The stewards of Ellsworth’s former county jail, built in 1886, are replacing its antiquated, leaking slate roof — the latest step in an ambitious project aimed at rehabbing the historic building that has survived years of neglect.
The Ellsworth Historical Society is in the middle of a yearslong rehabilitation project that will preserve the old jail’s historic character while ensuring it’s safe for visitors for years to come.
The latest repairs, funded through $500,000 in congressionally directed spending, will replace the roof and guttering system using materials and designs that match their original construction, according to the Ellsworth Historical Society.
“There was a danger that it would be torn down: the county didn’t want to maintain it — they have a modern jail and sheriff’s office that meet today’s needs — so the county commissioners could have had a parking lot there,” Ellsworth Historical Society president Mark Worth said. “The historical society wanted to save this historic building in downtown Ellsworth: it’s a part of the character and history of Ellsworth. We believed it was worth saving because of its historical significance.”
The project is being funded exclusively by grants and donations, without any reliance on taxpayer dollars, Worth said.
The society has owned the former jail, which also housed the Hancock County sheriff and his family, since 1998 but has managed the property since the 1970s, when jail operations were moved to a new wing of the current courthouse that is now used to house the sheriff’s office. The old jail was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in January 2008, according to Betsy Arntzen, the society’s assistant treasurer and grant writer.
The roof — roughly 30% of which will be preserved during construction — will be replaced with locally sourced slate, Arntzen said. The project’s bid was awarded to Hahnel Brothers Co., a more than century-old, family run Maine roofing and sheet metal contractor, and will be completed within two months, Arntzen said.
The society previously repointed the jail’s brick on all four sides, after decades of the antiquated building crumbling, with $200,000 in funding from a National Park Service grant, according to Arntzen. That work was completed in 2024.
The society has won more than $1 million in grants over the past three years, Arntzen said.
Next, the stewards will rehabilitate the jail’s front porch and all windows, work that will total just over $200,000. That construction will begin this fall and be completed by the summer of 2027, according to Arntzen. Future phases will include rehabbing old lead paint from the interior’s jail cells.
Following the restoration, the stewards hope to transform the once decaying jail into a museum with regular hours. They currently only host public tours by appointment.
“Every county’s jail has not survived exactly intact the way this one has — it’s largely unchanged — so it’s one of the unique examples of a county jail in the state of Maine,” Arntzen said. “Its architecture is a paired structure where the sheriff and his family live under the same roof with the inmates. [That] was a common idea for people who were taking care of the incarcerated law breakers, like a lighthouse keeper.”
The sheriff’s family would be involved in caring for the jail: spouses would cook meals for the inmates, some of whom would in turn babysit for the sheriff’s children, Arntzen said, adding that the wives would be “unpaid staff members.”
Among the jail’s most thrilling historical moments was the daring but temporary 1965 escape of Myles Connor, a notorious thief who fled the building after surprising the jail guard with a fake gun, which he had carved out of a bar of soap and blackened with shoe polish. Connor has also been linked to Boston’s infamous 1990 art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
The society will soon collect oral histories from former inmates, family members and friends who lived, worked and spent time in the old jail, they said, adding that they encourage the public to contact them with such stories.
“It’s living history, not some dumb building. It’s where real people lived with their families,” Arntzen said. “It represents a period of time, and it represents real people’s lives who are among us today. It is an untold story.”