Lincolnville is home to Steve Young. His story is unique in that what is now the Youngtown Inn was once the home he grew up in. It had been in his family for more than 150 years. It was home to his father and mother, Bernard and Rachel Young, plus five brothers and sisters.

“We were a large family," he said. "Of all of us kids, three are left-handed and three are right-handed. You don’t see that very often. The house had 17 rooms, and it was surrounded by beautiful, tall and majestic elm trees. Dutch Elm disease got them all in the 1980s. It was tragic.

“Occasionally, all the uncles and aunts and all their kids would gather at the farm. As many as 50 people sometimes, as far as family members go. There were really a lot of us, especially at Christmas. We needed every bit of all that space.”

What is your earliest recollection of growing up at Youngtown?

“The barn burning down. I was very small, maybe five years old and I can remember looking out my bedroom window watching the cattle barn burn. I had spent a lot of time playing in the hay bails in that barn. I remember just sitting there and watching it burn.

"When I was seven it was converted to an egg laying farm. I started working on the farm when I was eight. I would gather the eggs after school and on weekends. We started with one barn and ended up with three. We had upwards of 30,000 chickens. Chickens can average an egg a day so at times we collected 30,000 eggs. I didn’t have to do it all by myself. My grandfather and my two brothers helped, but it was all done by hand.

"We kept the eggs in big refrigerated rooms in the barns. A truck would come twice a week to take them away to be sold at local markets and stores.

“It was a beautiful place to grow up to say the least. I had a lake, the mountains, a great big house to grow up in and the ocean nearby. I could go camping and fishing almost anytime I wanted to. My grandfather had three cottages on Norton’s Pond. My uncle had a cottage on Lake Megunticook and that’s where I kept my boat. It was right down the road from us, so I would walk down and get in my boat and adventure around Megunticook.

“There was a place called Sunset Cove on the lake. My uncle ran it. Again, it was just a short walk up the road from us. People would go there to swim. There was a small beach with docks. My uncle ran a little takeout place there. You could buy hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries, ice cream, milk shakes and it had a big candy counter. Everybody liked the candy counter. As a kid it was our favorite. People would congregate there. It was a busy place. People of all ages would go there.”

Steve stayed on the farm until 1975 when he went off to college at UMaine at Orono. He worked in Bangor for three years after college before taking a job with T.J. Maxx as part of management team.

“T.J. Maxx was expanding west out of New England and I was sent to Colorado and Nebraska to open T.J. Maxx stores. I did that for two and a half years. My daughter was born in Aurora, Colorado. My son was born in Omaha, Nebraska.

“They wanted to send me to Texas and I wanted to come back to Maine (I missed the ocean), so they sent me to New Hampshire. We did this for two years in 1988. My wife and I wanted to come back to Midcoast Maine to raise our family. I had a house built in Lincolnville and we still live there today.”

"In 1982, the farm was sold to a Delta Airline pilot [Jim Rutland], who turned it into an inn. He also built a small airfield out in back of the inn.

“The first time I went back to the inn to dine it was with a group of friends. I ate in my so-called toy room. It felt a little strange at first, but it was a lot of fun talking about all the memories there with the group I was with.”

Steve currently works as the general manager for Harvest Energy in Rockport. He has been with Harvest Energy for four years and has been in the oil industry for 25.

“I like Harvest Energy because we work with biofuel. There are a lot of advantages there. The fuel improves the performance of the heating systems and lowers the carbon footprint. It’s locally produced and reduces our dependence on foreign oil. It’s renewable and creates jobs locally. It can be corn- or soy-based, but we use a company out of Portland that takes used oil from restaurants and refines it into heating oil. They buy some of that used oil from restaurants right here in Camden and Rockland.  

“We do heating, plumbing, solar, geo thermal and water treatment systems. I enjoy being able to have all these services available to our customers.”

Steve’s wife, Ronny, works as a dental hygienist with Camden Hills Dental in Rockport. They have one son Kyle, 27, and daughter Breyn, 28.