Radio Script #528

Little Talks on Common Things

March 4, 1962

In these times when our lives are being controlled more and more by actions in the national capital at Washington, and less and less by our own actions with our home towns, it is well to heed the words that William R. Pattangall, once the belligerent editor of the Waterville Sentinel, spoke in a Memorial Day address at Skowhegan 28 years ago in 1934. Listen to his words: “When legislative powers are surrendered to executives who are but too willing to accept them, when the sovereignty of the individual states is disregarded and local self-government becomes obsolete, when individual initiative is discouraged, the lessons of experience cast aside and personal liberty diminished, when men are denied the right to buy and sell the products of their labor in the open market, when the farmer is forbidden to sow and reap on the land he owns — then the time has come when the freedom for which America has always stood has ceased to be. When we lack the courage and independence to work out our own salvation, we can only become paupers of the state, dependent on its bounty to supply our needs.”

Those solemn words of Bill Pattangall, spoken in 1934, are worth recalling in 1962. Because I have referred to Mr. Pattangall several times on this program, a number of listeners have asked me to give a brief biographical sketch of the man. I am now glad to do that. William Robinson Pattangall was born in Pembroke, Maine down in Washington County, only two months after Lee surrendered at Appomattox on June 29, 1865. He graduated from the University of Maine in 1884. tie went to Brockton, Massachusetts, and worked in a shoe factory. In 1891 ne came to Machiasport and taught a school, in which he introduced the study of navigation for boys.

He studied law in the office of Archibald MacNichol in Calais and was admitted to the bar in 1893, setting up an office in the village of Columbia Falls. The next year he moved to Machias, where he remained until 1905. For four years, from 1896 to 1901, he represented the Machias district in the Legislature. While still practicing law, he took over in 1903 the local newspaper, the Machias Union, and made it a paper respected and feared by politicians, not only in Washington County, but allover the state. It was while editor of the Union that he wrote the famous Meddybemps Letters, from which I quoted extensively on this program last year.

In 1905 Pattangall left Machias for Waterville, to take the editorship of the Sentinel, an office he held for ten years. Meanwhile he practiced law in this city. In those years, as well as during his stay at Machias, Pattangall was an ardent Democrat, and he rapidly rose to leadership of that minority party in Maine. His barbed newspaper comments on leading Republicans are remembered to this day. It was while editor of the Sentinel that he wrote the stinging caricatures entitled “Maine’s Hall of Fame”.

In 1915 Mr. Pattangall moved to Augusta. He was several times an unsuccessful candidate for Congress and for Governor. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1920 and 1924. In 1926 he was apPOinted an associate justice of the Maine Supreme Court by a Republican Governor, Owen Brewster, and was promoted to Chief Justice by Governor Gardiner in 1930. He retired in 1935 and died seven year.s later in 1942 at the age of 77. In the 1930’s Pattangall became a Republican. He always claimed that he did not leave the Deomcratic party, but that rather the party left him. As his Memorial Day address, with which we opened this broadcast tonight, clearly shows, he could not stomach the New Deal and the Welfare State.

Mr. Pattangall was twice married and was the father of four daughters: Mrs. Edith Gilman of Augusta; Mrs. Josephine O’Flaherty of Augusta; Mrs. Grace Fassett of Cambridge, Mass.; and Mrs. Katherine Brown of New Britain, Connecticut.

Perhaps here is the place for another of those famous Pattangall stories. This is one about Patt, not by him. When he was a young lawyer, Patt once had to stay overnight in Farmington. The hotel was filled, but the innkeeper told Patt he could sleep in the stable. When Patt came to the office the next morning to pay his bill, he laid a dirty, rusty barn shovel on the desk, saying: “I’m checking out. Here is the key to my room.”

Not long ago Dr. Boardman, former President of the University of Maine, who is now one of my Waterville neighbors, let me see some papers pertaining to his grandfather, James M. Boardman of Bloomfield. One of those papers is a military commission issued by Governor John Fairfield, making Boardman Captain of a company in the Aroostook War. The commission said: “Reposing confidence in your ability, courage and good conduct, I do name you Captain of the B company of infantry in the First Regiment of the First Brigade, Eighth Division of the militia of this state, to rank from the 23rd day of April, 1840.”

In 1861 J.ames Boardman was considered too old for military service, though he tried Several times to enlist. He did, however, perform notable service as a recruiter of volunteers. In his hand writing is preserved a list of 35 men he recruited for a Somerset company during the month of November, 1861. Most of the recruits were farmers from Skowhegan, Norridgewock, Madison, Starks and Smithfield. Surprisingly for that time so early in the war, more than half the men were married.

One of the interesting Boardman papers is the form that a Civil War volunteer had to fill out before he could be accepted into one of the Maine companies. Here are some of the questions the recruit had to answer: “Have you any disease of the brain or any imperfection in eyesight or hearing? Have you any disease of the throat or difficulty of utterance?

“Have you any bone, joint or muscle incapacitated?”

At the bottom of the form is printed: “Rendezvous at Norridgewock. J. M. Boardman, Recruiting Officer.” Note that the form was not signed by any doctor, but simply by the recruit himself, certified by Boardman.

Preserved among the papers are vouchers submitted to the government for Boardman’s work in recruiting: “Dec. 5, 1861 — Paid William Brown, Anson, $2.20 for conveying three recruits from Anson to Norridgewock and two toll bridges.

“For office rent in West Embden from Oct. 22 to Nov. 6, 1861, and 100 post bills, $5.00.

“Transportation of J. P. Chatman from Kingfield to New Portland, $2.00.

“Horse and carriage for recruiting C. A. Bates, Oct. 21, $4.50.”

Boardman’s own fee for recruiting was $2.00 a head.

When Boardman started his recruiting venture, he intended to go to the war as captain of a company he himself would assemble. One paper in the old file reveals why he was disappointed. It says: “This certifies that I have examined Capt. James Boardman and have given the opinion that he could not, on account of certain physical disabilities, under which he has been laboring for several years, be able to endure the exposure and fatigue of camp life, and have strongly advised him to relinquish his idea of going with his company to the seat of war. I further certify that he has, by my advice, decided to return to his family, against the strongly expressed wishes of his company, who feel his departure to be a great disappointment. His company are strongly attached to him, both as a man and as a commander, and he leaves for home with the best wishes, not only of his company, but also of the entire Thirteenth Regiment.

“Camp Beaufort, Dec. 12, 1861. James M. Bates, Surgeon of the 13th Maine.”

James Boardman lived in the heyday of the local fire insurance companies, and it was natural to find among his papers a policy issued in 1860 by the Somerset Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Skowhegan. It insured Boardman’s house, porch and woodshed for $650 and his stable for $150. One condition of the policy was as follows: “Each person insured by this society is constituted a member hereof, and shall be holden for such losses as his share incurs.”

That meant that the way the company met losses beyond assets available from premiums was by assessment on each member.

I have been told that it was this assessment procedure that was responsible in the 1840’s and 1850’s for a radical departure in the building of farm property. Maine is notorious for what is called its sets of buildings. I know the term is now loosely applied, but it originally referred to. one long line of connected buildings, from parlor through kitchen, shed and carriage house to barn. When fire losses made it necessary to assess insurance company members, they began to insist that a higher rate be charged if the barn was a part of a set of buildings, than if it were built separately, especially across the road. After 1850 few barns were any longer attached to the house, although in compact villages the stables continued to be tacked on to the houses.

It is interesting how James Boardman, after he moved from Bloomfield to Norridgewock, got possession of a church pew. It all began in 1843 when John McKechnie, treasurer and agent of the Baptist Meeting House Corporation in the South Village in Norridgewock deeded to John Sylvester pew No. 34 in the meeting house for the sum of $32. A year’later, in 1844, Sylvester deeded the pew to Cushman Bigelow for §52, a profit of §20. Eight years went by and James Boardman got the pew from Bigelow for $50, two dollars less than Bigelow had paid for it.

In 1856 Mr. Boardman held the liquor agency in Norridgewock. His license, signed by selectmen Rufus Bixby and Silas Lindsey, read as follows: “To James M. Boardman of the Town of Norridgewock. Whereas the office of agent for the sale of intoxicating liquors in this town, under the act for the suppression of drinking houses and tippling shops, has become vacant, we the selectmen of Norridgewock, agreeably to the authority vested in us by law, do hereby appoint you an agent of the town to sell, within and for the town, intoxicating liquors for medicinal and mechanical purposes, and no other, until the first day of May, 1856, and until another is appointed in your place. And you are to conform to such rules and regulations as are provided in the statute, and as we shall in writing prescribe. And your compensation for said services shall be $1.25 per week.”

Even before Boardman became a member of the Somerset Mutual Fire Insurance Co., he had already taken a form of health insurance. Frankly I was surprised that any such insurance existed as long as 110 years ago. Yet in 1851 this was the kind of paper issued to James Boardman of Norridgewock. For a fee of $3 a year Boardman was promised §3 a week for every week that he should be rendered wholly incapable of pursuing his usual business. But there was a joker in the contract. It provided that, if the demands on the association should at any time exceed its resources, each member should be taxed such sum as might be necessary.

So the old health insurance was like the old fire insurance, but those in the health association could not cut losses by building the barn across the road.

Year: 1962