Inside Highlights:
Events schedule…..page 3
A Year without Summer…..page 7
Greenwood Mines & Minerals…..page 12
Greenwood Bicentennial
1816-2016
The Locke’s Mills train station served the Grand Trunk Railway and was demolished around 1970 .
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HAPPY 200TH BIRTHDAY, GREENWOOD!
MAINE LINE PRODUCTS
297 MAIN STREET
GREENWOOD, ME 04255 (207) 875-2522 STORE HOURS: MON – SAT 9-5, SUN 10-5
TO CELEBRATE THE 200TH BIRTHDAY ON AUGUST 13, 2016
FROM 11 – 3, WE WILL BE GIVING AWAY FREE HOT FUDGE
SUNDAES!
STOP BY THE STORE AND CHECK OUT OUR SELECTION
OF GREENWOOD-RELATED GIFTS AND SOUVENIRS.
GET A FREE SAMPLE OF THE OFFICIAL BICENTENNIAL
FUDGE FLAVOR – BLUEBERRY CHEESECAKE!
HERE ARE SOME PHOTOS OF WHAT OUR LOCATION LOOKED LIKE EARLIER IN THE 20TH
CENTURY. THE PHOTO ON THE LEFT WAS KNOWN AS HATHAWAY’S COUNTRY STORE AND
THE ONE ON THE RIGHT WAS OWNED BY PIP CUMMINGS PRIOR TO HATHAWAYS!
MAINE LINE PRODUCTS – PROUDLY CREATING JOBS AND SERVING
THE GIFT NEEDS OF THE GREENWOOD AREA SINCE 1979.
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Friday, August 12
3– 7pm Fire Dept. Fish Fry Locke’s Mills Fire Station
7 - 9pm Greenwood Historical Society Slide Show, Greenwood Town Hall
4-9pm Bingo, Legion Hall
Saturday, August 13
7:30 - 10am Pancake breakfast, Union Church
9am-5pm Information booth, Greenwood Town Hall
9am-Noon Rug hooking demonstrations Greenwood Town Hall
10am – 4pm Mineral displays with specimens from local mines, Greenwood Town Hall
10am – 4pm Greenwood art and photography exhibits, Greenwood Town Hall
10am – 4pm Silent auction of antique artist painted desks and local artwork, Greenwood Town Hall . Win-ners announced 5pm at Jackson/Silver Legion Post
10am- Addison Verrill book launch & signing, Green-wood Historical Society
11am Parade Howe Hill Road. Parade begins at Dunham Ball Park and ends at Main St. (Rt. 26)
11am-3pm Farmer’s market and artisan vendors, Main St.
11am-4pm Children’s activities Dunham Park, 98 Howe Hill Rd.
Noon Opening remarks, US Congressman Bruce Poliquin, Greenwood Town Hall
Noon– 3pm Wagon rides Fire station to Mt. Abram (provided by Meadow Creek Farm)
Noon– 4pm Period Clothing Exhibit, American Legion
Noon Maine State Police Canine Unit demonstrations, also 100% organic, both at Dunham Park
Noon Finnish concert performed by A’Chording to Can-tele, Union Church.
1-2pm Civil War Muster & Band, American Legion
1– 4pm Music events and presentations, Town Hall, per-formances upstairs (Stair chair lift available)
1:00 Dean Bennett, (author), Ghost Buck reading and discussion
2:00 Centennial Brass Band
3:00 Barber Shop Quartet, Back Bay Four
4:00 Northside Ramblers
1pm – 4pm Greenwood Fire Dept. Open House
1pm – 4pm Greenwood school reunion, Greenwood His-torical Society
3pm Cow Chip Bingo with authentic cow chips, 100% organic
4-7pm Chicken barbeque, Jackson/Silver Legion Post
7-11pm Dance with music by Shadagee Ramblers, Mt. Abram
9pm Fireworks, Mt Abram (rain date, Sunday, Aug. 14)
Sunday August 14
9-10am Old-fashioned church service, Union Church
9am-4pm Greenwood Historical Society Open House
Greenwood Bicentennial Schedule of Events August 12 – August 14, 2016
Main St./Rt. 26
Historical Society
Union
Church Greenwood
Town Hall
Fire Station
Jackson/Silver Legion
Gore Rd.
Dunham Park
Mt. Abram
Event location map
Howe Hill Rd.
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Cheers, Greenwood,
on 200 years
of township.
Gaudreau’s Repair 560 Walker’s Mills Rd. Bethel 824-2807
24-hour towing Specializing in Jeeps & 4x4s
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Celebrating
all the people
who made,
and are making,
Greenwood great.
The Local Hub Market & Café
224 Main St. Greenwood 875-0011
Sun.-Th 7am-8pm Fri-Sat 7am-10pm
Friday is Taco Night. Saturday is Burger Night.
Eat-in & Take-out, Bakery, Local Produce
Originally known as Plantation No. 4, the township of Greenwood was made up of three grants, made between 1795 and 1805. The grant-ees sold lots to the early settlers, who met in 1813 to organize a plantation form of government.
In 1815 the citizens voted to in-corporate, and on February 2, 1816, Greenwood became the 213th town in the District of Maine.
The Greenwood Road, built about 1820, was the main highway to Portland from points north. Green-wood City, on the outlet of Hicks Pond, was the first town center, with mills, stores, a blacksmith, a church, and a school.
Early townspeople settled in nine districts, eventually building elev-en schoolhouses.
Samuel Locke Sr. of Bethel built
the first dam and mills at what is now the village of Locke’s Mills on the Alder River in 1819, but the ar-ea remained remote until the mid-19th century.
After the railroad was construct-ed through town in 1851 and 1852, traffic on the Greenwood Road de-clined. Most of the buildings in Greenwood City burned in 1862 and were never rebuilt. The busi-nesses relocated to be near the rail-road, and Locke’s Mills became the town’s center and most populous neighborhood.
The first schoolhouse in Locke’s Mills, the Alder River School (razed in 2016), was constructed in 1851, and the schoolhouse on the Bird Hill Road in 1890.
For some years, town meetings were held at the Mt. Abram Hotel
in Locke’s Mills. Around 1932, the town built the present Town Hall.
The Locke Mills Union Church, built in 1883-84, continues to hold weekly services and sponsors many special events throughout the year.
This information was provided by the Greenwood Historical Society. A much more detailed history is available at www.greenwoodhistorical.org
Cover Artwork done by Joyce Hathaway.
Historic Photos courtesy of the
Greenwood Historical Society.
Page 5— Florence & Frances Cummings
Page 7— Howe Hill School
Page 11—Snow Removal, Greenwood Rd.
Page 13—Felt Family, Howe Hill Rd
L—Ruth Ring
R—Ethel Sanborn
Page 14—Ransom Cole, Shadagee Mill
Hicks Farm, Locke’s Mills
A Brief History of Greenwood, Maine
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Norway savings
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Happy
Bicentennial
Birthday,
Greenwood.
Good Food Store And Catering Company
Rt. 2 Bethel 824-3754 Prepared food, Sandwiches, Groceries,
Catering
200 good years.
Hope
Greenwood has
200 more.
SMOKIN’ GOOD BBQ
Rt. 2 Bethel 824-4PIG smokingoodbbq.net
Best BBQ around—Look for the orange trailer
By Christopher Dunham
In January 1816, just a few weeks
before Plantation Number Four
learned of its incorporation as the
town of Greenwood, news reached
Maine of a massive volcanic eruption
halfway around the world. Mount
Tambora in what is now Indonesia
had exploded the previous spring,
sending a great volume of ash and gas
into the atmosphere. The ash fell, but
the sulfur dioxide rose, oxidized, and
in the months that followed circled the
globe. As the citizens of Greenwood
gathered for their first town meeting
in March, sulfate ions were gathering
high overhead, scattering sunlight and
cooling the earth below. Greenwood's
first year as a town would come to be
known as “The Year Without a
Summer.”
Daniel Verrill, who came to
Greenwood from Minot in 1818, told
his grandson of the "frosty year, 1816,
when frost and ice formed during
every month, and all the corn and
nearly all the other crops were killed."
Ransom Dunham of Woodstock
recalled weather in June “so cold that
it killed the birds; English robins were
picked up as well as all kinds of birds,
frozen to death.” Summer was as dry
as it was cold. In the fall, fires swept
through Greenwood and surrounding
towns. William B. Lapham wrote of
fires so extensive that in Woodstock
“ordinary print could be read by their
light in almost any part of the town at
midnight, and the summits of the
blazing mountains could be seen far
away.” The Portland Gazette reported
that the smoke—carried by winds as
far as Boston—was “oppressive and
almost suffocating, affecting the eyes
and lungs most disagreeably.” A large
quantity of timber was killed in
Greenwood, much of which would be
Continued on page 10
1816—Greenwood’s Year without Summer
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savage
9
savage
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Looking
good for
200 years,
Greenwood.
Paaso Racing 303 Main St. Greenwood 357-1979 paasoracing.com
We repair, maintain, and modify it all
Happy
Bicentennial
Birthday,
Greenwood.
We’ve Got the Look Holly Roberts, Stylist
920 Walkers Mills Rd. Bethel 875-CUTS
Full-service hair & tanning salon
salvaged by Samuel B. Locke of
Bethel, who in 1819 bought land here
and commenced erecting mills in the
village that would bear his name.
The summer and fall of 1816 were
followed by what Artemas Felt called
“the hardest winter I ever knew.”
Snow came “early and deep,” he
wrote, “and averaged six to eight feet
on a level.” By the time of spring's late
arrival, food was scarce for both the
settlers and their livestock, and prices
were steep. Major Jonathan
Cummings of Norway, who had
purchased a large tract of land in the
southern part of Greenwood
previously granted to Phillips
Academy, pitied the farmers too poor
to plant a crop, and provided four
bushels of seed corn for their use.
Many who had contracted to buy
their land from Major Cummings
struggled to make payments after the
events of 1816, and his remaining lots
in Greenwood were slow to sell.
Meanwhile, Cummings—whose
generosity exceeded both his means
and his business sense—faced
demands from his own creditors.
Despondent, he committed suicide in
1820. Settlers who had not obtained
clear title to their land were left to the
mercy of Phillips Academy, which
reclaimed much of its former grant.
Land owned by the Academy was
exempt from taxation, placing
thousands of acres beyond the reach
of Greenwood's assessors. The
foreclosure would hobble the town's
ambitions for decades.
The Year Without a Summer had
driven Greenwood's settlers to the
brink of starvation, driven its largest
landholder into insolvency and
despair, and depleted its tax base for a
generation. But despite these early
hardships, Greenwood would
survive, and in the latter half of its
first century, with the coming of the
railroad and the expansion of
industry, it would thrive.
Continued from page 7
11
Celebrating all the
people who made,
and are making,
Greenwood great.
Mt Abram Maine’s Authentic Skiing & Riding Experience
308 Howe Hill Rd. Greenwood 875-5000 mtabram.com
Cheers,
Greenwood,
on your
200th
Birthday.
Swan Screen Printing
824-4836 [email protected]
151 Vernon St. Bethel
Posters, decals, signage, T-shirts
20 years in western Maine
The Greenwood Fire Depart-ment holds fund-raising fish fry dinners every other Friday. They offer fresh haddock, hand-cut fries, and all the fixings. Chicken is also available. These dinners help raise money for equipment. They have be-come so popular, they fre-quently sell out before closing. Here’s this year’s schedule. All are from 3-7PM at the Howe Hill Rd. fire station, and the cooks and servers are our firefighters. Credit/debit cards accepted as well as plain old cash.
Be Sure to Catch a Friday Fish Fry with the
Fire Fighters
July 8 July 22 Aug. 12
Aug. 26 Sept. 9 Sept. 23
Fire Chief Al Curtis Jr.
cooking up the haddock.
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Maine is well-known for its tourmaline, beryl, and other miner-als that are found in pegmatite (a coarse-grained granite). Quartz, feldspar, muscovite mica are the main minerals composing pegma-tites. Pockets (aka vugs) are com-monly encountered in many of the Greenwood pegmatites. These vugs can contain a range of differ-ent crystals. These crystals may in-clude quartz (smoky, clear and milky), tourmaline in green, pink and blue colors, beryl (aquamarine and morganite) and purple fluo-rapatite.
Greenwood has numerous pegmatite formations and many of these have been mined over the years. The following is a list of Greenwood mines and some of the notable crystals found in them.
Most of these mines are on private property, and permission is required before going to them. Tamminen and Waisanen are currently open to visitors. Hayes Quarry—Main specimens: bertrandite, almandine, fluorapat-ite. Diamond Ledges—Main speci-mens: pyrite, quartz. Emmons Quarry - beryl (aquamarine), pollucite, cassiterite, blue and purple fluoroapatite, hy-droxylherderite. Tiger Bill Quarry - Main speci-mens: felspar, beryl (aquamarine), blue and purple fluoroapatite, Harvard Quarry - Main specimens: lilac to purple fluorapatite, cassiterite, tabular blue fluoroap-atite. The quarry is named after
Harvard University which operat-ed it for mineral specimens from 1923-24. Nubble Quarry - Minerals found: quartz, muscovite, feldspar, garnet, beryl fluoroapatite and more. Tamminen Quarry – Montmorillo-nite, petalite, and pseudo-cubic quartz crystals. Waisenen Quarry - Mined for feld-spar in 1963. Some of Maine’s best hydroxylherderite crystals as well as good bertrandite and smoky quartz crystals found here. Witt Hill - Single and twinned chrysoberyl crystals found here.
(Source: A Collector's Guide to
Maine Mineral Localities by WB Thompson, DL Joyner, RG Woodman, VT King. ME Geological Survey, 1988.)
Happy Bicentennial
Birthday,
Greenwood
MUSEUM STORE AND
PREVIEW GALLERY NOW
OPEN
Jewelry – Gems – Minerals
57 Main Street
Join us on July 21st at 3 pm for our Third Thursday Talk dedi-
cated to the history of Greenwood Mines and Mining by Carl
Francis, Curator.
Stop in and see our Greenwood mineral display at the Museum
as well as at the Greenwood Town Hall during the bicentennial.
Bethel, Maine 04217
Mines and Minerals of Greenwood
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Celebrating all
the people
who made, &
are making,
Greenwood
great.
Happy
Bicentennial
Birthday,
Greenwood.
KELLY NEWKIRK, CPA 918 Walkers Mills Rd. Bethel
875-2401 newkirkcpa.com [email protected]
Your Trusted Advisor
Northern Roots Grow Supply 3 Bird Hill Rd., Greenwood
875-2089 northern rootsgrowsupply.com
Indoor & Outdoor Garden Supplies
Celebrating
all the people
who made, &
are making,
Greenwood
great.
Specialty Timberworks
Main St. Locke’s Mills 357-4220
Specialtytimberworks.com [email protected]
Unique post & beam houses & barns
Cheers, Greenwood,
on your 200th birthday.
Fred Curtis Logging
109 Hayes Hill Rd. Greenwood
744-5225 or 527-2028
Land clearing Selective cutting, Firewood
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Breaus 2
Congratulations,
Greenwood, on
200 years of
township.
Breau’s “Too” 12 Main St., Bryant Pond M-F 5AM-10PM Sat. & Sun. 6AM-10PM
665-2933
Grocery and gasoline
Pizza, subs, beer cave, agency liquor store, ice cream, treats and sweets
Serving the building needs
of Greenwood for 52 of those 200 years.
Western Maine Supply
Cross St. Bethel
824-2139 westernmainesupply.com
Building and remodeling materials
Mallard Mart
West Paris 674-2087 . Bethel 824-6111 . Norway 739-6050
6am-9pm 7 days a week
Gas Food Groceries
Italians Pizza Salads Fries Daily Specials
200?
You’re
just a
baby!
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