Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Winslow, Hollingsworth & Whitney

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Hollingsworth & Whitney paper mill, in Winslow.

by Mary Grow

In addition to the historic mills on Outlet Stream and smaller flowages in Winslow, Kingsbury mentioned two larger mills on the east bank of the Kennebec in the 1890s.

One he described as a new “large steam saw mill…on the historic grounds of Fort Point,” covering most of the “palisade enclosure of old Fort Halifax.”

Fort Halifax in 1754.

Old Fort Halifax was built in 1754 to deter the French and their Indian allies from attacking British settlements along the Kennebec River. After the ouster of the French from the area in 1763, the fort’s buildings were dismantled or allowed to fall down, until only one blockhouse survives, now the centerpiece of Winslow’s Fort Halifax Park. (See the Jan. 28, 2021, issue of The Town Line for more on this historic site.)

A deteriorating blockhouse at Fort Halifax, in Winslow, after the ouster of the French from the area in 1763.

The grounds went through a succession of owners and uses. The Maine Memory Network’s on-line site includes an item donated by the Winslow Historical Preservation Committee with an excerpt from the April 18, 1873, Waterville Mail commending an effort to preserve the remaining blockhouse, after “many years of talk and neglect.”

The Ticonic Water Power Co. then owned the buildings and had leased them to “Dr. Crosby” of Waterville and “J.W. Bassett and A.T. Shurtleff, of Winslow, for the purpose of preservation.”

Another on-line source says the Ticonic Water Power and Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1868 and “acquired the water rights and property adjacent to the Ticonic Falls.” In 1874, the Ticonic Power Company “became the Lockwood Company.”

The Lockwood Company is primarily associated with the mills in Waterville, just south of Ticonic Bridge. However, an on-line history of these mills says that in 1865, Waterville resident George Alfred “achieved the complex task of assembling water and property rights on both sides of the Kennebec River” in Winslow and Waterville.

Ownership of water rights let Alfred build a dam at Ticonic Falls, finished in 1869, the site says. It goes on to discuss the Waterville mills, built by Amos D. Lockwood, an engineer from Boston and Providence, who was familiar with water power.

On the Winslow side of the river, Kingsbury wrote that Edward Ware leased the land on Fort Point from the Lockwood Company and built a lumber mill in 1890. The building was more than 300 feet long, equipped with “all modern appliances for cutting lumber,” Kingsbury wrote. Logs came down the Kennebec from up-river timber operations and were made into lumber, shingles and lath, mostly shipped to Boston.

Your writer found the beginning (only) of a New York Times article on line, headlined “Lumber Ordered for Gray Gables,” with the dateline Boston, Sept. 30 (no year given). The first sentence reads: “Twenty-five thousand feet of spruce lumber has been ordered to be shipped from the sawmill of Edward Ware, at Winslow, Me.”

Gray Gables, Wikipedia says, was an elaborate house in Bourne, Massachusetts, built in 1880 and in 1890 bought by past and future president Grover Cleveland. He named it Gray Gables and used it as the summer White House during his second term, 1893-1896.

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The second large Winslow mill was under construction as Kingsbury finished his history in 1892. He wrote that Hollingsworth and Whitney was building Kennebec County’s “largest pulp and paper mill…on the east bank of the Kennebec, at a cost of three quarters of a million dollars.”

The University of Maine’s on-line Digital Commons provides a history of Hollingsworth and Whitney, written in October 1954 by company president James Lester Madden as the company merged into Scott Paper Company.

Madden wrote that the first Hollingsworth in the paper business was Mark Hollingsworth, from Delaware, who started in 1798 as a foreman in a Massachusetts mill.

In 1835, Hollingsworth bought a Revere Copper mill in South Braintree, Massachusetts, and converted it to a paper mill that was run until 1852 by his sons, John and Lyman. In 1852, another son, Ellis, came home after three years in California and took over the South Braintree mill.

In 1862, Ellis Hollingsworth formed a partnership with Leonard A. Whitney, Jr., owner of a “paper mill and bag factory” in Watertown. Whitney’s factory, Madden said, “produced the first machine-made paper bags in this country.”

Hollingsworth and Whitney’s first Maine venture was the purchase of a mill in Gardiner in 1876. Ellis’s son Sumner Hollingsworth was in charge.

In 1875 the company hired a “dynamic” sales manager named Charles Dean. After both founders died in 1881, Dean “was instrumental in incorporating the present [1954] company in 1882.” Sumner Hollingsworth was its president until his death in 1899, when Dean succeeded him and headed the company until he retired in 1911.

Hollingsworth and Dean had the Winslow mill built between 1891 and 1893, Madden wrote. He commented, “To move from Massachusetts to the wilds of Maine for a woodpulp and paper mill was a daring move in the 1890s.”

The original estimated cost turned out to be half the actual cost of $800,000, he said (see Kingsbury’s figure above). Because the 1893 financial panic made banks hesitant to lend, even to a company with a good record, Dean financed part of the building himself. The Winslow mill was “a high quality, very low cost producer,” and he was soon repaid from profits.

The mill had two paper machines and a pulp mill; its daily capacity was 30 tons of groundwood pulp and 20 tons of paper. Madden said the initial 150 employees worked 11- and 13-hour days for an average hourly wage of less than 15 cents.

“Under Mr. Dean’s leadership,” Hollingsworth and Whitney was the first paper company to go from two to three shifts, a change that was considered “very radical,” Madden wrote.

To guarantee a supply of wood, the company began buying forest land in 1895. By 1954, Madden said, it owned 550,000 acres in the Kennebec watershed.

He described additions and improvements at the Winslow mill in the first two decades of the 20th century (the last two paper machines were added in 1913 and 1916) and the building of a pulp mill in Madison, and praised the company’s products and reputation.

Madden said nothing about World War I. By World War II, he wrote, the Winslow mill was the only supplier of “Tabulating Cardstock” in the country. Production was quadrupled to meet the military’s need for “cards to operate tabulating machines.”

After Scott Paper sold to Kimberly-Clark, the Winslow mill was closed in 1997.

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Kingsbury listed another 10 mills on lesser streams and brooks in Winslow before 1892.

Again, a map of Winslow is helpful. As explained last week, the town is bounded on the west by the Kennebec River. On the south it is bordered by Vassalboro, on the east by China.

There are two ponds in Winslow. The smaller, Mud Pond, is in the southeastern corner of town, with its eastern shore in China (according to China tax maps and most others found on line; one on-line map shows the boundary deviating from a straight line to follow the shoreline, putting the whole pond in Winslow).

A connecting stream runs northwest from Mud Pond to larger Pattee (or Pattees or Pattee’s) Pond, which lies east of the Sebasticook River. The Pattee Pond outlet stream, and streams that join it from the east, drain northwest into the Sebasticook.

In addition to the streams associated with these two water bodies, contemporary maps show one stream, Chaffee Brook, flowing west into the Kennebec. Chaffee Brook passes under Route 201 a short distance south of the Carter Memorial Drive intersection.

The first dam Kingsbury mentioned was on the brook named for John Drummond “near the river road” (Route 201).

Your writer found no Drummond Brook in contemporary Winslow; she guesses Drummond Brook is now Chaffee Brook. Just north of Chaffee Brook, Chaffee Brook Road goes west off Route 201 to the bank of the Kennebec. On the south side of Chaffee Brook Road sits Drummond cemetery.

(Chaffee Brook Road leads to the Kennebec Water District’s Chaffee Brook pumping station, which is being upgraded. Area residents who have seen the crane on the river bank and the platforms in the water are looking at the project.)

Drummond built a grist mill with two runs of stones, Kingsbury said. In 1822 he sold it to Josiah Hayden (probably the younger of the two Josiah Haydens in last week’s article) and built a sawmill (presumably sharing the grist mill’s water power). Kingsbury said as forests were cleared, the flow in this brook diminished until it could not provide adequate power after about 1840.

Of the next mill he described, Kingsbury wrote: “Frederick Paine had a plaster mill on Clover brook that did business from 1820 to 1870.” (On-line sources say plaster mills ground lime and gypsum into powder for building materials, including plaster and cement.)

Your writer suggests Clover Brook might be the 19th-century name for Bellows Stream, which flows north into Pattee Pond roughly parallel to the Kennebec and about midway between Winslow’s east and west boundaries.

The apparently nameless stream between Mud Pond and Pattee Pond, eastward of Bellows Stream, powered two mills, presumably on dams, by the first half of the 1800s. This stream flows north and then northwest from the north end of Mud Pond, under Route 137 (China Road) into the east side of Pattee Pond

The upstream mill was John Getchell’s sawmill, operating by 1795. It later became Isaac Dow’s shingle mill.

Half a mile downstream, a man named Alden had a sawmill that “ran down and was rebuilt by Esquire Brackett, who lost his life in it in 1840, by a blow from the saw frame.” Later, Jacob Brimner ran the sawmill (the 1856 map of Kennebec County shows a sawmill on this stream and a Brimner house not far upstream). Later still, a shingle mill ran until around 1870, Kingsbury said.

The Pattee Pond outlet, Pattee Stream, flows from the north end of the pond into the Sebasticook. For lack of space, your writer postpones a description of mills in this northern and northwestern part of Winslow to next week.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).

Websites, miscellaneous.

PHOTO: Sunset at Monument Park

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Janice Clowes, president of the Vassalboro Historical Society, captured the silhouette of the monument in the park, next to the historical society building.

East Vassalboro Water Co., LLC under new management

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The Masse Sawmill site on Rte. 32, in East Vassalboro. (contributed photo)

Ownership of the East Vassalboro Water Company (EVWC) will officially transfer on Thursday, December 28, 2023. EVWC was established in 1914 and for 109 years has been owned and operated by four generations of the Masse – Robbins families. EVWC supplies potable water to approximately 200 persons, keeping the ratepayer in mind with each decision.

The Maine Public Utilities Commission approved the sale of EVWC on November 27, 2023. On December 28, 2023, Justin Ahmann and Marc Liechti will become the new owners of EVWC. They have purchased similar utilities and provided capital investment and strive for operational efficiencies to give the ratepayers the best value.

New payment methods and contact information will be mailed to each existing customer. Should any customer have questions please contact the new owners at: accounting@aputilities.com.

The Good Trail: Tall Nancy is coming tomorrow

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by Lisa Lichterfeld

“Tall Nancy is coming tomorrow.” Selwyn gives one of his world weary sighs, signaling resignation, since his default stance towards visitors is generally averse. This gets me going with a quick retort. “You are incredibly lucky that tall Nancy chooses to come here and spend time with you.” Selwyn is equally quick to make eye contact and state “You’re right. Tall Nancy is an angel.”

When I took a seasonal farm position at Johnny’s Seeds, some of my friends – fellow parents of young athletes who are part of the Unified Champion Club – asked how they could be supportive. I was concerned about leaving my husband home alone for that length of time. Selwyn is physically frail and has growing memory loss and confusion. He had become increasingly dependent, needing support for many daily life activities. Nancy offered to come one day a week and stay for four hours. She developed her own routine into which she incorporated sweeping and cleaning the kitchen, bringing in the recycling barrel from the road, making and eating lunch with Selwyn, and rubbing Selwyn’s feet. Now everyone reading this understands why the term “angel” can be applied to Nancy. The tall part is because – well, she is tall, and that is how Selwyn distinguishes her from the other Nancys in our circle of friends.

Three weeks after I started working at the farm, I quit. It just wasn’t working out. Making sure the needs of my husband and my daughter were being met through coordinating daily support from my friends and family became too stressful. And Selwyn had deteriorated further due to his anxiety with all of the arrangements.

Tall Nancy said “Can I still come over on Tuesdays?” And so we established a pattern and a growing friendship and camaraderie as Nancy volunteered her time so that I could take a physical and mental breather from the demands of home life.

One day as Nancy was leaving our home I said “you are our hero Nancy”. That afternoon Nancy was walking the trail in Benton with her son Jonathan and his direct support person Kevin.

Chet started working at New Balance 23 years ago, right out of high school. New Balance, as a workplace, encourages its employees to embrace a culture of giving. This aligns with Chet’s own values and temperament. “I’m not going to drive by someone on the road with a flat tire, and not stop.” He hopes that this ethos continues to live on in his sons Christian 21, and Trenton 11.

On the first of July, Chet was driving around looking for a local ball game to watch. It was his first day of vacation. He sat on the bleachers at the Wrigley field, in Waterville, and watched a not so typical game.

All the batters hit the ball – either from multiple pitches or a T. Every hit, catch and run was cheered by the spectators. There was a great deal of elation, and rarely any sense of defeat. Chet was watching the Unified Champion Club. In the UCC team, some players are more skilled and they are able to play more competitively with one another. Others are beginners, or less skilled, and even the most competitive in the field will stop, wait, fumble the ball, and otherwise take steps to make sure that person makes it to first base.

While eating ice cream and observing this unusual ball game, Chet couldn’t help overhearing a conversation taking place a few rows down on the bleachers. Our very own tall Nancy was telling her other mom friends about her dream to have a swing built at her home that was large enough for her six-foot three-inch, 30-year-old son Jonathan. Jonathan is largely non-verbal, and does not participate in team sports, but comes to many of our team events. At the ball field he usually spends his time on the swings. He so loves to swing that he will endure the discomfort of having the too small swings (designed for children) cut into his hips, leaving open areas that have to heal.

This conversation percolated in Chet’s mind, and he decided that he wanted to build that swing. He talked to his friend and co-worker Maggie and she immediately wanted to finance the project. “Word got around and pretty soon everybody was saying ‘I want to help’.”

Now it was up to Chet to find the woman with the son who needed a swing. He went back to the ball field for the next two weeks on the same day at the same time, only to be disappointed. Determined to find them, he called the AYCC, spoke to Patrick Guerette and was informed that the one time that he had watched our game was on an alternate night due to bad weather. The next week he would finally be able to find us on the correct evening.

But he did not have to wait that long. Running on the river trail in Benton, he saw one of the people who he remembered from the game. It was Kevin, one of the partners in the UCC.

Once you have seen Kevin, you will remember him. Noticeably short with a very long, full, dark beard, Kevin is one of the most approachable people I know. Always up for a bit of fun, and frequently a bit of mischief. Chet stopped his run and began rapidly explaining how he recognized Kevin, and how much he wanted to build a swing for “that woman and her son”.

At some point, tall Nancy who was patiently watching this conversation unfold, leaned towards Kevin and whispered “well, shall we tell him?”.

And that is how Chet met Nancy and Jonathan.

Money was pooled from all of those involved with the major portion coming from Maggie.

When the materials were purchased, Dan from Hammond Lumber contributed funds to the project as well. Justin, Jimmy, and Chet built the swing with Chet’s son Trenton and Justin’s son Nick, assisting. Chet’s wife Renee beautified the landscape around the swing, planting flowers that continued to bloom right through the summer.

It all happened in a single day when Jonathan was out with Kevin and his partner Jill. Jonathan doesn’t like having people in his home and can sometimes become quite upset. But upon returning to the house at the end of the day, the smile and immediate adoption of the swing could not be mistaken for anything less than Joy. No matter how many people stood by and watched!

On the same day that I called Nancy “our hero”, she met Chet on the trail. As though synchronized by a writer’s pen, the trail of good deeds made itself visible. The service Nancy so graciously gave to us, and the very tangible and large swing that brought joy to Jonathan (and some respite for Nancy), seemed to be linked. At least in Nancy’s mind. Because the next time she came over, she said “You see, I better keep coming, because good things are happening!”

Love to my good friends Nancy Moore, Jonathan Tingley, Kevin Taft and Jill Currier. And love to those helpers I have not met – Chet, Renee and Trenton Hanscom, Maggie Diagle, Justin and Nick Cote, Jimmy Lucas, and Dan Doray.

The Unified Champion Club is a non-profit that operates out of the AYCC providing sporting events and memberships to adults with special needs and their partners. It brings people together whose destiny it is to assist one another in celebrating our beautiful lives. All donations towards this endeavor are welcome.

Lisa Lichterfeld is also the author of the book “My Name is Kwayah” written from the perspective of her daughter with Down Syndrome, and available on Amazon.

Vassalboro select board meeting draws large audience

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by Mary Grow

As expected, the Dec. 14 Vassalboro select board meeting attracted a large audience – 70 or more people filled the Vassalboro Community School cafeteria, 60 or so to listen to or join discussion of the Vassalboro Sanitary District’s sewer rates.

The VSD serves about 200 customers in East and North Vassalboro. Its collected sewage goes to Winslow and from Winslow to Waterville’s Kennebec Sanitary District treatment facility.

The main purpose of the Dec. 14 discussion, select board chair Chris French said, was to hear from VSD officials. Vassalboro’s legislative representatives were invited to listen and share information on possible funding sources; Rep. Richard Bradstreet attended, Sen. Matthew Pouliot had a conflicting commitment.

Also present was Laurie A. Stevens, northern New England regional director for RCAP Solutions. Her organization, she explained, helps small towns with water and wastewater needs. RCAP Solutions is federally funded, so neither VSD nor the town would be charged for services.

VSD superintendent Chuck Applebee, who has been associated with VSD for years, provided historical background to the present financial situation.

In the 1970s, he said, Vassalboro had two choices for sewage disposal that would meet state requirements: pipe to Winslow or build its own treatment system. Desiring local control, the town built its own system in 1980 and 1981, and VSD was organized.

By 2012, the system, consisting of three sand filter treatment beds in North and East Vassalboro and miles of pipes, had two problems. The beds were past their 20-year life expectancy; and the system could not meet new phosphorus control requirements.

In December 2013 VSD trustees hired an engineer to evaluate three options. They could connect the Vassalboro system to Winslow; they could rebuild each Vassalboro bed and add phosphorus treatment; or they could create a combined system within Vassalboro and add phosphorus treatment.

All three choices were expensive, Applebee said. The trustees chose the least expensive, connecting to Winslow, at a cost of about $7.8 million. Work started in 2019 and was finished in the fall of 2020.

Project funding included $4 million in grants, an unusually high percentage for which Applebee commended district trustees. They still had to borrow money; and the main reason for the 2023 problem is that VSD is about $3 million in debt.

In addition, Winslow recently announced a 25 percent increase in the rate it charges Vassalboro.

Consequently, rates to VSD customers, which have already gone up, are slated to increase by 60 percent in January. Several residents said they cannot afford the proposed quarterly costs.

Select board members and Town Manager Aaron Miller started to look into VSD rate increases after residents raised the issue in June. French said discussions with Winslow were delayed as that town changed town managers.

Related issues raised during the hour and a half discussion included a “ready to serve” fee charged – unevenly, residents said – to people who live along the sewer lines but are not hooked up because their septic systems are working.

VSD was denied a $1 million grant from the state. Bradstreet said he is seeking more information on reasons for the denial.

Resident Tara Karczewski-Mitchell asked a list of questions compiled after a Dec. 6 community meeting. Answers established that the VSD and the Town of Vassalboro are separate entities; that VSD needs and uses all its properties, except an old sludge dump off Taber Hill Road that would need environmental testing before being put on the market; and that in Applebee’s opinion, no engineering errors on the post-2013 connection significantly affected costs.

Karczewski-Mitchell’s last question, how 200 customers can be expected to repay a $3 million debt, drew applause from the audience.

After the discussion, many residents signed a petition asking select board members to ask voters to spread sewer costs among all residents, not just sewer users. The main rationale is that keeping sewage out of Outlet Stream benefits all residents.

In other business at the Dec. 14 meeting, select board members:

— After a quarter-hour discussion, voted unanimously to close the transfer station all day Sunday, Dec. 24; and voted 2-1, with French opposed, to close it at noon Sunday, Dec. 31.
— Unanimously approved revised cemetery rules.
— Agreed they should meet in person with a representative of the only engineering firm that bid on redesigning the transfer station (see the Dec. 7 issue of “The Town Line”, p. 3).
— Postponed action on a policy on public comment at select board meetings; installing a generator at the town office (and perhaps the North Vassalboro fire station); and considering changes to Vassalboro’s TIF (Tax Increment Finance) ordinance and to land use regulations.

Miller reported that Delta Ambulance had sent notice of a substantial fee increase for 2024, from $15 per resident to $25 per resident. French translated it as increasing the town’s payment from about $65,000 to about $107,000.

Miller said he had asked Delta officials to organize a meeting with representatives of the towns it serves.

The next regular Vassalboro select board meeting is scheduled for Thursday evening, Dec. 28.

Vassalboro groups present veterans with Christmas stockings

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contributed photo

At St Bridget Center on December 11, 2023, with Christmas music in the background, a dozen volunteers from American Legion Post #126, Cub Scout Troop #410, Sew for a Cause, and the Vassalboro United Methodist Church filled 200 Christmas stockings with personal care products and goodie bags for veterans at Togus. The stockings were made and donated by Sew for a Cause. American Legion Post #126 delivered the stockings to the Veterans Administration Service Office, at Togus, on December 12, 2023. American Legion Post #126 Vassalboro thanks Connected Credit Union, of Winslow, Maine Savings Credit Union, of Vassalboro, Cub & Boy Scout Troops #410, Vassalboro United Methodists Church, American Legion Post #5, Pike Industries, Knights of Columbus #13486 and area individuals who supported and donated to this project to honor and thank our veterans.

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Vassalboro scouts present stockings to veterans at Togus hospital

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Front row, from left to right, Webelos Scout Henry Gray and Wolf Scout John Gray. Second row, Arrow of Light Scouts Christopher Santiago and William Vincent. Back, James Kilbride, Adjutant for Post #126 and Christopher Santiago, Cubmaster Pack #410. (photo courtesy of Chuck Mahaleris)

by Chuck Mahaleris

On Monday November 27, 2023, Pack #410, represented by Arrow of Light Scouts William Vincent and Christopher Santiago, as well as Webelos scout Henry Gray and Wolf Scout John Gray, delivered 240 pens and 240 notebooks to the Charter Organization, American Legion Post #126, during their scheduled business meeting at St. Bridget Center, in North Vassalboro. The donation is for the Christmas Stockings made by Sew for a Cause that will be stuffed with essentials for the veterans spending the holiday at the Veterans Administration Hospital, at Togus.

Vassalboro Sanitary district topic of meeting

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by Mary Grow

The Dec. 14 Vassalboro select board meeting will be in the Vassalboro Community School cafeteria, instead of the town office, beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Town Manager Aaron Miller said the change is to accommodate the large crowd expected because of the first agenda item, “Discuss Vassalboro Sanitary District.”

The main issue is that sanitary district fees are stressing the budgets of residents of East and North Vassalboro. The district is in debt, mostly because of its recently-completed connection to the Winslow-Waterville system. Additionally, Winslow sewer rates have gone up.

At a Dec. 6 community meeting, some three dozen residents discussed information they hope to gain Dec. 14. They developed a list of questions to put to town and sanitary district officials and to Vassalboro’s state representatives, Senator Matthew Pouliot and Representative Richard Bradstreet.

Also on the Dec. 6 select board agenda are Vassalboro’s Tax Increment Finance District; local implications of a new state law on affordable housing; providing a generator at the town office (see the Nov. 23 issue of The Town Line, p. 3); proposed updates to cemetery rules; and engineering services for a new transfer station building (see the Dec. 7 issue of The Town Line, p. 3).

Area food pantries: people helping people

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Text and photo by Roberta Barnes

It is that time of year when people need help shoveling their walkways and heating their homes, but something that everyone needs at all times is nutritious food. Illnesses and accidents do not care about age, occupation, or gender. Misfortune can hit individuals or families at any time. Businesses and companies can go out of business. At unexpected times, individuals or families can be in a situation where resources have been stretched beyond the point of trying to eat balanced meals.

Neighbors, relatives, and others in the community have been helping for decades, but sometimes people are struggling themselves or do not know that a person or family needs help. The nice thing is that there are nonprofit organizations formed and supported by the community, who can help in our community, and our State, those that do not have the nutritious foods needed to keep their body and mind functioning during this stressful season.

Last week, several local food pantries in China, Jefferson, Windsor, Vassalboro and Winslow took time to talk with me. These volunteer-driven initiatives are located in spaces where businesses have closed down, in renovated town garages, and in churches. Some even operate mobile trailers that can be moved to different locations.

Each of the volunteers who spoke with me expressed compassion and a willingness to give without judgement. They are able to operate thanks to generous donations by local businesses, farms, and individuals, plus countless hours by volunteers. Their work is filling a need by helping supply needed nutritional foods.

How and when you can receive needed food varies with location. Some pantries are open one or two days a week, others are open only once or twice a month. In some locations the space is too small for people to walk into the area where the food is safely stored. In those cases, once a person checks off the list of food needed, volunteers bring those foods to the person’s vehicle. Other organizations have a space large enough that clients can walk through in single file and do their own shopping.

I heard from Jefferson food pantry, located in St. Giles church (207-315-1134), and Windsor food bank in a section of the Windsor Town Hall garage (207-445-9030), that in the case of an emergency situation they have delivered the needed food to a home. All organizations distributing food in Maine are focused on helping people in their communities have the food they need to stay healthy.

In October 1929 when Wall Street crashed and 15 million people were unemployed by 1933, there were no safety nets in place.

Today we are lucky to have help in place. But getting nutritious foods to the pantry locations, correctly storing perishable foods, and safely handling all foods, requires numerous steps from many different people.

Donations and volunteer work are the most important aspect in providing these additional safety nets, and in continuing to keep them available for those people who at certain times cannot buy food, or are having trouble with other basic needs.

The Federal Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP, began with donation efforts of surplus foods, such as cheese, by the USDA in late 1981. Foods from this program are given to each State based on the number of unemployed persons and the number of people with incomes below the poverty level. It is then given to the organizations that directly serve the public and submit all the correct forms. The receiving and passing out of these foods requires detailed paperwork completed by volunteers. This is just part of the effort that goes on behind the scenes that many people do not see.

In 1981, the Maine nonprofit organization Good Shepherd Food Bank was formed in Auburn through donations of individuals, retailers, and large food companies in Maine. The small grassroots effort has grown, expanding to Hamden and delivering foods to organizations throughout Maine that are contracted with them.

Good Shepherd’s purchasing power and relationships with wholesalers allow these organizations to use the donations they receive to purchase food at a fraction of the cost they would pay through standard retailers. Five dollars can result in thirty pounds of food. Because safely handling and storing perishable foods is important, annually each organization is inspected to be sure all foods are handled safely. Everything is carefully monitored and that requires accurate paperwork.

Donations made to Good Shepherd Food Bank and other organizations come from many sources. One of the donating companies, Hannaford Bros. Co., established a reclamation center to facilitate the process of distributing products to Good Shepherd and other food banks. In certain stores you may find programs inviting customers at the register to donate money or buy boxes of food staples for local pantries.

Speaking with volunteers in Windsor, I heard about a food bake sale that resulted in major funding for Windsor Food Bank Inc. Farms in some communities also donate various veggie and protein foods that are properly packaged, from late July sometimes into November.

When China Food Pantry was established in 1992 (1320 Lakeview Drive), it started by connecting with local stores for over-stocked and other foods that could not be put on the grocery shelves even though they were still safe to eat. With stores being willing to donate some foods, similar pantries in Albion, Palermo, Windsor, Jefferson and Vassalboro quickly followed. The volunteers in these locations drove to pick up food in various locations, including farms and Good Shepherd in Auburn. Today Good Shepherd delivers to those contracted with them.

The joy that pets of all sizes can bring into a home is obvious. Pets also are great listeners, help with depression and loneliness, can relieve stress, increase your physical anxiety, help you see the beauty around you and much more. But pets need pet food to continue to help the people they live with. Some of the volunteers shared with me that they will personally go to retailers and purchase pet food that can be picked up with the other needed foods at the organization’s location.

While I was not able to connect with all local organizations providing food at no charge, The Town Line’s website has a list of pantries and phone numbers here. You can also find the location by calling or dropping into the town office in your community.

In Vassalboro, there is the Vassalboro Food Station on Rte. 32 open on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to noon. The Winslow Community Cupboard also distributes food at The Mill, in Vassalboro, Wednesdays 4 – 7 p.m. and Sundays 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Winslow Community Cupboard also serves people in communities other than Winslow, which you can see by visiting their website. They are at the Winslow Congregational Church, 12 Lithgow Street, the second and fourth Thursday each month from noon – 3 p.m., and from 5 – 7 p.m.

As you are reading, these organizations require many volunteers to make all of this happen. Being a volunteer or donating can be extremely rewarding as you see the thankful faces of those receiving. If you would like to donate or volunteer, either contact your local food bank, food pantry, community cupboard, or town office.

Roberta Barnes is a freelance contributor to The Town Line.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Dams and Mills

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Building Two of the Olde Mill on Main Street in Vassalboro. (photo by Sandy Isaac)

by Mary Grow

The list of old dams on China Lake’s Outlet Stream started last week with dams in Vassalboro, as far downstream as the North Vassalboro dams described below.

In following weeks, your writer plans to finish summarizing the usefulness of Outlet Stream with descriptions of dams and mills in Winslow, between the Vassalboro line and the Sebasticook River; discuss two larger mills on the Kennebec, in Winslow; share rather scanty information about dams and mills on lesser streams and brooks in Winslow; and describe some of the industries supported by Seven Mile Stream, a/k/a Seven Mile Brook, in southern Vassalboro.

Readers who are tired of dams and mills might want to ignore these history articles until 2024.

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In his Kennebec County history, Henry Kingsbury started the North Vassalboro mill story with the arrival of Dr. Edward Southwick, who came from Danvers, Massachusetts, early in the 1800s, bought water rights from John Getchell and by 1820 was running “the largest tannery in New England.” The sheds to store the tree bark used in tanning covered over an acre, Kingsbury said, and “His business was the life of North Vassalboro.”

In her Vassalboro history, Alma Pierce Robbins quoted George Varney’s Gazeteer of the State of Maine as the source for naming Jacob Southwick, not Edward Southwick, as the tannery owner. Kingsbury said Edward and Jacob were brothers, and Jacob had a tannery at Getchell’s Corners (which was one of Vassalboro’s commercial and industrial centers for most of the 19th century).

Peter Morrill Stackpole and his son-in-law, Alton Pope, started their “wool carding and cloth dressing mill” (Kingsbury) on Outlet Stream in 1836 (Robbins).

John D. Lang (1799-1879) was brother-in-law to Stackpole (Kingsbury; Lang’s wife was Anna Elmira Stackpole [1800-1879]), and “an experienced mill executive” (Robbins), who came from Rhode Island and invested capital. Lang, Stackpole and Pope created, by 1836, the woolen mill that Kingsbury called North Vassalboro’s “chief industrial pursuit” for the rest of the century.

They also had a sawmill, which burned in 1848. Peter Stackpole was killed that November during the rebuilding.

(See the Oct. 19 issue of The Town Line for the Lang family’s agricultural contributions.)

Lang bought the Southwick tannery around 1850, and the next year built the first brick mill building on the site. According to Kingsbury, “A brick kiln was built, and after the brick were burned the walls of the mill were built around it.” The remains of the tannery were burned.

This mill was on the west side of Main Street, between the street and Outlet Stream, on the north side of Oak Grove Road, which runs west off Main Street and across the stream.

Kingsbury and Robbins wrote that the mill’s moment of international fame was in 1851, when one of its products was awarded a gold medal at the London World’s Fair.

Robbins said the prize was for “finest Broadcloth or Cassimere in the World.” The fabric was a “beautiful blue color,” mixed by brothers George and Jonathan Nowell.

(The senior George Nowell [1777-1868] moved to Vassalboro in 1806 and later to Winslow, where he farmed. He and his wife, Winifred [Parker] Nowell, had 10 children, according to Kingsbury, including sons George [1818-1904] and Jonathan [1820-1897].)

Jonathan Nowell worked at the mill for 40 years. Robbins called him “a dye mixer,” and Kingsbury said he was “boss of the dyeing works.”

The old Stackpole and Pope mill building on the dam, Kingsbury said, was moved to Main Street, where it served first as a “dry house,” then as a boarding house and by 1892 as a “dwelling and a hall.” (“Dry house,” in this context, might mean the building was used to dry materials used in the woolen mill. It was probably neither a saloon without liquor nor a recovery house for addicts.)

In a major renovation in 1861, Kingsbury said, a 47-by-200-foot building was added to the 1851 one, so close he referred to the two buildings as “practically one.” The result was “the largest woolen mill in New England,” in 1861 and still in 1892.

In the second half of the 19th century, the North Vassalboro mill had several different owners and names. Kingsbury said Lang and Boston partners organized the North Vassalboro Woolen Manufacturing Company before 1856. By 1892, he said, “Boston people” were the only owners. Robbins called the business the Vassalboro Manufacturing Company, until the mill was sold to American Woolen Company in 1899.

To Robbins, one of the significances of the mill was its effect on the population of North Vassalboro. In the 1850s, she wrote, Vassalboro Manufacturing Company began advertising for workers in newspapers in England and Ireland.

“Thus the family names in Vassalboro began to change. Nearly every other family had one or more ‘foreigners’ boarding with them,” she wrote. Immigrants from Canada joined those from England and Ireland.

The contribution to North Vassalboro’s economy was significant. When architectural historian Michael Goebel-Bain, of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, wrote the application for listing on the National Register of Historic Places in March 2020, he included census figures. They showed the mill had 180 employees in 1860; 263 in 1870; 300 in 1883 and “close to 600” before it closed in 1955.

Goebel-Bain pointed out that expansion of the mill was often in response to wartime demand for cloth. He cited new buildings in 1861 and 1863 and expansions in 1917 and 1943.

The historian pointed out that there were also contractions as demand dropped. In November 1888, he wrote, the mill closed briefly, because its owners owed $90,000 to a “Boston cotton mill owner” named T. W. Walker. Walker put up another $75,000 and bought and reopened the mill.

And, Goebel-Bain added, if there were a major drought, Outlet Stream might drop too low to provide power, forcing a – usually short – halt to production.

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Goebel-Bain’s application was for a Vassalboro mill historic district. He described nine separate buildings and one “structure” that were worthy of preservation, plus two related but non-historic buildings on the 6.8-acre parcel.

Parts of the 1851 building survived, Goebel-Bain wrote, but they were “indistinguishable as an entity” because of the many changes and additions between 1861 and 1943. He listed the period of historic significance as 1861 to 1955.

Goebel-Bain divided the buildings into categories, describing the single-story brick office building; a 444-foot section of mill with towers and many original windows; other mill sections; and the single-story Dye House, first built in 1894 and completed between 1903 and 1911. The 444-foot section, he observed, has the same roof height from one end to the other, but “due to the sloping lot two stories are visible at the east and four stories at the west end.”

The contributing structure is described as a 90-foot tall smokestack, built around 1894 of “hollow, glazed structural tile.” Goebel-Bain added, “The associated boiler house and boilers were removed in 1981.”

The application described some of the many physical changes during the life of the woolen mill. Goebel-Bain wrote that a canal from a dam “800 feet north” used to run “directly under several mill buildings and ended as an exposed tail race.” Many of the walkways between buildings “by enclosed corridors and in many cases more substantial connector buildings” had been demolished.

Additions were made at intervals in the 19th and 20th centuries. Goebel-Bain found that one building started out as brick, two stories high, built between 1861 and 1863; acquired a third story, also brick, in 1894; and by 1906 had a wooden fourth floor.

Despite the changes, Goebel-Bain found the mill complex historically valuable. He wrote, “The common characteristics typical of mill construction include brick walls, large window openings, open floor space, heavy wood framing, exterior stair towers, and flat roofs. All or many of these features exist across the major buildings.”

He saw the Vassalboro buildings as an example of “slow-burning construction,” common in mills: construction methods that would hinder spread of fires in buildings with mainly wooden interiors.

Goebel-Bain concluded: “The largest and most significant buildings remain and collectively form a district that has integrity to reflect is [sic] industrial development from 1861 to 1955.”

The Vassalboro mill was added to the National Register of Historic Places on Oct. 5, 2020.

Lombard log hauler exhibit locations

The Lombard log hauler, one of only six remaining, at its home at the Redington Museum, in Waterville. (photo by Roland Hallee)

Local readers who would like to see a Lombard log hauler (introduced in the Oct. 26 issue of The Town Line) will have two local opportunities.

The Fall 2023 issue of the Maine State Museum’s Broadside newsletter reports that when the museum reopens in 2025, a new exhibit will showcase its Lombard log hauler. Museum officials are also helping the Waterville Historical Society upgrade its Lombard log hauler display.

The projects are funded by a grant from the Bill & Joan Alfond Foundation.

Readers might also want to visit the Maine Forest and Logging Museum, in Bradley, northeast of Bangor (website maineforestandloggingmuseum.org), or the Maine Forestry Museum, in Dallas Plantation, with a mailing address in Rangeley (website maineforestrymuseum.org). The Forest and Logging Museum’s website advertises its Lombard log hauler; the Forestry Museum’s says it has a variety of equipment and tools.

Both websites list 2024 event schedules.

The Forestry Museum is closed for the winter, reopening in June 2024. The Forest and Logging Museum is hosting Santa Claus on Dec. 9.

Tannery owner Jacob Southwick

Tannery owner Jacob Southwick was involved in other businesses in the village near the Kennebec that began as Getchell’s Corners, was called Vassalboro in Kingsbury’s time and is now Getchell Corner. Kingsbury wrote that he had a pail factory an “ashery” and a plaster mill on a brook there.

(Wikipedia says an ashery made hardwood ashes into lye, potash or pearlash. Lye was an ingredient in soap; pearlash, made by kiln-baking potash, was often exported to Britain to be used in making glass and ceramic materials.)

Around 1825, Jacob, his father, Dr. Edward Southwick, and others started Negeumkeag Bank at Getchell’s Corners, with $50,000 capital; it lasted about 15 years. After it closed, Kingsbury said, the “queer old strap, wrought iron safe” went to another tannery the Southwicks owned in Burnham.

By 1836, Kingsbury said, one of the places for posting notices of town meetings was the Jacob Southwick and Company store.

Jacob was a selectman for two years in the 1820s. In 1843, he was innocently involved in what appears to have been election fraud. Whether deliberate or accidental is unclear.

The story is told in an 1843 report of the Maine legislature’s Committee on Elections, reviewing returns from the newly-created Fourth Senatorial District. The district included Augusta and eight nearby towns.

Votes were cast for a total of 11 men, plus “all others.” Four men got more than 3,300 votes each. Three more were closely grouped in the 2,600s. Jacob Southwick was one of four men who each got fewer than 550 votes.

However, the committee found that many voters had marked four names on the ballot, when the instructions said to vote for no more than three. This conduct they condemned as illegal, disorderly and corrupt.

The report concluded, “That a great evil would result from permitting the voter to determine, not only for whom he may vote, but for how many, must be obvious to all.”

The committee therefore rejected numerous ballots, including 323 from Vassalboro – one of the higher numbers, exceeded only by Augusta and Hallowell – and declared the new senators to be none of the four top vote-getters, but the three in the second tier, John Hubbard, Jacob Main and John Stanley.

John Hubbard was Dr. John Hubbard, of Hallowell, later governor of Maine. Jacob Main was from Belgrade; David Stanley was from Winthrop.

Main sources

Goebel-Bain, Michael National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Vassalboro Mill (March 24, 2020), supplied by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971).

Websites, miscellaneous.