USA > Maine > Penobscot County > Orono > Historical sketch of Orono > Part 4
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Working in close cooperation with the public health of- ficer has been the public health nurse. The town first appropriat- ed money for this purpose in 1920. The nurse was then em-
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ployed by the Old Town-Orono Anti-Tuberculosis Association, which had been organized in 1913. This association supported a nurse who devoted most of her time to the control of tuberculosis. It also maintained a summer camp for children who were vic- tims of the disease. Late in 1920 this organization merged with the Central Penobscot Public Health Association, which includ- ed Orono, Old Town, Bradley, Milford and Veazie.
Some years later the Orono members withdrew from the larger organization and established the Orono Public Health Serv- ice, which has since served Orono people only and is affiliated with the Maine Tuberculosis Association. Other groups cooper- ating with the nursing committee are the selectmen and school officials of the town of Orono and the Red Cross. Much of the credit for the success of the association in earlier years belongs to Mrs. Alice Hart who was for a long time its chairman. Later for many years, Mrs. Roselle W. Huddilston was chairman, Mrs. Susan F. Day was treasurer, and Mrs. Annie R. Bartlett was nurse. Mrs. Mildred C. Bradbury is public health nurse at the present writing.
Besides the control of tuberculosis, the work of the health nurse has included temporary care of the sick, training home- makers to care for patients in their own families, maternity and child health nursing, and assisting the health officer with vaccina- tions, inoculations, examinations, and other services for school children. The town has provided the major part of her salary in recent years. Any person in Orono is entitled to request the services of the nurse in case of need.
Another community service initiated by a private organiza- tion and now maintained principally by the town is that of the Orono Public Library. The library was established, probably in the eighteen-eighties, by the members of the Orono Christian Temperance Union, and was maintained by them as a service to the citizens for some forty years. The town first voted money for their assistance in 1892. The amount was $200. The article in the town warrant read: "To see if the town will raise money to aid the Ladies' W. C. T. U. in maintaining a free public library and reading room." The library then contained sixteen hundred volumes.
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The town continued to raise two or three hundred dollars annually for the support of the library for a long term of years, and by 1929 had increased the amount to nine hundred dollars. One of the major sources of income, however, was the series of excellent dinners that the members of the W. C. T. U. served on town meeting day. In 1930 the town warrant contained this article: "To see if the town will vote to accept from the W. C. T. U. all its rights, title, and interest in the public library." The voters accepted the library and the town has maintained it ever since. However private persons and organizations have continued to contribute to its support. It now has more than twelve thousand volumes on its shelves. Librarians for the last half century have been: Mrs. L. P. Thompson to 1909; Miss Abbie L. Wilson, 1909 to 1919; Mrs. Susie C. Flint, 1919 to 1921; Edson F. Hitchings, 1921 to 1935; Mrs. Warner J. Morse, 1935 to 1946; and Miss Vera I. Hill, 1946 to the present writing.
The desire on the part of the people for more and better services, rising salaries, inflation, and the increasing cost of doing business have brought about a corresponding increase in the tax load of Orono citizens, just as it has in that of the tax payers elsewhere in Maine. For instance, the total amount of tax assessed on polls and estates in 1940 was $124,294. In 1950 it had risen to $175,317, and in 1955 to $267,265. Amounts of some of the major appropriations for those fiscal years were: For educa- tion, $35,500 in 1940, $65,500 in 1950, and $118,900 in 1955; for protection of persons and property (police, fire department, and rental of hydrants ) $12,900 in 1940, $23,320 in 1950, and $48,700 in 1955; for highways, $7,801, and $14,094, and $27,966; and for charity and corrections, $12,000, and $5,000, and $4,000 respec- tively. And the end is not yet?
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CHAPTER V The Old Order Changes
The history of the manufacture of lumber in Orono since the Civil War falls naturally into three periods - the heyday of the sawmills from 1865 to about 1890, the transition from building materials to pulp and paper, 1890 to 1914, and the era of the paper mills from that time until they finally went out of business about the beginning of the Second World War.
During the heyday period the dams on the Stillwater were crowded with sawmills, and yards filled with fragrant, freshly sawed lumber lined both banks of the lower reaches of that river. At Basin Mills the scenery was the same. One long mill stretched across the eastern channel of the Penobscot from the Orono bank to Ayers Island, and the groaning of the water wheels and the screech of the gang saws continued through the spring, summer, and fall months. The Adamses, Atwoods, Engels, Lincolns, Rings, Walkers, and Websters were the lumber lords of the day in Orono. Their mills were busy turning the old growth pines of the Penobscot Valley into laths, clapboards, shingles, boards, planks, and dimension timber from which citics were being built, and also into staves, pickets, shooks, and other products for more prosaic purposes.
The river was often crowded with logs on their way to the mills, and great lumber rafts floated serenely on their journey to the wharves at Bangor. The rafts had long lumber for their hulls and their decks were piled high with clapboards, laths, and shingles. Happy were the Orono boys who rode on these rafts nearly or all the way to Bangor even though they ran the risk of having to walk home.
The period of transition that began with the building of the first paper mill in 1889 lasted for twenty-five years. When it ended the manufacture of long and short lumber in quantity had also come to an end, and nearly all local employment was con- fined to the two paper mills.
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Ferry Hill, about 1900.
Picture taken about 1890 of store where Treworgy's now stands.
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There were several reasons for the change. The pine for- ests that had seemed inexhaustible were becoming exhausted after all. Lumbering crews were pressing farther and farther up the Penobscot and its branches for pine, and the logs that crowded the booms from Orono to Argyle were becoming smaller in size year by year. At the same time the once neglected spruce was increasing in importance. Following the Civil War, and espe- cially during the eighties, processes had been perfected for re- ducing spruce logs into pulp for the making of many grades of paper, notably newsprint. King Spruce was challenging King Pine as the monarch of Maine forests.
Lumber mills on the Stillwater in Orono were being oper- ated in 1889 by Adams & Company, J. W. Atwell, William Engel, Matthew Lincoln, Andrew G. Ring, Edmund T. Ring, Edgar E. Ring, and Eben C. and J. Fred Webster, and at the Basin by James Walker & Company. Atwell, Lincoln, Andrew G. Ring, and the Walker Company had been in business for many years, as had the Webster family. The others were more recent comers.
The industry that was to succeed them came to Orono that year. G. W. Stephens writes in Hatch's History of Maine that the Eastern Manufacturing Company, of Brewer, seems to have been the first in the state to manufacture wood pulp by the sul- phide process. That was in 1889. Later the same year, the Orono Pulp and Paper Company began operations at its new mill on Ayers Island at the Basin and employed the same process. Thus the rivalry between the two industries for raw materials had begun, not only at Orono but elsewhere in the state and country.
During the nineties, J. W. Atwell, Andrew G. Ring, and Matthew Lincoln ceased to do business, and Edgar E. Ring sold his holdings on the Stillwater to the Ring and Webster Pulp and Paper Company. Then about 1902 the Adams Company retired from the scene of action. Only three of the large concerns were left, William Engel & Company, James Walker & Company, and the Websters. Later, in August 1910 the great Walker Mills at the Basin were burned. It is said that at that time they were the largest and longest sawmills in the United States run by water power. They were never rebuilt and the power rights were sold to an electric company.
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A year or two later the Webster family dropped out of the lumber business after a hundred years of activity. By that time William Engel & Company owned all the mill sites on the Bab- cock dam and was the only large lumber manufacturing business left in Orono. Within another year or two their mills were also burned. They, too, were never replaced. With them Orono's principal source of income for nearly one hundred fifty years went up in smoke. Fortunately the two pulp and paper mills continued operation.
The Orono Pulp and Paper Company was listed in the Maine Register for the first time in 1890 and then annually until 1894. In 1895 and 1896 the Bangor Pulp and Paper Company is listed. But beginning again in 1897 the Orono Pulp and Paper Company is given an annual listing until it was absorbed by the Eastern Manufacturing Company, now the Eastern Corporation, about 1930. The Eastern operated the plant with some intermission until it was permanently closed. Perley B. Palmer was superintendent of the mill for some years.
Beginning in 1892 one finds the Webster Paper Company listed in the Maine Register. This was an enterprise of the Web- ster family. J. Fred Webster was president; Eben C. Webster, treasurer; and Alden P. Webster, superintendent. The mill was located on the Webster property at the lower end of Marsh Is- land near the mouth of the Stillwater. A little later the Ring and Webster Manufacturing Company was formed to deal in lumber and pulp. J. Fred Webster was president of this company and Eben C. Webster was its treasurer.
Then in 1898 the Webster Paper Company bought the Ring and Webster Manufacturing Company. Later the same year it became a branch of the International Paper Company. The new company had its headquarters in New York but Alden P. Webster continued for some years as superintendent of the mill. The mill made ground wood pulp but later, at least, bought pulp made by the sulphide process for some of its paper products.
Thus for half a century Orono had a stable pulp and paper industry. In 1913, for example, when the business of manufactur- ing long and short lumber was becoming moribund, the Inter- national mill employed about one hundred persons and the Orono
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Pulp and Paper Company had about one hundred sixty employees. During the thirties the principal product of the International mill was a grade of paper used in printing wallpaper. At the same time the Eastern was advertising various grades of wrapping paper made at its Basin mill.
Soon after America entered the Second World War both mills yielded to the pressure of the changing times and ceased to operate. When they closed, the lumber industry that had been Orono's economic staff of life for more than one hundred and sixty years became history, a fading memory in the minds of men.
Orono has had several minor businesses that have been more or less closely connected with lumbering. Among them have been the manufacture of cantdogs, poles, boats, oars, and other equipment for river driving, and of matches.
"Between 1830 and 1840," wrote Mrs. Rogers, "John Ben- noch built a cantdog factory which he subsequently sold to E. Mansfield and Company." The Mansfield business was conduct- ed first by Edward Mansfield, Sr., and later by Edward Mans- field, Jr., and his cousin, Israel Mansfield, Jr. For a long term of years this was one of the most widely known business concerns in Orono; and its cantdogs, poles, and other equipment for river drivers enjoyed a wide reputation both in the United States and Canada. The company ceased to do business about 1907.
The Orono cantdog, of later years at least, was of the type that made the name of Peavey nearly as famous in the lumber woods as that of Paul Bunyan. The peavey was almost an Orono invention, but not quite. "In 1858, Joseph Peavey, of Stillwater," wrote Mrs. Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, "as he stood on the bridge there watching some river drivers at work with the old 'swing bail' cantdog, conceived the idea of an improvement in the tool. Going to his son's blacksmith shop nearby, he worked out his idea so quickly that he was able to put the now indispensable tool that bears his name into the hands of one of the same boat's crew that he had been watching, William Heald of Orono." The Peavey com- bined two heavy older tools, the loose-jaw cantdog and the pick handspike, in one much lighter and more serviceable implement. So it was that while the peavey was invented just over the town
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line in Upper Stillwater, it was used for the first time by an Orono man.
Several concerns have made boats or oars or both. James Hamilton made oars from about 1842 until some time in the fifties, when he bought a sawmill from Benjamin P. Gilman which he operated until his death some years later. The Vinals also made bateaux and oars for perhaps thirty years before 1900. Their business was conducted first by Elijah and Charles and later by Charles and Phineas Vinal under the firm name of C. M. Vinal & Co.
William C. Taylor was engaged in the manufacture of oars and paddles as long ago as 1858. Since his death early in the present century, the business has been conducted under the firm name of Shaw and Tenney. This is now the oldest business en- terprise in Orono.
At least two Orono concerns have made matches. The first was started by Anson Allen who later had Henry Powers as a partner. Allen and Powers were doing business as early as 1871 and as late as 1894. John Chase also manufactured matches for a few years in the eighties.
Mention has been made of the fact that the concern of Shaw and Tenney is the oldest concern now doing business in Orono. Next oldest is the hardware business of Fred C. Park which was started about 1892 by the present owner. The Nichols Drug Store has been in operation for fifty years or more as has the Penobscot Water Company, formerly the Orono Water Company. Persons who have been in business in Orono between thirty and forty years include Edward L. Peters, garage; B. K. Hillson, cleaners and dyers; and Edward J. Virgie, clothing and footwear. The Byer Manufacturing Company has been in business since 1926, first in the manufacture of camp furniture and now of sporting goods.
Mention has been made of the lawyers and physicians who practiced in Orono before 1875. During the past eighty years a number of persons in both professions have come to Orono and have remained for but a comparatively short time, but several have accomplished their life work here. Among the lawyers was Charles J. Dunn, who was in active or partial practice for nearly fifty
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years, and John H. Ncedham, who has had nearly thirty years of practice and who is the present representative from Orono in the Maine House of Representatives.
Among the physicians were Drs. E. N. Mayo, J. H. Knox, and B. K. Kelleher in the last quarter of the nineteenth and first dec- ade of the twentieth centuries; and Drs. C. H. Bayard and E. Tomlinson during the first quarter of the present century and well into the second. Dr. Walter C. Hall has been one of Orono's physicians for some fifty years and Dr. Asa C. Adams for more than a quarter century. Orono's other physicians, Dr. Roswell P. Bates and Dr. Elmer M. Sewall have been in town for some years.
A number of Orono men have been prominent in the govern- ment of the State of Maine. Charles J. Dunn was Associate Jus- tice of the Supreme Court from 1918 to 1935 and Chief Justice from 1935 until his death in 1939. Edgar E. Ring was Commis- sioner of Forestry from 1901 to 1911 and Albert D. Nutting is the Commissioner at the present writing. Albert K. Gardner was Com- missioner of Agriculture from 1945 to 1949. Orono has had two members of the Governor's Executive Council, Charles Buffum in 1871 and Dr. Roswell P. Bates at the present time. Buffum also served as President of the Senate and Bates as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Many Orono people might be cited who were prominent in other walks of life but lack of space forbids. Still we may recall that two natives of Orono were brigadier generals in the Civil War, James H. Carleton and Charles D. Jameson, who was a grandson of Jeremiah Colburn. Gencral Jameson was also the candidate for Governor for the War Democrats in 1861 and again in 1862.
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Orono Town Hall - 1956.
Orono High School - 1956.
CHAPTER VI The Orono Churches
Orono has had four religious denominations that have served their communicants and the welfare of the town faithfully and well. They have been the Methodists; the Congregationalists and Universalists, now united in the Church of Universal Fellowship; and the Roman Catholics. This chapter will recall some of the highlights in their history.
Orono people were slow in perfecting a church organization. More than fifty years elapsed between the arrival of Colburn and Eayres in 1774 and the formation of the first religious society in 1826. This delay does not mean that the people were all that time without religious services. Rather it means that they were too few in number, too poor, or too divided in doctrine to support a settled minister. As a matter of fact services were held more or less fre- quently by the Congregationalists, Methodists, and perhaps other denominations.
Congregationalists were first in the field. During the long period before Orono had a resident pastor, their services were conducted by ministers from "down river" such as the Reverend Seth Noble, first resident minister in Bangor, or by itinerant preachers sent to the newer and more remote sections of the state by the Maine Missionary Society. Prominent among these home missionaries were the noted "Father" Jotham Sewall, who has re- corded that he preached twenty-seven times in Orono, and "Father" John Sawyer, who was one of the founders and for forty-four years a trustee of the Bangor Theological Seminary. These men made long journeys through the budding towns, preaching, teaching, converting, baptizing, and forming new churches as they had opportunity.
One of the earliest itinerants was the Reverend Daniel Little, of Kennebunk, whose devotion to duty in this respect earned for him the honored title of "Apostle of the East." His first visit here, perhaps, was made in September 1786. He had been sent to
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establish a school and provide religious instruction for the Penob- scot Indians at their village up river. His Indian mission proved a failure, but while in this area he conducted for a short time a school for white children at a place that he called "Rumseek- hungus." Hcre he found living Mr. Colburn and six other fami- lies. For a short time he had eleven of their children in what may have been the first school held within the limits of the pres- ent town of Orono.
The Congregationalists were the first to form a church or- ganization. May 18, 1826, they organized a church society with fourteen members - five from older churches and "nine persons from the world." Four ministers were present at the ceremony. They were the Reverends John Sawyer; Swan L. Pomeroy, of Ban- gor; John Smith, of the Bangor Theological Seminary; and Jubi- lee Williams, of Frankfort. John Perry and Bancroft Williams were the first deacons of the church. During the next few years the infant church was served by supplies, some of them from the Bangor Theological Seminary, and membership doubled.
Meantime religious services were held in a schoolhouse or in homes. But the need for a church building became more and more pressing, and March 19, 1831, the First Congre- gational Society of Orono was incorporated for the purpose of holding property and transacting other business. A year later the Reverend Josiah Fisher was installed as the first settled pastor of the church. Under his leadership the society went forward and erected a meeting house on Bennoch Street. Hugh Read and Israel Brown were the builders. The new edifice was formally dedicated April 17, 1834.
Mr. Fisher resigned in 1835, and during the next nineteen years eight ministers successively served the church. Then the Reverend Stephen L. Bowler, a graduate of Bangor Theological Seminary, came and remained ten years, 1854 to 1864. After he came, wrote Percia Vinal White, "the church took on new life. Possessed of a commanding presence, a superb voice, and an elo- quent and impressive 'gift of prayer,' Mr. Bowler was in the fore- front of the preachers of his day. He did grand work in build- ing up the spiritual power and influence of the church at Orono."
The next minister was the Reverend Smith Baker, who re-
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mained for seven years, 1864 to 1871. During his pastorate, "which was marked by a most affectionate regard between pas- tor and people," the meeting house received extensive alterations and repairs. The building was raised and a much needed ves- try was constructed beneath the auditorium. Money was seeured for this purpose by assessing the pew holders and by selling the parsonage on Mill Street.
During the next thirty-five years, the church had six pastors and continued to minister to the spiritual needs of its constitu- ents and the town. In 1898, through the will of Deacon Edward Mansfield, who had died in 1893, and an agreement with his adopted daughter, Helen M. Mansfield, the society became the owner of the Mansfield homestead. This fine home near the church made a most desirable parsonage.
After seventy years of use the meeting house itself was again in nced of repairs. The Reverend John M. Brockie became pas- tor in 1906 and extensive renovations were made under his guid- ance and that of the building committee. Members of this eom- mittee were George H. Hamlin, Lueius H. Merrill, and Horace M. Estabrooke, all members of the faculty of the University of Maine. Among the additions was an excellent pipe organ that was presented to the Orono church by the First Congregational Church of Brewer. The building was rededicated November 4, 1907. The Reverend Smith Baker, now of Portland, preached the dedication sermon.
Methodists were next in the field. The Reverend Jesse Lee, founder of Methodism in Maine, visited the Penobscot region sev- eral times, beginning in 1793. He may have been the first min- ister of his denomination to preach in Orono, although of that one eannot be quite sure. However, in his aecount of his first mis- sion to Maine, Lee wrote: "I went as far as Castine, at the mouth of the Penobseot River, then up the river to the upper settle- ments, which were then just below the Indian settlement ealled Old Town." In 1795 he was instrumental in organizing a Method- ist eireuit that extended from Union to Orono. The Reverend Joshua Hall was the first itinerant on this eireuit. As the work grew, the territory was divided and Orono was ineluded first in the Orrington and later in the Bangor circuits.
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The Reverend John Atwell, who was pastor of the Orono Methodist Episcopal Church in 1840-41 and again in 1857-59, and who died here in 1868, wrote in brief: "When I was first sta- tioned on the Penobscot in 1812 or 1813, Orrington, which was my circuit, extended from Orland to Hemlock Stream, now Argyle. The names of Marsh, Jameson, and Colburn, in Orono, will long fill a permanent place in the history of Methodism in that region." One result of the devotion of these early circuit riders was that two sons of John Marsh, William and Jeremiah, became Methodist clergymen.
In 1829 Orono was made a regular Methodist charge with a minister of its own. Pastors in 1829, 1830, and 1831, were, suc- cessively, the Reverends Greenleaf Greely, Charles L. Browning and Joseph H. Jenne. While Mr. Jenne was here subscriptions were started to raise funds for building a meeting house, which was erected during the term of the next pastor, the Reverend Mark Trafton. The building was raised August 22, 1833. It was completed and the pews were sold in June 1834. The Reverend Joshua Hall preached the dedication sermon.
The society was incorporated in 1835 under the name of the Oak Street Chapel Society. During the two following years the town experienced the greatest revival of religion that it had experienced up to that time. The number of conversions ex- ceeded one hundred, and many members were added to the Methodist Church. The Reverend Caleb Fuller was then pastor.
Thirty years passed and in 1867 the church building was thoroughly repaired. In 1872 about fifty conversions were re- ported under the ministry of the Reverend Leonard H. Bean. For many years prior to 1878 the minister appointed by the Methodist bishop to serve in Orono was also the pastor of the church at Veazie, and that year Old Town was added to his charge. Later Orono and Upper Stillwater were combined but without Veazie and Old Town. Still later Orono was made a separate charge.
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