The final building to be burned on the Hunnewell farm was their home. It was burned the night before the water reached the buildings.
The picture on the front cover of the book is the sugar house where maple syrup was made, labeled and shipped in wooden boxes. This building had been burned a few days earlier.
Starting flooding the Kennebec River in 1929 to make way for Wyman Dam. Farm buildings in Pleasant Ridge Plantation and Moscow, Maine were burned before the water reached the farm. The trees were not cut and still remain standing under Wyman Lake.
Left to right: Lucille Hunnewell Currier, Bob Hunnewell and Rena Hunnewell Gray. This picture was taken in 1995 at the new house we built in 1929. which was the year we had to burn our old house when the Kennebec River was flooded to build Wyman Dam.
The Hunnewell ancestors migrated to Pleasant Ridge Plantation when it was known as “Carrytunk also known as Carratunk”. Our ancestors bought land from William Bingham’s “million acre tract” when Maine was still part of Massachusetts. The Hunnewell family is one of many families on Pleasant Ridge Plantation that went through the flooding of the Kennebec River to build the hydro dam. Many farms were burned, families had to move to new areas, but there were a few of us that owned enough land to rebuild a new house on land our ancestors had refused to sell. Many of us still have no electric power, but we enjoy the life of Pleasant Ridge Plantation.
Progress has to go on, we all know this and we all live with this.
This book gives you an insight on how the Hunnewell ancestors obtained their land and includes families who used to own land on “The Ridge” before Central Maine Power built Wyman Dam. There are funny stories about the people in the area, a chance to follow the “old road” that is now under Wyman Lake and the road built after Wyman Dam was completed.
Robert E. Hunnewell was born and brought up on Pleasant Ridge Plantation before Central Maine Power flooded the Kennebec River in 1930 to build a hydro electric dam. It is now 79 years later and there are still homes and cottages on Wyman Lake with no electric power.The residents live with gas lights,gas stoves, gas refrigerators, generators or even solar power.
