Emmett Appel receives MPA Principal’s award

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Emmett Appel

Headmaster Jamie Soule has announced that Emmett Appel, of Windsor, a senior at Erskine Academy, in South China, has been selected to receive the 2025 Principal’s Award. The award, sponsored by the Maine Principals’ Association, recognizes a high school senior’s academic excellence, outstanding school citizenship, and leadership.

Appel is a consistent high honors student in a highly competitive academic program that includes honors or accelerated level classes and numerous Advanced Placement and Concurrent Enrollment courses with nearby colleges. He has been commended and honored within the school for his exceptional academic achievements, extracurricular involvement, leadership, and community service. Appel is currently ranked among the top students in Erskine Academy’s Class of 2025, and was one of only two students in the state to be selected to represent Maine at the 63rd annual U.S. Senate Youth Program (USSYP) Washington Week this month.

“Emmett’s dedication and commitment to his academic studies, extra and co-curricular activities, and to causes he cares deeply for, perfectly exemplifies our school’s core values of scholarship, leadership, stewardship, and relationships. Emmett has consistently distinguished himself as an exemplary representative for Erskine Academy, and I am proud to honor him with this well-deserved award,” noted Headmaster Soule.

Appel, Soule, and other award winners and their principals will attend an Honors Luncheon at Jeff’s Catering, on Saturday, April 5, 2025, at 12:30 p.m. The event recognizes outstanding students by presenting a plaque and awarding ten $1,000 scholarships in the names of former Maine principals and MPA Executive Directors: Horace O. McGowan, Richard W. Tyler, and Richard A. Durost.

The Principal’s Award is presented in more than 100 Maine public and private high schools by member principals of the MPA, the professional association representing Maine’s school administrators.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Windsor High Schools

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by Mary Grow

Last week’s story covered primary schooling in the Town of Windsor, south of China and Vassalboro and east of Augusta in the Kennebec Valley. This week’s article will add a bit of information on Windsor high schools, plus a biographical sketch of an early area settler who was Windsor’s first primary-school teacher.

As described in previous stories in this subseries on education, the State of Maine’s 1873 Free High School Act required towns to provide high-school education. Some towns, including Windsor, did not wait for a state law.

Henry Kingsbury and C. Arlene Barton Gilbert both say Windsor’s first free high school started in 1867 in school District 1, in the municipal building at Windsor Corner (now the intersection of Routes 32 and 105).

Kingsbury’s version, in his 1892 Kennebec County history, is that town officials bought “seats and desks” for the second floor of the town house to open the school, with Horace Colburn the first teacher. Two high-school terms a year were held for about five years, he wrote (and Gilbert repeated, in her chapter on schools in Linwood H. Lowden’s 1993 Windsor history).

At a March 3, 1873, town meeting, Gilbert wrote, voters raised $200 for the high school; but they met again April 28 and rescinded the vote. To Gilbert, this sudden change of mind indicated “some dissatisfaction with the school.”

The problem was apparently resolved, because by 1877, voters were again supporting high school classes.

Gilbert quoted from Supervisor of Schools Joseph Colburn’s 1877 annual report saying District 1 had hosted two free high school terms, eight weeks in the spring, taught by Hattie King, from Whitefield, and 10 weeks in the fall, taught by Lizzie S. Milliken, from Augusta.

Colburn called the high school “very profitable to the district and vicinity, giving the scholars who attended an opportunity for improvement that they could not otherwise have had.” How many high-schoolers he did not say; the total in 13 Windsor schools that year was 400 students.

Gilbert then quoted from the 1878 report submitted by Supervisor George J. Moody, which covered only the fall term, beginning Sept. 4 and running 10 weeks. The teacher was Harry R. Thurston, of Belfast; there were 34 “scholars” (out of 376 in town), “most of them being well advanced and quite a good number having had experience as teachers.”

Moody listed 1878 high school courses as “reading, arithmetic, grammar, geography, composition, history, physiology, geometry and algebra.” He praised students and teacher; wrote that the “closing examination showed that the term had been both pleasant and profitable”; and expressed the hope “that the district will again avail itself of this opportunity.”

(Kingsbury said that Horace Colburn or Coburn [1812-1885] had three sons. Two of them taught school, starting in their teens; each of those two served as Windsor’s supervisor of schools, Joseph from 1871 to 1886 [with Moody interrupting?] and Frank in 1888 and 1889.

(For more on Windsor’s Colburn family, see the June 8, 2023, issue of The Town Line.)

Gilbert wrote that Windsor continued to support a free high school until “about 1902,” not always in District 1. In 1902, she said, there was a spring term; but by then, the town was paying tuition to a four-year out-of-town high school, which she did not name.

(The two most likely high schools were in Augusta and South China. Augusta’s Cony High School was operating well before 1902. Erskine Academy, in South China, opened in September 1883, and the Maine legislature incorporated it in 1901.)

Windsor is currently a member of Regional School Unit #12 (Sheepscot Valley). The town has its own elementary school for students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade and continues to tuition out its high-school students.

The Rev. Job Chadwick

As mentioned last week, Windsor’s first elementary-school teacher was Rev. Job Chadwick. He was also the first teacher in what became China and for many years the townspeople’s “only spiritual guide” who lived in town, according to a 1931 family history compiled by Lillian Rich (McLaughlin) Gilligan, found on line.

Summary of Rev. Job Chadwick’s life

When Rev. Job Chadwick was born on 4 December 1756, in Falmouth, Barnstable, Massachusetts, United States, his father, James Chadwick, was 31 and his mother, Ruth Hatch, was 27. He married Mercy Weeks on 13 September 1784, in Harlem, Kennebec, Maine, United States. They were the parents of at least 3 sons and 1 daughter. He lived in Windsor, Kennebec, Maine, United States in 1810 and Gouldsboro, Hancock, Maine, United States in 1820. He died in January 1832, in Maine, United States, at the age of 75, and was buried in Chadwick Hill Cemetery, China, Kennebec, Maine, United States.

Gilligan began with the settlement of Jones Plantation (later China) in 1774. In the spring of 1782, she wrote, James and Ruth Chadwick came from southern Massachusetts with unmarried children Job, Ichabod, Elizabeth and Judah. They were followed in 1783 by married sons John and James, with their families and youngest son Lot, who’d been considered too young to move to the wilderness the previous year.

Gilligan guessed the Chadwicks came up the Kennebec to get to their new home, and mentioned a family tradition that they stopped first in Getchell’s Corner, in Vassalboro, not far from the river, before moving inland. Their China farms were in South China, including the area known as Chadwick’s Corner on what is now Route 32, leading from South China Village south into Windsor.

Gilligan said Job and his three older brothers were all born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Gear or Gayer (who never came to Maine – he went to Philadelphia about 1774 and then to Beaufort, North Carolina, for the rest of his life) and John were born in the late 1740s, James, Jr. in the early 1750s and Job on Dec. 4, 1756 (making him 25 in the spring of 1782).

(Henry Kingsbury’s version of the family’s arrival is that Ichabod Chadwick, with his sons Job, Judah and James, settled Chadwick’s Corner before 1797. The website WikiTree names James, Jr., Judah, Ichabod and Asa as Job’s half-brothers.)

On Dec. 13, 1784, in Harlem, Job Chadwick married Mercy Weeks, born in Falmouth Dec. 5, 1757. Gilligan said the couple settled “near the present town house” (on what is now Lakeview Drive) and had four children: Abigail, born Nov. 30, 1785, married Joseph Linn; Paul, born May 30, 1787, married Hanna or Hannah Leeman; Abraham, born May 27, 1790, never married; and Lot, 2nd (or Lott), born Sept. 24, 1792, married Sally Linn.

The FamilySearch website agrees with the information above and adds that Job Chadwick lived in Windsor in 1810 and Gouldsboro (Maine) in 1820.

Your writer found no source that explained where or when Chadwick got his religious education, if he had one. In his Windsor history, Linwood Lowden wrote that “according to his own testimony, by the year 1804, Chadwick had already spent fourteen years in the ministry.”

A summary biography in Rev. Joshua Millet’s 1845 The History of the Baptists in Maine, says Chadwick was “ord[ained] an evan[gelist] at Vassalborough, 1796.” (The entire book has been digitized and is available on line.)

Millet wrote that Vassalboro’s first Baptist church was organized around 1790. Some of its members lived in adjoining Harlem, and in 1796 a separate church was organized in southern Harlem, named the Second Baptist Church, with Chadwick its pastor from 1797 to 1805.

Millet called Chadwick and the Vassalboro pastor, Nehemiah Gould, “men…who were experienced in all the peculiarities of a new country, and therefore qualified to lead the flock of God in such times.”

(Kingsbury said the First Baptist Church of Harlem was organized in 1797, with Chadwick the first preacher; he “supplied the church for eight years, and occasionally for several years afterward.” After China was made a separate town in 1818 and reunited with Harlem in 1822, the Harlem First Baptist Church became the China Second Baptist Church.)

How Chadwick qualified as a teacher is another unknown, but he definitely served as one, first in China and then in Windsor.

The China bicentennial history says Harlem residents established their first school in 1795, on Michael Norton’s land midway of the east shore of China Lake. Classes met either in a house or in a log cabin built for a schoolhouse, and the teacher was Rev. Job Chadwick.

Kingsbury surmised Chadwick must have run a successful school, because “he continued to wield the ‘birch’ several terms in succession here.”

Lowden wrote that Windsor’s first teacher (and first resident preacher) was Rev. Job Chadwick, who had previously taught in China. In 1804, Lowden wrote, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel sought a teacher for two small settlements, Hunts Meadow (later included in Whitefield) and Pinhook (in the southern part of what became Windsor).

Lowden quoted at length from a July 18, 1804, letter from a Wiscasset minister named Alexander McLean recommending Chadwick. McLean wrote that Chadwick planned to move his family from Harlem to Windsor; called him “well qualified to instruct children’; and added that he “has for some years been employed in the instruction of children.”

McLean explained that a recent “variety of misfortunes” had “stripped [Chadwick] of all his worldly property,” so he could probably be hired to teach “at as easy a rate as any.” He recommended a month-long term at Hunts Meadow and two months at Pinhook, if the Society could afford that much, to “moralize and civilize” the settlements, pointing out that Chadwick could double as the Sabbath preacher.

Chadwick got the job. In her chapter on education in Lowden’s history, C. Arlene Barton Gilbert wrote that his first term of school in 1804 was two month long, with an average attendance of 15 to 20 youngsters.

Chadwick was still in Windsor in the spring of 1809, Gilbert said: at an April 3 town meeting at his house, voters raised $50 for education and chose a four-man school committee.

Disagreeing with Lowden’s and Gilbert’s information, Millet, in his religious history, implied that after Chadwick finished his ministry in Harlem in 1805, he promptly became a missionary in what a reviewer of Millet’s work called “the destitute regions of Maine and on Cape Cod, Mass.”

He then became a pastor in Gouldsborough, from 1816 to 1831. He returned to Windsor, where he died Dec. 25, 1831 (according to Millet), or in January 1832 (according to other sources). The latter sources say Mercy Chadwick had died in China in 1826.

FamilySearch says Job Chadwick is buried in China’s Chadwick Hill Cemetery. Find a Grave lists 52 Chadwicks in this cemetery, none named Job or Mercy.

Family members buried here include Job’s father, James (July 5, 1725 – Sept. 6, 1786); his mother, Ruth (Hatch) (Aug. 15, 1729 – Jan. 15, 1786); two of his brothers, James, Jr. (Feb. 25, 1753 – Oct. 25, 1826) and Judah (Dec. 9, 1765 – Aug. 9, 1816); James, Jr.’s widow, Rhoda (Weeks) (1756 – Jan. 30, 1831); and Judah’s widow, Sarah “Sally” (Webber) (1766 – Feb. 25, 1854).

Also buried in Chadwick Hill Cemetery, according to Find a Grave, is Job and Mercy’s son Paul, the surveyor who worked for the Kennebec Proprietors and was killed by squatters as he worked in Malta (later Windsor) in September 1809 (see the March 7, 2024, issue of The Town Line for a summary history of the so-called Malta War).

Main sources

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).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: Windsor Primary Schools

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by Mary Grow

Note: part of this article was first published in the Oct. 28, 2021, issue of The Town Line.

This subseries on central Kennebec Valley towns’ early schools still has one town to cover: Windsor, a few miles off the river, east of Augusta and south of Vassalboro and China.

The area was first settled in the 1780s, mostly by people moving inland from Bristol and Damariscotta via the Sheepscot River. Organized around 1790 as New Waterford Plantation, it became Malta on March 3, 1809, Gerry in 1820 and Windsor in 1822.

Henry Kingsbury, in his 1892 Kennebec County history, commented that the town grew fast. He wrote that “a continual influx of population…augmented by the development of a new generation” meant that within 30 years after the first land claims, “nearly all the valuable lands [were] in the hands of permanent proprietors.”

Kingsbury noted how many of the first settlers’ families stayed in Windsor. His chapter on the town is full of references to their children and grandchildren (mostly the sons) still living there in 1892.

Windsor residents are fortunate: Kingsbury’s book is supplemented and updated by a well-researched town history by Linwood H. Lowden, published in 1993. It includes an equally well-researched chapter on schools by C. Arlene Barton Gilbert.

Gilbert wrote that Rev. Job Chadwick taught the first recorded school in Windsor, in 1804, for two months, with average attendance 15 to 20 students.

Chadwick’s school was funded by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, not by taxpayers. Gilbert commented that other religious organizations sometimes funded early education.

The earliest record of a Windsor – Malta, at the time – town meeting that Lowden found was on April 3, 1809, at Rev. Chadwick’s house. Gilbert said voters elected a four-man school committee, John Arnold, John Bughee (Bugbee?), Walter Dockendorff and Thomas LeBallister, and approved a $50 appropriation for education.

Voters also appropriated $700 “to be wrought upon the road or highways.” The latter was supplemented by approval of paying $1 a day for a man’s work on the roads and 66 cents a day for oxen, Lowden reported.

A year later, voters approved five school districts and appropriated $150. Gilbert copied from the town records: “this money for schooling be paid in lumber and produce.” In April 1811, she wrote, they appropriated $200 – and “were already rearranging school districts which they had established two years earlier.”

Kingsbury agreed about the five Malta school districts in 1810, taking information from “[t]he earliest authentic record which has been preserved.” He added, though, that talking with older residents led him to “infer” an earlier division into two or three districts.

One of the first districts, Kingsbury said, covered the entire area east of the West Branch of the Sheepscot River (somewhat less than half the town), and was later (in 1810?) divided into three districts. That district had a schoolhouse “built of logs” close to Charles Mason’s 1892 house.

Voters on April 16, 1812, elected seven school agents (including LeBallister), which Gilbert took to mean there were by then seven school districts. In 1813, she said, no education money was appropriated; but in 1814, one meeting raised $150 and a later one $200. Voters at the second meeting elected eight committee members (including Dockendorff), implying eight districts.

On April 6, 1818, another assemblage of voters approved $500 for education and elected 18 committee members (again including Dockendorff).

As in other towns, a school did not necessarily mean a schoolhouse. Neither Gilbert nor Kingsbury is clear about what Windsor school buildings were where at what time.

Gilbert quoted from a letter an early resident named John Linn wrote in March 1807 to a Boston resident saying he and friends had accumulated supplies to build “a small meeting house and to keep school, but all lies dead now.” What went wrong, and what Linn hoped his Boston friend could do about it, remained unexplained.

Lowden said Linn and his wife Rebecca (Anderson) came to Windsor in 1801 to settle on a lot he bought from his brother-in-law the previous autumn. With them were their 10 children, several of the boys “close to adulthood” (no wonder Linn was interested in a school). The family sailed from Boston to Bristol and “walked most of the way from Bristol to Windsor” (36 miles by 21st century roads).

The log schoolhouse in one of Kingsbury’s inferred pre-1810 school districts was not the first Windsor schoolhouse, he said; the first one was built at Windsor Corner (the present junction of Routes 32 and 105) “about where the town house now stands.” He gave no construction date, but said it burned in February 1832.

Another early schoolhouse Kingsbury called the Center schoolhouse. This building, he said, was used for the annual town meeting in 1819, for the first time.

Lowden said the first proposal to build a town house, where town meetings could be held, was in the spring of 1811; voters rejected it. Until 1819, per Kingsbury, meetings had been in private houses; for five years after 1819, the Center school and the Methodist church shared the duty.

(After that, Kingsbury said, voters assembled in barns. On May 15, 1845, he and Lowden wrote, voters approved building a town house, to be ready by June 1846; they started using it May 21, 1846 [Lowden] or in 1847 [Kingsbury].)

Gilbert wrote that once there were school buildings, annual town meetings – but, she implied, not necessarily special meetings – were “usually” held in them. One exception was on April 2, 1821, when voters met in the District 1 (Windsor Corner) schoolhouse. They raised $100 for education (and $1,200 for roads) and elected a four-man committee “for the inspection of teachers and schools.”

Gilbert summarized the next couple decades, as voters elected town school committees plus a changing number of (unpaid, she said) district agents. Annual education appropriations slowly increased, from $400 to $500 in the 1820s, to $600 in the 1830s and to $700 in 1841.

Kingsbury and Gilbert agreed that Windsor’s first annual school report was printed in 1851. Voters directed town officials to have 350 copies of the report “distributed two days before the annual meeting.” Gilbert did not know of any surviving in 1993.

Windsor’s 15 districts in 1866-67 Gilbert called the largest number simultaneously operating in the town’s history. She quoted at length from the school committee’s district-by-district report (omitting Districts 11, 12, and 15).

On April 1, 1866, the report said, Windsor had 478 students. Two dozen school terms were taught (two terms a year in all but Districts 5 and 6, which had no summer term), by 19 women and five men, funded by $1,161 in town money and $37.86 from the State of Maine.

Committee members (Orren Tyler, C. A. Pierce and Horace Colburn) praised most of the teachers. In District 13, though, it took a while to find the right one. Adelia Cunningham started, but residents were displeased because she wasn’t qualified to teach algebra, and she left after a week. Dolly Hilt, from China, took over; she got homesick and left after five days. Jennie Maxwell was then hired and did a good job.

The 1866 Windsor school committee members were very unhappy with the condition of the school buildings.

“Three-fifths of our school houses are not fit places for schools,” they wrote. Pig-pens or hen-houses, maybe; they refused to label them stables, calling them “miserable huts” and claiming parents who sent their children into them wouldn’t consider housing their horses or oxen so badly over the winter.

One consequence, the school committee members said, was that competent teachers refused to teach in Windsor, and the town had to hire inferior ones.

Their proposed remedy was consolidation, among small districts or between a large and a small, to provide resources to build decent buildings. It would be better, they said, for children who wanted an education to travel a mile and a half to a school “that will fully repay them for their labor” than to go half a mile “and attend a nuisance.”

In 1878/79, school supervisor J. H. Barton was still advocating consolidation, on the ground that “it is hardly economy to employ a teacher for only ten or twelve scholars” in a small district. His main gripes were not buildings, but lack of parental interest – children study harder if their parents reward with “love and approval,” he said – and too few or too varied textbooks.

For 1881, supervisor W. E. Gorham, M.D., wrote a long, erudite and occasionally blunt report that included references to the Prussian education system two centuries earlier, the Bible and Athenian law-giver Solon (630 – 560 BCE). Gorham called for eliminating at least two districts, unless the entire “bungling” district system was abolished; and complained about inadequate school furnishings.

School libraries, maps and globes, proper blackboard erasers and a chair for the teacher – some schools provided not even a milking stool, he claimed – were among Gorham’s recommendations.

He, too, stressed the parents’ role. Their influence, he wrote, “dates from remote pre-natal conditions, little understood by people generally.” He recommended more study of “inherited tendencies,” and suggested penalties for parents who did not send their children to school.

Gilbert provided locations for some of Windsor’s 16 school districts, and Kingsbury added information on a few of the schoolhouses. When the consolidated school opened in 1951, town officials sold remaining five rural school buildings, Gilbert wrote.

She said the early Windsor Corner building that Kingsbury said burned in 1832 was probably on the east side of current Route 32, and after the fire was rebuilt on the west side, roughly across the road from the town hall. It survived, with frequent repairs, until 1951.

Electricity was not installed until 1836, Gilbert said. School days ran from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; kerosene lights made late-afternoon classes challenging on sunless winter days.

Gilbert said in 1951, town officials leased the school building for 99 years, for $1, to the “newly organized Windsor Volunteer Fire Department.” Firefighters were authorized to remodel it.

District 2, in South Windsor, had at least three consecutive buildings in slightly different places, the first two burning down. The final one lasted until 1951, when town officials sold it for $803; it became a house, still occupied in 1993. The North Windsor (District 3) building on Route 32 also closed in 1951 and was converted to a house, Gilbert wrote.

Kingsbury said the original building in Barton District (District 4, in western Windsor, where Dr. Stephen Barton and his family settled in 1803) was moved from its first site closer to the center of the district around 1850. It burned about 1889 and there was a new one on the old foundation by 1892.

Gilbert wrote that her father went to the Barton School. Around 1889, she said, most students were understood to be Stephen Barton’s descendants. In 1912, students were transferred to North Windsor and in 1913 town officials sold the building for $30.

Kingsbury said the Windsor Neck (District 7) schoolhouse in the northeast was in 1892 on the same spot as an earlier one “which was torn away nearly fifty years ago.” Gilbert found evidence in town reports that a third one was built in 1896; it was used until 1951.

In 1892, Kingsbury said, there were five original schoolhouses still standing, a 70-year-old one in the Pierce or Hallowell District (which is not on Gilbert’s list) and others in Districts 6 (Erskine, to Gilbert), 8, 10 (Coleman, on Legion Park Road, closed about 1926) and 16.

Main sources

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).

WINDSOR: Long discussion takes place about Long Pond Acres

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by The Town Line staff

At their February 11,2025, meeting, the Windsor Select Board heard from Town Manager Theresa Haskell that she received a letter from Delta Ambulance confirming the $35 per capita fee imposed on the town for ambulance service.

Also, Dan. West sent an invoice to the town for $100. This is for his appointed secretary duties for the planning board meeting on January 6. Broken down, it is $75 for the service and an additional $25 for doing agenda preparation for the planning board’s February 3, 2025, meeting.

A water test was conducted for the town office on January 28. The test results have not come back yet. Not PFAS test was done at this time. There will be more discussion as to whether a PFAS test will be done in the future.

Select board members approved the PSAP contract, as written, and authorized Haskell to sign the contract, which includes an fee increase.

In personnel changes, the board approved a motion to remove Thomas Leonard as a planning board alternate, and appointed Carol Chavarie as planning board chairman. Leonard was removed for missing numerous planning board meetings, and several attempts to contact him have failed. Nancy Fish was appointed to the planning board.

Matthew Taylor handed out a packed for the select board to review and spoke with the select board at length regarding the Long Pond Acres Subdivision. Questions were raised regarding the right of way and the fire road. Taylor, as well as other lot owners, said Taylor is looking for more clarification. Taylor collected information after meetings with Greg Feltis, assistant Codes Enforcement Officer, Carol Chavarie, planning board chairman, and Theresa Haskell, town manager. Following much discussion, the select board will send information to the town attorney for review and request the planning board draft a letter by February 28, 2025, for all property owners and abutters so Taylor can take to his meeting stating the town is having the town’s attorney investigate further.

In other business, Troy Thibodeau and Gery Mitchell from Clean Energy Connect were present to let the select board know what has been happening around town power lines. He said most of the large equipment has been removed from the work sites or is already on site that they need. There are only a few pieces of large equipment that will be brought in, a transaxle crane and bulldozer. The plan is to be finished work. by June 2025. They are aware of the damage being done to the roads and they are documenting it the best they can and if the public works department sees areas, to let them know so they can forecast the cost for repairs they will need for which to account.

Bill Portela spoke to the board regarding a dangerous dog situation. He says he has been walking his dog, on a leash, on the South Belfast Road, and has been attacked by two German shepherds. He showed a video of one attack, when he needed the aid of a school bus driver and a passing motorist. He read, out loud, the state statute for dangerous dogs. He believes these situations meet the guidelines for dangerous dogs. A formal letter was submitted to begin the legal process.

The next meeting of the select board was held on February 25, 2025.

Local central Maine Town Meetings schedule for 2025

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Town meetings 2025

ALBION

Municipal Election
TBD
Besse Building
Town meeting
TBD

CHINA

Town meeting (election format)
TBD

FAIRFIELD

TBD
Fairfield Community Center

PALERMO

Town meeting

Saturday, March 8, at 9 a.m.,
Palermo School, Route 3

Town voting for town officials

Friday, March 7, 3 – 7 p.m.
The town office.

VASSALBORO

Town meeting
TBD
Town Elections
TBD

WINDSOR

Municipal Election
TBD
Town meeting
TBD

*   *   *

To be included in this list, visit our Contact Us page or send an email to The Town Line at townline@townline.org.

Emmett Appel elected for United States Senate Youth Program

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Emmett Appel

The United States Senate Youth Program (USSYP) is pleased to announce that high school student Emmett Cook Appel will join Senator Susan M. Collins and Senator Angus S. King in representing Maine during the 63rd annual USSYP Washington Week, to be held March1-8, 2025. Emmett Appel, of Windsor, was selected from among the state’s top student leaders to be part of the 104 national student delegation that will attend meetings and briefings with senators, the president, a justice of the Supreme Court, leaders of cabinet agencies, and other officials throughout the week. Each delegate will also receive a $10,000 college scholarship for undergraduate study.

The USSYP was founded in 1962 by sons of William Randolph Hearst and the senate leadership of the day in response to the deep disiveness and national anxiety following the McCarthy era. They outlined a plan to encourage America’s most talented young people to consider public service as an important, life-long, and noble pursuit, sponsoring Senate Resolution 324, which passed unanimously. As stated in founding testimony, the program strives “to increase young Americans’ understanding of the interrelationships of the three branches of government, learn the caliber and responsibilities of federally elected and appointed officials, and emphasize the vital importance of democratic decision making not only for America but for people around the world.”

Windsor Fair officers/trustees

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Dan Foster

Windsor Fair officers for 2025 are Daniel Foster, president; William McFarland, first vice president; Rick Cummings, second vice president; Dennis “Frank” Reed, secretary; Jeffrey A. Tracy, treasurer.

Trustees include, Thomas E. Foster, of Augusta, Arthur Strout, Windsor, William McFarland, Augusta, Emery Pierce, Windsor, Alan Turner, Windsor, Dennis “Frank” Reed, Jefferson, Robert S. Brann, Windsor, Daniel R.Foster, Augusta, Gregg J. Baker, Pittston, Carol Davis, New Sharon, James Foster, Augusta, Jeffrey A. Tracy, Winthrop, Dennis Strout, China, Tim Chase, Whitefield, Rick Cummings, Windsor, Darlene Newcomb, Whitefield, Shannon Ayotte, Augusta, Peter Chase, China, Dave Nelson, Windsor, and Sara Perkins, Pittston.

 

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LETTERS: Advice to local senior citizens

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To the editor:

An open letter to senior citizens living in the South China, Windsor, Weeks Mills and Somerville area.

If you’re thinking of selling your home, moving south to live with a child, be very careful as this is what happened to me.

I got to Florida and my daughter took control of my finances of six figures and opened up a joint bank account in both our names. Paid for a nice sports car, Mercedez Benz, no less, and started shopping for a horse farm for her. As I saw my finances quickly go down, I told her the bank is closed.

This infuriated her when she found out I went to the bank and transfered what was left to Maine. I decided to move back to Maine, and not to worry, the VA has cabins in the woods for homeless veterans.When I got here I was told there was nothing available.

I spent two weeks and $2,000 looking for an apartment while staying at a motel. I ended up in a Catch 22 dilemma. I had too much cash and too low Social Security income. I was told Social Security must be equal to or more than one month rent. So this 91-year-old veteran ended up in a VA sanctioned Bread of Life Ministries homeless shelter for two months while looking for a rent.

Luckily, I was able to find a new studio apartment – don’t ask how. I pray for my brother vets who aren’t as well off as I am and spent many months at Bread of Life hoping to find a home. Most stay there while applying for a low income voucher. I was told if I had a voucher I could have been accepted.

So, senior citizens, before you’re thinking of doing what I did, suggest you fly down and spend a month to see if you get along. As for me, I made the mistake of moving in with my daughter, a 63-plus year-old cat woman who has lived alone for the last 15 years.

Lastly, she put the cats way above me. I had no choice but to leave.

Frank Slason
Augusta

Windsor select board recommends abolishing Conservation Commission Committee

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by The Town Line staff

At their October 22 meeting, the Windsor Select Board voted unanimously to recommend a warrant article to abolish the Conservation Commission Ordinance at the June 2024 town meeting.

Adrian Prindle, chairman of the Conservation Commission Committee reported they were going through the process of the ordinance and there is legal technology within the ordinance that is confusing and is causing the committee members to have many questions..

The conservation commission committee members are entertaining to have the ordinance abolished and then create a Belle Grove Parke Advisory Committee. The same members of the conservation commission would want to be part of the Belle Grove Parke Advisory Committee and would submit by-laws/rules.

They are meeting on Tuesday, December 10, at 6 p.m., and will suggest the process of forming a new group. Chester D. Barnes Jr. said the legal terms of this ordinance are for them to maintain a list of wetlands public and private property and he feels the town does not have the authority to do that, commenting, “We are not DEP.”

In other business:

– Town Manager Theresa Haskell said she has two letters from the assesdor’s agent regarding abatements and an abatement denial. The board approved an abatement in the amount of #3,761.88 for errors in building valuations for the Hysom, Shelia, heirs of $439; Carver, Ryan and Loralee of $958.62; Castle, Marcella and Collins, Matthew of $701.04; Bradbury, Joseph and Debra of $153.74 and Shorey, Timothy of $851. The board also approved the recommendation of the assessor’s agent for the denial at 139 Casey Road which lacks supportive documentation to substantiate what the assessment should be and is unclear as to how they calculated the reduced assessment.
– Public Works Supervisor Keith Reed reported on multiple issues with town trucks. He said the new truck was shipped November 14. Also, truck #5 needed to have transmission lines replaced at a cost of $3,000; when asked about what the future is going to bring for plow truck drivers, he said everyone that drives wants $30-plus per hour. He said, “we’ll have to go with what we have since we have not had many applicants.”

On the backhoe, locking pins, control switch and wiring had to be replaced at a cost of around $2,000.

– It was reported the medical marijuana petition will need to be formally voted and denied by the select board and for them to state the reason. The Maine Municipal Association recommends that it’s OK to have an ordinance ready before any vote. It was approved by the board on Select board member Allison Whynot’s motion to deny the petition as the wording is not a specific warrant question.
– Haskell handed out an updated Windsor Educational Foundation and Reed Fund Statment of Investment Policy for the select board to review until tne next meeting, and having someone from Kennebec Wealth Management attend the meeting as well.
– Haskell said the June 30, 2023, audit is complete and will be receiving the final audit soon.
– Finally, Haskell received a request from Aaron Ready to allow his truck to be parked in the town’s parking lot because he comcommutes to his job at Bath Iron Works with another driver. The select board said they had no issue at this point but would suggest they do not utilize the parking lot during snowstorms.

The next meeting of the select board was held on November 5.

PHOTO: RSU#12 takes part in Special Olympics bowling event

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Representing RSU #12 (Palermo, Chelsea, Windsor, Whitefield) with pride, students competed in a local Special Olympics bowling event. These students gave their best effort and demonstrated the values of perseverance, teamwork, and determination. This annual event brought together athletes from across the region to compete, make new friends, and celebrate their achievements.Their participation in the Special Olympics bowling event showcases the district’s commitment to inclusion and highlights the extraordinary talents within the RSU #12 community. Pictured, front row, from left to right, Anderson Hines, Elias Vashon, Draven Ruby, Jayden Clark, Aria Goethe, Christina Bell, and Holly Morgan. Back row, Kynlee Staples, Allison Storm, Tara Delisle, Lincoln Heiss, Liam Brown, and Mark Leavitt. Absent, Isabelle Zarate. (Contributed photo)