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Town’s Past Rooted In Lumber
By Mark E. Honey
Special to The
Ellsworth American
Great Pond is one
of three small communities that once existed on the fringes of the
great woods of northern Hancock County. Plantation 32, Myra, was
situated to the west of Great Pond (Plantation 33). It was a small
farming community with a population that never exceeded 60. Stud
Mill Road now runs through the community.
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Joshua Williams, a Civil War veteran, and his family were the
first settlers of Great Pond.
Photo Courtesy of Joan Archer |
Plantation 39 to
the north of Great Pond was known as 39-Mile Tannery, primarily
because it was located 39 miles above Ellsworth. In the early 1890s,
James Rice of Bangor built a tannery on the banks of the Buffalo
Stream, run in association with the tannery of Oliver H. Buzzel at
Governors Falls in Amherst.
Joshua Williams, a
native of Taunton, Mass., settled Great Pond circa 1808/1809. He
came to the community with his wife Bethia, brother Silas and
son-in-law John Collar as well as his sons. Most of Great Pond’s
citizens were descendants of the Williams and Collar families.
The community
served as the staging ground for the lumbering operations that
worked the forests of northern Hancock County. Various lumbering
operations sent their logs down Main, Alligator, Buffalo Streams and
Scotch Brook, combining their production at Great Pond for the drive
to Ellsworth Falls.
Tobias Lord ran the
Great Pond Hotel, named the Frank Honey Place, in 1880. After his
death, it was called the Forest Home and run by James F. Emery and
later, by his nephew Charles.
The hotel was still
in business in the 1920s. Mrs. Florence W. Laughlin also ran a
boarding house or hotel in the 1930s.
Great Pond was also
a close-knit and active community. The social scene was livened up a
bit, periodically, by a dancing instructor or a social soirée at the
grammar school. Many of the dances were attended by woodsmen who
made the trek out simply to see a pretty girl, a welcome sight to
any man cooped up in a dark hovel all winter with a bunch of men.
The lumbering
operations began to wane by the 1890s. Sportsmen seeking the
pleasures of hunting and fishing in the North Woods filled the
economic gap. John F. Hayes ran a camp on Alligator Lake from 1896
through 1936. A sporting camp on Middle Branch Lake was run in
Aurora by Frank E., and later, Asa Mace.
W.S. Cowing ran a
boys’ camp on Long Pond in 1925 and another on Great Pond by 1930
called Trails End. |
