History
Early Settlements in Fairfield Plantation
According to state records, the entire area originally was the Fairfield Plantation. Settlement in the plantation may be said to date back to 1771 when Jonathan Emery built a house on Emery Hill near the banks of the Kennebec River. Other settlers established themselves nearby and a small community began to develop. In 1780, William Kendall purchased the mill of an earlier settler (Jonas Dutton) as well as much of the land in the area. The entire village area came to be known as Kendall's Mills?.
While the Kendall's Mills settlement was developing, a second population center was established. On October 11, 1781, Joseph Dimmock and Joseph Nye (both of Cape Cod in Massachusetts) purchased an 18-square mile tract of land in the Fairfield Plantation. Within a five year period, sixty lots were surveyed and settled. Nearby, a group of Quakers under the Bowerman brothers established a third settlement in North Fairfield in 1782.
On June 18, 1788, Fairfield Plantation was incorporated as the 56th town in Lincoln County in the District of Maine in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A few weeks later the first town meeting was convened in North Fairfield. A union church/meeting house was built in Fairfield Center in 1793-1794 and in 1802 the first permanent meeting house was established there ? because it was the center of the growing settlements. It remained as the town hall until 1875.
Development
With one area of the town being primarily industrial and the other primarily agricultural, it is not surprising that differing priorities led to debates and arguments. The dispute came to a head in 1856 when a town meeting refused to provide increased police and fire protection to Kendall's Mills. On April 7th, Kendall's Mills established its own village corporation (later known as the Fairfield Village Corporation) in order to deal with those issues that were basic to its needs. In 1872 the main post office located in Fairfield Center was relocated to Kendall's Mills (and the original post office was renamed Fairfield Center).
For years the two population centers co-existed, each putting out an annual report and each being an entity of the town of Fairfield. The town meetings in Fairfield Center were concerned with the running of all areas of the town (including Kendall's Mills) while the Village Corporation was pretty much limited to the fire, police, electricity and water of Kendall's Mills.
The Opera House was built in 1888 on the site today occupied by the town offices and the town of Fairfield received a 99-year lien that would allow it to place its municipal offices in Kendall's Mills. Soon afterwards the town meeting was moved from the Center to Andrews Halls although it was not until 1928 that the town government agreed to support fire and police activity in Kendall?s Mills and the Corporation was dissolved.
Fairfield Today
Through the years, the boundaries and size of the town have changed. Land has been offset to Norridgewock and to Bloomfield (Skowhegan) and land has been added from Benton. Today the town covers nearly 55 square miles and includes the geographic areas of Fairfield Center, Fairfield Corners (Nye's Corner), Hinckley (East Fairfield), Larone, North Fairfield, Shawmut, and the downtown area (Kendall's Mills).
Links
- Fairfield Historical Society
- History of Mill Island
- Photo Album (includes Historical Photos)