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Oriental Powder Company
Oriental Powder Company was a gunpowder manufacturer with mills located on the Presumpscot River in Gorham and Windham, Maine. The company was one of the four largest suppliers to Union forces through the American Civil War.
==History==
The Presumpscot River dropped 16 feet at Gambo Falls where the river formed the border between the towns of Windham and Gorham. Sebago Lake formed a large natural reservoir upstream of Gambo giving the falls an unusually reliable water supply with comparatively minor flow peaking from storm runoff.〔Wells, Walter ''The water-power of Maine'' (1869) Sprague, Owen & Nash, Augusta〕 Early European settlers built a sawmill powered by the falls. In 1817 the sawmill was converted to gunpowder manufacture by Edmund Fowler and Lester Laflin.〔Dole, Samuel Thomas ''Windham in the Past'' (1916)〕 Lester Laflin was a grandson of American Revolutionary War gunpowder manufacturer Matthew Laflin. The Laflin family manufactured gunpowder in Massachusetts for several generations. When Lester came east to Maine, his first cousins traveled west to build gunpowder mills in New York and Chicago.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Laflin & Rand Powder Company )〕 Lester, his partner, and their mill foreman drowned on Sebago Lake on 22 June 1827.〔
Following an explosion killing seven employees on 19 July 1828,〔''The Newsletter of Presumpscot Regional Land Trust'' Winter 2009-2010〕 the Gambo Falls mill was enlarged by Oliver Whipple concurrently with construction of locks for the Cumberland and Oxford Canal. The canal provided reliable transportation from Portland harbor for sulfur from Sicily and saltpeter from India and from Sebago Lake for charcoal and lumber from forests to the north. Whipple's mill used the lumber to manufacture kegs holding as much as 25 pounds of powder. Kegs of gunpowder were shipped to Portland in canal boats when possible, but moved in horse-drawn sleighs when the canal was frozen.〔 Canal boats carried about 25 tons, and sometimes sailed all the way to Boston when weather was favorable.〔
After plant explosions killed one employee each in 1835, 1847, 1849, 1850, and 1851, a major explosion on 12 October 1855 killed seven employees,〔 including Whipple's brother and son, injured five more and destroyed a canal boat and parts of the mill.〔 Manufacture of gunpowder in response to orders avoided the hazard of storing powder inventories until orders were received, but required water power on demand. The canal lock system controlled outflow from Sebago Lake; and, as a shipper interested in the well-being of its customer, canal management was receptive to regulating water releases to meet needs of the powder mill.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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