"P. C. Holmes & Co. occupy a main building, 40x106 feet, two stories, used as a machine shop, a foundry 30 x 70 feet, a store house 40 x 50 feet, three stories, all brick, for the manufacture of machinery, commencing here in 1860, as successors to Holmes & Robbins, who established the business in 1831. They employ thirty men, and melt one ton of iron daily. A 11 horse power Blake wheel supplies the power ; the fall is eleven feet." (Quote from 1869.)

      "The history of the Holmes & Robbins' pioneer machine and iron working manufactory begins in 1830, when Philip C. Holmes and Charles A. Robbins began to build grain threshers on the lower dam, near the present Daily News building, for R. B. Dunn. In a few years they moved to dam No. 2, just above the old Gardiner woolen mill, where they built a wooden foundry on the site of their present old foundry, and a store-house for patterns, and added mill work and steam engines to their line of manufactures. This entire establishment was burned in 1846. Within a single month a brick foundry was in complete running order on the site of the old one, and the next year they built the present brick store-house. In 1848 the firm built the machine shop now in use, and made castings for ship work. Their forge for making ship shapes stood on dam No. 3, where Foster's axe factory was and where now the Gardiner Tool Company is located.

      This line of work was continued to 1858, when shipbuilding went down. The old firm was dissolved in 1860 and the new firm of P. C. Holmes & Co. was formed, by Philip C. and George M. Holmes and Thomas Wrenn. The latter died in 1866, and in 1873 Philip H. Holmes was admitted. Philip C. Holmes died in 1882 and the next year George H., son of George M. Holmes, became a member of the firm. In 1889 The P. C. Holmes Company was incorporated, with a capital of $300,000. The Holmes turbine water wheel, invented by Philip H. Holmes, is a specialty of manufacture; also the fibre graphite, another remarkable invention of Mr. Holmes, which obviates the use of all lubricants in the running of machinery. George M. Holmes is the inventor of machinery for placing accurately spaced and planed gears." (Quote from 1892)

Information Sources

• Webb's New England Statistical Gazetteer,1869, pg. 50
• History of Kennebec County, Part Two, 1892, pgs. 611-613