Radio Script #453

Little Talks on Common Things

March 27, 1960

Tonight I want to tell you about something that happened in the year 1842 here in Maine. I am sure it will astonish most of you. Family quarrels are not uncommon, but such quarrels ending in divorce were more uncommon 120 years ago than they are today. Even today the estranged parties avoid publicity as far as they possibly can. What do you think of a man who, at his own expense, published a bound book and circulated it widely, just to tell the world what a bad person his estranged wife had been and still was?

Even after more than a century, we should hesitate to talk about this case on a public radio program, if it had not all become public property by the publication of this book. It is a tiny volume, bound in green board. and measuring only 6 by 4 inches. The contents cover 120 pages. The title page tells us that this is “A Brief Notice of the Life of Mrs. Hannah Kinney for Twenty Years – by Ward Witham, her First Husband; Published by the Author, 1842.”

Ward Witham was a respected citizen of New Portland, and it is probably true that Mrs. Witham did not enjoy the best of reputations when she left her husband, got a divorce, and married another man. Nevertheless it is not easy to justify Witham’s bursting into print to tell the world of his woes. Witham’s excuse for writing the book was that the estranged wife had done her best to vilify Witham, and he had kept silent as long as he could. In the book’s preface he said: “Regard for the feelings of my children, respect for myself, and pity for her wayward propensities have restrained me from exposing her frailty. But when she has done all she can to bring odium upon those children and upon me, it is high time the public should know her real character.”

Witham had another reason for bursting into print. The woman had already done so. through the publication of a pamphlet sponsored by her new husband, Kinney, in Boston, and Witham felt called upon to present his side of the case. Ward Witham and Hannah Hanson had been married in New Portland in 1822, and set up housekeeping about a mile from Hannah’s paternal home. They had been married less than three months when the wife was accused of theft. But let Witham tell the story: “In the house where we lived. there also resided a family named Weymouth. Mrs. Weymouth began to miss household articles. She became convinced that the goods had been purloined by Mrs. Witham. I was thunderstruck, and inclined to deny the accusation as an insult. My wife denied her guilt, and picking up the Bible, swore that she was innocent. Even when Mr. Weymouth assured me that my wife had confessed to Mrs. Weymouth that she had taken the articles and had urged the Weymouths not to tell me, lest I leave her; even then I preferred to believe her protestations of innocence.”

Then Witham devotes several pages of his book to the story of the birth of a child only a few months after their marriage — a child of which he solemnly declares he could not have been the father. Witham says he was determined to leave his wife then and there, but he didn’t do that. Let us see why.

“My intention to leave”, he wrote, “was frustrated by Mrs. Witham’s mother, than whom no person ever had more influence with me. By smooth words and strong appeals to my feelings, she persuaded me to believe that the reports against Hannah were the work of her enemies. By such appeals she fairly bewildered me. I tried to believe Mrs. Witham an injured woman and decided to remain with her and protect her.”

For a year the family situation improved. Then in 1825 Witham went to work with a lumber crew in the woods. While Witham was away, his wife took in the district schoolmaster as a boarder. When Witham returned from the woods, the teacher had already departed, but the neighbors, as neighbors sometimes will, filled his ears with gossip. Some said that the schoolmaster, like the biblical Joseph, had fled from the advances of the woman; others had it that he had welcomed the opportunity. But Witham says he refused to believe the rumors, concluding, as he puts it, “that the safest and easiest course was to pay no attention to them.”

The next year Witham was absent for four months with a lumber crew in the Dead River region. While he was away, Mrs. Witham again aroused suspicions by her conduct with a young fellow whom she had engaged as a hired man on the farm, having replaced a boy whom Witham had left to do the winter farm work. The way people sometimes behaved in rural communities is strikingly revealed in the following paragraph in Witham’s book: “My neighbors had so great a regard for my welfare that they determined to find out whether their suspicions were correct. They kept watch about my house night after night. Whether by this course they did obtain evidence of misconduct, I have never been informed.”

Witham says he had no way to care for his children even if he took them away, though he was convinced the court would place them in his custody. He says: “I was obliged involuntarily to remain with my family, but I resolved that New Portland should no longer be my place of abode.” In 1827 Witham moved the family to Dover, Maine, where he bought a tannery business.

According to Witham’s account, the trouble started allover again, and soon all Dover was alive with rumors about Mrs. Witham. So the man decided he had had enough. Off he went to Boston and got a good job. Missing his children sorely, he had decided to send for his family and try another reconciliation when he received a letter from a friend in Dover, reciting in detail several instances of Mrs. Witham’s recent misconduct. Not to drag out any longer this sordid story, let me just give you the sub-headings of subsequent chapters in the Witham book:

“Ch. VI. Mrs. Witham’s conduct in Dover. A singular affair and more letters from her father. Her visit to New Portland and occurrences there. Her return to Dover and her further conduct in that place.

“Ch. VII. Mrs. Witham leaves Dover. Imposes upon an old gentleman in Bangor. By false statements obtains assistance from my friends. Goes to Boston.

“Ch. VIII. The Caravan Man arrives in Boston with Mrs. Witham. Mr. Witham’s first knowledge of his wife’s presence in the city. Her treatment of him and their final separation.

“Ch. IX. Witham goes to Bangor. Takes steps to obtain a divorce. Learns that Mrs. Witham has already secured a divorce.”

Then follows a chapter regarding Mrs. Witham’s acquaintance with two men, Freeman and Kinney. Freeman was a minister of good reputation. He married Mrs. Witham who, all the time, according to this Witham book, was enamored of Kinney. Freeman died suddenly and a few months later his widow married Kinney. In less than a year Kinney also died. Since both his death and Freeman’s had been sudden and both men had been in supposedly good health, the authorities investigated. As a result Mrs. Kinney was indicted and brought to trial for the murder of Kinney. After a spectacular trial she was acquitted. This is what Witham says about it in his book:

“That Mrs. Kinney was guilty of administering poison to Mr. Freeman or to Mr. Kinney, the public have as good an opportunity of judging as myself. It is certain that both of those men died suddenly, that there has been much excitement in the community relative to their deaths, and that Mrs. Kinney has been tried for her life and acquitted by a jury. In justice to Mrs. Kinney I will say that never to my knowledge did she attempt to poison me, and I do not think she ever contemplated my destruction.”

In the 1840’s almost every publication was expected to point a moral, and Witham was careful to see that his little book did just that. Here is the lesson he tells us, that can be drawn from his story: “There is a moral contained in the history of Mrs. Kinney that is well worth studying. The young man full of ardor and love, who sees nothing but the most adorable qualities in the fair object of his affection, should control his emotions sufficiently to allow reason to ascertain whether marriage, binding him to her by indissoluble time, may not be his ruin. A man of more mature years will see how easily he may be deceived by a woman, but a young man of immaturity falls too easily into a designing female’s clutches.”

We have heard a lot of complaints about the Maine Legislature that completed its regular session last June and has called in special session this winter. That legislature was condemned for lack of leadership and for following the wrong leaders. It was denounced both as too radical and too conservative. It was both too long and not long enough. And in the special session it was criticized severely both for what it did and what it did not do.

If it is any comfort to our legislators, let them be assured that it was ever thus. Listen to what the Waterville Mail had to say when the Maine Legislature closed in the spring of 1892 — 88 years ago: “Let us thank Heaven”, said the Mail, “that the 66th legislature has adjourned sine die. If it had adjourned a month earlier, the State would be better off. It has exceeded all its predecessors in burdening the people with taxes. Most of the passed bills have been private and special laws for the benefit of trusts and corporations. We have got too much law already. If this legislature had repealed half the laws on the statute books, voted themselves a thousand dollars each, then gone home, the tax payers would be much better off today. Will Maine ever be able to elect a legislature, the majority of whose members will be men, not jackasses? When we do, the millennium will be at hand.”

By this time those who listen to this program know that I am partial to events that happened in the year 1891, because it was the year when I was born. Naturally I have no personal recollection of what happened in that year, and I don’t pretend that any of its happenings were important, but I do like to dig them out of old newspapers, old documents, and old letters. So I was interested in what the newspapers had to say about the. enforcement of Maine’s prohibitory law right here in Waterville in the spring of 1891. On May 26, 1891 Daniel Wing, the fearless editor of the Waterville Mail, had this to say: “On May 3 the amendments to our prohibitory law went into effect. Since that day we have been assured that the reason shops of Waterville have become as dry as the Sahara.. Yet we noted 50 intoxicated persons on the streets a week ago Sunday. We have one authorized rum shop, stocked by the City, protected by the government, and conducted by city officials. When the law condemns and punishes the sale of liquor as never before; when the churches and other good influences among us have persistently requested the restriction of the city liquor agency to its proper and legal limits, what we see is increased lawlessness which puts 50 drunks on our streets on Sunday. Why should we expect police to arrest drunkards on our streets when the city officially breeds drunkards for its own profit? They let the liquor agency do as it pleases as long as it pours money into the city treasury.

Year: 1960