[SUM-ner] is a town in Oxford County, settled in 1782 by Revolutionary War veterans from Massachusetts.

It was incorporated on June 13, 1798 from West Butterfield Plantation.

Sumner annexed land from Plantation Number 2 (1838) and from Franklin Plantation (1844, 1863), and ceded land to Buckfield in 1856.

It received its name in honor of Massachusetts Governor Increase Sumner.

U.S. Representative Samuel F. Hersey was born here in 1812. He served in the Maine legislature in the mid-19th century, and in the U.S. Congress in the 1870’s.

The coming of railroads in the 19th century encouraged agricultural production of corn, cream, and apples.

The new paper mill in Rumford required pulpwood from Sumner’s forests.

In the 1880’s, it had the usual modest manufactures: sawmills, grist mills, shingle mills.  It also had a population, in 1880, of 1,014 and supported sixteen public schoolhouses.

After booming for decades, the town was crippled by the Great Depression and eventually by the loss of the railroad in 1952. However,beginning in the 1960s, Sumner’s population rebounded, almost doubling its historic low by 2010.

A survey of the town’s historical resources identified the following: The Increase Robinson Library in East Sumner Village; two of the old schoolhouses; sites of other schoolhouses; and early farms and farm buildings.

The relatively obscure Nezinscot River (east and west branches) flows through the town, joining at Buckfield to the south.

From Buckfield to Turner, the river is a corridor for canoe trips, with a portage at Turner Village.

East-west Maine Route 219 serves Pleasant Pond and the villages of West Sumner and East Sumner on its way from West Paris to North Turner.

Form of Government:
Town Meeting-Select Board.

Additional resources

*Maine. Historic Preservation Commission. Augusta, Me.   Text and photos from National Register of Historic Places: http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/nrhp/text/02000850.PDF and http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/nrhp/photos/02000850.PDF

Healy, George R. Sumner 200: Portrait of a Small Maine Town. Sumner, Me. The Town of Sumner. 1998.

Sumner (Me.) Centennial History of the Town of Sumner, Me. 1798-1898. West Sumner, Me. C. E. Handy, Jr. 1899. [University of Maine, Raymond H. Fogler Library, Special Collections; Bangor Public Library; Maine State Library]

National Register of Historic Places – Listings

First Universalist Society of West Sumner

[1114 Main Street] The 1867 First Universalist Society of West Sumner Church sits on a high ridge just northwest of West Sumner center. To the west, small homes and farms stretch along the state road toward Pleasant Pond. Down the hill to the southeast are nestled several dozen homes and the former 1858 West Sumner Baptist Church. The Town of Sumner is overwhelming rural, and consists of several small settlements that historically supported their own churches, post offices and schools. West Sumner has a small population; other than the Universalist church and the Grange Hall, it no longer contains the stores and business that once defined it as “the Hub” of town through the in the mid-19th century.

The First Universalist Society Church is an example of a post Civil War church that has been kept in good condition. The Society was established in 1829. For nearly the next four decades the congregation met in the town house, the school houses, or the homes of its members. When the church started planning for the construction of its meeting house in 1867, the town was undergoing several changes. Greater than fifty percent of Sumner’s male residents served in the Civil War. Church members came home from the War inspired to build this church. Construction occurred over three months in the summer of 1867. In the next few years the interior was furnished, pews were built and sold to members of the congregation. Other amenities were added later.

The history of the religious community in Sumner differs slightly from many of Maine’s post Revolutionary settlements. As with other towns, the initial plotting of town lots reserved lands for use by churches. However, divisions between the Congregationalists and the Baptists in Sumner led the town’s authorities to the solomon-like decision that the land grant for church support revert to a permanent ministerial fund to be divided between all active religious societies, according to a formula essentially based on membership numbers.

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By 1828 this included the Universalists. In West Sumner the Baptist Congregation was the strongest, claiming a higher percentage of local families as members than did the Universalists, thus receiving a greater percentage of the church funds. However, the building the Baptists built in 1858 is no longer associated with the denomination and is privately owned. The Universalist Society supplemented their town funds and small member pledges by renting their Washington Hall to community groups. In the 1870s a high school was held in the hall, as were meetings of the Temperance Society and Ladies Aid Society. In 1913 a kitchen was added, enabling the Pleasant Pond Grange # 351 to use the room between 1915 and 1921. The room has been moderately updated with the addition of electricity in 1955, water in 1965, new windows in the 1970s, and a bathroom and gas furnace in the 1990s.

As the only remaining hall in town, it continues to be the site of benefit dinners, family reunions and club meetings. The sanctuary is almost unchanged from its original appearance. The floral pattern carpet was replaced in 1976, and the original pew cushions are long gone, but the rest of the interior is original, down to the kerosene chandeliers, evoking the same sentiments of community and piety that the returning war veterans were seeking.* [Christi A. Mitchell photos, 2002]