Radio Script #309
Little Talks On Common Things
September 9, 1956
It is good to be back with you again after the summer intermission. For the ninth consecutive year we now resume these simple broadcasts about oldtime th i ngs •
This summer I made my first visit to a land that is doubtless fami liar to many of my listeners — the beautiful Canadian province of Nova Scotia. From time to time on this program during the next few weeks I shal I refer to Nova Scotia, especially in reference to its historical connections with Maine.
To cross the Bay of Fundy on the new Bluenose ferry from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth is really a sea-going voyage, because it is a trip of a hundred mi les that takes six hours. The Bluenose is new, big and even luxurious, carrying 160 automobiles and 600 passengers. There are spacious lounges, an excel lent cafeteria, a courteous information desk, and, if you can stand the stiff, chi I ling wind, plenty of space out in the open for deck chairs.
We were told that the trip can be very rough, much like crossing the English Channel. Two days before we made the voyage, the cafeteria bad prepared a noon meal for 500 persons, but only 35 were able to eat it. It seems one can get just as seasick on the Bay of Fundy as on the open Atlantic. But on our crossing it was a delightful day, with just a nice, rol ling swel I on the water. Nevertheless the vibration of the engines made several people seasick. ~4rs. Marriner and I were not affected. Anyhow she is a better sa i lor than I, hav i ng spent every summer in her teens at Ow I’ s Head on Penobscot Bay.
You lose an hour’s time by.the earth’s rotation, crossing to Yarmouth, for Nova Scotia, like Malne, is on Daylight SavJlng Time, but theirs, of course, is Atlantic, not Eastern time, an hour faster than ours. Even with the six hours on The boat, you save some time as wei I as considerable distance, because the route by land through St. John, Moncton and Amherst is a long, long way.
So, when the Bluenose landed at Yarmouth, we found ourselves for the first time in North America’s New Scotland, Nova Scotia. On a later program I’ll tell you about some of the things we found there.
But for tonight let’s now get back to Maine. That our state is a healthy p I ace in wh i ch to live is revea led by the federa I government’s stati sti cs on old age. In only seven of the 48 states is more than 10% of the population over 65 years of age, and four of those states are in New England: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. The oTher three states are near together in the Middle West: Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. In New York only 4t% of the people are 65 or over; in New Mexico 4.8%, and in North Carolina 5t%. AlmosT twice as large a proportion of inhabitants of Maine are 65 or over as is the proportion in Texas. Florida, where we have been told older people are taking up res i dence in ever i ncreas i ng numbers, has on I y about two-th i rds of ~·1a i ne’ s proporti on of elder Iy peop Ie •
The pers i stent gri pers wi I I te II you that th i sis not good news at a II, that Maine’s proportion of old people represents an economic burden. question such statements. have seen no evidence to show that our Maine men and women over 65 are economically unproductive. You and I know plenty of them who are nOT a burden on anyone. I f someone remarks that they are enti t led to social security, I sti II say these older peop Ie are worth a lot to Maine, and I certa’i n I y don’t see the handi cap of havi ng federa I soci a I securi ty funds poured regularly into our economy.
So leT us be gilad to publicize widely t·1aine’s big proportion of elderly people — a sign of good health in a healthful state.
Now I want to say a word about the usual Maine vi Ilage of long ago. I have often noticed how completely our early Maine communities followed Cotton Mather’s recipe for a New England vi Ilage. That famous Boston clergyman, whose word became law in religious and secular matters alike in the early eighteenth century, once said that four things made a New England community: a meetinghouse, a schoolhouse, a muster field, and a town meeting.
I f you look into the history of Ma i ne vi Ilages estab I i shed before 1800, you wi I I find thaT is just what happened. When The Pe r leys and othe r sett Ie rs first came to my native town of Bridgton and setTled around what is now the tiny hamlet of South Bridgton, what did they do? They bui It a meeting house when the communiTy had only 30 adult residents, and in the very same year they bui It a schoolhouse. It took a bit longer to organize a mi litia company, and unti I they had that organization they needed no mUSTer field. But they had one within a few years, not at South Bridgton, but at Bridgton Center, which soon became the town’s largest vi I I age of its five settlements. And even before they got a muster field, they had town meetings. Deacon Perley and a few others saw to it that the town’s freemen met and voted on issues of local government, elected the necessary officers, and exercised the democratic way of life.
Not a II towns in Maine were fortunate enough to have a sett ler of substanti a I means like Deacon Per ley of Bri dgton. Some of them were therefore much slower in getting a meetinghouse and a schoolhouse at public expense. That was the case with what are now the twin communities of Watervi lie and Winslow.
The whole area on both sides of the Kennebec was incorporated as the town of Winslow in 1771, and it was not unti I 1802 that the west side of the river was set off as the separate town of Watervi lie. The sett’lers~were so poor that they could not always obey the Massachusetts law to provide regular preaching, although itinerant preachers were brought to the community for a few Sundays in almost everyone of the town’s first 23 years. But it was in that 23rd year of Winslow’s existence, 1794, that the town finally voted to “erect a meeting-house on the east side of the river on land to be given by Arthur LithgowTf. That bui Iding, now beautifully remodeled but sti II ret~aining its essential character and its original dimensions, is today’s Winslow Congregational Church on Lithgow Street, the oldest religious edifice in Kennebec
County in which services have been held continuously for 160 years. In that meeting house presided as the first pastor the famous Joshua Cushman, preacher, orator and statesman, whose fame spread far beyond the Kennebec to Boston, New York and Ph i lade I ph i a.
In most Maine towns the early town meetings were held in private homes, usually in the home of the vi llage squire or leading citizen. But it became almost the universal practice to hold town meetings in the meeting house. You wi II note that the old records always call those bui Idings meeting rouse, not church. Meetinghouse was what it was — not merely a place for Sunday services, but also the assembly place of all community gatherings except those for pure recreation. Those early ~etinghouses harbored no dances nor jamborees.
Those functions were held in barns and in big rooms in the taverns, like the big, second-story front room in the Read house in Benton, where Colby’s director of public relations, Dick Dyer, now lives.
Town meetings, however, were held in the meetinghouse, and in that first meetinghouse on Lithgow Street, Winslow’s town meetings assembled for many years. When Watervi I Ie became a separate town, it followed Winslow’s example, holding its town meetings in the meetinghouse which had been erected on the common between Main and Front Streets — the bui Iding which later became the Armory and which was torn down only a few years ago.
Just as there was preach i ng before there was a;meeti nghouse, so There were schools before there was a schoolhouse. At the town meeting of 1787, held at the home of Ezekiel Pattee, Winslow voted to al low Captain Zimri Haywood four pounds eight shi I lings and sixpence for paying and boarding a schoolmaster for a monTh. Nine years later a group of citizens made a contract with a young man who was later to become one of WaTervi lIe’s most prosperous and moST influential citizens, Elijah Smith. The wording of That contract is presented in an old document. It reads:
f~inslow, 28th Dec. 1796. Whereas Elijah Smith of Winslow has agreed to keep a school in Ticonic Vi Ilage for The term of three monThs next ensuing the date hereof, and board himself and find a room convenient for that purpose; we The subscribers do promise to pay him $20 per month — two dol lars of which is to be paid weekly for his board — and the remainder to be paid at the exp’iration of said_three months. Each one of us agrees to pay in proportion to the number of pupi Is he signs for, and to find and haul to said room a sufficient quanti ty of firewood for sa i d schoo I. n
That instrument was signed by eighT citizens, the best remembered of whom was E I nathan She rman, mode rator of WaTe rv i I Ie’s first town meet i ng .
Just when the first schoolhouse was bui It on either side of the river is not clear, but there was at least one on each side before 1800. Near the meetinghouse on the common on the Watervi I Ie side a schoolhouse was bui It before Watervi lie became a separate town, and by 1808 there were at least four schoo 1- houses on the west side.
So far as I am able to learn, this community’s first muster field was in the area beTween Ma in and P feasanT Streets and between Center and North Stree,t s. The parade ground was where the original Thayer Hospital stood, the home of Dr. Thayer. It is now the front of the First National parking lot. In the first forty years after Watervi lie’s incorporation there were no bui Idings between the P I a i sted House on the corne r of r””a in and Cente r a I I the way to North Street. I Twas, however, a II cleared ground — an open fie I d wh i ch made a fine place for regular musters of the militia.
Late r musters we re he I d down on the P I a ins, of f Water Street. Whethe r any were held on the Winslow side of the river, we do not know.
Those musters were ga la occas ions for every Mai ne commun ity in pre-Ci vi I War days. People came from miles around — whole fami lies of them — in wagons, on horseback, on foot, up and down the river by boat or canoe. Peddlers roamed the grounds, se II i ng gingerbread, rum, ci der and cheese. The mi Ii tary exercises always closed with a sham fight, after which the soldiers made their ti psy way home. Often before the show broke up, the sham fights became rea I fights and doctors had to bandage a few broken heads.
Well, those were the things which CoTton Mather said made a New England vi Ilage — meetinghouse, schoolhouse, town meeting and muster field. They all had their part in the making of our Maine towns.
During the many years of logging operations in Maine, a lot of good stories have come out of the woods. One of these concerns a man who had a reputation as a prodigious eater. Uncle leke could put away more solid food than many a whole fami Iy of French Canadian youngsters, and Uncle Zeke was just a Maine YaRkee. In the woods country, where big eaters are common, he didn’t attract much attention, but when he went to a celebration in a tour down state, someth i ng happened to set tongues waggi ng. The high I. i ght of the ce lebration was a barbecue, and Uncle leke was terribly disappointed when he learned that his train was due to leave before the.time for starting to serve the barbecued meat. When the committee in charge heard about it, they decided to let Uncle Zeke eat ahead of time, fixing him up a nice special meal of a roast suckling pig and all the trimmings. After Uncle leke had been shoveling away at this for an hour, one of the committee stuck his head in the tent and asked the the old fellow if there was anything more he would like. ”’,AJhy, yes?!, said Unc Ie Zeke, Hi f you’ve got any more of them sma II hogs, bri ng on a coup Ie.
Year: 1956