Our History
Herrick & Salsbury, Inc., began practicing land surveying in April of 1962 as a partnership under the name of A. B. Herrick & Son, Malcolm P. Herrick and Richard C. Salsbury being the principal partners. The corporation of Herrick & Salsbury, Inc., was formed in 1968 and Richard C. Salsbury was the sole stockholder, president, and chief of parties. The first office location for Herrick & Salsbury, Inc., was on Main Street in Blue Hill.
The company remained in Blue Hill until 1978 when the office was relocated to 67 Franklin Street in Ellsworth. At that time, Jinny Salsbury began managing the office work and bookkeeping. The location was just a short walk to the courthouse and registry of deeds. At that time, there were no means of deed researching other than physically going to the registry of deeds and poring over the actual bound books.
In the early 1980s, Stephen Salsbury began working for his dad during summers and school breaks. The company had many experienced land surveyors on staff, all of whom Stephen worked with. After completing school at the University of Maine in 1987, Stephen began working full-time at Herrick & Salsbury, Inc. Richard and Jinny quickly started going to Florida for the winters, and Stephen began running the day-to-day tasks in their absence.
In the 1990s, Steve became licensed and began the transition to ownership of the company. Jinny still worked part-time and Richard continued working well beyond that time, mostly helping with deed research, litigation, and consulting with attorneys when he wasn’t traveling with Jinny in their RV or playing on his beloved John Deere tractor.
Tara Hartson started with the company after working one summer in 2006, graduated from the University of Maine in 2007, and quickly became a licensed land surveyor in 2009. Tara has participated in all aspects of the business from the surveying, research, client contact, project management, and helping make many of the business decisions. Tara and Steve have an agreement in place to transition the ownership of the company to Tara, and Steve is pleased to have Tara become the vice president of Herrick & Salsbury, Inc.
We fully expect that our transition will not have any effect on the delivery of quality surveys and other services to our clients as we have been working on and will continue to work on transitioning in the coming years. Continuity is the foundation of any successful transition and Stephen expects to end his working career at Herrick & Salsbury, Inc. (or until he finds his desk in the parking lot some morning!).
In 2018, Tara and Steve completed a six-month-long business growth course presented by the Small Business Administration. In part because of having taken this course, the company launched a new website with the assistance of Sutherland Weston to better connect to our clients and prospective clients while reinforcing the company’s presence and standing in Hancock County.
In 2021, Herrick & Salsbury, Inc. opened a second office location in Northeast Harbor, Maine, located at 123 Main Street, Suite C-1. In January of 2023, Herrick & Salsbury, Inc. purchased a property near the end of Main Street to establish a permanent location in Northeast Harbor.
Herrick & Salsbury, Inc., looks forward to serving another generation of clients for many more years to come. The firm currently employs three registered land surveyors and has a total of seven employees. Since our conception, we have been serving clients throughout the state of Maine and locally in Hancock, Knox, Penobscot, Waldo, and Washington Counties
