Thomaston, Maine, once the busiest and most prosperous of Maine towns, is known for its historic white houses, with both Main and Knox Streets on the National Historic Register and about eighty-five percent of the town’s slightly more than 700 homes more than one hundred years old, many closer to two hundred. Three major industries shaped its wealth and future: shipbuilding, lime burning, and the Maine State Prison. Shipbuilding was the most influential, bringing great wealth to Thomaston’s wharves; more nineteenth-century sailing ships were built here than anywhere else in the country, and the town was filled with shipbuilders, sea captains, and merchant sailors whose voyages could last two to three years. Lime burning was the second most successful occupation, and although lime powder was a dangerous cargo that caused fires at sea and the loss of ships and crews, it remained the most lucrative of the goods shipped from town. The Maine State Prison, established in Thomaston in 1824, remained there until 2002 and was the third largest employer. Together these pursuits gave Thomaston the appearance of a nineteenth-century town and fostered its strong interest in local history. Among the prominent people associated with the town were Major-General Henry Knox, George Washington’s head of artillery during the American Revolution and first Secretary of War, who retired there in 1795; Senator John Ruggles, often called the father of the United States Patent Office; and Congressman Jonathan Cilley, the last man killed in a duel east of the Mississippi River, whose two sons later brought honor to the town during the Civil War. The St. Georges River, Thomaston’s route to the ocean, once marked the boundary between the French on the east and the English on the west until after the American Revolution.