OTISFIELD — The town’s archives that have been stored in a private barn for years will finally have a proper home in the recently renovated Otisfield Town House.

The new archival room will be named after Sybil Knight Lamb at a dedication and open house from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 6, at the Otisfield Town House on Bell Hill Road.

Lamb’s century-plus-old diaries have become an invaluable resource for local historians. Lamb was born in 1850 and died in 1929.

“It is fitting,” said Otisfield Historical Society member Jean Hankins, who owns the Scribner Hill home where Lamb once lived and where her diaries were discovered. “The diaries are one of our most important possessions,” she said.

The 1905 Town House was deeded to the historical society by voters in 2009 after it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. Society members recently completed renovating it for use as their headquarters and as a repository for archives. 

The building was once a hub of town activity, including the site of annual town meetings and voting. Official use of the building declined as the population grew and, in 1992, a town office opened in the former Otisfield elementary school on Route 121.

Members of the historical society have said the town’s archives were in desperate need of a appropriate, climate-controlled repository.

In June, after the foundation and basement were completed, the town voted to grant the society $22,606 from the Sybil Lamb Fund to complete the archives room. The fund, which still has more than $100,000 in it from interest accrued over nearly a century, allowed the society to complete construction of the basement room.

The money paid to frame and insulate the basement perimeter, install a sump pump, dehumidify, frame and insulate the 25- by 20-foot room, and install Sheetrock and a climate-control system.

“We do not know where she got her money,” Hankins said.

Sybil Lamb was the wife of Nathaniel Lamb, whom she described as a “jack of all trades.” He earned money in many ways, ranging from lumbering to giving haircuts.

After her husband died, Lamb went to live with a friend in what is now Hankins’ house, owned by Hankins’ late husband’s family. Lamb died in 1929. She had no children. The nine small, hand-bound diaries were left in the house along with other artifacts.

They became one of the town’s most important historical assets, said Hankins, who transcribed them. The diaries are also on microfilm.

“The diaries ended up in our attic. When she died, the diaries just stayed here,”  Hankins said. They were found by Hankins’ husband’s uncle, Fred Pottle, who gave them to the Maine Historical Society for safekeeping. “He wanted them protected and they have been,” she said.

Today, Hankins still has some of Sybil Lamb’s items in the home, including a letter-opener that has Sybil’s initials on it.

The public is welcome to attend the open house and dedication.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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