Otisfield's beginnings actually reach back close to a hundred years before George Peirce's arrival. Otisfield became one of many so-called “Canada towns," towns tracing their origin to 1690 when Massachusetts sponsored an unsuccessful military expedition against French-held Canada. In 1736 the Massachusetts General Court had actually granted a township to the heirs and descendants of the military company headed by Captain John Gorham which participated in that expedition. For various reasons that land grant was cancelled and in 1771 superseded by a second grant of land to the heirs of Gorham's Company. Twenty Boston businessmen, most of whom had no connection to the original grantees, acquired rights to the land and became its proprietors. In 1776, presumably to honor Col. James Otis, one of the major property holders, the proprietors voted to name their town Otis Field. At their bidding, George Peirce arrived in Edes Falls (now part of Naples), and set to work establishing the new town. Eighteenth century Otisfield encompassed a much larger area than it does now. Bounded by Raymondtown and Bridgetown, the new town eventually would be the northernmost town in Cumberland County. Its western bound included the eastern half of what is now Harrison. (Harrison was established in 1805 by setting off the land east of Long Lake and west of the Crooked River from Bridgton and Otisfield.) To the southwest the town extended from Edes Fails across the outlet of Long Lake to include much of what is now the village of Naples. (Naples was formed in 1834 from parts of Otisfield, Raymond, Harrison, Sebago, and Bridgton.) George Peirce chose Edes Falls for his foothold in this wilderness first, because of the water power supplied by the falls on the Crooked River, and second, because of the ease of access to more developed towns to the south by way of the Crooked and Songo Rivers and Sebago Lake. One of Peirce's conditions for undertaking this task was the use of the proprietors' boat for ten years. The aim of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in establishing new towns was to expand settlement, thus increasing trade, security, and the wealth of the colony. Therefore the General Court imposed certain conditions on the proprietors. They could not simply strip their land of virgin timber and abandon it. To retain their grant, within six years the proprietors were to settle thirty families, build a meetinghouse, and settle a "Learned Protestant Minister" in town.
The town's second settler, Benjamin Patch, arrived in 1776 from Groton, married George Peirce's daughter Sarah, and soon moved onto Bell Hill, where his son Levi built what is now thought to be Otisfield's oldest house. Despite the outbreak of the American Revolution, more new settlers continued to arrive, principally from Wrentham and Groton, in Massachusetts, and from Gorham and Falmouth in what is today Maine. By 1783 fourteen families had purchased hundred-acre lots from the proprietors, clearing land, building log homes, and producing large families. They were the families headed by George Peirce, Benjamin Patch, Ebenezer Kemp, Joseph Spurr, Daniel Cobb, Samuel and Micah Whitney, Jonathan Moors, David Ray, Mark and Zebulon Knight, Jonathan Britton, Samuel Reed, and David Mayberry.
Edes Falls, with its access to Long Lake and the Songo River and with water power for Peirce's mills, was the first part of the original Otisfield to be settled. From there settlement spread to the north and east. Perhaps because of its longer growing season, Bell Hill was the earliest settled section of present-day Otisfield. Bell Hill, originally known simply as "Otisfield Hill," was also the location for the town's first school district and the first town school, built in 1800. It was also Bell Hill that the proprietors selected as a site for the meetinghouse they commissioned George Peirce to build. That meetinghouse was dedicated on November 7, 1797. The proprietors' gift of half a barrel of New England rum and half a barrel of West Indies rum made the dedication ceremony a bit merrier. Two weeks later eight men and women- one Peirce, three Spurrs, two Hancocks, one Turner, and one Thurston- formally covenanted together to form the Otisfield Congregational Church, with the Rev. Thomas Roby as the first minister.
In 1839 the present Bell Hill Meetinghouse, designed by Nathan Nutting,
Jr., was erected. Through these early years, as the first settlers struggled
to carve their farms from the forests, they looked to the proprietors for
the necessities of a civilized town roads, bridges, schools, churches.
The proprietors, after all, owned the town. The townspeople were increasingly
dissatisfied with a system where decisions were made by absentee landlords
in Boston, where months, often years would pass before their requests were
answered. As the settlers gained control of the land, they also sought
to gain control of its governance. In 1787 the residents successfully petitioned
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to gain the status of plantation.
The first plantation meeting, the precursor of our present-day town meeting,
was held on May 18, at the house of Deacon Stephen Phinney, with David
Ray acting as moderator. Eleven years later, on February 19, 1798, the
General Court of Massachusetts passed an "Act to Incorporate the
Plantation called Otisfield, in the County of Cumberland, into a Town by
the name of Otisfield." With the town's incorporation, the proprietary
role of the Boston businessmen came to an end. The residents of Otisfield
had now to look after their own affairs.
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. J. 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 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 served also 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 corn shop, established in 1890 and operating until about 1925. The corncob 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.
About 1920, at the same time that sawmills and farming were waning, the advent of the automobile helped create new opportunities for profit making- tourism and real estate. A number of children's camps opened on Otisfield's three major lakes: Ohuivo, Wacipi Pines, and Wayaka on Thompson Lake; Great Oaks on Saturday Pond; Powhatan, Truda, and Arcadia on Pleasant Pond. The camps flourished from the 1920s into the 1960s. Most now have been closed and sold off as individual building lots. Arcadia, however, continues to flourish, and Powhatan has gained a new life as the Seeds of Peace Camp. The rapid development of shore property for summer cottages and second homes, begun in the 1920s and 30s, continues unabated today. World War II served as a watershed for Otisfield. During the war many young people from town served in the armed forces, some never to return. Others found work in Maine's booming shipyards.
Since 1945 the town's population has turned around and shown steady growth, rising to 1136 by 1990. Modern roads and automobiles have allowed residents to take advantage of country living while commuting to neighboring towns and cities for work. Otisfield is no longer a farming community; on the other hand, Otisfield has maintained a strong rural character. Since World War II particularly, the town has attracted not just vacationing visitors but individuals and families who enjoy outdoor activities, hunting in the fall, snowmobiling and ice fishing in the winter, and water sports in the summer. As the twentieth century is about to give way to the twenty first, Otisfield is no longer the wilderness that George Peirce found in 1775. Neither is it any more the collection of distinct villages that it was in the last century. Industry has moved out of town, leaving Otisfield without a post office or business center except for the one small year-round store in Bolsters Mills. On the other hand, technological changes and changes in the town's population and economy have tended to unify the town and lend it a single character. Newcomers to the town still remark, with pleasure, about one aspect of Otisfield that has remained the same for two centuries, its form of government. Otisfield citizens still gather together at a town meeting every spring to elect three selectmen and to conduct the town's business, just as they first did in May of 1787.
One recent political change shows how seriously Otisfielders take their political responsibilities. In 1978, led by Albert Willis, the townspeople staged a rebellion possibly inspired by America's revolt from England two centuries before. Otisfield objected to being taxed to pay for Cumberland County's new civic center in Portland. It was, they felt, simply a device on Portland's part to pass the tax burden on to towns which would not benefit. Richard Bean flatly declared, "We will secede." And so they did. Eventually, with the blessing of Oxford County, the Maine legislature passed an act enabling Otisfield to withdraw from Cumberland and join Oxford County. Otisfield's victory was complete.
Doubtless more great events of this kind will occur in the twenty first
century, transforming Otisfield in ways we cannot even guess. Whatever
these changes are, let us hope that the town will always remember its history.
It is Otisfield's past, after all, that is responsible for what it is today-
a small town with pride in its natural surroundings, its relaxed way of
life, and its tradition of independence. George Peirce would approve
of what has become of his wilderness.
Web Page Published 6/17/1999
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