Radio Script #232
Little Talks On Common Things
September 19, 1954
I want to talk a bit tonight about one of the finest institutions In our State — the Maine Seacoast Mission. If you go down to the beautiful vi I lage of New Harbor on the Pemaquid peninsula early in August, you are likely to see riding at anchor in that picturesque cove a tidy diesel-powered cruiser with a white cross on her bow and under it the name I!Sunbeamll. She happens to be at New Harbor, as she is off and on during the sumner at many other tourist ports, because of the loyal support given her by our summer visitors over the years. For the bigger villages like New Harbor, close to inland centers such as Damariscotta and Rockland, are not on the Sunbeam’s main route of duty calls. But whether in Ba>r Harbor or New Harbor, or on the remote islands like Matinicus Rock and Two Bush, every man, woman and chi Id along the Maine coast knows the Sunbeam. Whenever misfortune strikes and help is needed, the Island and coasta I fo I k ca II the MI ss I on s tatl on at Bar Harbor and at once the S unbeam Is merey-bound for the scene.
As Hazel Young puts It in her “Islands of New England”, “On scores of Maine’s remote islands and isolated sections of the coastal mainland are tiny settlements and lighthouses where, in the long Maine winters, life is rugged and harsh. That is the pari sh of the Ma I ne Seacoast Mi ss I on.”
What does that floating mission do? It christens babies, performs marriages, buries the dead, ho I ds church servi ces, shows rrovies, bri ngs supp lies and gifts, performs countless errands of mercy, and makes 5,000 pastoral calls a year in 150 different communities.
Present head of the Miss ion is a Col by graduate , Rev. Nea I Bousfie I d. It is he whom the Sunbeam’s skipper and crew speed over white-capped winter seas to take a sick or i nj ured is I ande r to doctor or hosp i ta I. It is he who takes supp lies to an ice-bound community. He says a typ i ca I Sunbeam cargo I as she leaves Bar Harbor or Rockland, may be a casket containing the body of some islander who died on the mainland, but now goes home for burial, a big box of rags for a shut-in woman, half a cord of wood for the Matinicus church, a second- hand sewing machine for an island Ladies Aid Society, a mattress for a family on relief, a disk harrow, a second-hand lighting plant, an electric refrigerator, a bridge lamp, a baby’s high chair, 1,000 feet of lumber, books and magazines for the lighthouses, and a twin’s baby carriage.
One of the most important of the Mission’s services Is its rrobi Ie dental clinic. It is no easy job to get that vehicle on and off the Sunbeam at some of her landings. But the ingenuity and the strong muscles of the islanders manage it ina I I ki nds of weather. No longer do peop Ie on the islands lose thei r teeth before they reach mi dd Ie age. The Mi ss i on’s regu lar denta I care of the ch i 1- dren’s teeth is a I ready pay i ng off in better hea I th.
The Maine Seacoast Mission was started in 1905 by two Scotch brothers named Alexander and Angus MacDonald, both ordained ministers. One day, as they stood together on top of Cadi Ilac Mountain, Alec said to Angus, spreading his arm over the long reach of coast and islands, “What a parish!” And their parish it” became. At least it became Alexander’s after Angus left for other fields.
For 16 years Alexander MacDonald was the mission. Dressed in rough fisherman’s clothes, he cruised the whole coast, ministering to both the physical and the spiritual needs of isolated people. With borrowed money he bought a small sloop and named her !1The Hope”, Bit by bit interest in his work developed, especially among t”he summer visitors, and he was able to get a larger boat.
Duri ng the years there have been th ree boats ca lied the Sunbeam. The present one is a 72-foot diesel cruiser, designed especially for ice-breaking and bui It much I ike Don McMi Ilan’s Arctic cruiser, the “Bowdoin”.
As dusk beg i ns to sett Ie on some remote ~4a i ne is I and at the end of an autumn day, the sound of mus i c comes in from the sea — not the re iterated mus i c of waves and wind, but the music of man-made instruments and human voices. As it comes loudly out of the boat’s amplifiers and reaches the ears of the islanders, the whole settlement moves down to the dock. They know what that music means.
The Sunbeam is coming in. There wi II be movies tonight in the schoolhouse. On Sunday there will be a church service. And anyone who needs to get to the mainI and can get there now.
Watervi lie and Colby College have a special interest in the Maine Seacoast Mission. Several years in its service, before Neal Bousfield, was another Colby graduate, Rev. Hannah Powell, long the beloved pastor of the Waterville Universal ist Church and sti II, in her advanced years, a resident of this city. Miss Powell was a member of the college sorority of 5i gma Kappa., and she was largely responsible for every chapter of that sorority across the whole United States making “the Maine Seacoast Mission its special phi lanthropic project year after year.
Everyone on the Maine coast loves the Sunbeam especially for her annual Santa Claus cru i se. Every l:ecember the boat de livers Ch ri s tmas !li fts to more than 2,500 people, paying special attention to chi Idren and shut-ins. During the autumn workers, most of them volunteers, bundle the gifts at the Mission’s headquarters i n Bar Harbor. Then the first week in Decembe r a I J is loaded on the Sunbeam an d she sets out for he r 150 po i nts of ca I J — not on I y to the b i q places like tJPnhegan and Isle au Haut, but little settlements of a few people like Burnt Coa”t Harbor and Moose Peak Li ght. Every ch i I d gets th ree gi fts:
something useful, as sweater or socks; sorrething useless but treasured, as a doll or toy al rp lanei and a bag of candy.
I like the way Hazel Young puts it. She writes: “Ask any child along the Maine coast how he thinks Santa Claus gets around, and he wi II Immediately reply ‘By boat, of course. Santa a Iways comes on the Sunbeam’ • If
You may recall that last spring we were trying to discover hON Vassalboro got its name. I can now tell you. In 1661 four men — Antipas Boies, Edward Twing, Thomas Brattle ald John Winslow — paid to the Plymouth Colony 4,000 pounds for the great tract of land in Maine that became known as the Kennebec Purchase. A hundred years went by, during which repeated Indian wars and other factors prevented settlement. In 1753 the Massachusetts provincial legislature authoriz~d the hei rs of the four purchasers and those who had bought from them to set up a corporati on ca lied the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase.
One of those proprietors was Wi I liam Vassal who, in the division of the tract I recei ved ti tie to I and on both sides of the ri ve r north of Augusta, just as Sylvester Gardiner. another proprietor, secured ownership of simi lar land south of Hallowell. Like Gardiner, Vassal was a staunch Tory, and he fled to Canada duri ng the latter part of the Revo I uti on. But the name gi ven to the pri nci pa I settlement on his I ands out lived the Revol uti onary emoti ons. I t has ever since 1753 been called Vassalboro.
More than once in the last six years we have mentioned on this program Watervi lie’s first settled minister, Rev. Joshua Cushman. It is more accurate to call him Winslow’s fi rst settled minister, for his parish was what was, 160 years ago, the town of Winslow, then including both Wins low and Watervi lie.
The fact that is most often related about him is the way he left his ministry in these towns. The manner in which Mrs. Jeremiah Chaplin, wife of Colby’s first president, recorded it in her diary is not at all complimentary to the Rev. Joshua. Mrs. Chapl in wrote: “The people seem as though they had been as sheep without a shepherd. The man who formerly preached to them and to the people at Winslow is said not to favor experimental religion, and two years ago they agreed to give him $1,200 not to preach to them any more.”
Mrs. Chaplin, however, was prejudiced. It is true that Cushman’s theology was tainted with Unitarianism, and that was enough to condemn him in the eyes of any such hard-she lied 8apti s+ as Mrs. Chap I in. She sure Iy looked uponCushman’s retirement from the local church as the Lord’s doing.
The truth is that Josh ua Cushman was a man whose I deas we re just too advanced for a backwoods settlement such as this community was In the 1790’s.
The only listener who has told me he was personally present at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 is Dr. Thomas McCoy of Waterville. A boy of nine years, he was taken to the Co I umb i an Expos i ti on by a bus Iness associ ate of his father’s.
He remembers the thri II of a ri de on the huge Ferris Wheel, the strange sight of westem long-horn catt Ie, the marve lou5 exh i bits from fore i gn countries, especia Ily Germany. Two other th i ngs about that Ch i cago vis it, 61 years ago, are also vivid in the doctor’s memory. One is the barber shop in the famous Palmer House, with Its floor of small marble squares and a silver dollar embedded in each square. The other memory is that when the gentleman taking him to the Fair tendered a $20 bill in payment of some candy, he was given change entirely Ins i I ve r, inc Iud i ng 19 s jive r do I lars.
Another Watervi lie res i dent has excepti ona I reason for reea Illng the Worl d’s Fair of 1893. One of the most beloved of our now elderly residents, Mrs. Edward Heath, received a telegram in 1893 from friends attending the Chicago Exposition.
The telegram asked, fils it congratulations or commiserations?” Mrs. Heath had just become the mother of twins. Her many friends, 61 years after that telegram, can assure her that the answer was definitely congratulations.
Year: 1954