OTISFIELD — A major archival donation of town documents, some dating back to the late 18th century, have been saved using a turkey roasting pan, bricks, a cookie cooling rack and some wet towels.

Otisfield historian Jean Hankins said the Historical Society recently received about 250 individual Otisfield town documents, dating from 1797 to 1849, from Bourdon Scribner, a descendant of early Otisfield settlers. They also received another group of papers once belonging to William S. Spurr, author of “The History of Otisfield,” published about 1950.

Hankins said many of the documents, including small handwritten notes dating from the late 18th and early 19th century were tightly folded and tied in a small bundle, making them unsafe to unfold and read. They included notes from several Otisfield highway surveyors stating whether or not each adult male in town had performed his town- and state-required work on the town roads.

Before the papers could be read, they had to be humidified, flattened and dried — a process that took several days.

“It’s pretty low tech,” Hankins said of the process that was taught to society members about 15 years ago by consultant Elizabeth Maule when the society had a large box of town documents to unfold.

“We formed a group of about six women who met once a week for about two years unfolding and flattening approximately 1,500 documents. It was a slow process, but fun, because we all had the chance to read and sort out the papers once they were dry,” she said.

This time the same process was used, but only took a few days to complete.

Hankins said the Scribner Collection also includes a number of documents showing how the town took care of its needy citizens and several bills sent by Dr. Horace Barrows, the only physician in town, in which Barrows asks to be reimbursed by the town for visits to and medicine for a number of poor individuals. The collection also has an 1832 contract between Stephen Stevens of Otisfield and the Otisfield selectmen in which Stevens promises to support John Sawyer, “a deranged person,” for $70 a year.

The collection of Spurr papers includes a wider variety of items including seven diaries kept by Lydia Spurr, mother of William Spurr, from 1916 to 1964; 10 scrapbooks containing 20th century newspaper clippings mostly of Otisfield people; one glass negative of an unidentified house; six letters regarding Civil War pensions; and about 100 old letters and deeds, notably from members of the Holden family.

Hankins said the Holden papers include two letters written by Joseph Holden, better known as “Joe” Holden and remembered primarily for arguing that the Earth is flat. William Spurr, who died in 1977, probably collected all the donated materials to use in his “History of Otisfield,” she said.

The donor of both collections, Bourdon Scribner, is a descendant of some of Otisfield’s early settlers. The Scribner name is attached to local sites such as Scribner Hill Road and Scribner’s Mill. Scribner purchased some of the papers from a book dealer in Naples, Hankins said.

The donation to the society’s archival collections arrived in two parts, spread over a month, Hankins said. The first part will be called the Bourdon Scribner Collection. Once sorted, cataloged and placed in archival boxes, the Spurr papers will be known as the William S. Spurr Collection.

Once the project is done, the society will make the contents of both collections available for inspection and research. For more information, consult Jean Hankins at 539-2521.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

OTISFIELD — Town historian Jean Hankins described the process of unraveling old papers in this way:

“You take a foil turkey roasting pan and place a cookie-cooling rack in it. Under the cookie rack you put several paper towels which you soak with water,” she explained in an email. “On top of the cookie rack you spread the still-folded papers (not touching the wet paper towels, of course!). You can put in about 20 folded documents at a time.

“Then you insert the turkey roasting pan inside a large plastic bag and seal it with a twisty tie. Leave it in a coolish place for several days and then open the plastic bag. At this point the documents will be limp.

“One by one you pull the documents out, unfolding each one carefully and placing each on a sheet of blank computer paper,” she continued. “Cover the damp document with another sheet (or two) of paper and repeat the process, piling the documents up.

“When they’re all piled up, place (squeeze) the whole pile between two large sheets of glass. (We had a local glass company smooth the edges of two sheets for us, for safety’s sake). Put some heavy weights on top of the glass. (We used some bricks.) Now place the new pile somewhere for a few days or a week.

“At the end of that time, all the documents should be dry and flat, with the creases minimized. Repeat process with more folded documents.”

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