HARTLAND:  Extracts from Maine Histories Written by School Children
Sprague's Journal of Maine History 
Volume 9, April, May, June, 1921 No. 2
Page 89

No study is more enticing than the achievements of men and 
the study becomes doubly interesting when it has to do with the 
beginnings of things with which we are now perfectly familiar.
Many of the schools of our state, from the little country school
on the hillside to the girls in our state normal schools, are
doing research work in local history and are producing some very fine
stories of the beginnings of their town.  Miss Nellie Jordan,
with her class in the Aroostook State Normal School, produced some 
wonderful books, each student taking for her own work her local
town.  In some instances, the book compiled is a community
affair, each child contributing some fact or some paragraph or 
some source material from which the paragraph is written.  I hope
the work may be carried on in future years.  Teachers who have
not begun it will find explicit directions in our little
booklet, "One Hundred Years of Statehood and One Hundred Leading Facts of 
Maine."

I am giving herewith some of the paragraphs culled from the 
books sent in to the office by schools throughout the state.  It 
will be noted that these paragraphs are finished exercises in
English and show a very nice discrimination of leading facts.  It is
really worth something to the child or even to a high school stu-
dent to make some original investigation from the sources of 
information, collect that data around a central idea and write it
up definitely and purposefully.  I am pleased to call the atten-
tion of the teachers of the state to the following very fine
paragraphs or extracts from Maine books.

HARTLAND
(By Gertrude Davis)

"Perhaps one of the most important and interesting of the 
early settlers was William Moore.  He erected a log house not
far from where the offices of the American Woolen Co. stand at
present.  Mr. Moore built a saw mill which soon became a very
busy place, as there was no other for several miles from there.
It is related that the original mill was built entirely of wood,
everything being made of wood but the saw.  The first dam
he built of logs and it was not far from the dam owned by the 
American Woolen Co. at present.  It is said that so little dis-
turbed was the wilderness by the encroachments of the settlers,
that at time Mr. Moore allowed the machinery in his mill to 
run all night in order that it might frighten away the bears and
other forest prowlers."

(c) 1998

Courtesy of the Androscoggin Historical Society
<http://www.rootsweb.com/~meandrhs>  

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