Arranged and described by Brenda Howitson Steeves
Raymond H. Fogler Library Special Collections Department
December 2003
 
 
Introduction and Summary Information
 
Collection Title: Oliver Moulton Papers.
Dates of the Collection: 1857-1887 (inclusive); 1857-1863 (bulk).
Provenance: Unknown.
Collection Number: MS 354.
Box Numbers: 1 (formerly Ledgers M862).
Size and Arrangement: The collection consists of 1 document box.
Preferred Citation: Oliver Moulton Papers, Special Collections, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University of Maine.
Restrictions on Access and Use: Kept at Fogler Library's offsite storage facility. One week's notice required for retrieval.
 

Biography
 
The collection consists of four ledgers belonging to Oliver Moulton, a resident of Pittston, Maine, and owner of several sawmills in the area. Sometime after 1853 he bought a sawmill and its privilege in Chelsea, Maine, and also owned a sawmill in Sidney, Maine. In 1864 he built a sawmill on Togus Stream in Randolph, Maine, which was destroyed by fire ten years later. He then built another mill near the original site; this mill was leased and operated by his sons, Henry and Warren Moulton. Notes in one of the ledgers in the collection indicate that he had men working for him in the woods around Augusta and along the Kennebec River. A letterhead found in the collection shows that in 1886 his business in Randolph was a “manufacturer of all kinds of rough and dressed pine and spruce dimension, frames, timber, deck plank, boards, staves, clapboards, laths, shingles, pickets and hard wood of all kinds.”
 
Scope and Content Note
 
The collection contains financial records of Oliver Moulton’s sawmills. The volumes do not specify which sawmill is included in each individual volume. Volumes give information about lumber sold, surveys done for Moulton, lists of men who worked for him and their wages, items purchased for use in logging camps, and agreements between Moulton and others to cut, haul, and deliver logs from property owned by Moulton.
 
Box List
 
Box 1
 
Folder
 
1 Journal, 1857-1862 and cashbook, 1861
2 Ledger, 1857-1859
3 Loose material from ledger in Folder 2
4 Ledger, 1862-1863
5 Oliver Moulton’s book, 1886 [Ledger, 1886-1887]
6 Loose material from ledger in Folder 5