Radio Script #84
Little Talks On Common Things
November 19, 1950
The present campaign is by no means the first time that the citizens of Waterville have rallied to the needs of their college. For 135 years the people of this community have rightly considered the college theirs, although legally it is a privately operated institution.
The charter granted to the Maine Literary and Theological Institution by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1813 did not provide for locating the college in Waterville. On the contrary, the land allotted for the new institution was in Township No.3, fifteen miles above Bangor on the Penobscot River. That site, then far out in the wilderness, was obviously so unsuitable that, in 1816, the trustees of the as yet unbuilt college obtained the right to locate and establish their buildings in any town within the limits of Kennebec or Somerset Counties.
Three towns actively competed for the new college — Farmington, Bloomfield and Waterville. Does Farmington surprise you? It need not, because there was then no Franklin County. Bloomfield was, of course, the old name of Skowhegan.
Credit for bringing the college to Waterville has long been given chiefly to Timothy Boutelle, and it was indeed he who collected the subscriptions and issued receipts for them. But it seems reasonably clear that the man who gave the movement its start was Dr. Obadiah Williams. If they could have been contemporaries, Obadiah Williams and Franklin Johnson would have made a great team. Both men of vision and foresight, both devoted to the welfare of the community, both undaunted by adversity, both such optimists that they believed the impossible only takes a little longer than the difficult; one of them planned for a college in Waterville, the other made the little, struggling institution a college with a new site and a national reputation.
You will perhaps recall an earlier broadcast in which I told how Obadiah Williams gave to the town the site of the City Hall and its park. It was on that site that the first meeting house on this side of the river was erected the building that was to serve nearly a century and a half successively as a church, town house and armory. Dr. Williams was by all odds Waterville’ s leading citizen until his death in 1799, fourteen years before the college trustees got their charter.
Born in Antrim, New Hampshire in 1752 young Williams had participated in the battle of Bunker Hill, and afterwards served as surgeon in General Stark’s regiment throughout the Revolution. The first Maine town to benefit by his practice was Sidney, where he stayed until 1792. He then came to Waterville, married a Waterville qirl and became the father of five boys and two girls. He built the first frame house in Waterville.
Such was the good physician who in 1788 wrote to Dr. Whittaker of Canaan about his plans for an advanced educational institution in Winslow, for not until fourteen years later did Waterville become a separate town.
When in 1816 a committee of the trustees reported in favor of Bloomfield, Waterville citizens remembered how hard Obadiah Williams had worked to interest people in a college, and they determined not to be unmindful of his memory. They persuaded the trustees to locate the institution in Waterville provided the people of the town would raise a suitable sum of money. Over $2,000 was subscribed, but in 1816, just as today, it is easier to get pledges than to collect them.
Nine men came forward and guaranteed the subscriptions, some of which were in amounts as small as fifty cents. Two of those nine men were Waterville’s leading citizens of the time, Nathaniel Gilman and Timothy Boutelle.
Believe me, the men who were determined to have the college in Waterville were glad to get those fifty cent subscriptions. And it is just the same today.
No one need refuse to give to a worthy community cause for fear that a small gift does not help or will not be appreciated. It is the accumulation of many small gifts that brings success to·’ every such enterprise. What a thrill those small givers of 1816 must have had when they talked about their college.
I haven’t forgotten that last week I promised to tell you about Vassalboro’s newspaper. It was a very interesting sheet and one of its editors was a woman very well known to many of you who are listening tonight.
In March, 1886 there appeared in Vassalboro Volume I, Number 1 of the Clarion, published by S. A. and N. C. Burle~gh. The first named editor was Samuel Appleton BurleIDgh, who about eight years later would graduate from Colby College.
In 1886 he was only fifteen years old and his associate editor, N. C., was his even younger sister, Nettie Burleigh.
That first issue of the Clarion was a tiny, four-page sheet, 6 by 5! inches.
The enterprise of the young editors was shown, however, in their publication of three display ads; one announcing that Lizzie Taylor, fashionable dressmaker, made cutting and fitting a specialty at North Fairfield; another that the Lang Farm at Vassalboro had Plymouth Rocks for sale, also eggs for setting; and the third ad stated that Miss Mary Morrison of Vassalboro had a good, second-hand Davis Machine for sale. There was space for a fourth ad, but the young editors evidently failed to sell it, for they printed therein “This space is reserved ·for our patrons”.
Every proprietor of a new paper in those days took pains to announce his plans and policy in the first issue, and these youngsters were no exception. This is what the first column of page one announced:
“To our patrons: With this our first issue we launch our little bark upon the boundless sea of literature, trusting in the charity of our fellow voyagers to overlook anything that resembles incompetency and to encourage our labors so far as they meet with approval. Our object is the dissemination of truth and temperance, and the advancement of scientific and practical knowledge among our fellow men.”
The Burleigh children announced their advertising rates as 10 cents an inch, 45 cents a column, 85 cents a page. They proposed to publish the paper monthly.
The only local news in that first issue concerned the opening of the spring term at Oak Grove and an entertainment by the ladies of the Congregational Society.
Now it is not unusual for children to start a paper, especially if someone gives them a printing press, but it is not so usual for such a paper to continue publication. I suppose most of the Burleigh neighbors expected Sam and Nettie soon to tire of the press in the upstairs room of the house. How surprised folks must have been to see that little paper not only keep on month after month, but increase in size and actually achieve a circulation of more than a thousand copies. By June, 1888 its crude, childish printing had disappeared, and a neat four-pager, ten by eight inches, three columns to a page, heralded Volume 3, No. 1 of the Clarion.
The ads were now numerous. Hall and Meader, with stores both at Vassalboro and North Vassalboro, carried the biggest ad — two columns of four inches. Their ad ends with this interesting postscript: “We shall cut prices on fertilizers, if other firms do”. Mrs. H. C. Minot of Belgrade evidently did a good business in bees and honey, but she also had a sideline, for in a separate ad she announced the Novelty Slate Pencil Sharpener at 7 cents, two for 12 cents. The original subscription rate of the Clarion had been 20 cents a year. Success had now permitted an increase to 30 cents a year.
There were two full columns of locals in that issue of June, 1888, one of which announced that Mr. Will Yates had again sailed for Africa, where he would spend the summer. First strawberries of the season were on the market at 16 cents a quart. In fact a box on page 3 is headed “Vassalboro Market, Retail Prices Current”, followed by “Potatoes, $1.00 a barrel; flour, $5.75 a barrel; corn, 80 cents a bushel; eggs, 14 cents a dozen; butter, 20 cents a pound; dry hard wood, $5.00 a cord; soft wood, $3.75 a cord.”
In 1888 the Burleigh brother and sister were eager to get news from surrounding towns. They published an ad of their own, which reads:
“Wanted — correspondents in different parts of Vassalboro, China, Winslow and Sidney, to send US news items. We will furnish writing material and stamps, and will send the Clarion free.”
So, on through 1889, 1890 and most of 1891 the Clarion continued its monthly peal. By that time Sam Burleigh was in college, and he launched a more ambitious publication. On September 1, 1891 appeared’Vol. 1, No.1 of the Kennebec Valley News, published at Vassalboro. Evidently Sam Burleigh had not thought of the Clarion as a newspaper, but rather as a monthly periodical of literature, for his announcement of the Valley News reads: “At last our dreams are realized and Vassalboro has a newspaper. Here we are! Another literary infant thrust upon the mercies of a cold world. We don’t propose to pander to the whims of anyone, be they male or female, saint or sinner, prohibitionist, Democrat or Republican. We shall try to help warm this cold world by turning into it the gulf stream of charity and benevolence.”
The Valley News was no tiny monthly; it was a full-sized, four page weekly, published every Tuesday. Evidently Sam Burleigh had good connections in Waterville, for his first issue was full of Waterville ads. Sam Preble or rather Preble and Jordan — offered life size crayon portraits at $6.00; Harriman Brothers called attention to their fine collection of jewelry; S. A. Estes announced that his store in the Plaisted Block was the place to buy boots, shoes and rubbers; but on the same page the Loud Brothers printed a bigger ad, saying “Look here!
Why don’t you buy your boots and shoes at Louds?” Hanson, Webber and Dunham wanted Vassalboro readers to try the new Royal Atlantic cooking range; F. A. Robbins on Silver street wanted the Vassalboro folks to bring their furniture to him for upholstering. Dolloff and Dunham at 40 Main Street offered men’s, boy’s and children’s suits, odd pants and overcoats at greatly reduced prices to close them out and make room for fall goods. H. B. Tucker and Co. asked:
“Did you ever know that there is a drug store in Arnold Block, waterville? When you are sick do you have Mr. Tucker and Mr. Larrabee, both registered apothecaries, put up your medicine? If not, you had better begin right away, and get fair prices on all goods, not be robbed on goods you know little about.”
By 1888 the safety bicycle, as distinguished from its big front-wheeled predecessor, had come to Central Maine. Sam Burleigh himself was agent for the Columbia, which his pictured ad announced as the best wheel for business or pleasure. He also offered two second-hand Columbias for sale cheap_ Such is a part, and only a part, of the fascinating story of Vassalboro’s newspaper started by two very enterprising children 64 years ago.
Year: 1950