Radio Script #216
Little Talks On Common Things
February 28, 1954
An interesting feature of our times is the attention which manufacturing companies and business institutions give to matters of local history. If you are not fami liar with the adverti sements of the Cana I Nat i ona I Bank of Port I and, you ought to notice them some time. That bank has a marvelous collection of pictures and recorded items about Portland and vicinity covering many years. By a remarkable coincidence, a few days after I talked on this program about the old canal that made navigation possible from Portland to Sebago and its tributary lakes, there appeared a Canal Bank ad, showing a drawing of one of those cana I locks.
The newest item of this kind to come to my attention does not come from Portland, however, but from central Maine. It is a neat little pamphlet, describing and showing cuts of the historical murals which I ine the walls of the lobby of the Livermore Falls Trust Company — the bank with which the Sturtevant fami Iy — three generations of Colby graduates — have long been associated. One is the fami I iar picture of Washington Crossing the Delaware, displayed in the Livermore Falls bank in order to call particular attention to one man in the boat, Adj utant Eli sha W I II i ams, first school teacher I n the town of Li ve rmore.
Another picture is the earl iest known photograph of Livermore Falls. Another, called “Main Street Crossing”, shows a locomotive of the Androscoggin Ra i I road in the 1 850 ‘s • Othe rs dep i ct the 0 I d cove red b ridge across the Androscoggin, a six-ox team on Depot Street, and the growing vi 1 I age in 1860, One picture of the Battle of Gettysburg calls attention to the particlpation of twenty Livermore men in that crucial battle. Another shows Abraham Lincoln walking “through the Washington station with EI ihu Washburn of Liver,., more, Congressman and close friend of the President. A copy of the well-known picture of Lincoln and his cabinet shows Vice-President Hannibal Haml in, son of livermore’s first physician, Or. Cyrus Hamlin. There are more than twenty other pictures, showing local scenes at the Falls and other livermore vi I I ages through the past century. Two pages of the pamphlet are appropriately devoted to that remarkable Washburn fami Iy, about whom we talked on this program several weeks ago. That one family furnished two governors of two different states, four representatives to Congress from four states, one U. S. Senator, two foreign ministers, a secretary of state, a major general of the Army, and a captain In the Navy.
We congratulate Mr. Reginald Sturtevant and his associates of the Livermore Falls Trust Company on such sp lendld recogn I tion of thei r loca I history. Mr. Sturtevant says that any of our listeners can obtain a copy of this booklet by simply writing to the livermore Falls Trust Company.
Have you ever cons i de red what anxieties and heart-rendlngs must have been caused when the gold fever struck Centra I Maine in 1849 and the early 50 ‘s, and stalwart sons left home for the gold fields? One such lad was James Green of North Fairfield, and I know of no better way to help you understand what those departures meant than to read you a letter written by James Green’s father to a re lati ve in Nord dgewock in June, 1852.
“J une the 27, 1852. I take th I s opportun I ty to wrl te a few Ii nes to let you know that we are a II we II at present. We rece I ved your lette r the 25th. We was g I ad to hear that you were a II we II. You wi sht to hear about James. I suppose that you have not heard about the ship North America that James went on was cast away on the 27 of February in the night. They went on the shoals 4 days sal I from the Isthmus about .100 mi les from Axapulco In Mexico. We have received 3 letters from him since he has been there. They all had to go on mules and afoot to Axapulco. They were three days going, with 40 women and children with nothing to eat. There were 1,000 passengers on board. James writes he was on deck asleep when she struck. A dreadful confusion on board. The last letter we received was dated 20 of Apri I. There was a sailing ship there that was sent from San Francisco by government to take them to California. James wrote they expected to sa i I that week. That is the I ast we have heard from him. Old John Robins that I ives on Oak Hi II by your uncle John Holbrooks went with James. He has returned home sick. He brought a letter fran James. James has had the meas les and a run of the fever wh lie at Axapu Ico in Mexi co. But he wrote in the last letter that his health was good.
”We shall expect a letter from James as soon as he gets to Cal i fornla. A. Varney and all the rest of the crew that went with James got off in a steamer (200 was left with Janes) and have got to Cal itornia and wrote back . Elbridge was sick on board with the measles. They settled in his legs so thathe has lost the use of them, but was getting better. Your Uncle Joel’s Stephen and your Uncle Jonah’s John, that went out in December last, got there well. But John has since died. Soon after he got in the mines he left $200 to be sent back to his mother. It has almost ki lied his folks. fvbther and I was up to Mercer last Sunday. They sent for us to come up. Your grandfather is sick and he does not expect to Ii ve long. His sickness is dropsy. We shou I d have come over but we have had no horse that we could go with. Both have got colts but one week old, and we shall not be able to come out this summer. We want to see you a II very much. M:>the r says if you will come out she w I I I do your sew Ing for you. So do not fal I of coming. Mark and I have bui It a barn and have finished it all off pretty much alone. We are poor as to money. It has cost all that I can nake and scrape to build and rig James off with $300 James took with him. don ‘t expect I sha II be ab Ie to pay anyth i ng on that note. I am in debt $100 now more than I can pay. S. Green.”
In spite of the father’s hopes, James Green was never heard from again. Probably he never reached California; otherwise some of the many boys who went there from Central Maine would have heard from Mm. Did he die of dis … ease In Acapulco (the elder Green spells it Axapulco)? Was he lost at sea between Mexico and San Francisco? Or was he murdered? We know ‘that many of those young men who left New England for the gold fields, especially those who went by way of the Isthmus of Panama, were murdered for the money they carried. Others met death by violence in the tough mining camps In the gold fields. Think of those anguished months and years during which Farmer Green and his wife up in North Fairfield waited day after day for a letter from James or fran someone who could at least tell them what had happened to him. But both father and mother went to thel r graves without any word from the boy.
I am decidedly in favor of consolidated schools, where education can have the same modern conveniences we all expect in our homes. I have no sympathy with people who want to cut the school cafeterias, the assembly rooms and the gymnaSiums, who see no place for art and music and home economics. They are the very peop Ie who want electric stoves, deep freezers, and te levis I 00 sets In the i r own homes.
Nevertheless, I am all for reasonable economy in the building of these new school houses, and I can appreci ate a good yam I recent Iy heard about such a bui Iding. A Maine town had voted a certain amount of money to build a consolIdated school and had authorized a committee to employ an architect to submit a plan. He seems to have been an extraordinary architect, because he held strictly to the budgeted figures. The committee Instructed him that the school must have the latest features for comfort and convenience, as well as for instruction in subjects beyond the three R’s.
Came the day when the architect’s· plan was displayed in the town hall for all the citizens to see. It showed a visitor’s reception room, a principal’s office, a supply room, a health clinic, a cafeteria, a kitchen, a locker room” and a comb i ned gymnas i um and assemb Iy ha II. I t was a won de rfu I p I an unt i I an old citizen, inspecting it mrefully through his spectacles, said: “It’s sur;:e· I()ve I y, but where are the cl ass rooms?”
“We haven’t forgotten them”, rep lied the archi tect. “Look in the four comers of the plan and you will see In each comer a square marked 10′ x 10 feet. Those little squares are the classrooms. That’s all the space you have left after you’ve put in the features you told me to be sure to include. You insisted on the features and also demanded I stay within the budget. You Just can ‘t have your cake and eat it.”
A few weeks ago I heard an interesting incident about the old ice industry of the Kennebec. I had supposed that every summer those huge ice houses along the river were completely emptied, cleaned and readied for a new c~.p the next winter. Such seems not to have been the case. When the large ice houses of the American and Knicke.rbocker Companies from Gardiner to Ric;hmond were abandoned and finally torn down, they still contained a bottom layer of solid ice, melted together by the enormous weight of layer upon layer pi led above it to the very eaves. That had happened year after year, and it is said to have been as much as twenty years in some instances that the sol i d bottom layer had been left untouched.
Tradition has it that school houses and barns were once painted red because red paint was cheap. Why was that so? How could one get red paint any more cheaply than any other color? Throughout New England there are deposits of reddish earth resembling red oxide of lead. In very early times somebody discovered that the earth from these deposits would make an ingredient for very cheap red paint. We are told that Squi re Brown of BrCMn’s Corner, now called Riverside, in Vassalboro, discovered such a deposit on his farm, with the result that in the early 1800’s red barns dotted the Vassalboro countryside.
Here’s more in formati on on that word “scant II ng”. I have been approached by dozens of people with at least half a dozen different interpretations. Some lumberman insist a scantling, in their usage, was a small outside strip of wood with the bark still on, something like a small slab. Others say it was a kind of studd Ing; others thati t was the litt Ie brace put up aga inst the studding; others that it was just any slat, wider at one end than at the other.
That very helpful listener, One Eleven, who asked the question about scantling in the fi rst place, now comes up with information gleaned in his recent conversation with a carpenter-contractor of the old school, a man nOtl well past the allotted three ;score years and ten. This old carpenter said: “By golly, I don’t hear that word scantling on a house job any more, or at a saw mill either. Fact is, they don’t get ’em out these days. Time was, though, when they were as necessary as cedar shingles, on new work,that is. They came 8 or 10 feet long and wider at one end than at the other. A I I tied up wi th tarred rope I ike laths. About 24 to a bunch as I recall it. In bui Idlng a 2t story house, we used to criss-cross the uprights with scantling on the inside of the studs.
Once we had the outs i de boarded in, we knocked off the scant lings so the lathers could go to work. Often we had to take off the scantlings in a hurry and split a lot of them so they were good for nothing but kindling. HCMever, we sanetimes found a use for even the broken ones. We used them as wedges to true up open- I ngs and door jambs. I n the 0 I d days we never used wide boards care less Iy, even though they were plentiful. Scantlings, instead of wide boards, were used for bracing and propping all through a job. They were rough s.awed, and often the bark of the spruce was left on In p laces where the saw ‘ran out’. That’s the way it used to be, but today if you can’t fi;nd a board, don’t look for a scantI i n9. There just at n ‘t any nowadays.”
Year: 1954