Radio Script #254
Little Talks On Common Things
February 20, 1955
One of the oldest church bui Idings in Kennebec County is the Baptist Church at East v’linthrop. It was in that venerable and beautiful structure that a large number of Colby people gathered a few years ago for the funeral of Colby’s great benefactor, Han. Herbert Wadsworth. Yes, this is the church made famous by the Baileys, by f\1r. Wadsworth, and by that gracious and generous woman, Eleanore \~oodman .
The old East Winthrop church had an interesting origin. In the early years of the nineteenth century people traveled long distances to church. Baptists in vii nthrop, especi ally in the eastern part of that town, attended the church at Readfield, about which I told you a few weeks ago. By 1822, believing they were now sufficiently numerous to support a church of their own, those East Winthrop Bapt i sts withdrew from the Readf i e I d church and formed a new organ i zati on. Rev. Josiah Houghton donated land for a meeting house. Lumber was contributed by various neighboring congregations. For instance, the four pine posts that support the be I I-deck came from the town of leeds. Present-day members of the 0 I d church maintain that their bel I was the first one hung in ~ny belfry west of the Kennebec River. Of course they do not mean on the west side of the river, for certainly bells were hung in the belfries of Hallowell, Gardiner and Auqusta long before 1822. \~hat defenders of the East Winthrop bell mean is that it was the first be II west of the river towns. Trad I ti on says that th is be II was rung for the first time at the election of John Qunicy Adams as President of the Un-I ted States.
It was in the East ~\linthrop Baptist Church that the Maine Baptist Convention was organized in 1824. Its first pastor was Rev. John Butler, and the present minister is a widely known and dearly loved woman pastor, Rev. Mildred Huffman.
lam constantly amazed by what I learn about the size of farm shipments from the Kennebec Val ley to the Boston market. Those shipments were significant, not only in the early years of the former century, when in value wheat exceeded all other commodities, even lumber, but were of consequence half a century ago.
Mr. D. E. Decker of Clinton calls my attention to an item In the Clinton Advertiser of June 14, 1905 — an item which concerns Mr. Decker’s own fami Iy, for he, like me, was brought up in a family that operated a country store. The item says: t’L. Decker and Son have shipped 37,480 pounds of butter in one year from Apri I 1, 1904 to Apri I 1, 1905’1″ Nearly 19 tons of butter — that was indeed a lot for one country dealer to send to the Boston market.
Clinton’s widely known undertaker and furniture dealer had a ful I-page ad in the Clinton Advertiser of fifty years ago. When you consider what you have to pay for bedroom furni ture today? you wi I I be interested to learn that Mar,ce I I us then offered chamber sets for $15.50. I f you wanted to spruce up your living room, Marcel Ius would sell you a couch or an adjustable sofa for $8.50.
You could get an iron bed for $2.75 and a chair for as little as fifty cents. Marcel Ius also said: “We have pretty go-carts, the price and qual ity of which . wi I I surprise you”. Back in 1905 straw matting was popular. The Cain ad says:
“Straw matting will not only make a sleeping room look neat, but wi” keep clean and cool for summer at I ittle cost.”
The next year in 1906 the Advertiser was carrying an ad by Dixon and Runnels which named just four commodities: men’s pants, workinq shoes, fresh eggs and butter.
Remi nded by my menti on of bu I k cream of tartar in “Kennebec Yesterdays”, Mr. Decker tells us a good yarn about his father’s old store in 1890. One day ~1r. Decker’s father sold a man a pound package of Arm and Hammer Soda. The customer’s wife was a stubborn woman. She made her husband walk back the long 2t miles to Decker’s store to exchange that package soda for the bulk kind. nl won ‘t use i t H , she ins i sted _ “Ta i nt no good. Them fancy packages take a I I the goodness out of it.” The henpecked husband reported a II th i s to the storekeeper.
~-1r. Decker calmly opened the package and dumped the contents into a paper bag, and the customer returned the same i denti ca I soda to the now sati sf ied woman.
Mr. Decker a I so has a good fish story. He says that a bout 50 years ago Samuel Marr, an old resident -of Battle Ridge, told him he had seen the Sebasticook at CI inton so full of herrinq that some of the fish were actually crowded up onto The bank so far they couldn’t qet back into the water. All anyone had to do was walk along and pick up all the fish he could carry.
It is a long time since we have mentioned on this program the Indians of the Kennebec. It is fitting tonight that we call attention to the fact that it was a Ioost exactly fi fty years ago when a monument was erected at Woolwich to commemorate the I ast I nd i an Massacre on the Kennebec. Four years after the building of Forts Halifax and Western in 1754, a band of Indians in the emp I oy of The French descended upon the cab in home of Ebenezer Preb Ie near what is now the town of Woolwich. The momument erected in 1905 tells the story. The inscription reads thus:
‘The I ast massacre of the I nd i an wars on the Kennebec. A memori a I. Ebenezer Preble and Mary Harnden his wife, ki lIed by Indians at their home, one mile SOUTh of this spot. Buried here) June 9, 1758. Their six chi Idren were taken capti ve, of whom one was taken to France. Two daughters were recovered from Canada in 1759 and two sons in 1761, who made their homes near this place.
One capti ve servan”t was ki lied on the march and one never returned. A Iso buried here is the father of Mrs. Preble, Captain Samuel Harnden, 1699-1768, a pioneer settler of the Kennebec. His block house stood six”ty feet east.”
One of the rnos”t helpful persons on this program is Mrs. Roland Stinneford of the Cushman Road in Ivins low. A careful historical worker, especially in D.A.R. material and in the lore of old Winslow, Mrs. S”tinneford is quick to pick up mistakes she notices in print or on the air.
Recent Iy she “to Id me that she had often wondered how the tradi ti on persisted that Rev. Joshua Cushman, this vicinity’s first settled minister, was ordained on the wes”t side of the river. Every reader of the old histories knows that the first church was what is now the Winslow Congregational, erected on the east side of the river. Ivhy should Elder Cushman have been ordained on the west side? Well, “the fact is he wasn’t. Let us see how the wrong impression became fixed in the mi nds of 0 I der peop Ie sti II I i vi ng today.
When Watervi lie was 100 years old in 1902, Dr. Edwin C. \I/hittemore edited and hi mse I f wrote most of the bi g vo I ume we know as ‘lThe Centenni a I HI story of Watervi lie”. Indeed Dr. Whittemore’s name heads Chap”ter 2, which recounts the older history of this locality. On page 52 of tha”t chapter, Dr. Whittemore told about the ordination of Rev. Joshua Cushman. In one sentence he wrote; “Twenty of the leadi ng citizens of the town were made a committee to conduct the ordination counci I to the large booth of evergreen erected on the plains where the meeti ng was to be he I d.”
In 1902 what did the expression !lthe plains” signify to everyone who heard it? By that “time, when anyone said Irthe plains!!, he meant the French settlement along Water Street. So everybody assumed tha”t down on “later Street was where Joshua Cushman was ordained. That view was fur”ther confirmed on paqe 321 of the Centennial History, in a chapter written by Martha Baker Dunn. In Dr. Whittemore’s chapter the word “plains” is printed with a small lip!’, but in Mrs. Dunn’s chapter it appears wi th a cap i ta I “P” in these sentences: “On June 10, 1795 Rev. Joshua Cushman was ordained as pastor of the \’linslow church. The ordination services were held on the Plains, where a huge evergreen bower SUf)ported by twenty pi liars had been erected for the purpose.”
At the time apparently no one thought to check the cenTennial statements with Ki ngsbury ‘s Hi story of Kennebec County, wh i ch had been pub Ii shed ten years earlier in 1892. On page 555 of that history, Kingsbury refers to the Cushman ordination In the same words as those used later by Mrs. Dunn, “a huge evergreen bower, supported by pillars”, but Kingsburg added the significant words “on the plains, as the point of land near the fort was then cal led.”
There you have it. Rev. Joshua Cushman was ordained right where common sense says he should have been, near the spot where, a year later, his church was to be erected. A few feet from the site of the present Wins low Cong regati ana I Church was the scene of that ordi nation — the i nsta I ling of the fl rst minister of the old town which then included what is now both Winslow and Watervi lie.
As soon as another meeting house was built on the Waterville side — and that 0 I d meeti ng house, as you know, became as the years wenT by the Watervi lie Armory — Mr. Cushman di vi ded his preach i ng between the two sides of the ri ver, but when he first came that was not so. What is now the town of Winslow, not her big sister across the river, had the honor not only of havinq the locality’s first church, but of ordaining on her own soil the first minister.
Do you agree with me that we ought to cling more tenaciously to some of the old time words and expressions that are rapidly passing out of use? Hoof long has it been since you heard anyone refer to an ax helve, meaning, of course, an ax hand I e? A New Jersey man recent Iy wrote a letter to the New York Herald Tribune. He said: HHaving had three lar!:je oaks cut down by Hurricane Hazel, before I started to break up the big blocks and split up the wood, I needed a new ax helve. Going to a larqe store, I asked a young clerk where they kept their ax helves. He looked at me dumbly and said: n\~e don’t carry them. \,~hat are they? All we have are ax handles and heads.” So for fun went on to another question. “Where do you keep your beetles?” Said he; llWhat are you trying to put over on me? We don’t catch beetles in the sumrrer and se I I them in the store duri nq the wi nter. If We II, at 78 I can sti I I use the axe and the beet Ie and the wedge, and the outcorre of Haze lis that I now have seven cords of stove wood in my shed.”
Of course none of you listeners would be caught napping by the expression “ax helve”, but what about a “beetle”? Did you know that our grandfathers always ca II e d the big rna I I et used to d rive wedges or tamp down pavi ng s tones a beetle? So that 78 year old New Jersey man was talking about three instruments used in chopping wood when he referred to the helve, the wedge and the beetle. And with that we say goodni ght for 01<:1 times I sake.
Year: 1955