Goose Eye No. 2 (2022)
The Amazing Early History of the Bethel Steam Mill
Peter R. Stowell
The Backstory
As its life as a spool mill waned following the decline of the wooden spool industry in the late 1970s, the Bethel Steam Mill remained a ghostly gray presence on the river side of the railroad tracks west of Bethel. One hundred years earlier, William E. Skillings began to produce thread spools there.
Mirroring the stacks of spool wood that once lined its mill yard, Skillingston, as the village was called by Bethel residents, was but a store, a boarding house or two, and a cookie-cutter stretch of houses along today’s US Route 2. Skillingston never rested easily as a name. But now, its older name of Steam Mill has risen from history’s ashes to assume its rightful place.
More than two hundred spool mills once existed in Maine, the first near Lewiston in 1848 to the late 1970s when they all had closed. Plastics became the new thread spools, and cheap offshore labor sealed their fates. More than 140 spool mills once operated in Oxford, Franklin, and Androscoggin counties. Only Aroostook, Knox, and Lincoln counties never turned a spool.
Oxford County hosted seventy mills; surprisingly, Bethel once had more than a dozen – five operating simultaneously in 1899. The Bethel mills were operated by (1) Eber Clough, (2) Isaac Morrill, and (3) Eben Richardson on Mill Brook; (4) Isaac Morrill in North Bethel; (5) Alpheus Bean, (6) George Merrill, and (7) Adams & Morrill in West Bethel; (8) William and Julius Skillings in Steam Mill, (9) Parker & Sawyer on Mechanic Street; (10) George Merrill & Nelson Springer, then (11) N. S. Stowell on Railroad Street; (12) Rufus J. Virgin, and (13) Hiram Hodgson in South Bethel. Spool mills plied their wood-turning trade and either thrived, stagnated, or were crowded out through competition. Those that failed to modernize were usually forced out of business.
The Bethel Steam Mill was planned on the coast of Maine but was birthed in turbulence, raised in poverty, and abandoned by its owner. Engineered to run by steam engines with five boilers, it was the first so designed. The Parker and Sawyer mill at Mechanic Street’s intersection with High Street followed years later. This mill originally made windows and doors before converting to spools in 1871.
The mill’s early history has been slow to reveal itself, leading to a skewed narrative that says the mill began in 1863 when entrepreneur David N. Skillings built a state-of-the-art spool mill in December. Skillings’ design made the mill’s spool output the largest of any mill in Maine. Oddly, the story continues, the Skillings mill would sit beside another mill owned by Albert and William Gerrish of Bethel, shown clearly on the 1858 H. E. Walling map of Bethel.
The mill’s history is much richer and filled with grand drama covering several decades. Spurred by the Charter of the Atlantic and Saint Lawrence Railway in 1847, the Bethel mill was constructed, and operated by Charles and William Donnell Crooker of Bath, Maine. Later Portland merchant John Lynch owned it then sold it to a consortium fronted by Portland’s Hezekiah Winslow. Winslow owned it but briefly when the mill became controlled by Portland native David N. Skillings of Boston in late 1872.