Radio Script #408

Little Talks on Common Things

February 15, 1959

A hundred years ago it was customary to close each term of school with an oral examination, a kind of exhibition to which the whole community was invited. Down in Belfast in 1858 the school committee criticized the manner in which those term examinations were held. In its annual report the committee said: “The term examination should not mean an exhibition in which both sexes seek to display their theatrical powers, acting the part of knaves and dupes, of gamblers, robbers, drunkards and other scandalous characters. Such exhibitions are detrimental to manners and morals. Public declamations by boys may prove beneficial, but to the appearance of young females on the stage we are wholly opposed. What we recommend is a strictly literary examination of all scholars, and an exhibit of specimens of their handwriting and their original compositions.” Think of it! No girls on the stage. My, how times have changed.

During the first half of the 19th century our Maine people had a lot of trouble with paper money. Whenever possible cash payment for wages was demanded in species — gold and silver coins. People were rightfully afraid of paper money, not so much because it might be counterfeit, as because of its easily reduced value. The commonest paper money was not U.S.Treasury notes, such as are circulated today, but bank notes — that is, bills issued by the hundreds of different banks. The value of a particular bill depended much on the standing of the bank that issued it — and the standing of that bank at a particular time; for a bank that was considered sound in December might be close to failure in February. In 1837 the whole nation was swept by financial panic and bank failures were numerous.

The notes of a dozen Maine banks were not honored at all in Boston. Fortunately the Waterville Bank was not among them. It weathered that stonny year of 1837 without closing its doors or repudiating its obligations. As if the depression were not enough, that year of 1837 also saw a flood of counterfeit bills flow into Maine. In the following summer the Waldo Patriot was still warning its readers in these words: “A piece of paper having the appearance of a $20 bill on the Belfast Bank was offered in this town a few days ago. On examination it turned out to be one of the lumber association’s plastus, dated at New York, signed by one Twist as president, and payable at the Belfast Bank six months from date. They are doubtless intended to pass for money in Belfast, but bills of that denomination have never been issued by our bank. People should also beware of bills of the Oxford Bank of Oxford, Maine, altered to read Oxford, Mass. They are worthless.”

Half a century ago, when Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, a leading member of the U.S.Senate was Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana. Thirty years ago he wrote a brilliant two-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, which on publication it was my privilege to review for the Portland Evening News, then edited by the man who a few weeks ago was elected one of the first two senators from the new state of Alaska, Ernest Groening.

Well, it seems that in 1903 Senator Beveridge vacationed in Maine, and that old newspaper which I have quoted so frequently, the Maine Woods, had something to say about it. Its comment was “Senator A. J. Beveridge ended his vacation and started home last Sunday. He greatly eqjoyed his outing here and gained several pounds in weight. His habit was to sleep twelve hours every day. He went to bed at nine and got up at eight. After dinner he always took an hour’s nap. Next summer the presidential campaign will be on, and the Senator will be doing the hardest kind of work instead of sleeping in a hammock at Haines Point or in a bed at the Rangeley Lakes House. The Senator never drinks liquor and is careful about his diet. While here he ate principally cereals, fruits and berries, and he drank cream as well as two quarts of Rangeley mineral water every day.”

A few days ago I was looking at a Maine publication of 56 years ago in 1903. It brought vividly to mind two industries that have now all but disappeared from the Maine scene: granite and ice. In 1903 the Bodwell Granite Company operated big quarries at Vinalhaven, Spruce Head, St. George and Jonesboro. Granite from the Bodwell quarries had gone into the War and Navy Department buildings in Washington, into the Pennsylvania Station in New York, into the Custom House and the Post Office in Cincinnati, into the huge Auditorium in Chicago, and into the new department store building of the Jordan Marsh Co. in Boston.

As for ice, the volume said: “The annual ice harvest is enormous, averaging 1,700,000 tons a year, valued at $1,600,000. There is invested in ice houses along the Kennebec a capital of $1,400,000. One year’s crop of ice makes about 2,500 cargoes for good-sized vessels, or in other words it furnishes business for 400 different ships six months of the year.”

One of the great national figures associated with Maine was General Henry Knox. After his retirement as George Washington’s Secretary of War, the general settled in Thomaston to manage the vast Waldo lands, part of which his wife had inherited as the granddaughter of Samuel Waldo, and part of which Knox had himself purchased. There he built Montpelier, the most imposing mansion of the time north of Boston. Through his various foremen and supervisors Knox employed a lot of men, and some of them had to wait a long time for their pay. The custom was for the foreman to issue to the employee an order on General Knox, to be paid whenever the holder could be fortunate enough to collect it, or which he could sell to some speculator at a discount.

In my collection of Maine items isjust such an order. It reads: “Thomaston, Oct. 23, 1806. This may certify that there is due to Elijah Dodge on order from Genl H. Knox for said Dodge’s labor the summer past the sum of Ninety Dollars and Fifty-Three Cents, on demand with interest. For Genl H. Knox, 1. Glinson.”

Evidently Dodge held the note for nearly a year, for a notation adding $5.43 interest, for a total payment of$95.66 is dated Octq~r 3, 1807. It seems that Dodge was something more than a .oommon laborer, for on the back, of the same paper is an inscription which indicates he had made –smIle sort of investment. The inscription says: “January 3, 1812. I sent M.E.Dodge four dollars in a letter directed to him, which is his first dividend. Edward Kelleran.”

This little paper is of historic interest but of no great value, because it was signed by one of 8-253 Knox’s foremen, not by the great general himself. Hidden away in the attics of many a listener to this program are old documents of no apparent value. Possibly one of them has on it the authentic signature of General Henry Knox.

Did you know that religious tests for full citizenship lasted far beyond the fonnation of the United States? It is generally known that the theocratic province of Colonial Massachusetts allowed only persons of the established church of the colony to vote and hold office, but Massauchsetts had abandoned that practice long before the publication of the old Register I told you about a few weeks ago, that for the year 1786. Of the 13 original states at that time, the following had no religious qualifications for citizenship: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia. In that year five states still had a religious test of some kind. New Jersey restricted the rights of government to Protestants. Pennsylvania limited it to “all who profess the Christian religion”; Delaware to those who believed in the Trinity, thus barring all Unitarians. North Carolina and Georgia excluded Roman Catholics from offices of government.

Altogether in the 13 states a lot of people were denied what we today consider ordinary democratic rights.

A whole page in the 1786 Register is devoted to directions for sailing in and out of Boston Bay and these are followed by Signals at the Castle. This was Castle Island in Boston Harbor, which played such a prominent part in the Revolution, for in its fort the British imprisoned many a Boston patriot, among them young Peter Edes, who later became the first printer at both Augusta and Bangor. Note what were some of the Castle Island signals: for a ship in sight, a blue flag on the upper staffing; for a brigantine, a pendant; for a vessel with two topsails, two flags. The list ended with these words: ”No signals are made for sloops and schooners.” Can you guess why? They were much too numerous.

The few ambassadors and ministers from foreign countries in 1786 were assigned to the Congress, for that was all the national government that existed. There was no executive branch. The President of the Congress was Richard Henry Lee, and the minister of war was none other than Maine’s great land owner and Thomaston squire, General Henry Knox. The Congress was represented in only four foreign countries: by Benjamin Franklin in France, by John Adams in England, by Wtlliam Carmichael in Spain, and by John Rutledge in the Netherlands.

This old Register gives the names of postmasters and the location of their offices on all the post roads throughout the U.S. in 1786. The first route mentioned is called “the post road eastward from Boston to Casco Bay”. Only five post offices are named: Salem, Ipswich, Newburyport, Portsmouth and Falmouth. How often did the mail go over this road? This is what the Register says: “The post from Falmouth in Casco Bay arrives at Boston each Saturday in the afternoon, and sets out on its return the following Monday at noon.”

Whenever we have extremes of weather someone always comes up with the remark that it was hotter or colder, wetter or dryer, or stonnier on some occasion long, long ago. Several years back, when my son was being initiated into his town managership in the town of Guilford, my wife and I drove up to that town via Athens and Harmony, to have Thanksgiving dinner with my son’s family. In Waterville the ground was bare, but as we passed through Parkman we saw men shoveling paths to their barns in snow more than a foot deep. That is the only time I have seen snow on Thanksgiving Day for many years until 1958. But back in 1862 there was plenty of it right here in Waterville. The newspaper reported: “Sleighing on Thanksgiving Day, with 1 1/2 feet of snow and the thermometer 20 below zero, are hints indeed that winter has come. It matters little to those who have warm houses, big wood piles, and abundant bedding. But where rags hang in broken windows, and snags of stumps peak through snow to tell of scarcity of wood, where little bare feet tread upon frosty floors, a cold winter is torture. To the farmer, with his stock of cattle and his winter work, a mild winter means dollars and cents. His hay mow suffers direct taxation for every degree the temperature drops. When his barns are neglected, old Boreas bleeds him of beef and pork and horse flesh. The way this winter has started, both farmer and town dweller seem to be in for a real testing.”

Let me end this broadcast on a more cheerful note. Even in the midst of war people are entitled to have some fun, and that is just what the folks in Oakland did in 1863. Here is how the Waterville Mail told the story in its issue of September 4 of that year: “Last Friday the City of Lewiston was visited by several car loads of people from West Waterville in a pleasure excursion. Our neighbors at the source of the Messalonskee have a way of doing their play just as they do their work — they make a business of it. Why can’t they come and scrape our acquaintance over here on the Kennebec? Too distant for a wa1k and too near for an excursion, we only see one another at town meeting, and consequently are about as much strangers as were Levites and Samaritans.”

And here is one final item of a different kind. On September 11,1863 the Mail said: “Edwin Tibbetts, whom we have recently spared from our village to minister to the thirsty at North Vassalboro, has just paid fines to the amount of$44 for violating the provisions of the Maine law. Rum sellers will find it hard sledding in that sober little village.”

Year: 1959

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