Bryant Pond's Three-Story Privy

Bryant Pond has a rare three-story outhouse in its Masonic lodge.

The lodge, and its retro facilities, were state of the art in the mid-1800s when they were constructed. This skyscraper privy is a simple pine board with a hole in it. Anything dropped through falls two complete stories until it smacks the earth. Venerated by some, abhorred by others, the three-holer was finally supplemented by real indoor plumbing in the year 2000—a flush toilet and everything. But only on the ground floor; the second and third stories remain as they were. [Link]

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America's Oldest Family-Run Inn

12th-generation innkeeper Tricia Mason believes that Seaside Inn & Cottages in Kennebunk is the oldest family-run inn in America.

The Seaside has been in her family since at least the mid-1600s. That's when Mason's ancestor John Gooch answered the call of Fernando Gorges, agent for King Charles II, to ferry travelers across the mouth of the Kennebunk. Gooch sailed from England and settled here, most likely in the 1650s. Because travelers often needed to spend a night or two before the crossing, he offered rooms and meals. [Link]

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The Center of New England

The title of "geographical center of New England" has been claimed by Dunbarton and Wakefield, New Hampshire, and Sanford, Maine. But according to a geologist with the U. S. Geographical Service in Massachusetts, the center lies in the Oxford County town of Norway.

Using her computer algorithms, Emily Himmelstoss pegged the center of Maine in a bog at the west end of Roaring Brook Pond in the unorganized Piscataquis County land mass labeled on maps as "T-7, R-9 NWP" (45.3937 W, -69.2385 N).

The center of New Hampshire is 41 feet off the Winona Road, 0.14 miles northwest of Winona Lake (43.6877 W, -71.5785 N). Vermont's centroid is 480 feet west of a spot on the Drown Road, 3/4 of a mile, as the crow flies, from East Roxbury (44.0740 W, -72.6637 N).

For Massachusetts's, the center of the state can be found 61 feet east of South Flagg Street, 0.12 miles for its intersection with Pleasant Street, in Worcester (42,2756 W, -71.8389 N), while Connecticut's centroid is smack in the westbound lane of Route 9, 0.15 miles from where it passes under Beckley Road, in East Berlin. Finally, Rhode Island's center can be found in the south brook of the Pawtuxet River, 0.17 miles east of Gatehouse Farm Road, in Coventry (41.6942 W, -71.5916 N).

All of that, puts the center of New England in Norway, Maine, at a spot 542 feet east of a spot on the Shedd Road.

The Advertiser is not revealing the exact point on the Shedd Road because, while public use is allowed - a snowmobile trail cuts across one corner of the 110-acre parcel - the owner has yet to acclimate to the prospect of a long line lookie-loos tramping past the family farmstead. [Link]

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