Woolen Industry of Sangerville, Maine

By Honorable Angus O. Campbell

Sangerville Mill

At the close of the Civil War, some of the enterprising citizens of Sangerville, seeing that if the town was to be anything more than a cross road, with a blacksmith shop in the corner, formed a mutual company and built a building suitable for a woolen mill. Among those identified with this company were A. T. Wade, Jacob True, O. B. Williams, Moses Carr, Rob't Ordway, Edwin Jewett, Stoughton Newhall, and others which I can't now recall. This building was leased to D. R. Campbell and Wm. Fairgrieve, who took possession in 1868. Mr. Campbell purchased the interest of Mr. Fairgrieve in 1874 and ran this mill successfully until 1889 when he sold to the Carr family, who do business under the name of Sangerville Woolen Co. The original buildings were burned flat in 1891, but with indomitable energy they at once built a new and much better plant which has run continuously with marked success. The present officers are Frank S. Carr, President; Fred H. Carr, Treasurer, and H. M. Carr, General Manager.

The Carleton Mill

In the year 1881, a stock company officered by Moses Carr, President; Abner T. Wade, Treasurer, and O. B. Williams, Agent, built the Carleton Mills, on the original Carleton Mill privilege. This mill ran with variable success until 1910, when it was purchased by the Sangerville Woolen Co., who have since run it as a part of their plant. In the year 1885 the citizens of the town said to D. R. Campbell that if he would build a modern mill on the lower privilege on Carleton stream, they would provide a site and build a dam. They fulfilled their contract, and in 1886 he erected one of the best mills in New England. In 1890 he took in his sons, A. O. and D. O., and the company was known as D. R. Campbell & Sons, until 1900 when a close corporation called the Campbell Mfg. Co. was formed, the officers being D. R. Campbell, President, D. O. Campbell, Treasurer, and Angus O. Campbell, Agent and General Manager, which continued until the death of D. R. Campbell in 1911, when the heirs consolidated with a mill they owned at Dexter and it is now known as the Dumbarton Woolen Mills, the officers being Angus O. Campbell, President, and George Park, Treasurer and General Manager.

The woolen industry has been the means of changing Sangerville from a small rural community to a large, prosperous village, filled with neat homes mostly owned by their occupants. The mills employ about two hundred operatives, and there is disbursed each month in wages the sum of fifty-five hundred dollars. The operatives are happy and contented; there are no labor unions, and there has never been a labor strike.

Source: Sprague's Journal of Maine History, Vol. 2 No. 3, Published by John Francis Sprague, Dover, ME, July 1914