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    Dennysville Lumber Company Photos

    Photograph
    Workers pose for a picture on the newly rebuilt Dennysville Lumber Company, following a devastating fire in 1907. The young girl in the foreground in Marie Mahar, who happened by just in time, and was invited to joint the picture by her uncle, who is standing bedside her. The smoke stack for the waste burner on the opposite (Edmunds) side of the river is visible in the background. Other photographs record the adjacent mills, boarding houses, stacks of drying lumber, and teamsters preparing to haul the sawn boards to market. When the mill was closed in the 1920's it was purchased by the Higgins Brothers and moved across the road where it served first as a Gulf Oil Distributorship, later a chicken barn, and was remodeled int the 1960's as recreational hall called the EDM--for Edmunds Dennysville and Marion-Youth Center. It was purchased as an art gallery.

    Ambrotype

    Originally built and operated by the Lincoln family in the 1780's, work in the mills came to an abrupt and sudden end in 1928, after they were acquired by Dead River Timberland Company. In 1894, the Lincoln family business was sold to the Dennysville Lumber Company, a consortium of local and area business interests. For the thirty years of their operation, the Dennysville Lumber Company provided employment the year round in their mills and woods camps, and produced a variety of wood products for local and distant markets. During the winter of 1899-1900, for example the Company had twenty-six crews of men and sixty-five horses in the woods in different places. The lath mill was in full operation, employing a number of men and teams who were hauling wood to the mills and laths to the railroad station to be shipped to New York. A four man crew was producing 40,000 laths a day. In 1916, the Dennysville Lumber Company sold all its timberland and mills to the Dead River Timberland Company for $147,500, which was in turn leased to the Eastern Manufacturing company in 1918 for ten years for $1,150 annually. When the lease expired on April 30, 1928, the mill business was terminated. In 1929 the Dead River Company sold to the Higgins Brothers the tan yard lot and tannery building, the box and novelty mill structure, the new office building, and land by the railroad station. The dam was blown and the pond drained in 1930.

    Dennys River Historic PhotographsPhotos for Map

    Bird's eye views of the Dennysville Lumber Company operation on the Dennys River c. 1910
    Lincoln Mills on the Dennys River

    Dennysville Lumber Company, 1907; Dennysville Lumber Company workers pose for a picture beside their new mill building, with young Marie Mahar who happened along just in time.
    View of the Lincoln Mills on the Dennys River, 1880; Mills for long lumber, laths, staves and a machine shop on the far shore testify to the activity of the Lincoln family mills in Dennysville in this photograph by John P. Sheahan of Edmunds, Maine. View of Dennysville Lumber Company Boarding house and mill buildings on the Edmunds side of the Dennys River; Stacks of drying lumber and saw logs surround the boarding house and other buildings belonging to the Dennysville Lumber Company on the Edmunds side of the Dennys River. The Lyons Hills school, Stephen Lyons' and Noah Sylvia houses are visible on the hill behind. Dennysville Lumber Company, Dennysville Maine, c. 1910; Teamsters prepare to haul several heavy loads of sawn boards for the Dennysville Lumber Company. Stacks of drying lumber were a common sight along the banks of the Dennys River during the heyday of the lumber industry. The small square building behind the teams is the Company's office, where records were kept and the men were paid, a reminder of the economic source of the area's stability during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.