Radio Script #460

Little Talks on Common Things

May 22, 1960

Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. That is a subject we don’t often discuss on this program. But, now that winter is well behind us and we approach Maine’s balmy summer days, we may as well give a little attention to old time records of weather. Long before the days of modern, scientific weather recording, the old diarists almost invariably jotted down the weather story every day in their voluminous journals.

I told you some months ago that one of the most important diaries ever kept in Maine was written by Parson Smith, Portland’s first minister, who faithfully kept his journal from 1724 to 1783. On several broadcasts of this program I told you what the parson had to say about Indian raids, early settlers, travel conditions, and the coming of the great British evangelist, George Whitefield. Now let us note some of Smith’s comments about unusual weather in Maine two hundred and more years ago:

“October 28, 1733 — It began to snow.

“October 29 — Snow melted much, but is still three inches deep. I believe no man ever saw so much snow so early in the year.

“November 16, 1745 — The snow is now more than a foot deep and has not melted since it first fell ten days ago.

“January 1, 1752 — Much snow, the roads blocked and impossible to travel outside the town.

“February 4, 1752 — The harbor froze over this morning and the whole bay is shut up. People pass over to Purpoodock on the ice.

“December 25, 1758 — The harbor has been froze over for a week, away out to the Islands.

“March 28, 1763 — It has been a cold, tedious winter. In February the roads were completely impassable. Several of our people returned on February 5 from Windham with great difficulty. We feared they had perished, but after a terrible journey of more than twenty hours they got through. Our people have spent many days shoveling paths to the meeting house and elsewhere. We were everywhere shut up. People grew discouraged trying to make paths. There was five feet of snow on the level, and it was mountainously drifted on clear ground. By the first of March there was not a path anywhere through the country farther than Stroudwater. Mr. Marston, returning from General Court in Boston, was obliged to leave his horse at Hampton and come home on snowshoes. On March 8 and 9 we had the coldest and longest storm of the winter, with twenty inches of new snow.”

The earliest record of snow in Parson Smith’s diary is for October 18, 1750 when he wrote: “Snow covered the ground last night. It is thought winter never set in so early.”

Heavy snow — more than a foot — fell on November 18, 1763; again on November 18, 1769; and again on November 22, 1794. By the first of December in 1747 there was three feet of snow on the ground.

As for late snow, the Parson tells us that at the end of March in 1733 it was four feet deep in the woods. His record for April 23 of that year says: “Snowed at Sacrappa last night, knee deep.” On April 3, 1757 he recorded: “More snow after eleven snowstorms in March. On Back Street the snow is as high as the fences and no sleighs can pass.”

So much for the good Parson’s remarks about winter. He recorded just as faithfully the other seasons. In 1752 there were five consecutive July days when the thermometer went above a hundred. In 1760 there was a terrible drought — forty-six days without rain. Then there were summer pests. On September 1. 1754 he wrote: “We have no potatoes growing this year because of grasshoppers, and there is a melancholy drought.”

But the weather news was by no means uniformly bad. Just as there were springs that came late, there were others that arrived early:

“April 27, 1726 People are generally well along with their planting.

“April 19, 1734 Have just finished planting my potatoes.

“April 17, 1736 We dug the lower garden and sowed carrots, parsnips and turnips.

“April 10, 1744 — No one ever saw such a forward April in this eastern country, so dry and warm and pleasant.

“June 5, 1744 — We have had ripe strawberries and other things more than a fortnight early.

“March 31, 1747 – Very early spring. We dug our garden today.

“April 16, 1747 – English beans and peas already up.

“April 15, 1769 – We set out our cabbage plants today.

“April 20, 1778 – We finished planting our garden five weeks earlier than last spring.”

In those days when the settlers often went long periods without grain for bread and encountered hardship when weather ruined the crops, the Maine woods seldom failed them. On August 5, 1733 the Parson wrote: “Pigeons are very plenty. We kill more than we can eat.”

When I was discussing Parson Smith’s diary a few months ago, I spent so much time on other portions of it that I neglected to tell you how that diary reveals the slowness with which news traveled two hundred years ago. Even the exciting news of the last days of the Revolutionary War reached Portland slowly.

After the treason of Benedict Arnold and his taking a command in the British force, his name spread terror through New England. On September 13, 1781 Parson Smith wrote: “New London and Groton have been burnt by Arnold. We fear he is coming next on us.”

“September 24 – Great expectation from the Chesapeake, where are 28 battleships under Count de Grasse with 8,000 troops, General Washington with 8,000, and LaFayette with nearly as many.” Arnold had burned New London on September 5, and it took eight days for the news to reach Portland. Count de Grasse had sailed into the Chesapeake on September 10, and Portland did not hear the news until the 24th.

We all remember the false armistice of World War One. In similar manner Portland got false news of Cornwallis’ surrender in 1781. That event actually occurred on October 19, but fifteen days earlier, on October 4, Parson Smith put in his diary: “Capt. McLellan brought hand bills from Boston with news of the surrender of Cornwallis and his army and a great victory of the French fleet over the British. Our people are rejoicing.”

When the real news came to Portland it was eight days late. On October 27 the Parson recorded: “The post came today with the great news of the unconditional surrender of Cornwallis and his army on the 19th.”

On April 12 peace negotiations began in Paris, but Portland did not hear of it until May 6, when Smith wrote: “We have just received the great news that our independence is acknowledged and that troops here are recalled. To that the British have agreed in Paris.” On August 10 Smith noted that Yankee prisoners held in England had been released. That had actually happened on July 2.

Parson Smith was the most prominent man in the whole District of Maine at the time of the Revolution. You may be sure he had many acquaintances allover the colonies and the best access to news. The final treaty of peace was signed at Paris on January 20, 1783, and was ratified by the British Parliament on February 3, but Parson Smith heard nothing about it until the ninth of April. On that date he set down in the diary: “We have just learned that the articles of peace were certainly signed at Versailles on January 20. An inglorious place for Britain and a happy one for America.”

On June 30 Parson Smith could at last record: “Gen. Washington has taken leave of the army and retired. All is peace.”

Readers of Kenneth Roberts’ “Arundel” know that, as indication that a sure route was known up the Kennebec River to the City of Quebec in 1775, Benedict Arnold had the help of a journal made by the British engineer, John Montressor in 1761. Several years ago, on this program, I told about that famous journal, especially about Montressor’s arrival at Fort Halifax. He had come down from Quebec by way of Penobscot waters to a point north of Moosehead Lake, had then cut across under guide of Indians who knew the way, to the big lake, then down the Kennebec to Winslow. It was on his return to Quebec that Montressor took the route that Arnold was to follow, and Montressor’s description of the Dead River portion of that trip prevented Arnold from getting completely off the route as some of his inexperienced guides advised. This is what Montressor wrote 14 years before Arnold’s famous journey:

“The Dead River swings to the north just before joining the Kennebec. That portion of the Dead River has a great many windings, is full of islands, is shallow and rapid. To avoid these inconveniences, it is usual to carry through the woods until you meet the river, where it is deep and its current hardly perceivable. The portage is divided by three different lakes. The French usually made use of the eastern route into New England, the route by which I came, but by both the French and the English the route by which I returned, the one the English called the Kennebec route, was regarded as the most eligible route into Canada. In order, therefore, to mark these portages for later travelers, we took care to blaze all the trail from the Kennebec to Lake Megantic. ”

Arnold’s party, coming 14 years behind Montressor, did indeed find many of those blazed trees still marking the way.

As we approach the centennial of the Civil War, it is appropriate from time to time, as we have been doing, to mention the effect of that war on Maine, especially on the Kennebec Valley. On July 24, 1863 the Waterville Mail gave considerable space to the unpopular draft act. Among other things the Mail said: “The draft for this district is concluded, and all the men are being notified. They are allowed until August 10 to report at Augusta. Failing to do so, they will be reported as deserters. The just and humane ruling has been made, however, that a drafted man may pay a commutation fee or hire a substitute. The direct payment of $300 will save such a man the trouble of finding a substitute. The government believes, for that amount, it can directly hire a man to take a drafted man’s place.”

In the same issue the Mail editorialized: “A choice of evils becomes the resort of all drafted men. Some of the weakest made their choice before the draft took effect and fled the country. Suicide would have been as honorable. Few really able bodied men will escape through the plea of disability. To pay $300 or send a substitute — that will be the question with many. The former choice is unworthy. Our country needs men, not money. But under all circumstances the man who furnishes a substitute stands acquitted of duty. ‘Come yourself or send your man’, the country now says to every drafted man.”

Although in later years, especially as the GAR gained political strength, men who had furnished substitutes were looked down upon as having been unpatriotic, it was not so in 1863. When the draft was in operation the men who furnished substitutes were considered to have acted so honorably that their names were actually published in the newspapers. The very issue of the Waterville Mail from which I have been quoting contained the names of ten such Waterville men. But so different is the feeling about their patriotism today that I will not offend their living relatives by repeating their names tonight.

Year: 1960