Radio Script #577

Little Talks on Common Things

May 12, 1963

Last week we told you how Waterville finally secured its supply of unlimited pure water from China Lake and the part played in that victory by the famous Waterville attorney, Harvey D. Eaton. After the formation of the district Mr. Eaton, throughout his long life, was alert to the best interests of the people who were dependent upon that water supply. Thirty years after China water had come to Waterville, affairs of the Water District became so troublesome that Mr. Eaton felt again compelled to intervene on behalf of the citizens. He asked that a public meeting be called, and on the evening of June 26, 1934 a gathering of 150 met to discuss the problem.

What had happened? The Trustees of the Kennebec Water District were accused of extravagance, waste and incompetence. At that time the trustees consisted of five men: S.E. Whitcomb and Arthur Picher from Waterville, William Nye and Harold Weeks of Fairfield, and the one appointee of the county commissioners, George Chamberlain of Winslow.

Former Mayor Herbert C. Libby was chosen moderator of the meeting. The Waterville Sentinel quoted him as saying in his opening remarks: “I voice the opinion of the people of Waterville when I express thanks to Harvey Eaton for drawing public attention to conditions existing in the Water District.”

Then, on behalf of the complainants, Mr. Eaton presented a bill of particulars. He first dealt with a mass of small expenses, each alone of little consequence, but together amounting to considerable money. Then he moved, as he put it, from the molehills to the mountains. He pointed out that all the engineering costs to build the plant and get the water flowing had been only $15,000, but that in the past four years the engineering expenses, just to keep the plant running, had exceeded $65,000. “It looks as if the engineers were instructed to design the most expensive things possible”, said Mr. Eaton. “Look at the building that houses the pumps”, he cried. “That alone cost $60,000. Until the bonds are paid off and the water rates lowered, the trustees have no business making architectural monuments.”

Mr. Eaton next called attention to the District’s revenues, more than two million dollars in less than 30 years. “If the affairs of the District had been prudently administered”, Mr. Eaton insisted, “all expenses could have been paid and enough money left to payoff all $750,000 of the original indebtedness. All that would have been necessary was careful insistence on sacred protection and accumulation of the originally intended sinking fund.”

The real trouble, said Mr. Eaton, came from the eagerness of squabbling politicians in the outlying towns to get into the trusteeship to collect fat fees for attending meetings. He contended that the board held unnecessary meetings, during one particular month as many as seven meetings. At $5 a meeting for a trustee’s attendance, that to Mr. Eaton looked like fattening the turkey. To add insult to injury, the trustees had now asked the legislature to increase their  compensation to $12.50 a meeting. That, said Mr. Eaton, was just too much effrontery and defiance of public interest.

With rousing cheers the Waterville meeting voted unanimously to oppose in the legislature that bill for higher pay to the District trustees. Then the crowd condemned vociferously and by overwhelming vote the taking of more than $17,500 in fees by the trustees in the 13 years since 1921.

Despite the careful explanation of former trustee Fred Rose, the meeting voted to disapprove the action of the board in its last refunding of district bonds.

Next there occurred sharp controversy between Mr. Eaton and young attorney George West. It concerned a motion to express no confidence in the District trustees. West contended it was unfair to ask for an expression of no confidence in the entire board, and that while there seemed to be justifiable complaint against outside members, that was the business of the electors of those members — in two instances the town of Fairfield, in one instance the county commissioners. Mr. Eaton took issue with that view. “I think”, he said with obvious emotion, “that, since the people of Waterville pay 3/4 of the cost of the district and are controlled by a majority of outsiders, they have every right to condemn actions so prejudicial to their interests.” So the meeting, with another loud whoop, passed a vote of no confidence in the present trustees.

With instructions to the moderator, Herbert Libby, to appoint a committee to make thorough investigation and seek proper amendments to the District charter, the meeting adjourned.

Where did I get all the information I have just given? I assure you there was no secret about it. It was all publicly printed for people of this region to read at their breakfast tables in the Waterville Sentinel on June 27. 1934. It can be happily reported that subsequent reforms proved satisfactory to all parties. and the district was not broken up, as had been at first feared. The Kennebec Water District went on to even more prosperous days. but it was not until within the past year that the town of Winslow was officially made part of the District.

From time to time on this program I have mentioned grants of land given to schools, and in the “History of Colby College” I have told about its two grants of land, the first received from the Massachusetts Legislature in 1815. the second many years later, in 1861,from the Maine Legislature. A number of persons have asked me how the schools and colleges happened to get these gifts of land.

When Maine became a separate state in 1820. there still remained a vast acreage of wild land called the Massachusetts State Lands in the District of Maine. and a source of contention between Maine and its mother state for many years was that the two states so long held a joint ownership to much of that land. At last it was finally settled as all belonging to Maine after our state had agreed to pay a substantial sum to Massachusetts.

After the Revolution, when Massachusetts was recognized as an independent state in the American Federation, and especially after the ratification of the Federal Constitution in 1787, the Legislature in Boston was annually importuned to help financially in founding or sustaining academies and colleges. The State Treasury was constantly empty; people would not stand for taxation to help private schools and colleges. But one thing the State did have in plenty — land and especially plentiful and unoccupied were its several million acres in the far-away District of Maine.

Between 1785 and 1793 a few grants were made west of Bangor and south of Norridgewock, because a few scattered acres in southern and western Maine were then still public domain. It was in 1793, however, that the Philadelphia financier, William Bingham, friend of Gen. Henry Knox. purchased his famous million acres in what were later to become the counties of Somerset, Piscataquis and Franklin. Those million acres began at a line just north of Norridgewock, extending almost due east and west, and stretched out toward northern Maine. But beyond the northern limit of Bingham’s million acres was still a vast extent of land not owned by any individual or corporation, but by the state. And a similar expanse of unclaimed land stretched on both sides of the Penobscot River above Bangor. After 1793, when the State of Massachusetts looked with favor upon school and college applications for land, it had to turn to those great forests of the north.

So far as schools situated within the District of Maine are concerned, it all began with Berwick Academy which in 1793, a few months after the Bingham Purchase, was granted a whole township of 23,000 acres in Harmony. On the same day Marblehead Academy, in old Massachusetts, got a township in Exeter. (The Maine names, mind you, are used by me merely to spot for you the location of the land grants. At the time when the grants were made, there were no such towns and in most instances no inhabitants on the land.)

A few months later in 1793 Washington Academy down at East Machias was granted a township in nearby Cutler. The next year Berwick Academy received a second grant, an entire township in Athens. Then in 1795 there went to Fryeburg Academy 18,000 acres near the New Hampshire line at Conway. In 1796 came the first grant to Maine’s first college, Bowdoin. It was a huge tract of 92,160 acres (four whole townships) in what are now Dover-Foxcroft, Guilford and Abbot. At the same time Bowdoin also got a full township in Dixmont. In 1800 there went to Phillips Andover Academy half a township in Greenwood, and to Dunner Academy at Byfield half a township in Woodstock. It was also in 1800 that Jacob Abbott was granted 4,000 acres between the Androscoggin and Kennebec Rivers, which was to be the nucleus of his later famous Little Blue School at Farmington.

In 1802 Williams College got a township at Littleton in Aroostook County and Groton Academy received 11,000 acres near Linneus. Then in 1803 attention was strikingly called to schools within the District of Maine itself. Within a short period in that year grants went to Portland Academy, Bridgewater Academy and the Monmouth Free School. In 1805 Lincoln and Bridgton Academies received lands, and soon after, similar favors were done to the academies at Gorham. Bath and Blue Hill. In 1810 came a whole rash of such grants that included Hebron, Monson and Warren Academies. Monmouth Free School.

Especially favored was Monmouth Academy, successor to the It got half a township in Ripley and posseSSion of nine islands in the Androscoggin River. In 1813 came another grant of two whole townships to Bowdoin College, this time in Piscataquis County. Maine’s second college, now Colby, got its grant in 1815, when to the Maine Literary and Theological Institution were conveyed 20,000 acres in Township 3, on the west side of the Penobscot River. Designated in the deed of conveyance as “land purchased from the Indians”, it was in wilderness above Bangor that later became the towns of Argyle and Acton.

The last school grant to a Maine institution made by the old mother state of Massachusetts was to Canaan Academy, of half a township in the first range of lots in Somerset County, north of the Bingham Purchase.

That was the situation when Maine took over. Though more niggardly of such largess than Massachusetts had been, and handicapped by joint ownership, the new state did continue to make occasional land grants to academies and colleges, and as late as 1861, on the very brink of the Civil War, the Maine Legislature conveyed to Waterville College (now Colby) two separated half townships ;n the vast wilderness above Moosehead Lake.

Year: 1963