Late 1810s Halloween costumes. Photo: Library of Congress
By Patricia Violette-Adams, Sanford-Springvale Historical Society
Long before plastic masks, miniature candy bars, and organized trick-or-treat routes, Halloween in Sanford and Springvale balanced old superstition with youthful mischief. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Irish and Scottish customs, newspapers, schools, churches, and merchants gradually transformed an unruly autumn observance into a community celebration.
Allen & Emery’s dry goods store Photo: Library of Congress
Sanford and Springvale were distinct but closely connected mill villages along the Mousam River. Period photographs preserve their appearance. The Historical Society dates views of Springvale Square to 1899, the Springvale House and Hotel Brown to about 1900, Allen & Emery’s dry goods store in 1906 and Frank Broggi’s fruit store in Sanford Square to about 1905. The images show dense rows of shops, hotels, signs, sidewalks, utility poles, and horse traffic—the setting in which Halloween crowds and pranksters moved. The Springvale House, opened by Samuel Nasson in 1845, remained a hotel until 1925; a circa-1910 view also shows Makin’s Store.
Pranks reported across Maine towns were well suited to Sanford and Springvale’s compact business districts. Gates vanished from dooryards and reappeared blocks away. Wagons, barrels, packing boxes, benches, and wooden trade signs were shifted into unlikely places. A Sanford merchant might find crates stacked against an entrance or a handcart dragged from an alley. In Springvale’s village center, a loose sign, hitching rail, or store barrel invited attention. Windows were soaped, doorbells pulled, and doors rapped before the culprits scattered toward side streets or the darker roads near the river.
Downtown merchants stood at the center of Halloween’s give-and-take. Sanford shopkeepers and Springvale dealers received goods in boxes, barrels, baskets, and wagons—all useful materials for a prank. Their windows displayed apples, nuts, popcorn, sweets, paper decorations, and eventually masks and party favors. Proprietors checked doors, shutters, awnings, carts, and outside displays before going home. The next morning brought a walk through the square to see what had moved, followed by rehanging signs, clearing steps, and returning borrowed property.
Inside local homes, the evening was more orderly. Families played parlor games by lamplight. Bobbing for apples remained a favorite, along with biting an apple suspended from a string. Nuts were roasted, ghost stories told, and fortunes sought in apple peels, candle wax, mirrors, or paired nuts beside the fire. Young people treated these games as playful predictions of courtship and marriage. Doughnuts, cider, apples, popcorn, and homemade candy suited the harvest season and household budgets.
Local institutions increasingly offered respectable alternatives to roaming. Springvale Town Hall, enlarged with a stage in 1903, provided a setting for suppers, entertainment, and club socials. Churches, schools, lodges, and neighborhood hosts sponsored masquerades and games. The Sanford Tribune, published from the 1890s, and the Springvale Advocate, begun in 1905, carried notices and social items. After Nasson Institute opened in Springvale in 1912, its students added another organized community to the village’s social calendar. Such gatherings reflected a national effort to redirect Halloween from vandalism toward supervised amusement. Nonetheless, adults and children wore homemade scary costumes made out of whatever materials they could find. The idea of being totally disguised was a key element in the early days.
Halloween in old Sanford and Springvale belonged to the whole community. Crowded streets and shop windows shaped the holiday, but it remained rooted in harvest foods, household games, storytelling, and neighborhood ties. One night might produce a jack-o’-lantern on a family table, a merchant guarding a sidewalk display, and boys carrying a gate toward an improbable destination. The documented buildings, dates, and streetscapes establish the local setting; the pranks reflect customs widely reported in New England unless tied to a specific local newspaper account. Behind today’s costumes and candy lies an older Halloween—less commercial, more homemade, and shadowed by the possibility of mischief before morning.
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