Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Libraries

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The Lawrence Library, in Fairfield.

by Mary Grow

The differential treatment in education discussed last week did not necessarily make women less interested than men in learning and literature. Local histories mention discussion and debate groups, most by and for men, some by and for women, and early libraries.

Daniel Cony

Augusta had two men’s literary groups, one formed in 1817 and a successor in 1829. Kingsbury credits Daniel Cony’s example for “a reading room and social library organization” started on Oct. 1, 1817.

It was reorganized June 2, 1819, and chartered June 20, 1820, as the Augusta Union Society. The Society’s incorporation was “the first act passed by the legislature of Maine” after the separation from Massachusetts, according to James North’s Augusta history.

North wrote that the Union Society’s goal was “improvement in useful knowledge by means of a library of choicely selected books, magazines and public newspapers.” By 1825, the Society had outgrown its first headquarters and moved to the Kennebec Journal building on Winthrop Street. The Union Society had disbanded by October 1829, Kingsbury said.

In the 1820s, North said, Cony’s Female Academy had the largest library in Augusta. There was also William Dewey’s circulating library.

By then, North wrote, debating societies were common. He mentioned the Nucleus, organized in 1825, and the Franklin Debating Club.

Both Kingsbury and North offered information on the Augusta Lyceum, which Kingsbury said replaced the Union Society in 1829, “as the organized exponent of the intelligence of the town.” North explained that lyceums succeeded debating societies as “a form better calculated to impart instruction, and at the same time afford equal amusement.”

North said the Augusta Lyceum’s October 1829 constitution established dues at 50 cents a quarter-year (25 cents for members under 18), and life memberships were $20. Meetings were weekly, with monthly debates that Kingsbury said “were sometimes brilliant and exciting.”

North offered as an example the debate over the treatment of Indians by Puritans. Discussion continued for weeks, with clergymen on one side and “a vigorous attacking party” on the other. The eventual decision was “against the Puritans, more from a spirit of victory in debate than any intention to defame that noble but austere race of men.”

Another interesting evening North described was April 18, 1830, when John A. Vaughn, of Hallowell, delivered an illustrated talk on railroads, which were not to reach Augusta until 1851.

Vaughn brought a model railroad, with two cars attached to each other. One held two 56-pound weights, the other a grey squirrel running on a treadmill. The squirrel’s motion pulled the heavier car, illustrating the minimal energy needed for a great effect.

Vaughn also had a picture and explanation of a British “Novelty Steam Carriage,” which provided 30-mile-an-hour passenger service. He concluded by predicting the expansion of railways throughout the United States, North said with impressive accuracy.

The Lyceum movement was national, at the state, county and town level, North wrote. The institutions became “a prominent educational means by developing a spirit of inquiry and creating a fondness for reading and a pleasure in receiving and imparting knowledge heretofore unexperienced by the mass of the community.”

State and county lyceums did not last long; local ones continued into the 1850s. North blamed their decline and disappearance on “a plethoric feeling which constantly demanded, from year to year, a higher grade of talent in lectures and new sources of excitement.”

In the adjoining town of Vassalboro, Alma Pierce Robbins’ history mentions, but provides too few details about, groups whose members might have been interested in reading, as well as sociability and needlework. Three appear to have been women’s organizations.

Local organizations on Webber Pond Road included a Christmas Club, apparently primarily a women’s needlework group, and a Browning Club, a Vassalboro branch of the international group organized in 1895 to expand women’s literary and cultural knowledge and named for English poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

(At a 2017 meeting reported on line, a Browning Club historian said the organization “served as an outlet for its members to educate each other during a time when attitudes toward women did not include higher education.”

She continued, “[T]hese women strived to provide each other with the opportunity to read, explore, and learn from one another.”)

Robbins said Vassalboro’s Christmas and Browning clubs met year-round at members’ houses. She did not date either organization.

In Riverside, she continued, there was a Riverside Corporation and later a Community Club, about which she provided no information beyond the names; and a “Riverside Study Club.” Vassalboro Historical Society President Janice Clowes says the Study Club was organized in 1947 and disbanded in 2001; Robbins wrote that it “became an affiliate of the State Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1949.”

Waterville, according to Whittemore’s history, was home to a series of debating clubs, exclusively for men. The earliest he mentioned was the Ticonick Debating Society, started Sept. 18, 1824, with “the leading men in the town” as founding members.

It was succeeded in 1837 by the Waterville Lyceum, which Whittemore said lasted only two years. Its 1841 successor, the Waterville Debating Society, apparently lasted a year. The Mechanics’ Debating Club Whittemore dates in the mid-1850s.

The Woman’s Association in Waterville was organized in 1887 and was still going strong, with 50 members, when Kingsbury published his history in 1892. He said its purpose was to provide women and girls with “useful information” and “special instruction.”

The organization had a 400-volume library. It sponsored evening classes “through the cold seasons,” where attendees could learn “needlework, penmanship, music and a variety of useful arts.”

Contemporary Facebook pages on the web list a Waterville Woman’s Association, founded in 1887, and a Waterville Area Women’s Club, founded in 1893.

The only similar organization Linwood Lowden mentioned in his history of Windsor was not organized until 1913, and was primarily a social group. The Unity Club, organized Dec. 17, 1913, apparently lasted into the 1930s, Lowden wrote.

Lowden said the “short literary program” that was initially part of each twice-a-month meeting was frequently replaced by a social service type activity, like making baby clothes for a needy family or knitting for the Red Cross.

* * * * * *

It is tempting to consider literary groups as precursors to public libraries, and one women’s group clearly was.

According to the Fairfield bicentennial history and an on-line source, a group of 24 women, led by Addie M. Lawrence, Mary Newhall and Frances Kenrick, organized a circulating library called the Ladies Book Club in 1895 or 1896. The club started with 48 books, kept in two bookcases in a small room above C. E. Holt’s candy store on Main Street.

The bookcases could accommodate 200 books, the history says, and were filled in three years. In July 1899, the club moved to two rooms in a Fairfield bank (the history is inconsistent in naming the bank), where residents continued to donate books and magazines.

Addie Lawrence was Edward Jones Lawrence’s daughter, and she “persuaded her father to offer the town a public library.” (Edward Jones Lawrence also established Fairfield’s Lawrence High School; see The Town Line, Oct. 7, 2021.)

At the March 1900 town meeting, voters accepted the offer. In May 1900, the renamed Fairfield Book Club held a meeting at which Lawrence promised to build a library when a site was found. Louise E. Newhall donated a lot between her house and Lawrence’s house, on the south side of Lawrence Avenue, facing the town park.

The result was Lawrence Library, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since Dec. 31, 1974.

It had one precursor, according to the Fairfield history. The writers quote from the Jan. 29, 1867, issue of the Fairfield Woodpecker the statement that “The Ladies Library had been very active prior to the Civil War but was not used much at this time.”

(The Woodpecker was published in Kendall’s Mills, the name for what is now downtown Fairfield, from 1867 to at least 1874. The Fairfield Historical Society has copies on film; the Lawrence Library also has copies, according to an on-line site.)

William R. Miller

Maine architect William R. Miller designed the new library. In the application for National Register listing, Earle Shettle­worth, of the Maine Historic Preservation Com­mission, described the architecture as Romanesque Revival modified by H. H. Richardson.

Miller (1866-1929) was born in Durham, Maine, and worked mostly in Maine throughout his career, based first in Lewiston and later in Portland. Wikipedia says his projects included “schools, libraries, hotels and churches as well as private residences.”

Other local buildings Miller designed include the original Lawrence High School, the Gerald Hotel and two Goodwill-Hinckley buildings in Fairfield, and Water­ville’s Carnegie Library.

Henry H. Richardson

Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886) developed the form called Richardson Romanesque. Wikipedia says he is considered one of the titans of American architecture, with Louis Henry Sullivan (1856-1924) and Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).

The Lawrence Library building is made of “slate rock with granite trim,” Shettleworth wrote. It is two stories high with a hip roof. The rock is of different colors, mostly variations on light reddish-brown, with darker browns and greys interspersed.

The main entrance door on the north side, facing the park, is set under a large granite arch. Above the arch, a sign identifies the building. An elaborate edifice above the sign includes three stained-glass windows inside granite-topped arches flanked by small towers. Still higher is a shield labeled “1900” (the year construction started) below a peaked roof.

Beside the entrance is an octagonal tower with more arched windows. On either side of the door and tower, the main floor rooms have large triple-arched windows. Granite above the windows and on the building’s corners and “cornice level granite strong courses” contrast with the vari-colored stone.

Shettleworth wrote that the same themes – stone, granite and arched windows – were continued around the building, with the back (south) side the least elaborate.

Lawrence Library was dedicated July 25, 1901. Shettleworth quoted physical descriptions, but nothing about the ceremony, from the July 26, 1901, issue of the Waterville Sentinel.

The newspaper writer said the stacks in the west room could hold 5,000 books and were almost full. The books were “arranged according to the Dewey system and a glance over the titles will delight the soul of any book lover,” he wrote.

The east room was the reading room. The “pastel portrait” of Edward Lawrence was done by Flora Gross Clark; the Fairfield Book Club donated it. Also mentioned were the oil painting of the Moor of Venice by local artist F. E. McFadden (who was also a lawyer and in the 1880s town clerk for at least two years); and the “splendid globe,” “18 inches in diameter… on a bronze pedestal 43 inches high” given by Mrs. E. P. Kenrick.

The Clark and McFadden portraits still hang in the east room. Portraits of Addie and Alice Jones, set in stained glass rectangles, decorate the wall behind the librarian’s desk. Overhead, the inside rim of an off-white dome lists well-known New England writers.

Above the front door, a large bronze plaque says Jones donated the building and 2,000 books, and Newhall donated the land and another 2,000 books. Librarian Louella Bickford says the plaque is identified on the back as made by Tiffany, the New York studio led by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933).

Commenting on Edward Jones Lawrence, the 1901 Sentinel writer observed that many towns owed their libraries to “the Scotland born and American made millionaire” [Andrew Carnegie], others to a native son who made his fortune elsewhere.

But, he wrote, “Fairfield rejoices in the gift of a man who was born within her borders, educated in her public schools and whose position of wealth and influence among the foremost business men in the State has been won in his native town. … He is one also who has worked his way up from the bottom of the ladder by his hard work and who has shown that success is possible for any man in Maine and in Fairfield. The gift is therefore especially prized.”

* * * * * *

Six-masted schooner Addie M. Lawrence was launched on December 17, 1902. It carried military supplies in World War I and ran aground in a gale off the coast of Brittany on July 9, 1917.

Three of the schooners that Lawrence helped finance in Bath were named the Addie M. Lawrence, the Alice M. Lawrence and the Edward J. Lawrence.

The Dec. 23, 1902, Fairfield Journal reported that the “Addie M.” was launched at 12:45 p.m. on Dec. 17, “a date that will long be remembered by many as one of great pleasure.”

The six-masted schooner was built at Percy & Small’s shipyard at a cost of $130,000. The reporter wrote that she was 2923 feet long and 483 feet wide, a patent absurdity; another on-line source gives the dimensions as 292 feet, four inches by 48 feet, three inches. Each mast was 118 feet tall; topmasts were 56 feet long, and the sails totaled “about 8700 yards of canvas.”

Wikipedia says the largest sailing ship ever built was another Percy & Small six-masted schooner, the Wyoming. Launched in 1909, she had an overall length of 450 feet, counting her 86-foot jib boom and “protruding spanker boom”; her deck length was 334 feet. (The jib boom is an extension of the bowsprit; the spanker boom supports a sail over the stern.)

(For more comparisons, the RMS Titanic was 882 feet, nine inches long. The future USS Daniel Inouye, the U. S. Navy’s newest guided missile destroyer, launched from Bath Iron Works Oct. 4, 2021, is 513 feet long. The Daniel Inouye is scheduled to be commissioned at her home port, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December.)

The 1902 Journal reporter said the “Addie M.” had three cabins, the aft (stern) one “a thing of beauty being of quartered oak, mahogany and cypress with furniture of leather trimmings.” Sternward rooms were gold and black, forward rooms aluminum and black; the captain had an office “and a stateroom prettily furnished and very light and pleasant.”

For the launching, the ship was decorated with flags and bunting. Addie Lawrence smashed the traditional bottle of champagne against the bow as the ship started down the ways.

The reporter was one of a “large crowd,” including many Fairfield residents. He wrote, “[W]hen the giant craft had left her cradle and made a mighty leap into the river a mighty cheer went up from the bystanders, while all the neighboring craft and manufacturing establishments along the river saluted by blowing three long whistles, to which the Lawrence responded.”

The South Portland Historical Society has a history of the Addie M. Lawrence that says she carried military supplies in World War I and ended her career off the coast of Brittany on July 9, 1917, when she ran aground in a gale.

Another on-line site says six-masted schooners were too big to be practical. Fewer than a dozen were built; the Edward J. Lawrence, built in 1908 and burned in 1925, was the last in use.

Edward Jones Lawrence

Edward Jones Lawrence (Jan. 1, 1833 – Nov. 27, 1918) was educated through sixth grade and first worked as a farm hand in Fairfield Center, his birthplace. A job in a Norridgewock store gave him bookkeeping experience, which led to an accounting position with the Gardiner-based lumber business Wing and Bates.

In 1860 he bought a one-third ownership in Wing and Bates. After another decade, he and his brother, George W. Lawrence, had money enough to buy the company’s Shawmut building and replace it with their own mill.

In the last quarter of the 19th century, the Fairfield history says, Lawrence and Benton native Amos Gerald “invested extensively in street railroads.” An on-line source lists him as president of two street railway companies, the Waterville and Oakland and the Portland and Brunswick, in 1909.

The Lombard log hauler, which used to be on exhibit near the Waterville-Winslow Bridge, is now on display at the Redington Museum, on Silver St., in Waterville.

Other ventures included supporting Alvin Lombard’s Lombard hauler; supporting Martin Keyes’ pulp-wood plate business, ancestor of today’s Keyes Fibre* (“Keyes’ first machinery was set up at the Lawrence mill” in Shawmut); and investing in ship-building in Bath.

After Lawrence’s first wife died in 1865, in 1868 (or 1870; sources differ) he married Hannah Miller Shaw, who became the mother of Annie (born in 1870, died in 1886), Addie (born in 1873) and Alice (born in 1879).

The bicentennial history says Lawrence moved from Shawmut to Fairfield, where he built “the grand house at the corner of High Street and Lawrence Avenue,” because he wanted his daughters educated and Fairfield had better schools. He represented Fairfield in the state legislature for one term, in 1877, as a member of the Greenback Party.

A history of Lawrence Library says Representative Jones fought for two causes, safe working conditions and fair pay for workers and legislation “allowing only the federal government to print paper money.”

After Annie’s death in 1886, Hannah had a nervous breakdown, and the two younger girls went to a Massachusetts boarding school.

Both were artistically talented. Addie was on the verge of becoming a portrait painter, but returned to Fairfield because of her mother’s health and family finances. Alice studied piano with pianist and composer John Carver Alden (1852-1935). She married Walter Daub and had two daughters; and after a divorce in 1919 returned to Fairfield.

Alice’s older daughter, Mary Lawrence (Daub) Halkyard (Sept. 25, 1910 – Nov. 15, 2013), and her husband Neil were teachers; they founded the Shepherd Knapp School, in Boylston, Massachusetts. The school no longer exists, but its building, which dates from 1848, is a National Historic Landmark.

After retiring from teaching, the Halkyards lived in China (Maine) when they were not traveling. Mary Halkyard remained fond of, and like her grandfather generous to, the Town of Fairfield.

* Today’s Huhtamaki plant.

Main sources

Fairfield Historical Society, Fairfield, Maine 1788-1988 (1988).
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).
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 Civil War memorial statue repaired

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Sculptor Andreas von Huene, pictured above, has been doing the work to repair the Vassalboro Civil War Monument near the East Vassalboro boat landing. (photo by Eric W. Austin)

Repairs were made to two places on the cape, and to the nose of the statue. The rifle has been missing for years, and pieces were most recently discovered at the Outlet Dam, in North Vassalboro. The missing rifle section will not be repaired at this time, as costs were prohibitive.

Sculptor Andreas von Huene. (photo by Eric W. Austin)

VCS has new gadgets, costing almost nothing…for now

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Vassalboro Community School (contributed photo)

by Mary Grow

Vassalboro Community School (VCS) has lots of new technology for students and staff – and so far, the gadgets have cost town taxpayers almost nothing. But there may be big bills down the road, as things wear out and need repair and replacement.

That was the gist of the message Will Backman and David Trask gave Vassalboro School Board members at their Oct. 19 meeting.

Backman, Director of Technology for the former Alternative Organizational Structure (AOS) £92 that served, and many of whose staff still serve, Vassalboro, Waterville and Winslow schools, and Trask, teacher and Technology Systems Administrator at VCS, summarized past, present and planned future technology at the school.

In the old days, VCS owned a few computers that were wheeled on carts from one classroom to another. Now, every student has a personal laptop – and headphones, Trask added, so students no longer need to bring their headphones from home.

There are five 3D printers, all but one purchased with grant money. Opportunities for online and remote learning have multiplied.

Asked if students spend all their time staring at screens, the men said no – computer use varies with grade level and with different subjects.

Typing is inherent in the curriculum, Trask assured board member Jessica Clark, from third grade on up. And, he added, many students become competent on a keyboard on their own.

Looking to the future, Trask and Backman advised:

  • “Funding to sustain upkeep and replacement of all this new technology.”
  • “Fixed and mobile makerspace(s)” for everyone to use, and more integration of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) in all grades and subjects.
  • Professional development to expand teachers’ use of technology, and higher expectations for students’ technological literacy.
  • A full-time “instructional technology support and data management” staff person.

Trask said currently he, and VCS, are unusual: he is both a classroom teacher and the technology manager, while many other schools have a technology teacher and a separate technology support staff.

Another report to board members, from Superintendent Alan Pfeiffer, said that in-school construction is almost done, after delays due to supply bottlenecks; and the generator that is a major step toward making the school building an emergency shelter should arrive early in November.

Director of Finance Paula Pooler said the 2021-22 budget is on track so far. She received an unexpected $22,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the food program, which she hopes will continue to pay for itself.

She and Food Service Director John Hersey said as far as they know, the State of Maine will pick up the tab after the federal funds that allow free school meals expire next year.

On the Vassalboro school website, vcsvikings.org, an Oct. 21 letter from Pfeiffer reminds parents to fill out the Economic Status Form. These forms, originally applications for free or reduced-price meals, are still essential in determining how much federal money VCS receives for different programs, Pfeiffer explained.

Pfeiffer expressed appreciation to Pooler and the other staff members at the former AOS central office who have added federal programs to their usual workload over the last 20 months. Pooler said the amount of money flowing through her office has almost doubled, from around $40 million a year pre-pandemic to around $78 million now, with a more-then-corresponding increase in required documentation.

Pfeiffer also thanked Trask for his service as president of the Vassalboro Education Association and introduced his successor in the position, first-grade teacher Stacey Feyler.

Board members approved appointment of librarian/media specialist Melora Norman as director of the Gifted and Talented Program. Pfeiffer said it will be revived, after a pause caused by a lack of applications and by the impact of the pandemic.

Principal Megan Allen updated board members on VCS’s anti-bullying and social/ emotional health programs, the latter being run cooperatively with the Maine Department of Education.

Half a dozen parents of VCS students attended the meeting to again object to and ask questions about the school’s mask mandate. They also had questions about pool testing, which they said has become “cool” among students, and about quarantine requirements.

One parent, who identified herself as an employee at another school, said pool testing “really does work.”

Another letter from Pfeiffer on the opening page of vcsvikings.org, dated Oct. 12, provides information about pool testing.

The next Vassalboro School Board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday evening, Nov. 16.

VASSALBORO: Officials, residents present ideas for future town improvements

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by Mary Grow

Vassalboro select board members, Town Manager Mary Sabins and other residents presented ideas for future town improvements at the select board’s Oct. 21 goal setting session.

Board Chairman Robert Browne summarized the three proposals that he thinks should be considered first as:

  • Surveying residents to see whether opposition to zoning is as strong as it was earlier in the century, when zoning ordinances were rejected and the state-mandated town comprehensive plan was retitled a strategic plan, including only state-required zones. Currently, Browne pointed out, town officials and voters are doing piecemeal zoning, through ordinances that regulate locations of activities like medical marijuana facilities.
  • Expanding the town recreation program in many directions, with possibilities including providing more open space for outdoor activities and perhaps building a recreation center; adding more adult activities; creating the park on town-owned land on Outlet Stream that Sabins recommends (“Mary’s fishing hole,” Browne called it); adding lighted outdoor basketball and tennis courts (another suggestion from Sabins); and hiring a new town employee whose responsibilities would include directing a recreation program.
  • Developing a financial plan with short-term and longer-term components that would let town officials continue to pay competitive salaries to employees, update equipment and deal with unexpected expenses like the Gray Road culvert, all without going into debt.
    Other suggestions included:
  • From select board members Barbara Redmond and Chris French, more control over and limits on solar development, especially on farmland. Both support solar power, but want a balance with other values.
  • From Redmond, a transition plan for Sabins’ retirement (which Sabins said she plans in mid-2024). Others said the proposal might lead to hiring a new town employee to take over grant-writing and tax work, who might also be the recreation program head and, Browne suggested, work with school officials.
  • From French, a more stringent procurement policy for town purchases, including services, perhaps with budget committee involvement.
  • From Sabins, an increase in the codes officer’s hours, now 20 a week. She gave two reasons: in the spring, building permit applications take a great deal of time; and she would like incoming codes officer Ryan Page to have more hours and benefits as an incentive to stay in Vassalboro.

She said Page has already committed to work for the town for a year, in return for his training under Paul Mitnik. Mitnik, who has retired repeatedly and returned to work when no one replaced him, hopes to retire for good at the end of December.

Sabins and audience members mentioned other issues town officials are facing.

Sabins reported the new fishway at the Outlet Dam, in East Vassalboro, was finished Oct. 20. A temporary boardwalk across the stream is to be removed, because although the bridge is sturdy, the railings are unsafe. And, she said, the dam, which belongs to the town, is leaking.

Former Town Manager Michael Vashon advised abandoning the dam. The Kennebec Water District would be highly likely to take over maintenance, he said, since China Lake is the district’s water supply.

Sabins said Matt Streeter, who managed the fishway project for Maine Rivers, will look into options for dam repairs. A new method of injecting material from the top might be reasonably inexpensive, she said.

Public Works Foreman Eugene Field said the state-owned, weight-limited Cushnoc Road bridge is a burden on the public works department. The only truck he has light enough to plow it is designated for primary use in North Vassalboro; the bridge is in the south end of town.

Field predicts the state will gradually lower the weight limit and eventually close the bridge, rather than rebuild it.

Another problem, he said, are the “terrible” sidewalks in North Vassalboro, a comment that led to discussion of the sewer manhole covers that are lower than the new pavement. Vashon called them “an accident waiting to happen” as drivers swerve toward oncoming traffic to avoid them.

North Vassalboro resident and former select board member Lauchlin Titus said a state Department of Transportation inspector told him next year, the state will add new curbing and sidewalks, and another layer of pavement.

Sabins said because the federal and state governments have created a new holiday, Juneteenth (celebrated on June 19 each year), Vassalboro’s staff handbook needs to be revised. It says staff get state and federal holidays off and lists the holidays; Juneteenth needs to be added.

Titus suggested other changes that might be considered while the topic is open. Sabins said select board members and staff need to approve all changes.

The next regular Vassalboro selectmen’s meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18. There will be no meeting Oct. 28 or Nov. 4.

Vassalboro voters reject mass gathering ordinance

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In Vassalboro, voters rejected the proposed Vassalboro Mass Gathering Ordinance, by a vote of 615 in favor to 698 opposed. Town Clerk Cathy Coyne said she thought many people voted “no” because they did not know what the ordinance was about.

Select board members and Town Manager Mary Sabins developed the ordinance to provide town regulation for large gatherings, in response to notice of a planned country music festival in Vassalboro in July 2022.

The ordinance was the only local question on Vassalboro’s ballot.

On the three state questions, Coyne said results were:

  • Reject the CMP corridor: 848 in favor; 587 opposed; and 9 ballots left blank.
  • Approve the transportation bond issue: 930 in favor; 505 opposed; and 9 blank ballots.
  • Approve the Constitutional amendment: 920 in favor; 509 opposed; and 15 blank ballots.

Coyne said a total of 1,444 Vassalboro residents voted, a turn-out she considers good. The 2020 census put the town’s population at 4,520.

These fish have been waiting 200 years for this moment

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The Maine Rivers team at the location of the new fishway constructed at the head of Outlet Stream, from left to right, Landis Hudson, executive director; Matt Streeter, project manager; and Nate Gray of the Maine Department of Marine Resources. (photo by Eric W. Austin)

by Eric W. Austin

It’s been more than 200 years since an alewife has successfully made its way, under its own power, from the ocean and up the Sebasticook River to Outlet Stream before arriving at China Lake, but all that’s about to change. After nearly seven years of hard work, oceans of red tape, scores of harrowing town meetings, contentious public debate and skeptical property owners, the Maine Rivers team has succeeded in their efforts to bring a fish back to China Lake.

To understand the momentous nature of their success, we must travel back in time to examine the problem they were attempting to address when they first conceived of this project back in 2014.

As European settlers moved up the New England coast and into Maine’s interior in the 1700s, they naturally established communities along the state’s abundant water sources. Beyond their use as fresh water for crops and consumption, fast-moving rivers and streams provided a source of power for the growing lumber and agricultural industries. As a result, dams popped up everywhere. In Vassalboro alone, there were six dams along Outlet Stream, the egress for most of the water in China Lake.

These dams provided an important resource for growing settlements in central Maine, but they also had one major negative effect on the environment: by blocking the flow of water the dams also prevented fish from traveling between the lake and the ocean as they had been doing for thousands of years. Now, two centuries later, these dams no longer offer the benefits they once did, but they have continued to block the movement of migratory fish up and down our waterways. This has had an ecological impact on the food web in the lake and all the way along Outlet Stream to Sebasticook River and beyond.

Maine Rivers, a nonprofit group initially founded by the Natural Resources Council of Maine before becoming an independent organization in 2003, with a mission to “protect, restore and enhance the health and vitality of Maine’s rivers,” has been working with many local groups, including the towns of China and Vassalboro, the Maine Department of Marine Resources, the Kennebec Water District, the Sebasticook Regional Land Trust and the China Region Lakes Alliance, to remove these legacy dams – or build fishways around them – and free up the Outlet Stream for the return of migratory fish like river herring (alewives and blueback herring), sea lamprey and salmon, among others.

The core Maine Rivers’ team consists of executive director Landis Hudson, project manager Matt Streeter, and longtime resident of Vassalboro and Maine Department of Marine Resources’ employee, Nate Gray. I have had the pleasure of meeting with them twice before, in 2019 and 2020, to discuss their progress on this project.

“The fact that the one and only Nate Gray, who works for the Department of Marine Resources, lives in Vassalboro,” Hudson says about one of the reasons for their success. “You cannot find a person with any more expertise, connections and commitment. He’s been a leading light. Vassalboro is lucky to have him. The State of Maine is lucky to have him, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s hard to imagine a project of this scale being done anywhere else in New England.”

Over the course of the project, three dams have been dismantled, Lombard, Masse and — this year — Morneau, and three fishways have been constructed, at Box Mill and Ladd dams, and most recently, at the head of Outlet Stream.

Although Maine’s Department of Marine Resources has been stocking alewives in China Lake since the late ‘90s, the fish could not return to the lake for spawning because of blockages created by these dams along Outlet Stream and must be restocked every year. Nate Gray says he expects the lake can support about one million alewives, although that will fluctuate from year to year.

Alewives play an important role in the ecology of the lake and in the food web all along the water sources leading away from it. Their young feed on the phosphorous-rich plankton in the lake, and carry those nutrients with them back to the ocean where most are eaten by bigger fish. In this way, they serve an important role in maintaining an appropriate nutrient balance in the lake and their return should help increase water clarity over time.

One aspect of the project that doesn’t get enough attention is the work the team does after a dam is dismantled. From the head of Outlet Stream, where the team is finishing the final fishway, we traveled just up the road to the remains of Masse Dam to see how the landscape has changed over the years since it was removed.

A dam stops the flow of water and creates a pond behind it. When it is removed and the stream is allowed to proceed naturally, the pond drains and what is left is a broad, muddy patch of ground devoid of any vegetation. An important part of the Maine Rivers project has been to restore the ecology of these areas and nurture the healthy return of the original habitat. They have worked with the local Vassalboro schools, particularly the fifth and sixth graders, to plant native shrubs, trees and flowers that would have grown here before the dams were constructed.

“The more diverse the habitat, the more diverse the plants are, the greater the habitat value for insects and birds, rodents and everything else,” says project manager Matt Streeter, gesturing across the field that used to be the location of a pond behind Masse Dam.

The new fishway recently constructed at the head of Outlet Stream in Vassalboro. (photo by Nate Gray)

The Outlet Stream will also run cooler as a result of the dam removals, since standing water like the pools created behind the dams tend to heat up and carry that heat downstream. This cooler water should attract new species of fish that appreciate the colder temperatures, such as brook and brown trout. Eagles are already flocking to the newly opened waterway, which is a good sign.

And, of course, there are the alewives. Since the Department of Marine Resources have been stocking alewives in China Lake for years, they are already imprinted with the location of the lake and will return for spawning. This spring will see thousands of the fish fighting their way up the fishways in their efforts to start a new generation. (The best places to watch the alewife runs will be at either Ladd or Box Mill dams, as the fishway just finished at the head of Outlet Stream is not set up for public viewing.)

Executive director of Maine Rivers, Landis Hudson, says the expertise they have built in the team over the years of working on the project is their greatest asset. And their work is not done. “There are lots of opportunities in Maine for improving fish passage,” she says.

“There are thousands of dams around the state that are doing nothing useful,” confirms project manager Streeter.

So, let’s pause and appreciate the simple alewife. After more than 200 years, this is the moment they’ve been waiting for.

Vassalboro select board cancels October 28, 2021 meeting

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Vassalboro select board members have canceled the meeting scheduled for Thursday evening, Oct. 28. Their next regular meeting would have fallen on Nov. 4, but that evening they plan to attend the Mid-Maine Chamber of Commerce awards banquet where former bookkeeper Jean Poulin will be recognized as municipal employee of the year. The next regular select board meeting is therefore scheduled for Thursday evening, Nov. 18.

Sew for a Cause at St. Bridget’s Center

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Some of the items created and collected by Sew for a Cause and American Legion Post #126 for veterans this Christmas.

The Sew for a Cause group is working with American Legion Post #126, in Vassalboro, on a project. The ladies have made a couple hundred patriotic themed Christmas stockings.

Members of American Legion Post #126 are also collecting personal care items such as shampoo, shaving cream, socks, soap, etc., and snack treats to fill the stockings. The stockings will be donated to veterans at Togus VA, in Augusta. Anyone interested in donating items can contact St. Bridget Center, at 207 616-3148.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: More high schools (Vassalboro)

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Original Oak Grove School

by Mary Grow

Vassalboro

In Vassalboro, which until 1792 included Sidney on the west side of the Kennebec River, voters first discussed schools in 1771, the year the town was incorporated. According to Alma Pierce Robbins’ Vassalboro history, voters at a September town meeting approved “Thirty Pounds Lawful money” to support a minister – and refused to appropriate anything to support a schoolmaster.

School districts existed by 1785, in varying numbers and with varying boundaries. After 1806 there was a separate district for members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), at least part of the time.

Oak Grove School, founded by Vassalboro Quakers in 1848 (see The Town Line, July 22), was the third high school established in Vassalboro in the 1800s. The first two were at Getchell’s Corner, a far more important village in the 19th century than it is now.

The earlier, according to Raymond Manson’s research, was Vassalborough Academy.

In his paper on the school, now in the Vassalboro Historical Society’s library, Manson lists the 18 men who, at the beginning of 1835, decided to open a high school. On Feb. 28, 1835, the Maine legislature approved incorporation of The Vassalborough Academy.

Academy trustees commissioned one of their group, Moses Rollins, to build a home for the Academy. Manson wrote that Rollins put the building on the west side of the road through Getchell’s Corner, almost across the street from what was in 1967 Adams Memorial Chapel.

(Rollins, born in 1786, died June 2, 1863, and is buried in Vassalboro’s Union Cemetery. An on-line history says he was a sergeant in one of the Vassalboro companies raised for the War of 1812; this writer found no information on his occupation.)

Nathan Longfellow was the Academy’s first “preceptor,” or teaching principal, serving until the spring of 1837, Manson wrote.

Robbins found an 1837 advertisement in The Kennebec Journal for the Academy’s spring term. Levi Higgins Jr. had succeeded Longfellow; he stayed only one term, Manson said.

The advertisement said quarterly tuition was from $3 to $4.50 (depending on the subjects chosen, as at other high schools). Board was $1.50 to $1.75 a week. Manson wrote that students boarded with neighborhood families in the Academy’s early days, and later arrangements were made to let them room in groups.

In September 1837, Benjamin F. Shaw, who held a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth, became principal. The trustees were pleased. Shaw left in the spring of 1839, but returned sometime in 1840.

Robbins’ first mention of the second high school is for the year 1837. She quotes a long advertisement from The Kennebec Journal for the School for Young Ladies that “Miss A. Howard” planned to open about April 10.

Miss Howard intended to teach “Reading, Writing, Grammar, and Composition”; “the Rudiments of French and Latin Languages”; “Arithmetic, Geography, with the use of Globes, Intellectual Philosophy and such branches of Natural Science as are usually taught in High Schools”; and “useful and ornamental needlework, Painting and Drawing.”

The School for Young Ladies was across the street from the Academy, and, according to Manson, was so successful that after three years of running the Academy for boys only, the trustees decided they should admit girls. For the spring 1838 term, they added to the one-man faculty an “instructress,” whom they described as “eminently qualified.”

This writer has been unable to find any record of Miss Howard or her school later than 1838.

Vasssalborough Academy apparently adapted to co-ed education promptly. In August 1839 the new principal, Ashiel Moore, added “Chinese Painting and Linear Drawing” (for an extra fee), and in the spring of 1840 he introduced “Wax and Needlework,” specifically for the female students.

Manson found lists of Vassalboro Academy principals, course changes and occasionally tuition fees through the 1840s. There was a new principal about every 12 months, including three Bowdoin men in a row (it is unclear whether they were graduates or still students).

The new principal in the fall of 1848 was Josiah Hayden Drummond, Waterville College Class of 1846 (the first of several Waterville College men to head the school in the 1840s and 1850s). Manson wrote that when Drummond was 14 years old, he had been Vassalborough Academy’s assistant math teacher under Principal Shaw.

Science courses were added, physiology in the spring of 1841, chemistry “and other sciences” in 1842. Manson’s first mention of a music course (type unspecified) was in the fall of 1841.

French and German were the foreign languages taught in 1846. In that year’s fall term, Italian replaced French. In 1856, Latin, Greek, French and German were offered.

By the 1850s and 1860s Vassalborough Academy was publishing catalogs, giving Manson additional information.

For example, in 1856 Principal Reuben Foster had four assistants, one a woman. They taught 78 students in the spring term and 88 in the fall term.

The majority of students lived in Vassalboro. Others were from nearby towns – Augusta, China, Windsor and Winslow. The enrollment also included three students from Hanover (west of Rumford) and one each from Buxton (west of Portland), Olney (neither the web nor Chadbourne’s Maine Place Names lists a Maine town named Olney), Palmyra (north of Pittsfield), South Leeds (southwest of Winthrop) and Topsham (north of Brunswick).

The Academy’s purpose was always to prepare male students for college or for teaching. The 1856 catalog repeated these goals and added preparation for business. For girls, the catalog offered “an elevated course of female education.”

By 1861, Manson said, Oak Grove Seminary was providing serious competition for Vassalborough Academy. The 1860s were probably when, according to Kingsbury, the Academy building was used for “religious as well as secular instruction.”

William Penn Whitehouse, Colby 1863, became Academy principal in the fall of 1863 – perhaps the last principal, Manson wrote. (Whitehouse later became a Justice of the Maine Supreme Court [see The Town Line, Dec. 10, 2020].)

The Methodist Society bought the Academy building in 1868. Manson added an item from the April 29, 1870, Waterville Mail saying the work to convert the building to a Methodist church should be finished by July 1870.

The Getchell’s Corner Methodists merged with the North Vassalboro church in 1890, Manson continued. After the merger, he wrote, the building “became a general store and was destroyed by fire about 1917. All that remains of the old academy are the foundation walls.”

There might have been a successor to Vassalborough Academy. Robbins mentioned in 1869, in quotation marks, ” ‘the upper school’ at North Vassalboro,” where Lewis Mowers was the teacher. She provided no further information.

After the Maine legislature required town high schools in 1873, Robbins wrote, Vassalboro opened two, in East Vassalboro and at Riverside.

According to Vassalboro Historical Society President Janice Clowes and information in the Historical Society library, the East Vassalboro High School was on the west side of Main Street, approximately opposite the present Grange Hall. Kingsbury said voters appropriated $500 for the building in 1873, but by 1892 “the continued success of Oak Grove Seminary has superseded the necessity for the high school.”

Undated postcards the Society owns show a two-story wooden building with an attic. Two doors with a window between them face east, toward the street; the second floor has a single front window above the ground-floor one, and above that is a semi-circular attic window.

Accompanying information calls the school a primary or grammar school. It was discontinued in the latter half of the 1920s, and students moved to the “new” East Vassalboro School. That building now houses the Historical Society museum.

Neighbor Harold Taylor bought the old schoolhouse in the 1930s, and his daughter, Betty Taylor, had the building torn down in 1981, according to Historical Society records.

The 1873 Riverside School, Clowes says, is the building on the north side of Webber Pond Road, a short distance east of Riverside Drive (Route 201). She commented that it has been “very changed.”

In 1873, too, North Vassalboro residents spent more than $6,000 for a new school building there. Kingsbury called it the “best school building in the town,” with “three departments, and a large public hall on the second floor.”

Neither Kingsbury nor Robbins said what grades it housed. After serving as a school and then as the town office building, it is now the office of Mid-Maine Internal Medicine.

Robbins cited an 1889 state law that required each public school teacher to “devote ten minutes of each day to the principle of kindness to birds and animals.”

After the 1903 state law telling the town to pay $30 tuition to “any high school of standard grade,” Robbins wrote that from Vassalboro, 33 students went to Oak Grove Seminary, 10 chose Coburn Classical Institute, in Waterville, four attended Erskine Academy, in China, and one each went to high schools in Hallowell and Yarmouth.

Vassalboro historians Alma Pierce Robbins and Raymond Russell Manson

Alma Pierce Robbins was born Oct. 4, 1898, in Vassalboro, youngest of five children of Ira James Robbins (1855-1929) and Lucy Alma (Smiley) Robbins (1862-1930). She died Nov. 29, 1997, aged 99 years and almost two months, according to an on-line genealogy.

The three girls in the family were travelers. Older sister Elsie Marion (1886-1960) died in California; second sister Edna Mildred (1888-1987, another long-lived family member) lived in Massachusetts and Illinois; and Alma Pierce worked in Massachusetts and died in Florida.

Their brother Wendell Ira (1891-1983) spent his life in Augusta. Brother Maurice Smiley (1893-1970) got as far away as Mechanic Falls, but died in Waterville and is buried in China’s Chadwick Hill Cemetery.

Robbins’ obituary, published in Nantucket County, Massachusetts, says that after elementary schooling in Vassalboro, she graduated from Brewster Academy, in Wolfboro, New Hampshire, in 1917 and attended colleges in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

For more than 30 years she was a social worker in Boston. She lived on Nantucket and edited the Nantucket Historical Association newsletter.

The genealogy, but not the obituary, says that from January to December 1928 Robbins was married to Herman Schwartz. In 1930, the genealogy says, she was described as an osteopath in Brunswick, where she lived for about two years.

On-line military records show Robbins enlisting in the Women’s Army Corps on Aug. 14, 1944, from Boston. Army records describe her as unmarried and without dependents. She had had four years of college; her occupation was in the category “Social and welfare workers.” She was discharged Sept. 2, 1945.

The obituary says after retirement, “she lived in Vassalboro, Clearwater [Florida], and Arcata [California],” moving to Florida permanently in 1985. Her “numerous published writings” include the 1971 Vassalboro history.

With permission of her great-nephew Stephen Robbins, between 1990 and 2003 The Town Line published several of Robbins’ articles describing early 20th-century life on the family farm on Webber Pond Road.

Raymond Russell Manson, another Vassalboro historian, wrote a short autobiographical piece for the Maine State Library’s Special Collections compilation of correspondence from Maine writers. The library has made his 1967 information available on line.

Manson wrote that he was born Oct. 6, 1899 (almost exactly a year later than Robbins), in North Vassalboro, George Thomas and Mary Jewett Manson’s fifth child.

He went to Vassalboro elementary schools and graduated from Oak Grove Seminary, Class of 1918. He entered Colby College in the Class of 1922, apparently after army service in World War I. On June 1, 1919, while still in college, he became a post office employee in Waterville, rising to the rank of Assistant Postmaster before he retired on Dec. 31, 1960.

He married Vivian Crafts (born Nov. 19, 1904), from Watertown, Massachusetts, on Sept. 3, 1930. They lived on Burleigh Street in Waterville; both were Christian Scientists.

Manson was a member of the Vassalboro Masons and the Vassalboro Historical Society. He wrote numerous historical pieces about his native town, including the history of Oak Grove that he and Elsia Holway Burleigh wrote in 1965 (previously cited in this series; see The Town Line, July 22, issue).

Manson died Jan. 11, 1980. In 1989 his widow married Clarence Merryfield; the couple lived in Belfast until 1993, when they returned to Waterville. She died there Dec. 5, 2006.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Manson, Raymond M., Vassalboro Academy (June 15, 1967; manuscript, Vassalboro Historical Society).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Vassalboro Fundraiser for Fortins

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Fortin’s Farm where 8 cows were struck by lightning. (photo from Facebook event)

VASSALBORO – The Spaghetti Supper Fundraiser for the Fortin’s will be held at St Bridget Center, Saturday, October 16, from 4 – 7 p.m.