Annual Report

Leeds Historical Society

2022 Summary

We are all saddened by the loss of Connie Buckley who was a long time member, exemplary treasurer for many years, and a financial supporter of our efforts. She will be sorely missed. It gave us great pleasure to present her with the Boston Cane before she left us and, in this small way, honor her for all she has given to us and the Town over the years.

Contributions to the Collection and our Efforts:

In addition to the Buckley family, we'd like to thank David Trider, Larry and Vicky Catlett, Jeri and Gary Maurer for their financial support.

We are indebted to Amy Dacyczyn for her exceptional work on scraping, restoring, and repainting the back side of the History Center.

John and Sandy Nutting donated a 1819 framed deed on the transfer of land to Lincoln Curtis and also a copy of the 1950 Angelus, Levitt's yearbook, with early pictures of Nancy Trider and Clinton Waite among others.

Sandy and Harold Bates donated a large file with the Bates family genealogy as well as clippings about Leeds from over the years. They also donated issues of various genealogy magazines, and for our Keene's Corner/Leeds Junction walk lent us a brick typifying those made at the Leeds Junction brickyard in the late 1800's.

Abe and Kathy Additon donated ~100 year old family quilt, a bench that was used at the Grange, and an ornate crib that Abe used when little.

Charlie Barker, instrumental in raising funds for the Monument Hill flagpole in 2009, gave a newspaper article and photos which document it. He also donated Robert Barker's (his brother) ration book from WWII from when Robert was 6 years old.

Shirley Smith donated items of Rev. Wm. T. Pettengill, a Nazarene church minister, who composed music, and we now have copies of some of his original hymns.

Doug Hodgkins donated a postcard of the Quaker Ridge school. It is by far the best photo we have of it in our collection.

Community Programming:

We opened the building from May to October on the 2nd Saturday of each month from 9-11am giving people a chance to come in and see the place, ask questions, or drop off donations. We also invited some people to a coffee and conversation with us on various Saturdays. David Trider, Ray Guest, Larry & Vicki Catlett, Barbara Angell and Jo Dell Brackett all joined us and added to our knowledge about the Town's history. We also opened during the Farmer's market on Friday's 3-6pm during the summer, providing an appreciated place to take a break for vendors and buyers alike. Visitors on those days also made generous contributions.

After at least two years, we sponsored our first in-person program with good turnout in October with Paul Frederic presenting a talk about corn shops. Thanks to Becky Starr for compiling the Leeds corn shop chronology.

We continue our series of well-attended walks in the spring and fall this year around areas of interest in town, such as Keene's Corner, the confluence of the Androscoggin and Dead Rivers, Fish/Lothrop cemetery including the poor farm, Quaker Ridge Quarry, Camp Tekakwitha, and the Indian Carry. Thanks goes mainly to the property owners who generously allowed us access and information and to Amy Dacyczyn and Bud Murphy for their essential input.

We participated in the Break Out community event on June 5th on the school grounds. It turned out to be a real money-maker for us. Thanks to Mary Field for handling our table.

We had quite a showing of people at this year's Veterans Day event – possibly 50! Laura asked a few veterans to join her in reading brief bios of the Howard Brothers as exemplifying Leeds' Civil War involvement. There was participation from some of the school's student council, Girl Scouts, Bill Grant, and Rev. Steve Allman. Next year we will center on WWI veteran's, so if you, or others, could provide bios of them we would be grateful.

The Holiday Open House, Dec 3 was quite a success and we shared the space with Kim Trider-Grant, Larry Acree and Jeri Maurer who sold their own items. Jeri donated the proceeds of what she sold to us. It was nasty weather but, overall, a great festive turnout.

Highlights of other Activities:

We've been fortunate this year to accumulate important information about various historic farms, such as Chapel Hill, Addition and Quaker Ridge, including photos, primary documents and memories.

Since receiving from the Buckley family the Lothrop portraits of Davis Francis and, his wife, Carolyn Morse, we now believe that they were painted around the 1850's with the probable support of Carolyn's brother, Ruggles Sylvester Morse. He built the Victorian Mansion in Portland and, as they are large and professional portraits, the director of the Mansion thought that it's “entirely plausible that Ruggles helped foot the bill for the portraits” and they may have hung there at one time as well.

Eileen Coyne in cooperation with the Wayne Historical Society has on loan the Stillman Lothrop Howard's diaries from the years he lived in Leeds. They reveal much about West Leeds in the mid-1800's and interestingly, they overlap with some years of the John Y. Merrill diaries in our collection.

We were able to view some of Stephen R. Deane's penmanship art work that is owned by Nicholas Wourms, grandson of Stephen, and housed at a friend's place. Quite a masterful work of ink drawings and lettering.

We've reprinted a clearer rendition of the 1858 map and also printed a new 1912 one. Along with the 1873 map, all are available at the Town Office.

We are preparing to put out another in our Anthology series. Any local write ups welcome!

We do appreciate all the support and trust the town continues to show towards our efforts.

Respectfully submitted, Laura Juraska, President