A brief history of Waterville The founding of Waterville ● Originally settled by the Canibas tribe of the Wabanaki people, who named the Kennebec river waterfall after their chief, Teconnet or Teconnet Falls ● Following an expedition by General John Winslow, the English built Fort Halifax on the east side of the river ○ Led to town settlement - first through a “plantation” known as Kingfield, then as a town in 1771 named Winslow ● On June 23, 1802, Waterville was officially separated from Winslow ○ Allowed partly because settlement on west side of river was becoming increasingly independent due to non-existence of a bridge at that time making contact difficult Two cent bridge ● Built in 1902 to ease the commute of mill workers as they traveled back and forth from Waterville to Winslow ● Named after its toll of 2 cents the bridge was washed out in floods of 1902, but rebuild a year later ● Believed to be the last surviving toll footbridge in the United States Castonguay square ● Castonguay square land was gifted to the city by land deed in 1840 ● Originally called the commons, it was renamed in 1921 for Arthur L. Castonguay ○ First soldier from Waterville killed in WW1 ● Has been re-designed multiple times, most recently in 1986 ○ There is currently a new redesign initiative underway Mill history ● Lockwood Company, 1873 ○ Large cotton mill complex that employed 1,300 people ● Hollingsworth and Whitney mills, 1892 ○ Pulp and paper mills located in Winslow ○ To ease Waterville workers’ commute the two-cent bridge was built ● Riverview Worsted Company, early 1900s ○ Woolen mill ○ Beame the Wyandotte Worsted Company Cultural history ● Large population of French-Canadian immigrants came in search of better jobs and living conditions ○ The Francophone immigrants settled largely in an area of town called the planes ● Many Syrian-Lebanese immigrants also came to Waterville to evade economic hardships and because they had been inspired by American missionaries in their homeland ○ The main population of Lebanese immigrants was located in the Head of Falls area where Arabic could be heard regularly in the streets Bibliography Crane, Martha, and Tom Schulhof. “Name-Changing Patterns among French Canadians in Waterville, Maine.” The French Review, vol. 43, no. 3, 1970, pp. 459–466. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/385505. Plocher, Stephen. A Short History of Waterville, Maine. Edited by Elizabeth Leonard, 2017, Colby College. Rowe, Amy E., "Exploration of immigration, industrialization & ethnicity in Waterville, Maine" (1999). Honors Theses. Paper 215. https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/215. Full Text of "Illustrated History of Kennebec County, Maine, 1625-1799-1892", https://archive.org/stream/illustratedhisto02king/illustratedhisto02king_djvu.txt. http://www.waterville-me.gov/head-of-falls-2/ https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/62841.