Radio Script #607

Little Talks on Common Things

March 22, 1964

I am sure many of you listeners, especially the women, will be interested to hear about a wedding dress with Maine associations that has found its way into the collection housed in our famous national museum, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Very well known in the Waterville area is the Bessey family, to which Mrs. Webster Chester of Burleigh Street is related. When Miss Lenora Bessey of Stoneham, Massachusetts died, her will made Mrs. Chester’s husband, Professor Webster Chester, long head of the Biology Department at Colby, her executor. It seems that Miss Bessey possessed a very old dress that had come down in the family through several generations. A cousin of Miss Bessey’s, Mrs. Austin Clark of Washington, D.C. thought the dress interesting enough to deserve a place in the Smithsonian. After long negotiations Mrs. Clark secured acceptance from that museum, and at once got Prof. Chester’s consent to place the dress there.

The dress has an amazingly interesting history. The bride for whom it was made in 1777, in the midst of the Revolution, was Mary Gould, who had been born in Stoneham in 1753. The groom was Dr. John Hart of South Reading. The size of the dress shows that the bride was a small person, thus giving credence to the story, handed down in the family, that she could ·stand upright under the outstretched arm of her husband, whose two hands could encircle her waist.

In colonial days the road to a profession was much easier than now, and John Hart, the bridegroom, had already been declared a full-fledged physician at the age of 19, seven years before he married Mary Gould. He was a Revolutionary surgeon, first in the regiment of Col. John Prescott, and later in that of Col. John Bailey. He served throughout the war, so that his bride of 1777 must have spent many lonely months apart from her husband. Dr. Hart was one of the official witnesses at the execution of Major Andre, conspirator in the treason of Benedict Arnold. Hart was known and trusted by Gen. Washington. On one occasion he was commissioned to bring from Boston to Washington’s camp a large sum of money in gold, and he got it through Tory communities successfully. After the war Dr. Hart developed a large practice in Reading and Wakefield. He served several terms in both House and Senate of the Massachusetts General Court.

Dr. and Mrs. Hart had eight children, of whom the eldest, Mary, married Henry Prentiss of Paris, Maine. When Mary’s daughter Julia was about to be married, her grandmother wanted Julia to wear the dress in which the grandmother herself had been married. Julia was a high-spirited and sensible ~irl. About to be married to a Maine farmer, she insisted it just “wa’nt fittin”‘ for her to be married in such a fancy dress, and she chose a simpler gown. Mrs. Clark says she finds no record that anyone except Mary Gould Hart ever wore the dress.

It eventually came into possession of Mary’s great-great granddaughter, Miss Lenora Bessey. The dress is now too fragile to be exhibited on a mannequin. as are the dresses of the wives of all the Presidents. In the Smithsonian, Mary Gould’s wedding dress will be kept lying full-length in a display case. Made of the finest silk of colonial times, it is still preserved, though now too fragile to be worn.

At one time or another on this program mention has been made of every town in Kennebec County, but some towns have received a lot more attention than others. It is time that we had something to say about Fayette. After the automobile rider ascends the steep hill from Readfield Village to the hundred-year-old site of the Kents Hill School, and then drives on past the school to the west, he descends the hill on the other side and comes in a few minutes into the town of Fayette, today one of Maine’s very small towns, but once a thriving center of rural activity.

When it was laid out late in the 18th century, Fayette was one of those regular townships, six miles by six, containing the standard 36 square miles. It is in the extreme northwesterly part of Kennebec County, being bounded on the north by Chesterville in Franklin County and on the west by East Livermore in Androscoggin.

The first settler in Fayette was Chase Elkins, who came in 1781 and put up a crude cabin near the present site of Fayette Corner. The township was originally called Starling Plantation, and its proprietors were eager for settlers. At that time there was living in East Readfield the family of Elnathan Wing, who was captain of a coasting schooner. While her husband was away on a voyage, Mrs. Wing learned that some choice lots in Starling Plantation were to be put up for sale on a given day. With her child in her arms, Mrs. Wing walked the ten miles from East Readfield to Fayette, following a trail of spotted trees. She bought 150 acres of new uncleared land, paying for it with a cow and a feather bed.

At first Mrs. Wing’s purchase brought bad luck. When her husband and his two sons were felling trees to clear the land, a few months after the family got possession of the property, Mr. Wing was killed by a falling tree. His son Benjamin, however, cleared and occupied the farm. On it later was constructed the first brick chimney in town and the first stoned-up well. When the Kennebec County history was published in 1872, the author was obliged to say: “For many years there has been neither store nor tavern at the corner.” So Fayette’s prosperity had already begun to decline more than 75 years ago. But in the early years of the 19th century the road through the Corner was thronged with teams drawn by horses and oxen, carrying clapboards and shingles to Hallowell for shipment on the schooners to distant ports. On the return journey those teams carried merchandise for the many country stores along the route from Hallowell to the towns of western Kennebec, Franklin, Androscoggin and Oxford Counties. One old timer told the writer of the county history that, in the old days, any time when he went to his door in Fayette he could hear the rumble of wheels or the jingle of sleigh bells.

Fayette’s most prominent trader in its heyday was Joseph Underwood, who gave the name to that part of the town called Underwood’s Mills. He not only carried a big stock of merchandise in his store, but he also ran a carding mill and a tannery. His business became so extensive that his books showed more than 800 accounts, and these accounts covered territory from Andover in Oxford County, above Rumford Falls, to Edgecomb in Lincoln County near the ocean.

Fayette’s biggest landowner was Nathaniel Bachellor, who had come to the region from Kensington, N.H. He liked the place so well that he sold all his New Hampshire holdings and with the proceeds bought 1,500 acres of land in Fayette. In fact, by the time he died, Mr. Bachellor owned so much property in the town that he was able to leave each of his nine children 200 acres.

Like many another Maine town, Fayette has it~ legend of witchcraft. One does not have to go back to 17th century Salem to find belief in witches. It was prevalent in a lot of Maine towns even into the 19th century. A certain Mrs. Knowles in Fayette had the reputation of possessing the terrible power of the evil eye. When housewives had trouble getting the butter to form after long, tedious churning, they said Ma Knowles had bewitched the cream. So a red hot horseshoe was thrown into the churn. Folks insisted they could then hear an unearthly scream, proof that the witch had been badly burned. They even insisted that the next day Mrs. Knowles could be seen with a bandaged hand.

Fayette was incorporated in 1795. At the very first town meeting it was voted that swine should be allowed to run at large only if they were yoked according to law. They voted to spend thirty pounds for schooling and five times as much for roads, 150 pounds. For work on the roads men were allowed four shillings a day on their tax bills. Because that was the time of the New England shilling, rated at six to the dollar, that 30 pounds for schools meant a total of $100 for all the schools in the town of Fayette for an entire year, and that four shillings a day for work on the highways meant a day’s wage of 66 2/3 cents. At that time the town had nearly a thousand inhabitants.

Despite the meager start to provide schooling, Fayette later became proud of its rural school. Its historian wrote that no town of its size in Maine could boast of having sent out more successful teachers than had Fayette. It was a by-word around the county that Fayette was noted for its big oxen and its schoolma’ams. In the early days it was not unusual to find 70 pupils under the charge of a. single teacher, and one aged resident boasted in 1890 that years before he had one winter kept a school with 104 boys and girls. No wonder those old timers talked about keeping school instead of teaching school. Not very much individual teaching could have been exerted on anyone of those hundred youngsters.

Now let us have, as we close, a few words about Waterville. Two well known teachers in Waterville 60 and more years ago were Julia Stackpole and Sarah Lang. There are older persons still living who attended Miss Stackpole’s private school, and Miss Lang, who was somewhat younger, is even better remembered as a teacher of art. Miss Lang and Miss Stackpole were related. Both belonged to Waterville’s famous Stackpole family, founded here by James Stackpole, who was a merchant in Waterville some time before the coming of the 19th century, and whose grandson was for many years treasurer of Waterville College. The original American Stackpole also had been James, had come from England in 1780. Miss Julia Stackpole was descended from his oldest son John, while Sarah Lang was descended from the third son Philip. Thus two of Waterville’s best remembered teachers of 75 years ago were distant cousins. In fact Miss Lang’s grandmother bore the Stackpole name, Ann Elvira Stackpole.

I said Miss Lang was younger than Miss Julia Stackpole. She was indeed much younger. Miss Stackpole was born in 1829 and lived until 1918 at the age of 89. Miss Lang was born in 1863, but for quite a period both women were teaching in Waterville at the same time.

Year: 1964