Thirlstane Ranch Inc.

Thirlstane Ranch Inc. is William Pierson Hamilton's undertaking, he was the great grandson of Alexander Hamilton, our countries first Secretary of the Treasury. I can't possibly do this story justice in just a few sentences, but I'll try to give you a few facts to ponder.

Basically, Hamilton bought up over 40 working farms (during the Great Depression) around 1936-37 on MDI, Trenton, Lamoine and used each one for a different purpose. The owners of the farms were allowed to continue to live on the farms rent free and manage the farms. They all had one thing in common... the color scheme of the buildings were all the same – they were yellow with blue trim and red roofs. On these farms he dabbled in horses, a game bird farm, and other “hobby farms”. But he also had a dairy farm or farms somewhere apparently. And one of the farms, Lakewood Farm (the Clarance Alley Farm), was where he set up a state-of-the-art plant for processing and bottling milk. At that plant Hamilton employed N. Searle Perry from Hampden as foreman.

Visitors were encouraged to observe cows being milked from behind glass. Hugh Kelly was Hamilton's book keeper and my grandfather Owen J. Clark was in charge of the milk routes/distribution. It wasn't long before Hamilton decided to pack it all up, just about 2 years. The Thirlstane Ranch milk routes were offered to OJ and Hugh Kelly - free for the taking. Those two men agreed to split the routes – OJ getting Southwest Harbor/Tremont, Kelly getting Bar Harbor. And they also agreed to not cut in on each others territory and stuck to that. See “Farm Owners History” in the documents section below and see if you can understand what that writer is saying in reference to the properties acquired by Hamilton. When Thirlstane Ranch dissolved in 1939, the individual farms were returned to their previous owners. Hamilton employed over 150 people.