Radio Script #775

Little Talks on Common Things

September 29, 1968

On this program I have often commented that Waterville’s earliest industries were on the Messalonskee, not on the Kennebec. The first mill built on this side of the Kennebec, on what is now Waterville, was put up on the Messalonskee by Dr. John McKechnie in 1780, near the present site of the Kennebec Water District pumping station off Western Avenue. That fact has often been noted on this program, and has frequently been heralded in print. When Kingsbury compiled his “History of Kennebec County” in 1892, the McKechnie mill had been gone for so long that no one living had ever seen it and its exact location has become somewhat doubtful. The best information we now have, even 75 years later than Kingsbury’s book and 188 years since Dr. McKechnie built his mill, points to its location on the left bank of the Messalonskee near the rear of the present Water District building.

What almost everyone has now forgotten, or never heard of, is that several prosperous mills once used the power sites between the Western Avenue bridge and the entrance of the Messalonskee into the Kennebec, south of Pine Grove Cemetery. Starting at the mouth of the Messalonskee and going up stream, let us see what some of those factories were.

The first power site, far down the stream, was used originally about 1795 by Silas and Abijah Wing for a combined saw and grist mill. In the 1820’s Samuel Hitchings put up a carding mill on the same site, and in part of the same building turned out bedposts. In 1832 Daniel Wells put up a shingle mill and operated it, together with the Hitchings property, which he had taken over.

At the second power site, where is now the dam of the Central Maine power Company, visible both from the Memorial Bridge and from the Sidney Road, stood the mill of the man who gave his name to the.stream. He was Asa Emerson, and for nearly a century what we now call the Messalonskee went by the name of Emerson Stream. Emerson’s first mill was built only ten years after McKechnie’s, in 1790.

He operated it for 43 years. Then, in aged retirement. he sold to Joseph Fairbanks, the only Messalonskee operator to gain a national reputation, for he was the inventor and manufacturer of the famous Fairbanks scales. Though Fairbanks left for Vermont in 1843, and it was there that he made and distributed his scales, there is reason to believe that he developed the plans for them here in Waterville while he was making iron plows on the old Emerson site. So far as we know, Fairbanks’ business between 1833 and 1843 was the first instance of factory manufacture of iron products in Waterville.

The true forerunner of the later Waterville Iron Works came, however, with Fairbanks’ successors, who took over his Messalonskee factory in 1843. They were John Webber and Fr-ecl.Havilana, in fact the Webber family continued its connection with the industry for more than a hundred years. Webber and Haviland expanded the Fairbanks business into general foundry operations. They did business on that site until 1871, when the new factory opened on the Kennebec and took the new name of Waterville Iron Works.

Next above the old Emerson-Fairbanks site was the dam built in l850 by Erastus Perley. There a company formed by Samuel Appleton. ZebUlon Sawyer and John Ramsted built a paper mill and made newsprint. In 1873 Robert Marston took over the plant to make wooden shanks for shoe-making.

Just a bit up stream, in 1830. Moses Gilroy started a small carpet factory. Then in 1840 came Pearson’s tannery which was taken over in 1874 by Henry Ricker, and continued for another decade.

Then we come to the old McKechnie site. near which because of the dam and falls, there developed through the 19th century several important industries. James Crommett built there a bigger dam and erected saw, grist, carding and cloth mills on the west side of the stream. For nearly a century the location was always called Crommett’s Mills.

In the same general area, in 1858. Winslow Marston built and operated a match factory. So the old sulphur matches were made in this region long before the Diamond Match Co. came to Oakland. William Butterfield also put up a factory in the same area for making shovel handles. That was in 1873, and only two years later the centennial anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord saw the erection of Dow’s furniture factory.

There is no other industrial site on the Messalonskee until, still going up stream, we come to the bridge on the Rices Rips Road near the old power company station and flume. From there to the falls known as the Cascade there developed over the years a proliferation of factories. The first scythe factory — a product for which Oakland became famous — was built on the present site of the Cascade Woolen Mill. In 1854 another scythe factory was opened at the head of the Cascade and at the same general site. in 1857, Reuben Dunn organized the Dunn Edge Tool Company.

Between the Cascade and the outlet of the lake into Messalonskee Stream were two important power sites. The first, about a quarter of a mile from the outlet. was at a dam built in 1850 by Daniel Lord. where he and Jesse Graves manufactured axes and hoes for several years. In 1865 the power privilege was bought by John Hubbard and William Blake, and there the Hubbard and Blake Manufacturing Co. made scythes and axes until they sold to the American Axe and Tool Co. in 1889.

About 1795 Jonathan Coombs built at the outlet a dam to provide power for a saw mill and grist mill. In 1836 it was replaced by a larger mill operated by Burnham Thomas. In 1855 it was carried away by a spring freshet, but in the next year was replaced by a large grist mill. which was still operating when Kingsbury’s history appeared in 1892. On the same site a carding mill was put up by Jonathan Coombs, and operated by his sons, Jonathan and David. who also took over their father’s property interest in the site. On the other side of the stream was a factory for making chairs and settees, opened by Joseph Bachelder in 1849. Thirteen years earlier, in 1836, Alfred Winslow opened a tannery on the same site, and for thirty years turned out what was called upper leather. Nearby that leather was made into boots by Winslow and Jordan. Between the tannery and the grist mill Lyon, Bragg and Hubbard set up wood working and jobbers shops.

Yes, indeed. at one time there was a lot of industrial activity on the Messalonskee.

Why it developed so much faster than mills on the larger river was explained as follows by Reuben Dunn: “The flow of water in the Messalonskee is far more constant than in the Kennebec. By controlling the dams at the outlet and carefully storing the water, the Messalonskee’s power can be made continuous at about 25 horse power for each foot of fall.”

Mr. Dunn explained that the Belgrade chain of lakes provided an abundant source of controlled power. He wrote: “In the west part of Waterville is the Messalonskee Stream, the outlet of the lake of the same name, into which are discharged the waters of East, North, McGrath, Ellis. Great and Long Ponds. This stream flows northerly for about four miles, with a fall of about 150 feet, of which 100 feet are in the village of Oakland and within less than a mile from the outlet. After its four-mile run, the stream turns to the east, then to the south, and empties into the Kennebec two miles below Ticonic Falls. As it passes through Waterville it takes a further fall of about 100 feet.”

Having given that account of the Messalonskee industries. I want now to turn to another subject. Most Maine people today, as we prepare for the 150th anniversary of statehood in 1970, take it for granted that Maine became a separate state in a natural process of evolution and without serious friction. Such is far from the case. Three times a proposal to request Congress to make the Massachusetts District of Maine into a separate state was placed before the voters who lived in the district and three times it was turned down. The movement for separation had begun in the last decade of the 18th century, was steamed up under the Embargo Act of 1807, was delayed by the War of 1812, but after 1815 continued to gain support. At last, in 1819, a favorable vote was obtained, agreeable to the Massachusetts Government. As every student of Maine history knows, the only way Congressional consent was obtained was to put the Maine case into a larger package, which U.S. history knows as the Missouri Compromise. Under that deal, Maine came into the Union as a free state, to offset the admission of Missouri as a slave state.

By no means did every town in Maine favor the separation, even as late as 1819. The people of Wells were so determined to remain citizens of Massachusetts that they voted 408 to 49 against statehood. Nor was opposition confined to anyone region of Maine. It is considerable distance from Wells to Waldoboro, yet in the latter shipping town the vote was just as overwhelming to keep the status quo, 280 to 24. Nearby Warren sided with Waldoboro, voting 127 to 22 to stay out of the deal.

In many Maine towns the vote was close: 107 against separation and 103 for it in Freeport; 194 against and 178 for in North Yarmouth; 67 for to 56 against in Norway; 42 for and 52 against in Waterford; 48 for and 41 against in Bloomfield. In most towns of the Kennebec Valley the sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of separation. The Waterville vote was 184 for to 22 against, while in Winslow there was not a single negative vote, all of the 81 cast votes being in favor. The Augusta vote was 293 to 49 in support of separation. In China it was 88 to 5, in Clinton 163 to one, in Albion 48 to 7, in Fairfield 117 to 26, and in Madison 68 to 11.

Opinion in the Bangor area was very much divided. While Bangor itself voted 89 to 17 in favor, the majorities in Carmel, Orono and Orrington were all opposed.

It is interesting to note who were a few of the more influential members of the Maine Constitutional Convention of 1819. Leading the list was William King, who for twenty years had been fighting the battle for separation, and who richly deserved his subsequent election as Maine’s first governor. Another very prominent figure was William Preble of Portland, for whom were named the city’s Preble Street and its once luxurious Preble House. Another Portland man, Albion K. Parris, would be a successor to King as governor. Augusta was naturally represented by its leading citizen, Daniel Cony.

Men not so widely known, but of great influence in the Kennebec Valley, are well remembered in the local histories, and were natural delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Waterville had two such delegates, Ebenezer Bacon and Abijah Smith, both ardent workers in the industrial development of this town. William Kendall, for whom Fairfield Village was long called Kendalls Mills, was a convention delegate from Fairfield, while William Allen, the historian, represented Norridgewock.

Samuel Redington was there from Vassalboro, and on the list were two of the original incorporation of what is now Colby College, Benjamin Titcomb of Brunswick and Thomas Francis of Leeds.

Year: 1968