Canton Maine Historical Society

History Story:

The Corn Shop

by Robyn McClintock 

The Canton Corn Shop was built in 1881 by J. Winslow Jones, and soon after that the Winslow Packing Co. was formed. The Winslow brothers patented their canning process.

In 1887, they sold the business to the Portland Packing Co. In 1898 the Portland Packing Co. was struck by lightening, and the main building and the shed were destroyed, losing 325,000 cans of corn! Only 2,000 cans were recovered.

1910 saw the largest pack of corn in years, 500,000 cans. Albert Adams of Canton Point received $686.84 from raising 6 ½ acres of sweet corn, while Fred Tripp of the same neighborhood received $190 from 1 5/8 acres of sweet corn. The sweet corn packing season started around the end of August to the first of September.

In 1915, another small shed burned because of a grass fire along the railroad tracks. 1928 saw the price of a pound of corn at 3 ½ cents! The McCollister brothers of Canton Point planted 16 acres of sweet corn for the packing Company.

During the height of Portland Packing ownership, they employed 123 people for a payroll of $5,000 to $6,000.

In 1947, Mabel Lavorgna had her right hand crushed while working, just one of the accidents that took place.

Portland Packing had 7 factories at one time. Canton raised 175 acres of corn and they also packed squash, tomatoes, pumpkins, and green beans.

In 1954 Portland Packing sold out to Monmouth Packing Company. Frank Bean was the new superintendent when it reopened in 1954. Sam Hayden of Canton Point was a superintendent of the corn shop and he also raised 12 acres of sweet corn himself in 1954. Under Monmouth Packing, the shop employed 75-80 employees during the highest of the packing season, buying corn from 300-400 acres in the area.

In 1961 there was a fire in the boiling room, which was the only room destroyed, ruining 53,000 cases of corn out of the 70,000 case quota.

In the fall of 1944, several girls from Canton High School worked in the corn shop because the men were still at war. Many of the Canton ladies, and those from surrounding towns kept the shop open during the war. Gladys Conant would cook and take food over to sell to the workers for lunch and snacks.

Virginia Stevens Verrill and Betty Jane Wakulish worked there on a section that conveyed the corn from the huskers (husked by hand) to the cutter area, where 6 girls would be working. The cutter girls got messy from the sticky juices squirted from the corn. The machines would be washed clean as the next batch of corn was coming through and was marked accordingly. Virginia was also lucky enough to ride along with her uncle Horace Worden, superintendent at the time, to go out and check the corn fields.

Monmouth Packing sold to Wainwright Farms, ending the “corn shop” in 1968, and changing to a potato farm. Around 1991, Wainwright sold to Maxwell Farms, and then to Crane Brothers, as we know it today.