Libbey family and W.S. Libbey Company collection

In the 1880s, using profits earned working in the timber industry, Winfield Scott Libbey (1851-1914) bought a small cotton mill in Auburn, Maine, and a woolen mill in Vassalboro. He repaired their looms and created successful operations in both mills. With the financial backing of Harry Dingley, the son of a congressman and publisher, and New York textile firm Deering-Milliken, Libbey was able to buy the Cumberland Woolen Mill and later the Lincoln Mill (renamed the Libbey Mill). Libbey & Dingley, later known as The W.S. Libbey Company, was officially founded in Lewiston on May 31, 1898. The purchase of the Lincoln Mill had given Libbey the water power rights of the Androscoggin Falls. He eventually purchased the American Light and Power Company and the Lewiston and Auburn Electric Light Company, and to aid in electricity production, the Libbey-Dingley Dam was built upriver. This cross-industry conglomeration created the infrastructure for a dominant and lasting textile mill.

Expanding their interest in electricity, Libbey and Dingley became incorporators of the Portland-Lewiston Interurban, a train railroad line that connected Maine’s two largest cities between 1914 and 1933. Libbey was known as its "foremost promoter." He would, however, not live to see the Interurban in use, dying of complications from a stroke in May 1914.

The company was consistently run by descendants or in-laws of W.S. Libbey, Sr., after his death. For periods it was headed by Alla A. Libbey (1885-1974), the patriarch’s oldest daughter, and later passed to W.S. Libbey, Jr. (1896-1965), who ran the business from 1919 to 1965. The final head of W.S. Libbey Co. was Philip Meldrum, husband of Anne Libbey Meldrum (1928-2016), W.S. Libbey, Jr.’s youngest daughter.

The major products by W.S. Libbey Co. through 1972 were unbranded blankets and electric blanket shells, which represented 80% of sales. In 1972, a fire gutted the Libbey Mill Annex building and claimed the lives of two employees, and injured 10. Though the loss resulted in a large insurance claim, the company continued to experience major losses through 1976. Soon after, the company ended its production of blankets and began producing a high volume mix of products, such as draperies and industrial insulation. It remained in the Libbey family until 1987.

The Libbey family documented their private and social lives extensively through correspondence, photographs, and ephemera. Because this collection was donated by a granddaughter of W.S. Libbey, Jr.—W.S. Libbey’s youngest son—it is richest in the documentation of that wing of the family. Like his father, W.S. Libbey, Jr. was known as Scott, as well as "Tootie" and "Chum" in his youth. He attended Harvard, graduating in the class of 1918, and was an Ensign in the Navy during WWI and a Lt. Commander in WWII. He headed W.S. Libbey Co. and all its subsidiaries from 1919 until his death in 1965. He sat on the advisory board of Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, and was an overseer of Bates College. Clearly valued by succeeding generations, WSL, Jr.’s personal papers, photographs, and effects are well-preserved.

Due to the success of the mill, W.S. Libbey, Sr. was able to purchase a farm in Wayne, Maine, for hunting and family retreats. Many generations of the family spent summers there, documenting their activity at the Wayne Estate through photographs and paper records. The farm suffered a devastating fire in the 1980s or 90s. Anne Libbey Meldrum and Philip Meldrum later acquired a parcel of that property and built a cabin there on the shore of Pocasset Lake.

The Libbey family was active in the preservation of Lewiston’s history, architecture, and culture. Ruth Libbey O’Halloran (1927-2005), daughter of W.S. Libbey, Jr., appears to have been the de facto preservationist of the family, with a particular interest in Lewiston, particularly its Irish Catholic heritage. She assembled and collected primary and secondary sources—printed matter, periodicals, photographs, and ephemera—that document the city’s history. She was on the Lewiston Historical Commission, wrote pieces on local history for local publications, planned and gave walking tours, and lectured and taught classes on the history of the city. There is evidence that she was in the process of writing ostensibly never-published books on the Catholic history of Maine, the history of the Libbey Company, and what’s referred to as the "inventory book." Indeed, Libbey family history greatly overlaps with the history of Lewiston. It is indicated frequently in O'Halloran’s notes that she saved things under the term "Lewiston History." The Lewiston History Collection attempts to amalgamate those items in this collection that were saved by O’Halloran (and perhaps others) because they were documents of Lewiston, not primarily the family’s history. She may have been attempting to write a book on Lewiston history, or perhaps adding to and updating Wayne C. Jordan’s work, a history of Lewiston that had been commissioned by her grandfather, W.S. Libbey, Sr. (see below). Regardless, O'Halloran assembled materials both general and subject-specific, documenting, for example, Lewiston's Franco-American community and its Irish-American community.

The Spring Street Company was a corporation owned and operated by the Libbey family. It was incorporated on April 14, 1927, by founders W.S. Libbey, Jr., and his sister, Alla A. Libbey. The goal of the company was to capitalize on the then-rapidly growing industrial and commercial enterprises of Lewiston and its vicinity. The company owned land between Whipple and Spring Streets, as well as on Riverside Court, on which they hoped to build a warehouse. The land between Whipple and Spring was sold in the late 1940s for about $15,000 to beer distributors, a hardware company, a banana wholesaler, and four other rail-associated companies. They also owned a filling station at Main and Mill Streets, which accounted for the bulk of the company’s income. As of 1963, the stockholders were W.S. Libbey, Jr., W.S. Libbey III, Elaine Libbey Holman, Alex Holman, John Libbey, Paul Libbey, Ruth Libbey O’Halloran, and Anne Libbey Meldrum; the directors were W.S. Libbey, Jr., Alex Holman, and Paul Libbey; the officers were Alex Holman (President), W.S. Libbey, Jr. (Vice President), Paul Libbey (Treasurer), and Paul Rovnak (Asst. Treasurer). In the mid-1980s, its President was Ruth O’Halloran, its Treasurer was Philip Meldrum, and its Directors were Elaine Holman and Dan Holman. In 1987, its President was Alex Holman. The primary business of the company seems to have been the buying and selling of real estate. The Libbey family estate in Wayne, Maine, originally purchased by W.S. Libbey, Sr., was operated by the company. The house on the estate was destroyed by fire in May 1986, and appears to have been liquidated in 1988. This is an artificial sub-collection; all Spring Street Company documents found within the many Libbey-related boxes were brought together to form one cohesive unit. The bulk of the documents appear to have come from the files of Philip Meldrum and Ruth O'Halloran.

Timeline

• 1845: The building that would become known as the Libbey Mill was built by Captain Daniel Holland, a local contractor, and incorporated as the Lewiston Falls Cotton Mill; it was generally called the Lincoln Mill
• 1851: Winfield Scott Libbey (Sr.) born, Avon, Maine
• 1863: Mill's bell tower incorporated in city seal
• 1893: W.S. Libbey, Sr., with financial backing from Harry Dingley, son of a congressman and publisher, purchases the Cumberland Woolen Mill and the Lincoln Mill, which would later be known as the W.S. Libbey Co. Mill
• 1896: W.S. Libbey, Jr., born
• 1898, May 31: Libbey & Dingley Co. founded (later known as W.S. Libbey Company)
• 1904: W.S. Libbey, Sr. appointed to the (Maine) Governor’s economic council
• 1910: Portland-Lewiston Interurban Train begins construction
• 1914, May: W.S. Libbey, Sr., dies
• 1914-1933: Portland-Lewiston Interurban train in operation
• 1929: New storehouse built on Lincoln Street
• 1941: Company approves a 10 percent raise for workers; city and company reach agreement on tax dispute
• 1945: C.I.O. (Congress of Industrial Organizations) union strike closes six textile mills, but W.S. Libbey continues operating
• 1947: Mill pays $16,415 in city real estate taxes
• 1948: Lewiston Finance Board recommends city sue Libbey owners for unpaid taxes
• 1953: End of the Korean conflict has a negative impact on woolen mills, including Libbey
• 1959: 100-year-old Walker building in Libbey complex razed near Main and Mill streets
• 1963: Libbey adds a new line of acrylic blankets including the "Golden Fleece"
• 1964: Mill sustains extensive water damage from fire started when naphtha was spilled and dropped on machinery
• 1965: W.S. Libbey, Jr., dies
• 1972: Explosion and fire destroys Libbey Mill Annex, killing 2 and injuring 10
• 1975: Business recovers, employees get wage hike
• 1981: Dozens of workers laid off
• 1984: Mill honored as Exporter of the Year
• 1986, May: Wayne house significantly damaged by fire
• 1987: Libbey family sells mill to Armand J. Favreau, former CEO of company
• 1988: Spring Street Company dissolved and liquidated
• 1991: Owners move textile operations to South Carolina; building is abandoned
• 1992-1998: City Council votes to waive foreclosure on mill complex to avoid having unwanted property
• 1996: Michael Hamlin acquires mill at auction for $25,000; later that year, Kennebec Superior Court orders him to turn over the mill to Norman and Shirley Burdzel of Augusta in compensation for Hamlin's failure to pay them from a previous court case, but Hamlin had already sold the mill to a friend, Gretchen Zeh, who conveyed the property to Miracle of Living Waters, a nondenominational ministry headed by Rita Jean
• 1997: The Burdzels, believing they owned the building, sold it to Walter Moody for $135,000; Moody began demolishing the building for salvage material; he also razed two of the 13 mill complex buildings; later that year, city officials become concerned about debris at the site and use a $250,000 tax lien to prevent Moody from removing any more material from the complex
• 1999, summer: Decades' worth of documents are unearthed from Libbey Mill and stored at Lewiston Armory for archiving
• 1999, September: Someone spreads oil throughout building in what officials investigated as a possible arson attempt
• 1999, October: Massive fire ravages the mill, destroying the section that runs parallel to Main Street, the piece with the cupola's tower and the giant "W.S. Libbey" sign
• 2000: The historic cupola, which is featured on the city's seal, is removed and placed in storage
• 2001: Much of the Libbey Mill is torn down
• 2005: Developer Travis Soule and the city sign agreement to jointly develop the spit of land that juts into the Androscoggin River, the remnants of the Libbey Mill, the Cowan Mill, the former CMP building and a substation; the multi-million dollar Island Point project would convert the two mill buildings into upscale condominiums, bring a mix of retail and office space to the other buildings and site a high-end hotel
• 2007: The joint development agreement with the city expires when Soule cannot secure financing
• 2007: The rest of the W.S. Libbey Mill is torn down
• 2008: Councilors unanimously approve an agreement with Winston Hospitality Group to take over work on the Island Point project; later that year, Lincoln Jeffers, development director for Lewiston, says the Island Point project is still viable but has been scaled back