Shaw Brothers Tannery (Grand Lake Stream, Me.)

F. Shaw and Brothers was a Boston firm which dominated the Maine tannery business in the late 1800's. They had large tanneries at Kingman, Jackson Brook (now Brookton), Vanceboro, Forest City, and Grand Lake Stream. The three brothers in the firm, William, Fayette, and Thackster Shaw, had learned the business from their father who had a small tannery in Cummington, Mass. In the summer of 1870 the three of them started their operations in Maine after a trip to Hinckleytown or, as it came to be known, Grand Lake Stream Plantation. Bark was needed for the tanning process, and the Shaw Brothers often set up extract operations in the woods. Eventually the investment in the immense Shaw operations was too much and the firm failed in the summer of 1883. Creditors formed a nine man committee to investigate the firm's finances. Trustees ran the tanneries until the nineties, selling off land to pay off part of the debts. In the late nineties the remaining property was sold to the International Leather Company, which dismantled the mills and shipped the usable machinery to Boston. By the end of the eighties the Grand Lake Stream tannery, now run by the trustees, was getting its bark from the Machias River area. By 1910 the United States Leather Company had ceased operation in all the large tanneries purchased from the creditors of the Shaw family.

Charles W. Clement was a trustee of the business of the Shaw Brothers Tannery.

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