The Hamlin Memorial Library & Museum offers a wide range of things that show the lives of Paris Hill residents going back more than 100 years. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

PARIS — If you’re looking for something out of the ordinary, we know just the place.

At the top of Paris Hill sits a granite building with cast-iron bars on its recessed windows. It was built in 1822 to house Oxford County prisoners waiting for court dates.

The granite was quarried “over in Oxford (the town),” said Brandan Roberts, curator of the museum space at the Hamlin Memorial Library & Museum now housed in the former jailhouse.

The stone blocks were dragged up Paris Hill “over the frozen ground of winter” and the jail was built on site, according to the museum’s website.

The exhibits on the second floor of the 31-by-21-foot building include portraits of members of noted families that lived on Paris Hill, including the Hamlins, the most famous of whom was Hannibal, Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president.

Horatio King’s reading glasses are displayed in the Hamlin Memorial Library and Museum on Paris Hill. King and Hannibal Hamlin started a newspaper called The Jeffersonian in 1827. Under different management, it would later become the Oxford Democrat and eventually the Advertiser Democrat. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

You will also see displays of gems and minerals, including tourmaline, quartz and mica, mined on Paris Hill and the vicinity, as well as stones from other areas.

“The larger pieces are local,” Roberts said, “but some of the others were donated.”

Also displayed: 19th-century wedding and baptism dresses, an 1848 quilt made locally, sculptures and a “primitive” oil painting, original jailor keys and steel handcuffs, an antique deputy sheriff’s badge, a birchbark map of the Rangeley Lakes District drawn by a local Native American, arrowheads (at least one local), shark teeth (we guess not local), and rattlesnake rattlers. (Some local? Maybe.)

Timber rattlesnakes once slithered over the mountains of western Maine, according to the Maine Audubon Society. Timber rattlers, a subspecies aptly named C. horridus, are a type of pit viper with venom that can kill humans.

Don’t worry, though. They were “extirpated” from Maine likely before the turn of the 20th century, according to the Audubon Society. That means they were rooted out and destroyed into extinction in the state. Let’s hope.

The museum also houses archival material for genealogy and other research, and books about Maine, as well as other early publications including about 20 volumes of Shakespeare plays — “the entire works,” Roberts said.

He described the museum as a small collection of artifacts and archives relating to and donated by the residents of the Paris Hill community from over the past 120 years.

Timber rattlesnakes were once local to Maine. Rattles are displayed in the Hamlin Memorial Library and Museum. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

“The collection consists of an equal part antiquarian art and books, locally relevant and unique documents, and natural specimens such as gemstones and fossils.”

The building retains its original granite walls and barred windows. The walls are 2 feet thick on the ground floor, where the small library offers about 5,000 books and other materials. The walls on the second floor are 18 inches thick, Roberts said.

The jailhouse had four cells downstairs and two upstairs, he said. The upstairs had a separate entry via an outside stairway, apparently for better security.

The cells apparently weren’t totally secure because two jailbreaks occurred, Roberts said.

“The first was when the inmates got out of their cells and tried to burn the original wooden door down,” he said. “It was not successful and that is when they added the new metal door.”

The iron door is still in place today.

The second jailbreak in 1840 was more successful, Roberts said.

The Hamlin Memorial Library & Museum is housed in a former jail. The old bars over the small windows remain. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

“They chiseled out the mortar around one of the smaller stones and pushed it out,” he said. “Three inmates escaped, but the fourth got stuck and was found the next morning by the jailer.”

Evidence of that break can be seen in the interior of the building where a metal plate was bolted over the replacement slab to prevent further escapes.

A bust of Hannibal Hamlin is displayed in front of a portrait of his mother, Anna Livermore Hamlin, in the Hamlin Memorial Library & Museum. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

Roberts didn’t know how the men got out of their cells and got their hands on a chisel. That part is lost to history.

What isn’t lost is the history of the building itself.

FROM JAILHOUSE TO MEMORIAL HALL

In 1822, two years after Maine became a state separate from Massachusetts, a new jailhouse was proposed by Oxford County court officials.

“The Court here proposes to build and erect a stone prison . . . on the site of the old prison in Paris,” according to museum documents.

The prison (actually a holding-cell jail) originally was to be 30 feet long and 21 feet wide, two stories high, and the windows “to have four lights each of glass 7 by 9 inches & strongly and sufficiently grated with iron bars.”

The Hamlin Memorial Library & Museum was once a holding jail that was bought by the Hamlin family after the county seat was moved to South Paris. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

The “old prison” was built in 1805, the year Oxford County was established and Paris was designated the county seat. The building was to be made of hand-hewed timber 12 inches square and to be 36 by 20 feet.

There is no record of what happened to that first jailhouse. Maybe the prisoners burned it down and escaped into the rattlesnake wilderness.

The 1822 building remained as a jail into the 1890s, when new county buildings were sited in the village of South Paris for better access to the railroad that had come through in 1850.

When the new buildings opened in 1895, the county seat was moved from Paris Hill to South Paris where it remains today.

The jail and other county buildings on the hill became private property. The jailhouse was bought by Hannibal Hamlin’s nephew, Dr. Augustus Choate Hamlin, the founder celebrated at the town’s annual Founder’s Day event (see details). The Hamlin estate is still next to the former jail.

The doctor had the building renovated and deeded it to the Ladies of the Paris Hill Library Association, with the stipulation that it be named Hamlin Memorial Hall.

Original Currier and Ives lithographs of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin are on display at the Hamlin Memorial Library & Museum. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

Other stipulations were that the building be used as a museum for the minerals of Oxford County and the vicinity, that it be used as a library for the people of Paris Hill and friends, that it serve as a “receptacle and depository of relics” of the Hamlin family and other distinguished people of Paris, that the artifacts not be removed except under extraordinary circumstances, and that the grantee keep the building in good condition.

The hall opened in 1902. The stipulations still guide the current board of trustees.

Around 1962, Hamlin Hall became the Hamlin Memorial Library & Museum. The building sits among the grand 19th-century houses of the Paris Hill Historic District. The village was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

The 250-acre district is a sort of museum itself, with its white clapboard mansions and jaw-dropping views of the White Mountains.

Most of the houses were built between 1800 and 1860, according to parishill.org. They are mostly of Federal and Greek Revival style. The village’s Greek Revival-style church was built in 1838.

A campaign flag is displayed in the Hamlin Memorial Library & Museum. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

Most out-of-town visitors to the Hamlin Memorial Library & Museum haven’t heard of it, librarian Jennifer Lewis said.

“It’s usually people who are driving around,” she said. The sightseers stop at the small stone building out of curiosity, “and they think it’s really unique.”

She said anyone is welcome to check out books. You don’t need a card or an ID. It’s part of the charm of the hilltop village.

“I love the fact that kids come to this little tiny library on their bikes, get their books and ride away with them,” she said. “It’s the only local institution that people can connect to.”

Visitors to the Hamlin Memorial Library & Museum are greeted by a sign forbidding talking to the prisoners. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal