Clark Thread Company/MacGregor Mill | So. Lincoln

Sgt Data?

A friend of mine once said that the absolute best thing that one can do for themselves upon arrival in Lincoln is to immediately turn around and go back home. I generally disagree and find that a bit unfair; Wing Wah exists and there's also a Marden's (personally I'd rather live in a town with a Marden's than without a Marden's). It's a town that's relatively picturesque. Lincoln has everything you'd really need to survive including a Hannaford and another liquor store with a slightly unnerving life sized wooden policeman out front. Visitors may find that its quaint main street is a great place to spend an afternoon attempting to back out of a parking spot that they foolishly pulled into. As of late and most unfortunately, what once was a mill town is now a town built around the remains of a mill. The only smoke stacks you'll see running now tend to be attached to diesel 4x4s (Lincoln really isn't a Prius town). Even though the mill has closed it's surviving, unlike some of its cousins to the north. 

Before Lincoln was all about paper, there were other wood-centered mills to the point where Lincoln used to have its very own Lewiston (or its own Brewer, depending on which congressional district you're reading this in) in the form of South Lincoln. Like Tannery 39, it was a settlement surrounding a specific industry that was large enough to have its own post office. The Annual Report of the Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics noted the following in 1898:

©Lincoln Historical Society | MaineMemory.net

The spool mill at South Lincoln proved to be one of the most interesting plants visited. John MacGregor, the owner, was born in Scotland and learned his trade in that country. When he first came to this country he went into the employment of the Clark Thread Company. He went to Lincoln in 1873 and built a mill there in 1875. Many additions have been made since that time and quite a village has grown up around the spool works. About fifty men are employed and from 2,500 to 3,000 cords of spool wood are required annually. No better spools are made in the world than are turned out at South Lincoln.

-Annual BLS Report. 1898

Quite a village indeed. A map from 1875 reveals the village of South Lincoln and its school, railroad access, and cemetery. Other documentation from around the same period indicates that there was a general store and that the town had its own post office. In trying to locate the location of the spool mill I realized that using the Penobscot River as a reference point wouldn't work since bodies of water tend to meander. So, I used the town's cemeteries as cemeteries don't tend to move unless you're that family from Poltergeist, or you live on Ohio street in Bangor (I'm being partially facetious as I'm assuming that bodies were moved when the interstate was built.)

HistoricMapWorks map overlaid onto Google Earth using cemeteries as a reference point. Non monetized content.

As you can see, the graphic is rougher than a  rap battle between Susan Collins and Diane Rehm. I admit that the accuracy of the above 'map' hinges wholly upon the cemeteries being correctly positioned relative to one another as opposed to something like the position of the European & North American railroad bed. What does it tell us? Someone's got an awfully neat back yard that may or may not include the foundations of a spool mill complex. I'd be surprised if there was nothing left considering that the mill predates 1874 according to MacGregor's obituary and persisted until at least the 1930s. 

Until I can make the choice between slowly cruising past someone's house a few times while peering into the woods, and sending a letter to a stranger asking to nose around in their backyard because my hobby is writing about stuff on the AOL Machine, I'm afraid I'm going to have to file this one under "lost." However it is going on my list of sites that I want to hit once we thaw out and we have days longer than the run time of the good Star Wars movies.