Browse Items (103 total)

Gilead's Centennial To-Day This Oxford County Town Fittingly Celebrates Her 100th BirthdayHer Sons and Daughters ReturnThe Parade Led by Indian Rangers - The Dinner - The Formal Program - Field SportsFull Story of the Day Gilead, Me. July 14…

DEATH OF GEN. CLARK S. EDWARDS An Honored Citizen—A Distinguished Soldier—A Noble Hero and Patriot has gone to his rest. Passed quietly away at his home last Sunday Evening, at 8.45 o’clock, after an illness of but a few days. A hero and patriot…

FRAGMENTS OF LOCAL HISTORY. Concerning the Bethel Common. Number 2.—By a Sudbury Native. In the previous number we have endeavored to outline in a crude, unpolished manner, an upward growth in our Common’s physical condition; from an uncleared…

FRAGMENTS OF LOCAL HISTORY. Concerning the Bethel Common. Number 1.—By a Sudbury Native. It is an every day saying that persons, objects or things which drift into our environment for a long, unbroken period, often sink to the level of the common…

Atherton Bernard Furlong: Artist, Singer, Poet Atherton Furlong (1849-1919) Photo courtesy of the Greenwood Historical Society Editor’s Note: The following obituary of Atherton Furlong appeared in the 24 October 1919 issue of the Norway…

Indians of the Androscoggin Valley The Indians of the Androscoggin River Valley were members of the Anasigunticook tribe, a sub-group of the Abenakis, the major tribal grouping which encompassed the Indians from the Pennacooks in New Hampshire to…

Society Marks First Decade Society founder Eva M. Bean at Woodland Cemetery No one seems to know who first conceived of a Bethel Historical Society, but in 1855 thirty citizens gathered for what was recorded as an antiquarian supper with a…

Maine Music Festival Note William Rogers Chapman (1855-1935), founder of the Maine Music Festivals Editor's Note: This first short essay, entitled "The Influence of the Festival," appeared in the 1925 Maine Music Festival Program. Although…

1796: A Special Year in Bethel's Past The town we now call Bethel began as Sudbury Canada in 1768. It was granted to recognize the services of soldiers who fought in one of several abortive campaigns by Puritan Massachusetts to conquer the…

Western Maine Saints [Part 4]: The York and Carter Families by Carole York Conversion to Mormonism and Western Migration “I first embraced Mormonism in 1834 in the town of Newry, Oxford County, State of Maine. The first elders I ever heard…

Crossing by Ferry on the Androscoggin by Frank Worcester West Bethel Ferry, Androscoggin River, circa 1910 The ferryboat was retained in its proper position on the river by means of a large steel cable suspended across the river from two large…

Western Maine Saints: A Newry Family Who Joined the Latter-Day Saints in Seeking a Home in the West by Mary E. Valentine Martha Fifield Wilkins, author of Sunday River Sketches, at the Sessions-Chapman-Bennett House near North Newry in…

Western Maine Saints: Mormon Missionaries in the 1830s by Mary E. Valentine Umbagog Lake from the highlands of Letter B Township, now Upton, Maine Editor’s Note: The area discussed in this article, and subsequent installments, includes the…

The Bethel Antiquarian Suppers of the 1850s Dr. Nathaniel Tuckerman True (1812-1887) Founder of Maine's first Farmer's Club (1853) at Bethel Originator of the Bethel Antiquarian Suppers (1855-1857) American life in the mid-nineteenth century…

The Last of the Pequakets: Mollockett Written for the Maine Historical Society by N. T. True, M.D.,and published in theOxford Democrat, Jan. 2, 1863 The Pequakets were a powerful tribe on the Saco River. The Lovewell Fight at Fryeburg, in 1725,…

Grafton, Maine: A Historical Sketch by Margaret Joy Tibbetts Grafton, from the 1880 Atlas of Oxford County, Maine The Town of Grafton surrendered its charter in 1919, the year in which I was born. The only buildings in Grafton which I can…

The Irish Neighborhood by Margaret Joy Tibbetts Irish Neighborhood School, 1903, Guy Coffin Photographer, First Row (Left to Right): Carl Lufkin (?), Grace Deardon. Second Row: Mary Harrington, Mary Deegan, Margaret Pool, Nellie Harrington,…

Bethel Doctors, 1900-1950 by Margaret Joy Tibbetts Dr. Raymond R. Tibbetts (1875-1958) Editor’s Note: A version of this essay was presented as a lecture sponsored by the Bethel Historical Society on 7 November 1991 held in the Dr. Moses Mason…

Harriet Beecher Stowe Finds "Intellectual Activity" in Western Maine Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), circa 1865Photo courtesy of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission Editor’s Note: The letter quoted below was apparently written by…