Radio Script #234
Little Talks On Common Things
October 3, 1954
Our neighboring communities of Madison and Unity deserve hearty congratulations on the successful celebration of their 150th anniversaries. 80th towns paid tribute to the stalwart pioneers who were the fi rst settlers; both brought out the colorful, yardful costumes of long ago. Over in Unity the men sported lavish growth of facial foliage, as the men of Watervi lie did two years ago.
People who care little for these historical remembrances, people who say we have qui te enough to do to take care of contemporary needs — let the dead past bury its dead — these are the peop Ie who fa i I to recogn i ze that the p resent is clearly and definitely the heritage of the past. It is not mere nostalgia, therefore, that promotes an interest in the people and the events of long ago, that induces communities to celebrate 150 years of incorporation. Of course there is a bit of homey nostalgia connected with it, but it is more than that. It is recognition of a great fact of life. No generation can live in isolation, in oblivious disregard of either the past or the future. Inhabitants die, but the community lives on. Names of once populous fami lies vanish from the voting lists, but the free will of free voters still persists in our Maine towns.
In addition to the significant week-end program with which Unity celebrated its 150 years as an incorporated town, the occasion produced one of the best published local histories we have yet had in Maine. This book — “A History of the Town of Un i ty, Ma i ne lY is the work of James Berry Vi ckery ‘II, a member of the Maine Historical Society and of the Essex Institute. He wrote the book as an extension of his thesis for the degree of Master of Arts in History at the University of Maine. Five of his paternal ancestors were among Unity’s first sett lers.
Mr. Vickery emphasizes a point which it is well for us to keep in mind, as we consider old time ways in Central Maine, as we have been doing on this program for the past six years. He says religious liberty had little to do with inducing seTTlers to Maine. We have heard much, not only about how Puritans and Pi Igrims came to America in the first place to escape religious persecution in England, but also how the tyrannical control by the Boston Theocracy became intolerable to free men, how Roger Wi I Iiams and Anne Hathaway were banished from the Bay Colony for their religious beliefs. It is easy, therefore, to assume that men fled such tyranny to seek freer lives in the wilderness of Maine.
We forget that the Central Maine settlements, as true settlements rather than isolated cabins, did not really get going unti I after the bui Iding of Fort Hal i fax and Fort \Vestern in 1754, and saw no real boom unti I the Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended the long struggle with the French and Indians. By 1763 the Boston Theocracy had lost its grip comp lete Iy. Boston was sti II a re I i 9i ous town, where Sabbath observance was strict. But the estab I ished orthodox church no longer controlled the state. Religious belief and its exercise in worship were as free in Boston as anywhere else on the Ameri can conti nent.
I am especially interested in the principal source which Mr. Vickery uses to support his contention that Maine was not settled through the motive of religious freedom. That support comes from a town history of which I am very fond, Hugh McLe II an ‘5 “Hi story of Gorham”, because my mother was born in Gorham, and it was of that Town that my great-grandrrother used to tell me thrilling stories about the pioneer days.
Now Gorham was the scene of a massacre in the later days of the French and Indian Wars. Under an earlier Hugh McLellan the settlers who escaped the In”: dian tomahawks — and some twenty of them did not — took refuge in the Fort on Old Fort Hi II, where the State Teachers College now stands. The writer of the Gorham history was himself a later Gorhamite, who got a great deal of his material from the lips of old residents, some of them his own ancestors. This is what he wrote: ”Men came to Maine not so much to find a free atmosphere of religious faith, as to find opportunity to better their worldly fortunes.”
Although Unity is situated on a height of land between the Penobscot and the Kennebec Valleys, it really belongs to our Central Maine, because its drainage, including Its Lake Winnecook, flows into the Kennebec River, by way of the Sebasticook.
Watervi lie’s own Edward Perkl ns, I ate Professor of Geo logy at Colby, in his thorough geological survey of the region, discovered how much Unity owes to the great ice sheet that covered Maine 25,000 years. ago. One of the glacier’s terminal moraines, Dr. Perkins wrote, “swings about the south end of the pond and at Unity VI I lage expands into a delta. The delta grows shal low up the valley of Sandy Stream, then the esker reappears, following up the Sandy and HalfMoon Valleys In a mass of fine sand.” That esker, or as the natives call It, a .”hor.seback”, is the way the ice sheet 25,000 years ago p resented Un i tv with excellent deposits of gravel and sand. It also explains why Unity, unlike its neighbors, has no towering hi 115.
On a I ate r program I want to te I I you more about th is i nte res tl ng Ma I ne town, 150 years ,old in 1954.
Abraham Lincoln, our Clvi I War president, never visited Maine. I believe the nearest he came to us was Exeter, New Hampshire, where he once visited his son, Richard Todd lincoln, then a student at Phi I lips Exeter Academy. But,. if Lincoln never came to Maine, his most notorious Civi I War opponent did, Jefferson Davis who, three years ,I ater, was to become pres i dent of the seceding Confederate states, lectured in the Hall of Representatives at the State House, Augusta, on September 22, 1858. It was State Fair week in that city and a large crowd turned out to hear the Southerner speak on agricu Iture. He was afterwards suspected of having come to Maine to ascertain the attitude here toward secession.
One of America’s most remarkab Ie women, Helen Keller, lectured in this community at least once. A group of young ladies in the Fairfield f1Iethodist Church formed a society whose chief interest in 1913 was raising money for a pipe organ. In that year these girls were able to book Helen Keller for a lecture.
The new pipe organ had already been Installed in the church, but was not entire Iy paid for. Half of the needed flOney had been suppl ied by Andrew Carnegie — did you know the old steel tycoon was Interested in church organs as well as public libraries? — but the remaining half had been partially secured by a loan. So by private subscriptions, suppers, and entertainments the money was being raised to clear the debt.
Miss Harriet Nye, official historian of the Fairfl,eld ~thodist Church, remembers well the occasion of Miss Keller’s lecture. She recalls that, as Miss Keller, deaf, dumb and blind, with her famous teacher Miss Sullivan, came into the room, the organ was playing softly. At the close of the lecture the audience was given opportunity to ask questions. Someone asked a question which at the time Miss Nye cons.idered especially tactless to put to one with Miss Keller’s infirmities. It’Was~ ”What musical instrument do you like best?” Miss Keller, when the question was relayed to her by Miss Sullivan, promptly replied, “The organ and the violin” •• “How do you hear them?”, someone asked. “With my feet”, answered Miss Keller. ”The organ was playing when I came in.”
As we closed the program last week, I promised to te II you more about Watervi lie’s fi rst regu lar preacher, Joshua Cushman. One of the most surpris i ng th:ings I have learned about that surprising man was the cost-of-Hvlng clause which he insisted on inserting in his contract with the town ot Watervi I Ie. We hear much about such clauses today and abouT cost-ot-divlng bonuses to salaried workers. But this is the first time I have ever encountered such a clause written more than 150 years ago. Cushman’s salary was not inflexibly fixed at 110 pounds a year. Listen to what the contract said: “Agreed on the part of the town that, if money should become materially of less value and the prices of articles of living be materially increased, or the inhabitants increase in wealth and in population, such additions to the salary now voted to Mr. Cushman shal I from time to time be made as shall put him above servile dependence and enable him to discharge the duties of his station with satisfaction and abi Ifty.
Agreed on the part of Mr. Cushman that, if the relative value of money should materially be increased and the articles of living be materially diminished in price, he wJ II from time to time relinquish a reasonable portion of his salary so as not ‘to be burdensome to the peop Ie.”
The ordination of Mr. Cushman to head the Waterville church, in· the summer of 1795, was a brilliant occasion. Representatives forming an ordination counci I were presen’t from the free churches of Canaan, Pownalborough, Woolwich, Brunswick, Topsham, Wells and Kittery. Twenty local citizens formed a committee to conduct ‘the counci I to a I arge booth of evergreen erected on the plains where the meeting was held. There Mr. Cushman was inducted into the ministry which he held for 19 years.
Joshua Cushman was a man of distinction, who would have graced a community much larger than the two vi I I ages across the ri ver from each other at Ti con i c Falls in 1795. He came from stalwart Pi Igrim stock. Robert Cushman, an £ng- I ish Puritan, was one of the band wh i ch boarded the Mayf lower and the Speedwe II in August, 1620. But when both ships proved unseaworthy and put back to Bristol for repairs, Robert did not rebeard the Mayflower for its memorable voyage which culminated aT Plymouth Rock. But he did not stay long behind. I.n the spring of 1621 he was aboard the Fortune when thaT welcome ship was sighted by.
the hungry settlers at Plymouth. With Robert Cushman came his son Thomas, a boy of 14. The faThe r returned to Eng I and on the Fortune and neve raga in visited the Colony, but young Thomas remained at Plymouth and founded the Cushman fam i I yin Arne rica. Rev. Josh ua Cushman, the Wate rvi I Ie p reache r, was a fifth generation descendant of Thomas.
Joshua Cushman had one trait which is supposed to be theprlvi lege only of the feminine sex — he would never tell his a.ge, even TO members of his own family. As nearly as those closest to him could determine, he was born either in 1758 or 1759, probably at Halifax, Massachusetts. His boyhood was spent at Bridgewater. Early in the Revolution, when he was 17 or 18, Joshua joined the Continental Army and served for three years, being among that rugged band who suffered through The terrib Ie wi nter at Va Iley Forge. After the war he deci ded to prepare himself for the ministry, somehow gained admission to Harvard, and when he was at least 35 years old received his Harvard degree In the same class with a much younger man, John Quincy Adams.
Mr. Cushman was a real orator and was in great demand for Fourth of July orati ons. Severa I of those addresses were printed and preserved. The fi rst of them was del ivered at Augusta in 1807. In 1808 he was the widely heralded orator of Wiscasset, and in 1814, the year he left his Watervl lie mlnlstry,he was Fourth of July orator In Waterville itself. In that fact lies plenty of proof of his continuing popularity in Watervl lie. He did not leave his ministry because people were tired of listening to him.
One of Cushman’s most famous orations was delivered aT Winslow on April 13, 1815. The occasion was an observance requested by a presidential proclamation.
The unfortunate and unpopular war with GreaT Britain — what American historians have called the War of 1812 — was at last over. The war and Its em- bargoes which had stifled New England trade were now ended. The General Thanksgiving, proclaimed by President Madison, appealed to everyone, and Joshua Cushman let loose the best of his impassioned rhetoric on that spring day in Winslow.
Joshua was sti II orating as late as 1832, when he gave a stirring address in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of George Washington’s birth.
Joshua Cushman has been so frequently mentioned as Watervi lIe’s first minister, that many people today are not aware of his distinguished political career. In 1810 Kennebec County sent him to the Massachusetts Senate. Then in 1811 and 1812 he represented Winslow in two sessions of the Massachusetts House.
It was in 1819, however, five years after the end of his ~/atervi lIe ministry, that Cushman reached the peak of his political success. From what was known as the Kennebec Congressional District of Massachusetts in the District of Maine he was elected to Congress, to the nat i ona I House of Rep resentat I ves. The ve ry next year Maine became a state, and Cushman was reelected to Congress by the same voters, but who now voted in a Congressional District of the State of Maine.
He continued in Congress for six years.Stl II keeping active in political and religious work, sti I I responding to repeated invitations for public addresses, but ho I ding no furthe r pub I i c off I ce I he was a recogn i zed leader in Ma i ne unt i I his death at Augusta in 1834.
Such was Joshua Cushman — liberal preacher, si Iver-tonaued orator, respected statesman — a man who, in his first term of Congress, actually served two different states, the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the new State of ~4a i ne.
Year: 1954