About
Chandler’s River
When Judah Chandler sailed his coaster out of North Yarmouth, he was searching for energy and opportunity. And when he turned into the forgotten river, he found King’s Pine: a vast stand of virgin timber across the hills and valleys, and a great expanse of grassland.
He was a man of faith and, like all founders, an entrepreneur. He needed fuel: fuel to fill his family’s bellies, fuel to fill his credit line and, God willing, fuel to carry him through the long winters ahead. A Yankee trader and an old coaster, he lived a perpetual game of calculating risk and reward.
Judah came in the early 1760s, and in 1764 he built a sawmill on the north side of the river. His wife was Rebecca (Seabury) Chandler. The river took his name, and so did the settlement: Chandler’s River. Families followed, among them Whitney, Watts, Weston, Schoppee and Noyes.
The land was Plantation No. 22. In 1788, a committee of the Massachusetts General Court conveyed the tract it called Chandler Township to eleven proprietors, all of Boston, led by John Coffin Jones. The deed set land aside for a minister and a grammar school, and it bound the proprietors to secure the settlers already there on their land. In 1804, the people of “Plantation No 22. alias, Chandlers ville” asked to become a town so they could support schools, a minister and “our Aged Infirmed, and Suffering Poor.”
Chandler River Holdings is a legacy carried through the generations of Judah’s descendants. It carries on with the work passed to it by people who lived old ways, determined and free. They left for us a treasure chest of stories.
Our mission
To pass generational wealth forward through stories, artifacts and collections, guided by Proverbs 13:22.
“A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.”
Proverbs 13:22 (KJV)