Radio Script #78
Little Talks On Common Things
October 8, 1950
It was nearly two years ago When, one night on this program, I put in a good word for Maine farmers. Some of you will recall that I quoted Arthur Roberts, the late President of Colby College, as once saying, “Farming in Maine isn’t an occupation; it’s a misfortune.”
In light of statements of that sort, it is interesting to note the figures recently released by the Maine Department of Agriculture. In 1949 the cash receipts of Maine farmers totaled $180,944,000. And the cash receipts by no means tell the whole story. For example, the Maine hay crop annually brings in only two million dollars in cash, but its value as harvested and fed to the animals on Maine farms is twenty millions.
By far the larger part of Maine farms are operated by the owners. Of our 42,184 farms, only 1,337 are operated by tenants, only 211 by managers.
Absentee owners therefore control only 3! per cent of the Maine farms.
Maine farmers cwn 15,000 tractors and 19,000 trucks. More than 30,000 Maine farms have electric distribution lines within a quarter of a mile, and 90 per cent of those farms use electricity.
We often hear that Maine is too far from the markets to be an important agricultural state. What is the fact? It is this: Two-thirds of the population and three-fifths of the wealth of the entire North American continent is within 500 miles of Maine.
So much for Maine farmers. The time has now come to keep our promise to you patient listeners and turn to Waterville’s famous murder case of 1847.
We are going to devote a portion of three consecutive programs to that murder, tonight and the following two Sundays. Tonight we shall deal with the murder itself, next Sunday we shall tell about the trial, and two weeks hence we Shall take up the most interesting feature of all, telling you What happened after the verdict was in.
We referred briefly to the case on one of our broadcasts last spring.
Since that time we have learned a lot more about it. We have not been content with reports made long afterward, like the feature articles in the press as recent as 1948. Not even the review of the case in the Waterville Mail in 1888 contented us. We just had to take time to seek out the contemporary accounts in the newspapers of the time.
The sheer mass of those newspaper stories astounded us. We have read more than 300 columns of print on that murder — accounts in the old Waterville Evening Mail, in the Portland Argus, in the Northern Tribune of Bath, in the Boston Gazette, and in other papers. And best of all, we have talked with and received invaluable assistance from the man Who probably knows more than any other living person about that old-time murder. He is Doane Eaton, retired u. S. Army engineer, now living at Cornville, Maine. Mr. Eaton tells me that he believes more than a thousand columns were printed in the contemporary press about that murder. He knows that reporters came not only from most of the Maine papers and from Boston, but even from New York and Philadelphia.
The railroad had just been completed from Portland to Augusta; it did not reach Waterville until two years later. When the murder trial was held in Augusta 102 years ago, the railroad dispatched a special train from Augusta to Portland at th~ end of each day of the trial, to take the reporter’s stories to the waiting newspapers.
Now let’s get down to the story. What happened to Shock not only Waterville, but the whole country on the evening of September 30, 1847? ValorUs P. Coolidge was a young doctor, 26 years old, who had been practicing in Waterville for several years. He had learned the art under the tutelage of Dr. Potter and had attended medical lectures in Philadelphia. He was born in Canton, Maine, where his parents and at least one brother still lived in 1847. He was unmarried and boarded at the Williams House, pictures of which may be seen at the Waterville Historical Society and on the wall of the Reference Room at the Waterville Public Library. His office was on the second floor of No. 27 Main Street, in a building which stood where a part of the present building of the Federal Trust Company now stands.
In the morning of October 1, 1847 Dr. Coolidge, having gone out of town on a very early call, returned to find the town in an uproar. When he reached the Williams House, where he not only boarded, but also kept his horses, he immediately joined other Waterville physicians in an inspection of the body of a prominent young citizen. Let us see what the Waterville Mail of October 7, 1847 had to say about what had happened:
“Between 7 and 8 o’clock on Friday evening last, the dead body of Mr. Edward Mathews was found in the rear of Mr. shorey’s clothing store, Pray’s Building, Main Street, under circumstances which indicated beyond question that he had been murdered and robbed. There were several severe wounds on the head, some marks of violence on the throat, and a cut across the thigh near the groin, apparently made in cutting open the pantaloons pocket.
“On inquiry it was ascertained that Mr. Mathews had about his person, at nine o’clock the previous evening, $1,500 to $1,800 and a gold watch, for which, no doubt, the murder was committed.
“A jury of inquest was summoned as soon as a coroner could be obtained from a neighboring town, which has continued in session to the present time, and may still sit for some days.
“We forbear, for the present, giving any of a thousand stories and surmises which are afloat, or anything that has been developed, so far as have been made public, before a jury. Strange facts are said to have been disclosed, but under present circumstances we can rely upon nothing so far as to make it public. No arrest has yet been made, though it need not be concealed that suspicion is very decided in one direction.”
Such is the factual, cautious account in the Waterville Mail that citizens :r ead avidly six days after the crime. Of the murdered young man, 25 years old, the Mail had this to say: “Edward Mathews was a young man of enterprise and highly esteemed, and was in partnership with Mr. Soule of Clinton in a store at that place. He came from Clinton to Waterville on Thursday morning for the purpose of completing certain negotiations relative to the money of which he was robbed, $1,500 of which he took from the Ticonic Bank during the day. He was seen by numerous individuals, arid at various places, between 7 and 9 o’clock.”
Not then reported by the Mail, but well known by the citizens, was the fact that, in addition to his Clinton partnership, Edward Mathews was in the cattle business, buying beef cattle and driving them to the market at Brighton, Massachusetts. Though not a man of wealth, he frequently had considerable sums from the cattle business. More than once he had borrowed money from the Ticonic Bank to finance these transactions.
On Sunday — the third day after the murder — an autopsy was performed. The physicians present were Doctors Sidney, Thayer, Plaisted, Noyes, Boutelle and Coolidge. Dr. Thayer, the grandfather of our famous Dr. Frederick Thayer, seems to have been in charge. Yet young Dr. Coolidge took an active part.
It was he who removed the contents of the stomach into a wash basin. Later Dr. Thayer suggested that those contents should undergo chemical analysis.
Someone said, “We’d better send them to Bowdoin”. Dr. Noyes said, “We don’t need to do that. We have a perfectly good chemist right here in Waterville.”
So they called in Professor Loomis of Waterville College (now Colby). He made a thorough chemical analysis, and declared that he found fatal amounts of prussic acid.
So it came about that, on October 6, the coroner’s jury rendered a verdict that Mathews had come to his death by poison, or by blows inflicted on the head, or by both, by a person or persons unknown. The jury further declared that the poison was prussic acid, administered in brandy, the effect of which is known to produce almost instantaneous convulsions. terminating in death, sometimes in so short a time as four or five minutes. The jury believed, but were not sure, that the blows had been inflicted after death.
It was clear that the murder had not been committed where the body was found, just inside the entrance to the basement under Shorey’s clothing shop.
Nor had it been committed on the street or anywhere out of doors, for there was no mud or dirt on the boots or clothes. There was no indication that the body had lain or been dragged on the ground, or that any scuffle had occurred.
On October 7 the grand jury at Augusta brought in an indictment against Dr. Valorus P. coolidge for the murder of Mathews, and the next day he was arrested by Officers Norris, Nudd and Miller, acting for County Sheriff L. D. Moor. Let us see what had caused this sudden turn of events, just too late to reach the Waterville Mail of October 7, though the next week’s issue on October 14 told the story in great detail.
Young as he was, Dr. Coolidge was not only a doctor, but an instructor of would-be doctors as well. Two young men studied in his office, one of whom is unimportant to this story. But the other, Thomas Flint, sealed Dr. Coolidge’s doom. ~wenty-four year old Flint was the son of State Senator Flint of Anson. For a week after the fateful night of September 30th he kept silent, but then sent word to his father that he wanted to see the senator.
The elder Flint came to Waterville and, closeted in a room at the Williams House, extracted from his son an amazing story.
The young man said that about nine o’clock on the evening of September 30, Dr. Coolidge came to the door of Flint’s room at the Williams House, and asked Flint to accompany him to the office, which was but a few steps distant. They went together to the office, which consisted of two large rooms, front and rear, on the second floor. After entering the front room, Dr. Coolidge locked the door, and immediately told Flint that he was going to reveal a mystery in which his very life was involved. He then proceeded to say that Mathews came in a short time before, that the doctor gave him a glass of brandy to drink, whereupon Mathews immediately fell into an apoplectic fit, and was lying in the other room. The doctor said the affair would ruin both him and Flint if the body was found in the office; so they must dispose of it. Coolidge said the night was not dark enough to take the body into the street or throw it into the river. So Flint was persuaded to help the doctor carry the. body down two flights of stairs into the basement.
Such was Flint’s story to his father. Was he telling the truth? What about the $1,500 to $1,800 Mathews was said to have had? For that we must wait until next week, for it all came out in the trial.
Coolidge was brought before Justice Tenney of the Maine Supreme Court at Augusta on October 24, 1847, and pleaded not guilty. The judge announced that trial would take place at the January term of court, and Coolidge was meanwhile remanded to the county jail at Augusta. When the trial opened on January 26, 1848, Dr. Hill testified that a very important witness, Cyrus Williams, proprietor of the Williams House, was too ill to appear. So the trial was postponed to the second Tuesday in March, and at that point we shall resume the story next week.
As a final touch tonight, let it be known that the body of Edward Mathews lies in a well marked grave here in Waterville. Undoubtedly he was at first buried in the old churchyard where is now Monument Park on Elm Street.
Our older inhabitants well know that the Elm Street cemetery was abandoned in the decade before the Civil War. I can now be more definite than that.
I can tell you when the first burial in Pine Grove Cemetery took place. It was that of Charlotte Sutton Lowe, who died on November 29, 1851.
On October 3, 1847 the funeral of Edward Mathews was held in the Waterville Universalist Church. Sometime after 1851 his body was taken up from the old Elm Street burying ground and deposited in a lot belonging to Miss A. Mathews in the new Pine Grove Cemetery. Here are the exact words of the burial record, still kept at the office of Pine Grove.
“Name – Mathews, Edward Estey
Residence – Waterville, Maine
Age – 25 years
Date of death – September 30, 1847
Cause – Murdered by Dr. Coolidge
Buried – October 3, 1847
Lot 379. Grave 3.
Year: 1950