Some South Berwick Events from Newspapers of the 1840s-1860s
"The Thursday Sketcher" Great Falls NH Thursday Evening 12/02/1847
Vol.1 #4
Commerce of South Berwick. Vessels of different sizes have occasionally been built at South Berwick, and then rigged and loaded at this port. Two enterprising young men, Messrs Eben Goodwin of New York, and Mark F. Goodwin of South Berwick, have just built, rigged, and are now loading at Hamilton Wharf, South Berwick, a beautiful bark, build of the best materials. She is a little short of three hundred tons, and is not inferior to any vessel of her size. -Portsmouth Journal.
The Old Bridge at Salmon Falls has been removed, and an elegant new structure placed in its stead, a few rods farther North, to make room for the foundation stones of the new Factory the Salmon Falls Company is erecting.
The Dover Enquirer
Published Every Tuesday Morning, By George Wadleigh, Washington Street,
Dover, New-Hampshire
Vol XXIII Tuesday Morning, July 17, 1849 No. 7
The railroad bridge over the Salmon Falls river, which was destroyed several months since by fire, has been rebuilt, and the cars now run direct to Portland.
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By a notice in another column it will be seen that the Cadets of Temperance intend holding a Pic Nic in the Grove near the Railroad Junction in South Berwick, to-day. This Society is composed of young men who have associated together for the promotion of temperance. They deserve encouragement in their laudable enterprise. We hope that all will attend who can make it convenient.
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Salmon Falls Co., &c.- The paragraph which we published yesterday in relation to the dividends of the Salmon Falls and Sunapee Cotton Mills was all wrong. The facts, as stated, we found in several of our exchanges.--We have been authoritatively informed that the Sunapee Cotton Mills make goods of medium fineness and have omitted but one semi-annual dividend since their incorporation, June 1, 1847.--The whole amount of dividends in this time has been fifteen per cent, or seven and a half per cent, per annum. The Salmon Falls Company has not failed to make a semi-annual dividend of at least four per cent, during the last four years, besides keeping a handsome reserve. It is one of the most successful companies in New England, composed of a small number of proprietors living in Boston and Portsmouth.
The capital is $1,000,000, and it distributes $18,000 a month by its pay roll, among the antimonopolists of the Granite State and Maine, besides making a demand for a vast quantity of farm produce in the section of country about the factories, and enhancing the value of the farms threefold. Within five miles square, there are now running at Great Falls, Dover, and Salmon Falls, 142,000 spindles, owned by three companies, with the capitals amounting to $3,800,000, of which the proprietors live chiefly in Massachusetts. The original capitals of all these companies have been once wholly lost except a part of the Salmon Falls Company's, and the new capitals have been paid in. They employ more then three thousand New Hampshire and Maine girls and men, and pay them $58,000 a month, most of which is sent home. If every dollar which goes through these channels, and the other factories in New Hampshire, owned chiefly in Massachusetts, could be marked M. It would be murder outright to some of the New Hampshire politicians, who live by curing the corporations. Boston Atlas
The Great Falls Journal, Sat. Jan 16, 1869 Vol 3 No 3
An ox team was run into the other night by a train between South Berwick and Portland. The cattle were killed, but the driver escaped. On picking him up he exclaimed -"shut the barn door--it's getting chilly."