When my research uncovers firsthand stories and descriptions of Lewiston and Auburn in “the old days,” it’s like stepping back in time. Even more exciting is when observations of 100 or more years ago are not dusty recollections, but are important evidence of the inspiration and tradition behind some currently important local activity.

Just such a connection came from the writing of the daughter of an early rector of Lewiston’s Trinity Episcopal Church. Ruth Fortin Wilde lived in Lewiston from her birth in 1895, one year after her father, the Rev. Ivan C. Fortin, became rector of the church at the southeast corner of what is now Kennedy Park. The family moved away in 1910, but she wrote of her Lewiston memories almost eight decades later in a special piece for the Lewiston Evening Journal in March 1988.

She recalled waking every morning to the tolling of “the harsh, discordant mill bells, demanding their workers to awaken.” She told how some children carried hot lunches to their fathers at the mills in regulation lunch pails during school recess.

“I often went with one of my friends,” Wilde wrote.

She said, “I was fascinated, but frightened, as I walked in the aisles between the giant machines with their many moving parts. I clutched my dress around me, fearing one of the machines would grab me and grind me to bits.”

Her other Lewiston memories included rides on the electric trolley cars, and one route known as the “Figure Eight.”

Wilde said, “One could take the trolley at any corner and be driven around Lewiston in a loop, over the bridge to Auburn, around that town, and back to where it started. It was a fine ride for a nickel.”

A majority of her father’s parishioners were English mill workers who had emigrated to New England in search of a better life, she said.

“My father became a father image to them, their first hope in time of trouble, sickness or death. They arrived at the rectory at any time of day or night for help or comfort.”

Monday evening meetings of the women’s “Trinity Guild” brought families together at the church for fun and fellowship, and she had memories of the dining hall at the church. She described it in vivid detail.

“The dining room was papered with varnished matting from large, imported tea boxes,” she said. “The squares were framed with strips of cherry wood. On the red cherry molding around the room, a motto was painted in golden English-type letters: ‘We can live without Friends, We can live without Books, But civilized men cannot live without Cooks’.”

That quotation is a link from the past to the activity today of the church at 247 Bates St. and its Trinity Jubilee Center. The church went through a period of decline since Wilde’s childhood, but its connection to Lewiston’s downtown population is revitalized and strong.

The Trinity Jubilee Center is a nonprofit multi-service agency dedicated to addressing otherwise unmet personal, family, social and spiritual needs of people in the surrounding communities. Lewiston’s population has changed from mill workers of mostly English, Irish and French origin in downtown neighborhoods to a community of more diverse ethnicity.

Through numerous programs, including meals, a food pantry, a drop-in center, refugee relations, advocacy and intervention and partnership with many local organizations, Trinity Jubilee Center continues essential services similar to those that Ruth Fortin Wilde knew more than 100 years ago.

If Wilde and her father were here today, no doubt, they would recognize the city and its people, as well as the contributions they are now making to the community.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by sending email to [email protected].