Radio Script #570

Little Talks on Common Things

March 24, 1963

Our continued examination of the old papers found at the Waterville City Hall begins tonight with consideration of the city pounds.

During the first six years of Waterville’s existence as a separate town, domestic animals were permitted to run at large. Then in the warrant for the town meeting in 1808 appeared this article: “To see if the town will allow swine, cattle and horses to run at large.” The town voted to do nothing about cattle and pigs, but they decided to maintain a pound for the restraining of stray horses. Unfortunately the record does not tell us where that pound was built. We only know that Reuben Kidder was elected pound keeper. Very soon Kidder had to bring a case to the attention of the selectmen. An old document dated July 22, 1808 said: “To Nehemiah Getchell, Gentleman and Nathaniel Gilman, merchant, both of Waterville in the County of Kennebec: In the name of the Commonwealth of Mass., greeting.

Whereas one Reuben Kidder has taken up and impounded in the public pound in Waterville a certain two-year old mare colt, which beast is now in said pound, you are hereby directed to proceed to the pound and appraise the beast, at the value in money according to your best skill and judgment.”

The document is endorsed as follows: “July 23. 1808. Pursuant to the warrant to us directed. we have proceeded to the pound and have appraised the within mentioned beast there impounded to be of the value of $15. and we estimate the damage done to property at one dollar.”

Not until 1851 did the town vote to restrain cattle from going at large in the village, and even then they made the interesting exception of “such cows as are owned by poor people who shall be licensed by the selectmen”.

Probably for some time the pound keeper had been placed under bond, but the only record we have of that practice is dated 1861. when Henry White had to give bond of one hundred dollars. In those days professional bonding services had not become common, and White’s bond was signed by two citizens, Simeon Keith and Edmund Webb.

Why, in the midst of the Civil War, Waterville decided that it must have a new pound is not clear. Probably the old pound was falling to pieces; also it might not have been conveniently located to accomodate all sections of the growing town. Anyhow, at the town meeting in 1862 the voters decided to build a new pound. Concerning the location of this pound also we are left in the dark. Perhaps some listener can tell me where the 1862 pound was located. Some of the old town warrants refer to the building of that pound. Benjamin Hersom was paid $32 for cedar; Noah Boothby $42 for materials and labor. The lot was purchased of Otis Worthington for $50. Noah Boothby was the builder in general charge. Besides the $42 he received for his own supplies and labor, Boothby presented a bill for money he had expended in building the pound. That bill included iron rods $1.00, sharpening six drills 30 cents, 11 hinges and fastenings $3.81, screw bolts 20 cents, and ten pounds of spikes at ten cents a pound. Stone supplied by R.R. Clifford cost $2.50. Some of the citizens ~ho were paid to work on the structure were Milton Branch, Elden Herrick and Joe Robinson. The total cost of the pound was $76.14.

It is interesting to note what it cost to operate public affairs of Waterville in the early days. As an example. let us take a look at the year 1827. Total amount in town orders drawn that year was $2,815. Schools — all the schools in town and then there were fourteen districts, each with its own school house the total for all schools was $856. It cost a bit more to support the poor than it did to educate the children. Aid to paupers totaled $914. $12.50 was spent in surveying a lot in what is now Oakland for the “west burying ground”. Joseph Nye collected $5 for the breaking of his sleigh caused by a defect in the road. Office supplies, including all printing came only to $5.20. The keeper of the meeting house got $4. $60 was expended to supply the town with a hearse. The entire highway account came to $227, of which $102 was spent for repairs, including planks and timber for Emerson Bridge, $110 for making a new road, and $15 for damages caused by location of that road. It cost just one dollar to “run the town line”.

In those days towns had to support their militia companies. In 1827 Waterville paid $29 for militia rations and $9 for powder. Repairs of $1.36 were made on the East Meeting House — the building erected late in the 18th century and later converted into town hall and the armory.

To give you some idea of how little it cost to operate schools in 1827, let us note the expenditures in some of Waterville’s fourteen school districts. They were all one-room schools, each with a single teacher. Bear in mind that the figures I am about to give you covered not only the wages of the teacher, but all other operating expenses.

The largest district at Ticonic Falls, with its school house on the town common near the old meeting house, called for $79 to operate three terms in 1827. Another district in the village used $69, but the schools outside the village area fared much worse. One district actually operated for $10.62 and six of the fourteen districts spent less than $15. Naturally there was not much schooling in those rural districts. Some of them had no more than ten weeks of school during the entire year, and even in Ticonic Village the number of weeks that the schools were open totaled only 24.

Among the old papers turned up at City Hall was an interesting summary of expenses of the town from 1822 through 1827. The year I have just been talking about, 1827, was the most expensive with its total cost of $2.815. The cheapest year was 1825, when expenses ran only to $1,838, but in each of the other three years the costs were less than $2,300. There must have been some quibbling in Waterville when the citizens learned that it cost $800 more to run the town in 1827 than it had in 1826, and $1,000 more than in 1825. Furthermore, when the Treasurer closed his books in 1827, he reported that the town still owed $369 to the school districts, $145 for merchants for supplies to the poor, and sundry bills of $150.

We might here go back a bit and see in what condition the town found itself in 1808, only six years after its incorporation. Among those old papers at City Hall is one with this heading: “State of the Treasury, April 2, 1808.” The town owed on outstanding orders and unpaid bills $917, the lion’s share of which, $542, was owed to the several school districts. Among other debts were $22 to James Hasty and to Bacon and Gilman for clothing for the poor. Hasty and the Bacon and Gilman firm were at that time Waterville’s most prominent merchants. To offset those debts there was still due from Isaac Stevens, collector of taxes, about $840. This does not mean that Stevens was withholding any money he had collected, but rather that there had been committed to Stevens and technically charged to him the entire tax commitment of 1807, $840 of which he had presumably not collected. Smaller amounts, $47 for 1806 and $17 for 1807 were still due from previous tax collectors, making possible assets of $904 to offset the $917 of liabilities. Not a bad showing! But the figures were deceptive, because many dollars of those delinquent taxes doubtless eventually proved to be uncollectible.

So, if it is any comfort to present Waterville citizens, I am glad to remind them that when their great-grandfathers were running the town 157 years ago, Waterville was already in debt. Contrasted with total cost of $2,800 to operate the town in 1827, let us see what was the situation a little more than half a century later in 1882. In another six years Waterville would be a city, but in 1882 it was still run by a board of selectmen under appropriations voted at town meeting. The total appropriation for that year was slightly less than $25,000. In light of million dollar city appropriations today, that $25,000 seems a paltry sum, but it was nine times the total expenditures of 1827.

What had happened to Waterville’s finances during those 55 years is shown only too clearly by some of the items in the 1882 appropriations. The town already had such indebtedness that the appropriation for the single year of 1882 called for payment of $5,000 on the bonded debt, $500 to repay a temporary loan, and $1,750 to discharge interest on the debt. That made a total of $7,250, which was more than a quarter of the total appropriation. In other words, one dollar out of every four paid by Waterville taxpayers in 1882 went to bury dead horses.

In 1882 it cost the town $4,000 for its common schools, $1,500 for its relatively new free high school, and $500 for textbooks — a total of $6,000 for all educational purposes. It cost $700 to light the streets and $400 to provide a night watch. The fire department took $2,500, one tenth of the whole appropriation, and what do you think it cost for the police department, exclusive of that night watch? To police the city in the daytime cost for the whole year of 1882 just $150.

Now let us see what a change was wrought by the next fourteen years. What is the figure in 1896 that compares with that total cost of $25,000? The 1896 expenditures ran a bit in excess of $166,000, six and a half times the expenses of 1882. Now in all fairness we should point out that toward construction of the new city hall and purchase of its lot $18,000 had been paid from that one year’s appropriation, but that leaves $148,000, still almost six times the 1882 expenses.

Let us see what had happened in the different departments.

Cost of the common schools had jumped from $4,000 to $12,000; the high schoolfrom $1,500 to $2,500; the fire department from $2,400 to $4,500; the care of streets and highways from $3,600 to $11,000; sidewalks from nothing to $4,500; street lights from $700 to $3,500; support of the poor from $1,800 to $10,000; and the police department from $550, including the night watch, to $2,200.

That, in brief, is the story of the rising cost of the town’s official business during the nineteenth century. But remember it was the price paid for significant progress. With the rise in town expenditures came a rapid rise in productivity — that is, of dollars earned by agriculture, industry and services in the town. It is the same story today. There is no progress without cost, and those costs are paid only by the industrious earnings of the people.

The location of certain features of Waterville long since forgotten is revealed in the description of the boundaries of the various districts allotted to 27 highway supervisors in 1829. Listen to this one: “To Supervisor William Pearson, from house to Temples I Landing, thence to the Burying Ground via the old ferry road; also the road to the end of Ticonic Bridge.” Now let us see what that description tells us. We know that the old ferry road was what is now East Temple Street, leading from Main Street to the Kennebec River, where a ferry crossed the stream approximately where the footbridge now stands. The Burying Ground was, of course, the old cemetery where we now have Monument Park and the road leading to it was an extension of Temple Street west of Main, now known as West Temple. The road to the end of Ticonic Bridge was Front Street south of Temple.

Here’s another district: “From Hastyls corner by Crommettls Bridge to John Cool’s corner.” That means from the corner of the present Cool Street along that street to a point just north of the Oakland Road.

One more: “From Ticonic Landmark to end of new road near the spot where Joseph Allen formerly lived. 1I Ticonic Landmark was a stone marker set up near what is now the junction of Silver and Main Streets, and Joseph Allen lived on what we used to call the Plains, the new street referred to being the present Water Street.

Year: 1963