Sep 30, 2021 - Sale 2580

Sale 2580 - Lot 157

Price Realized: $ 688
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(MAINE.) Ledger of William Kilby, blacksmith in the frontier village of Dennysville. 264, [2] pages plus contemporary 4-page manuscript index. Narrow folio, 15 1/4 x 6 1/2 inches, original calf, worn; lacking front endpapers, moderate wear to contents, several leaves worn or coming detached, pages 142-3 missing, pages 263-4 partly excised, most accounts crossed through as they were settled; numerous accounts signed by Kilby and his customers, 1937 provenance inscriptions on inner front board and final index page. Dennysville, ME, 1808-30 (bulk 1810-19)

Additional Details

William Kilby (1763-1829) was a blacksmith in Dennysville, ME, a few miles from the coastal border with Canada--about as far east as Down East gets. The village was settled in 1786 by a group of 16 settlers from Hingham, MA; Kilby came up from Hingham to open his blacksmith shop the following year. He eventually held many official posts in the small town, including clerk, selectman, treasurer, and postmaster.

Lumber was the town's main industry, and Kilby often made or repaired supplies for the town's sawmill such as crowbars, chains, spikes, hooks, and more. He supplied picks and nails for a carding mill (page 207) which seemed to be a much smaller operation. For local farmers he supplied hoes, horse shoes, and plows. For the schoolhouse (page 95) he produced andirons, a fire shovel, and "an iron to ring bell." The town's early leader Judge Theodore Lincoln (1763-1852), son of the Revolutionary War general Benjamin Lincoln, is featured on at least 10 pages.

Harvard's Baker Library holds an earlier Kilby ledger, and the University of Maine holds the following one. Provenance: by descent from William Kilby to his great-great-grandson Keith Hobart Kilby (1907-1969) of Dennysville; gift to William A. Reily in 1937.