[wil-ih-MAN-tik] is a town in Piscataquis County, incorporated as the town of Howard on February 22, 1881 from Howard Plantation. Two years later the name was changed to Willimantic, for the Connecticut town of that name.

The first recorded settlement in T8R8 (now Willimantic) was in 1826, following the purchase of the town from Harvard College by Aquilla Davis. At least 14 families had settled in the western part of the town by the 1850’s.  The first public school was held in a one-room log house in 1856.

Later in the century a granite quarry operated on Davis Mountain and another near Onawa Station and Greenwood Pond. The Howard Slate Company began extensive operations in the northeast corner of town.

There was a sawmill operating at Wilson Stream and one at Greenwood Falls, now Tobey Falls. The falls, located in the western portion of the township, is a series of three falls with a pool below the lower falls.

The Willimantic Thread Company of Connecticut bought land here in 1879 and in 1886 established a mill to create spools. In 1912 the mill was moved to Milo.

Located on the western end of Sebec Lake, the town offers many camping and fishing opportunities. Packard Landing was the location of Packard’s Camps in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Maine Route 150 runs north from Guilford and terminates at the village of Sebec Lake, not to be confused with the town of Sebec at the far eastern end of the Lake.

Form of Government: Town Meeting-Select Board.

Additional resources

Old Sebec Lake. Dover, N.H. Arcadia. c1997. [Maine State Library]

Packard, Marlborough. A History of Packard’s Camps, 1894-1916. Published Privately. 1974. [University of Maine, Raymond H. Fogler Library, Special Collections; Maine State Library]

Willimantic Comprehensive Plan Committee.  Willimantic Comprehensive Plan. April 25, 2006. Submission to the State planning Office. http://region.katahdincommons.com/texts/willimanticcomprehensiveplan.pdf (accessed May 3, 2012)

VanHyning, Conrad. Willimantic, Maine Past and Present. Willimantic, Me. Willimantic Conservation Commission. 1976. [University of Maine, Raymond H. Fogler Library, Special Collections; Maine State Library; University of Maine at Farmington, Mantor Library]

*Hathaway Barn

National Register of Historic Places – Listings

Hathaway Barn

[135 Nortons Corner Road] The very large late 19^th century Hathaway Barn was built as part of a moderate sized family farm. When Hiram V. Hathaway was born to Jabez and Olive Hathaway in 1844 he became about the 30th settler on the then unincorporated lands. In 1857 Jabez joined 10 other families in purchasing homestead lots. Over the next 60 years the family cleared the 140 acre farmstead of rocks and trees and built barns and houses to suit their needs.

Between 1860 and 1870 the value of Jabez S. Hathaway’s estate jumped from a $500 dollar cash value for the farm to $2500. During this decade he added $375 worth of farm machinery and implements, increased the number of his horses from one to five, and doubled the size of his flock of sheep. He cleared 20 additional acres of fields and raised his production of rye by 12 bushels, corn by 35 bushels, and hay by 15 tons, while adding new crops of barley and buckwheat. During these years, he built or enlarged his home for his wife and eight children and worked the land with his sons Hiram and William.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They probably joined forces with their neighbors during harvesting and planting. In both the 1870 Federal population census and the Federal Agricultural Census, the farm is given its highest cash value of the nineteenth century. By 1880, Jabez Hathaway acquired an additional 60 acres of wood lot. Through out the 1890s and early 1900s the Hathaway farm continued to support a moderate flock of sheep, as well as several horses, cows, and steers. They farmed the land on a moderate level, but after the death of Jabez Hathaway in 1893 the workforce on the farm consisted primarily of his son Hiram, who married in 1880.

When they sold the property in 1915, they sold with it the remaining “horses, cattle and swine and hens on said farm, also all the farming tools and farming machinery and all carriages and vehicles except one wheelbarrow, one sleigh, and one handsled.” They also sold the crops, “harvested or unharvested”. Similarly, the fate of the town slowly declined after the turn of the century; the only sawmill closed in 1902 and the population started to migrate in search of employment. The existing Hathaway farmstead has been considerably reduced in size and the Greek Revival house, with connected ell and former small barn, has been modified extensively. The Hathaway barn remains as a testament to the scale of the possibilities that the farmer settlers hoped to attain in this wild, open land. While only small scale farming continues in Willimantic, Hathaway Barn stands as a witness to the optimism of a late 19th-century farm family in the North woods of Maine.* [Christi A. Mitchell photos, 2003]

 

 

Norton Corner School House

The Norton’s Corner School House has been part of the history of the town of Willimantic as one of the first public buildings in town. Built to serve School District #2, the Norton’s Corner School is one of only two existing one-room school houses in this remote Piscataquis County community of just over 150 people. Probably built about 1882, this was most likely the second building to be erected as a school in the town, and it was used continually for that purpose until 1965. Eleven years after classes had been moved out of the building the Willimantic Civic association installed book shelves and began using the building as a library during the summer months.

The Norton’s Corner School is significant for its association with patterns of rural schooling in 19th- and twentieth-century Maine, and as a good example of a type of educational facility that was once common throughout the state. Its historic period begins in 1882 and ends in 1965, when the last classes were held in the school.