It would be hard to find a more outstanding example of the agrarian Democracy in Maine of the 1830’s than The Honorable Job Prince.
Born in Buckfield in 1795 he was educated in the public schools and at Hebron Academy. While he was to begin farming in Turner, Maine in 1819 and maintain farming as his principal business thereafter, there was little else in Oxford County that Job Prince didn’t have his hand in.
He was first a Captain and then a Major in the Maine Militia, having served briefly in the War of 1812. He held every principal town office in Turner as well as being trustee of the county and State agricultural societies.
When Job Prince wasn’t busy surveying lands, drawing up deeds, acting as a Claim Agent for Revolutionary pensioners or administering upwards of ninety different estates, he was acting as a County Commissioner, Judge of Probate, Tax Assessor and President of the Oxford County Agricultural Society.
Since this wasn’t enough to fully occupy his time he served in both branches of the Maine Legislature and as a member of the Executive Council. Elected to the Maine House in 1834, he served as President of the Maine Senate in 1839 at the age of forty-four.
Prince lived on for thirty-six more years, dying on May 1, 1875 at the age of eighty.