Radio Script #305
Little Talks On Common Things
May 13, 1956
What is more common or more useful today than the hundreds of gadgets that lighten the work of the housewife in the American home? No one man was more responsible for that relief to overworked wives than was George Landers of New Britain, Connecticut. More than a hundred years ago, in 1842, Landers opened a little factory to manufacture wardrobe hooks.
In that year 1842 the housewife was a drudg~, spending af I day, day after day, in hard labor. Washing was done by hand, and it took strong arms to scrub the clothes and strong fingers to wring them. Houses were cleaned with brooms and mops, and on hands and knees. Food had to be prepared often lest it spoi I.
In 1854 Landers produced his first article to help the housewife. It was a spring scale for weighing foodstuffs •. In that era, when grocers sold almost everything in bulk and there was no inspection of weights and measures, the home had need for a fami Iy scale to keep a check on the merchant. Before the coming of packaged foods, Landers’ fami Iy scale fi lied a household need.
Landers followed his scale with a patent food chopper and sausage stuffer, an apple parer, a coffee grinder, a potato slicer, and a lemon squeezer. In twenty years he had produced nearly a hundred gadgets from magnetic tack hammers to revolving ink wells. One of his most ingenious contraptions was the sewing bird, a cast iron device that held needles and pins and a special method of holding the thread.
Among the best known of those early inventions were the bread maker, the food chopper, and the coffee percolator. Then in the first decade of this century came the vacuum bottle. AI I of these things preceded the common application of electricity to household devices. When that application was made, the day of the electric toaster~ the electric iron~ and the electric blanket had at last arrived. But anyhow~ long before the vacuum cleaner salesman knocked on anyone’s door ~ it had a II begun with a fe II ow named George Landers down in New Britain~ Connecticut~ who was not content with just making hooks for the clothes closet. ~
wonder how many of you have ever known that a Maine man helped Benjamin Franklin during his crucial years in France~ at the time of the American Revolution~ and in fact went on a secret mission for Franklin to the enemy heartland of England itself. The fel low who carried out that mission was Jonathan Loring Austin of Kittery~ Maine. Born in Boston in 1748~ Austin had graduated from Harvard in 1766, had become a successful merchant at Kittery and a Major in the New Hampshire mi litia.
I n the spri ng of 1777 matters were ina bad way for the Reve I ut i onary cause. The Continental Army~ after a bitter winter~ was in Morristown and was apparently helpless to resist the obvious plan of the enemy to cut the colonies in two. General Burgoyne was already on his way down Lake Champlain to join Lord Howe’s fleet at Albany. Benjamin Franklin was in Paris, seeking help from the French court — he I p that grew nore un like I y eve ry mon th with the i ncreasing bad news for the colonial cause.
Then in the summer came the turn in the tide. Burgoyne was defeated at Saratoga and surrendered his entire army to avoid their anni lihation in the wi 1- derness south of Lake Champlain. Here was news Franklin could certainly use to advantage in his dealings with the French. A trusted messenger must be found to carry it to him. Sending the message was the business of the Massachusetts Board of War. Only a few weeks before Burgoyne’s defeat it had chosen a new secret3ry~ young Jonathan Austi n of Kittery. To him was given the task of taking the welcome news across the Atlantic to Benjamin Franklin.
The ship Perch7 carrying our Kittery merchant7 crossed the Atlantic in 31 days7 an unusually fast voyage for those days, especially since it had to be made through waters infested by enemy frigates intent upon picking up prizes of war.
AI I of the American Commissioners to France, with Franklin at their head 7 were at the Hotel de Valentinois when the post chaise from Nantes, drawn by three horses abreast, clattered into the inn yard. To the arriving Jonathan Austin, Benjamin Frankl in had just one question: “Is Phi ladelphia taken?f! ‘ryes, sir”, was Austin’s reply. In despair Franklin clasped his hands together and turned to enter the inn. But Austin called after him, “Never mind Phi ladelphia, Dr. Franklin. Burgoyne’s surrendered.” The announcement threw Franklin and everyone else in the company into jubi lant spirits, and the American cause got renewed support in France.
It was whi Ie Austin was sti I I in Paris that Franklin decided to send the young man on a secret mission to London. The plan was to have Austin visit certain of Franklin’s friends in London, appraise them of the true nature of American resistance, and persuade them to use their influence on members of Parliament to have the government offer the Americans acceptable terms of peace.
Franklin certainly had influential l.ondon-,friends who opposed the government’s oppressive stand toward the American colonies. Lord Shelburne 7 Wi I liam Pitt, and Edmund Burke had come actually to accept the American cause as their own.
To these and lesser men, Jonathan Austin reported in London. The historian Parton says about it: t~he strange spectacle was then afforded of the most eminent British statesmen associating with, and entertaining in their homes, a commissioned emissary of their King’s revolted subjects, the King’s own son and heir not disdaining his society. The secret was wei I kept, however, and few persons, even to this day, are aware that such an audacious mission was undertaken. H As a preparatory measure, before leaving Paris, Austin was required to burn, in Franklin’s presence, every letter the young man had brought from America. In their place Franklin gave Austin two letters which he assured the Kittery man would open the way for him in the highest circles in London.
When Austin reached London, he became a house guest of the Earl of Shelburne, whose chaplain was the celebrated Dr. Priestly, scientific friend of Frankl in. He was actually introduced to the Prince of Wales, the future George IV.
Austin was making some headway with the plan to influence Parliament when exciting news from France reached London. What had happened is thus recorded in Aust in’s own journa I: “Saturday it was reported that France had recogn i zed the independence of America. On Monday the same was announced in the papers.
On Tuesday Lord North told the Commons that a message would soon come from His Majesty. Stocks fe II two poi nts today. I rece i ved a message from the French ambassador that if I intended to leave England, the sooner I did it, the better.”
The French ambassador knew that his government’s action surely meant war with England and that in a short time all travel from London to Paris would be forbidden. So he warned Franklin’s messenger to get out of London at once. Jonathan Austin heeded the advice, crossed the channel to rejoin Franklin, and stayed in France with the old gentleman for two more years. But finally, in 1780, Austin did come back to America, bringing important messages from Franklin to the Congress at Phi ladelphia. On the tenth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1786, the town of Boston cal led as their orator for the occasion Ben Franklin’s one time messenger to enemy London, Jonathan Austin of Kittery, Maine.
A few weeks ago I told about the frogs which infested the farms of Union after a heavy thunder shower early in the nineteenth century. Tonight I want to te II you about a plague of grasshoppers. We have a II heard of the great locust swarms that ruined crops in the West. One of the memorable features of Temple Square in Salt Lake City is the tall pi liar with the figure of a seagul I on its top. It is a memorial to the relief of the Mormon settlement from devastation by the locusts. When it looked as if al I the crops would be ruined by the mi II ions of re lent less insects, there sudden Iy appeared huge f locks of gul Is, which devoured the locusts and saved the crops.
No such invasion of locusts ever came to Maine. But in 1749, five years before the bui Iding of Fort Halifax, when the Kennebec settlements were few, bad luck struck the coast settlements from Falmouth to Machias. That bad luck came in the form of grasshoppers. They were especially ruinous at Pemaquid and the settlements along Muscongus Bay. The settlers had to fight the pests with bare hands. There were no i nsecti ci des in those days. The iron Iy a II i es were the birds, but those came not in relieving hordes as they came to the Mormons. Down in Falmouth (now Portland) Rev. Thomas Smith, whose diary is a mine of information about the early days, wrote the following record: “June 24, 1749 – The grasshoppers do more spoi I than the drought. June 29 – They have eaten up en~ tirely an acne of potatoes. July 3 – I reckon my poultry, about 100, eat 10,000 grasshoppers every day. July 13 – As many grasshoppers as ever, but they are a new growth. J u I Y 24 – The ground beg ins to look green, but the re are many grasshoppers yet. N
The inseCTS had struck just when the growing crops were wei I under way, and to many settlements they brought suffering hunger the following winter.
People inTerested in Maine history have long known that, before the Revolution, a large number of German immigrants had settled on Maine lands. Just how they happened to do so has not been clear. But that they came to old Pownalborough, now Dresden, is wei I attested by the German place-names that dotted the region. Even better known was the German settlement at Waldoboro.
One of the finest and best documented local histories we have ever had in Maine is a new work published in 1956 in two large volumes. It is “History of Broad Bay and Wa I doboro” by Jasper J. Stah I, hi mse I f a descendant of those German immigrants. In this important historical study, Stahl explains the large influx of German migration at that time.
The two chief motives were economic betterment and religious freedom. The Protestant Reformation in Germany had given rise to various Protestant sects, many of them minority groups dominated by the majority faith of the Lutherans.
These lesser sects rejected the old doctrine of infant baptism and other majority beliefs. Hence they were severely persecuted. Their only recourse was to get away. And alluring land with plenty of room in which to be free was in the American colonies across the sea.
From 1618 to 1648 a II Germany was laid waste by the Thi rty Years War. For three decades the armies of Western Europe ravaged and looted a II over the German I and. Some areas were comp lete Iy depopu I ated. Everywhere were destructi on and famine. In those thirty years the population of the German states was reduced from 16 mi II ion to 6 mi II ion. The soi I was vi rtually abandoned. After 1648 the taxes imposed by the landlords were nearly as bad as the destruction of the armies. By the dawn of the new century in 1700 more and more peep Ie were maki ng every effort to get away.
“That”, says Stahl, “is the background which explains the early German immigrations to America, to the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and to Dresden and Waldoboro in Maine. Our forefathers who settled at Waldoboro and their fathers’ fathers before them had lived in an area perennially wasted. For decades poverty and suffering had been their lot. They had lived under the constant shadow of destruction. And so from 1685 to the time of the Revolution an unending stream of those Germans poured across the Atlantic to find new homes whe re they cou I d be both fed and free.”
The fi rst Germans reached Broad Bay, near where the vi Ilage of Waldoboro now stands, in 1739, and they have been there ever since; for some of the finest citizens of present-day Waldoboro are descendants of Germans who came during the subsequent years before the Revolution.
Year: 1956