Evan Gerrish started his business in 1878 when he was 24 years old, according to Ed Socker, owner of Wooly Willow Canoe Co. in Rockport.

In 1942, the Bangor Daily Commercial touted Bangor as the home of “the first” canvas-canoe built in the world, and cited Evan Gerrish as its builder.

Gerrish started his business at 18 Broad St. in Bangor, right in the middle of a bustling mercantile exchange area of downtown, Socker said. Citing the book, “The Wood and Canvas Canoe,” by Mainers Rollin Thurlow and Jerry Stelmok, Socker said the story goes that Gerrish was guiding a wealthy “sport” on Moosehead Lake and rescued his guest from a dire situation. The sportsman rewarded Gerrish with an amount substantial enough to set him up in business.

Gerrish was building about 18 canoes a year in those first years, and by 1882 he was charging $25 a canoe, Socker said. By 1884, the company was turning out 50 canoes a year.

By 1891, E.H. Gerrish had moved to the corner of French and Hancock streets in Bangor, into a “new, two-story building measuring 40 by 50 feet in size, built especially for his growing business,” according to George F. Bacon, who wrote “Bangor: Its Points of Interest and Its Representative Business Men,” published in that year.

Bacon considered Gerrish “one of the leading boat builders in the state. He is a manufacturer of canvas canoes, boats, paddles and oars, and those entrusting him with the making of either of the above named boats may rest assured that the job will be carried out in a workmanlike and ‘ship-shape’ manner.”

By 1909, production was up to about 100 boats a year.

Gerrish later sold the company, which moved to Costigan and continued to produce canoes into the 1930s. Socker estimated that the company’s total production was fewer than 2,000 canoes.