Riceville | Township 39

In the vast swaths of rural nothingness that comprises a good chunk of everything north of Route 9, is an overgrown ghost town that exists as a relic of the time when a company would open up an industrial site and practically build a settlement around it. In this case the industry was hide tanning, and the time was the late 1800s. A ghost town that used to be home to a large tannery...and it was almost a coal town.

Consider it a bit like Cushman's Ridge 2.0  ,if you will. Also check out Abandonment of Maine's (unaffiliated with this blog) informative piece on the tannery; their Flickr Photostream has lots of neat photos of Riceville's current condition as well.

The company was Hancock Leather Co. which, according to the New England Business Gazetteer and Directory for the year 1854, had offices in Amherst, as well as on 39 Hammond St in Bangor (it had later relocated to 6 State St by 1914). Other maps from the period list "F. Shaw & Bro Bark Extract works" onsite as well.

Shaw operated for some time in the area before Hancock Leather began production in Riceville, as evidenced by documents indicating they got themselves in to trouble by using Sysadobsis stream (between Nicatous and Sysadobsis Lake) to float hemlock to their facility in 1870. As this was against the landowner's wishes it was considered a breach of contract, causing a legal battle(Young vs Clement, 1889). This legal dispute and subsequent fine would later cause Shaw's insolvency. The F Shaw facility's function was to acquire a naturally occurring acid from the hemlock bark called tannin, used in tanning.

Tanning had historically been a process by which the protein structure of an animal skin is altered to be less susceptible to decomposition through treatment with tannin, a naturally occurring acidic compound found in oak trees. The Annual Report of Industrial and Labor Statistics in Maine from 1897 (one year before the Hancock Leather Co tannery opened) describes the tanning process used at the time. This excerpt details the operation of a Shaw tannery in Kingman, of particular interest is the 'acid process'

Up to this point the fiber of the hid is too compact to allow the tanning liquor to "take" as it is called, and if the tanning process were proceeded with in this state the tannin would act only on the otuer surface. The acid process opens up the pores of the hide and "plumps" or gives it a spongy appearance so that it will take the tanning liquor as a sponge takes water. There are two ways in common practice in bringing about this result, one known as the acid process and the other the sour liquor process. In the former case, a strong acid is diluted to the proper consistency to produce the desired result; in the latter, the hides are placed in a liquor which is allowed to sour or form a natural acid which produces the same result on the hide....the hides are now put through a handling process to remove the acid."

Annual Report, Industrial & Labor Statistics

1897

Considering that the "F Shaw & Bro Bark Extract Works" was on the Riceville site prior to Hancock leather Co, it's somewhat safe to assume that the Hancock Leather Co facility at Riceville used traditional tanning methods (tannin acquired from hemlock) as detailed above as opposed to using chromium salts.

So, what was there? Thanks to the annual report for 1907 (the first and last time I must applaud the taxman), I can verify three businesses: Hancock Leather Co, which was responsible for the tannery and all its buildings; Whitcomb, Haynes & Co, whose names appear in several directories as being in the lumber & dry goods businesses (likely the owners of the sites sawmill) as well as John Cassidy & Son, who hold several patents for whisky and rum in the Boston area and are listed as a wholesaler/importer of wine and liquors as early as 1905. In 1900, there was also a school with an attendance of 20 pupils.  There was also Hinkcley & Egerry (sic) Iron Co present as indicated by the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier.

Between them it's known there was a tannery, sawmill, engine and boiler house, outbuildings, boarding house, bark yards, a general store and two farms. Cassidy & Son may have indicated the presence of a bar, and I've heard other rumors of the settlement having a movie house.

What remains of this settlement nowadays? Next to nothing.

In 1880, 10 people lived in Riceville. A decade later at least 136 people lived in the settlement. The next snapshot we get is from 1900 where we see the population diminish to 75. There was nobody there in 1910. It wasn't a slow exodus, driven by economic downturn, that would kill Riceville (far from it, its founders injected $50k of capital into the facility as late as 1902), nor was it the town's brush with smallpox, but rather a disaster that would bring their economic engine to a halt. I must credit a local group of Ghost Hunters for finding an article from the time that appeared in the Bangor Daily Commercial:

The extensive plant at Riceville, consisting of a large tannery, sawmill, engine and boiler house and several outbuildings, owned and operated by the Hancock Leather Co., composed of James Rice, Francis X. and John Rice of Bangor, was entirely destroyed by fire Saturday forenoon, the result of the explosion of a lantern in the roll house. The Riceville plant was an extensive one, consisting of the tannery, roll house, saw mill, engine and boiler house, large bark yards and a general store and boarding house. The two latter were not burned. … The company is now considering the matter of rebuilding the plant but has reached no conclusion as yet. About 25 men were employed at the time of the fire, which gained such headway that with the apparatus at hand nothing could be done to save the buildings.

The roll house was where the final steps of the process occurred. As the name implies it's where leather was compressed using a brass plate and mechanical rollers. From there the story fades from the stark black and white of historical documentation, into the gray of oral history. The story becomes one of outsiders (whether some trader or logger) who had been to the town earlier and returned to find it either abandoned or with bodies strewn about the streets.

Tannery cook - The Bangor Daily News has more photos like this.

 After the accident, the tannery wasn't rebuilt. The prevailing theory at the time is that chemicals from the tanning process contaminated their water table. This is possible, as acids and bases were an integral part of the tanning process, and according to the World Health Organization long term exposure to a base such as ammonia can reduce sensitivity to insulin in small doses. In large doses, adverse effects can be seen in blood pressure and bone mass. Over-exposure to alkaloids during pregnancy can cause cyclopia. Both these substances are detectable in water either by scent or by taste, and it is unlikely that the people of Riceville would have unknowingly poisoned themselves leading to the truth of the 'bodies strewn about' narrative. It's much more likely that a combination of economic concerns and environmental ruination led to the town's demise.

That doesn't mean that there was nothing fishy about the demise of Riceville, as Ryan Prescott of Abandonment of Maine reported:

Despite the media accounts of a lantern explosion, a few people that knew about the settlement were not so sure that the fire was a mistake.  A very reputable source on Riceville claimed that the circumstances of the fire were very confidential due to the insurance company's orders, and he must take great care in what he reveals.  Whether it was an accident or not, he wouldn't say.

AbandonmentOfMaine.com

 In the news...

This site had inspired me to subscribe to Newspapers.com, as they've got extensive archives of the Bangor Daily Whig & Courier...which Google does not. While I cannot link news stories from this site, I provide synopses below: 

• State News - Bangor Daily Whig and Courier - 5/30/1883
• A fire broke out on Township 39 but was contained. 
• Supreme Judicial Court - Bangor Daily Whig and Courier - 06/29/1879
• Someone had stolen from Hinckley & Egerry (sic) Iron Company on Township 39. 
• Local Matters - Bangor Daily Whig and Courier - 02/23/1893
• Township 39 was almost annexed to Penobscot County from Hancock. A petition was circulated against the idea and it never materialized. 
• Coal Beds By The Mile, Waiting to be Mined - Bangor Daily Whig and Courier - 1898
• This story indicates that there is a vein of coal under Township 39 (and Greenfield), a rather substantial one at that. Substantial enough to attract out of state attention. It was never mined because affordable royalty leases could not be acquired. Riceville was almost a coal town.
  

So, what about ghosts? 

It's close enough to Halloween that this stuff can be fun, even though it does tend to make finding historically relevant information somewhat difficult. Personally, I'm of the belief that anything that's real can be objectively measured. I can't purport to know what others feel they've experienced proximate to this ruin. Here are some key bumps in the night provided for your entertainment.

• They were following a narrow path through the woods leading to the Brown Farm site, located in the township’s southwest corner, when the path suddenly vanished from view. (BDN) 
• Three months ago, an ATV rider who is not psychic heard a woman’s voice calling, “Time to come in!” while riding through Riceville. (BDN) 
• “Mostly I picked up on a magnetic field that was self-generating with no apparent easy explanation...Also we picked up on a very slight electrical reading, again with no apparent cause. Nothing to be able to analyze because it was so slight and it didn’t last long enough to get an accurate reading on it.” (BDN)
• This is perhaps the most believable account, the presence of EM fields is not subjective, however the interpretation of the source is. 
• The United States Geological Service shows the coordinates for the Riceville post office as all zeroes.  (Someone better call Mulder & Scully Doctor Walter Bishop.) (GhostTowns)
•  There is a crazy little woman that confronts people with a broken shot gun and a hatchet. (Maine Geocaching)
• Two people that do not sleep walk were drawn out into an area in the woods at different times in the night. (Maine Geocaching.)
• WABI reported an account of a 'mass cemetery' containing 'two or three' bodies. There is a cemetery on site, it's been noted/fenced in. Hardly a 'mass' cemetery.