Stillman Armstrong: A Life Well Lived

by Lyn Mikel Brown

Stillman R. Armstrong (1879-1938) was Vanceboro’s version of a Renaissance man. At various points in his relatively short life, he was a taxidermist, a shoe manufacturer, an inventor, the co-owner of Vanceboro’s silent movie house, a fire insurance agent, the owner of a lumber mill, and the proprietor of the town’s first electrical plant.

Armstrong was more than an astute businessman, though. As former Vanceboro resident Herb Gallison wrote in his memoir, The Long Life and Pretty Good Times of Herb Gallison, Armstrong was beloved in Vanceboro for his creative energy and commitment to the well-being of the community.

“More than any of his contemporaries he was altruistically civic-minded, too honorable to ever be politically inclined. Everything he developed improved the living conditions in our community. He made jobs for and paid good wages to local people who weren’t on the MCRR payroll. He provided [the town] with our first household electric power, enabling us to have useful appliances and retire our smoky kerosene lamps. He introduced us to our first moving pictures.”¹

Armstrong was born on February 6, 1879 in Perth, New Brunswick, a village located just across the St. John River from Fort Fairfield, Maine. In 1899, at the age of twenty, Stillman co-owned Hill & Armstrong’s Taxidermy Shop in Fort Fairfield. In 1903, he married Adele “Addie” Marion Levesque from Grand Isle, Maine, an Acadie village just north on the St. John River. Perhaps realizing the importance of the US Canada railway to an emerging entrepreneur and businessman, the couple moved to Vanceboro.

In February of 1904, Stillman purchased a house on the corner of Railroad St. and Salmon Brook Road from Charles Hunter, E.A. Holbrook, and E.T. Holbrook. The following August he bought the Railroad Street property next door, from Horace Kellogg. There he constructed a two story building and began manufacturing shoes under the business name Stillman Armstrong Co. The next year, he and Addie welcomed a son, Vose, their first of twelve children.

Armstrong was, by then, also operating a taxidermy shop. As a newspaper article of the time reports, the shop employed two part-time workers and did “very fine work” mounting moose, deer, and caribou heads sent to him from as far away as Alaska and Newfoundland.”

Armstrong Moccasins: Yours from Maine

Stillman Armstrong Co’s specialty and most popular shoe was the moccasin and he advertised them widely.

He studied the moccasin’s construction and on Feb. 21, 1909, filed a patent with the U.S. Patent Office:

“Be it known that I, STILLMAN ARMSTRONG, a citizen of the United States, residing at Vanceboro, in the county of Washington and State of ‘Maine, have invented new and useful Improvements in Moccasins….”

The invention, he continues, “has for its object the provision of a moccasin of the ‘low quarter” style, in which the disposition of the lacing flaps insures the secure fastening of the moccasin against looseness and slip; and, furthermore, such lacing flaps, together with the tongue, when arranged in accordance with my invention, afford a complete protection for the instep of the wearer; these results being accomplished without adding materially to the weight or cost of the moccasin, and without detracting from its appearance or comfort.”

Armstrong’s “new and useful improvements” were popular and the patent, it would seem from his subsequent land purchases and businesses, was quite profitable. His design remains a fundamental reference for other patent applications. A search for Armstrong’s patent number takes us to a 2012 design application submitted by Croc, Inc. The earliest listed reference, distinguishing their filing from any other, is “March 1909, Armstrong.”

Over the years, Stillman Armstrong became a wealthy land and business owner. In 1913, he bought the spool mill and all associated buildings and machinery on the shore of Spednic Lake from King Maxwell (one acre of land). In 1924, he bought property, including “the mill, the dam across the river, and the water power thereto belonging, known as the Vanceboro Tannery land and bounded on the north by the Maine Central Railroad, east by St. Croix River, south by line of pasture land and house lot, west by Salmon Brook St.” On this property, utilizing the dam and river, he built an electric plant that brought light and energy to Vanceboro in 1925.

In 1937, Armstrong sold the spool mill to Roger Hale of Chestnut Hill, MA. The mill then became part of Sunrise Farm, the anthroposophy center run by Roger Hale and his wife, Marion.²

Even with all this success, it was Armstrong’s earlier 1916 venture with deputy sheriff and state detective George W. Ross to bring silent movies to Vanceboro that made him a truly popular fellow.

The Armstrong Picture House was located on the top floor of Stillman Armstrong Co shoe factory.

Again, we look to Herb Gallison for a full description of the theater:

Stillman and Addie’s many children can be seen in all variety of school photos over the years. Herman and John played football and later, Herman attended Blessed Electric School in Washington, DC. Marion played basketball. Vose studied Forestry at the University of Maine, where he landed the nickname, Beaver.

Most of the Armstrong children left Vanceboro. Some married, had children of their own, built lives elsewhere. But Stillman and Addie remain with us, here in the Vanceboro cemetery just down the road from where the shoe factory and the picture house stood, anchoring a life well lived during a prosperous era in the life of the town.

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1. Gallison, Herb. (1992). The Long Life and Pretty Good Times of Herb Gallison. Edited by Kate Gallison. Lambertville, N.J. Mystic Dog Press. [University of Maine, Raymond H. Fogler Library]. ↩︎
2. Hale, Judson (1987). The Education of a Yankee: An American Memoir. New York: Harper & Row. ↩︎
3. Gallison, 1992. ↩︎