Birds Eye View of Rumford Ctr, Me. 51.

LB2007.1.111496

111496

[included in the exhibit "Maine Agriculture: Views from the Past"] Bird's Eye View of Rumford Ctr., ME Oxford County The corn factory is in the foreground; the Androscoggin River is at right. Rumford Center and Rumford Point, western districts of the town of Rumford, feature prime intervale farmland, which the early settlers-most of whom came from Concord, New Hampshire-divided amongst themselves by drawing lots. Three ferries connected the two halves of the town-three of but many on the river and elsewhere in the state. River ferries generally ran on a cable, employing the current to help propel them. River towns were prone to more than just the normal political factionalism between villagers and farmers. Well-endowed intervale farmers, and the often-hardscrabble hill farmers, whose pastures were so bony that it was said that the sheeps' noses had to be filed to graze between the rocks, were not always in concert. Politics were further complicated If a town was divided by a river, since there were times of the year-particularly town meeting time in March-when the river could not be crossed due to freshet or unsafe ice and ferries would not be running. This situation gave voters living on the same side as the town hall an advantage and was a factor in the separation of Livermore Falls from the town of Livermore, an Androscoggin valley town below Rumford. --Willaim H. Bunting