Necessity of paper was the 'mummy' of invention

The Bar Harbor Times reports The Necessity of Paper was the "Mummy" of Invention

BY MICHELLE PRONOVOST

GARDINER - During the Civil War, the owner of a Gardiner paper mill, dangerously short on linen, got creative.

Augustus Stanwood, of Stanwood & Tower paper mill on Dam. No. 5, began importing Egyptian mummies to convert their wrappings to pulp.

When I first read a blurb about this in Down East Magazine, I asked myself, could it be true? A trip to the Gardiner Public Library history room revealed that I am not the first person to wonder. Over the past 50 years, a number of Maine journalists have debated the legend of the mummy paper. So many have sought further information at the library, in fact, that a vertical "Mummy" file was created.

My research revealed that the mummy story first came to light when Dard Hunter published "Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft." The mummy file holds a copy of an excerpt from the book about Stanwood.

Hunter said that little is known about Stanwood's unique experiments when struggling to keep his business afloat. "The most interesting phase of Stanwood's career," Hunter said, "was his use of Egyptian mummies for making wrapping paper." Hunter said this information was relayed to him directly from Stanwood's son Daniel, a retired professor who lived in Massachusetts.

According to Hunter, "(Daniel's) father was pressed for raw material to keep the Maine mill in operation and he had to use his ingenuity to overcome the difficulty. This he did by importing mummies from Egypt for the sole purpose of stripping the dried bodies of their cloth wrappings and using the material for making paper."

Stanwood supposedly bought not just a few mummies but several shiploads. These were not all pharaohs. In ancient Egypt, says the Encyclopedia Smithsonian, mummification was a common method for burial of the dead. Hundreds of yards of linen were used for each mummy.

Egyptians believed there was a practically limitless supply of mummies, and they put them to use themselves, as fuel for trains on the Egyptian railroad.

Stanwood would unwrap those skeletons and toss the linen along with papyrus filling into beaters, producing coarse brown wrapping paper which was used by butchers and grocers.

Young Stanwood told Hunter that at first there was no disinfection process for the mummy linens, and as a result there was a cholera epidemic among mill workers. There is no mention of how Stanwood disposed of the bones.

Stanwood may have blamed it all on New York scientist Dr. Isaiah Deck, who Hunter believes gave Stanwood the idea of using mummy wrappings. In 1855, Deck published an article in the Syracuse Standard extolling the use of mummy wrappings for papermaking. Deck tempted his mill-owning readers with statements that a mummy could produce 300 yards of linen with the "finest texture." Deck even mentioned that one did not need to limit oneself with human mummies. Mummified bulls, crocodiles and cats could also be used.

Although Hunter tells the story of Stanwood and his mummies as though it is undisputed fact, many believe it is fabricated, no pun intended. Articles on the subject published in a 1986 issue of Yankee Magazine and a 1987 issue of the Maine Sunday Telegram cite various "experts in the field" (a Michigan orthodontist who collects mummy skeletons, a Wells treasure hunter) who support the idea. Yet, the Gardiner mummy legend has never completely been accepted as truth. From what I gather, if I want to prove it, I better start digging.

Michelle Pronovost of Hallowell is a reporter at the Weekly.