Lincoln, Maine

Responses from students in Mr. Koscuiszka's class can be viewed below:

Breanna Sutherland
"Research your topic and summarize the ‘who, what, when, and where’ in the form of a few paragraphs"

Albert Washington Weatherbee was born in Springfield, Maine on April 30th, 1841 and died in 1904, in Lincoln, Maine. Mr. Weatherbee married Lucinda Electa Butterfield in 1861. Around the same time he opened a hardware store in Springfield. The store was open for four years until Weatherbee moved to Lincoln in 1865. He made a partnership with Cyrus E. Messer while in Lincoln, which lasted until Messer left town unexpectedly. Weatherbee attended law school at Union University at Albany, N.Y.; he graduated in 1875. After his law degree, he built his hardware and tin shop in the same building as his law office.

In 1900 a contractor built E.A. Weatherbee’s Hardware store for Edward Albert Weatherbee, Albert Washington Weatherbee’s son. He built his store on the west side of the street because he knew all the farmers came into town from the north and the farmers would hitch their horses on the west side of the street. After World War I, Mr. Horace Weatherbee, Albert Weatherbee’s grandson, Edward Weatherbee’s son, became a stockholder in the business. Horace Weatherbee ran the store until1967, when it closed. The Weatherbee's had many loyal customers throughout their many years in business. In 1961, The Lincoln News it was said about the youngest Mr. Weatherbee, “all through his life he had enjoyed being a 'Hardware' man, and if he had to live his life over again, wouldn’t do anything else.”

Gregory Smart
"Compare and contrast your topic in the past and in the present"

My uncle worked as a road constructor and he worked there for a while and then bought his own property, named his own road and he’s put a lot of money in to it. He has worked hard to get to where he is now. My uncle also used to go to meetings about politics. He still does, but only sometimes. He goes too far and gets really annoying when all he talks about is politics.

My Uncle Gary is building a hardware store. We have been working on it for a while. When it’s done, I get to work there. We are still working on it; we are hoping to get it done soon. He’s still working hard and we are working on getting the money so we can get what we need to finish it. So far it’s not going so well.

Hardware stores carry newer products than what they used to.

This is compared with Weatherbee Hardware because we are building a hardware store. Our hardware store is my comparison to Weatherbee Hardware.

Zachary Savage
"How does this topic connect to you in your life today?"

This connects to my life because if there was no Weatherbee Hardware store I might not have a house to live in. I might not be able to have a shelter from the weather and diseases. If the store didn’t exist back then people couldn’t build houses, and there would be no jobs, they would have to build houses from hand and they would have to cut the wood by hand. Weatherbee Hardware helped with supplies to build houses for people. If the Weatherbee store didn’t exist people would have to go to a different town to get the tools and supplies to build houses.

Reilly Struck
What if Weatherbee Hardware never existed? Explain the consequences to the town.

If the Weatherbee Hardware Store never existed then the people living in town wouldn’t be able to get the things they would need right away, they would have to go out of town to get certain things. If people needed a new light bulb because theirs went out they would need to wait another day to get it if the Weatherbee Hardware store wasn’t there. No one would remember the store so it wouldn’t have been in Lincoln’s history.

The Weatherbee Store would have had a big impact on people if it never existed, like for people who were trying to fix something they wouldn’t be able to repair it because they wouldn’t have the tools. So, it would just have to stay broken until they were able to go some place else where there were tools to fix it. We might not have some of the buildings in the time they were built if people didn’t have a place to buy hammers, nails, bolts, and screw drivers so they could build the buildings that make our town what it is today.

Works Cited

"Weatherbee Hardware". Lincoln News. Lincoln Historical Society. Lincoln: Lincoln Historical Society, 1961. Print.