Maine Town Reports: Town Highlights

Litchfield

Litchfield, Maine was originally called Smithfield Plantation, after early settlers named "Smith." In 1795, the plantation was reorganized as a town and the name changed to Litchfield. Between 1817 and 1867, land was set off from Litchfield to the towns of Bowdoinham, Kennebec, Wales, Webster, and West Gardiner.

Litchfield Corner, Maine, ca. 1900
Image courtesy of the Historical Society of Litchfield, Maine

Litchfield is the southernmost town in Kennebec County and is bordered by the Cobbesseeconte Stream. There are several villages in Litchfield, and the northernmost one is known as "Purgatory," despite official attempts to change the name.

The Litchfield town seal shows a piece of "Litchfieldite," a very rare type of igneous rock which is found in Litchfield and was named for the town. Litchfield is also the source for a rare type of blue sodalite, a specimen of which is housed at the Smithsonian Institution, in Washingon, D.C.

Annual reports from the town of Litchfield have been made available online through a special partnership with the Historical Society of Litchfield, Maine. Members of the society scanned printed town reports and converted them to a digital format (PDF), while staff at Fogler Library used OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to make keyword searching of the reports possible. Over 25 years of Litchfield town reports are now available through Fogler Library's online holdings and we hope that this is the first of many such partnerships with local libraries and historical societies.

Litchfield resources:
Historical Society of Litchfield, Maine
History of Litchfield, Maine

Gardiner

Gardiner, Maine was named for Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, a wealthy Boston physician and drug merchant who founded the Gardinerstown Plantation in 1754. At one time, he owned over 100,000 acres of land on the Kennebec River, but he was forced to flee to Nova Scotia and later England because of his loyalist sympathies during the American Revolutionary War.

Free Baptist Church, Gardiner, Maine, ca. 1915
Image courtesy of the Penobscot Marine Museum.

In 1779, the Gardinerstown Plantation was incorporated as the town of Pittston. In 1803, some Pittston land was set off to form the town of Gardiner, which then incorporated as a city in 1849.

The Gardiner city seal shows a town on the banks of a river. As was the case for many New England towns, proximity to a river was vital for industry, both as a power source for mills and as a shipping channel to move goods and supplies. Gardiner is located between two waterways: the Kennebec River and the Cobbesseeconte Stream.

Gardiner is well represented in Fogler Library's online holdings of town reports with over 40 years of digitized reports dating from 1851 to 1901.

Gardiner resources:
Images and artifacts relating to Gardiner, Maine from the Maine Memory Network
The Gardiner Story: 1849-1949
History of Gardiner, Maine