From A Short History of Otisfield
By Jean & David Hankins
During the first decades of the nineteenth century, when transportation moved no faster than a horse could walk, when communication was either by word of mouth or a note delivered across town by a friend or neighbor, Otisfield’s wilderness evolved into an agricultural society centered around a number of small villages, each clustered around a store or a mill, a school, a blacksmith shop, or a church. Each village by modern standards was relatively isolated from the others; each had its own particular character. Otisfield’s population increased rapidly after 1800. Soon the communities already established at Edes Falls and on Bell Hill were supplemented by such settlements as Jugtown, Wardwellville, Hancockville, Dunkertown, and Swampville. Though these names are not often used today, during most of Otisfield’s history they denoted separate villages. Today a few of these places retain their nineteenth century names and vestiges of that village character.
Spurrs’s Corner was named for one of Otisfield’s first settlers, Enoch Spurr, a Revolutionary War veteran and the first town clerk. Perhaps because of its good road access to Edes Falls, the village developed into a town center. Otisfield’s second school district included Spurr’s Corner. A general store opened by 1838. In the 1850s the Spurr family was operating a nearby shingle mill. During the Civil War, a clothing manufacturing business was established, and a large tin shop was set up in 1868. Although these early mills and factories were gone by 1900, as late as the 1950s Glenn C. Henry, an inventor and engineer, sometimes called “the folding man,” ran a small shop which produced collapsible record albums, notebooks, and even folding boats. In 1887, as the town’s population shifted away from Bell Hill, the Congregationalists moved their regular services from the Bell Hill meetinghouse into a church built in 1871 at Spurr’s Corner. The Otisfield Grange was first organized here in 1875 with forty charter members and E. Sylvester as first master. This Grange closed in 1959.
East Otisfield. In the eastern part of town the Sucker Brook flows from the outlet of Saturday Pond to Thompson Lake. Along its course two important mill sites developed, and two villages sprang up, known as Rayville and Pugleyville.
In 1783 David Ray moved his family by ox sled from road’s end at the Patch house on Bell Hill through the woods to the outlet of Saturday Pond. There he built the first grist mill and sawmill within the bounds of present day Otisfield. The cluster of dwellings, school, and church that grew up around the mills came to be known as Rayville. Ray was one of early Otisfield’s most important citizens. He was the town’s first physician. He opened his own school some years before the first town school was built on Bell Hill. He was also elected moderator for the first town meeting. After the Civil War Joseph W. Holden rebuilt Ray’s mill and operated it until 1890. David Ray’s house and the remains of the granite dam that once powered his mills still stand in Rayville.
Another important part of Rayville was its early church. In 1829 the town’s Baptists and Methodists jointly constructed a Union Church, the same church that now serves as the East Otisfield Free Baptist Church.
Probably the best known citizen of Rayville is Joseph W. Holden (1815-1900), mill owner and later prominent member of the Flat Earth Society. Because Joe Holden willed a small sum in support of a Sunday School picnic, East Otisfield still celebrates a Joe Holden Day each summer, honoring “the old astronomer” who, as the inscription of his gravestone tells, “discovered that the Earth is flat and stationary, and that the sun and moon do move.” In 1977, Otisfield native William Spurr also left money for the picnic. Spurr’s bequest stipulated that strawberry ice cream must be served.
The origin of the name “Pugleyville” is uncertain. Historian William Spurr’s explanation is that “puggling around,” meaning fussing around, was the favorite expression of one village lady named Mrs. Samuel Edgley. Another theory is that the village was named for an early family named Pugley. Like the other town centers, Pugleyville had a number of early industries. Until 1846 George W. Barrows operated a tannery and made shoes and boots there. The mills built in 1812 by Timothy Fernald on Sucker Brook near Thompson Pond were operated by a succession of individuals, the last of whom were the Kemp Brothers, who closed down in the 1930s. Early in the twentieth century, Harry M. Stone operated a small shop in Pugleyville for canning apples, vegetables, and jellies. Since 1865, at least, when Zachariah Wardwell opened his store, the village had a retail store. In the twentieth century a number of individuals owned and operated the East Otisfield General Store, including Ellis R. Stone, Chester Lamb, and David Bean. After the store finally closed about 1960, the building was torn down.
Through the nineteenth century Rayville and Pugleyville each had a one room school. In fact, the school system, based on the premise that children could walk as much as a mile and a half to school, at one time included fourteen school districts, each with a one room school. Once automobiles became established, the district school system ended. Otisfield’s first consolidated school was opened in 1950 in East Otisfield, after the economically minded townspeople moved the old Spurr’s Corner schoolhouse north a few miles and joined it to the one room school in East Otisfield. The last step in the consolidation process was the opening in 1990 of the Otisfield Community School, serving grades K-6, on the Powhatan Road. In 1992 the building in East Otisfield which had served as the town’s elementary school for over forty years became the Otisfield Town Office. Since 1966 Otisfield has been part of School Administrative District 17, along with seven other towns, and students in grades 7—12 attend the Oxford Hills Middle and Senior High Schools.
Bolsters Mills, first known as Pinhook, was named for Isaac Bolster (1769-1835). Although originally Otisfield’s boundaries included both sides of the Crooked River, in 1805 the river became the line between Otisfield and the new town of Harrison. Today Bolsters Mills remains a distinct village within the two towns, with its own traditions, such as a Bolsters Mills Day, which ignore town boundaries. It is also a matter of local pride that Bolsters Mills has recorded some of the lowest daily temperatures in Maine, on occasion even in the United States. But its first settlers were doubtless drawn by the possibilities of water power. Over the years, seven mills were built here. In 1819 Isaac Bolster built a dam, saw mill, and gristmill on the east side of the Crooked River.William Bolster later built a fulling mill on the Harrison side of the river, where later a district school, Methodist Church, Grange hall, and public library were also located. About 1920 Fred Clark closed down the last mill in the village.
Isaac Bolster, Jr., built a general store on the Otisfield side of the river in 1821. The store, which once also served as post office, has been in continuous operation ever since, operated in the twentieth century by (among others) Lawrence and Rose Spiller, Albert and Nellie Hamlin, James and Judy Colburn, and David Dale. In 1997 it was the only store in Otisfield open year-round.
South Otisfield which includes the Mayberry Ridge overlooking Pleasant Pond, was once called Dunkertown, perhaps a corruption of “Donkeytown.” Today it is a residential area which, except for its cemetery, bears few obvious signs of its industrial past. But about 1900, in addition to its school and Baptist church, Dunkertown featured Forrest Edwards’ apple orchard and Ephraim B. Jillson’s cornshop, established in 1890 and operating until about 1925. The cornshop probably constituted Otisfield’s largest commercial business.
The Gore began its history as Phillips Gore, named for Samuel Phillips, an early owner of the land. It began its existence as a rectangle of unincorporated territory that fell between the surveyed boundaries of adjacent towns, in this case between Otisfield and Oxford. Otisfield annexed the Gore in 1803. The area was settled early and was distinguished by a number of large farms, including those belonging to the Sawyer, Lombard and moving into the twentieth century, the Linnell, Brett, and Thomas families. The Frederick Robie Grange, organized in 1890, served as a social center for the Gore until it merged with Oxford in 1997. The Gore school, because of its distance from the Otisfield Central School, continued in use well after the closing of the town’s other one-room schools.