The first known stores and shops appeared at this location beside the Dennys River when William Kilby began his blacksmithing business here in 1791, followed by Dougald McLaughlin, the village shoemaker and a variety of others. Aaron Leeman Raymond (A.L.R.) Gardner came to Dennysville in 1832 and opened a blacksmith shop and later a store offering general merchandise, followed by his son, Fred L. Gardner, who wrote in his journal for 1889 of putting three of the four buildings near the store to use for storage: "Hereafter the Samuel I. Jones shop will be known as 'potato,' the Stephen H. Jones shop as 'corn,' and our own blacksmith shop as 'flour.' . . .." In his journal entry for March 28, 1908, Fred L. Gardner wrote of the tearing down of the Stephen Jones shop, and gave a history of the building as follows: ". . . At different times, and long before my time, it has been occupied as a house, a man named Steadman had traded there. John Green' had a tailor's shop there, J. Hinkley a tin shop, T. Robinson a fish stand, and so on. We have used it for a storehouse. It was unsightly and out of repair so we have removed it." From R. W. Hobart, Dennysville 1786-1986 . . . and Edmunds, Too! (pp. 57-8.) The waste burner conveyor and smokestack a half a mile upstream in this photograph were completed in September of 1907, following a fire which had destroyed the box and novelty mill and adjacent grist mill belonging to the A.L.R. Gardner Company on April 4 that year. See R.W. Hobart, above, (p. 43.)

A.L.R. Gardner's store on the Dennys River