Radio Script #623

Little Talks on Common Things

October 11, 1964

During the years that this program has been on the air we have frequently mentioned one or another of the early prominent families of Waterville. More than once a portion of some broadcast has been concerned with someone named Mathews. We have talked about Simeon Mathews, the storekeeper, William Mathews, the internationally known writer, and we devoted two entire broadcasts to the murder of young Edward Mathews in Waterville’s first and most sensational homicide.

It is time that I gave you a more systematic account of the Mathews family because it is one of the few families still living in Waterville whose ancestors settled here before the dawn of the 19th century. The present Norman Mathews of Western Avenue, who was for many years the distinguished principal of Waterville High School, and now curator of the Waterville Historical Society’s Redington Museum, is present custodian of the precious family records and is a direct descendant of the pioneer Mathews who came to Waterville in 1794.

The first John Mathews from whom came the Waterville line was born in Massachusetts in 1719. At Framingham in 1745 his son Jabez Mathews was born. When Jabez was a boy the family moved to Gray, Maine. There, when he was thirty years old, Jabez enlisted in Captain Ward’s company of Major Meigs’ division of the army, recruited for Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec in 1775. Jabez’ commander on that expedition, Capt. Ward, was the grandfather of the much more famous Julia Ward Howe, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

In Capt. Ward’s company Jabez Mathews started out from Pittston in one of the new bateaux built for the expedition by Col. Colburn. They stopped at Fort Western in Augusta, then at Fort Halifax in Winslow. After spending a night at Old Canaan, they went on to make the carry around Skowhegan Falls to their next encampment at Norridgewock.

The Waterville Centennial History says: “After reaching the Dead River region, Col. Ward’s command deserted Arnold and returned to Cambridge.” That statement is incorrect. In the first place there was no Col. Ward. He was Capt. Ward, commander of a company, and he was not in the division that turned back and deserted Arnold. That division was the fourth one in the army, the last up the river, and it was commanded by Col. Roger Enos. It is true that Enos brought back with him some of the ill and the injured from the preceeding three divisions of Mogan, Greene and Meigs.

But we know that Major Meigs himself continued on to the St. Lawrence with Arnold, and Capt. Ward and many of his company may have been in that party. So it is quite possible that Jabez Mathews, instead of being among Col. Enos’ deserters, may have gone through the horrors of that awful march through the swamp between the Kennebec and the Chaudiere. At best, like Nehemiah Getchell and John Horn of Vassalboro, we know that Jabez Mathews started out with Arnold.

In 1794 Jabez Mathews moved from Gray to Winslow, bringing his two sons, John and Simeon. John, the elder, had been born in 1783, his brother Simeon in 1785. Jabez kept a tavern and a store on the north side of Silver Street near where, until Urban Renewal, the Kimball hardware store was located. He built and lived in a house near the present site of the WTVL studios. Jabez Mathews died in 1828 and was buried in the old cemetery that is now Monument Park. His remains were later removed to Pine Grove Cemetery, where they still lie with many other members of the family.

It is from Jabez’ older son John that Norman Mathews is descended. In fact, every ancestor of Norman’s, from that great-grandfather John, son of Jabez, had been named John. It was the name of Norman’s father and of his grandfather. If you want to know how Norman escaped being also named John, you will have to ask Norman himself.

Norman’s great grandfather John had seven children. Besides the oldest son, John, who was Norman’s grandfather, there were two other boys and four girls. The best known of those brothers and sisters was Charles K. Mathews, born in Waterville, in 1823, who became in mid-century Waterville’s most famous dealer in books and stationery.

After 28 years in that business, he spent five years as agent for a publisher of school books. In 1874 he started the C.K. Mathews Insurance Co. and was its head for 23 years. Altogether this man enjoyed 56 years of uninterrupted business activity in Waterville. For eight of those years he was President of the Ticonic National Bank, and for 12 years he was a trustee of the Waterville Savings Bank. After his death in 1902 the insurance business was carried on by his son, Charles W. Mathews.

Now let us turn to the other son of Jabez Mathews who came to Waterville with his father in 1794. He was Simeon Mathews, who became known throughout central Maine as a trader and lumber dealer. At the turn of the century in 1800 he was in partnership with Nathaniel Gilman in a store where the Montgomery Ward building now stands. They later did business in a store on the site of the present Crescent Hotel.

It was from the records of that Gilman and Mathews store of 165 years ago that I got the material for a broadcast that some of you may remember which I made several years ago.

Either alone or in partnership with Gilman or others, Simeon Mathews had business interests in several Kennebec towns. Their records showed a lot of hauling to and from a kind of branch store that they had in Albion. They had another in Clinton, and a third in Belgrade. Of the many men who, in the early 19th century, traded in hats and shoes, cloth and leather, i ron and pewter, tea and coffee, sugar and spices, molasses and rum, for the farmers’ wheat, oats, flax and potatoes, none became better known or more prosperous than Simeon Mathews. He dealt in huge quantities of lumber every year, binding it into big rafts to be floated down the Kennebec to Bath and there loaded on ships for Boston, New York and Philadelphia. He owned and operated several longboats to ply between Waterville and Augusta or Hallowell, and with Nathaniel Gilman he shared ownership of the Schooner Ticonic, built at Waterville in 1804. Another of Simeon Mathews’ river boats, the Eagle, was wrecked on the rocks above Augusta when it was proceeding up the river with a big load of goods.

In 1826 Simeon Mathews built the mansion on lower Silver Street which to a later generation was known as the Terry house.

Simeon Mathews had six children, the oldest of whom, William, lived to achieve international fame. Born in Waterville in 1818, he graduated from Waterville College (now Colby) in 1835. He began the study of law in the office of Waterville’s famous attorney and wealthy land owner, Timothy Boutelle, then attended the Harvard Law School, from which he received the LLB degree in 1839. Admitted to the Kennebec County bar in 1840, he practiced law in Benton and Waterville for three years. Meanwhile, in partnership with Daniel Wing, in 1841 he started a Waterville weekly newspaper called the Watervillonian, which was changed the next year to the Yankee Blade.

In 1847 William Mathews moved the paper to Boston, where he published it for nine years. Then in 1856 he moved to Chicago where. after several years as a journalist, he entered college teaching as Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Chicago. After 1875, when he retired from teaching, William Mathews devoted himself entirely to writing. Among more than forty of his books, the best known was “Getting on in the World, or Hints on Success in Life”, of which 70,000 copies were sold in the United States, and as many more in other English speaking countries. The book was translated into Norwegian and Danish, German and Magyar, French and Italian.

Of all William Mathews’ writings I regard as most interesting the exciting chapter he contributed to the 1902 Centennial History of Waterville, entitled “Recollections of Waterville in the Olden Time”. When William Mathews wrote that chapter he was 84 years old, but his mind was still sound and vigorous. He lived for six more years, dying in February, 1909 at the age of 90.

It was another son of Simeon Mathews, Edward, who was Waterville’s first murder victim. Both on this program and in “Kennebec Yesterdays” I have told that story -how a respected Waterville physician, Dr. Valorus Coolidge, was convicted of killing young Edward Mathews by putting prussic acid in a glass of wine, all in order to conceal that he had borrowed from young Mathews a large sum of money.

Among the papers and other relics of the Mathews family now in possession of Norman Mathews is a brief diary kept by Charles K. Mathews, the man who ran the bookstore. It tells us that the family was always close to each other. On January 17, 1854 Charles wrote: “John Mathews spent the day with us, with his wife and little ones.” Waterville social life at that time is revealed by the entry: “Wife went to Shaws to attend the Sewing Society. We have just returned from sociable at Mrs. Silas Redington’s.”

The months of January and February, 1854 brought intense cold to Waterville. On January 21 it was 22 below zero. On the 30th the mercury sank to 32 below. From February 3 to 6 there were four successive days of cold without let up, the mercury reading on successive mornings 26, 28, 30 and 29 below.

On March 10 Charles Mathews tells us, the Waterville House was opened with a ball.

At the end of April the usual spring freshet raised the Kennebec and its tributaries. Mathews recorded: “Returned from Oliver Marston’s on foot via the railroad track. (That means the track along the county road from Oakland to the North Street underpass.) The water was so high the other side of the Marston Bridge that we had to procure a boat to sail from a few rods below the big hill to the bridge, sailing around Clay Hill, as it is called.”

On May 24, 1854 Mathews put into the diary this spicy item: “R.E. Paine was expelled from the college for stealing books from my store.”

In 1854 the new Pine Grove Cemetery was just being opened. On May 1 Mathews wrote: “Today the religious societies in town had a tea party at the Town Hall, the proceeds to be expended in ornamenting the new cemetery.”

On February 6, 1855 Mathews said: “The cars commenced running today regularly from here to Augusta.” That was the beginning of the Somerset and Kennebec Railroad. Already in 1849 the A & K RR had come to Waterville from Portland via Lewiston, but it was not until 6 years later that the line from Portland to Augusta was extended on to Waterville.

Year: 1964