Radio Script #431

Little Talks on Common Things

October 25, 1959

I have referred so frequently to items published in Maine newspapers during the 1860’s that I am sure you are well aware that not all the news in those days was war news. It was in early September of 1863, only two months after the Union victory at Gettysburg, that a scandal broke in Waterville — an incident that shocked the entire community. It concerned the Superintendent and Treasurer of the Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad, Edwin Noyes.

Noyes had come to Waterville in 1837 at the age of 25, the ink on his Brown University diploma scarcely dry. President Pattison had hired him to be a tutor of Greek at Waterville College. The Treasurer of the college and Waterville’s most prominent citizen, Timothy Boutelle, took a liking to the young man and soon had him studying law in the Boutelle office. In 1839 he left his college teaching to spend a few months at the Harvard Law School. Successfully meeting his examination to the bar, Noyes became a law partner of Boutelle, and in 1842 married his older partner’s daughter, Helen Boutelle. One of the persons chiefly responsible for bringing the Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad to Waterville in 1849 was Timothy Boutelle, and he persuaded his fellow directors to make Edwin Noyes the company’s first treasurer, and, after the road got into full operation, its superintendent.

Noyes became one of Waterville’s most prominent citizens, a leader in every movement for advancement of the community. After Boutelle’s death in 1855, he came into the management of that part of the huge Boutelle estate, which his wife had inherited from the old squire. That property included Waterville’s first real business block, the Phoenix Block on the west side of Main Street, just south of its junction with Temple Street. In that block, for more than a hundred years, was located a drug store, which a few older people remember as Dorr’s, more people remember as Allen’s, and most remember as Dexter’s. It was in that store, when it was operated by Bob Dexter, that I found the old 1847 account book of the Waterville liquor agent.

Well, let’s get back to Edwin Noyes. He held many local offices and served two terms in the Maine Senate, 1849 and 1850. Just before Mr. Boutelle’s death Noyes had left Waterville and had spent the years 1853 and 1854 as Superintendent of the Michigan Central Railroad, living in Detroit. His father-inlaw’s death and the need to look after his wife’s local property, much of which was in real estate, caused him to return to Waterville and resume his old position with the A & K RR, which a few years later became merged with the Maine Central, Noyes remaining superintendent of the merged system. So it came about that on September 11, 1863 the Waterville Mail spread this story before its readers: “For some weeks past our village has been deeply excited by reports of an extensive defalcation by the Superintendent of the Maine Central Railroad, Hon. Edwin Noyes. Fact after fact was developed, and evidence accumulated upon evidence, till this community was compelled to believe that the reports were true. The amount has been variously reported, and we think it is not definitely known, even to the directors. In due time we doubt not they will inform the public.

“The default has accrued in the purchase and sale of wood in the name of the company, the Superintendent converting the proceeds to his own use. On Saturday last, after several days of private negotiation with the directors, Mr. Noyes secretly left Waterville, and was next heard of on his way to Canada. Pursuit was made in various directions, and we believe he has now reached Montreal. It is generally thought that British laws will protect him.

“This disclosure has astonished all who knew Mr. Noyes. No man stood higher in the general confidence of the community or had more positive hold on the faith of business men and the deep sorrow everywhere manifested shows how valuable a reputation has been wounded, if not destroyed.”

Two weeks later on September 25, the Mail had more to say on the same subject:

“If it were not for the extravagant details we find in the Portland Courier, the Lewiston Journal and the Bangor Courier, we should feel some confidence in our own ability to give the public something like a true picture of the Noyes affair. Those papers contain such a random compound of truth and error that the simple facts in the case, as we shall state them, are too tame to outstrip rumor. That Mr. Noyes was worth $120,000; that he had engaged passage to Europe; that Noyes has already coughed up $40,000; that another prominent Waterville citizen is vindictive toward Noyes; those and a score of other assertions are utterly without foundation.

“Mr. Noyes arrived home last Saturday and is now with his family. Negotiation for a complete settlement of the claims of the road have been in progress, but have not been completed. What is the actual amount of the defalcation we cannot yet ascertain. A considerable sum has been established; beyond that all is guesswork. As the directors profess to desire nothing more than complete restitution of the deficiency, and as Mr. Noyes declares his determination to refund, to the extent of his means, the full amount of any claim that may be established, there ought to be a speedy adjustment.”

The next reference to the affair is in the Mail for October 9. It then said: “No important discoveries have been made beyond those already made public. We are informed on good authority that the amount will not exceed $40,000. The public should understand that the measures taken by the directors are necessarily private. That is why such exaggerated rumors have been spread. But we do not doubt that in due time the directors will meet the inquiries of stockholders by a thorough investigation. Nothing short of a full investigation will give satisfaction. Let the entire management of the road, from the opening to the disclosure of the fraud, have a careful examination, at the hands of men whose interests are identified beyond bias with those of the stockholders.”

Now for the sequel. That affair was indeed settled quietly and mysteriously. That item of October 9, 1863 was the Waterville Mail’s last word on the subject. Through the rest of 1863 and all of 1864 it is not mentioned in any issue of the paper. We know that Mr. Noyes made complete restitution of the funds and was never prosecuted in the courts. In 1866, after working for a time on that part of the Maine Central known as the Portland and Kennebec, the line between Portland and Augusta, he was restored as Superintendent of that part of the Maine Central system known as the Androscoggin and Kennebec, where he remained until 1872, when he resigned to enter other business interests. He regained his reputation as a fine citizen of Waterville, and in 1875 was chairman of the committee that erected the soldiers’ monument in our Monument Park on Elm Street. Throughout the decade of the 1870’s he and his wife conducted a long dispute with another prominent Waterville family over the boundary between their lots in the vicinity of Temple Street. At that time Mr. Noyes and his wife lived in what was long afterward called the Noyes mansion on Temple Street, now occupied by the Waterville Y.M.C.A. While on a business trip to Boston in 1889 Mr. Noyes was fatally stricken with a heart attack in Young’s Hotel.

That defalcation in 1863 is indeed a remarkable story. According to the Waterville Mail, Noyes admitted taking the money and promised complete restitution. If that had happened today with any such corporation, legal prosecution would have been practically certain. Many a defaulter is deservedly given a new chance after he serves his sentence, but is there any other case on record where such a man was kept right on the railroad payroll and eventually returned to his executive position, so re-winning public confidence that he was completely restored in the good graces of his local community?

Now let us turn to another kind of fraud that also has no time limits, although its perpetration during the Civil War was cruder than we now find it. In the winter of 1864 the Maine papers warned the public that there were in circulation counterfeit five dollar bills on the Waterville Bank, made by pasting figures from other bills on what were actually one dollar bills. The notice added: “They are clumsily done and can be easily detected.”

Today when we think nothing of seeing a freight train with 130 cars, it is amusing to read what the Kennebec Journal said about a long freight train in 1867: “Large as was the cattle train that passed through Augusta last week, it was still larger this week. When it left Waterville it numbered 34 cars, and after leaving Augusta it had 38. That is a very long train.”

A hundred years ago the fair sex often came in for comment in the newspapers, and it was not always favorable. In 1866 the Portland Courier commented: “A correspondent of our paper recently spent an evening in Waterville. He says he was being disturbed by noisy and unmannerly women, both old and young, during an entertainment in the Town Hall there. Those women, he says, found the performance beyond the stretch of their shallow brains, so they resorted to amusement according to their capacity — something which proved most annoying to others in the audience. ”

To this the Waterville Mail made indignant reply: “We don’t like to have our village advertised in this way, when the blame belongs only to a few. Only three women in the whole village are marked for their ignorance of good manners in a public audience, and their worst fault consists in whispering and giggling when others are trying to listen. Two or three young men eat peanuts, but as they generally get back in a corner with a few young misses who chew gum, the two disturbances neutralize each other. Want of a knowledge of the fashion in refined cities like Portland causes us to refrain from any claim over such places. but we still think Waterville has a reputation for good mannered audiences.”

The Civil War was scarcely over when travelling showmen were taking advantage of it. In the spring of 1866 there was exhibited in the Waterville Town Hall — a later generation knew it as the Armory — a feature called “Perham’s Mirror of the Rebellion”, advertised as a gigantic illustrated history of the war, which had attracted overflow audiences for three months in Boston. The proceeds were supposed to be devoted to the aid of invalid veterans. but by the time the promoters had scraped off the cream, there was only the thinnest skimmed milk for the advertised charity. The ad said that after showing in Waterville on May 16 and 17, the show would move on to Kendalls Mills, where it would appear in Hogan’s Hall on the 18th.

An item in the Waterville Mail on June 10. 1864 reveals an interesting bit of national history. The Mail referred to the Baltimore convention which had just renominated Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency. The Mail said: “The convention acted with the unanimity that was expected, Mr. Lincoln receiving every vote except that of Missouri, which went for General Grant.” Now comes the amazing part of that news item. TheMail said: “The nomination of Andrew Johnson of Tennessee took the whole vote of Maine, the result being Johnson 492, Dickinson 17, Hamlin 9.”

In Remembered Maine I told the story of the shelving of Hannibal Hamlin for Andrew Johnson, thus denying Maine a president when Lincoln was assassinated. But what I did not know when I wrote that story was that, in the Republican Convention in Baltimore, Hamlin did not get a single vote from his own State of Maine.

Year: 1959