Stevens Store, Portage, Maine A353

Stevens Store, Portage, Maine A353

Stevens General Store at Portage, Maine. Portage is located west of Presque Isle and Caribou in Aroostook County, Maine. Signs advertise Swans Down Cake Flour, Dixie Peanut Butter, Robin Hood Flour and Libby's Bartlett Pears. At the right of the store is a 1940 Buick Super Eight parked in front of a barn and at the left of the store is a covered outside stairway leading to the upper floors. Will Ross was the original owner of the Stevens' brothers' store. A store ledger, dated 1878, listed Newcomb W. Stevens as the proprietor. Will Ross had many other interests, so he sold the store to [brothers-in-law] Ray and Harold Stevens around 1914. Harold did not like the store, so Ray bought him out. At that time it took two or three people to run the business. Ray moved his family upstairs over the store in 1918. Everything came by freight and had to be hauled from the train station. The mail had to come by train, too. Sugar came in 100-pound bags and had to be [put] up at the store. Molasses and vinegar came in barrels; cookies came in boxes. The storekeeper put all these up by pounds. Until the last few years, the store and home were heated with wood. All the wood had to be split and put in the cellar. IN the store, Ray sold everything anyone would need: clothes, shoes, building supplies, medicines, household needs, and food. Local farmers supplied milk and vegetables in season. Portage Lake was a thriving community, with three sawmills and a few farmers who sold oats and hay to the woods workers. When you bought something in the store and charged it, the information was written on a slip. Many people came in at the end of the month and paid their bills, but many didn't. https://www.townofportage.org/images/Historical_Society/newsletters/Vol-1-issue-2.pdf