Radio Script #454

Little Talks on Common Things

April 3, 1960

Some time ago I asked if anyone had a picture of the original Elmwood Hotel that burned in 1863. In the office of the Elmwood manager hangs a very old picture, but I think it is one of the rebuilt Elmwood after the fire, not of the original hotel built in 1850. But I am glad to say that one of our listeners, Mr. Wesley Wixson, has provided me with a splendid picture of the old Elmwood. In fact Mr. Wixson went to a great deal of trouble to get this picture for me. It is from an insert on the Map of Kennebec County made in 1856. That is a much rarer map than the better known county chart of 1878 and the county atlas of 1874. Like most of the old county maps, the Kennebec map of 1856 had pictures around the margin. Since that was before the day of photographs, the pictures are all drawings. This picture of the Elmwood is therefore not a photograph, but a drawing. The picture on the map was carefully copied and enlarged by Leverett-Wixson of the Luce Studio in Farmington, and it is an excellent, clear reproduction.

The picture, of course, shows a building much smaller than the present Elmwood, but facing the square, just as it does today. The main house was of 3t stories with an open piazza on the ground floor. On the second floor were five front windows and the same number on the third floor. In the top, half-story, under the roof, are three front windows and three dormers facing east. There was a long ell of two and a half stories, and behind that was the big hotel stable with its entrance on Main Street. Between the east end of the hotel piazza and College Street (now College Avenue) ran an ornamental fence. The hotel did not sit in the center of the triangular lot, but close to the Main Street side.

The picture shows, emerging from the front door, a woman in hoop skirts, accompanied by a man in a tall silk hat. Near the east end of the piazza is a horse and buggy with a single passenger, another man in a tall hat. The top buggy and other features of the rig suggest it is meant to depict a doctor, for in those days doctors commonly kept their horses and carriages in hotel stables, where they would have the care of the stable staff.

Drawn up in front of the hotel is a closed chaise. I do not think it is meant for a stage coach for three reasons. First it is not large enough. Second it is drawn by only two horses. Third, and most significant, it has a footman as well as a coachman. I think it is meant to depict a private coach, perhaps waiting for the man and woman emerging from the door. While the gentleman and the coachman are dressed in the long trousers of the 1880’s, the footman wears knee breeches. The words “Elmwood Hotel” are painted across the front of the building, between the second and third floors, and likewise on the east side. Beneath the printed insert picture on the old map was placed the identification, “Elmwood Hotel by John L. Seavy, Waterville”.

Now let us clear up the question about Waterville cigar makers in 1909. It was Richardson and Murphy at 151 Main Street who made the Rand M cigar. The Talberth Cigar Company at 13 Main Street made the M D 10 cent and the 30 – 9 five cent cigars. Larkin and Dignam, to whom I referred when I asked the question about cigar makers in 1909, were then located at 87 Main Street, between Castonguay Square and what is now the Sterns Department Store. A fourth Main Street cigar maker was W. P. Putnam at No. 59 on the lower side of Castonguay Square. Putnam made the Colby cigar.

There were three cigar makers on Water Street: Joseph Blais, Dominique Houle and Charles Poulin. That made a total of seven Waterville establishments making cigars — a goodly number for a town of 10,000. Predecessor of Larkin and Dignam had been a cigar maker remembered still by our oldest inhabitants. He was Peter Herbst. In fact ten years before 1909, when people were just beginning to look forward to a new century, the only cigar makers in Waterville were Peter Herbst and W. P. Putnam. At least they are the only ones mentioned in the Maine Register for the year 1900.

Cigar smoking was certainly booming in Waterville fifty years ago, and the boom had come in the few years since 1900. In no other way can one explain the increase of cigar makers from two to seven in nine years.

Now I want to put out another appeal for information. Has anyone ever heard of a gunsmith named A. P. Baxter, who is believed to have made guns in Waterville about a hundred years ago?

A local photographer, Russell Longley, is a collector of guns who has come into possession of a bootleg pistol. That weapon gets its name from the fact that it is a long, narrow pistol made to be carried in the leg of the old-fashioned high boots of a century ago. This particular gun, about which Mr. Longley seeks information, is 11 3/4 inches long, with a ten inch barrel, half round and half octagon. It is a single shot, muzzle loader, using percussion cap ignition, with the hammer on the under side. The grips are of wood with brass trim. Stamped on top of the metal barrel, in two lines, is the inscription it A. P. Baxter, Waterville, Maine.”

This is the usual place to find the mark of the maker, not the owner of such a firearm. Now, what does anyone know about A. P. Baxter?

It was just 60 years ago that the Waterville Board of Trade sponsored a special trade edition of the Waterville Mail. That supplement was printed on glossed paper so that it would take a number of clear cuts depicting individuals and scenes in Waterville at that time. When such a supplement appears today, it is filled with advertising. The distinguishing feature of that 1900 supplement is that it contained no advertising at all. It told the story of business Waterville interestingly and fully without ads to distract the reader’s attention.

Perhaps if I say a few words about the many pictures in the publication, the names may bring back memories to my older listeners. On the first page were photographs of six men: Warren C. Philbrook, who was then Mayor of Waterville; Nathaniel Butler, President of Colby College; George Davis, the carriage maker, who was chairman of the Board of Aldermen and Vice-President of the Board of Trade; Frank Redington, President of the Board of Trade; J. F. Percival, cashier of the People’s National Bank; and Cyrus W. Davis, then Waterville’s representative to the Legislature.

Another picture is an interior view of the People’s Bank, showing Mr. Percival behind the grill. There are two views of the office of Davis and Soule in the Masonic Block on Common Street where, in partnership with Henry Soule of Boston, Cyrus Davis dealt in corporations, investments, bonds and real estate. The supplement tells us that the firm had been established in 1891 for the purpose of organizing corporations. The statement says: “Eighteen solid corporations having their principal office with Davis and Soule, and for whom they furnish either clerk or treasurer, have made theirs a flourishing business. Among the corporations is the Gold King Consolidated Miners Company, owning and operating 28 gold mining properties, extensive coal mines and a railroad in Colorado. They have also furnished the capital for the Sawyer Publishing Company, a Waterville enterprise.”

On other pages appear photographs of Christian Knauff and Everett Drummond, respectively President and Treasurer of the Waterville Savings Bank; P. S. Heald, the clothier; L. W. Rollins, who kept on Front Street what the paper called a “livery, boarding and baiting stable”. Other men whose faces appeared were Herbert Simpson of the Ticonic Mineral Spring Company; G. L. Leonard, the plumber; and Horace Perkins, the insurance man.

When I returned to Waterville, to make it my permanent home, in 1923, still doing business on Union Street was S. A. Dickinson, the harness maker, and down on Main Street was Waterville’s famous tailor, Luke Brown. In this Board of Trade supplement of 1900 the two men appear together. Standing in front of his store, that in this picture looked just as it did when I knew it a quarter of a century later, was the diminutive Mr. Brown, of whom the accompanying text said: “For thirteen years Mr. Brown has united the goose and shears. He keeps a large number of able workmen busy the year round, thus adding materially to the manufacturing industries of the city”. In this picture of sixty years ago the face of Luke Brown bears a striking resemblance to that of his son Chauncey today.

Right beside Luke Brown’s picture is one of S. A. Dickinson. His huge, handle-bar mustache is appropriate for a man who sold and repaired bicycles. Of him the supplement said: “Mr. Dickinson carries an extensive stock of blankets, robes and whips. He came here from Dresden Mills twelve years ago. He learned the harness trade with his father, Silas Dickinson of Wiscasset.”

As for bicycles, the old high-wheelers had given way to the new safety bicycle in 1900, and there was a real boom in the sale of the smart vehicles. To be in society at all was to be a member of the Waterville Bicycle Club, and everybody who was anybody rode about on what was then called a “wheel”. Waterville’s largest bicycle establishment in 1900 was the shop of H. N. Beach and Company on Main Street. A picture shows the front of that shop decorated in flags for Memorial Day or the Fourth of July. In front of the shop stood three men and a woman, all with bicycles. Over the front of the building was a big sign, “Bicycle Repairing”, and on each side of the doorway are vertical signs reading “Bicycle Factory”. Concerning this establishment the paper said: “The increased popularity of bicycles in the ten years has been marvelous. The past summer has been the busiest the bicycle dealers have ever known, and accidents and breakdowns have been proportionately numerous. A first class bicycle repairer was needed here, and Mr. Beach came two years ago from Lancaster, N.H. He sells the Thistle, Algonquin, and Ballingham wheels, and is able to make repairs on any kind of bicycle, including enamelling, brazing and vulcanizing.”

The drug store in the Phoenix Block, operated there for a hundred years, before Fred Larry moved it across the street to the old Hager store, was conducted in 1900 by George Dorr. When this Board of Trade supplement was published, Dorr had already been doing business in that venerable store for thirty-five years. I suppose, except for the owners and pharmacists of that store, such as George Dorr, Jim and Bert Allen, Bob Dexter and Fred Larry, I am one of very few persons who ever saw Prescription No. One recorded by that store in 1850. I talked about those early prescriptions on this program in 1950, when that drug store was just a hundred years old.

Of course the supplement gave attention to one of Waterville’s oldest retail establishments,then going by the name of W. B. Arnold and Company. It sold, according to the paper, “hardware, plumbing, steam heating, stoves, doors, sash and blinds. iron and steel.” In business with W. B. Arnold was O. G. Springfield. The paper said: “This is one of the oldest businesses of the city. Mr. Arnold has been in the business since 1852 and has been a partner since 1864; but the business itself was established long before he ent~red it as a clerk.” It was first Drum. Elden and Company, then Elden & Herrick, then Elden & Arnold, then Arnold & Meader. In 1881 Mr. Arnold bought the business, and in 1889 he took Mr. Springfield as a partner.”

Year: 1960