Medford

[MED-frd] is a town in Piscataquis County, first settled in 1808, incorporated under the name Kilmarnock on January 31, 1824 from township T2 R7 NWP. The name was changed to Medford in 1856.

During the Depression from 1939 through 1945 the town deorganized, then organized briefly as a plantation, then deorganized again.

In 1957 it reincorporated as a town and remains one today.

Medford Center village is the site of the very modest town office, the park with the veterans memorial, and a small church.

Cold Stream, which runs through the village, provided power for a grist mill in the nineteenth century.

 

 

 

 

 

As the Gazetteer of Maine noted in 1886,

Where the Schoodic Stream falls into the Piscataquis, General [J. P.] Boyd, in 1820, erected the largest saw-mill then upon the Penobscot or any of its branches. In 1832 it was taken down, and another was built, and taken down; but still another was erected on this site. In 1835 a saw and grist-mill were built on Cold Brook [now Cold Stream], which flows into the Piscataquis from the south, and around this the village of Medford has sprung up.

Medford village lies just east of Milo on the Piscataquis River, which winds west to east splitting the town in two sections: north and south. The larger village, Medford Center, is on the south side of the river.

Form of Government: Town Meeting-Select Board.

Additional resources

Clement & Son (Milo, Me.) Photos of Construction Work: B. & A. R.R. 1907. 1907. (Cataloger Note: Photographs mounted in an album showing construction done in 1907 on the “Medford cutoff” of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad in the vicinity of Lagrange and Medford, Maine. Accompanied by a booklet entitled “The Medford Cutoff,” written by G. Vincent Cuozzo, the donor of the collection. Cuozzo’s father, George Cuozzo, worked on the construction project and supplied laborers for it.) [University of Maine, Raymond H. Fogler Library, Special Collections]

Cold Brook Grange No. 436 (Medford, Me.). Medford notes 1808-1958. Prepared by the Grange as part of the sesquicentennial program in observance of the coming of the first white settlers in 1808. Medford, Me. The Grange. 1958.

History of Cold Brook Grange. 1976. [Maine State Library]

Merrill, Walter Scott. A Power Development on the Piscataquis River at Medford, Maine. 1910. (Thesis (B.S.) in Civil Engineering–University of Maine, 1910) [University of Maine, Raymond H. Fogler Library, Special Collections]

Sawtell, William R. Medford Revisited. Dover-Foxcroft, Me. Printed at D & B Printing Services. 1996.

Varney, George J. A Gazetteer of the State of Maine. 1886. p. 359-360.

National Register of Historic Places – Listings

Little Schoodic Stream Archeological Site (107-4), Address Restricted