Robbins' Mill, Bristol, Maine 71

Robbins' Mill, Bristol, Maine 71

Robbins' Mill, Bristol, Maine. man with a team of oxen pulling a wagon loaded with lumber. Piles of lumber, buildings and a home. Other men working. Robbins Mill, Bristol, Me 71. A team of oxen and wagon have paused in front of the Robbins lumber mill in Bristol Mills. Calvin C. Robbins and his son ran the mill for decades. Lumber stacks lining the road, like those on the left, signaled an active business. Calvin and his wife, Lucinda, also ran a boarding house, one of the first on the Pemaquid Peninsula. From about 1820 through the mid-1800s, Bristol Mills was the local wood capital. Small waterfalls on the Pemaquid River powered sawmills. These produced boards and ship parts for boat builders, clapboards, laths, shingles, boxboards, and other wood products. They also made fish barrels and oil barrels for pogy factories. Pogies, or menhaden, are herring species from which oil was extracted for dressing leather and paint. Calvin C. Robbins invested $4500 in his mill and employed eight men in 1870 to meet the demand for wood for building pogie steamers, processing plants, and oil barrels. The pogy industry went into decline in the late 1870s. However, new hotels and summer cottages provided new markets for the Robbins mill.