For nearly two centuries, the Alder River Ponds in Greenwood and Woodstock —North Alder, South Alder and Round Alder, which are known today simply as North, South and Round ponds — have played a major role in the area’s economy.

Samuel Locke built the first dam on the Alder River, about 500 feet above the current dam, in 1819 and used water power to run a sawmill.

A few years later, Locke added a shingle mill and a gristmill, and the village that had sprung up became known as Locke Mills.

Those first mills are long gone, and the wood-turning mill that took their place is now idle, but the waterfront property around the ponds has become increasingly important to the local economy.

By the late 19th century, both locals and “rusticators” (vacationers “from away” in search of fresh air and a slower pace) had begun spending their summers on the Alder River Ponds, and between 1890 and 1915, the first generation of camps was built on their shores.

Blaine Mills of the Greenwood Historical Society believes that the two oldest summer places in Greenwood were built in 1890.

One is the camp on the Little Island in South Pond, now belonging to Lennie Shaw, that was built by Reuben Rand of Lisbon, a silent partner in John Tebbets’ wooden spool mill in Locke Mills.

The other was a small camp that stood at the edge of Woodsum’s Field on Round Pond, on the site of what is now Dave and Sue Perham’s camp. The first camp was built there by Albert and George “Tommy” Woodsum, brothers who ran a store on Main Street in Locke Mills.

A two-story addition containing a kitchen was added onto the first rudimentary structure in the early 1900s and is still part of the Perhams’ camp today.

The original part of the Woodsum camp was later moved back and used as a shed for many years, before being removed several years ago to make way for the Perhams’ new garage.

Mills said that after their store burned around 1900, Albert Woodsum relocated to Mechanic Falls and Tommy became the well-known proprietor of Tommy’s Barbershop in Locke Mills.

Evergreen and Pinehurst

Within a decade or so of being built, the Woodsum camp had neighbors on both sides.

Camp Evergreen was built around the turn of the 20th century by the Hill and Davis families. It was later sold to Nellie Nicholson, a schoolteacher from Lewiston, and her brother.

Nicholson, who never married, continued to spend her summers at Camp Evergreen into her 90s, and still figures in stories told by her former neighbors. Before her death in the 1990s, she sold her camp to the present owners, John and Cathy Hall.

“She was a tough old bird,” Sue Perham recalled.

Dave Perham’s summers on Round Pond began in 1950, when his grandparents bought the camp next door to the former Woodsum camp (on the opposite side from Camp Evergreen) from Bessie Mann. That camp, known in the past as Pinehurst Cottage, now belongs to Dave’s cousins, the Wardwell family.

The Wardwell camp was originally built on the back side of Twitchell Pond, and belonged at one time to Blaine Mills’ grandfather, Ross Martin.

Martin sold the camp to his cousin, Spot Herrick, who later sold it to Jacob “Gib” Coffin, the father of early Greenwood photographer Guy Coffin. The Coffin family lived on the Howe Hill Road in Locke Mills.

During one winter in the early 1900s, Gib Coffin moved the camp by skidding it across the ice of Twitchell Pond and up the Greenwood Road to its present location on Woodsum’s Field.

By 1905, the Coffin family had moved to Mechanic Falls, and in the 1920s, after the deaths of his parents, Guy Coffin sold Pinehurst Cottage.

But Dave Perham’s family connections to the camps on Woodsum’s Field go back even further than 1950, to 1925, when his parents rented Camp Evergreen from Nellie Nicholson for their honeymoon.

Sue Perham began visiting Round Pond when she met Dave in 1964, and their sons, Jeff and Charlie, grew up spending their summers at the family camp.

The Perhams purchased the former Woodsum camp, known as Idlewilde, in 1980 and now live there for six months of the year, enjoying visits from their grandchildren as often as possible.

They spend the other half of the year in Florida, where, before retirement, Sue taught elementary school and Dave worked for Hallmark Cards.

A few years after purchasing their camp, the Perhams were able to buy the rest of the land that comprises Woodsum’s Field, except for the other camp lots. The open field provides room for ballgames and horseshoes, and a sunny space for Sue’s vegetable and flower gardens.

Graylogs

In addition to the three camps that have stood there for more than a century, several more have been built on Woodsum’s Field over the years. The first of these was a rustic log cabin known as Graylogs.

In 1927, Agnes Gray, the legendary schoolteacher for whom the school in West Paris was later named, built the cabin from trees cut on the property.

“Agnes won the land, a third of an acre, for the cabin from Bessie Mann in a poker game,” said John Swinton, who, with his wife, Cordelia, has owned Graylogs since 1982.

“I imagine that probably Nellie Nicholson was in on that game, too,” he added.

Mann, like Gray and Nicholson, was a schoolteacher, but Swinton recalled that when the three women were together at their neighboring camps for the summer, they shed their strait-laced schoolmarm images.

Before buying Graylogs, the Swinton family had vacationed since 1946 in a nearby camp at the edge of the pond that Gray also owned. It now belongs to Beryl Bonney of West Paris.

Upon Gray’s death from leukemia in the late 1970s, Graylogs was left to Bonney, who had cared for her in her later years.

Bonney, who for many years was Swinton’s regular teammate in horseshoe games at Woodsum’s Field, had been Gray’s student in West Paris as a child.

“As they used to say, ‘Beryl went to school to Agnes,’” Swinton said.

After renting the log cabin out for a few summers, Bonney decided to put it up for sale and, in accordance with Gray’s wishes, she offered it first to the Swinton family.

“My mother, who was a widow, didn’t want to buy it,” Swinton said.

His brother had a place on the Maine coast and wasn’t interested, either.

Swinton recalled that his gruff German mother’s response, when Bonney asked if she should call and offer him the cabin, was not to bother, because as an academic (he taught at Penn State for many years), he wouldn’t be able to afford to buy it.

But Bonney decided to call him anyway, and the Swintons jumped at the chance to own their own piece of Woodsum’s Field.

Except for the addition of rudimentary indoor plumbing (there is still no shower or hot water), the interior of the three-room cabin has changed very little in the nearly 90 years since it was built.

A large fieldstone fireplace dominates the living area, and Indian-themed decorative objects that once belonged to Gray, such as a collection of throw pillows and a wall plaque, are still displayed.

The Swintons say that Gray’s spirit lives on at Graylogs, and from time to time, her benign ghost has even appeared to visitors.

“She haunts this place,” Cordelia Swinton said matter-of-factly.

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