Radio Script #572

Little Talks on Common Things

April 7, 1963

In this sixth successive broadcast that deals with old papers found at Waterville’s City Hall last spring, I want to begin with some of the old relations with adjoining towns to the west.

When Waterville was incorporated in 1802 the town included most of what is now Oakland, ~nd the settlement at the foot of Messalonskee Lake was then called West Waterville. That part of Ten Lots that is now in the town of Oakland was also then in Waterville, the line between that part of Waterville and the town of Fairfield being near the present site of the Williams Memorial Hall in Ten Lots, which is the old site of the original meeting house in that community.

In 1808 the selectmen of the town of Belgrade decided the time had come to mak~ sure about the boundary between Belgrade and Waterville. So on April 11 of that year James Lombard, a professional surveyor, wrote to Abijah Smith, the town clerk of Waterville, as follows: “I would acquaint you that I, being appointed a surveyor by the Selectmen of Belgrade and the Selectmen of Waterville respectively, to perambulate, run and renew the dividing lines between the two towns, find as follows: “Beginning at a stake and stones on the east side of the county road between Sidney and Waterville, after taking a range of that line, we ran west 23° north across Snow Pond, there set up a stake and stones, this being the northeast corner of Belgrade. From thence we continued the same course to the southwest corner of Waterville and marked a yellow birch tree standing about three rods to the south of the corner. I was accompanied by John Jones of Belgrade and by Samuel Downing and Asa Soule of Waterville. James Lombard, Surveyor.”

The old name of the town of Smithfield was Dearborn, and in 1840 there was a movement to annex Dearborn to Waterville. which only a few months before had been incorporated as a Maine town. The movement seems to have had political motivation, inspired by the Maine Democrats, who had just lost the governorship to the Whigs. That was the year when the Whig candidate for President, William Henry Harrison, also won the national election under the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”. In Maine the Democrats expressed their disappointment and their dire predictions for the state’s future by spreading the word that Maine had gone “hell bent for Governor Kent”. Determined to win back the state house, the Maine Democrats started a movement to reorganize the towns, and one step in that direction was the plan to annex Dearborn, where there was a majority of Democrats, to the Whig stronghold of Waterville.

At a special town meeting of 1840, one hundred and thirty Waterville citizens unanimously voted to oppose the annexation of the town of Dearborn, and Reuben Foster and John Mathews were chosen a committee to attend the legislature and oppose the annexation, as the record says, “to the last extremity”. The bill was defeated, but when Democrat John Fairfield was back in the governor’s chair in 1843 it was a different story. Then, despite the vigorous protests of Waterville voters, the legislature voted to approve the annexation. It lasted only a short time, for within a few years the town of Smithfield came into existence. The whole agitation, however, explains an old bill found among those Waterville papers last spring. It reads:

“June 9, 1840. Town of Waterville to R. M. Dow, dr.

“My expenses on the committee to remonstrate and prevent the annexation of Dearborn to Waterville.

“1 day goi ng to Dearborn to collect evi dence $ 2.00

“2 days at Augusta before the Legislature 4.00

“5 days attending Legislature 10.00

“1 day making survey 2.00

“4 days at Augusta 8.00

$ 26. 00”

In the first half of the 19th century the towns used to try hard to tax intangible property. The state had passed a law requiring all corporations chartered by the state to report to each town annually the number of shares held by each owner of the stock who resided in that town. Among the old papers at Waterville’s City Hall are a number of such corporation returns. One of those papers is dated May. 1839. and lists Waterville residents who held stock in the Ticonic Bank. Altogether those residents held 336 shares. each with a par value of $100. The largest holder was Timothy Boutelle with 47 shares. Next came Simeon Mathews with 45. Jediah Morrill with 40 and James Stackpole with 35. Asa Redington had 30 shares and John Mathews had 20. Altogether there were twenty stockholders in the Ticonic Bank. with the smallest amount held by Waterville Lodge of Masons. who owned just three shares.

The same bank’s returns for 1842 showed very little change. Timothy Boutelle still had his 47 shares. but Asa Redington’s had increased to 40. In that brief span of three years since the 1839 report. three prominent Waterville men had died. for among the holders recorded were the Estate of Isaac Stevens. the Heirs of William Phillips. and the Estate of Simeon Mathews.

A new Waterville bank, the Merchants Bank, reported in 1842 just one local stockholder: James Rawson with ten shares. But two Waterville men owned stock in the Skowhegan Bank. Dr. Stephen Thayer held 32 shares and John Philbrick had 30.

In 1858 another bank, the Waterville Bank, had been revived under the impetus of D.L. Milliken, who owned 82 shares. The next largest stockholder was Thomas Kimball with 35, and a number of Waterville men, including Charles Thayer. James West and Daniel Blaisdell had 20 shares each. The then-young co-publisher of the Waterville Mail. Daniel Wing. had six shares, and the rising young iron worker, John Webber, had four. Only one woman appears on that list of stockholders: Laura Nudd with four shares.

One corporation in which many Waterville citizens had financial interest was the Androscoggin and Kennebec R.R. Unfortunately the earliest reports of that corporation to the town of Waterville are missing, and the first return found among the old City Hall papers is dated 1862. The railroad had come to Waterville in 1849, and its original stock had been subscribed several years earlier than that. By 1862 Timothy Boutelle had died, and he must have been at the beginning a large stockholder, for he was the first president of the road.

In that Civil War year of 1862 we find that Dennis Milliken, chief owner of the Merchants Bank, held 25 shares in the railroad, and that Jediah Morrill, one of the road’s original promoters. still had 19 shares. Another wealthy Waterville man, James Stackpole, held 22. Charles Hathaway, the shirt maker, had eight, and the entire Redington family had just ten shares, divided four for William, four for Silas, and one each for Samuel and Charles. Two of the Percival family were interested in the railroad, S.J. with nine shares, Homer with eight. A hundred years ago college professors, even college presidents. were so poorly paid that few of them owned stock in any corporation. It is interesting, therefore, to learn that in 1862 James T. Champlin, President of Waterville College, owned one share of stock in the Androscoggin and Kennebec R.R.

Speaking of railroads, as early as 1880 those crossings on College Avenue were causing trouble. In that year the town meeting voted to appoint a committee, consisting of R. W. Dunn, C. R. McFadden and Simon S. Brown, to confer with the Maine Central R.R. to obviate the danger and inconvenience caused by the making up of railroad trains in the public highways of the town.

Those old papers at City Hall sometimes reveal the property holdings of some well-to-do Waterville men. During the first half of the 19th century Waterville’s leading citizen, by every criterion, was certainly Timothy Boutelle. He was the town’s most prominent lawyer, its heaviest taxpayer, first treasurer of the college, first president of the railroad, and had for several terms represented Kennebec County in the State Senate, and had served as its presiding officer.

In 1855, only a few months before his death, Timothy Boutelle turned in to the town assessors for tax purposes his own inventory of that part of his estate that was taxable in Waterville. It was only part, and indeed a small part of the Boutelle holdings, for either alone or in partnership with Nathaniel Gilman, he owned thousands of acres of land in various parts of Maine. It is interesting, however, to note the Boutelle real estate in Waterville, as the man himself listed it in 1855. He valued his Phoenix Block on Main Street — the building that long housed Allen’s Drug Store — at $3,100. His house and lot on Temple Street he listed at $1,800. He owned another Main Street brick block with $7,000, another house at $1,000, his new house and lot at the corner of Elm and Temple at $6,000, and a farm of 90 acres at $4.500. His total real estate holdings in Waterville amounted to more than $25,000 on the very low valuations of that time. The same property today would assess at closer to $200,000.

Among his other taxable holdings in 1855, Mr. Boutelle listed one horse and one cow $300. and 57 shares in the Ticonic Bank, $5,700. Then appended in the old gentleman ‘s own handwriting is the followi ng: “The debts I owe exceed what is owing to me. I own bonds in the million dollar loan of the A & K RR, which I value at $5,500. I own 25 shares of stock in the Penobscot and Kennebec R.R. at $15 a share, totaling $375, and 22 shares in the Ticonic Bridge at $70 a share, amounting to $1.540.”

Altogether the statement gives some idea about the holdings of one of Waterville’s wealthiest men 108 years ago.

As the central village in any Maine town grew in size, so that sometimes the villagers outnumbered the farmers and outlying residents, there often arose sharp divisions between villagers and farmers in regard to town appropriations. People in the village demanded sidewalks, paving of Main Street, J wat~r- supply and other conveniences. As time went on the needs extended to street lighting, sewers, full-time police and firemen. Was it fair for the outlying farmers to be taxed for things that benefitted only the village?

The solution reached in most Maine towns was the creation of a separate tax unit called the village corporation, which levied its own taxes for sidewalks, street lights and police and fire protection. Waterville had been in existence only 34 years when. in 1836. tired of frequent disputes in town meeting, the people of the village set up the Ticonic Village Corporation. One of its first orders was the purchase of a hand fire engine, Ticonic No.1. Years later that old engine became one of the most famous in the annual contests among Maine’s hand tub companies.

Year: 1963