\nI suspect it is not generally known that, when it closed a few months ago, the Waterville Iron Works was the oldest continuous industry in this community, being in operation for 137 years. To be sure, at the beginning it had a different name; it was not called the Iron Works until 1882.<\/p>\n
It all began with Joseph Fairbanks, inventor of the famous Fairbanks platform scale. In 1833 Fairbanks came to Waterville and with Orba Nelson built a dam and foundry on the site of Asa Emerson’s earlier, burned-out sawmill on the Messalonskee. That was well down the stream below what was then called the Emerson Bridge, now the Memorial Bridge, near the junction of Kennedy Drive and West River Road. It was on the east side of the stream below what is now Flo’s Greenhouse, and not far from what is now the east end of the Central Maine Power dam. The foundry was operated by Fairbanks, Nelson & Co., the “Company” being other members of the Fairbanks family.<\/p>\n
In 1838, Fairbanks left Waterville for Springfield, Vermont, in which town, rather than Waterville, he brought to production the Fairbanks scale, design for which he had made before leaving here. The Fairbanks foundry in Vermont later became the great machine-tool industry of which, a few years ago, Senator Flanders was the head.<\/p>\n
A small group of Waterville business men — and we must remember that Waterville had little more than 1,000 people in 1838 — formed a company called the Waterville Iron Manufacturing Co., and bought the Fairbanks foundry on the Messalonskee. Among the stockholders were John Weber and Fred Haviland, who bought out their fellow holders in 1843, first under the firm name of Weber and Haviland, then changing the name to Waterville Iron Works. In 1895 their Messalonskee plant burned to the ground, and they decided to reestablish on a new site. They chose land on the west side of the Kennebec, about a quarter of a mile above Ticonic Falls. There they erected new shops, much larger than those they had lost, put in the best modern machinery and developed a thriving business. In 1873 Frank Philbrick joined the firm, and by 1882 they were three owners: Philbrick, Charles Haviland and Frank Webber, both second generation descendants of the two principal purchasers from Fairbanks.<\/p>\n
When the Centennial History of Waterville was published in 1902, the Waterville Iron Works was using neither water power nor steam to drive their machines. At that early period they were already using electricity. The History says: “The Iron Works gets its power from a 20 horse power electric motor, securing its electricity from the Waterville and Fairfield Light and Power Co.” The History added: “While they carry on a general foundry business, much of their work is in making pulp mill machinery.”<\/p>\n
Through the courtesy of Mr. Ralph Desmond, who is in charge of the disposal of Iron Works property for its present owner, I have had access to certain records of the Company during the early years of occupancy of the plant off Front Street on the Kennebec.<\/p>\n
One account is a set of cash records from January, 1895 to February, 1900, thus giving us a picture of their very first business on the new site after their fire on the Messalonskee.<\/p>\n
In that first month their biggest customer was the Maine Central R.R. for which they did work amounting to $688. Nearly as big was their bill to Hollingsworth and Whitney, $645. Most of the accounts were less than $50 in that opening month: Horace Purinton and Co., $43; W.I. Shaw, $44; Lockwood Co., $19. Some of the bills were small indeed: Sentinel Publishing Co., $5; Baptist Church, $4.77; C.F. Hathaway Co., $1.24; Colby University, $2.50; and Turf, Farm and Home, 55 cents.<\/p>\n
As the year 1895 got well underway, business steadily increased at the Iron Works. Amazing is the amount of work they did for the Colby physics professor, William A. Rogers. They charged him $204 in February, $190 in May, and $268 in September.<\/p>\n
Rogers was a remarkable man. Because his physics building was near the railroad yards and thus subject to almost constant vibration, Rogers had persuaded the donor, Col. Shannon, to build on a very deep foundation, make the walls of triple thickness, and construct for Rogers’ personal use a soundproof and vibration-proof laboratory. Nothing short of an earthquake could cause even a quiver when Rogers was at work on his delicate experiments. And of national importance some of those experiments certainly were. In that building on the old Colby campus, Rogers developed the standard yard for the U.S. Bureau of Standards, and he made experiments on light that were of considerable assistance to Edison.<\/p>\n
Just why Rogers should pay the Waterville Iron Works more than $650 for work during 1895 we do not know. Seventy-five years ago that sum of money would buy a lot of iron work.<\/p>\n
In 1896 the Iron Works billed what it designated as the Electric R.R. for $200. A bit later in the same year there was a bill to the Waterville and Fairfield Railway and tight Company for $173. For Coburn Classical Institute, they did work that came to $56. Vassalboro Woolen Mills paid them $50. One unusual bill was to the Waterville Cemetery for $54. It was, however, the pulp and paper mills that supplied their major business. Hollingsworth and Whitney, Stobie and Cunningham, Somerset Fibre Co., Piscataquis Falls Pulp Co., Lawrence, Newhall and Co., and Great Northern Paper Co.<\/p>\n
Waterville Iron Works had a part in the development of the Lombard Log Hauler. In 1897 their bills to A.D. Lombard exceeded $2,000. Individuals, as well as business firms, had their names on the Iron Works books: Amos Gerald, promoter of electric railways; Edward Ware, the lumberman; Appleton Webb, lawyer and breeder of race horses; Frank Bessey; A.H. Totman; Joseph Tardiff and Hod Nelson, owner of the world champion trotter.<\/p>\n
Only occasionally is a manufactured item named. In October, 1896 they made a cider mill screw and a plow. In 1898 they repaired a press for the Savage Publishing Co.<\/p>\n
Now let us take a look at the other side of that cash book. Who were some of the Iron Works’ suppliers? They were the Holyoke Machine Co., Star Belting Co., B.F. Sturtevant Co., Akron Iron Co., Wales Tool Works, Boston Gear Works, Kiesel Fire Brick Co., and more than twenty others.<\/p>\n
Among their payments in 1895 were $430 for taxes, $30 to Harvey Eaton for legal work, and 90 cents for recording a deed. Their truckman was F.H. Thomas, and some payment to him is recorded almost every month.<\/p>\n
Evidently the Iron Works was often in a hurry for supplies, or perhaps were answering hurried inquiries from customers, for they spent a lot of money on telegrams. In fact they seem to have used Western Union and Postal Telegraph as much as they used the mail. In the first quarter of 1896 they spent only a dollar for stamps.<\/p>\n
As for their ordinary labor, such as work around the yard, their records show exactly the same practice that had been in use up in the lumber camp near Moosehead in the middle of the 19th century. That practice was not to record the name of French Canadian employees for unskilled labor. So over and over again we read in these Iron Works records, “Labor, Frenchman, six days, $4.50.” That is at the rate of 75 cents a day. On the other hand much of their skilled labor came from Waterville French Canadians, and those men were named just as were the Yankee employees. Four Poolers were on the 1895 payroll, along with Joe Coro, Jim Ranco, Silver King, and Philip Proulx.<\/p>\n
The Iron Works was always buying old iron, not only from the junk men, but also from individuals. If you wanted to get rid of an old, broken-down iron range in 1895, the Iron Works would take it.<\/p>\n
Of course the proprietors had to travel to the big cities occasionally. That explains one expense item in 1896: Mileage book $20. Some other specific expenditures recorded are blacksmithing, ladders, repair of wagon, shoveling sand and picture of old foundry. I wonder what became of that old picture. How the Waterville Historical Society would like to have it today. The last expense items in the book, for March 3, 1900, are Time Books, 50 cents; ink stand and sundries, $2.00 and F.B. Webber, $2.00. Three days earlier, on March 2, appeared the last amount received. It was $2,140 from A.O. Lombard, inventor of the log hauler that was predecessor of the farm tractor and the war tank.<\/p>\n
In 1896 the Iron Works payroll contained only 16 names. In 1898 it had risen to 26; and by 1900 the employees numbered 38. Some of those original Frenchmen were still with the firm, but alongside them were such Yankee names as Watson, Hussey, Fletcher, Jackson and Douglass.<\/p>\n
One by one the old family industries have left us, either purchased by big, non-resident interests, or just folded up. One of the finest of those industries was the Waterville Iron Works. It had an important part in the industrial prosperity of Waterville, and we should not forget it.<\/p>\n
As we close, let’s have a couple of items from the Lewiston Journal of 100 years ago in 1870: “The Biddeford Journal reports that a woman from Lewiston was before the Biddeford court for drunkenness. This week a Lewiston man came before the same court for the same reason. We are sorry that Biddeford can’t receive our visitors without getting them tight.”<\/p>\n
“The through train on the Grand Trunk R.R. got stuck yesterday in Gilead and had not reached Mechanic Falls when we went to press. No balm in Gilead.”<\/p>\n
Year: 1970<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #866, Broadcast on November 8, 1970<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1205,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}