Radio Script #424

Little Talks on Common Things

June 7, 1959

As time nears for the harness racing tracks to reopen for the season here in Maine, I am on the alert for old news items about Maine racing. I have frequently reminded you that, a hundred years ago, Maine was even more famous than Kentucky as the birth place and training ground of fast race horses. Long before the days of Aroostook’s John R. Braden, such Maine racers as General Knox and the Drew horse were famous allover the country, and right here in Waterville. 65 years ago, was stabled the fastest racer of that time, the world champion trotter Nelson.

I was interested to learn recently that not even the Civil War stopped racing in Waterville. On August 14, 1862 the Waterville Mail carried a story about a spirited race meet at the old trotting park in the south end of the city, held on the previous day, August 13, 1862. The fastest time had been 2:40, made by General Robinson’s famous horse, General McClellan, who won his event in straight heats. In fact the horse proved a much better winner than his namesake, the real General McClellan, who, though very popular with his troops.\, suffered some bad defeats at the hands of Confederate generals.

The prize money at Maine races was not lavish in those days. In the fastest race, won by the McClellan horse, the total purse was $30, and it all went to the winner. In a slower race a gray horse named Prince Albert beat a bay mare named Queen Victoria in three straight heats, in time that didn’t better 2:50.

In the 1860’s it was common to have half-mile races, instead of twice around the half-mile tracks, as was usual in later years. In the 1860’s the Maine tracks were all half a mile. The state had no mile track until the building of the famous Rigby Park at Portland some years later. That park was on the site now covered by part of the yards of the Portland Terminal Company. On that August day in 1862 in Waterville, five horses competed for a prize of ten dollars in a half-mile race.

Just as the Civil War did not suspend horse racing, it did not diminish the interest in local and state elections. In the fall of 1862, when Abner Coburn of Skowhegan was the Republican candidate for governor, Waterville went strongly for the up-river man, giving him 312 votes to 128 for his opponent, Bion Bradbury. James G. Blaine, Republican candidate for Congress, ran well ahead of his ticket in Waterville. Where Coburn received 312 votes, Blaine got 339. John M. Libby, a Union Democrat — the party that in 1862 could well be called the loyal opposition — was elected Waterville’s representative to the state legislature, getting 364 votes to 160 for C. M. Morse.

Ever since the national election in 1860, the Democratic party had been badly split on the slavery issue, and by 1862, when the nation was actually at war, most of the leading Democrats, like General McClellan and Stephen A. Douglas, had come out whole-heartedly for the Union cause. The saving of the Union had become no longer a party issue, but a great non-partisan cause. To show where they stood, those loyal Democrats actually formed a new party called the Union Democrats. Of John Libby’s election the Waterville Mail said: “Mr. Libby, the representative-elect, is a Democrat, with strong Union sentiments, well demonstrated by his works. He was nominated in a citizens’ caucus, in which Republicans largely participated. Mr. Morse was also nominated at a Republican caucus on Monday morning after the polls had opened.”

It is well known that not all northerners were in favor of the war, especially of the way it was being prosecuted by the Lincoln administration. That was just as true in Maine as it was in states nearer to the Mason and Dixon line. Up at North Anson was a rabid Democratic paper that took frequent jibes at the Washington administration and the Republican government in Augusta.

The Waterville Mail, a staunch Republican and pro-Union paper, paid its respects to the Anson newspaper in an editorial on October 2, 1862. This is what the Mail had to say: “The Anson Advocate, a paper that pollutes the name of Democrat by making it a cloak for secession, claims to have received a communication from West Waterville, which charges our representative-elect, John Libby, with being bought by the Republicans. Mr. Libby’s townsmen had never troubled to find out his politics, but they know he is not such a Democrat as the Advocate would have — one to oppose the war, and to sneer and sneak when his country calls. When Sumter surrendered, Mr. Libby was the first man in the loyal town of Waterville to move for enlistments to put down the rebellion. In all measures of the town to support the war he has, as one of the selectmen, taken a decided and active stand. Democrat as he is, or Republican as the Advocate charges. no man need fear that Mr. Libby will be other than faithful to the Union.”

During the Civil War many entertainments went on as usual, including lectures on all sorts of subjects. Among the latter was a series of lectures on some phase of physiology or popular medicine. On November 6, 1862 the Waterville Mail ran the following advertisement: “Dr. Miller of New York will commence a course of popular lectures on Anatomy and Physiology at the town hall in Waterville on Monday evening, November 10 at 7 o’clock. These lectures will be illustrated with splendid apparatus, consisting of four French mannikins, ten skeletons, and over one hundred mode 1s. The first lecture will be free.”

Throughout the first half of the 19th century it was the regular custom for all Protestant churches to have two daylight services each Sunday. What by 1900 had become a morning and an evening service was, before the Civil War, a morning and an afternoon service, or what the people called a morning and an afternoon sermon. In warm weather the people would drive in to Waterville from the surrounding country, to attend services at the Baptist or Universalist churches. coming for the morning sermon, eating lunch on the lawn, and then attending the afternoon sermon. In winter these people from the farms were often entertained for dinner in the Waterville homes.

I have often wondered when that old custom of morning and afternoon sermons was changed, and now I know. It was during the second year of the Civil War that the change became general in Waterville. On December 18, 1862, just a week before Christmas, the Waterville Mail said: “An arrangement has been made by the Congregational and Baptist societies in our village, by which the Sunday Schools will take the place of the usual forenoon sermon, leaving the afternoon for the one sermon of the day. The change will commence next Sunday. This will leave the Unitarians with the only regular forenoon service, for they have never had an afternoon sermon. For several years the Universalists have had preaching only in the afternoon.”

Almost a hundred years ago an unnamed contributor to the Waterville Mail wrote a very interesting and intimate account of Winslow in the old days. It is a kind of history of the town that ought some day to be gathered up and published in a single volume. At the time of its original publication, it ran through more than a dozen issues of the Waterville Mail. Here is a part of the writer’s account of Winslow village. He says: “Winslow Village was long known as Fort Village. Unpretending in appearance, it boasts no Gothic structures, no princely residences, adorned with cupolas and porticoes. Yet we feel a pride in our beautiful shade trees, planted by honored hands now cold in death. Hon. Thomas Rice, Francis Swan and Nathaniel Dingley did much to improve the appearance of this village by planting trees. Here the meeting house stands, answering the double purpose of meeting house and town house. Prior to the building of the meeting house, town meetings were held either in the old fort or in private houses. It was at such a meeting in 1791 that George Warren was appointed agent to petition the General Court at Boston for a lottery, to raise money to build a bridge across the Sebasticook, near its junction with the Kennebec. Nothing came of that petition. Not until 1802 did the town raise any money toward building a bridge, and then the amount was only $400. The next year, 1803, saw the matter of building a bridge put up at auction and bid in by John Spaulding for $1,500. Spaulding was unable to supply the necessary bond, so subsequently a town committee tackled the job. They completed it in 1806, but the very next spring a flood swept the bridge away.”

That long account led me to investigate the when and where of the first permanent bridge across the Sebasticook at Winslow. By “permanent” I mean a bridge that lasted more than one winter, for no bridge along the Kennebec and its tributaries proved to be permanent in the true meaning of the word. More than once, bridge after bridge at the same spot was swept away by the big freshets that surged down the Kennebec.

Well, anyhow, here is the story of Winslow’s Sebasticook bridge. The original bridge was not a toll bridge, built by a private corporation, as so many bridges were in those days, but a free bridge built by the town. That was the bridge of 1806 that lasted only a few months. It was not immediately replaced, and two years later, in 1808, the people were still clamoring for a bridge.

That winter the Legislature in Boston granted a charter to a private corporation to build a toll bridge, which was completed in 1814. It was a weak structure, although a lot of big timbers and much iron had gone into its building. That bridge of 1814 was also very soon the victim of a flood, and for eight years people again crossed the Sebasticook by ferry. In 1824 a third bridge was put up. and for eight years it resisted the strength of the water until. along with scores of other bridges in Maine. it was carried away by the Great Flood of 1832.

Then in 1834 Joseph Eaton headed a corporation which put up a covered bridge destined to have a long life. As late as 1866 a Winslow writer said of that bridge. “Built in 1834. it has resisted the most violent floods for thirty years. It has needed little repair, and has now placed in the pockets of its fortunate owners the pretty sum of $1,600 a year.”

Those early bridges crossed the Sebasticook near the site of the present railroad bridge. and the one of 1834 withstood even the big freshet of 1869, but at last in 1901 an especially disastrous flood knocked it from its foundations. It was rebuilt. as a free, open (not covered) bridge, on the present site. To the astonishment of local people it withstood the tremendous flood of 1936, when even the big Ticonic Bridge went out.

Now, 153 years after the first bridging of the Sebasticook at Fort Halifax, that bridge which withstood the 1936 flood will be no more. In a few months the new highway bridge with its straight, not tortuous, approaches will be opened. Very soon the bridge many of us have used for half a century will be like Joseph Eaton’s older covered bridge — just something remembered for old times’ sake.

Year: 1959