Radio Script #533

Little Talks on Common Things

April 8, 1962

Now that Fairfield has a new town building, it may be appropriate to comment on the town’s old Opera House, which was recently torn down. Built in 1888 that building was long regarded as having one of the best entertainment halls to be found in any small town in Maine. ~ts erection was the result of a long controversy in town meeting after town meeting the voters first decided to have a town hall, then rescinded the vote, then voted a certain appriation for it, then repudiated that appropriation and substituted a smaller one.

When it was finally decided to go ahead, the Waterville Mail reported in December, 1887: “Much of the credit for the new town hall, which Fairfield at last seems sure to have, belongs to E. P. Mayo, the popular editor of the Fairfield Journal’! In September, 1888 Mr. Mayo’s Journal reported: “Yesterday workmen began to erect a 40 foot tower upon the Opera House. ~n it will be placed a large clock and bell, both the gift of Mrs. E. H. Totman and her son, A. H. Totman. The bell is already nere and tne clock is to be ordered this week. The clock will be 100 feet above the surface of Main Street and will tell the time for thousands of persons daily. It will add greatly to the appearance of our town.”

In December the Journal announced: “The Fairfield Opera House is nearly completed and will be opened January first. It will seat over 800 persons and has a stage 50 by 36 feet. The entire cost will be nearly §10,000. A grand concert with 50 voices is announced for the opening.”

After that opening concert on New Years Day in 1889, along with appropriate speeches by Fairfield dignitaries, the building saw a lot of use for functions besides: concerts and plays, though of course it attracted its share of the theater troops that then barn-stormed the Maine towns. Many a production of such perennials as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, East Lynne, and Ten Nights in a Bar Room, were seen on that Fairfield stage. The place was, however, also the scene of many a local function. Soon after its opening, the new Opera House sheltered the First Annual Banquet of the Fairfield Board of Trade, on March 6, 1889. This is the way the Journal described that event: “The Opera House presented a most inviting appearance on this cold, stormy night. Caterer Leonard fairly outdid himself to set tempting tables for the occasion. The menu consisted of oyster soup, cold cuts of beef, lamb, ham and tongue, rolls, mixed cakes, oranges, bananas and apples, nuts and raisins.

“Leading men of the town responded to toasts drunk to the Board of Trade, to the Lawyers, to the Ladies, to Waterville, to the State of Maine, to Skowhegan, to Fairfield industries, to the Press, and to the Clergy, Amos Gerald recounted the improvements that had been made in the village during the past six years. If the occasion our neighbor, the Waterville Sentinel, said: “ithe speeches were a happy mixture of wit and wisdom. The Board of Trade is composed of live men encouraged by live women, and the seeds of progress thus sown will sprout into vigorous growth. Long live the Fairfield Board of Trade.”

One of the industries toasted on that March night in 1889 has long since disappeared from Fairfield. It was the Maine Manufacturing Company. In 1874 John Cotton rented a small basement room and started experimenting on machinery to make folding lapboard, much as 30 years later Martin Keyes, in the Shawmut section of Fairfield, would be experimenting With the manufacture of plates and dishes from molded pulp. When Cotton had perfected his machine, he started making lapboard. He soon expanded his line into the making of plant stands, folding chairs and lawn seats. By 1882 he was operating a large mill and had several salesmen on the road. Undismayed by a fire that destroyed his plant, he rebuilt an even larger mill, 120 by 40 feet, with two stories and a basement, and he employed 40 hands. Then he added a storehouse 110 by 35 feet.

By 1889, when the Board of Trade banquet was held, Cotton had gone into the production of sleds, turning out 36,000 a year at prices from 75 cents to §2.50. He was also doing a big business in screen frames, and his newest product was a folding work table for use in the home — something like the card table of a later day. Does anyone know when John Cotton’s Maine Manufacturing Company gave up the ghost? Did it actually go out of business, or was it absorbed by one of Fairfield’s later woodworking plants?

Did you know that something like a prefabricated house was made as far back as 1889? In that year another firm, complimented at Fairfield’s Board of Trade banquet, was the Kennebec Framing Company, which was said to be the only mill of its kind in the state. “There”, said a spokesman at the banquet, ” one can get a house or any ‘thing in that line all ready to put Up.·1 The company announced that it had made right in Fairfield the immense roof for the reservoir of the old Orchard Water Company, and had transported it in marked pieces to be assembled at Ola Orchard. In similar fashion they had built the Life Saving Station for the U. S. Coast Guard at Jerry Point, N. H.

In ‘Kennebec Yesterdays’ I have referred to the prosperous lumber business in Fairfield a century and more ago, giving an account of the way the Connors and the Totmans sent big crews of men and oxen up to the Saplin’, a big timber region near Moosehead Lake. That was at its height during the twenty years just before the Civil War. But the lumber business in Fairfield continued to thrive and grow well up to the early years of this century.

Let us take a look at some of the things going on in that industry at the time when the Board of Trade held its first banquet in the Opera House in 1889.

Charles and T. W. Fogg had twenty men, numerous oxen, and a dozen horses on Holden Pond in northern Somerset County, where they were getting out about six million logs. S. A. Nye had just sent eight teams into the woods, bringing his total operations that winter to six camps employing 150 men and 60 oxen. Nye said his camps that year would consume 150 barrels of flour, 150 tons of hay, 50 barrels of pork, 40 barrels of beef, and 2,000 bushels of grain. In the previous spring and summer of 1888, Nye had sawed at his Fairfield Mills five million feet of lumber, 200,000 shingles, 300,000 clapboards, and two million laths. The several Nye mills had a drive of 600,000.logs down the Kennebec that spring.

Well, that is enough about Fairfield for tonight. Let us now turn to a part of Maine up in Franklin County, the town of Kingfield.

Recently Harold Woodside of Sheldon Place has shown me an old account book begun more than 140 years ago by the Bray family of that town. They lived on a prosperous farm on the ridge between Kingfield and Strong. Various Brays had a part in keeping those records: Nathaniel, Israel, Eliphalet, J. W., and Dexter.

The accounts were started in 1819 by Israel Bray. Some of the pages record Israel’s transactions with his nephew Nathaniel. In 1823 for some reason the uncle let the nephew have 93 cents in cash, and duly set it down as Nathaniel’s debt. Israel had apparently arranged for Nathaniel to work for John Clough during the summer of 1823. Whenever Clough notified Israel that Nathaniel hadn’t shown up for work, israel recorded the fact in terms not always complimentary: “One half day sick and lazy, one day gone fishing, one day to muster, one day to raising bee.”

In 1819 Israel Bray carried on an account with Moses Plummer, which consisted entirely of exchange of labor. Among Israel’s charges against Plummer were “half a day’s work chopping, 34 cents; myself and oxen, one day ploughing, $1.34; Eli phalet, one day mowing, 67 cents; the oxen, one half day, 67 cents; cart to haul fodder to the stack, 32 cents. In return Moses Plummer worked for Bray. He put in one day piling logs, half a day getting in nayseed, half a day gathering corn, and a full day’s work with Plummer’s steers.

In 1824 Bray charged Plummer with various commodities: a bushel of potatoes at two shillings, or 34 cents, a bushel; two hundredweight of hay for $2.00; and sills for his barn frame for $3.00.

A storekeeper with whom Israel Bray did business was Tisdal Hinds. Hinds sold Bray honey for nine pence a pound, tea for five shillings (83 cents) a pound, five pounds of pork for 62 cents, two quarts of molasses for 29 cents, and six pounds of lamb for 24 cents. In 1820 Bray bought a sheep of Hinds for $2.34.

Why were so many things priced at 34 cents, $1.34 or $2.34?

Because 34 cents represented the nearest even amount to the value of two New England shillings. Unlike the British shilling, the New England shilling in the half century after the Revolution was valued, in terms of the new U. S. currency, at six shillings to the dollar, or 16-2/3 cents each. Many articles were priced at two shillings, 33-1/3 cents, and the usual charge in the new American currency was 34 cents. Likewise an article costing eight shillings was $1.34 and one priced at 14 shillings was $2.34.

In 1825 Bray let John Welcome have two small pigs. Both together weighed only 22 pounds. Evidently keeping a cow was more expensive than keeping a ram, because Bray charged Welcome $4.18 for keeping a cow ten weeks and three days at 2/6 a week, but only 1 shilling a week for keeping a ram. As for those two little pigs, when in the fall Bray decided to swap hogs with Welcome, he had to pay Welcome §6.00 for, as he put it, “boot between hogs.”

In 1825 Bray was evidently in the window business, for he charged Nathaniel Smith on one occasion for a window sash and six lights of glass, and on another occasion for a sash and four lights. Apparently Smith also bought a grindstone that Bray owned in partnership with someone else, for the record says, “for my share in grindstone, one dollar.”

As a riding horse, Welcome’s mare was apparently a favorite of Bray’s. In the summer of 1827 he hired the mare three times, paying 72 cents to go 18 miles to muster, 80 cents to travel 20 miles to Farmington, and §2.50 to make the long journey to Minot. That same summer Bray paid Welcome 50 cents for a sheepskin.

It is possible that in 1828 Eliphalet Bray was keeping a store, for Israel gave Eliphalet credit for a pound of coffee, half a pound of Souchong tea, 6-1/4 pounds of loaf sugar, 1/4 pound of allspice, and two ounces of cinnamon. That loaf sugar, by the way, cost 20 cents a pound.

Another man with whom Israel Bray did business Was Benjamin Burbank, who in 1826 worked for Bray at harvesting. He spent one day threshing, two days winnowing wheat, and two winnowing oats. He also split 90 fence rails and cut 36 fence posts. On another day he washed Bray’s sheep for shearing, and on two days he drove oxen to the harrow.

As for Nathaniel Bray, it is clear that by 1827 he was a grown man, but unmarried. Uncle Israel charged him a dollar a week for his board and saw to it that he collected that $36 by his nephew’s labor.

On a later broadcast I intend to tell you more about those Kingfield Brays, especially about a later., generation who kept accounts in the same old book many years after Israel had died. Hut for now we must say Good Night for Old Time’s Sake.

Year: 1962