Radio Script #69
Little Talks On Common Things
May 21, 1950
In response to my request for more information about Maine trees, Mrs. Basil Larkin of waterville has loaned me her cherished personal copy of Miss Louise Helen Coburn’s book “The Trees of Coburn Park”. Mrs. Larkin was once Miss Coburn’s secretary, and her copy of the book was a personal gift from the author.
Louise Helen Coburn of Skowhegan was not only poet, essayist and historian; she was also an informed botanist, with special attention to trees. From the time when the Coburn family first established the park beside the bend in the Kennebec at Skowhegan, Miss Coburn took an active interest in every tree planted on those beautiful acres. In 1928 she wrote the book to which we now refer.
At that time,Miss Coburn shows, there were 108 different kinds of trees in Coburn Park. Perhaps others have since been added. Of the 108 trees, 30 are conifers and 78 broadleaved trees. Thirty-five of the 108 are original growers in the locality; 51 are either indigenous to Skowhegan or completely naturalized in the town. Of the imported trees, 17 are from the eastern part of the united States, four from the Rocky Mountains, 20 from Europe and Western Asia, and six from Japan.
Miss Coburn’s book not only describes each species of tree with botanical detail, but also contains much interesting historical information. For instance, she says the Norway pine has nothing to do with Scandanavian Norway, but got its name because the first trees of this species which were shipped to Kew Gardens in England came from Norway, Maine. The Norway pine is strictly an American tree.
Miss Coburn pays tribute to the historical importance of the Red Spruce, the tree that Holman Day crowned with the title King Spruce. She says this tree is found in a comparatively narrow area, covering New Brunswick, a small part of southern Quebec, the interior hilly parts of New England, New York ‘ and Pennsylvania, and southward along the slopes of the Alleghany Mountains.
It is the most valuable timber tree of our Northeastern forests. In 1672 John Josselyn, a 17th century traveler, published in London a book of his travels in New England, in which he said, “The Maine spruce furnishes the best yards and topmasts in the world.” The French traveler Michaud, visitin this country in 1806 said that in the dock yards of the United States,the spars were usually of spruce from the District ‘of Maine, and that it was exported for the same purpose in great quantities to the west Indies and to Liverpool. The pioneers along the Kennebec built their cabins of spruce logs, as woodsmen do today.
Because I so well remember the Balm of Gilead tree in my grandmother’s yard at Bridgton, I note with interest what Miss Coburn says about that tree. It is, of course, a species of poplar that has its buds saturated with a sticky substance that is so highly aromatic that the odor of the tree is perceptible to the passer-by. Although the tree is not planted in dooryards as often as it used to be, Miss Coburn says that in 1928 several fine specimens could still be seen in Skowhegan dooryards. She invites her readers to see the beautiful Balm of Gilead in Coburn Park near the pavilion close to the highway.
So, if you want to see more than 100 different varieties of trees, all within a few hundred feet of each other, pay a visit to Coburn Park at the east end of Skowhegan Village, where the Kennebec takes a wide bend before its turn southward to Fairfield and Waterville.
Jerry Frank, a senior at Colby College, has called my attention to what the local census, taken in connection with the Federal census, showed about Waterville in 1840, a hundred and ten years ago. Jerry dug it up in an old copy of the watervillonian, published June 19, 1841. The statistics were furnished the paper by Moses Healy, Esq. These figures provide a revealing picture of what waterville was like tw~nty years before the Civil War.
The population was 2,971. Humans were greatly exceeded by sheep, which numbered 4,895, with 1,861 lambs still further increasing the wooly population.
There were 1,611 neat cattle and 400 spring calves for stock, and 445 horses.
Now come some astounding figures. Raised within the limits of Waterville, which then included Oakland, were 6,280 bushels of wheat, 13,091 bushels of oats, 1,695 of barley, 704 of rye, and 30 of buckwheat, with the biggest crop of all being 18,345 bushels of Indian corn.
Those Waterville sheep produced 14,944 pounds of wool. The land produced not only grain, but also 4,680 tons of hay, and 53,938 bushels of potatoes •.
Waterville farmers sold 3,286 cords of wood, in addition to what they used at home. There were 41 persons employed in lumbering, who brought out of the woods $76,500 worth of lumber. Twenty-nine men were employed in carriage making, sell ing their product for $15,550. Six persons worked at making cutlery, sold for $4,600. In all of Waterville’s factories in 1840 the total invested capital was $147,000.
The number of retail stores of all kinds was 39, employing 76 people.
The total capital invested in those stores was almost as large as the capital in Waterville factories — $133,000.
It is clear that, despite the marty saw mills and grist mills using the water power of Kennebec and Messalonskee, Waterville was an agricultural community in 1840. A lot of manufacturing still went on in the homes, as it had done in the 18th century, before the Industrial Revolution. Squire Healy told the Watervillonian that in 1840 the goods manufactured in Waterville homes sold for $3,404.
When the old timers of this region used the expression “from China to the sea”, they meant from China, Maine to Belfast, Maine. Belfast is still the nearest seaport to Waterville, although in the old days the easiest route to the sea was down the Kennebec, through Merrymeeting Bay, past Bath and Woolwich, to the open ocean.
A century ago Belfast was an important port on Penobscot Bay. That is made clear by a quick glance at a Belfast newspaper of a century ago. It is the Waldo Signal of May 1, 1845, published by Charles Giles, with office at the Sign of the Eagle, Main Street, Belfast. The masthead asserts that the paper is devoted to literature, morality, general intelligence, agriculture, politics and domestic economy. Subscription rate was “One dollar and seventy-five cents per annum, payable within the year; two dollars at the expiration of the year, which will positively be exacted. Advance payment, one dollar and fifty cents per annum, seventy-five cents for six months.Country produce taken in payment at market prices.”
Local fervor had been aroused by President Polk’s appointment of M. N. Lowney as Collector of the Port of Belfast. It seems that Mr. Lowney, on his way to New York as a delegate to the Presidential Convention had said on a stop-over in Boston, “If Mr. Van Buren is not nominated I will leave the Party.”
“This is the man”, wrote Editor Giles, “who now has the fattest political job in Waldo County. What.kind of bargain did Mr. Lowney make in Washington, that the President whose nomination he opposed now rewards him with a job that belongs to a more loyal man?”
A letter to the editor, signed by a man in Camden, was equally wrathful. “What think you”, he wrote, “of the restoration of the Van Buren dynasty in Waldo County? Is the democracy of the county eternally to be saddled with this death-blight? Mr. Polk has been grossly deceived. A bu’sy and important port like Belfast should not be under the control of such a renegade.”
Maine Democrats were fighting among themselves in 1845. The Belfast editor refers to the two factions as “sound” Democrats and “terrified” Democrats. He predicted that their eventual fate would be that of the Kilkenny cats. Nothing would be seen but their tails.
In 1845 agitation had started against the use of friction matches because they were alleged to cause so many disastrous fires. Editor Giles did not propose doing away with matches altogether, but he did say: “Any person who neglects to keep matches in a covered tin box should be required to go back to flint and steel.”
A hundred years ago they were already talking about a railroad down in Belfast. There was strong agitation for a line from Belfast to Quebec, passing through the towns of Burnham, Plymouth, Detroit, St. Albans, Newport, and Skowhegan. A correspondent in St. Albans urged Belfast folk to get busy. He wrote to Editor Giles: “Your business men are asleep. While theyhave been content to barter in fish on a small scale, and deal in a few dead trees from the back towns, other places are getting ahead of you. We understand a railroad will soon come to waterville. Do you propose to let that town get the business which you could easily obtain?”
Well in 1849 the railroad did come to Waterville, and in due time it came to Belfast also. Now in 1950 that Belfast railroad is one of the most uniquely operated and one of the few municipally owned railroads in the United States.
On this program we talk so much about the old times of the 1840′ sand 1850’s that it is interesting to see in this old Belfast paper of 1845 a column headed “The Olden Time”. The column refers to a Philadelphia ‘paper’s reminiscences of George Washington when the General had resided in Philadelphia as the first President of the united States fifty years ago. People still remembered Washington’s eating habits, for instance. Thursdays were guest days at the President’s dining room. Dinners in those days were lavish and consisted of many courses. At a single dinner as many as a dozen kinds of meat and game might appear. Washington, however, generally partook only of a single dish and that of the simplest kind. If offered something that was excessively rich or unusual he would say, “This is too good for me”. He had a silver pint cup or mug of beer placed by his plate, which he drank while dining. He took one glass of wine during dinner and another immediately after. He then retired from the table and left his secretary to play host “until the wine-bibbers of Congress had satisfied themselves with drinking.”
Deep sea fishing called for varied supplies in 1845. The fleets that went out from Gloucester had· nothing on the Belfast boats so far as supplies were concerned, if we may judge from the advertisement of William Witherbee and Company in this old newspaper. Witherbee announced for sale at his store, No. 3 water Street, Castine, “an extensive supply of articles for the fishery, consisting of Liverpool salt, beef and pork, lard, flour, pilot bread, rice, corn, Indian meal, white beans, molasses, tar and pitch, Russia and cotton duck, Manila and tarred cordage, bolt rope, hawsers and cables, hemp and cotton cod lines, cod hooks and leads, and first quality fishing boots.”
Other ads in the same paper offer a thousand pounds of live geese feathers, warranted kiln dried, and of the very best quality; isinglass for lanterns; green window curtain paper I plain and printed. One firm advertised fire buckets, saddles, harnesses, trunks, valises, carpet bags and satchels. Another offered bathing tubs and vapor bath apparatus. Their feature was the Bates Patent Sliding Top Chamber Shower Bath.
The usual public notices, seen so commonly in the newspapers of a century ago, were not missing from the Waldo Signal. One of these announced that the summer term of the public schools in Districts 4 and 5 would commence on Monday, May 12, 1845. Jonathan Frohock announced the economic freedom of his son with this public notice: “This certifies that I have this day given to my son, Jonathan L. Frohock, the remainder of his time to act and trade for himself. I shall claim none of his earnings and pay no debts of his contracting after this date.”
In another public notice H. A. Lowell wanted it distinctly understood that the inhabitants of the town of Freedom had contracted with him to support Jacob Doten and family, paupers of said town, and that Lowell now forbade all persons to furnish supplies to the Doten family because he had made ample provision for their support at his own table in Freedom.
While all the world talks about a coming third World War, among all people everywhere is a great yearning for peace. Interestingly enough, it is not a clergyman, but a layman, who suggests that the only sure guide to peace is the moral law. That layman is Henry Luce, head of the great publishing organization that produces Time, Life and Fortune magazines. Says Mr. Luce:
“There is certainly no easy road to peace, no well paved Route 1, Route 2 or Route 3. Peace is a place across a vast jungle of human interests, conflicts, passions, errors, fears and hopes. But there is a guide through that jungle.
It is the moral law.
Mr. Luce quite rightly points out that, divided as the different sects surely are, on one thing they are united: our firm belief that God, the creator of man, also created a moral law for man’s government and endowed man with a conscience to apprehend that law. On that belief the government of the United States itself was founded. It provided the basis of unity when our forefathers framed the . Constitution in 1787. That basic belief in moral law is taught by Protestant, Catholic and Jewish religions alike.
The Difficulty — the great obstacle in the way of peace — is that while we Americans hold to that faith in moral law, there are others who do not so hold. In fact it is precisely that belief which the men who now govern Russia relentlessly attack. Stalin and the men of the Politburo say they have no objection to religion as a personal matter. They permit churches to stay open. But what they cannot permit, what they dare not tolerate, is the idea that their government, all government, is subject to a higher law, the moral law.
As far apart as we and the Russians are today on this acceptance or rejection of the validity of moral law, I believe Mr. Luce is profoundly right. Although Communist tyranny can stand between nations and the moral law, it cannot stand between men and the moral law. The yearning of men for liberty and justice cannot be repressed. The hunger and thirst for righteousness is universal. In the long run man or nation that flouts the moral law is doomed.
We must be determined to do all in our power, taking advantage of every constructive idea, to lessen the tensions and to restore people’s confidence allover the world. And we must do it, not because we are afraid, not lestsome enemy overtake us, but because it is right. Greater than armies and navies, more powerful than atomic bombs, is the power of moral law, giving all men the conviction that wrong cannot permanently conquer, and that two wrongs never make a right.
Year: 1950