R.D. Thurston is pictured operating his Main Street in Andover business, Ralph D. Thurston General Merchandise. The store existed for 22 years until 1928.

ANDOVER — Shortly after the Olde Home Days parade on Aug. 3, the Andover Historical Society held a ceremony regarding the donation of a safe that served an important figure in the town’s history, Ralph D. Thurston.
Tom Thurston said, “He and my great-grandmother ran a general store (Ralph D. Thurston General Merchandise) for 22 years (starting about 1906) and lived upstairs in the building that was most recently the Little Red Hen Restaurant (28 S. Main St.).”
The safe, which served for much of the time the store was operation, had “Ralph D. Thurston” in gold lettering on the top front, is about 36 inches wide, 36 inches deep, and maybe 48 inches high, was fortified with concrete to make it fireproof, and very heavy.
The safe, delivered here from Manchester Center, VT, weighs about 600 pounds. “It was taken there by my brother after he sold our great-grandmother’s house on North Main Street to the current owner,” noted Tom.
At the ceremony were historical society members Claire Sessions, Pam Berry, Trudy Akers, Steve Sessions and Peter Stowell.
But the most interesting aspect of the ceremony was that this was nearly a four-year acquisition process, hindered by the fact that the combination to the locked safe was lost!
Thurston said, “We had to get a safecracker (from Albany, NY) to come to Vermont to open it and record the combination.”
The safe was empty except for some locked boxes inside it.
In addition to the newfound combination to the safe, the ceremony also consisted of Tom presenting keys to historical society member Trudy Akers to open the inside door of the safe and the small boxes inside.
“Thankfully, they were in the safe,” said Thurston.

Tom Thurston, great-grandson of Ralph D. Thurston, presents the combination and keys of a donated safe from Ralph D. Thurston General Merchandise to Andover Historical Society member Trudy Akers. Bruce Farrin/Rumford Falls Times

Claire Sessions said they will definitely be using the safe to store valuable historical artifacts.
After getting the okay from other society members, Steve Sessions closed and locked the safe, then tried to open it using the combination. He was successful on the second or third attempt.
During the ceremony, Stowell presented Tom with a box containing a framed photo of the old Thurston store.
R.D. Thurston was born December 5, 1865 in Errol, New Hampshire.
Tom noted that before they had the store, “my great-grandfather was a professional photographer for about four years, using glass plate negatives. His studio is still in existence on Pine Street.”
He said many of the photos included loggers in the area. The negatives are probably a part of the historical society’s archives.
Tom said the Thurston store was a Grange Store. “They existed all over the country for local farmers to buy and sell their goods.”
After they stopped running the store, the Thurstons moved out of the upstairs to the house at Main and Pleasant streets.
It was from there that Ralph spearheaded an effort to bring electricity to Andover. He founded the Andover Power Co., which brought electricity to town for the first time in 1929 from the Oxford Paper Co. generating station in Rumford.
R.D. rendered the monthly bills from the dining room table in the white house just before Bert Rand’s brick house on North Main Street, said Tom.
He said the power initially consisted of just a two-wire line that only provided 120 volts and it came from Rumford Center through East Andover. When the satellite station was built, a bigger line served it and an extension was run from there to the village.
Tom said, “His last major accomplishment was to serve as the Representative to the State Legislature for that area for two years in the early 1930’s. We have a framed letter to him from the governor at that time.”
R.D. died in 1937 at age 76 when he came home after reading electric meters on snowshoes and dropped dead of a heart attack in the front hall.
Claire Sessions, who recently became secretary for the historical society, said, “We were able to make room for it (the safe) in the main room of the society building and not in the basement. We have a committed, if small, group of members who are working hard to rejuvenate the society. I am working towards having a website and an annual newsletter.”
To become a member, all you need to do is to pay the yearly fee of $20.
She said the Andover Historical Society is open on a limited basis during the summer. FMI: email andovermainehistoricalsociety@gmail.com