Horizons Unlimited: A History of Jay [Maine]

Livermore Falls, Maine: Livermore Falls Trust Company, 1967. Stapled Binding. Very Good. 0x0x0. Wrappers creased and lightly soiled, bookplate on front wrapper verso. 1967 Stapled Binding. 39 pp. Illustrated with black-and-white plates. Jay is a town in Franklin County, Maine, United States. Jay was included in the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine metropolitan New England city and town area. The population was 4,620 at the 2020 United States Census. Jay includes the village of Chisholm. This was once territory of the Anasagunticook (or Androscoggin) Abenaki Indians, whose main village was Rockameko, located on Canton Point. They were decimated by smallpox in 1757. The township was then granted by the Massachusetts General Court to Captain Joseph Phipps and 63 others for their services in the French and Indian War. Called Phipps-Canada, the plantation was not settled until after the Revolutionary War. On February 26, 1795, Phipps-Canada was incorporated as Jay for John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court. Originally in Cumberland County, Jay became part of the formation of Oxford County on March 4, 1805 (affirmed part of Oxford County in 1808), then of Franklin County on May 9, 1838. In 1821, Canton was set off from Jay and incorporated as a town. Farmers found the soil to be loamy and productive, yielding great quantities of hay, corn, wheat, potatoes, oats and apples. In 1793, a tavern was constructed at Jay Hill. On the Androscoggin River near Jay Hill was erected a toll bridge, then in 1839 a sawmill. At North Jay was built a sawmill, brickyard and granite quarry. White granite from the North Jay Granite Company, established in 1884, would be used to construct numerous important buildings throughout the country, including Grant's Tomb. East Jay had a sawmill, and Bean's Corner a carriage factory. In 1857, the Maine Central Railroad reached town. Jay had a population of 1,490 in 1870. The following years would see papermaking develop into the town's predominant industry. In 1888, industrialist Hugh J. Chisholm built at southern Jay the Otis Falls Pulp & Paper Company mill, then the third largest paper mill in the country. Nearby developed the mill town village of Chisholm. In 1898, it became one of the founding mills of International Paper. In 1905, International Paper built a mill on the opposite side of the river, which became known as the Otis mill. The mill was known as James River through the 1980s. In 1998, this mill was sold to Wausau Paper from a group of investors. In 1965, International Paper opened the Androscoggin Mill. It is an integrated pulp and finished paper goods plant, employing 990 people operating five paper machines. In 1987-88, it was site of a major strike by members of the United Paperworkers' International Union against International Paper, which ultimately led to management hiring strikebreakers to permanently replace the strikers. In March 2009, Wausau Paper announced the closing of the Otis mill. Operations there stopped permanently at the end of May 2009.