Samuel Melcher account books

Samuel Melcher was born in New Meadows (near Brunswick), Maine, on May 8, 1775. Melcher married Lois Dunning (1778-1867), and they had several children.

Melcher and his brother, Aaron (b. 1773), were housewrights in Brunswick and Topsham. While he was not formally trained in architecture, Melcher observed new architectural ideas in Boston and Salem, which he brought back to Maine to incorporate into his own building designs. The Melcher brothers were hired by the Bowdoin building committee to design and build the college's first structure, Massachusetts Hall (1799-1802). This was followed by the original President's house (1803), which burned down a few years later; Maine Hall (1808; rebuilt 1837); Winthrop Hall (1823); Little-Mitchell House (1827); and Appleton Hall (1843). Melcher and his sons were later responsible for executing the interior woodwork in the Bowdoin College Chapel (1844-1855). In addition to his work on the college buildings, Melcher was also privately employed by Dunlap as housewright and shipbuilder. In 1872, Melcher's son, Richard T. D. Melcher, was hired by Peleg W. Chandler (Bowdoin 1834), the son-in-law of Professor Parker Cleaveland, to remodel the upper floors of Massachusetts Hall into a natural history museum known as the Cleaveland Cabinet for the display of the late professor's extensive collection of minerals and natural science specimens. Architectural drawings detailing the remodeling are located in the College Buildings collection. Samuel Melcher died on March 3, 1862.