Radio Script #541

Little Talks on Common Things

June 3, 1962

One of the great men of Waterville, and indeed of all Maine, a century age was J0siah Drummond. When he was just beginning to win wide renown as a lawyer, he left Waterville and lived his remaining years in Portland, but Waterville will always claim him for her own. A member of the famous Winslow family that had come to this region in colonial times, Josiah Drummond was born in Winslow in 1827. He graduated from Waterville College in 1846 in a class of only five men. Before his admission to the bar in 1850, he served as principal of China and Vassalboro academies.

He served in both branches of the legislature and was Attorney General of the state. He Was one of the nation’s best known Masons and the author of the Maine Masonic Textbook. He was one of the few Maine men ever to take the rare and coveted 33rd degree. He died in Portland in 1902 at the age of 75. For 45 years he was a trustee of Colby Colloge and chairman of its board fer twelve years.

In 1890 Josiah Drummond wrote his recollections of a Waterville fence in the days of his boyhood and young manhood. I think you will find his comments interesting. Here they are: til remember when there was no. fence at the town hall, but after one was built I straddled ever it many times to get from Main Street to the hall, instead of going around by Common Street. After a time some pests were set up so we could pass through. One time there was a pair of bars there so that a team could be driven through. That was the case in 1851, when I first made Waterville my home, though I had studied law there in 1848. I recall that the fence ran closer to the hall than to Main Street.”

In 1845, when Josiah Drummond was a senior in Waterville College, he wrote the following letter to his brother John Drummond in Winslow. But this was not a letter that went only across the river. It was written during the long winter vacation at the college, and like most of his fellow students, Josiah was teaching a country school. So it was from Woolwich that on January 2, 1845 Josiah wrote to his brother as follows: “I snatch a few moments to let you know that I am alive and well, but my school is not quite what I could wish. By the time this reaches you, I shall have kept this school for seven weeks, and I expect to keep it for seven more, but it may run to nine, sixteen weeks in all.

“My boarding house is first rate.The district pays me $28 a month and I board myself, so all I actually get from my landlady is room and washing at one dollar a week. I am really well off, because all of my classmates are paid less for their schools and they all have more scholars than I.

“At my boarding house the family consists of Mrs. Stinson, a widow lady, who runs the house; another widow, Mrs. Tallman, who is the landlady’s cousin; two Stinson girls, Harriet and Frances, aged 11 and 13; Mr. Garland and his wife; and last, but not least, certainly in inches, myself. The house is half a mile, ten minutes walk from the school house.

“I also keep a grammar school once a week. It has only one class of twelve scholars. In my regular school I had 50 scholars today, more than ever before. The average is 45.

“By the way, you can write as much as you please on any newspapers you send me. The postmaster never thinks of opening them.

“The weather is very mild. I have not had on my greatcoat since I came here, and I have worn my gloves only once.

“I must tell you how I spend my evenings. Sunday evening I go to meeting, Monday to the Debating Club, Tuesday I visit, Wednesday to prayer meeting, Thursday keep my grammar school, Friday to singing meeting, and Saturday I write letters and visit and talk. I also hear George Stinson recite Virgil every evening except Saturday. I am as well contented as 1 could be away from home.

“I am beginning to plan how I shall get home when the term is over. It will cost so much to go by stage that I think some of you had better come down and get me. You could start in the morning and get here at night. Then the next day we could come part way home by going around by Brunswick College, where I would like to stop, if it is good sleighing. However, it is of no consequence now, as we shall have time to think about it. Perhaps Cousin Daniel would like to come with you. 1 am almost out of money and I must soon settle my postage bill, because the office is going to be changed and the postmaster who leaves must settle all accounts. After I pay him I shall have little left. I should like to have a dollar sent me for fear something might happen. I have no chance to spend it and it will last for some time, but I want it handy in case of emergency. Send it in a letter.”

Five years later, in 1850, when Josiah Drummond had decided to follow the Forty-Niners out to California, he wrote from New York to tell his brother about his trip to the biggest city Josiah had yet seen. He had taken the boat from Portland to Boston. Then, instead of taking the famous Fall River Line, he went by train over the Western Railroad (later the Boston and Albany) to Springfield, where he changed to another train down the Connecticut River to Hartford, then on to New Haven. On the way Josiah says he saw a curious sight, the salt meadow covered with stacks of hay looking like Hottentot camps. In later years that was a common sight for travelers who approached Portland on the western division of the Boston and Maine through Scarborough.

At the New Haven station Josiah spotted a Yale student wearing the insignia of Delta Kappa Epsilon, Josiah’s own fraternity.”I made up to him”, wrote Josiah, “gave him the grip, and was at once acquainted. He lived in New Haven and pressed me earnestly to visit his home, but I could only stay till the cars started for New York. I had forgotten all about dinner, but I got a pocketful of chestnuts and munched them all the way to New York. ”

The country boy was duly impressed by the metropolis. He wrote: “New York is not like Boston. Its streets are wider, straight and regular, and every corner is numbered. In Boston I could get lost a dozen times, but not in New York. Many things here are different. Dutch, French, Spanish and even Italian signs are mixed among the English. There are splendid stores, as far beyond anything in Boston, as Boston is beyond Thomas Frye’s in Winslow.

“One thing here I don’t like. In the morning, however late you have been up the night before, you can’t sleep after six o’clock because of the incessant noise.

“Broadway is as long as from Uncle John’s to the corner, and four pence will give you a ride the whole length of it. A walk down and a’ride back gives a good chance to see the natives. It would take a month to go allover New York. You can get some idea of it by imagining all the space from Fort Halifax to China all covered with buildings laid out in streets.”

Josiah just missed a chance to go to California as a kind of law clerk at $300 a month, because the steamer with his prospective employer left New York just before he arrived. But he soon got another chance and did make his way to the gold fields, but in 1851 was back in Waterville to settle down to the practice of law. So much for Josiah Drummond.

Now to another subject. More than once there have been rumors of the discovery of precious metals in Maine. One such occasion came in 1855 when that reliable Augusta paper, Drew’s Rural Intelligencer, published the following account: “The rise of the Sandy River compelled the New Sharon gold diggers to abandon their operations just as they had got into successful progress. Mr. Trask showed us a quantity of gold from the size of a pinhead to that of a kernel of corn — the result of one day’s work by three men. There are many such lumps in the bed of the Sandy River, but we suspect there is more profit in cultivating its banks than in digging in its bed. No gold is found in the shifting sand overlaying the boulders that pave the river bed. The gold is found in the cavities, filled with black sand, between and under the boulders. Since constant pumping will be required when pits are sunk into the porous gravel, we think the quantity of gold that can be mined will not pay.”

In the same issue of his Intelligencer, Drew announced the opening of the Penobscot and Kennebec Railroad as far as Pittsfield. He wrote: “We understand that passenger trains will run regularly, after next Monday, February 15, from the station of the Portland and Kennebec RR in Augusta to Kendalls Mills in Fairfield, there forming a connection with the Penobscot and Kennebec, which extends at present to Pittsfield. The line from Augusta to Kendalls Mills is part of the Somerset and Kennebec, which crosses the Kennebec River at Augusta, passes through Vassalboro and Winslow, then recrosses the river at Waterville Village, proceeding up the west bank to Kendalls Mills. Early in the spring the Somerset and Kennebec will be built on to Skowhegan.”

One of Maine’s greatest of her early publishers was Luther Severance of the Kennebec Journal. When Drew started the Intelligencer in 1854, Severance had written a letter of congratulation and had promised Drew his hearty support. In his issue of January 13, 1855 Drew published the following editorial in his own paper: “Thirty years ago, in 1825, we made the acquaintance of a flaxen-haired youth who came to Augusta just out of his apprenticeship to Gale and Seaton, publishers of the National Intelligencer in Washington. He came as an adventurer in the printing business and issued proposals for a paper — there was then none in Augusta — to be called the Kennebec Journal. He not only edited, but actually printed his own paper, setting the type at his case from the thinking machine in his head. He proved to be the ablest editor that Maine ever had. In less than five years the people forced him into a seat in the legislature in Portland.

Later he was chosen to the state senate again and again. Then the folks sent him on to Congress. Less than twenty years saw the poor apprentice boy rise to a place in the national House of Representatives, in the very city where he had served his apprenticeship. Hardly had he returned to his editorial desk in Augusta when President Fillmore sent him as U. S. Commissioner to the Sandwich Islands, where he remained for four years. Though now in declining health, Luther Severance still writes weekly articles for his old paper.”

Every word that William Drew wrote about Luther Severance was richly deserved. Not the least of his accomplishments was the founding of a newspaper that survives to this day, for now in 1962 the Kennebec Journal has been in continuous existence for 136 years.

Year: 1962