I. Augustus Stanwood

“Long ago, Augustus Stanwood had a paper mill in Maine,

He was quite a clever fellow, and not the slightest bit insane.

         When he was making paper in eighteen sixty two

         They were using rags for pulp, didn’t know what else to do.

         But when the Civil War came, and rags were not for sale

         They almost shut his mill down to use it for a jail.               

But Augustus cut his finger and while bandaging the gash,

         He had a bright idea—it really was a flash.

         He remembered that in Egypt, on the railroad by the Nile, 

         They didn’t burn coal and they didn’t burn oil.

         They burned Egyptian mummies to get a head of steam,

         There was such a big supply that it made Augustus beam.

         So he sent away to Egypt, and brought a few shiploads,

         He brought them to his mill and took off all their clothes.

Every mummy that he brought was wrapped in thirty pounds of linen,

And the fine papyrus stuffin’—well he used that for the fillin’.

He used up all the mummies to make some wrapping paper,

He sold it to the merchants; to the butcher and the baker.

But his employees they got sick, and some customers they died,

         And poor old I. Augustus had to run away and hide.

         For the cholera bug was hiding in the mummies clothes,

         Why Augustus didn’t sterilize, only Heaven knows.

         Now the moral of this story can be very plainly seen,

         Never push your dear old mummy in our Number Twelve

machine.”

Isaac Augustus Stanwood had been involved with the paper industry for many years. In 1865 he moved to Gardiner, where he started a paper mill in partnership with William Towar, near the Great Falls mill on the Cobbossee Contee. Known as the Cobbossee Mill, it was situated at Dam #5. Great Fall’s mill was above him, at Dam #6. Cobbossee Mill was a one-machine mill, which made “bogus manila paper.”

Stanwood & Towar eventually became Hollingsworth & Whitney. As of 2000T the mill is the only one still in existence, and until the turn of this century still made paper from recycled materials. Its primary products were cardboard rolls for toilet paper and paper towels.

The modern view of a side of the building and the dam which provided the water power, was taken from the roof of the abandoned building by my intrepid husband, David A. Rawson.