Andrew Chase was born in Edmunstun, New Brunswick and had nineteen siblings. In 1903, at age fifteen, he began working in the woods at Eagle Lake in Maine. He continued to work in the woods, between the St. John and Moosehead Lake, as well as on spring river drives, until 1918, when he and his wife moved to Orono and he worked in the paper mill and in an oar and paddle factory. He had six children.