Rosamus Lowell Mitchell, the proprietor of an extensive woodworking establishment in Skowhegan, Somerset County, was born in Norridgewock, January 26, 1830, son of Jonathan and Nancy B. (Walton) Mitchell. Some of his ancestors were Revolutionary patriots. His grandfather, John Mitchell, a native of Bath, Maine, who spent the most of his life in Chester, Maine, and lived to be eighty-one years old, reared four sons and three daughters. Jonathan Mitchell, son of John, was born in Chester, now Chesterville, Maine. During the War of 1812 he was called out with a company, and served for a short time. He cultivated a farm for a space, and later was engaged in woodworking and blacksmithing in Norridgewock. At his death he was ninety-one years old. In religious belief he was a Baptist. His wife, Nancy B., who was a daughter of Joshua Walton, of Readfield, Maine, became the mother of five children, of whom a son died in infancy, and three sons and one daughter lived to maturity.
Rosamus Lowell Mitchell was educated in the common schools and at Bloomfield Academy. He possessed a natural genius for mechanics, especially woodworking. After some time spent in a machine shop he was employed as the engineer of a tow-boat on Moosehead Lake. He was later employed in the carriage-making business and still later in a casket factory in Cambridge, Mass. In 1872 he located in Skowhegan, where he began the woodworking business upon a small scale; and in 1882 he bought his present building, thirty-six by eighty feet, which he has since obliged to enlarge. He employs an average of twenty men the year round, and his goods — such as stepladders, clotheshorses, and clothes-driers — find a ready market in Boston and Philadelphia. He has been connected with the fire department since he was twenty-five years of age. For one year he served as chief engineer, and for three years he was on the Board of Engineers. He has been Junior and Senior Warden of Somerset Lodge, No. 34, F. & A. M.; and is a member of Somerset Chapter, Royal Arch Masons. In politics he is a Republican. In religious belief he is a Baptist, and he has been a Deacon and a teacher in the Sunday-school for a number of years.
Mr. Mitchell first married Helen, daughter of Seth Banks, of Bloomfield. She has since died, leaving three children, namely: Henry L., the superintendent of his father’s factory; Walter V., who is employed in said factory; and Helen B., who married H. M. Weston, and resides in Skowhegan. Mr. Mitchell’s second marriage was contracted with Martha W. Cass, a daughter of Enoch C. Cass, of Cornville, and who died in the fall of 1882.
Source: Biographical review: containing life sketches of leading citizens of Somerset, Piscataquis, Hancock, Washington, and Aroostook counties, Maine. Boston: Biographical Review Publishing Company, 1898.