Toppan Robie, one of Gorham’s leading citizens in the 1800s, paid $500 for the Howard Clock Co., and gave it to the town
after the Civil War.
Historian Hugh McLellan recorded in his “History of Gorham” that Robie paid $500 for the clock.
Robie came to Gorham from New Hampshire in 1799 as a teenager and became a retail merchant, with a store in Gorham Village. He served several terms as Gorham’s representative to the General Court of Massachusetts and then the Maine Legislature after it became a state.
A civic and church benefactor, Robie was treasurer of the First Parish and once gave the church $9,000. Bertha Willis wrote in her 1986 book, “The Way It Was in Gorham,” that Robie was the first president of Gorham Savings Bank in 1868.
One of his sons, Frederick Robie, became a Maine governor. He was a medical doctor, and was appointed a Union paymaster by President Lincoln at the beginning of the Civil War.
Toppan Robie, who also gave the town $2,000 for a soldier’s monument, died in 1871 at 89.
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