WILLOW CREEK — The Nathaniel Thorne house on River Road, the oldest continuously occupied dwelling in the township, has been modernised with the installation of indoor plumbing and a coal furnace, bringing the 1820s home into the twentieth century.
The work, which took six weeks, includes a new kitchen sink with hand-pumped water, a claw-foot bathtub, and a coal-fired furnace replacing the fireplaces that heated the house for nearly ninety years. The fixtures were shipped from Bangor on the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad, the only practical way to move such goods overland.
“It is strange to see the old house with pipes in the walls,” said Ezra Thorne II, who lives in the home with his wife and young son Walter. “My grandfather Nathaniel built this house without a single nail, every joint mortise and tenon. The idea that it would one day have a flush toilet would have seemed like a story from a dime novel.”
The house was built by Nathaniel Thorne, the son of the shipyard founder. It was here that Nathaniel planned the vessels he would build at Thorne & Sons Shipworks, and here that subsequent generations raised their families. The house has seen the shipyard’s rise and fall, the arrival of the railroad, and the construction of the mill.
“Every Thorne born in this town was born in this house,” Thorne said. “The railroad brought the pipes and the furnace. But it also brought the mill that drowned the launching slip. Progress is a mixed account.”