DANVILLE — Carloads of immigrants arrived at Danville Junction a century or more ago to work in the Lewiston and Auburn mills. And this now-quiet town was home to several busy brickyards.

Danville native Betty Young related these and other Danville facts to 20 people during a tour of the town’s historic locations. The event was sponsored by the Androscoggin Historical Society. Young is a local historian and a member of the society’s board of directors.

The tour viewed several sites, including the house built by Squire Andrew Giddinge, an early leader in town who read and wrote letters, surveyed land, wrote deeds and settled disputes for his neighbors.

The tour ended at Danville Junction, where trains from two railroads converged and made the town a major shipping and passenger center from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. Immigrants from Canada and other locales came to Lewiston and Auburn to find jobs in the growing mills.

The Junction had its share of train accidents. In 1869 a steam engine exploded just north of the station. “There was not so much as a splinter of the cab left and the smoke-stack was never found,” one account said. Remarkably, the engineer was not injured.

Young related an incident in 1915 that involved her mother, Doris Thurston, a Danville girl who at age 7, anxious to pick up a new dress, ran across the railroad tracks. Her high-buttoned shoes became wedged in a rail and she was struck by a train.

Carried to the mail car, she was placed in a wicker mail basket and taken to the Auburn station and then to the Central Maine General Hospital in Lewiston. Doris Thurston lost her leg but learned to use a crutch and led an active life. She married and raised four children, and led Brownie and Girl Scout troops and a 4-H Club.

Young said Danville was home to several brickyards over the years, due to rich clay deposits. One yard survives: the Morin Brick Co., which has supplied bricks used in many large projects, including the Auburn Mall, L.L. Bean’s corporate offices in Freeport, several banks and colleges, and the “Big Dig” in Boston.

Young told how in 1802 the town was incorporated as Pejepscot, covering about half of what is now Auburn, and in 1819 a town meeting voted to change the name to Danville. In 1859 the Legislature ceded to Auburn a piece of current downtown Auburn north of the Little Androscoggin River — taking away much of Danville’s tax list and voter list. And in 1867 the Legislature passed an act that annexed Danville to Auburn, although a majority of Danville voters apparently were not in favor, and the town ceased to exist as a political entity. However it retains its community identity today with a church, post office, its own zip code, and the last active Grange in the Twin Cities.

The tour was the first in a new effort by the Androscoggin Historical Society to present programs on weekends. The traditional series of monthly evening lectures will continue in the society’s headquarters on the third floor of the County Courthouse in Auburn.