Morton’s Bakery circa 1910. Submitted photo
March is an interesting time in Farmington. The weather begins to gradually warm, the days get longer, and it is around this time when the ice cream stands reopen for the season. It is a weekly tradition of mine for most of the year to go down to Gifford’s and get an ice cream cone or frappe, enjoying my treat in the tranquility of Abbott Park. While ice cream is one of my beloved desserts, I also have a soft spot in my heart for baked goods. Pies, cakes, doughnuts, you name it, I love it. While the name Morton may bring back memories of Chevrolet dealerships in town to many older Farmingtonians, I vicariously reminisce about a prior time when John C. Morton, Jr. owned a bakery on Main Street some 105 years ago. Let’s take a journey back to March of 1915 and follow the bakery over the course of a year.
Tuesday, March 16, 1915 is quite the exciting day in pre-WWI Farmington. John C. Morton, Jr. has opened his new bakery on Main Street in Farmington (partly where Food City is today). This is his second bakery in Maine, his first being in Winthrop. This is also his new location in town, formerly being located on Broadway in the Stoddard House building (which was town down in the 1950s for the building which now houses the Homestead). As one enters the establishment, the aroma of fresh baked bread, pies, cookies, and other delectable treats invites a hungry customer in. The bakery is one of the finest in the state of Maine. It is extraordinarily clean and finished with white enamel. The prices in the bakery are quite reasonable, especially on this coming Saturday. “Sat-dy Specials” as Morton calls them in the Franklin Journal advertisements, are some of the best deals in town. For instance, for 25 cents, one can get one of three specials, which have different items every week. One week, the specials were as follows: 1.) 10 sugar cookies (chocolate chip wasn’t invented until the 1930s), 10 doughnuts, 4 turnovers; 2.) 10 hermits, 1 mapo cake (mapo is a hybrid citrus fruit of a mandarin orange and grapefruit), 4 mocha cakes; 3.) 10 fruit bars, 1 loaf of bread, 6 chocolate squares. Over the course of the day, 500-600 people visit the bakery for the grand opening.
Over the next year, several interesting improvements occur at Morton’s. In April, Morton’s swiftly delivers 30 loaves of bread on an Indian motorcycle. In November, Mr. Morton expands the bakery by having an extension built on the back on the building. The following month, Morton sells his bakery in Winthrop, focusing solely on his Farmington business. It is announced in February of 1916 that Morton’s Bakery will be expanding and adding an ice cream parlor to the establishment.
On Tuesday, May 2, Morton opens the ice cream parlor to the public. It is interesting to note that there are now two major ice cream parlors in town, the other being Florence Norton’s Candy Store in Drummond Hall. As Norton’s is very popular amongst the youth of Farmington, Morton has been running ads in the Franklin Journal “inviting Normal, Abbott School, and High School students” to make Morton’s “your new headquarters in Farmington”. The ice cream parlor has 6 different flavors of ice cream, and 12 different sauces. Like with the bakery, Morton has Saturday specials for the ice cream parlor. For one week, the specials were as follows: 1.) chocolate ice cream with hot fudge chocolate sauce – 10 cents; 2.) grape nut ice cream with butterscotch sauce – 10 cents.
Morton continued in the bakery/ice cream business until the early-1920s when he and his son Lloyd went into the Chevrolet business, continuing that business for decades. (Stories sourced from the Franklin Journal)
Layne Nason is a Farmington historian, specializing in the history of the Abbott School for Boys and Farmington during the era of the Great War.
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