Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892, Part 20

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York, Blake
Number of Pages: 1790

USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892 > Part 20

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Daniel Brooking Post, No. 142, of Randolph, was organized June 18, 1885, with seventeen charter members, and now numbers forty-six, who meet at G. A. R. Hall, over Kelly's store. The commanders have been: Robert S. Watson, George W. Marston, Eben Brooking, Charles H. Dunton, A. P. Thompson and William H. Dudley. C. H. Dunton is adjutant. This Post has an appropriation from the town at the March town meetings to defray the expenses of Memorial Day, and the graves of veterans of Randolph and Pittston receive a tribute of flowers. The Post decorates 126 graves in the two towns yearly, which number includes the soldiers of 1776, 1812 and 1861.

MONUMENTS .-- With the surrender of Lee's army, the rebellion practically closed. The events which intervened between this and the capture of Jefferson Davis were but the dying struggles of the confederacy. The return of the boys in blue, the tattered flags, the

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glad welcome, the tears of joy-these for the poet's pen, not the his- torian's !

Old Kennebec had borne well her part in the sanguinary struggle, and of all the regiments from Maine, none returned more heavily loaded with honors than hers. But, alas! there were tears that were not of joy. All along the line of march, on the battle-field and in the depths of the surging ocean, were scattered the heroes who welded with their blood the parting bonds of the Union. To their memory, in many of our larger towns, monuments have been erected by a grateful people, on which are inscribed the names of these honored patriots.

Of all these monuments, perhaps the most beautiful is the memo- rial tablet which has been erected in Memorial Hall, at Waterville, to immortalize the alumni of Colby University who dropped their books and grasped the sabre at the nation's first appeal. Surmounting this tablet of richly veined porphyry is a well executed copy, in pure Car- rara marble, of Thorwaldsen's "Lion of Lucerne." This beautiful stone edifice cost $3,000 and is the first structure of its kind dedicated to the memory of the soldiers of 1861-5. ' The tablet bears 151 names, of which 101 were commissioned officers and 23 were privates.

Next to this in point of beauty, and far more imposing, is the soldiers' monument of Augusta. Its base is triangular. The three faces are suitably inscribed. The southeast side records that-

IN HONOR OF HER HEROIC SONS WHO DIED IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION AND TO COMMEND THEIR EXAMPLE TO SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED BY THE CITY OF AUGUSTA A. D. 1881.

The west side bears the names of the following officers: Lieut. Col. Seth Williams U. S. A. and Brevet Maj. Gen. U. S. Vols .; Lieut. Col. Edwin Burt; Lieut. Col. Harry M. Stinson, aid to Gen. Howard; Capts. Charles K. Hutchins, Albert H. Packard, James M. Williams; Chaplain George W. Bartlett; Lieuts. Warren Cox, James L. Thomp- son, William O. Tibbetts, William Campbell; Quartermasters Ivory J. Robinson, David S. Stinson; Sergts. Niles A. Hanson, James M. Has- kell, William F. Locke, Daniel B. Morey, Asa C. Rowe, Alonzo P. Stinson, Albert N. Williams, John P. Wells, Orison Woods; Corps. Charles S. Avery, Edward S. Baker, Jason R. Bartlett, William H. Brock, Daniel Chadwick, George L. Fellows, Daniel W. Hume, George A. Lovering, George S. Mills, Charles R. Powers, Greenwood C. Pray, Charles C. Rideout, Samuel E. Remick and William E. Smith.

The names of 120 privates are also inscribed: George Allen, George W. Andrews, Homer S. Bean, George W. Bemis, William H. Berry,

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

Isaac D. Billington, James Boyce. John S. Brown, Thomas J. Bragg, Byron Branch, George F. Burgess, Francis M. Caswell, Miles O. Chase, G. E. Chamberlain, Theodore Clark, John Code. George Cunningham, Rodger Connelly, Edward H. Austin, Josiah L. Bennett, Charles F. Beal, Eli A. Black, Charles F. Bennett, Darius Brooks, Bradford S. Bodge, Calvin H. Burden, John E. Britt, Eugene Cate, Joseph Bushea, Rowland S. Clark, John Curtis, Henry A. Chandler, James Davis, Jesse M. Clark, D. Cunningham, William H. DeWolf, George Dill, Benjamin Douglass, Danforth Dunton, Gustavus A. Farrington, Ed- mund Fay, Elisha S. Fargo, Edward Flood, Samuel H. Gage, Charles H. Gordon, Artemus K. Gilley, Rodney Harriman, Henry W. Hawes, Elijah L. Horn, John C. Holbrook, George A. Kimball, Henry G. Kim- ball, Thomas Lilly, John Leavitt, Ira B. Lyon, William H. Lowell, Howard W. Merrill, James W. McGregor. William C. Moore, James W. Miller, William N. Murry, Henry Mullen, John B. Parker, John O'Connor, Frank W. Peaslee, Alonzo L. Page, Charles E. Philbrick, Fred B. Philbrick, S. H. Prescott, Charles M. Phillips, Enoch Sampson, John Riley, Greenlief Smart, George H. Smith. Alonson G. Taylor, Ed- ward A. Stewart, Alfred Trask, Warren P. Trask, John O. Wentworth, Thomas H. Welch, Stephen Wing, Atwell M. Wixon, George H. Gor- don, William A. Hayward, Leonard J. Grant, Alonzo Irish, James A. Henderson, Virgil G. Lanelle, John W. Jones. Samuel Lishness, Na- thaniel Lane, Alfred J. Marston, Ruel W. Littlefield, William G. Mer- rill, William E. Marriner, John M. Mosher, Edward Miner, Thomas Murphy, Jeremiah Murphy, Eben Packard, William Nason jun., Franklin A. Perry, Henry E. Patterson, Noel Byron Phillips, James Perkins, Samuel Remick, Asa Plummer, John N. Scott, Charles W. Richards, Joseph H. Spencer, Charles F. Shaw, Fred A. Tiffany, George W. Stone, Aaron C. Varney, Moses B. Tolman, Alonzo S. Weed, Joshua R. Webber, William D. Wills, Joseph Weaver and Wil- liam C. Young.

The monument at Waterville bears the plain, modest inscriptions-

ERECTED BY THE CITIZENS OF WATERVILLE-1876. TO THE MEMORY OF THE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS OF WATERVILLE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE REPUBLIC.

The Hallowell monument is a fine, square shaft of granite. Its west face is inscribed-

IN MEMORY OF THE SOLDIERS FROM HALLOWELL WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN THE WAR OF 1861-5. 1868.

The other faces preserve the names of the patriot dead, with the company and regiment in which each served: Capt. John B. Hubbard, Capt. George O. Getchell, Capt. George A. Nye, Lieut. Charles M. Bursley, Ensign Walter S. Titcomb, Sergt. Henry A. Albee, Sergt. George L. Chamberlain, Charles Bancroft, Samuel D. Besse, William H. Booker, Sumner Bryant, Joseph Bushea, Williani H. Burgess, Western Burgess, Joseph D. Carr, Edwin C. Miner, Charles E. Mor-

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MILITARY HISTORY.

rill, Alonzo 1). Pottle. William F. Richards, George W. Ricker, Charles B. Rogers, John W. Rogers, Sanford Runnells, Frank B. Runnells, William F. Sherman, Emery N. Smith. Augustus Smith, Thomas Smith. George Whitcomb, Robert A. Witherell, Heman B. Carter, Winfield S. Dearborn, Sewall Douglass, Hazen H. Emerson, John C. Edson, Nathaniel Ellery, Sherburn E. George, Charles C. Gilman, Edward R. Gould, Edwin Goodwin. Thomas Keenan, John Leavitt, William K. Libbey, Edwin McKenney, and William Matthews.

The Gardiner monument is of Hallowell granite and stands within an octagonal enclosure of iron, in the city park. Its north face is in scribed-

IN MEMORY OF THE MEN OF GARDINER, WHO DIED IN THE WAR OF 1861 THAT THEIR COUNTRY MIGHT LIVE.

ERECTED BY THE CITY A. D. 1875.

The other faces bear these 71 names: T. A. Pray, J. M. Ring, G. F. Spear, C. H. Tabor, G. W. Tyler, J. W. Taylor, G. R. Parsons, F. W. Sawyer, H. B. Stevens, R. S. Starbird, Denola Whitman, E. M. Reed, A. O. Wood. G. W. Weeks, W. E. Welch. G. E. Webber, N. W. Walker, A. F. Tinkham, C. A. Whitney, T. B. Whitney, James Siphers, Hiram Wakefield, C. W. Richardson, C. C. Card, H. W. Dale, G. R. Moore, D. N. Maxcy, William Jordon, A. M. Jordon, A. L. Meader, C. D. Meader, G. S. Kimball, J. F. Merrill, H. W. Huntington, Oscar Hil- dreth, J. A. Foye, A. A. Mann, G. H. Smith, C. D. Smith, W. H. Noyes, C. H. Potter, J. H. Peacock, W. H. Peacock, Charles Sprague, James McNamara, Thomas McNamara, E. A. Smith. E. W. Ayer, B. A. Babb, M. G. Babb, G. H. Berry, C. N. Brann, C. W. Brann, Daniel Brann, G. H. Clough, S. S. Bennett, E. T. Chapman, Calvin Boston, Westbrook Dean, J. G. Card, William Brann, E. O. Blair, L. G. Brann, F. E. Gow- ell, H. N. Jarvis, G. E. Donnell, L. C. Hinkley, A. M. C. Heath, Thomas Douglas, W. W. Hutchinson, and Arrington Brann.

At Oakland a Memorial Hall, valued at $10,000, was erected by private subscription, and dedicated to the memory of the fallen sol- diers, by the Memorial Association of that town. Subsequently, by an act of the legislature, the property was conveyed to Sergeant Wy- man Post, No. 97, G. A. R.

The Winslow monument was authorized by town vote in 1887. The Lockwood Company donated a site and the town appropriated $1,000 for the stone. It was furnished by I. S. Bangs, of Waterville, who cut the statue which surmounts it. In 1892, having been removed to its present site, it was dedicated with appropriate ceremonies. Its inscriptions show that it was "Erected by the town of Winslow in mem- ory of her dead soldiers, 1889."

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

The thirty-one names recorded on it are: Ashman Abbott. Edward Abbott, Joseph Brann, George H. Bassett, Eben Brooks, Charles L. Crowell, Benjamin F. Dunbar, Capt. Joseph Eaton, Andrew W. Fuller, Henry W. Getchell, George W. Hodges, Frederick C. Jackins, A. Lit- tlefield, Asa Pallard, Charles Pollard, William Pollard, John S. Preble, William T. Preble, John Palmer. Winthrop Shirland, Christopher C. Sanborn, Henry Spaulding, William Taylor, Howard H. Taylor, Al- bert E. Withee, William F. Wood, John S. Wilson, D. W. Wilson, H. C. Webber, George L. Webber, and Lieut. Thomas Green Rice.

CHAPTER VII.

INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES.

Early Trading .- The Beginning of the Lumber Trade .- Kennebec Log Driving Company .- Steam Towage Company .- The Fish Supply .- Manufacturing .- Shipbuilding .- The Ice Business .- Captain Eben D. Haley .- The Granite Industry .- Governor Joseph R. Bodwell.

T HE law of compensation is never-failing in its exact adjustment of natural conditions that, at first sight, are apparently anti- thetical. Thus, while the early settlers of Kennebec county doubtless complained of the rigors of its climate, and the harsh, un- promising aspect of the landscape, seamed as it was with rock and covered with trackless forests, the great law of compensation was, in the course of time, to turn these seeming disadvantages into sources of wealth, prosperity and happiness, and literally to make "the wilder- ness blossom as the rose." The severe winters produced the ice that was afterward destined to find a profitable market in states and coun- tries far removed ; its granite ledges were to furnish inexhaustible material for the purposes of art and architecture; and its spreading forests were to supply the timber for thousands of homes, and scores of vessels, whose flags were to be seen on every sea; while the clear- ings thus made and constantly increasing with the flight of years were afterward to become the scenes of varied agricultural pursuits, noticed in the following chapter.

The first small beginning of the vast and varied commercial rela- tions of the county with the outer world were laid in the trade in furs, along the river, with members of the Plymouth colony, soon after 1629. The first settlers and the Indians purchased the necessaries of life with the skins of the otter, beaver and moose. James Howard was licensed to sell tea and coffee at the Fort in 1763, and Samuel, his brother, sailed a sloop; and cord-wood, skins, furs, staves, shingles, salmon and alewives were taken for merchandise, and in turn ex- changed at a profit for goods to fill the store. The Indians exchanged their furs with the white man for powder, shot and rum.

The first industry of the settlers was to erect saw mills, and the lumber business was one of profit. As the lands were cleared the product of the mills found ready sale, being sent out in large rafts as floats, or in vessels; while the many tanneries, of which every town of

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

the county had two or more, made market for the hemlock bark. which was also an article of export.

The first period of the lumber business began with the operations of the pioneers, whose chief aim seems often to have been the clear- ing of the land and the destruction of the forest. Better facilities for manufacturing and marketing the product checked these wasteful tendencies and large revenues were derived as the forests disappeared. The great lumbering interests in this county at the present day belong to an entirely distinct period and are strictly manufacturing enter- prises, dealing not with the product of the county, but, at the great mills along the river, fitting for the markets of the seaboard the prod- ucts of the vast timber lands around the sources of the Kennebec.

On March 27, 1835, at Sager's Inn, in Gardiner, was organized the Kennebec Log Driving Company, now the oldest existing transporta- tion company in the county-simply a cooperative association of lum- ber dealers to hire their logs run down the river in the best manner, the actual expense to be paid by pro rata assessment. The estimated amount of lumber in the logs handled during the year 1891 was 140,846,000 feet, which cost about thirty-five cents per thousand feet for driving. The company owns a number of booms and dams. D. C. Palmer, of Gardiner, has held the office of clerk since 1863, his prede- cessor, Daniel Nutting, having filled that office from the organization of the company. From twenty-five to one hundred men are employed by the company during the busy season.

The Steam Towage Company was organized at Gardiner, May 21, 1881, by twenty gentlemen. Abraham Rich, W. H. Ring and Celon L. E. B. Gooden have been the presidents. The duties of secretary, treasurer and agent were performed by F. B. Dingley till 1889, and by W. H. Ring since that time. The company owns the tugboats Charles Lawrence and the Stella.

Prior to 1800, the principal products of the county-in addition to those of lumber and fur-were potash and pitch, though the abundant supply of fish in the inland ponds, as well as in the Kennebec, was a reliable food supply for the early settlers, and ultimately became the basis of one of their important industries. Sturgeon were so plentiful before the white man came that the Indians had named the vicinity of Gardiner "Cobbosseecontee "-the place of many sturgeon. Ken- nebec salmon, always so excellent, and once so plentiful, have now disappeared; and where thousands of barrels of herring were seined, as late as 1825, they are now practically extinct.

The various manufacturing enterprises throughout the county have been so generally the principal interests of the cities and the little hamlets in which they are found, and their origin is so closely related to the settlement or growth of those localities, that they have been regarded and treated as proper branches of the succeeding town

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histories. It may, however, be stated here that the leading enter- prises in 1820 included 81 saw mills running 91 saws, 63 grist mills with 107 run of stones, 43 tanneries, 42 carding machines, 29 fulling mills, 15 spinning machines, 3 distilleries, and 2 cotton and woolen factories. The combined capital invested in these industries was $147,000.

The manufacture of paper is an industry of considerable import- ance, the location of the pulp and paper mills, and their daily capacity of production being as follows: Augusta Pulp Company, 20,000 lbs .: Cushnoc Fibre Company, Augusta, 20,000; Hollingsworth & Whitney Company, Gardiner, 26,000; S. D. Warren & Co., Gardiner, 26,000; Richards Paper Company, Gardiner. 16,000; Richards Paper Com- pany, South Gardiner, 20,000; Kennebec Fibre Company, Benton. 16,000 1bs. The Hollingsworth & Whitney Company are erecting a very large plant at Winslow. From a hint given by Dr. H. H. Hill to the old paper mill men at Vassalboro that, as wasps made paper from wood, so might man, grew experiments in that direction which have led to the present large manufacture of wood pulp.

Shipbuilding was once a great industry of the county. Captain Samuel Grant came from Berwick, Me., to Benton, at the close of the revolution, and furnished the first masts for the frigate Constitution, then building at Boston. With his son, Peter, as partner, he estab- lished, in 1792, a ship-yard at Bowman's point, Farmingdale, and built a number of vessels. Peter, jun., and his brother, Samuel C., succeeded to the business at the death of their father, in 1836. Peter, jun., retired from the firm some years later, and Samuel C. continued the business until his death about 1853, when his son, William S., suc- ceeded him. The latter built his last vessel in 1858. Peter Bradstreet then became the owner of the Grant ship yard, and, with his brother William, built several vessels there.

A once very conspicuous name in the annals of shipbuilding, but which has now vanished from the county, was that of the Agry family. Thomas Agry removed from Dresden to Agry's point, in Pittston, in 1774, where he built some of the first vessels constructed above Bath. His sons, Thomas, John and David, also entered the business, and in the long list of vessels built at Gardiner, Pittston and Hallowell, from 1784 to 1826, their names, as owners and masters, appear with surprising frequency. David's name ceases to be seen after 1806, he having died at sea shortly after.

About 1811 Major William Livermore, of Augusta, built in front of the Old South Church, Hallowell, the sloop Primrose, afterward altered to a schooner. Near this spot, Page & Getchell built the brig Neptune's Barge about 1817. She sailed from New Orleans to England with a cargo of cotton. Captain Joseph Atkins, another well-

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

known Hallowell shipbuilder, constructed vessels for Isaac Smith; Simeon Norris built the schooner William Henry about 1816; and Rob- inson & Page, about 1823, built the ship Marshal Ney, at Pierce's yard, on the Chelsea side of the river.

About 1811 Judge Dummer built the ship Hallowell on the east side of the river. She was captured by the British, and her bones now lie at Bermuda. From 1816 to 1825, Captain Isaac Smith built a num- ber of coasters at Loudon hill, launching his vessels directly off the shore; and during the same period Abner Lowell, at his wharf in the lower end of Hallowell (then called Joppa), built a number of vessels for the West India trade. Prior to this, Captain Shubael West built two sloops, just south of Lowell's yard; and anterior even to that date, Captain Larson Butler built, in this neighborhood, a sloop for the Boston trade.

In 1845. Mason Damon built a schooner at a point north of the Grant yard, in Farmingdale; and south of Grant's yard, Elbridge G. Pierce built several whalers and other vessels for New Bedford parties. At the Grant yard, between 1851 and 1858, clipper barks and ships were built for the Boston and Galveston line; and also two large ves- sels, of 1,090 and 1,190 tons, for the Calcutta trade. This yard, the largest in the county, ran two blacksmith shops for ship-fitting, and employed from twenty-five to seventy-five men the year round.

ICE .- A staple export of the county is ice, the purity of the Kennebec being such that its ice has long been established as the standard of quality. Years before the opening of this now vast industry in Maine the consumption of ice was small. The first authoritative account of ice being shipped from the county as an article of merchandise was previous to 1826, when the brig Orion, of Gardiner, was loaded with floating ice during the spring, and sailed for Baltimore at the opening of navigation. This cargo was sold for $700. It is said that several cargoes were thus put on the market years previous to any attempt at housing for summer shipment. The Tudors, of Boston, who had had exclusive control of the ice trade with the British West Indies, built about that year, on Gardiner's wharf, Gardiner, the first ice house on the Kennebec.

In 1826 Rufus K. Page, in company with a Mr. Getchell, of Hallo- well, erected, in Gardiner, a building of 1,500 tons capacity on Trott's point, now occupied by Captain Eben D. Haley. This house they filled during the winter, and in the following summer loaded it in vessels, on account of the Tudors. The speculation proved unprofit- able, however, and the business was abandoned. In 1831 the Tudors acquired the building and filled it. At the same time they erected a house on Long wharf, in Gardiner, which was then just where the bridge now stands, and in it some 3,000 tons of ice were stored. No other attempt at housing is recorded until 1848-9, when the Tudors

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INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES.

again began operations on the river; and W. A. Lawrence, Dr. C. W. Whitmore and Charles A. White, of Gardiner, cut and housed 2,000 tons at South Gardiner, and 2,000 tons at Pittston. Another house was also filled at Pittston, and one each at Bowman's point, Farming- dale, and Hallowell. In the aggregate some 10,000 tons were cut here that year. The following summer it was loaded, fifty tons being consid- ered a good day's work. The largest cargo was three hundred tons. Consignments were made to New Bedford, New York, Washington and Baltimore, $2.50 per ton being received, but the cost of labor and slow progress in handling made the profits small.

In 1860 the industry entered upon a new era and grew into a more permanent form. James L. Cheesman, a New York retailer, began stacking at Farmingdale, and the following year entered upon exten- sive operations. Until 1865 he flourished wonderfully. In 1868, how- ever, reverses compelled him to sell out the Farmingdale plant, and later, in 1872, the Pittston plant, to the Knickerbocker Ice Company of Philadelphia, which now exceeds all other companies here in the quantity of ice handled yearly.

In 1867 the Kennebec Land & Lumber Company built the first modern ice house at Pittston; and in 1872 such solid corporations as the Great Falls and Independent Ice Companies, of Washington, D. C., located in Pittston. Under the firm name of Haynes & De Witt, J. Manchester Haynes, of Augusta-who has been prominently identi- fied with the ice industry since 1871-together with Henry A. De Witt and the late Ira D. Sturges, controlled a large business on the river; and in 1889, with others, formed a corporation known as the Haynes & De Witt Ice Company. Improvements in tools and ma- chinery had taken place gradually since the early beginning of ice harvesting, and in 1890 Messrs. Shepard and Ballard, of the Knicker- bocker Ice Company, added to the list an important invention-an automatic vessel-loading machine-which is now in general use.

The following list, corrected to date, shows the location and storage capacity of the ice houses on the Kennebec and within the county. Those on the west side of the river are: Coney & White, 8,000 tons, Augusta; Kennebec Ice Company (two houses), 25,000 tons, and Knick- erbocker Ice Company, 12,000 tons, Hallowell; A. Rich Ice Company, 70,000 tons, and Knickerbocker Ice Company, 30,000 tons, Farming- dale; Morse & Haley, 5,000 tons, Great Falls Ice Company, 30,000, and Eben D. Haley, 32,000, Gardiner. The houses on the east side of the river are: Old Orchard (Knickerbocker), 20 000 tons, and Chelsea houses, 30,000 tons, Chelsea; Randolph (Knickerbocker), 25,000 tons, Haynes & Lawrence, 13,000, and Centennial Ice Company, 15,000, Ran- dolph; Morse & Haley, 20,000 tons, Smithtown (Knickerbocker), 65,- 000, Great Falls Ice Company, 30,000, Independent Ice Company, 60,- 000, Haynes & De Witt Ice Company, 12,000, Consumers' Ice Company

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HISTORY OF KENNEBEC COUNTY.

of New York, 35,000, and Clark & Chaplin Ice Company of Portland, 40,000, Pittston. The total capacity of the above houses is 567,000 tons.

In the development of this great industry here, as well as on the Hudson river and Booth bay, Captain Eben D. Haley, of Gardiner, has borne a prominent part. His grandfather, Moses Haley, was a house carpenter of Bath, where he raised a family of four boys and two girls. Woodbridge, his oldest child, born in 1806, grew up in the same occu- pation as his father, and married in 1833, Jane Dutton, of Gray, Me .. where, in 1835, their first child, Eben D., was born. The next year they came to Pittston, where four more children were born to them: Joseph M., who died when four years old; George T .; Thomas H., now in the dry goods business in Chicago; and William D.

Shipbuilding was then very active on the Kennebec, at which Woodbridge Haley worked for several years, mostly on large vessels for Boston parties, some of them at Sheepscott Bridge. He died at his home in Pittston in 1863, where his wife still survives him in what is now Randolph. Here Eben D. passed his boyhood days to the age of fourteen, when he left home for school, first at Bath, and then at Gardiner Lyceum. When sixteen years old his school days were ex- changed for the beginning of a career of business and adventure that is still at its maximum activity. He first entered the dry goods store of Field & Reed at Bath, leaving there at the end of one year for a clerkship in the store of N. K. Chadwick in Gardiner, from whence he went to Rockland and worked in Wilson & Case's store till he was twenty-one. Resolved to see something of the great West, he went to Keokuk, Iowa. where, in 1857, the firm of Ricker & Haley engaged in the produce and commission business, which extended over a wide extent of country.

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Illustrated history of Kennebec County, Maine; 1625-1892, Part 20

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed Publication date: 1892 Publisher: New York, Blake Number of Pages: 1790

Author: Kingsbury, Henry D; Deyo, Simeon L., ed
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: New York, Blake
Number of Pages: 1790