Radio Script #351
Little Talks On Common Things
October 20, 1957
It has always been common to give a mortgage deed to protect a loan on real estate, but it is not common to find in the old deeds of the early nineteenth century a fixed plan for partial payments. The banks and the bui Iding loan companies now operate such plans as their standard practice, but in the old days it was more-usual to give a time note in the expectation of renewing part or al I of it on expiration.
One of those partial payment mortgage deeds was issued by Israel Chaney of Lunenburg, Vermont to James Goodwin of Fairfield on June 4,1810. For $760 Goodwin sold to Chaney a lot of 100 acres, bordering on the Kennebec River in Fairfield. It was the north half of the proprietor’s lot No. 65 under the old Nye-Dimerick survey_ Goodwin deeded the lot to Chaney, and in return Chaney gave Goodwin a mortgage deed with interesting conditions. He was to pay Goodwin $200 in cash on February 1, 1811. On February 1, 1812 he was to pay $100, then on February 1, 1813 the payment was to be $50 in cash and $50 in meat stock. A fourth payment of $100 was due on February 1, 1814. Interest was to be $25 in cash and $25 in meat stock. The same arrangement applied to 1815 and 1816. That made a total of $700 for which Goodwin must wait nearly six years _ The rema in i ng $60 Chaney was to pay before February 1, 1811.
So here was a sale of land for which the seller had to wait eight months be fore he got any money at a I I. The re was no down payment whateve r. The firs t payment, totaling $260, eight months after the sale, was to be without interest, but the other payments included interest from March 20, 1810. Interestingly enough the instrument does not state the rate of interest, but in 1810 it may we II have been hi ghar than what became I ater the customary six per cent. It certainly was not lower.
The ancestor of ma,ny of the Centra I Mai ne Goodwi ns was Stephen Goodwi n, born in Ki ttery in 1733. In 1763, after his marri age to 0 live Fi Tch of Newcas~ Tie, he petitioned the General Court for payment for his services in the French and Indian War. He was then living at Bagaduce. That was one of the old names for Casti ne. At the age of 44 he en listed in the Revol utionary Army and served in the i II-fated Penobscot campa i gn, wh i ch ended in the routed retreat from the very Casti ne where Goodwi n had once lived. Stephen’s brother Ca leb, also a Revolutionary soldier, died of smallpox whi Ie stationed with Washing-:-‘ ,Ton’s army outside Boston. In 1785 Stephen Goodwin settled at Clinton, buying lot 13 on the proprietor’s map of the Kennebec Purchase. In 1795 he bought 1/6 share ina mil I near Kenda I I s ~-1 i I lsi n Fa i rf i e I d •
Stephen Goodwin died in 1805, and his widow Olive petitioned for her son Mi les to be administrator of hi s father’s estate. The inventory of that estate included one horse, one cow, farm tools, household utensi Is, and clothing including two black stocks.
That Stephen Goodwin, in spite of his ownership of only one horse and one cow, was a man of respected position and some substance, is revealed by his son Mi les’ final report to probate. That report contained an item of $3.00 paid TO Sam Gibson for making a coffin. Since $1.00, or at most 9 shi Ilings (which was $1.50> was the usual price for a coffin, Stephen Goodwin must have had an unusua Ily fi ne one.
Watervi lie comes into the Goodwin picture through the person of our most noted early physician. When Israel Chaney issued his mortgage deed to James Goodwin in 1810, it was acknowledged and sworn to before Justice of the Peace Moses App leton •
Another of the early Goodwins was Daniel Goodwin who lived aT Pownalborouqh (now Dresden) in the days of the famous Parson Sai ley, the first settled minis- ter on the Kennebec above Merrymeeting Bay. On October 22, 1761 Daniel issued a deed to John Small, which I find so interesting that I want to share with you its exact word s :
t’l, Daniel Goodwin of Pownalborough in the County of Lincoln, the Province of Massachusetts Bay, blacksmith, in consi deration of the sum of eight pounds” (approximately $40) Hlawful money duly paid, do absolutely give, grant, bargain, sell and convey unto John Small of Pownalborough, tanner, a certain parcel of land, lying and being in said Pownalborough, on the western side of the Eastern River, containing twenty acres!? (The boundaries are then described’> Hln witness whereof I, the said Daniel Goodwin and Prudence, my wife, in token of her consent hereto, and relinquishment of all her right and title in the premises, have hereunto set our hands and sea Is, th is 22nd day of October, A. D. 1761, and in the first year of His Majesty’s reign.”
I have often told you that the best picture of social and economic conditions in our early Maine communities is revealed by the ads in the old newspapers.
What life along the Kennebec was like 125 or more years ago is shown by some of the ads in the very first issue of the Kennebec Journal, which appeared on January 8, 1825. B. Nason & Company announced that they had just received and were eager to sell 10 hogsheads of West Indian rum, three of Jamaica rum, 30 of molasses, and 150 of salt, as well as 30 barrels of sugar and 30 chests of Souchong tea. They were sure that prospective purchasers would be glad to know a scarci ty of nai Is cou Id now be re Ii eved for they had just got in 120 cases of assorted si zes.
Means and Brooks wanted to buy 500 yards of good wai led cloth; a II woo I; also 100 prime fox skins. Alexander Johnson said he was in the market to buy from Kennebec farmers pork, oats, white beans, peas:~’ and a few barrels of cider~ as wei I as 200 cords of hemlock bark, and 20 thousand white ash barrel staves.
Moses Safford informed the public that he had on hand, and would keep constant I y on hand for sa Ie, a I arge assortment of cha irs of every descri pti on. He wou I d se II them for cash, country produce, or on cred; t at pri ces wh; ch coul d not fail to please those who would favor him with their custom. Innkeeper Thomas Hamlen informed his friends and all travelers that the Kennebec Tavern was now we II repai red and handsome Iy furni shed. GraTeful for past favorSt Hamlen respectfu I I Y so Ii ci ted the i r conti nuance.
The movement for circulating libraries began early in our Maine communities.
The plan which Benjamin Franklin had started in Phi ladelphia before 1750 spread throughout the colonies, and when the Kennebec Journal was first published in 1825, the people of Augusta already had a library. The Journal said: “A meeting of Thefproprietors of the Common Library in the town of Augusta, for the purpose of organizing themselves into a socieTY or body politic, by the name of the Social Library of the Town of Augusta, wi I I be held at the Reading Room on Friday, January 14,1825 at six o’clock p.m .• A punctual attendance is requested. ”
I n those days every loca I newspaper 1 however sma I I, pri nted fore i gn news. In fact, excepT at election time, little attention was paid to national news within our own country. Readers seemed more eager to know what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic.
Of course such news reached this country slowly. The Journal, in its initial issue, was therefore proud to announce that The packet ship Pacific had arr i ved at New York from Li ve rpoo I, whence s he sa i I ed on Decembe r 19. 1’The Pacific”, said The Journal, “brings us papers from England up to ~cember 19 i ncl usi ve, from wh i ch the New York edi tors have made for us a vari ety of extracts.”
One of those extracts concerned the war between Greece and Turkey: another covered the do; ngs of Genera I Lafayette after his recent return to France from a visit to the United States; a third told of the capture of pi-rates in the Mediterranean. But the most interesting item concerned the British invention of a steam gun. “It is simply formed~’, said the Journal, !!by introducing a gun barrel into the steam generator of any engine, then adding two pipes toward the chamber of the gun, introducing a quantity of bal Is] which by action of a handle on the chamber are dropped into the barrel and fired out one at a time, at the rate of four or five hundred to the minute.”
Some election returns, which recently noted for the year 1824, give us a striking contrast between the population in three Kennebec communities then and now. Ha II owe II, now the sma I lest of the Kennebec ci ties, was then the I argest.
In the presidential election of 1824 it cast 337 votes; Augusta was second wi th 176 votes; whi Ie Ii tt Ie \vatervi lie was far be low the other two wi th only 79 votes. Today Augusta and Watervi lie are of about equal size and Hal lowe I lis much sma Iler. Vassa I boro then had a I most as many peep Ie as V”atervi lie.
Barter rather than cash was the principal medium of trade in the first half of the last century. In some of the ads which I mentioned earlier tonight, you have noti ced the merchants’ readi ness to take produce and other goods i n ex~.··>’ change for thei r commodities. Let’s se lect a few other samp les from the first issue of the Kennebec Journa I. Chand ler & Nason had for sa Ie at the i r new store, on the si te where thei r former store was previous Iy burned, a general assortment of English, West Indies and American goods which they were wi 11- ing to exchange for other articles. They particularly wanted 600,000 fi rst quality shingles and 4,000 bushels of oats. W. F. Hallet & Company were readyto take produce, especially corn, oats and honey, in exchange for their assortment of household needs, which included cognac and Spanish brandy, Holland and American gin, West Indies and New England rum, loaf and brown sugar, coffee and tea, salt cod and pollock, window glass and nai Is, logwood and redwood, shirting and sheeting, calicoes and cambrics.
Year: 1957