China Bicentennial
On the west bank of the stream, the 1879 map showed a house and barn labled C. Clark. These probably belonged to the best-remembered village blacksmith, Chester Clark. Chester Clark began life as a farm boy, but in April 1860 he left his home at the south end of China Lake and went to Theodore Jackson's blacksmith shop in South China, where he spent a year learning the trade. The outbreak of the Civil War unsettled business and cost him his job; during the war years he worked in Rockland, Belfast, and East Vassalboro. In 1865 he bought his own blacksmith shop in Weeks Mills, where he worked for over sixteen years before selling out to Cyrus Davis. In The 1879 map showed his shop on the east bank of the river south of Main Street, behind the Gray store. After a few years of blacksmithing in Waterville, Gardner, and Hallowell and running a livery stable in Augusta, Mr. Clark returned to Weeks Mills in 1888 for a few years before moving back to Augusta. Kingsbury wrote of him in 1892:
Chester M. Clark, the village blacksmith at Weeks Mills, is a son of Jonathan Clark, 2d, grandson of Randall and great grandson of Edmund
Clark. He was born 1838. His first wife was a daughter of William Church, and his second is a daughter of Charles B. Bassett. Mr. Clark has been at the Mills since 1865, excepting for the five years preceding 1888, in the building which was erected for a wagon shop by Eben French, who was drowned in the stream while watering his horse.
China Bicentennial
On the west bank of the stream, the 1879 map showed a house and barn labled C. Clark. These probably belonged to the best-remembered village blacksmith, Chester Clark. Chester Clark began life as a farm boy, but in April 1860 he left his home at the south end of China Lake and went to Theodore Jackson's blacksmith shop in South China, where he spent a year learning the trade. The outbreak of the Civil War unsettled business and cost him his job; during the war years he worked in Rockland, Belfast, and East Vassalboro. In 1865 he bought his own blacksmith shop in Weeks Mills, where he worked for over sixteen years before selling out to Cyrus Davis. In The 1879 map showed his shop on the east bank of the river south of Main Street, behind the Gray store. After a few years of blacksmithing in Waterville, Gardner, and Hallowell and running a livery stable in Augusta, Mr. Clark returned to Weeks Mills in 1888 for a few years before moving back to Augusta. Kingsbury wrote of him in 1892:
Chester M. Clark, the village blacksmith at Weeks Mills, is a son of Jonathan Clark, 2d, grandson of Randall and great grandson of Edmund
Clark. He was born 1838. His first wife was a daughter of William Church, and his second is a daughter of Charles B. Bassett. Mr. Clark has been at the Mills since 1865, excepting for the five years preceding 1888, in the building which was erected for a wagon shop by Eben French, who was drowned in the stream while watering his horse.
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