This broad view from the Monaghan Hill on Canal Road looks south across the Machias River. The wooden structure is the remnants of the dam that supplied power to the original Sullivan lumber mill, which burned in the 1890s. Grant’s house, on the riverbank on the right, was torn down about 1935 so Lester Crane could build a sawmill.
Three of the houses to the left of Grant’s are now gone, but the property to the left of the trees was made into a warehouse for St. Regis Paper Company and still stands. The next two houses are gone. At the curve in the road, before the Congregational Church, is the Whitneyville Town Hall, which was torn down in the 1980s.
On December 7, 1836 area clergymen held a meeting to establish a church in Whitneyville. The townsfolk were tired of walking to Machias, four miles away. Meetings were held in private homes until 1841, when the schoolhouse was utilized as a meeting place. In 1869 construction of a church building was started on the site of William Palmer’s store. The Saxby Gale of 1869 demolished the incomplete building. Work resumed, however, and the church was completed in 1875.
Caption written by Judy Spencer and Roger Huntley