[ACCOUNT BOOK] Timber Mill Account Book

Bucksport, Maine, 1836-1866. Hardcover. Marbled paper boards, calf spine. Good. 177 pages, with 54 pages utilized. This volume offers a window into the daily and season operations of a mid-19th-century timber mill. The proprietor(s) record work involving spruce, hemlock, pine, and both "soft" and "hard" woods over the years. Timber frequently serves as currency, exchanged for supplies or labor. Entries note the boarding of workers and animals, as well as barters for pork, potatoes, butter, molasses, smoked and dried fish, flour and beans. Additional exchanges include shoe mending and log rafting. Local men mentioned include John and Charles Harriman, Ebenezer Grant, Isaac Eldridge, James Pinkham, Benjamin Snow, William, George, and Sam Page, Daniel Page, Silas Quimby, and others. At least two distinct hands appear in the entries.

In the early 1800s Bucksport was a small Penobscot River town whose economy and daily life revolved around water-powered mills, river trade, and supporting crafts and services that grew up around them. Buckstown was incorporated in 1792; the name changed to Bucksport in 1817. Col Jonathan Buck had earlier built a sawmill on Mill River, the small stream that runs through the village, establishing milling as the economic anchor even before the Revolution. Lumber went into local house and barn building and coastal shipyards, but also into the coastal trade via the Penobscot River, which functioned as the mill's export route. Mill hands and owner-operators worked daylight hours when water flow allowed, adjusting to spring freshets and summer low water. Men combined mill work seasonally with farming, logging upriver in winter, and occasional coastal voyages. The mill site was a local gathering point: farmers brought logs or grain, exchanged news, and negotiated small credits or in-kind payments with the mill owner, whose position in town politics and church life was correspondingly prominent. Covers heavily rubbed, rear hinge weak but holding. Interior toned and foxed.