Radio Script #327
Little Talks On Common Things
January 13, 1957
Maine’s greatest export has always been her sons and daughters, and that is sti I I true. Maine is one of only five states in the whole nation which actual Iy has fewer people today than it had in 1950. On Apri I 1, 1950 there were in our state of Maine 913,771 persons. The Census Bureau, in its figures recent Iy issued for a II 48 states, te lis us that on July 1, 1956 Mai ne ‘s population had fal len to 910,000. The only other states to show population declines since 1950 are Arkansas, Mississippi, Vermont and West Virginia. Every other one of the 43 remaining states showed a gain. The greatest numerical gain was in California, which has added 2,800,000 people since 1950; but the biggest percentage gain was in Nevada, which increased 55% in the six years. Arizona boomed with a 41% increase, and Florida shot up from 2,700,000 to 3,700,000, a ga in of 36%.
This population lag in Maine is something to give us thought. Population growth accompanies prosperity. Can it be that Maine is lagging in comparative prosperity with The other states? Itlhy aren’t we holding our people? Since we know that, in the past six years, the birth rate has steadi Iy gone up, the census figures mUST mean that fami lies are moving out of Maine, not only faster than new famil ies come in, but faster than the added birth balance over deaths accumulates.
But this sort of thing has happened in Maine before. The Civi I War and the depression of the 1870’s greatly reduced ~”1aine’s population, but our state bounced back to good times. It wi II be so again if the modern generation in Ma i ne has the endurance and i ngenu i ty of the i r fathers.
One of the great religious leaders in Maine a century ago was Rev. Thanas Adams, a famous Congregationalist. He was at one time connected with that denomination’s churches in three of Central Maine’s towns — VJaterville, Winslow and Vassalboro. In the town and county histories and in numerous references in old newspapers have read much about Thomas Adams, but never anything quite so intimate as an old printed booklet that recently came into my hands. It is entitled HReminiscences of the Churches and Pastors of Kennebec County. Read at the Kennebec Conference in Watervi lie, October 17, 1894, by Sarah B. Adams.:!
Now 1894 doesn’t seem very long ago, but to give you a picture of just hON long ago it was, let me say that I was just three years and one day old when that daughter of Thomas Adams told the Congregational Conference assembled in vvatervi lie about her noted father.
She told them that Thomas Adams had come to Vassalboro in 1818, nJo years before Maine became a separate state. He had been sent to the general region of ~Jaterville by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, but his daughter made it plain why he turned his attention to the town down the river. She said: ”When it was found that Rev. Jeremiah Chapl in, a man of sol id learning and sterl ing worth, was coming to Watervi lie to establ ish there a school of high order, the leading object of which was to educate young men for the ministry, it was of course expected that in connection with the school there would be regular religious worship. So my father decided to turn to Vassalboro and not compete with Dr. Chap lin. ”
Almost immediately after establ ishing a Congregational Church at Getchel I ‘s Corner, Adams convinced the CongregationaLists of Winslow that they should organize as a church, and as the years went by he helped them eventually get possession of the community meeting house on Lithgow Street, over which the first settled pastor of the whole Watervi I Ie-Winslow community, Joshua Cushman, had once pres i ded .
It took a lot of cooperation to provide even the meager funds that minis- ters were paid in the early 19th century. Since Adams came to Maine in a missionary capacity, there was at first no dependence on local funds. In the first year his entire salary was paid by joint contributions of the Congregational Society, the Massachusetts Missionary Society and the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and others in North America. Apparently among those Hothers in North American were included the heathen of II/aterville, Winslow and Vassalboro, deemed badly in need of missionary services. The head of that society with the long name, when Adams appeared on the Kennebec scene in 1818, was the father of one great American and the grandfather of another. He was Rev. Abiel Holmes, father of the man who banished the fear of puerperal fever from the hazards of motherhood, and who wrote the “Autocrat at the Breakfast Table!’, Dr. 01 iver \tJendell Holmes; and a grandfather of the man whose dissenting court opinions in behalf of ordinary Americans have made his name known around the world, Justice Oliver \~endell Holmes Jr.
After Maine became a separate state, Massachusetts Congregational ists abandoned their Kennebec chi Id. But the church at Vassalboro not only struggled a long, but unde r Adams’ dynam i c I eade rsh i p estab I i shed b ranches at III i ns low and C linton.
Adams rema i ned at Vassa Iboro for 16 years, when he moved to \~/atervi lie, expecting to preach on both sides of the river, but finally deciding to confine his efforts to Watervi I Ie, where he did much to put the new Waterv i I Ie CongregaTional Church on the \tJay to becoming the prosperous organization it has since become • Thomas Adams’ Vassalboro parish covered a big territory. In 1820 Vassalboro was one of the wea I th i est towns in the new State of rv’la i ne. It pa i d the largest state tax of any ~v’laine town or city except Portland.
gave
\’/hen Thomas Adams’ daughter Sarah addressed the conference in 1894, she vivid recollections of the ~’1inslow church as she knew it when a chi Id. Her father had told her that when he fi rst preached at ~’Jins low 1 the church had been standing for 25 years without paint, and the overhead timbers were bare, right up to the ridgepole. Up among the high rafters the swal lows squeezed in to make their nests, and on Sundays their music competed with the choir. ~·~i ss Adams sa i d that, when she first knew the ‘tli ns low ch urch, the p u I pit was so high that the minister seemed suspended between heaven and earth. One visiting clergyman who fi I led the pulpit on a hot summer Sunday said that looking down from such a vast height upon the constantly waving fans actually made him dizzy.
In the \I/ins low church a hundred years ago mus ic was rendered by an invisible choir, but no one has ever contended that they were angel voices. Between the choir, who sat in the rear of the church opposite the pulpit, and the congregation, was a green curtain which was opened during the service, then drawn immediately after the benediction. Because the choir was as high as the minister and behind the congregation, the worshippers never saw the 5 i ngers as a group. By the time the fo I ks in the pews had ri sen after the benediction and turned around to get a look at the choir, that green curtain had been drawn shut again.
For several years after Miss Adams first attended services in \~/inslow .. the church had no artificial heat. In fact those big stoves that first heated any of our Central rvlaine churches were not generally introduced unti I about ten years before the Civi I ItJar. As late as 1856 Editor Drew of Augusta’s paper, the Rural Intelligencer, was writing vigorous editorials against stoves because he considered them dangerous and unsanitary inventions.
The unheated church explains why we so often read of services being held in private homes during the coldest part of the winter. But our forefathers 7 power of endurance seems to have been much tougher than ours. Many a December service was held in those unheated churches. Though it is difficult to believe, the records of WaTervi lie’s Fi rst Baptist Church te II us that a Miss Furbush was baptized in the Kennebec River by Rev. Wi II iam Kelton on December 24,1863. Baptized in the river the day before Christmas! \1hat do you think of that? Granted that 1863 probab Iy offered an unusua Ily warm December, certa in Iy warm enough for the river to be open, that woman who was immersed in the Kennebec on that day before Ch ri stmas in the Ci vi I War year of 1863 must have had a very rugged consTitution.
By 1894, when Miss Adams told her story at the Congregational Conference, women were taking a prominent part in church affairs, but it had not been so when ivl iss Adams first knew the \v ins 1011 ch urch. She sa i d : !’That ch u rch was strictly obedienT to St. Paul’s injunction, ‘Let your women keep si lent in the churches!. A declaration of war would not have produced more commotion than the ri sing of a sister to speak in meeti ng. ”
Miss Adams commented on the strictness of Sabbath observance in \.vin$low and Vassalboro in the 1840’s. Riding, except to church or on errands of mercy:, was forbidden. She recalled the arrest of one man for riding for pleasure on a Sunday. Another fellow, apprehended by the sheriff, begged to be al lowed to proceed on his drive, saying that his grandmother lay dead in the next town. What the driver did not say was that his grandmother had been dead for ten years.
Miss Adams said that, as a girl, she used to envy the people who lived far enough from the church to ride to service. As for games on Sunday, they were definitely not to be countenanced. Even a young chi Id who would run instead of walk on Sunday was reproved. What chi Idren were supposed to do was to sit quietly on the Sabbath, perhaps with a copy of the Shorter Catechism, with its first page warning telling the chi Id tqn Adam’s fall we sinned alIt’, followed by the grim statement, ”Time cuts down all, both great and small fl Many interesting anecdotes are told about that early Kennebec minister, Thomas Adams. At one time when he was preaching in Ohio, many years after his days in Vassa Iboro and \~ins low, he encountered a colony of German immigrants, of which he said they mixed church-going and whiskey-drinking in equal proportions.
He sent to the Tract Society for some religious tracts printed in German, a language which Adams could not read. He soon found that the people to whom he gave the tracts had questions about their contents, but they didn!t know enough English nor he enough German to carry on a conversation. Then he discovered that these people, having no minister of their own national ity or even of their own Lutheran faith, turned to him for weddings and funerals. Although he had then reached the age of 60, Adams set to work to learn German, with the result that he could not only conduct funerals and weddings in that language, but actually preached sermons in German.
After his years in Ohio, Thomas Adams returned to Maine and lived again in our Kennebec Val ley unti I on his 89th birthday his own funeral was held on February 7, 1881. He had been a boy of eight when the 19th century began, had seen the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War, had lived through every presidency from George Washington to Rutherford B. Hayes, and during those long years had done noble Christian service in many parts of the land. A fitting memorial to this early minister is the recently remodeled and reopened Adams Chapel at Getchell’s Corner in Vassalboro.
Year: 1957