Lowell

[LOW-ehl] is a town in Penobscot County, incorporated on February 9, 1837 under the exotic name of Huntressville from the former township of T1 R1 NBPP. The current name was established the following year.

First settled in 1819, the area was known as Pages Mills, then Deanfield in honor of two esteemed residents: school teacher Mary C. Dean and Rev. Pindar Field. The final name, according to some, was given for Lowell Hayden, the son of Alpheus Hayden, one of the original settlers.

In 1841 Lowell annexed Pages Mills Plantation and then some land from Passadumkeag in 1842. It conceded some land to Burlington in 1847 to end its boundary changes. In 1856 a tannery was built on Tannery Road in East Lowell.  The Grange was organized in 1877.

Here’s a little mystery.  Enlarge the Grange Hall image (click on it as with most other images). You see the sign “Eskutarsis Grange,” spelled as is the local road. The stream is locally named Eskutarsis. However the State of Maine government, Google maps, and Delorme all spell the place names “Eskustassis.”

The relatively new town office and community center is in East Lowell on Route 188 near Vinegar Hill Road. East Lowell village is centered at the intersection of Eskutarsis Road, Tannery Road and Route 188, known as West Main Road and East Main Road.

Just east of Enfield, on Maine Route 188, the town has frontage on Cold Stream Pond and on Eskutarsis Pond.  The latter pond has a broad outlet and a stream near East Lowell village.  Mill Stream once hosted a grist mill and a piece of its machinery sits on the bank near East Main Road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lowell has been a high growth town, adding to its population at an average rate of 24% in each census since 1970, even though it is not close to an urban center. There is little development in the western, marshy portion. Lowell village, on the Passadumkeag River, is in the southeast, with East Lowell just a few miles north.

Additional sources

Chadbourne, Ava Harriet. Maine Place Names and The Peopling of its Towns.

Austin, Isaac. Account Book, 1826-1878. A volume used by Isaac Austin to record information about his work, mostly as a farm laborer, and the use of his horses and oxen. Entries in the volume are headed Windsor, Hartland, Bridgewater, and Lowell, Maine. The book was also used from 1874 to 1878 by N. I. Austin to record his time working on roads, shoveling, hauling shingles, threshing, etc. [University of Maine, Fogler Library, Special Collections.]

[Lowell, Maine, Centennial Celebration, September 4, 1937] 1937. (Cataloger Note: Photocopy of mounted newspaper clipings from the Bangor news and the Bangor commercial, September 2-7, 1937.)

Porter, Wayne S. A History of Lowell, Penobscot County, Maine. Brewer, Me. L. H. Thompson. 1993.