Ward family cabin undergoes renovation> Log home was built by company founder

TOWNSHIP 4 RANGE 16 — Eleanor Ward Nichols used to look over the loft railing at her Madawaska Lake camp, watch her children play with their cousins and ask, “Is everybody happy?”

The 88-year-old woman looked over that railing again recently to view the main part of the newly restored log cabin, one of the first of such structures built by her father, Bruce Ward, the founder of Ward Log Homes.

The company, now owned by the McLaughlin family, is headquartered in Houlton and claims to be the oldest log cabin company in the country.

There were tears of happiness in her eyes as she descended the loft stairs. There were tears the day before when she arrived at the camp with her daughter, Rebecca Ward Nichols Goulart of Walpole, Mass.

Named “Sunset Lodge,” the cedar log cabin has been placed on the list of National Historical Places because of its builder and the type of architecture, which was popular in the early 20th century as recreational housing.

After the structure was placed on the national historical list, Goulart and her sisters decided it was time to repair the place. She contracted with Alwin Espling of New Sweden, who with Richard Bechard of Stockholm, has restored the structure.

Throughout the summer, the pair replaced logs, jacked up the building, replaced the foundation and repainted floors. If new logs were required, they were acquired from the Ward Log Home Co. in Houlton.

Bruce Robert Ward was born in 1876 in St. Francis. He married Charlotte Bradbury in 1906 and the couple had a daughter, Eleanor.

Ward started out in the building business by working for Great Northern Paper Co. where he selected trees for harvest. Around 1914, he started the Ward & Bradbury Co., which consisted of a mill and store. About 10 years later, he built a mill in Washburn and moved to Presque Isle. Fire destroyed that business and another mill was built near the fair grounds in Presque Isle.

The mill, which became the Ward Cabin Co., milled cedar poles for the telephone and electric companies. When an excess of poles developed, Ward started constructing log buildings.

The first round log structure built by Ward was the American Legion hall in Yarmouth in the winter of 1931-1932. Ward’s Madawaska Lake camp was the second, built in 1932. Several other camps at the lake, located just north of Stockholm, were built later by Ward’s company.

In the late 1930s Ward developed and patented the tongue and groove method of building the cabins. He also developed the overlapping interlocking system of corner joining in log home construction.

He designed cabins with numbered logs and shipped them to customers throughout the country.

Goulart and her mother were back at the cabin this fall to view the restoration process.

The back bedroom, now divided to allow for a bathroom, was called the “haunted bedroom,” where the children gathered to tell ghost stories. “It was on of our favorite things to do,” she recalled.

Mrs. Nichols and her husband, also a builder, used the loft above the main area for sleeping quarters. A large beam running the length of the loft bears the signatures, dates and messages of visitors for the last 60-odd years.

Harold Nichols, Ward’s son-in-law, worked in the business and traveled to Rhode Island to supervise the construction of 30 Ward log cabins in Narragansett. Unable to get away during the busy summer building season, his wife, Eleanor Ward Nichols, traveled on Route 1 with her three daughters to spend summers at the cabin.

“This was our summer vacation,” she said.

At that time, the lake road was between the camps and the lake. People would park their cars in front of the camp and residents would have to cross in order to enjoy the lake, Nichols remembered. During the 1940s, the road was reconstructed to allow the camps to be right on shore.

On rainy days, they’d visit relatives in Fort Fairfield, from where the Nichols family hailed.

They played an old piano that occupied an entire corner in the main living area.

“Dad bought it at an antique shop,” Mrs. Nichols remembered. “They had to take out the window to get it in.”

With the restoration almost complete, Goulart believes the camp will be used quite a bit more.

“I think we’re gong to have to draw names for weeks (in the summer),” Goulart said.

“I think it’s wonderful,” said her mother as she settled in a rocking chair beside a wood fire.