Lakes Region’s Historic Blacksmith Shop Restoration by the Raymond-Casco Historical Society

by Brian Swartz

Aided by strong private and public support, the Raymond-Casco Historical Society has restored the William Watkins Blacksmith Shop, a rare Sebago Lakes Region commercial building dating to at least the mid-19th century.

In 1824 blacksmith John Stackpole deeded to William Dingley a blacksmith shop located near where the Quaker Ridge Road intersected the Portland-to-Bridgton road in South Casco. Although the RCHS cannot accurately date when the existing smithy was built, ownership of the property passed from Dingley to others before the Fickett brothers — Daniel Jr., William, and Seth — ran the smithy by the 1850s.

According to RCHS member David Allen, William Watkins was born in the 1840s and apprenticed at the blacksmith shop during the 1850s, most likely with Daniel Fickett. Taking over the smithy in March 1865, Watkins operat- ed it for the next 70 years.

In 1922 he and his son, Albert, appeared in the silent film Timothy’s Quest, based on a novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin, a Hollis summer resident who wrote Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The Timothy’s Quest scene featured William and Albert using an ox sling and a forge to shoe an ox. The scene revealed much of the shop’s interior, from the ox sling and its stall to the forge and its chimney.

The smithy survived the transition from horses to automobiles, but the last owners “walked out of it” by the 1940s, said RCHS President Frank McDer(cont. on page 6)

(cont. from page 5) mott. The derelict smithy slipped into obscurity.

Meanwhile, Ernest Knight started the RCHS in the early 1970s. A Raymond native, Knight “was incredible” in his passion for preserving Casco and Raymond history, said McDermott. The society also received vital support from Skip Watkins, a Casco resident “very interested in preserving the local history,” McDermott said.

Watkins, who owns the historic Watkins Farm, built the RCHS’s museum there, donated the land upon which it stands, and leased to the society his barn, located across the access driveway from the museum on Route 302.

Steve Linne of Blacksmith Winery in Casco contacted McDermott in October 2021. Linne owned the deteriorating Watkins Blacksmith Shop, which he needed to move or demolish by July 1, 2022. Would the RCHS be interested in the building? he asked.

McDermott and Allen quickly visited the smithy. “We were aghast at what we saw,” McDermott said. The building’s interior was piled high with blacksmith tools, metal parts for horsedrawn carriages and automobiles, and other abandoned items. The brick chimney had collapsed onto the forge.

Only a tin roof had kept the elements from destroying the smithy altogether. McDermott contacted Dr. Robert Schmick, museum director at Orrington’s Curran Homestead. Arriving at the smithy, he “went in and poked around and said, ‘This is an absolute gem. This is history,’” recalled McDer- mott. Greg Plummer, an RCHS member descended from William Watkins, remembered Schmick finding an oak quenching trough, in which William Watkins cooled metal items created on his forge. Schmick indicated the wooden trough was extremely rare. The RCHS launched a fund-raising campaign to save the smithy. Norway Savings Bank contributed, as did many other businesses and individuals. Saco River Community TV of Bar Mills sent former WCSH-TV reporter Susan Kimball and a cameraman to film the blacksmith shop and then created a 3½-to4-minute video for the RCHS to show on its website. The towns of Casco and Raymond appropriated $25,000 apiece to help move the smithy and restore it. “It was a difficult move,” Allen said.

Limington riggers Kerry Tottle and his son, Kerry, and Bridgton restoration carpenter Ed Somers all examined the smithy. “The Tottles’ decided they could move it and put it back up,” Al- len said. After Skip Watkins approved siting the building on his land next to the RCHS’s museum, the Tottles’ built a full frost wall on which to set the 20-by-30-foot smithy. Its split-stone foundation was reassembled atop the frost wall.

The Tottles’ took the smithy apart in nine sections and moved it in June 2022. The videos that Plummer shot during the move are available on the RCHS website, too. He, McDermott, Allen, and other volunteers spent the summer helping the Tottles’ and Somers reassemble the smithy, which was opened in time for an August 9 blacksmith demonstration held outside the building.

“Our whole concept was to keep the inside the way we found it” while upgrading the smithy’s exterior, Allen said. Except for some floorboards too damaged to reuse, “the boards on the inside are original,” as are the beams and the windows (which volunteers are restoring inside the RCHS museum).

The society installed a new metal roof and sided the outer walls of the smithy to make it weather-tight, then covered the walls with cedar shakes, Allen said. Some original bricks were reused when the forge’s chimney was rebuilt to match the chimney seen in Timothy’s Quest. The ox sling and stall and stone forge are original to the smithy.

Hancock Lumber has generously provided materials at cost for the project, which spurred renewed interest in the Raymond-Casco Historical Society. “It’s been a community effort,” said Allen.

The RCHS will schedule on-site blacksmithing demonstrations held outdoors with the blacksmith shop as a backdrop. McDermott envisions the society also holding lectures and other programs in the adjacent Friends School, a replica of an 1849 school that was located on Quaker Ridge.