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Stores and Schoolhouse, Somesville, ca. 1900

Contributed by Mount Desert Island Historical Society
MMN Item 78952 Item Details
Stores and Schoolhouse, Somesville, ca. 1900
MMN Item 78952 Zoom

Description

This picture of Main Street in Somesville at the turn of the nineteenth century shows the R.H. Fernald store on the left, a horse-drawn carriage awaits by the front steps.

The center house is described in a note on the back as yellow, and the place where the elementary school met on the second floor, while the post office was on the first floor.

The third house was a milliner's shop run by two women. The last structure on the right is the Selectmen's Building, built in 1780, and the center of town civic life from that time until the second decade of the twentieth century.

The dirt road is augmented by a wooden sidewalk, first constructed in the 1870s through the charitable contributions of the Ladies' Sewing Circle. The sidewalk ran from Babson's Corner (in 2012 the site of the traffic light) to the Mullien Hill Road (now Pretty Marsh Road where the fire station is located).

The handwriting on the back of the photo: "John Somes store, yellow house (in between) first elementary school children met there first floor was post office. (now moved). 3 house - millineary shop run by 2 women."

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