Radio Script #601

Little Talks on Common Things

February 9, 1964

A part of the town of Fairfield that has been neglected on this program is Larone. We have talked frequently about Getchells Corner and Shawmut, about Fairfield Center and North Fairfield, about Pishons Ferry and Noble’s Ferry, but very few words about Larone. Today it is that community’s turn to have a place on the program.

My information on that little hamlet in the northeast corner of the town of Fairfield comes partly from persons who have lived there and partly from a little pamphlet published in 1918 by the man who was at that time Larone’s postmaster, Will P. Winslow.

The village of Larone owes its existence to the Martin Stream, the Kennebec tributary that has played so large a part in the industrial history of Fairfield. Rising not far from East Pond in the town of Smithfield, Martin Stream flows not into that pond and hence into the Kennebec by way of the chain of Belgrade Lakes and the Messalonskee, but in the other direction, northwest to the Kennebec River. On the way to the river the stream was crossed, at the time when Mr. Winslow wrote his brief sketch, by roadways in no fewer than fifteen spots. Ten of them required public bridges, eight in Fairfield and two in Norridgewock. The other five were privately built on non-public logging roads.

Martin Stream is one of the few small rivers in a heavily populated part of Maine where one can still find beaver dams. In fact, when the area of Larone was first settled, it was considered the best hunting and trapping region for miles around, and it supported several full-time trappers who sold their furs at Hallowell for shipment to Boston and New York merchants. One of those professional trappers was named Martin, and it is supposed his name was given to the stream, although others contend that it was named for the prevalence along its banks of the fur-bearing animal, the marten.

About 1780 Abraham Potter secured from the owners of the Nye-Dimmock. tract a settler’s lot on the Martin Stream at what is now Larone. He was soon followed by Asa Whiting and Tilson Emery. Before Potter came, the itinerant trappers had made a footpath between Norridgewock and Ticonic Falls. that passed near the present Larone. After the settlers arrived. that footpath was soon widened into a tote road. Already a tote road had been opened from Hallowell to Norridgewock. through Fairfield Center. but it passed well west of Larone. The rapid growth of the Larone settlement caused the route to be changed to the new tote road. so it would pass through Larone.

In that vicinity the Martin Stream had two drops. known respectively as the upper and lower falls. On both were built several mills — sawmills. a grist mill. a tannery and a carriage factory.

Until 1845 the community was called Winslow’s Mills. after Daniel Winslow. who had built a dam just west of where the Larone highway now crosses Martin Stream. There he put up a tannery and a sawmill in which he installed machines to make shingles and laths. At that time the nearest post office was at Black’s Mills. now North Fairfield, and the thirty or more families near Winslow’s Mills felt the time had come to have their own post office. Two smart politicians of Norridgewock, Charles Townsend and William Gould, rose to the support of the people at Winslow’s Mills. Their efforts in Washington won a government decision to have the stage from Waterville to Norridgewock leave mail at Winslow’s Mills and appoint a postmaster there. But the post office had to have a new name. Down in Lincoln County there was already a post office named Winslow’s Mills. and of course there could not be two post offices of the same name in the same state.

Still current at Larone is the story of how the new post office got its name. Tilson Emery, an early settler and substantial citizen, was one of the few men in the community who owned a driving horse, a handsome roan-colored gelding that could make good speed even over the crude roads of a hundred years ago. Far and wide Mr. Emery’s horse was known as “The Roan”. When the inhabitants met to seek the new post office. they knew their petition to Washington should suggest a name. They also had to be sure of a way to get the mail to the local post office. Close togetherat the meeting came two questions from the lips of stalwart citizens: “How shall we get the mail here?” asked one. Almost simultaneously another voice asked. “What shall we call the post office?” Hearing the first question. Mr. Emery shouted “The Roan”. meaning if no other way were open. his good horse would bring the mail from Waterville or Fairfield or wherever one had to get it. Another fellow. who had heard only the second question. scoffed, “The Roan — what kind of a name is that for a post office?” Then a third man, of French-Canadian descent, spoke up. “Well. why not? ‘The’ is ‘La”. Just add trone’ and you get Larone. That’s a right good name.” So Larone it became and still is today. though the post office has long been replaced by Rural Free Delivery.

In his pamphlet Fred Winslow says that Larone was in 1916 still a prosperous little village with 25 families, all fairly well to do and, as he puts it, “peacefully inclined and content to let the world wag along in her regular course, willing to be carried around with her once every 24 hours.” Although war was already waging  in Europe and ships carrying American citizens had already been torpedoed on the high seas, Mr. Winslow could not forsee that within one short year American boys would be on their way to the battlefields of France and the contented peace of even a hamlet like Larone would be cruelly upset.

During the existence of the Larone post office its patrons were not confined to those who resided in the town of Fairfield. Because the community lay in the extreme northeast corner of the town, Larone naturally spilled over into Norridgewock on the west and Skowhegan on the north. The corner boundary stone is marked on the south by F for Fairfield. on the west by N for Norridgewock, on the north by B for Bloomfield, as that part of Skowhegan west of the Kennebec was long called.

Mr. Winslow tells us that in 1916 there were ten residents of Larone who paid taxes in two towns and three who were taxed in all three towns.

Larone is justly famous for the view from the top of its Bigelow Hill, where now is located one of Maine’s largest chicken hatcheries and adjoining broiler plants. Mount Blue, Saddleback, Bigelow and Moxie loom large and deceptively near on a clear day. The White Mountains are visible in the distance. From that 780 foot height of Bigelow Hill, a man with a good glass can see the rolling Atlantic, and with the naked eye can in the other direction distinguish Mount Katahdin. He can follow the course of the Kennebec River for nearly a hundred miles.

Larone once had a cattle pound. Surely it could not have been the only pounq in Fairfield, situated so far from the larger settlements of Fairfield Center and Kendalls Mills, but Mr. Winslow refers to it as the town pound. However, the evidence he gives — the record of the town meeting of March 8, 1790 — says nothing about the location of the pound, and the names of men who volunteered to contribute each a day’s work on the structure include several who lived at North Fairfield: Elihu Bowerman, Josiah Burgess and Amos Tozier. Unfortunately Mr. Winslow does.not tell us where in Larone the pound he writes about was located.

A Larone landmark was the old red school house, built by subscription in 1822, and used for many years both for a school and for religious services. The room was divided into two sections, one side for the boys, the other for the girls. Sometimes as a punishment a boy was given the humiliating experience of having to sit on the girls’ side. Larone people will tell you many fascinating stories about that old school house. One of the best concerned the man who became the community’s physician, Dr. Llewellyn Brown.

In order to get money to attend medical school, Brown worked at any good job that came his way, including teaching the village school. One term when Brown was the teacher, the boys, as schoolboys always will, developed a prank into a sort of continuing custom. Every noon they put on a water fight, drenching the school room floor. Brown finally announced to the whole school that if there was another water fight, every participant would be punished. As Brown probably expected, the very next day saw a grand water battle, and when Brown returned to the school house from dinner, the place was a mess. Most of the boys had been awed by the schoolmaster’s announcement, for he was a big fellow with a strong right arm. But half a dozen fellows had quite naturally taken the warning as a direct challenge to their own supremacy. Somehow Brown managed to identify the guilty persons and gave each of them a good faruling. That night, an hour after school had closed, Brown, finishing the day’s work for he was janitor as well as teacher — stepped out of the door to be greeted in the face by a pailful of water from the vengeful hands of one of the boys. Though the culprit ran off and never again returned to the school, Brown had been able to identify him, and afterward announced to all who would listen: “When I get my hands on that fellow again I’ll thrash him publicly, even if it is right in church.” But it was a long time before Brown saw the water thrower again.

The boy soon left Larone for the gold fields of California; Brown went away to study medicine. Then the teacher returned to Larone as Mr. Brown, where he became the respected and beloved physician. Years later the fellow who had thrown the water came back to the community, married and became a successful farmer. At the birth of his first child, he called in the village doctor, Llewellyn Brown. So pleased was the young husband with the delivery of a healthy son that he said, when Mr. Brown was leaving the house: “Well, Doctor, we have now met for the first time since the water fight, and I understand you have said more than once that you would thrash me when we next met. Well, here I am. I deserve that thrashing. Go ahead with it. I’m ready.”

The good doctor replied: “That was a long time ago. A lot of water has run down the Martin Stream since then. I guess we’d better call the battle off. Let’s shake hands.”

Little Larone today isn’t what it was even in 1916, to say nothing about its heyday in the 1850’s and 1860’s. when its big tote teams made regular trips from its mills and its farms to the railroad at Waterville or at Kendalls Mills. But the gushing spring waters of Martin Stream still flow. Cattle, sheep and especially chickens still grow on Larone farms. And the majestic peak of Bigelow Hill still casts its protective mantle over the little hamlet. The community once named for a roan horse is still there.

Year: 1964