Staff Writer
In 1844, Samuel W. Collins located his business in Caribou with Washington A. Vaughan, the two entering a joint lumber venture together.
1994: A ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday, August 17 kicked off a week of specially planned activities to celebrate the S.W. Collins Company’s 150th year of the family lumber business and of their settlement in Caribou this week. The Collins family had planned several activities from Aug. 15-20 including a “Kids Day,” “Contractors Day,” a “Do It Yourself Day,” a visit to the Caribou Historical Society, Collins family reunion and a five-kilometer road race. Present for the ceremony were, from left, front row: Tess Collins, Donald Collins, Laura Collins, Sam Collins, Gregg Collins, Emily Collins, Lori Collins, Annie Collins, Catherine Collins, Lise Collins and Brenda Libby, executive director of the Caribou Chamber of Commerce. Back row: city councilors Verne McKenney and Philip Bennett, Carolyn Doresy, executive director of the Caribou Development Corp.: Mayor Robert McMahan, John Weeks, chamber president, and City Manager Richard Mattila.
During the time when the business was emerging, Caribou had few settlers; Wilslow Hall, Hiram Hall, Ivory Hardison and a Mr. Parsons had arrived a year before the entrepenures, and there were only one or two other settlers in the area, one living where the bridge crossed the Aroostook River.
Collins and Vaughan built a lumber mill on the Caribou Stream, building also a gristmill shortly thereafter. The pair generated a large amount of business for the settlement, employing quite a few hands in the woods and around their mills.
Other settlers soon joined the growing community, including George and Cephas Sampson and David F. Adams.
During this time, Caribou was entirely forest devoid of roads; the river acted as the only highway and log canoes were the primary means of transportation.
Collins, born in Bangor on Sept. 6, 1811, was raised and educated in Calais public schools. He left his home at 18 to work in a sawmill.
Vaughan was born on Sept 21, 1806 in Burlington, Vermont. As a child, he moved with his family to Brookfield, Mass. He became one of the first citizens of The County, he first arrived by bateau, working his way to the headwaters of the Penobscot River carrying over to the waters of the Aroostook with four others.
Vaughan and the four other travelers ventured along the Aroostook River until they came to Presque Isle, where Vaughan formed a partnership with D. Fairbanks and built the first saw and grist mills in the area, which are speculated to be the first mills built on the Aroostook River.
After roughly nine years in Presque Isle, Vaughan moved to New Brunswick, staying there until the spring of 1884 when he returned to Aroostook County with Collins.
Collins and Vaughan spent the summer of 1844 building a gristmill on the Caribou Stream, and built a sawmill the following year in 1845. The partnership between Collins and Vaughan lasted 14 years until Vaughan withdrew from the firm while retaining some of his mill property.
With very little in the area in 1844, supplies for the settlers and lumber camps had to be brought in 160 miles from Bangor. An arrangement a few years later allowed for supplies to be placed in bond and brought first to Woodstock, N.B. and then over land to reach Caribou.
Collins married Dorcas S. Hardison, the oldest daughter of Ivory Hardison; their wedding was the first for Caribou, known then as Lyndon. The couple had 13 children, only five of which survived the harsh times to reach maturity.
Vaughan, the town’s first postmaster, married Lydia Bickford. The two had three daughters before Lydia died on Feb. 17, 1864. Vaughan married Mrs. Lizzie Carleton two years later.
The firm of Collins and Vaughan prospered through their unique partnership, never keeping a set of books or writing a memorandum designating the division of work, property or profits.
When Vaughan decided to leave the lumber business as he grew older, he decided to invest his accumulated capital at 12 percent; the two partners sat down to divide their property in 1857 without the aid of lawyers or legal documents.
Contributed photo
S.W. Collins, founder of the oldest lumber company in the region, settled in Caribou around 1844. His great-great-grandson Samuel W. Collins currently runs the lumber company.
They arranged for Vaughan to take much land south of the Caribou stream and their lot north of the stream, where he build the Vaughan House in 1860 which flourished into a historic landmark.
Collins, who decidedly received the sawmill and the bulk of the land on the northern side of the Caribou Stream in their arrangement that effectively dissolved partnership in 1857. Collins carried a large business by himself until 1876.
From 1876 until 1882, Collins was joined in his business endeavors by Charles W. Porter, his son-in-law. From then, Collins organized a new firm titled S.W. Collins and Son; partners of this enterprise included Charles E. Oak, his son-in-law, and his youngest son, Herschel D. Collins.
Times were tough for all early Caribou settlers and despite his financial success, Collins was no stranger to hardship, dealing with burning mills, ‘normal’ job hazards, and dishonest businessmen.
Despite the challenges he faced, Collins helped settlers root in the area, giving them credit freely and proving himself to be a lax creditor; one man conducted a winter lumber operation for Collins came out of the woods in the spring owing Collins $2,000. While Collins was known to be a poor collector of debts due to him, extraordinary circumstances convinced Collins that the debt should be paid, and he began legal action against the fellow. When Collins went to court and found that the indebted was a poverty-stricken old man wearing a battered hat, he told his lawyer, “Dismiss the case; buy the fellow a new hat and send him home.”
When Collins died, Herschel (one of his partners) became the head of the firm. Herschel had been born in 1860 in Caribou, and conducted lumbering operations and mills in Maine and New Brunswick. Contracting and producing numerous ties for the Bangor and Aroostook and Canadian and Pacific railroads, he also operated the gristmill and general store started by his father for many years. Seemingly a jack of all trades, Herschel took on the first Ford agency in Caribou, though he left that business in 1918, concentration again on the lumber business for the following two decades.
Herschel married Freda Files, daughter of Even and Mary Files. Herschel and Freda had five children, Mary, Maud, Clara, Samuel and Ida.
Herschel was early chief of the fire department, as civic activities were an important part of his life. Even after his reign as chief ended, he outfitted the department with some of their first motor equipment.
At 77, he died on Dec. 30 1936 after he fell on ice, breaking his hip.
To the joy of most parents, Herschel had witnessed the successes of his children; Mary, the eldest daughter, had been the bookkeeper of the business and later became treasurer of Collins Lumber Co., where she worked for 34 years. Born in 1896, Samuel was head of the company, having joined his father in the lumber business in 1919 after graduating from the University of Maine.
In 1922, Samuel married Elizabeth Black, daughter of Almon and Teresa Black. They had five sons, Samuel Jr., Donald, Herschel, Douglas and David.
Donald, the second son of Samuel Sr. and Elizabeth, entered the business in 1949 and, representing the fourth generation of Collinses, carried on the lumber business until 1991. Like his father, Donald Collins graduated from the University of Maine. He married former Patricia McGuigan of Port Jervis, N.Y. They had six children, Greg, Sam, Susan, Nancy, Kathleen and Mike.
The company is currently operated by the fifth generation of the Collins family; Samuel W. Collins, son of Donald, currently runs the lumber company. Sam and his wife, Lisa, have four daughters, Tess, Catherine, Laura and Clara.
