Daniel Stickney was born on Nov. 25, 1804, in Hallowell, and was the third of nine children. He was a direct descendant of William Stickney, who emigrated to the United States as part of the Great Migration from England in the 1600s.
According to his autobiography, which was published by the Lewiston Saturday Journal on Sept. 16, 1893, he worked as a teacher and carpenter from 1824 to 1848. During his teaching career, he taught in Wilton, Carthage, Fayette, Sidney, Augusta, Whitefield, Boothbay, Westport and Lee.
His first wife died after only eight years of marriage and Stickney married a second time. After 31 years of marriage to his second wife, Stickney divorced her in 1870. Although divorce had been around since the 1600s, it was scandalous in the 1800s with almost a 0 percent divorce rate. Typically, to get a divorce, the spouse must have been cheating. Interestingly enough, he married for a third time in 1870 and that marriage also ended in divorce in 1877.
Stickney began preaching in 1843, a profession he maintained for 25 years. According to the Lewiston Saturday Journal, he gave up preaching after “becoming entirely dissatisfied with the practice which the world has fallen into of paying $10 to a lawyer for managing a petty case in a justice court which takes but two hours of his time, while the preacher is requested to spend the amount of time to attend a funeral, generally for nothing, and never for over $5, I decided to preach no more and abandoned the business altogether.”
In 1861, Stickney moved to Presque Isle and, according to his autobiography, had not been there 24 hours when he was offered editorial work for the Aroostook Pioneer newspaper, which was owned by William S. Gilman.
In 1863, Stickney opened his own newspaper, the Loyal Sunrise, which he operated until 1877. His first edition was published on August 5, 1863, when our young nation was in the midst of the Civil War. The purpose of his newspaper was published in that edition, stating he would advocate for the “right of all men, white or colored, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; to promote business and local interest in every part of the county; and to publish with a pure and unexceptionable tone.
However, his opinions were not always popular, and he ended up moving his newspaper to Fort Fairfield in August 1876. The 1893 Lewiston Saturday Journal article was accompanied by a sketch on Stickney with the headline “oldest newspaperman in Maine.”
On Sept. 9, 1867, Daniel was appointed as Postmaster of Presque Isle, a position in which he served until 1874. The compensation for a Postmaster in 1869 was a whopping $360 per year.
He also served in the Maine Legislature from 1870 to 1871.
Stickney passed away in Auburn in 1894 at the age of 89. The cause of death was listed as cystitis. He is buried in Presque Isle’s historical Fairmount Cemetery.
Kimberly R. Smith is the secretary/treasurer of the Presque Isle Historical Society.
