Storekeeping in a Maine Seacoast Town: Records of the W. G. Sargent Company

In many small New England towns during the nineteenth century, and even into the twentieth, all the business activities, centered usually about the general store, would be carried on by members of one family. Such a situation may be studied by means of a collection, comprising the records of the W. G. Sargent Co., of Sargentville, Maine, recently received by the Manuscript Division, Baker Library. The village of Sargentville, a part of the town of Sedgwick, is on the coast, east of Bucksport, and separated by a channel (now spanned by a bridge) from Deer Isle. Once there was a flourishing wharf (now demolished), where bait, fish, lime, ice, and granite were shipped up and down the coast, in return for products handled by the country stores in the vicinity. The Sargents, who seem to have given their name to the community about 1879, were at the center of this activity, building ships, arranging for their loads, and distributing the return goods, either as wholesalers or through stores they controlled.