Yesterday

A Dockside View of Ellsworth, When Lumber was King
By Mark E. Honey
Special to The American

The Wabenaki knew the river by a certain word, Wech-ko-te-tuk, “comes out facing” for the falls which faced the traveler at the head of navigation. The French called the river Mount Desert. The surveyors sent from the General Court of Massachusetts called her the Union River, in 1763, because the Union River formed the boundary between six new townships to the East, and six to the West.

This oil painting, “Ellsworth Lumber Port” by Alzira Peirce, was originally applied to the plaster wall of the Ellsworth Post Office in 1937. The painting depicts the urban Union River waterfront during Ellsworth’s heyday as a lumber port and shipbuilding center in the late 1800s.

It was an apt name, because the river would give birth to an economy that would join all of the towns, located in her waters, in a common purpose. The river would also help to create a unique culture, a culture bound together by the rhythms of the seasons and the close kinship of her families. Forest, field, stream and tidal bore were knitted together in a seamless weave of frenetic activity that never ceased. The heart of all this energy, the place where all things ended and began once again, was along the docks that lined the river in Ellsworth.

There once existed some 18 wharves and docks between Morrison Chevrolet and Tinker’s or Card Brook Cove. There were a number of others on the west side of the river and at least two above the bridge. These were the places where supplies were off-loaded for merchant stores and farmers’ pantries, and the place from whence the various lumber camps received the goods necessary to fit up a proper operation.

Iron and steel, glass, crockery, clothes, tools, books and molasses all were carried in the bottoms of stout ships, many of which were made beside these same docks. And endless streams of teamsters carried these goods to places near and far, returning at some distant time loaded with barrel heads and staves, fresh produce, eggs, butter, leather, knitted goods, maple syrup, and a host of other locally grown or made products.

The vast endless forests swarmed with stout men who worked through winter frost and spring thaw to cut the timber down. Teamsters with their plodding oxen and swifter horses worked to land these fallen giants on some distant lake or stream. Other men, in spring flood, would ride these wooden steeds down river to Ellsworth Falls, where the logs would be sawn into long and short lumber, laths, shingles and barrel staves.

From the docks at Ellsworth to Ellsworth Falls lay a two-mile stretch of tortured river; a stretch that held seven falls fit to build dams and mills. On these dams were built 11 gang saw mills, eight shingle sawmills, nine single sawmills, five box mills, and three clapboard mills.

In 1872, these mills would produce 55 million feet of lumber, all of which had to be loaded onto large wagons and brought by team to the docks. Other men waited on the docks, men who provided the brute force needed to load the lumber into the holds and decks of the various schooners, brigs and jackass brigs waiting their turn. On one May morning in 1852, there were some 60 vessels lying at the wharves waiting for a proper load to carry to Boston, New York City or the West Indies.

Not all of the lumber was shipped out of Ellsworth, for the shipyards used some of the best pine, spruce, oak, beech, and maple for the building of fine vessels. These shipyards were intertwined amongst the docks on the east side of the river, with at least one shipyard on the west side.

Ellsworth built some 170-plus vessels between 1812 and 1909. That record was topped only by Bucksport with 207 vessels built between 1770 and 1905. In 1854, Ellsworth surpassed all other Hancock County communities by building 3,400 tons of shipping. In 1853, 149 vessels were owned outright or in part by Ellsworth men and women. In 1884, 92 vessels hailed from Ellsworth.

But by 1902, this figure was reduced to 27.

In April 1855, the massive ship Horizon, 1,755 tons, was built by Isaac Elwell and Seth Tisdale. With three masts and three full decks, this ship was built for Capt. William Read of Boston and was still in service in 1866. She was 220 ft. long, 42 ft. wide, and 28 ft. deep in the hold. The building of this vessel also served as inspiration for parts of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem: “The Building of the Ship.” This vessel may have been built near the present Dead River oil company buildings.

The names of Ellsworth’s great shipbuilders included Joseph Tinker; Mark Shepherd; Nahum H. Hall, who built more than 40 vessels between 1831 and 1854; George A. Jameson;  Edward Hodgkins;  Abraham Lord; Andrew Peters;  Nehemiah Means; John Suminsby; Paul Curtis; and Charles Curtis.

Shipbuilding, on Water Street, fostered a wide range of businesses, including sail lofts, shipsmiths and blacksmiths, spar makers, block and pump makers, and a host of craftsmen. They all plied their trade on each phase of a new vessel.

Water Street was also host to a number of brickyards, many small grocery and retail stores, steam mills that produced doors and sashes, and a number of small foundries. The massive Peters Block, just below the Public Library, was built in a number of stages beginning circa 1835.

The construction of this building signified the rising wealth of the community, and the prosperity enjoyed by men like Andrew Peters. He was a merchant and shipbuilder with a vested interest in sawmills and timberland. This building also had a number of wharves and storehouses built along and over the river.

The Public Library is the last building, before the first falls, which was built during the great age of lumbering. The building was originally built for Benjamin Jordan circa 1817. It was the first of a long line of stately buildings built along State Street, Ellsworth’s first residential district.

The docks were not just the center for imports, exports and shipbuilding, for they also served a small body of local fishermen.

There were also a number of local weir fishermen who came to apply their wares, and in an earlier age, salmon, mackerel, and alewives could still be fished off the docks. Swift packet schooners carried freight and passengers up and down the coast, along with a number of coastal steamers that connected Ellsworth with larger steamship lines that took passengers to Boston and New York City.

The docks helped to create the incredible fortunes of men like Col. John Black and his sons; Andrew Peters; James Grant and his children Joseph, George and Ann; Henry and Barlow Hall; and Seth Tisdale. These men, and others like them, created integrated companies which encompassed timberlands and lumbering, sawmills, merchant houses, and a number of schooners and square riggers.

Lumbering and shipbuilding declined drastically by 1990, though the firms of Whitcomb, Haynes & Whitney and Charles J. Treworgy were still manufacturing long and short lumber at Ellsworth Falls. They were also manufacturing barrel staves and heads, shipping their product by rail and sail throughout the Maritimes and the eastern half of the United States.

Their companies would make Ellsworth the barrel stave capital of Maine by 1900. Whitcomb, Haynes & Whitney would also own a large fleet of vessels, including the schooners Nellie Grant, Harry W. Haynes, Henrietta Whitney, J.M. Kennedy, the Lavolta, the Lulu W. Eppes, and the Storm Petrel.

The advent of the railroad, the rise of the pulp wood industry for paper making, the declining availability of good timber and the changing tide of fortune for coastal schooners all spelled the end for Ellsworth’s docks. In 1921, Standard Oil built a tank farm on the waterfront, heralding the end of sail and the ascendancy of internal combustion. In 1923, Graham Lake Dam was built at Brimmer’s Bridge, flooding valuable timberland and ending the great river drives on the Union River.

There would be a few small drives after this, but an era had come to an end. The great flood of 1923, caused by the breach of this dam, also scoured the waterfront, destroying much of shipping’s infrastructure.

In 1929, Whitcomb, Haynes & Whitney sold its business and lands, the last of the great family run lumbering and maritime empires. The 1933 fire finished the job, wiping clean the landscape once built for maritime commerce.

Life was not kind to the remaining schooners of the Ellsworth fleet. The three-master Harry W. Haynes was lost with all hands in 1917. The Henrietta O. Whitney, also a three-master, burned at Eastport in August 1924. The Nellie Grant was lost with all hands in October 1924, taking with her Capt. Newell Kane, a veteran of the fleet. The last vessel to go was the graceful and swift Lavolta, sold to Massachusetts interests in 1930.

The tide still flows to the sea and the remains of the docks can still be seen at low tide. Like rotting teeth, they represent an older age that has run its course. They also serve to remind us of an age when the river was young and strong, shouldering the economy of Ellsworth and northern Hancock County.