Yesterday

Communities develop their own unique identities, sometimes based on an occupation, trade or industry, and sometimes based on geography.

Trenton is a community that grew up along the waters of the Union River, Western Bay and Mount Desert Narrows. These waters provided the early community with a highway of trade, commerce and communication.

Students and faculty of the old Narrows School, circa 1908, pose for a class portrait: George Garland sits in front; standing, front row from left, are Howe Hopkins, Madison Davis, Mattie Murphy, Richard Murphy and Ernest Hopkins. Back row, from left: Mildred McFarland, Gladys Cousins, Lewis McFarland, Bertha McFarland, Florence Hopkins and teacher Eva Perkins.

COURTESY LEWIS McFARLAND FROM “HANCOCK COUNTY, A ROCK-BOUND PARADISE” BY CONNEE JELLISON

The small farms of Bayside faced Union River Bay, providing ample opportunity for employment in fishing, coasting and shipbuilding in Trenton, Surry and Ellsworth. The Bayside community had a front- seat, witnessing a constant parade of schooners, brigs and barks heading for Ellsworth. The community also witnessed the graceful journey of countless schooners, leaving Ellsworth, laden with lumber and the slow and majestic journey of many steamboats.

Trenton was a community of farmers, fishermen and shipbuilders, a community that bears silent witness to the forgotten age on the Union River.

Plantation No. 1, east of the Union River, was one of the 12 townships surveyed in 1762. The original line between Thorndike Plantation, as Trenton was first known, and the Union River Settlement, later Ellsworth, may have run along Card Brook. The Union River Settlement was officially created in 1784 and known as Plantation No. 7. Territory from Trenton was annexed to the new settlement. Ellsworth was incorporated as a town on Feb. 26, 1800.

Thorndike Plantation received its name from Paul Thorndike, an early landowner. Prior to 1763, there were some French settlers living at Trenton (now Lamoine) and Oak Points. The first settlers came to this place circa 1763. Stephen Hutchinson, Ephraim Haimes, Roger Googins and William Hopkins are said to be among the first settlers. Trenton was incorporated on Feb. 16, 1789 and was named after the Revolutionary War battle at Trenton, N.J. The original town of Trenton would include Lamoine, created in 1870, and part of Hancock.

Trenton shipbuilders, including those at Lamoine, built at least 52 schooners and six brigs between 1815 and 1871. Warren King, David Hodgkins, Isaac Hodgkins, Herman Cousins and Ira Webb are a few of the men identified as shipbuilders. The largest schooner built was the Engineer, 165 tons, in 1861. The largest vessel built was the brig Maratina, 233 tons, in 1854. The shipbuilders of Lamoine, including Lewis King and various Hodgkins family members, built an additional seven schooners and one sloop between 1875 and 1901.

Bayside, in particular, was the home of many farmers who supplemented their income in the weir fisheries. The Union River also had viable fisheries in salmon, shad and sturgeon, though these fisheries would come under serious distress because of the dams on the river at Ellsworth, Mariaville and Amherst. These fisheries were probably in decline by 1820. The weir fisheries were still viable in 1900, with weir rights being bought and sold by various interests.

Trenton had an active brick industry in 1850, run by Samuel Whitmore and Sterling Haynes. Farming also played an important part in the local economy, with some of the best farms located on what is now the Bar Harbor Road. There was some commercial activity at West Trenton and Oak Point, and more specifically in that part of the community that later became Lamoine. For the most part, shopping was done at Ellsworth.

Many of Trenton’s men and boys followed the sea, and most found employment in Ellsworth. The cod fisheries were centered on the Jordan River, and the growing importance of this enterprise to the community, may have led the citizens of Lamoine to the creation of their own town.

West Trenton today would be properly called East Trenton. This strange turn of events came about before Lamoine was incorporated in 1870. Lamoine was known as East Trenton, with a viable commercial center, and thus the necessity for West Trenton as the community’s second commercial center. Bayside, in some places, would have been called West Trenton, but local logic has always known Bayside as such, leaving the central part of Trenton, prior to 1870, as West Trenton. This part of Trenton today contains the Grange Hall, a few motels and a number of places to boil a lobster.

Whitmore Cove, Bayside, was the site of a large steam sawmill and boarding home run by the firm of Whitcomb, Haynes & Whitney of Ellsworth. This mill, operating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was an integral part of an operation that manufactured barrel staves and heads, long lumber and lathes at Ellsworth Falls. The firm was the last great lumbering outfit on the Union River, operating a fleet of schooners. These schooners, the Storm Petrel,  Lavolta, Henrietta F. Whitney, and the Harry W. Haynes were familiar sites on the river.

The Civilian Conservation Corps, established in 1933, would rebuild and lay out a modern cement road, connecting Ellsworth with Mount Desert Island, and begin work on the Trenton airport. It is from this date that we can begin the transformation of Trenton into a “gateway” to Acadia.

Trenton today is simply the great highway to El Dorado, the mythic city of gold that is known as Bar Harbor. Increasing development has erased most of the farms and fields, though at least one family farm still carries on. Trenton is rapidly becoming a bedroom community for Ellsworth and Mount Desert Island with the specific focus on the natural beauty of Acadia National Park. Our focus today is the sea and tourism, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the fortunes of the community were tied to the Union River.