Added together, they have nearly a millennium’s worth of stories beginning at the end of World War I, but they are carrying on a tradition that started before the turn of the last century.

“It was a common organization in all congregational churches,” said Shirley Allen, 81. “When I was young, it was Ladies’ Aid.”

“It used to be in the evenings,” said Cora Fernald, 89.

“In the movies a long time ago, turn of the century, it was called Ladies’ Aid,” said Sandy Grady, 65.

“There was a group from Highland Lake,” said Fernald.

“Didn’t they make aprons?” asked Mary Smith, 78.

“That’s when people wore aprons!” said Allen.

Such is a quiet midday at the Prides Corner Congregational Church, where seven of about a dozen members of the Ladies’ Guild prepare their wares – pot holders are the main, group-made product, though each member knits and sews and quilts her own special craft. From September through May the group meets two Thursdays a month.

In a downstairs room at the church last Thursday, the group sat in front of a loaf of banana bread and a knife centered on a table to talk about their years together. Some, like Karin Gower and Cora Fernald, who tie each other as the oldest members at 89, have been members of the guild for over 40 years. Others are newcomers, like Nancy Curit, 66, who has been with the guild for just three years.

Every year around this time, churches and other nonprofits hold traditional fairs and festivals. Homemade crafts and baked goods are the attractions, and the sponsoring organizations take in the profits. In Westbrook, the Prides Corner Ladies’ Guild raises a couple thousand dollars for the church at its annual Harvest Fair, once named the Country Fair, and before that, the Christmas Bazaar.

The Rev. Susan Gilpin, the Prides Corner church pastor, said the Ladies’ Guild is the backbone of the Harvest Fair, raising 10 percent of the church’s operating budget. The Prides Corner fair and guild are special, Gilpin said, because many other fairs have fallen by the wayside.

None of the ladies gathered can remember when the Ladies’ Guild first started as the Ladies’ Aid, or why the name changed, or when. Gilpin said the group likely started when the church was founded in 1915, when Ladies Aid groups would roll bandages for soldiers in World War I, but “the history goes back probably a couple thousand years” when women followed and helped Jesus.

“Women have been putting their pennies together since the beginning,” said Gilpin.

The name may have changed when the new church, where they are now, was built in 1959. But whatever the name or where it started, Fernald remembers being young and going to the meetings with her mother.

“When she made a holder, she went with her feet on the machine,” said Fernald about the old way of running a sewing machine.

The Harvest Fair – scheduled this year for Friday, Oct. 26 and Saturday, Oct. 27 – is the big event for the Prides Corner church. A number of committees are each in charge of their own table. Baked goods, candy, books and wooden crafts will each be sold at a designated table. The Ladies’ Guild brings pot holders, quilts, afghans, pillows and numerous other items. They have boxes upon boxes stacked in a storage room at the church waiting to be hauled out.

At the fair, they will also be cooking, as well as supervising the less experienced. The members of the guild are not shy about offering advice when they believe it’s necessary.

“I was telling a girl how to make a chocolate cream pie the other day,” said Smith. “She was using instant pudding. I said, ‘You can’t use instant pudding! You can’t cut that!’ She was 30 or 40. We try to teach the younger people.”

After the fair is over, they’ll continue to sell at their bean and chicken suppers. But until then, they meet twice a month to get together and work on their projects and pot holders.

“We make 300,” said Allen.

“We used to make 500. We used to sell them 10 cents a piece. Then three for $1. Now they’re a $1 a piece,” said Gower. “We used to go to houses to work.”

Prices aren’t the only things that have changed. They used to dress up for the fairs. Brook Road used to be no more than three farms and a place for sledding, Curit remembers, but now it’s lined with houses. There used to be 25 people going to every guild meeting. Now seven of the dozen members of the guild have made it.

“We keep trying to recruit,” said Grady. Some of the newer members have joined as they entered retirement, others came long ago with their mothers.

“We don’t recruit as many as we lose,” said Smith, who said her mother-in-law was very active, and when she had time she joined, too.

Pastor Gilpin said one of the most important parts of teh guild is that all the ladies take care of each other. “They have stuck together through the thick and thin,” she said.

“It’s just sad we’ve lost so many friends,” said Gower, but they have many, many memories of the times they’ve all spent together. They leaf through a scrapbook filled with old newspaper articles from the mid-20th century, when the American Journal was the Westbrook American, and point out pictures of themselves.

“There’s my mother-in-law,” said Smith. “There’s Betty Smith and I.”

“There’s Karin (Gower) in high heels,” said Jane Smith, 87 (a second Smith in the group).

Some of the members don’t have such long histories in the Prides Corner Ladies Guild, but they all have stories that they share.

Jane Smith, in the guild for 17 years, was a platoon sergeant in the Marine Corps during World War II. She enlisted in Detroit, and shipped to Camp Lejeune from Chicago. She has lived in 13 states and moved to Westbrook from Maryland in the late 1980s. She has stayed after in the church after both her husband and her son passed away.

Allen is a retired registered nurse, who moved to Westbrook from Gardiner to be closer to her children. She has been a member of the guild for seven years.

While doing genealogical research, Grady happened to find out five years ago by sending an e-mail to a woman in Florida that she is actually third cousin to Gower.

“Nancy (Curit) and Cora (Fernald) are probably the only two born and brought up here,” said Gower, who has been here 52 years and married to her husband, Harold, for 72 years.

Fernald, a long-time guild member of more than 40 years, is descended the Pride family, the historic Westbrook family that was descended from one of three original settlers in the Prides Corner area, according to Julie Peterson, the history curator at Walker Memorial Library. Joseph Pride received a grant of 100 acres of land, though he never lived there. His children did, and Jospeh Jr. was a captain in the Revolutionary War. Some land was later donated to build a school, though not the land the Prides Corner School sits on now.

“There is more than one Pride though,” said Fernald.

“Ever go over to Woodlawn Cemetery and see all the Prides? There are a lot of Prides,” said Jane Smith.

“Born and raised!” said Curit. “My mother taught Sunday school in the old Prides Corner Church, years ago.”

“So did I. Was it that long ago?” said Fernald.

A CLOSER LOOK

Pride’s Corner Congregational Church Harvest Fair

235 Pride St., Westbrook

Friday, Oct. 26, 6-9 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 27, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Members of the Ladies Guild are:

Cora Fernald, 89

Jane Smith, 87

Shirley Allen, 81

Karin Gower, 89

Mary Smith, 78

Sandra Grady, 65

Nancy Curit, 66

Lin McNair, 57

Nellie Chambers, 87

Betty Thomas, 86

Charlotte Pratt, 83

Vaun Born, 83

Prides Corner Ladies Guild member Jane Smith has been in the group for 17 years.