USA > Maine > Kennebec County > West Gardiner > West Gardiner's hundred years, Centennial 1850-1950 > Part 5
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Outsiders did buy the dam, at last. But they took its flowage for an- other city's mills, and that is when the sun went down and the twilight came wherein the oldsters sit today, remembering, as they listen to the stream that turns their wheels no more.
More than one hundred-fifty years ago, control of the Cobbossee's flow- age was a bone of contention. And dissatisfied owners of its intervales still chew this over, today.
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
The ruckus began with one of the first settlers on the Neck, Jacob Cram, Jr., who came from Monmouth when he was twenty and eight years old and cleared a farm on the lake shore and gave to it the name of Cram's Point, which it bears today. And this was in 1793.
About two years later he built a log dam where Collins' Dam now is and either a grist mill or a sawmill, or both, on the western or then Litch- field side of the stream. R. H. Gardiner owned the land upon the eastern bank of old Cabbassa, and he looked across the stream upon the work of Jacob Cram and found that it was good.
Accounts vary as to just what did happen after that.
One story has it that Gardiner entered into an agreement with Cram, or his son, William, whereby the old log dam was torn down and the present granite one built, about 1830, on a sort of partnership basis. Another story is to the effect that Gardiner forced Cram to tear out the portion of the log dam bearing upon his, Gardiner's, land, thus ruining the value of Cram's holdings.
Whichever way the story starts, the ending is the same. Cram sold "his part of the water right at a low figure to Gardiner-which is just what the latter had intended from the start." (Kingsbury & Deyo).
In 1854, when Gardiner sold the dam and about one hundred acres of land for $6,500 to John Collins, the property included a grist mill, a saw- mill and a carding mill that gave employment to four persons making cotton batting.
JOHN COLLINS
Thirty-eight-year-old John Collins was the son of Paul and Mary (Winslow) Collins, Friends, who came to Manchester in 1803 from New Hampshire via Durham, Maine, and were buried in the Quaker Burial Place when they laid their earthly burdens down.
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
John Collins' grandson, Karl R., a former West Gardiner selectman, now farms on a portion of the old property. John, another grandson, is employed as an engineer by the Central Maine Power Company.
John Collins had been operating his mills about two years when he circulated the following petition, dated January 30, 1856:
"To the Legislature of Maine:
We, the undersigned, inhabitants of the town of Litchfield, in the County of Kennebec, respectfully request that the lands on which we live may be set off from the said town of Litch- field and annexed to the town of West Gardiner."
The signers, all property owners or residents of the "Homely Strip," as it was then called, were: John Collins, Cyrus Howard, Asa Getchell, Hugh Getchell, William Farr, Andrew Pinkham, Jeremiah Pinkham, Lemuel Pinkham, Noah Pinkham, Israel Pinkham, William Goodwin, Rufus Town, Joseph H. Town, Lot Goddard, Charles F. Goddard, Noah Farr, Frank Wadsworth.
There being no objection on the part of the town of Litchfield, the legislature granted the petition and the Neck became a part of West Gardiner March 22, 1856.
Reason for the Neck's residents wishing to become converted to West Gardinerism is obscure. It has been suggested that perhaps taxation might have had something to do with it, West Gardiner's rate being traditionally lower than its neighbor's. Another supposition is that the Neck is nearer to the West Gardiner Town House than to the Litchfield seat of govern- ment. At any rate, the acquisition brought this town some of the first settled farms of the region, a frontage on Cobbosseecontee Lake, and some of the mills at Collins' Dam.
"JOHN COLLINS BUILT A WOODEN BRIDGE"
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
Another thing John Collins did was build the first bridge across the Cobbossee at the mills. Previously the stream was crossed by fording, when the water was low, or by waiting until it was when it wasn't low, which was sometimes just as awkward as it sounds.
Fires have plagued the Collinses ever since they came to West Gardiner. In 1860 the sawmill and the carding mill went up in smoke. The sawmill was replaced and in 1870 Collins built a five-story building 100 feet by forty, according to one account, which he leased to out-of-towners as a furniture factory for $100 per year. The factory employed forty "hands" in winter and thirty in summer. Its specialty was bedsteads, but it made other furniture, too. Tables, for one thing. A portion of the building now occupied by the Grange at French's Corner was once the shed in which lum- ber was dried for the furniture factory at Collins' Mills. It's another of West Gardiner buildings which isn't where it used to was, you see.
The furniture factory was operated under the name of P. M. Fogler & Company when it burned, in 1878. The same fire demolished the new saw- mill and the new gristmill which had risen from the ashes of the old.
There have been more tanneries at Collins' Mills than you could shake a stick at.
It was a good location, because there was plenty of water handy to go into the tanning solution, and there was power to run the "bark mill." But most of all, there was an unfailing supply of good hemlock bark, almost as important as the green hides, in the early tanning process.
Hemlock bark, a by-product of the extensive lumbering of early days, was dealt in in sufficient volume to warrant a Surveyor of Wood and Bark as one of the town officers. We still have the office today, although the settling of disputes over transactions in bark is no longer one of its principal duties. Ervin Horne has held this office for years, and his father and his uncle held it before him.
Sheepskins were the hides most tanned in this old industry on the Cob- bossee, and Boston was the principal market. The hides came in hogsheads, green, to Gardiner by steamboat in summer and by railroad in winter and the leather returned to Boston over the same route. In the early days skins and leather were hauled to and from Gardiner in great, rumbling carts drawn by oxen.
According to Kingsbury and Deyo the first tannery at the mills was built about 1815 by Daniel Winslow, who tanned leather there for about twenty-five years. Archibald Horne bought Winslow's tannery, tore it down, built a larger one, where he specialized in tanning sheepskins for about thirty years. Isiah Hawks bought the tannery, ran it about two years, sold to Moses Stephens, who ran it nine years, and then it was back in the Horne family again, coming into the hands of William Horne, Archibald's nephew, about 1870. When William died a second Archibald and Eben, his brothers, ran the business under the name of Horne Brothers. In 1881 they built two buildings, each forty feet square, with steam power, and stepped up produc- tion to 7,500 dozen sheepskins per year. They employed four men the year 'round. The price of bark varied between $6.00 and $10.00 per cord. Archi- bald Horne ran the business until about 1929, when it was torn down and its pieces joined the other restless buildings, being moved to Gardiner where it became a laundry, so it is said.
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
ARCHIBALD HORNE TANNERY
Other tanneries, listed as being in West Gardiner by William E. S. Whitman's Wealth and Industry of Maine, for the year 1893 are: Lorenzo Chamberlain, who tanned 6,000 dozen sheepskins valued at $24,000 and em- ployed four men twelve months out of the year at an average wage of $10 per week; and James H. Buck who tanned about 4,000 dozen skins. Cham- berlain employed water power, Buck used steam. These two tanneries, alone, paid $4,250 in wages and $5,000 for bark per year, and that is one of the reasons why the north end of town was a right prosperous community, in the days that are gone.
But prosperous as it was, Collins' Mills almost achieved greater height.
That was when the Bates Manufacturing Company wanted to erect a textile mill here, so it is said, and the Maine Central Railroad is reputed to have run a preliminary survey for a branch line from Lewiston to Hallowell, with a station and siding to be at Collins' Mills, and Governor Joseph R. Bodwell, the same who was one of the kingpins in the Hallowell Quarries that did an annual business of a quarter of a million dollars and employed three to four hundred men, was an interested party.
All this was somewhere in the neighborhood of 1887, and none of it came to pass-some say because of the death of Governor Bodwell, others that it was because Frank Collins did not choose to sell because of the wish in his heart that the property which John, his father, had developed, should re- main in the family.
But this was not to be, either, for times changed, an era passed, and for $3,000 a deed was passed to James and Rose Carver, of Gloucester, Mass., and never once again was the right to harness the old Cabbassa's flow to rest within the town of West Gardiner. This deed was dated December 18, 1903.
About two years later, September 25, 1905, the Carvers of Massachusetts transferred their deed to the Gardiner Water Power Company, another out-
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
of-towner, and it is to this company that the old Collins' Dam is now as- sessed, at a valuation of $2,200.
Wherein lies a long tale which we'll try to condense:
In the 1920's many Maine rural areas were complaining that electric light and power lines weren't being extended into the countryside fast enough. West Gardiner, always ready with a goodly basso to join any chorus of complaint, was one of these. The Spear's Corner area was electric lighted early in the '20's but the lines were coming into the north end of town "no faster than you could whip a toad," which wasn't quite up to the speed de- sired.
Litchfield became weary of waiting and some of its homes were cheered and comforted by the glow from a local waterpower electric plant.
West Gardiner voted "aye" to Article Ten in the Warrant for Town Meeting of March, 1921, which read:
"To see if the town will vote to buy or lease the water power at Col- lins' Mills for the purpose of developing light, heat and power for the bene- fit of the people of West Gardiner or take any action thereon."
The selectmen, as usual, were instructed to consider themselves a com- mittee and in this capacity they set out to see if some of that water that was flowing off down to Gardiner couldn't be set to performing some chores for West Gardiner, while it was about it.
COLLINS DAM
Chairman of the Board then was Archie D. Cole and the other select- men were Basil U. Gordon and Reuben L. Snowe.
The Gardiner Water Power Company then was comprised of the S. D. Warren, the Hollingsworth & Whitney and the Central Maine Power Com- panies.
The Gardiner Water Power Company declined to lease or sell the water
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
power privileges at Collins' Dam even though the selectmen offered $5,000, which was more than double the assessed valuation.
Whereupon the Board of Selectmen upped the valuation from $2,200 to $5,000, which increased the tax on the idle property from an annual $79.20 to one hundred sixty-five dollars, even money.
The Cobbossee continued to flow through West Gardiner without turn- ing any wheels and the increased tax dollars continued to flow into the town coffers until somewhere in the neighborhood of the year 1929, when Central Maine Power service was extended to the north end of town. This was about the time when Maine voters, in referendum, decided that power generated by Maine rivers should not be sold out of state, if you recall.
And then a howl went up which is said to have been the biggest howl that ever was heard on the old Cabbassa since the Injuns clove its disputed waters in their war canoes. And the assessed valuation of Collins' Dam was reduced to its former $2,200, where it remains today.
Another elegant tale of water power rights and out-of-town owners thereof concerns Joseph L. Spear, he who once lived in a house, now gone, which was directly opposite the house where Sidney M. Gray, selectman, now resides, a stone's throw from Spear's Corner, on the Bog Hill Road.
Spear fathered eleven children of whom two are living in town today; Richard Harry Spear, on the Benson Road; and Mrs. Florence Farr, whom you've met hale and hearty after ninety-and-one years lived mostly in the Farr's Cove area of the "Homely Strip."
Joseph Spear had a small sawmill at the foot of Bog Hill before Horse- shoe Pond was flowed by Gardiner people, when a brook sufficiently sturdy to turn a waterpower wheel was there. He taught discipline and other sub- jects at the old Spear's Corner School, when it stood on the present site of A. D. Cole's store. With a blow of his fist Joseph Spear once put to sleep a man who attacked him with a butcher knife.
Joseph Spear was a man of some reputation even before he moved to the Collins' Mill region, about 1865, and opened a grocery store and hired a sawmill and ran them both.
JOSEPH L. SPEAR SAWMILL
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
About 1872 Spear moved to the rips about a mile above Collins' Dam, built a stone dam of his own, a bridge across the stream, and a sawmill with an up-and-down saw. The property was close to the Manchester line, on a millsite privilege which had been reserved by R. H. Gardiner and which had come under the control of Josiah Maxcy, a prominent man of Gardiner, or of one of the many corporations in which he was interested.
The story goes that Spear and Maxcy had made a dicker over water rights at the Rips but that both being men of their word, had neglected to pay a lawyer to make out the papers. Upon Maxcy's death his successor declined to continue the arrangement and Joseph Spear had to watch out-of- town owners derrick his stone dam away.
There appears to have been some sort of arrangement made, however, for later Spear built a log dam and operated his mill without interference except that every now and then the owners of the water rights would re- move a few logs from Spear's dam "just to show they had the right to do SO."
Spear built, near his sawmill on the west bank, a building where the Horne Brothers, Archibald and Eben, operated a tannery for a short time. Later Spear turned the building into a furniture factory, where he made end tables and shoe racks. He also built a paint shop and a house on the east bank.
He carried on these enterprises until his death in 1900. The old Spear sawmill has since been operated successively by Clarence Getchell, Frank Choate, Charles Mason and Louis Nason, who purchased it in 1923 and ran it until 1943 when it was torn down and the machinery moved to Winthrop.
And so the old mills are gone-the ones that were and those that might have been. The controversy over rights to water power in West Gardiner is an issue dead and buried these long years, and likely will not rise again.
But still the welkin rings with howls of protest over the poor old Cab- bassa's flowage.
New enterprises have come to take the place of industries that have withered. Camps for boys and girls, summer hotels, resorts and cottages, and just plain residents have come to the shores of waters that flow from Readfield to the Kennebec.
An association of property owners on Cobbosseecontee Lake organized and recently negotiated with owners of the flowage which resulted in the lake level remaining reasonably high and constant throughout the summer season.
But those below the Cobbosseecontee's Outlet derive no benefit.
From Collins' Dam downstream and through the Horseshoe and the Pleasant Ponds to New Mills Dam at Gardiner, residents and cottagers com- plain of waters that rise and lower like the tides, though with not their regu- larity nor reason.
West Gardiner intervale owners sadly contemplate their deeds wherein the clause: "Reserving to the owners of the dams on the Cobbossee Conte River the right of privilege of flowing said land forever, by the waters of the Cobbossee Contee River," bespeaks the fact that long, long ago the right to full enjoyment of the shore was sold down the river.
In addition to industries previously mentioned the following are included under the heading "Business Cards" on a "Map of Kennebec County, Me."
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
purporting to be "from the actual surveys by Baker & Co., published by J. Chase, Jr., Philadelphia and Augusta." The date is 1856:
J. & N. Knox, Stone Masons and Cutters, lived about where Stephen A. Mills now lives, Pond Road; D. Fuller, Joiner & Architect, lived at Maurice Fuller place, Brown's Corner; W. Fuller, Joiner & Architect, lived near Brown's Corner in the old Ellsworth Peacock place, now occupied by Mrs. Minnie Pitts; J. Woodbury, Carriage Maker, lived near French's Corner, in place now occupied by Merle Fuller;
O. S. Edwards, Blacksmith, lived in house now occupied by Zebadee Al- len, near Brown's Corner; Daniel Robinson, Astronomer, Brown's Corner, where Orland Martin now lives, later on Benson Road where Alfred Brann now lives, edited and published The Maine Farmer's Almanac, wrote text- books; J. Hodgkins, Master Ship Builder, Pond Road, where Harry Howard now lives; U. Briery, Shoemaker, Pond Road on Robert Smith place; J. Smith, Ship Carpenter, south side of Pond Road, foot of Brimstone Hill;
G. Malcomb, Ship Carpenter, Pond Road, where J. Earnest Dunn lives now; J. D. Wakefield, Stone Cutter, High Street, probably Charles Curtis place.
And there were other industries, not beholden to the water rights, in old West Gardiner days.
There was one Samuel H. Parsons, cordage maker, whose rope walk near Merrill's Corner was one of the "public and conspicuous places" where warrants for town meetings were posted from the 1850's until late in 1870. Samuel Parsons was prominent in town affairs during this period.
Earlier, we told how a Pope family moved to High Street and built brick houses. The first of the name here was Elijah and he came from Stoughton, Mass. in 1816, and settled across the road from the brick house he later built. Hiram, Elijah's son, was a farmer and so was Hiram's son, George, who built what appears to have been West Gardiner's only commercial cannery.
POPE HOME AND CANNERY
The cannery was across the road from the brick house and in 1890 pro- duced 28,000 cans of corn and 1,700 of pumpkin, which sold for $2,600, a pretty penny for those days. The cannery was just about the only industry ever in West Gardiner which furnished work for women outside their homes. Thirty persons were employed in the cannery, in season. Pope raised much of what he canned and he made his own tin cans, so it is said.
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
The heirs of George Pope sold the "cannery farm" to A. A. Brackett, who sold to Fred Towle, grandfather of Lloyd Towle, of this committee. Backfiring of a threshing machine engine set the barn on fire and the set of buildings burned in 1919, and the land was sold to Arthur Gosline.
There were two tanneries on the Hallowell Road in addition to those at Collins' Mills. One was on the old J. Bacheldor place on the Hallowell Road. Another was operated by John Stevens, father of John Frank Stevens, also on the Hallowell Road. It is understood that these tanneries used sumac rather than Hemlock bark for the tanning process. Present residents theo- rize that the heavy growth of sumac in that area may be the result of seeds coming in with the sumac for tanning.
The West Gardiner Observer, a semi-monthly newspaper, was published in West Gardiner by Ellsworth E. Peacock in 1889. It suspended two years and was then "Published every Saturday" in the Winthrop Banner office, for a time. The price was two cents per copy, thirty-five cents per year, "in advance."
About sixty-five years ago one Bert Page made and repaired harnesses in a building on Goddard's Lane now owned by Harold Thompson.
Many grocery stores have been operated in West Gardiner through the years.
The last store at French's Corner was run by the late Frank E. Towle, prominent in the Grange and in the town, until his death in 1949.
The late Charles Green ran a grocery store at Green's Hill from 1877 until 1915.
Grocery stores in town now are: Brown's Corner Store, Arthur Moore, proprietor; Hallowell Road, J. Earl Gaslin, proprietor; Horse Shoe Pond Camps and Store, L. J. Mercier, proprietor; Cole's Grocery, Spear's Corner, A. D. Cole, proprietor; Dunn's Store, Horseshoe Pond Road, Laurence A. Dunn, proprietor.
But if all of the old industries have gone from West Gardiner, new ones have appeared, to try to take their places.
The Central Maine Power Company is the largest single payer of taxes in the town. In 1950 it paid a tax of $4,434.28 on 39.84 miles of poles and line valued at $65,210.
And West Gardiner collects taxes from a portion of an industry that's underground-the six miles of pipeline of the Socony Oil Company which burrows through the town to carry liquid petroleum products from South Portland to Bangor. Valuation of the pipeline in this town is $6,400, taxed for an annual $435.20. About $5,600 land damage was paid West Gar- diner property owners as right of way for the line, at the rate of $17.50 per rod.
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
BALBROOK LODGE
The second largest enterprise in West Gardiner now in point of taxable property is Balbrook Lodge, a summer place on Cobbossee Lake with its 91 acres of land and several buildings.
The name Balbrook was coined because the incorporators were from Baltimore, Md. and Brooklyn, N. Y. The resort was started about twenty years ago and some of its guests have returned every year since the first.
Balbrook is an asset to West Gardiner in more ways than as a taxpayer. It is a good market for locally-grown produce and it employs about twenty people from this area during the season.
Other summer places that West Gardiner is glad to have are the Sports- man's Club of Greater Boston and the Cambridge Rod and Gun Club, which are offshoots of groups of business and professional people who began com- ing here fifty-six years ago; and Yornoc Lodge.
The Cobbosseecontee Telephone and Telegraph Company, another local industry, was organized in 1904 as the Woodland Telephone Company, with a capital stock of $10,000.
The exchange is in the home of Howard Curtis, on the Hallowell Road. The company maintains four toll lines to Gardiner and eleven local lines with 111 miles of wire. It has 125 telephones in use. It employs three operators part time and three men part time in maintenance and super- vision.
Present officers are: Milan Wakefield, president; Neva Goodwin, treas- urer and clerk; Harold C. Goodwin, general manager.
Automobile repair shops are West Gardiner Garage, Harry Farrington, proprietor; and Buck's Garage, Horseshoe Pond Road.
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
MILITARY
In one hundred years West Gardiner has seen 192 of its younger men leave town to fight their country's battles. For some there was no return- ing.
It is fitting that we read these names of soldiers, now.
VETERANS OF CIVIL WAR
1861-64
Andrews, Arthur B.
Babb, Hiram
Bailey, Charles E.
Blanchard, John, Jr.
Haines, Hiram
Haines, Wm. F.
Haines, David H.
Hatch, John T.
Brown, George H.
Hildreth, Robert
Burnham, Jos. L.
Howard, Chas. E.
Campbell, David Chesley, Frederick A.
Jewett, William H. Jewett, B. F.
Cole, Daniel M.
Crosby, Wm. H.
Crosly, Charles O.
Crowell, Allen T.
Marston, James
Merrill, Charles H.
Merrill, F. L.
McCausland, Geo. F.
Morse, M. A.
Mosher, James A.
Neal, Joseph N. Newell, George O. Newell, Geo. W. Nudd, Simon
Fairbanks, Benjamin F.
Page, Jacob Page, Dexter W.
Fairbanks, Edwin
Fairbanks, William H.
Peacock, Solomon
Pinkham, Jeremiah H.
Fogg, George S. Forrest, William
Pinkham, Thomas A.
Fuller, Gardiner H.
Pinkham, Naum M.
Potter, Rosco H.
Potter, Simeon
Potter, John A.
Potter, Emeral M.
Potter, Ansyl
Garland, George M. George, Hannibal Gilman, James L.
Grover, Alfred Grover, Geo. E. Guilford, Lester
Brann, John E., Sgt.
Brann, Calvin N.
Brann, Alfred G.
Cunningham, James A. Cunningham, Richard
Knox, Charles O.
Denison, Oliver L. Dill, Chas. H. Dillingham, Chas. E. Dow, Thomas H.
Edgecomb, John Edwards, A. K.
Fuller, Gustavus Fuller, Geo. W.
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WEST GARDINER'S HUNDRED YEARS
Reed, George F.
Spear, Charles
Roberts, Gardiner, Jr.
Spear, Justin F.
Spear, John, 2nd
Spear, Joseph F.
Spear, Milton C.
Spear, John A.
Sampson, Alonzo
Seavey, Elizha P.
Small, Oliver R.
Small, Charles
Smith, Hubbard C.
Wendingbury, F. Whitten, Elbridge E.
Spear, Alvin
Spear, Richard H.
Whittier, Albert W.
Spear, Franklin
Williams, Nicholas
VETERANS OF SPANISH WAR
1898
Jones, John C.
Spear, Lawrence
Merrill, Harry R.
VETERANS OF MEXICAN BORDER WAR
1916
Goldsmith, Ersley L.
McCaslin, Harvey H.
VETERANS OF WORLD WAR I 1917-1919
Andrews, William M. 4-168-322
Hopkins, Raymond S. 2,728,958
Bentley, Albert E. 111-52-35
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