Rumford’s James H. Kerr

by Charles Francis

It is a well-established fact that immigrants have played an important role in helping to build Maine. Swedish immigrants were among the early farmers of Aroostook County. The Irish formed the backbone of the labor force of the Bangor waterfront during that city’s heyday as a lumber port. Germans and Russians made major contributions to such towns as Waldoboro and Richmond. And, of course, Maine would not be Maine without the infusion of the vital French culture that runs from Biddeford in the south, through central Maine cities like Waterville, Lewiston and Auburn, and all the way to the St. John Valley in the north. While these immigrant groups and others like them have put their stamp on the state, another group of immigrants goes almost unrecognized in Maine. These are the Scots, one of whom, James H. Kerr, left an indelible mark on his adopted state and the city he settled in, Rumford.

James H. Kerr was an extraordinary builder. He built roads and bridges all across Maine as well as business offices, industrial structures, and even parking garages and theaters outside of the state. In fact, one of his bridges, the ornate Hancock and Sullivan Bridge in Downeast Maine, was considered the most beautiful structure of its type in the country at the time of its construction.

Rumford, where James Kerr settled and where he had the headquarters of his construction business, owes some of its first major business and industrial structures to Kerr. Kerr was also instrumental in developing the Mt. Zircon Spring Water Company, which at one time was second only to Poland Spring as a purveyor of mineral water in the northeast.

James H. Kerr was born on March 7, 1874 in a Nova Scotia town bearing the fanciful name of Pugwash. Pugwash lies on the Northumberland Strait which separates northwestern Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. When James Kerr was growing up there, Pugwash and the nearby coastal (cont. on page 42)

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(cont. from page 41) towns were prosperous centers of shipbuilding and boasted a profitable mercantile trade.

The area surrounding Pugwash was settled primarily by Scots in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The Kerr family came from Helensburgh, Scotland, which is where the actress Deborah Kerr was born. When James Kerr was growing up there, Pugwash had several large construction companies in addition to one of the largest foundries in Nova Scotia, a factor which undoubtedly led Kerr to the construction business in Maine.

When Kerr was twelve he shipped out as a cabin boy on one of Pugwash’s coastal traders. At eighteen he was captain of his own vessel, and by the time he was in his early twenties he had established himself as one of the most successful of Nova Scotia’s master mariners.

The late nineteenth century saw Nova Scotia undergo a serious economic depression. For this reason a significant number of the province’s residents, many of whom were Scots like James Kerr, emigrated to the mill towns of New England in search of work. Kerr left the province, however, not so much because he was looking for work but because he was searching for new and lucrative endeavors in which to invest what he had made as a ship captain. The place he chose to do this was Rumford, which in the last decade of the nineteenth century was just beginning to develop as an industrial and manufacturing center.

James Kerr arrived in Rumford in 1897 when he was just twenty-five years old and established the construction company which would make his fortune and reputation. Just five years earlier a power generating plant had been built at Rumford Falls. Prior to that the only industries Rumford had boasted had been saw and grist mills. The power plant had, however, spurred

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the growth of what would become Rumford’s commercial center, where a number of brick buildings were going up. Kerr immediately secured contracts for building more.

James Kerr’s first major contract was to build the vast sprawling buildings that became Rumford’s Oxford Paper Company plant. He built a bank in Norway and a five-story parking garage in Haverhill, Massachusetts as well as theaters in Rumford and a number of other Maine towns. In addition, he branched out into public works construction, building roads, dams, and bridges all across Maine. At the same time, Kerr began to diversify his business interests in Rumford.

Among James Kerr’s other Rumford-related businesses was the Rumford Ice Company which he served as president. In addition, he was vice-president and general manager of the Mt. Zircon Spring Water Company and was in part responsible making Mt.

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Zircon Spring Water a household name throughout New England by marketing it out of Boston. In fact, had fire not destroyed the hotel which was associated with the spring sometime before 1903, Mt. Zircon, with its famous Moontide Spring, might have come to rival the Poland Spring House as a watering hole and health spa for the wealthy.

James H. Kerr was just one of the Nova Scotia Scots to leave their native province and come to Maine where they became valued members of the communities in which they made their homes. The main reason why the Scots are not looked upon as a single group the way the Irish or the French are is that most of them, like James Kerr, were rugged individualists who set out to create a life for themselves on their own rather than by settling as groups in a single area.

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