Radio Script #308
Little Talks On Common Things
June 10, 1956
One of the world’s commonest things is babies, but it is only in recent years that prepared baby foods have become common. Our grandmothers knew nothing about such preparations. In fact the whole thing started only 28 years ago in 1928. Only the year before a young flier named Lindberg had soloed the Atlantic to Paris. Calvin Coolidge was President. In that year of 1928 Mrs. Daniel Gerber had just returned to her home in Fremont, Michigan from a visit to the fami Iy’s baby doctor in Grand Rapids.
The physician had recommended that seven-months-old Sally Gerber be started on strained fruits and vegetables. Mrs. Gerber accepted the task of straining those items but she wasn’t enthusiastic about the time she spent at it. Suddenly Mrs. Gerber had an idea. She knew that in her husband’s Fremont cannery they made tomato puree. Making purees required the use of a sieve. So Mrs. Gerber conjectured that somewhere in the Gerber cannery there must be some kind of sieve. So one day she asked her husband, “Dan, if you can puree tomatoes at the p I ant, why can’t you make stra i ned peas for Sa Ily?”
Dan Gerber knew how tough a job his wife had straining Sally’s food. He had tried doing it once himself. Dan and his son Frank went right to work on the idea. The first lot of strained vegetables and fruits was produced. Word spread around. Other Fremont mothers wanted to try the Gerber stra i ned products.
The Gerbers decided they had perhaps hit on something that would be of importance to more than a local market. But would the medical profession accept prepared vegetables and fruits? Would grocers stock them? How much advertising could the company afford? Would mothers permanently adopt the new foods, once the period of curiosity was over?
Patiently the Garbers faced these and other important questions, and answered them all favorab Iy. I n a few years they had p len,ty of competi tors -Heinz, Beech~Nut, Libby and others — but by that time their business was firmly established and, as the Gerber slogan put it, fiBabies are our business Our on Iy bus iness. tf
Mr. Bernard Reynolds of Burnham, for the past thirteen years an employee of Keyes Fibre, has come up with the answer to my question two weeks ago concerning the uniform penalty of 39 lashes in George Washington’s Army of the Revolution.
I asked why was the number 39.
It is obvious that Mr. Reynolds is one of those men — altogether too few today who thoroughly knows the Bible. He’ calls our attention to two statements in the sacred book, one in the Old Testament, the other in the New.
In the 25th chapter of Deuteronomy is the maximum penalty of whipping prescribed by the Mosa;,c Code. This is what it says: !flf the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, the judge sha I I cause him to lie down and to be beaten according to his wickedness by number. Forty stripes he may give him; but that number he sha I I not exceed.”
In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians the great apostle wrote: HOf the Jews five times received forty stripes save one.”
There you have the 39 stri pes. How di d the custom ari se to make the number one less than forty? Mr. Reynolds conjectures an explanation which is certainly plausible, and have no doubt it is correct. He says, “When inflicting official punishment, it became the practice to stop at 39 stripes so as to be sure the maximum of forty was not exceeded through miscount. To make a mistake and gi ve a man 41 I ashes wou I d be cons i de red a severe mi scarri age of justi ce. f! Like many other legal penalties which developed in England and crossed the Atlantic into colonial America, the penalty of 39 lashes in mi litary cases deri ved from the 0 I d Mosai c Code of Deuteronomy.
Old Maine records contain many interesting facts about the funerals of long ago. In the pioneer communities of Maine a death was known immediately by everybody in town. Neighbor passed the word on to neighbor very speedi Iy. As a vi Ilage grew, like the vi I I age around Fort Ha I i fax in Wins low, for instance, or along the banks of the Messalonskee, or at Tioonic Falls, a meeting house was soon bui I t and in it was i nsta lied a be II. That be I I was rung to summon the peop Ie for a II sorts of purposes. There deve loped a system of be I lsi gna I s to inform the people of specific happenings. So, by the sound and strokes of the be II, the peop Ie cou I d te II whether it spoke of fire or acci dent, of ho I i day or e lecti on, or of death.
Within a few hours of a person’s passing, the vi I I age be II was rung. If the death occurred in the night, the ri ngi ng was deferred unti I sunri se. For a ma Ie the be I I soun ded th ree strokes i n rap ids uccess ion. A fte r an i nte rva I of two minutes, the Three strokes were sounded a second time, then after another two minutes, a thi rd time. Then was sounded the person’s age, one stroke at a ti me. For a fema Ie the three strokes were repeated on Iy once, then the age was sounded.
For many years the dead were carried to the grave on litters or stretchers, borne on men’s shoulders, sometimes for Two or three mi les. There were commonly eight bearers, four to rei ieve the other four at short distances. We must remember thaT, after a Maine settlement was made, it was many years before vehicles, even carTS, came into common use. There was no sense in having a cart unless there was a road on which it could travel. In “Kennebec Yesterdays” have described how slowly roads fit for wagons actually developed.
No wonder we find so many tiny fami Iy cemeteries scattered over the Maine countryside. Only as a hamlet grew into a vi Ilage, with houses fairly near together, did a community cemetery corne into existence. Most often those community cemeteries were churchyards, as they had been in old England, and just as they were at first in Boston, New York and Phi ladelphia.
Yet th i s was not a Iways so. Watervi lie’s first cemetery was not near the meeti ng house, where the City Ha I I now stands, but out on Wes te mAven ue nea r the Messalonskee. That cemetery, however, was abandoned soon after 1825, in favor of a community churchyard adjoining the First Baptist Church. That churchyard, upon the establishment of Pine Grove Cemetery, gave way to a public park.
In 1855 the bodies in the Elm Street churchyard were removed to the new Pine Grove Cemete ry • Among those bodi es was that of young Ed ~~athews, who had been murdered by the notorious Dr. Coolidge in 1847.
When wagons first reached an early Maine settlement, they took the place of the shoulders of walking men to carry the dead to the grave. The body of a wagon was usually removed and the coffin tied to the axle trees, much as the body of any famous mi Ii tary man now ri des to the cemetery on a gun cai sson.
Before the end of the fi rst quarter of the ni neteenth century many a Maine town had acqui red a hearse. The town of Un ion, for instance, voted in 1817 uto procure a decent hearse for use of the town”. Ha I lowe II had a hearse as early as 1780, but Waterv; lie did not get one unti I 1818. My native town of Bridgton acquired its first hearse in 1835.
A study of the history of word meanings reveals an interesting relation between the ear I y use of litters on men’s shou I ders and the I ate r use of a veh i c Ie called a hearse. The word “hearse” is the old Anglo-Saxon word for harrow.
Primitive wooden harrows, used in Anglo-Saxon times may have actually been used to carry the dead to the grave, but it is more probable those litters were wooden triangles shaped like a harrow. It was important in those early days for the litter to be tri angu I ar, for that shape fi tted the re I i gi ous need of pi aci ng at each poi nt of the funera I litter a cand Ie, to denote the three e lements of the Trinity. On such a wooden triangle, shaped like a har~w, was placed the body of the deceased, and it was then carried, not by four, but by three men, to the grave. When a special wheeled vehicle was developed for the distinct purpose of funerals, it took the name of the old English harrow-like litters, and was called a hearse.
I wonder if there are any pub Ii c roads ; n our vi ci n ity that are st; I I on private land. I had supposed that, ever since the time of Maine’s first highways, the exercise of eminent domain had given town or state title to the land over which a road was constructed. But I find that such was not the case. In fact in the town of Waldoboro is a road that for nearly 200 years has run over, and still runs over, private land.
I am i nrte>rested in that road because on it lives a man who, more than 30 years ago, was a student of mine at Habron Academy. He is Foster Jameson, who made a success in the poultry business long before it reached its present popular peak in Maine. Jameson makes a specialty of day-old chicks, and in his years in that business he has sold and shipped several mi I lion birds.
It was with special interest, therefore, that I read the fol lowing passage in Jasper Stah I ‘s new “Hi story of Broad Bay and Wa I doborofT: “The ma in highway on the east side of the river, from Waldoboro vi I I age to Mr. Foster Jameson’s farm is sti I I pri vate property, the town havi ng no more cia im than a ri ght of way from gutter to gutter. This was the area occupied by the first German Colony in 1739, and farm was connected with farm along the river by nothing but a path. As the cabins were erected farther and farther back from the shore, the line of connecting travel shifted with them until that of the present highway was reached. It was first foot trail, then bridle path, then widened for the passage of ox teams. In th i sway it became the mai n line of traff i c across the farms, established through use. This al I happened before Waldoboro was incorporated into a township. The town cannOT point to a single scrap of paper that would establish title to the land over which the road runs, whereas the deeds of The property holders show clear tiTle to that land which has been used as a roadway for two centuri es.”
Strange as it may seem, the first seTtled Protestant minister in the Kennebec Val ley was not of the established Congregational Church of New England, but an Episcopalian of the established church of old England. He was Rev. Jacob Bai ley who came to ~ownalborough/now Dresd~n/in 1760. He was’a remarkable person, well worthy of mention on this program.
As most of you know, the first religious workers along the Kennebec were the JesuiT missionaries to the Indians, like Father Dru’i lIettes at Swan Island and Father Rasle at Norridgewock. An old record tells us, “On January 4, 1754 Peter Audren, a Jesuit missionary to the Norridgewocks arrived at Frankfort.Tf Frankfort was the original name of the settlement later cal led ~ownalborough.
In 1753 there was organ i zed the ProprieTors of the Kennebec Purchase, and that company, having persuaded the govemor TO bui Id Forts Pownall,Westem and Halifax, in addition to the existing Fort Richmond, began to encourage seTtlers.
In 1751 a group of Germans had come to Boston and were I iving a precarious exi stence near that town. To those Germans Dr. Syl vester Gardi ner and his fe 1- low proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase offered 100 acres of land, fami Iy passage from Boston, and six months’ provisions to each settler, on condition that the settler should, within five years, clear five acres and bui Id a house. Those German settlers found it hard enough to wrest a meager living from the foreSTed land without tryi ng to support a minister. In 1754 the whole of Maine eaST of Brunswick was without a minister of any denomination, and those Kennebec Germans determined the want should be fi lied.
They first appealed to Boston but, getting no help there, they petitioned, at Sylvester Gardiner’s suggestion, to the London Society for Propagating the Gospe lin Forei gn Parts “to send them a mi ss ionaryn. The signers ca lied themselves “a collection of Protestants from Great Britain, Ireland, France and Germany” • In 1756 the Soci ety sent a Rev. MacC leachan, who w rote to the Society in 1757: “There is no church, either at Georgetown or Frankfort, nor farm nor house prepared for the missionary, as was promised. I have resided in the old di smant led Fort {Fort Ri chmond} preserved from a rrerci less enemy to whom I am often exposed.”
When MacCleachan left in 1758, completely discouraged, the London Society aga in carre to the rescue, sendi ng Jacob Sa i ley in 1760. He at once set up a school as well as church services, but for many years the community had neither schoolhouse nor meeting house. When Pownalboro became the County Seat of the new county of Lincoln, the courthouse served as the meeting house for fully ten years.
There at Pownalboro Sai ley established an Episcopal Church which flourish~ ed for many years. He himself, however, was headed for trouble. When the Re~ volution carre, PasTor Sai ley, like most of the Church of England gentry, sided with the king. He had good company — rren I ike Sylvester Gardiner, Wi I Ii am Vassal and Robert Hallowell. Pastor Bai ley refused to read the Declaration of I ndependence from his pu I’p it. He was fa I se Iy accused of cutti ng down a Li berty Pole. Finally he was hai led before the court for preaching seditious sermons and inciting people to oppose the Continental Congress and support the king. He left Pownalboro in 1778 never to return. He took up residence in Nova Scotia, where he served the Episcopal Church at Annapolis Royal with distinction unti I his death.
This is our last broadcast of the season. We hope to be back with you again in September for the ninth year of this program. If you sti I I enjoy it, don’t forget that you and I both owe much to the Keyes Fibre Company, which has made its continuance possib Ie. People often ask me how “Little Talks on Common Th i ngs” began. te II them the idea got its rea I sTart back in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when a young man named Martin Keyes conce i ved the idea of maki ng plates rrom wood pu I p.
And so, with thanks for your patient listening, I must for old times’ sake say good night until September.
Year: 1956