Radio Script #261
Little Talks On Common Things
April 10 , 1955
IT’s good to have company. So I am comforted by learning that George Harriman, columnist of the Boston Globe, feels Just as I do about the rising volume of pub Ilc and prJ vate debt, wh I ch I ta I ked about a few weeks ago. Mr. Harrl man poi nts out someth i ng that many of us are too prone to forget:
that we are trying to do,. a very risky thing; ni;tmely, bqrrow buyin~ power fOr the ft.rt,*te~ O\ferextep~ed’ ¢redl t’ t s.t.heg~llJd$ to the bursts’ that follow big .Imorns. Harrl man i ns i sts that GVerextEUlslon ofcred·tt i sthe w.ork on \IIh fcft boom peri ods of the past have a I ways stubbed thet r toes.
I nthe first 45 days of 1955 consumer loans Increased by $138 million. Down payments are being reduced; the pay-back period on loans Is being extended.
How long can this borrowing from the future continue to pi Ie up? War diary of Ph i neas I nga lis, great-grandfather of Mrs. Marlon Hague, housemo. ther at the Tau Delta Phi fraternitY of Colby. .C o’h~ge. Three Weeks ago we , . heard hls.accbuAt Qf the opening events of the wararQund Cambridge in 1775.
Now let us see what he was dol ng a year later in the summer of 1776, that very summer when, at Phi ladelphia, the ContineAtal Congress announced the American Dec laratlon of Independence.
Terms of enlistment in the Revolutionary Army were short. Phineas Ingalls had ended his first enlistment on January 1, 1776 , but the next July he was back in the ranks. Under date of July 16, 1776 he recorded in his journa I: liEn listed, passed muster, took the bounty of seven pounds and one month’s pay of two pounds.” Then on July 23 he set down: “We bagan our march for Crown Point.”
By the summer of 1776 th i ngs were begi nni ng to get exci ti ng near Lake Champ I a in. Crown Poi nt and Ti conderoga were names becomi ng fami liar to the colonists around Boston. Every schoolboy of today knows that great events were in the offing when Phineas Ingalls’ regiment started their march from Cambridge to Crown Point.
Off they went, through Bi Ilerica and Chelmsford, through Groton and Shirley, and spent the first night at Lunenburg, where Phineas stayed with his Uncle Hovey. The march continued through Fitchburg and Ashburnham and Winchendon, to Fitzwi I liam, New Hampshire, where Phineas says they had very bad road for ten. mi les •
They had left Cambridge on a Tuesday. By Sunday they were at Keene, where Phineas attended meeting. The next Tuesday they had reached No.4, the plantation later to become Charlestown. Not unti I the 5th of August did they cross the Connecticut River and march on through the Vermont towns, Springfield, Weatherfield and Cavendish. On August 7 Phineas reported that it was 13 mi les between houses and the road very bad. He says, “Camped in the woods. Ra i ny -got very wet.” The next ni ght he found a chance to stay ina house. although it was sti I I seven mi les between houses. Passing through the settlements of Rutland and Ludlow, they next camped in the woods near Ludlow.
On Monday, August 12 they reached Lake Champlain, were conveyed in boats across the lake to Fort Ticonderoga.
Phineas saw no action at the Fort made famous by Ethan Allen. The slackness of security regulations in Revolutionary days is shown by Phineas’ habit of writing down in his journal the regular change of countersign. On September 1 he says the countersign one had to give to pass the fort’s sentries was 1!liberty”; a week later it was the simple conjunction “and”.
In mid-September news of the Battle of Long Island reached the men statloned at Ti conderoga. “Heard they have had a very hot batt Ie at New York 5,000 ki I led — 2,000 of our men and 3,000 of the Regulars. Two of our generals missing. News not certain whether defeat or victory for us.”
Both sides had for several months been bui Iding boats of various kinds and Sizes on the shores of Lake Champlain. The Ingalls journal frequently menti ons ga Ileys, ketches and bateaux. By mi d-October these craft were ready for action with the result that on Sunday, October 13 Phineas wrote: “Our fleet and the Regulars’ fleet met and kept up firing Friday and Saturday and part of today ti II two or three o’clock. The Regulars drove so hard upon our fleet that in their damaged state they were unable to escape. Some managed to make shore and get away, but some the enemy took. Not more than a th i rd of our shipping escaped, but our men destroyed the rest so that it did not fall into the enemy’s hands. The gal ley that has Col. Wiggleworth on board was burnt, but he escaped. General Arnold went ashore and came in to the fort by land; but Genera I Waterbury is supposed to be captured.”
During the fol lowing days the fort at Ticonderoga was jittery, expecting act I on eve ry min ute, but the fort was not attacke d • Whe n on Novembe r 3 it was learned that the British had abandoned Crown Point, it became apparent that part of the Ticonderoga forces would soon be needed elsewhere. So on the 18th Phineas wrote: “Orders are read to us that we are to march as soon as the bateaux get back from Fort George, where they have taken the regi ments of Co I. Starks and Col. Poor. We are to go by way of Albany, New York.”
The boats took them to a place Phineas calls Sheensboro, whence they marched to Fort Anne, then to Fort Edwards near Ki ngsbury, then to Fort Miller, where Phineas records an incident: “At the ferry Sgt. Dow and Isaac Smith, in attempting to cross the river in a long canoe ran on to the falls and upset, and came near being drowned, but were saved by one of our own bateaux.”
When on November 28 Phineas and his companions reached Saratoga, they had no way of knowing that here, in the next summer, would be fought the decisive battle of the Revolution. All was quiet in that section when they arrived. So, in pursuance of orders, they pushed on to Albany.
It would be more exciting if we could now recount that Phineas fought hard in bloody engagements, but his honest journal gives us no such information. He saw a few mi nor SK. i iTili sh.”s fltldr A I bany, unti I the end of December when his regiment was discharged and Phineas started the trek home to Andover, Mass. The place names between Boston and Albany have changed a great deal since 1776.
The modern reader of Phineas’ journal wi II recognize only a few of the towns through which Ingal Is tells us he passed: Greenbush, Schoodic, Tenderhook, C linch i II, Spencertown •. Barr i ngton, Terni ngham, London, G I askow, WesH i e I d, Springfield, Brookfield, Concord, Northbury and Bi Iferica.
One casual point mentioned by Phineas does interest us. He says that on November 18 there left Ti conderoga two genera I s whose names are fami liar to us 180 years afterwards. One was General Gates; the other was the most trusted of all of Washington’s generals, a young commander named Benedict Arnold. And, says Phineas Ingal Is’ diary, they turned the command over to another then insignificant general, to whom history has given the name of Mad Anthony Wayne.
Whi Ie the diary doesn’t contain a lot of mi litary action, it does reveal the simple, poorly disciplined ways of soldiering in 1776. So, as a social document of the long ago, there is value in the journal of Phineas Ingalls, the man who founded the important Ingalls fami Iy of Bridgton, Maine.
We have pointed out previously on this program the rapid growth of Maine settlements after the bui Iding of Forts Halifax and Western in 1754. You may recal I that four of our Kennebec settlements had become large enough to secure incorporation as towns in 1771. On the same April day in that year were incorporated Winslow, Hallowell, Winthrop and Vassalboro. At that time all of central Maine from the New Hampshire line to the coast, and from the Andros- cogg into the Penobscot, was Li nco I n County, with its county seat at Powna 1- borough, now Dresden.
To get an idea of how rapidly the county had been settled after strife with both the Indians and the French subsided, let us take a look at the situation in 1764. Except fo~ Downalborough on the eastside,of the river, in that year there was not a single incorporated town above Bowdoinham. Yet the whole great area of Lincoln County then had 4,347 inhabitants. A census was taken in that year of 1764 to ascertain the abi Iity of the towns to bear taxation for the province and for local needs. The county then had only six incorporated towns. The largest was Georgetown, near the mouth of the Kennebec, with 1,329 peop Ie. Second was. Pownalborough, the shire town, .with 889. Newcastle had 454,. Woolwich 415 and Topsham 340. Nearly 200 people were settled near Sylvanus Gardiner’s new settlement of Gardinerstown. There were perhaps 300 in the vicinity of Pemaquid and Walpole, and another 200 at St. George and Broad Bay the I atter be i ng the p resent town of Wa I doboro .
Along the coast from Casco Bay to Pemaquid, and up the Kennebec and Androscoggin, thriving settlements had already been established when in 1765 the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian wars.
A few weeks ago we were talking about tombstone epitaphs, In collecting these items one has to be careful about authentication. Naturally some of the funniest and especially the most bitter epitaphs were never cut in stone. They are what we cal I literary epitaphs, composed as caustic utterances that someone would like to see marking the grave of a person he didn’t like. Here are a few samples;
“If Heaven is pleased when sinners cease to sin;
If Hell is pleased when vi Ilains enter in;
If Earth is pleased when dieth crafty knave;
Then a II were p leased when 01 ng ley filled hi s grave.”
“Here I I es one Wood, encased I n wood,
One Wood within another;
The oute r wood I s ve ry good,
We ca nnot p ra I se the othe r • ”
“Beneath th I s stone, a I ump of clay,
Lies Uncle Peter Daniels,
Who, early in the month of May,
Took off his winter flannels.”
“The chi Idren of I srae I wanted bread
And the Lord he sent them manna;
Old Sam Wil Iiams wanted a wife
And the Oev I I sent him Anna. tl
“Here I I eth the body of Martha Dt as,
Always noisy, not very pious,
Who I I ved to the age of three score and ten,
And swore wi th a vi gor appa II I ng to men.”
“Here lies the body of Mary Ann;
She’s now in the arms of Abraham.
It’s pleasant enough for Mary Ann,
But It’s rat he r tough on Ab raham. ”
Not untl I this summer had ever seen an old deed which referred to those Kennebec settlers who were, rightly or wrongly, cal ted squatters. Mr. Herbert Axtell of Oakland has many ancient deeds that once belonged to his ancestor, Baxter .. Crowe I I, a promi nent ear Iy sett ler and tOiln off I cer of Waterville. In 1828 Crowell was one of the tOiln’s five largest taxpayers, owning a great deal of land in the western part of the tOiln.
In 1804 Crowell received the deed which, 150 years afterwards, it was my pri vi lege TO read. Bexter Crowe II got that deed di rectly from the proprietors, just as RoberT Hallowell Gardiner got his. Crowell’s deed was therefore issued by the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase from the late Colony of New Plymouth.
DaTed Jan uary 2, 1804, the deed conta I ns these words: “be I ng the lot submitted by the commissioners appointed by the legislature of the Commonwealth of MassachusetTS to settle with the settlers on the Plymouth Company’s undivided lands.”
When the company had been formed In 1754 the propri etors had di vi ded among themselves certain lands, especially those along the river front. That I s the way Gardi ner got the lands be low Augusta, and Wi II i am Yassa I the lands above it. The rest of the tract was held by all the proprietors — the whole corporation in common and was called the undivided lands. On those lands, not claimed by any individual, settlers had cleared land and bui It cabins. This old deed of Baxter Crowe II’s shows that some sort of settlement was worked out with the Watervi lie squatters, just as Sy Ivester Gardiner’s grandson had settled with squatters farther down the river.
Sometimes, on Easter Sunday, I have devoted the entire time of this broad~ cast to the subject of Easter. Tonight I have not done that. But I cannot close the program tonight without a few words about this sacred day.
Easter is The great Christian festival — the day that centralizes the many divergent ChrisTian sects. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Coptlcs, and all Protestant denominations recognize the culmination of Calvary in the resurrection from the tomb. Easter carries a poignant message to every Christian heart.
We are made constantly aware, however, that Christianity is only one of the world’s great religions. Readers of Life Magazine are seeing that popular periodical giving special attention to a new series, Great Religions of the World. Mi Ilions of people on this planet are devotees of other religions than Christianity — religions not degraded and mere cesspools of superstition, but religions of lofty ideals and noble behavior. The great principles of Confucianism in China, of Hinduism in India, of Mohammedanism in the Arab nations, the thousands who, through suffering and persecution, follow the ~40saic law and the prophetic teachings of JUdaism — these taken together are counted in many more mi Ilions than all the Christian peoples of the earth.
Has Easter any message for these non-Christian peoples — any message except a proselyting invitation to join a Christian sect? Indeed it has. For to all the world Easter cries out the message of the eternal worth, the unconquerable dignity of the human soul. To starving peasants of China’s Yangtze Valley, to the thronging outcasts along the Ganges, to every oppressed and anguished ghetto, Easter rings out the cry of undying hope. It says, “There is only one God for all humanity, and He is a God who cares.” The Individual does matter. He is not lost In the swarm of multitudinous mankind. Not even death can annihi late him. The self is more than the body. No stone closing the door of the tomb can seal up the human soul.
Year: 1955