Codes Officer Ryan Page reported that Chad Caron had made no appreciable progress on cleaning up the grounds around the former church he owns on Priest Hill Road in North Vassalboro. As of Jan. 20, Page said, Caron was waiting to hear back from an engineer he hoped would do the building inspection selectmen required be finished within 30 days after their Jan. 6 meeting (see The Town Line, Jan. 13, p. 2).

Board members unanimously approved rules for the Town Forest and Red Brook trails, presented by John Melrose of the Trails Committee.

Fire Chief Walker Thompson asked whether town trails are wide enough for rescue vehicles, if needed. He plans to confer with Melrose and other committee members.

Three items postponed for more information were preparing a policy on background checks for town employees and volunteers; creating a committee to draft an ordinance on decommissioning solar farms after their useful life ends; and looking into installing heat pumps at the town office.

The next regular Vassalboro select board meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 3.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Wars – Part 2

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by Mary Grow

As readers know, major wars have major effects, beginning before the battles, continuing for the duration and lasting years afterwards. Early historians tended to focus on economics and politics: whether development was slowed or speeded or both, who replaced whom in leadership. Later came interest in social effects, especially significant in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Individual psychological effects of war, now commonly labeled PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), have been recognized for centuries, but did not receive a lot of attention until the present century. A 2017 Smithsonian magazine article found on line discusses psychological effects suffered by Civil War soldiers, though not under the modern name.

Some of these young men, far from home and family and witnessing the horrors of face-to-face war, developed “what Civil War doctors called ‘nostalgia,’ a centuries-old term for despair and homesickness so severe that soldiers became listless and emaciated and sometimes died,” according to the article. Others had physical symptoms, like “soldier’s heart” (chest pain, difficult breathing, palpitations), or mental breakdowns.

After World War I, PTSD was called “shell shock.” “Combat fatigue” was the best-known of several terms used after World War II.

It is unlikely that 18th and 19th century soldiers from the Kennebec Valley avoided psychological stress, but finding records demonstrating the condition would be even more unlikely. There are, however, numerous reports on and analyses of economic consequences, and social and political consequences are sometimes obvious.

Many of the central Kennebec Valley towns, especially the larger ones, suffered economic distress during the Revolution. The level of distress in Augusta (then Hallowell) is recorded by historians Henry Kingsbury and Charles Nash.

Kingsbury summarized: “A town of so few inhabitants, however willing, could not give much aid to the continental cause, and its part in the war was necessarily small and inconspicuous. It suffered much during the period of the revolution – its growth was retarded and well-nigh suspended….So great was the depression that even the Fourth of July Declaration [of Independence] was not publicly read to the people.”

Nash wrote that by 1777, British warships so “infested” the Maine coast as to practically stop overseas trade, a blow to the shipbuilders and shipmasters of Hallowell (and downriver towns). A year later, though, he wrote that a Hallowell shipbuilder sold the government hundreds of pounds worth of ships’ masts, spars and bowsprits for the budding Continental navy.

According to Kingsbury, only about 100 heads of families lived in Hallowell in 1779, presumably after many Tories had left. When the new national government started assessing towns individually for soldiers and supplies, townspeople could not easily meet the demands.

By the 1780s, according to information Nash compiled from town meeting records, Hallowell voters were raising money to pay soldiers. In October, for example, they raised 12,000 pounds to pay $500 each to soldiers who served eight months in Camden. Many were paid in lumber or shingles instead of money.

Another series of votes in January 1781 raised 90 guineas (Wikipedia says a guinea was about the same value as a pound) for six men to “go into the service of Massachusetts” (Kingsbury added that they were required to enlist for three years); directed that “the selectmen and commissioned officers shall do their endeavors to procure said men”; and for that purpose directed them to “hire money upon the town’s credit.”

That the effort was not fully successful can be inferred from the February vote to “petition the General Court [of Massachusetts] for relief of the beef tax, and our quota of soldiers sent for from this town.”

In March, annual meeting voters gave town leaders “discretionary power to get the continental men in the best way and manner they can be procured.”

Nash found a September 6, 1781, vote (three weeks before Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown) that sounded even more desperate. Voters directed selectmen to “endeavor to procure this town’s quota of shirts, stockings and shoes and blankets required of this town, upon the town’s credit if they can be procured.” Kingsbury detailed the requisition: “2,580 pounds of beef, 11 shirts, 11 pairs of shoes and stockings, and 5 blankets,” and said the Massachusetts legislature threatened to fine the town if it did not produce.

From what little Whittemore wrote in his history of Waterville, the townspeople in what was until 1802 Winslow on both sides of the Kennebec also had trouble meeting quotas. Town officials had neither money for supplies nor willing volunteers for soldiers. The price of beef rose to five dollars a pound, indicating, Whittemore said wryly, “either a depreciated currency or that some primordial beef trust already had taken possession of the country.”

He was serious about the depreciated currency. Nash gave examples through the 1770s of a steady decline in the value of the paper money issued by the new government.

By 1781, he wrote, currency was worth so little that the government made a “new emission.” Defined as legal tender and valid for paying taxes, Nash wrote that it held its value briefly, but within a few months it lost almost half its value, a dollar becoming the equivalent of a half-dollar in silver.

Ernest Marriner picked up the theme in his Kennebec Yesterdays. Money, either paper currency or coins, was scarce in the valley anyway, he wrote; people often paid for things they could not make at home with things they could, especially crops, like wheat, corn, peas, potatoes and apples, and also butter, cheese, wool, flax and similar products.

The naval supplies Nash described were paid for partly in dollars (presumably Continental paper currency), with 100 dollars equal to 30 pounds, but also in corn, “New England rum,” sugar and glass.

Marriner found that by 1789, a Continental paper dollar was worth one-fortieth of a silver coin. By then, he wrote, hay, previously costing a maximum of $10 a ton, was $200 a ton. Butter cost $1.50 a pound; by 1802, it was down to 15 cents a pound.

Many Kennebec Valley families were left in precarious circumstances by the combination of limited access to outside supplies; heavy taxes to support local, Massachusetts and federal military and civilian needs; depreciated currency; and breadwinners off fighting, home recovering, in a British military prison or dead.

Rev. Jacob Bailey

Nash quoted from the journals and letters of Rev. Jacob Bailey, a Tory who lived in Pownalborough (now Dresden) for most of the war years. Bailey referred to “nakedness and famine” among his neighbors.

Some had no bread for months, he wrote. It was impossible to find grain, potatoes or other vegetables; meat, butter or milk; tea, sugar or molasses. People lived on “a little coffee, with boiled alewives or a repast of clams,” and not enough of that diet to forestall hunger, Bailey wrote.

* * * * * *

Tories, especially outspoken ones like Bailey, were a minority in the Kennebec Valley, and became a smaller minority as the war went on. When it became clear that the rebellion was succeeding, fence-sitters joined the winning side; opponents of independence went away, usually to eastern Canada.

In the Hallowell area, many of the big landowners, like the Gardiner, Hallowell and Vassall families for whom towns were named, were British sympathizers. During or after the war, they emigrated to Canada or Britain; post-war local governments confiscated their lands.

A notorious Tory in the Augusta area was John “Black” Jones (c. 1743 – Aug. 18, 1823).

Nash wrote a great deal about “Black” Jones in his Augusta history, distinguishing him from three other men named John Jones who were in the area earlier or simultaneously. The Tory Jones’ primary work was surveying for the Plymouth Proprietors, laying out lots on both sides of the Kennebec River, including the future towns of Hallowell/Augusta, Vassalboro, China, Unity and Skowhegan. Kingsbury added that he built the first mill on the west side of the Kennebec at Hallowell.

“Black” is said to have referred to his dark complexion, not his character. Indeed, Nash wrote that he was “a skillful surveyor and a man of good character,” who was repeatedly elected to local office in 1773 and 1775, despite being stubbornly pro-British in a divided community.

In April 1777, Nash found, town meeting voters chose Lieutenant John Shaw “the man to inspect the tories, and make information thereof.” At another meeting in July, they implemented a Massachusetts law intended to protect the country from “internal enemies” by instructing Shaw to collect evidence against Jones, “who they suppose to be of a disposition inimical to the liberties and privileges of the said States.” In Oct. 1777 they again voted Jones “inimical to the liberties and privileges of the United States.”

After a brief imprisonment in Boston, Jones escaped and went to Canada, where he enlisted on the British side. Assigned to Fort George, in Castine, he led a band of soldiers who raided local rebel towns. An on-line Canadian biography says he worked as a surveyor in New Brunswick, Canada, after the war.

Returning to Hallowell, according to Nash as early as November 1785, Jones was met by antagonists who escorted him out of town. He came back, and, Nash wrote, “by his many good qualities and an exemplary life he largely overcame, long before his death, the bitter prejudice which his attitude and acts during the revolution had aroused in his fellow-citizens.” Kingsbury wrote that in 1794 it was Jones who surveyed the division of Hallowell into three parishes.

Another mention of Tory sentiment is in Alma Pierce Robbins’ history of Vassalboro. She gave the Revolutionary War only a few sentences, mostly focused on Congress’s approval of aid and pensions to soldiers and their dependents.

Robbins said records indicated that Vassalboro residents were “somewhat lukewarm” patriots who “did their share in a dilatory manner.”

She added, however, that town officials fined “those who spoke too openly against the Revolution,” that the town’s beef quota was “finally” paid “under strong pressure” and that “many” did fight on the Revolutionary side.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Marriner, Ernest, Kennebec Yesterdays (1954).
Nash, Charles Elventon, The History of Augusta (1904).
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).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Vassalboro board rules Priest Hill Rd. church is a dangerous building

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by Mary Grow

In her 1971 history of Vassalboro, Alma Pierce Robbins wrote that the North Vassalboro Methodist Church was organized around 1850. Its members met in a Union Church (whose origins apparently are not recorded) until about 1875, when they bought an unfinished Winslow church and brought it to Vassalboro.

Fifty years ago, Robbins wrote, “This pretty little church stands to this day,…white, with a steeple pointing heavenward and a bell to ring on Sunday morning.”

Chad Caron told Vassalboro selectmen many residents would like to see the former Methodist Church on Priest Hill Road in North Vassalboro restored, not demolished. Some, he said, have helped him as he works on the dilapidated building.

People serious about preserving the church need to act fast, because select board members have given Caron 30 days to make progress in two directions.

After a public hearing that took more than an hour at the beginning of the Jan. 6 select board meeting, the two board members present voted that the church as it now stands is, legally, a dangerous building. The dangerous building order they approved directs that the building be demolished after 30 days.

However, select board members accepted Caron’s offer to get an engineer’s certification that the building is structurally safe; and they authorized new Codes Officer Ryan Page to extend the deadline if Caron can justify asking for more time.

Caron agreed Page will be invited to be present during the engineer’s inspection.

Just-retired Codes Officer Paul Mitnik reminded Caron and board members that Caron currently has no building permit and therefore cannot work on the building. However, board members expect Caron to continue to clean up the lot around it.

Caron has owned the former church for about two years. He explained that his first plan was to rebuild it as his own house.

He is using the property for his business, buying, selling and trading miscellaneous items. He stores things in North Vassalboro until he sells or reuses them; the collection in the yard changes, he said.

Mitnik and other residents said the unattractive “junk” reduces neighbors’ property values, could harbor rodents and includes bulky items so close to the road that they are in the way of town snowplows.

Mitnik said he has tried to get Caron to make improvements to the building and lot for 18 months, without success. Caron is hard to get hold of and does not meet deadlines to which he agrees, and overall the property is not improved. After too many missed deadlines, Mitnik said, he revoked Caron’s building permit – a year ago, Page added.

As the basis for their contention that the building is unsafe, Page and Mitnik supplied select board members with photographs that they said showed an inadequate foundation and inadequate support for the church’s steeple.

A solid foundation is essential, Mitnik said. He does not expect the building will fall down on its own, but is concerned about what might happen in a major storm.

Caron agreed that he has “overpromised and underdelivered,” giving Mitnik unrealistic deadlines and being too embarrassed to admit he couldn’t meet them. He apologized to Mitnik, to his “great neighbor” who puts up with the mess and to town officials.

The building is not going to fall down, Caron said, nor is the steeple going to topple over. He explained how solid the basic post-and-beam construction is – the crumbling bricks on the ground are a façade, not building support, he said – and what he has done for run-off control on the lot and repairs underneath to remedy past damage and prevent future damage.

He also removed an outhouse that had been attached to the back, relieving stress on the back wall and eliminating any possible source of sewage contamination.

He did do some clean-up as Mitnik requested, he said, and he is arranging a different storage location on a small part of a friend’s property on South Reynolds Road.

Select board member Chris French pointed out that despite promises to clean up the lot, Caron keeps bringing in more things.

Acting board Chairman Barbara Redmond asked Caron when he would have the lot cleaned up. Caron invited her to stop by and watch him working, and said he intends to finish “by summer” – having learned not to promise impossible time frames.

Fire Chief Walker Thompson asked for an overall time limit. Caron said he originally thought making a livable house would take eight months. After a year and a half just getting the structure level, he figures he’ll need another five years if he continues working alone.

Caron said he could not afford the estimated $1,500 to have an engineer’s safety report done when Mitnik raised questions about structural integrity last year. Caron’s mother, sitting beside him at the hearing, immediately said she will pay for it.

Caron said he now plans to restore the church as part of Vassalboro’s history. The front columns that he took down are in Norridgewock being refinished, and he has not removed the old tin ceiling.

He offered to give the building to someone who could and would undertake restoration. Now that he intends a community project, he plans to consult with the Vassalboro Historical Society and community leaders and to ask for financial help.

If the building must be demolished, Caron said he will take it down piece by piece, number each piece and store them until he is able to reassemble them.

Because select board Chairman Robert Browne was unable to attend the Jan. 6 meeting, most other agenda items were postponed to the board’s Jan. 20 meeting.

Redmond and French approved the Conservation Commission’s letter asking the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to let the town take over maintenance of the trail to Spectacle Pond.

A brief discussion of the sunken Vassalboro Sanitary District manhole covers on Main Street in North Vassalboro led to no decision. Resident Tom Richards recommended putting money for repairs in the 2022-23 town budget. Town Manager Mary Sabins said one effort to fill in around them had failed when the fill promptly washed out.

Vassalboro food pantry to receive matching grant

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Photo source: Vassalboro Food Station Pantry

Submitted by Don Breton

We are fortunate to have a group of volunteers that run and manage the Vassalboro Food Station Pantry. They have been recognized and selected to receive up to $1,000 from American Precision, Inc., a machine shop business from Indiana, with whom I am associated. They have challenged the residents of Vassalboro and friends of the pantry to make monetary donations between December 23, 2021 and February 1, 2022, to the pantry. They will match whatever is donated up to $1,000. You can send your donation(s) to Cindy Ferland, 26 Ferland Lane, Vassalboro, ME 04989, or you can also send a donation via Paypal to dlbreton@roadrunner.com. If you mail a check, please put “American Precision Donation Match” on the memo line.

Let’s all help the food pantry achieve this goal, please donate.

Vassalboro select board to meet January 6, 2022

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by Mary Grow

The Vassalboro Select Board will meet at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022, in the town office meeting room. The advance agenda is the same as for the Dec. 22, 2021, meeting that was canceled due to treacherous roads, including a public hearing at the beginning of the meeting.

The hearing is to determine whether the former church on Chad Caron’s property at 14 Priest Hill Road, North Vassalboro, meets the definition of a dangerous building.

Vassalboro Select Board agendas are posted on the town website, Vassalboro.net, usually by the Tuesday afternoon before a Thursday evening meeting.