The foot of Gas House Hill (so called because the first gas company was at the base of the hill) on State Street where Mt. Vernon Avenue begins, marks the beginning of the section of town that was the center for the Franco-American community in Augusta. In the late nineteenth century, many French Canadians came to Augusta to work at Edwards Manufacturing Company, a cotton mill on the banks of the Kennebec River. The mill owners actively recruited Canadians for this work and many responded. By 1908, nearly 20% of Augusta’s population was Franco-American. The Edwards Company was one of a succession of mills at the site (all now demolished), but it marked the beginning of the major influx of French Canadians to the city. The mill site was on the bank of the Kennebec River, a few hundred yards from the foot of the hill. The mill buildings burned in 1989. Sand Hill, Bond Street, and Mt. Vernon are names that refer to the Franco-American section, but the surrounding streets were home to many. The various mill companies owned tenements, boarding houses, and other dwellings in the area and rented them to mill workers, giving Augusta its own “company section” in town. This modest mustard-colored house is the center of much controversy in Augusta. Built sometime between c.1875-1878 for Franco-American mill workers, it has withstood the ravages of time and survives with much of its early detail intact, both interior and exterior. The controversies about the house are whether to leave it on its original site or move it to a nearby park and whether the building must serve some useful contemporary function (rehabilitated into housing) or whether it can survive as a unique example of housing from an earlier time. Surnames of children and adults who have lived at 25 Bond Street over the decades include Pullen, Dostie, Raheume, Breton, Leclaire, Bolduc, Butler, Billedau, Poulin, Cloutier, Parent, Dube, and Dientowski. Some of the children were certain to have attended the Laurel Hill School.

Augusta’s Franco-American population was wooed by the Edwards Mill owners, because of the shortage of workers. The Augusta mills were not the biggest producers of cotton goods in Maine, nor was Augusta’s population the largest in Maine, but Franco-Americans made up a large and significant population of Augusta. In 1900, the major Maine population centers for Franco-Americans outside of Aroostook County were Biddeford/Saco - 16,500; Lewiston/Auburn - 13,300; and Waterville - 4,300. However, the Franco population in Augusta (around 2,500) comprised nearly 19% of Augusta’s total population (13,211) by 1908. Their presence was critical for the cotton, shoe, and magazine industries that formed the backbone of the city’s economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In 1920, Joseph and Caroline Parent lived at 25 Bond Street. The small, shingled building at the head of Bond Street was home to the Parents and their children. Caroline was born in Canada, but Joseph was born in Maine. According to the census, there were four sons in 1920, the first and second were born in Canada and the next two were born in Maine. The different birthplaces suggest strong, yet changing ties between Augusta, Maine, and Canada. Many Franco-Americans worked in the cotton mills, but they also worked in the publishing and paper industries, shoe manufacturing, forest-based work, and small businesses. The home where Caroline and Joseph lived was built by Sprague Manufacturing, sometime prior to 1878 as housing for mill workers. The row houses down the street from 25 Bond, toward the river, were built in the 1880’s by Edwards Manufacturing for the same purpose. Alternatives to mill housing were privately owned homes and the many formal and informal boarding houses in the area.

The children who lived on Bond Street in 1886 would have been educated in a school built specifically for the French-speaking children in that area of town. In 1885, the school board in Augusta voted to build a school on the corner of Laurel and State streets to accommodate some of the estimated 206 French-speaking students who lived here. One of the surviving stories is that a teacher had to be recruited from Aroostook County, presumably to have the proper combination of education and language. Miss Marion Cyr was the first teacher. Miss J. Carrie LeProhon and the first & second graders posed for a photograph in 1896. The Laurel Hill School closed by the early twentieth century, but the building survived until 1993, when it was destroyed by fire.

This most intriguing aspect of the Bond Street and Mt. Vernon Avenue area is the layering of history. This was Martha Ballard’s greater door yard--the area that contained her gardens and the yards for her animals; the mouth of the brook was where her son Jonathan, his wife Sally, and their new-born child lived in 1795, and where they were almost swept away in a freshet that year (all survived). This same section of town came to symbolize, nearly two centuries later, the Franco-American community that came to Augusta to work the cotton mills. The Bond Street area was recently listed by a Maine preservation organization as one of the most endangered historical properties in Maine.

Site #37.1 Sources:

	Allen, James P. "Franco-Americans in Maine: A Geographical Perspective." In Acadiensis, vol. iv, no. 1 (Autumn 1974), 47. Department f History, University of New Brunswick (reprint).
	Augusta, Maine Sesquicentennial. Special reprint of Daily Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine, Sesquicentennial Edition, Wednesday, July 30, 1947.
	Hale, John, "Another Local War?" Capital Weekly, Augusta, Maine, September 27, 2001, Vol 7, Issue 39.
	Hendrickson, Dyke. Quiet Presence: Dramatic, First-Person Accounts: the True Stories Of Franco-Americans in New England. Portland, ME: G. Gannett Pub. Co., c1980.
	Douin, Anthony. Interviews by and conversations with Phyllis vonHerrlich, 17 March 2001, 31 August 2001, 18 September 2001, 28 September 2001, Augusta, Maine.
	Johnson, William. Interview by Phyllis vonHerrlich, 21 April 2001, Augusta, Maine.
	Kennebec Journal, August 15, 2001.
	Resident and Business Directory of Kennebec County, Maine: Including Cities of Augusta, Gardiner, Hallowell, and Waterville, 1919/1920.
	U.S. Nominal Census - 1920.
	Violette, Maurice. "Pre-Calumet Era: Origin and Growth of Augusta Franco-Americans." In Semi-Centennial Celebration: 1922-1972 - Fifty Years of Progress. Augusta, ME: Le Club Calumet, 1972.
	Violette, Zachary. The Architectural History of Sand Hill. Augusta Historic Preservation Commission, Draft - 19 April 2001.