It was a typical week on the Lincolnville Bulletin Board or LBB. The town-wide Google group, which reaches 595 members, recorded the usual pleas for roof-rakers, dry firewood, rentals, a poem from our resident poet, the Saturday morning menu from a local baker. Via the LBB, woodstoves are sold, crutches borrowed, cats and dogs lost and found, and baby gear passed on.

The idea for the LBB came from a New Hampshire visitor who described a similar online group in her small town. It sounded perfect for Lincolnville, so with a little technical help from a computer savvy guy, the LBB was launched in January 2010. Anyone who either lives in Lincolnville, has a summer home, land or a business here is eligible to join. By the way, if you qualify and would like to join, contact me. 

Joe Mullin’s Child

      One hundred and eleven years ago, Lincolnville was in an interesting position regarding communication between neighbors. Like those in other rural towns, Lincolnville people relied on the mail to converse across the miles with family, friends and business contacts. Yet in neighboring Camden and Belfast, folks could call one another on the telephone. This modern tool was just out of their reach, and that nagged at some forward-thinking men in Lincolnville. They began talking about the possibility of extending a “farmer’s” line up from Camden to the Centre.

     But New England Telephone & Telegraph Company (NET&T) needed a sufficient number of subscribers before they would build such a line, and there weren’t enough willing to sign up. In the end, that was a good thing, for NET&T would have built but a single line from Camden that accommodated only those who lived along it; anyone living off the Camden Road would be left out. As it turned out, one of those was Joe Mullin.

     Joseph Mullin, born on Vinalhaven in 1863, found his way to Lincolnville via Eastern State Normal School, the teachers’ college in Castine, where he met Jennie Lamb from Lincolnville. The two married, but she died just eight months after their marriage. He married her sister, Annie, a few years later, and they lived at Willow Farm on Mullins Bog Road; that house is now gone. Joe Mullin was many things in his long life—school teacher, surveyor, farmer, summer boarding house proprietor, state legislator, justice of the peace, chronicler of Lincolnville life through his poetry—but his most lasting contribution was the founding of the Centre Lincolnville Telephone Company.

     Joe had become convinced that Lincolnville must build its own line, and he set about persuading others to join his cause. Some of those included the storekeeper Nathan Ross, farmer-millman Abraham Lincoln “Linc” Young, Joel Fernald, fellow poet-farmer Arno Knight, John Dean, and mill owner Dave Heal. They worked up a plan to build a mutual neighborhood line with no thought of connecting to the outside world, not even nearby Camden. Each man would subscribe an equal amount—payable in cash, poles or labor. Assessments would be made whenever funds were needed for upkeep. Some 25 people agreed to join.

     But the more they thought about it and discussed it over the winter of 1903-04, the more they realized it would be nice to talk to Camden “in case we should need a doctor, or to inquire the price of eggs or pumpkins,” Joe wrote later, recalling the early days of the Lincolnville Telephone Company. He sought the advice of Maynard Bird of Rockland’s Knox Telephone & Telegraph Company, who said “we were on the right road but facing the wrong way,” pointing out that a mutual assessment company would spell trouble and end in ruin from the start. The only sure way to success, Bird argued, was to incorporate, then sell stock to those who wanted the service. Payment for the stock could be taken in poles, labor or cash.

     Joe and his fellow telephone pioneers took the new proposition, which included a dollar-a-month charge, to townspeople, canvassing them anew. Several who had earlier been on board now turned them down, preferring “to go a while longer on snow shoes rather than pay twelve dollars per year for a telephone.”

     But eventually 18 householders were persuaded, and in March 1904 the Centre Lincolnville Telephone Company was organized and incorporated under General Law with capital stock of $1,500. The first installation included the main line from Camden to Centre Lincolnville with branch lines from the Centre to Hope Corner, to Searsmont Village and to Centre Belmont via Miller’s Corner. Joe noted, “And the child was born.”

     The lines required about 14 miles of pole line, including two and one-half miles of tall line to Camden that was cross-armed to carry two wires. Dave Heal and Linc Young immediately set out into the woods with hand sleds to cut poles, paying the landowners for them with stock in the new company at five dollars per share.

     The frost was barely out of the ground in the spring of 1904 before they were setting the poles; cedar was the preferred pole wood, but they used juniper when cedar wasn’t available. “

Several people who ought to have known better told us it was as good as cedar,” Joe said, but as it turned out, the juniper poles were impenetrable by lineman’s spurs and soon decayed at ground level. “We would not take a pile of them as a gift,” he concluded.

     The wires were run to the cable box of the Camden exchange in July, and by August they’d installed telephones in the homes of the first 18 subscribers, and hooked it all up to a switchboard. They got lucky when they found a place to locate the new switchboard with a person to operate it in the same house. Tamson Scruton, living at 2020 Belfast Road, agreed to become the new company’s operator for 15 percent of its annual earnings, which its founders thought, might add up to $40 or $50 a year. It was presumed that she could tend to what calls came in and out without interfering much with her household work.

     Now that “the child could talk, and talk loud enough to be heard in Boston” it was as important a moment to the people of Lincolnville as “when the island of Nantucket established communication with the mainland.”

     But those initial 18 subscribers kept Tamson so busy at the switchboard, she could barely get to her housework and made less than $10 the first three months. As Joe Mullin was quick to admit years later, “There was no one among us who knew anything about telephones either in a technical or business way, and about all we had for instruction was contained in the advertising circulars we began to receive as soon as we were incorporated.” That included Tamson, who found herself face to face with the Bell switchboard they’d purchased for $50.

     It was equipped with four lines and one cord by which the operator answered incoming calls and then called the desired party. One of the two pairs of connecting cords then hooked the households together. To find out if a connected line was busy, she had to remove one plug and insert hers to inquire. That October, three more customers signed up, with seven more in December and two more in January 1905. “And the child kept growing, and prattled more and more.”

     When the lines were extended and more phones ordered, they added four more lines to the board, each with its own bell.

     “. . . imagine,” wrote Joe, “the jangle and clangor of those eight bells of different tones, and 30 or 40 subscribers on the lines and the operator having only one cord with which to call or answer calls.” Something had to be done. So Joe traveled to Boston and bought a 20-line board “which of course would serve our company for all time.” He then sent the Bell board “to the barn chamber where it has been gathering dust ever since.”

     Tamson Scruton, who knew absolutely nothing about a switchboard or telephone when she began, grew up with the business just like the company’s directors. She worked out of a room off her kitchen, a room with a tin ceiling and a separate entrance. This room truly became “Central”, as it was known in the years to come, and as more women were hired as telephone operators.

     Tamson’s son, Everett, who was as tall and skinny as a telephone pole himself, worked as a lineman for many years. With his toolbelt around his waist and metal cleats on his boots, he’d shinny up the poles with just a leather strap for support. After his marriage in 1911 to May Norton, his new wife gave up her work as a milliner to work the evening shift on the switchboard. Many nights she couldn’t eat supper until eleven o’clock when she went off duty.

     The business end of a running a telephone company was as interesting to Joe Mullin as the nuts and bolts, or rather the poles and wire. The company, which was legally capitalized at $1.500, had paid for poles in $5 shares of stock; the directors set the poles and strung the wire, then paid themselves with stock. They sold stock for cash whenever possible. Most of those who bought it did so more out of a desire to see a telephone company in Lincolnville than as an investment from which they expected to see dividends.

     So, at the end of the first season, when they realized they’d expended $1,300, quite a bit more than what cash they’d received for stock, they had a problem. The directors decided to announce that a five percent dividend would be paid on stock sold, and then they notified the local newspaper correspondent. Word got out that the company would be paying a dividend, and for the moment, their troubles were over. Now, potential investors saw the Centre Lincolnville Telephone Company not as a civic betterment project but as a sound financial investment. That first dividend was paid just six months after the first 18 telephones were installed and was followed up with another dividend every six months.

Joe Mullin wrote, “We firmly believe that it was these early dividends kept us off the rocks of adversity in the ‘Sea of New Experiences.’” By 1917, the company’s subscriber list hovered at nearly 200 households. Since the 1920 census listed just two 205 households in Lincolnville, it’s understandable that Joe could say “...the child has nearly got its growth.”

Read more about Lincolnville during the first half of the Twentieth Century in Staying Put in Lincolnville, Maine 1900-1950 available at Western Auto and at Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs, 217 Beach Road.

When we moved to town in 1970 we were introduced to the novelty of a local phone company; the Lincolnville Telephone Company had its office and switching equipment in a small building on Searsmont Road. If the office wasn’t open, and your bill was due, you could just drop a check through the mail slot in the door. A crew of two guys (I’m remembering Jerry Chalmers and Robert Libby during those years) took care of the lines, fixed your phone if you had a problem, and disconnected you if your bill wasn’t paid. More than once I got a call from Sally Laite, who worked in the office, saying “the boys” were on their way down to shut us off, should she try to stall them? That was my cue to hop in the car and hurry out with a check, all the while hoping we had the funds to cover it. Today, Joe Mullin’s “child” has a new name: Lincolnville Networks, Inc. with subsidiaries including Coastal Telco, Tidewater Telecom, and Lincolnville Communications. Their offices have relocated to Nobleboro; the child has definitely grown up.

The staff at the town office finds the LBB a good way to reach many households with a single email. Dave Kinney, town administrator, sent out this message last week: “The Town … has many volunteer opportunities.  We are in particular need of individuals willing to serve on the Board of Assessment Review.  This Board is convened (rarely but occasionally) to hear a property owner’s appeal for property valuation abatement of a denial by the Board of Assessors.  Although the Board meets very infrequently … it is nonetheless very important to those seeking an appeal of the Board of Assessors decision.... We also have openings on theBoard of Appeals, Comprehensive Plan Review Committee, Conservation Commission, Land Use Committee, Planning Board and Recreation Commission..... remember that you’ll only get out of your community what you are willing to put into it.”

Email Dave tadmin@town.lincolnville.me.us, call 763-3555 or stop by the town office if you’re interested in serving on one of these committees.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that the sidewalks at the Beach are cleared after every storm. Again, through the LBB, we find out who’s behind all this work. Dwight Wass posted this: “A BIG thank goes out to Rob Newcombe and his mighty snowblower.  He has volunteered his time, energy and $$ to clear a maze of walk ways connecting the residences and business along this small Beach community storm after storm this winter.  With out this lifeline, the Beach residents and businesses would have to close and go south for the winter.  Cheers Rob.....”

My Hope friend, Joan Carol Baker, reports the first crocus of the year …. only it’s blooming in Juneau, Alaska! Joan Carol’s granddaughter Kelly called to tell her about it; Juneau has had no snow this year, or at least, very little.

Crocuses seem like a distant dream today. At the moment, Wally’s standing on the snow that’s piled two thirds of the way up our big front windows, whittling them down so we can at least see the bird feeders. We haven’t seen the road or even our own driveway from those windows in weeks. Surely, within the month, the sap will start to run, and fresh maple syrup will be available again. I was picking up milk at Rose Thomas’ Dolce Vita Farm the other day, and there was a pile of Joe Calderwood’s maple sugar candy; unless Joe’s got a completely different climate at his place, this must be from last year. I took some home and crumbled it up on a piece of buttered toast (Rose’s semolina bread) instead of cinnamon sugar. And thought of spring.