Reuben Flanders was born in Cornville, Maine, in 1811, and moved to Dexter when he was nineteen years old. In 1856 he invented a machine for cutting stock for the manufacture of orange and lemon crates, whick he never patented. He engaged in the manufacture of cutting stock for crates in a building known as "the old box mill" in the lower part of the town. (The site of the mill was next to the Dam of the Dexter Shoe Company's No. 1 shop on Liberty Street.) In 1867 he purchased a mill in North Dexter and moved his lemon and orange crate business there. Ha also extensively manufactured long and short lumber.

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