Radio Script #637

Little Talks on Common Things

January 17, 1965

We are in such vital need of new and comprehensive histories of most Kennebec Valley towns that it is gratifying to greet one fresh from the press. The latest of the published town histories is about Albion, and it is the work of a devoted and highly competent historian, Mrs. Ruby Crosby Wiggin. She has spent years of patient research into the town records, property documents, account books, and letters, and she has been especially painstaking in her search for and conversations with old time residents of Albion, some of whom had long ago moved to distant parts.

Mrs. Wiggin has given her book the appropriate title “Albion on the Narrow Gauge”, for of all the Sheepscot and Kennebec towns on that little two-footer, Albion was favored by being the northern terminus of the road. At Albion were the turn-table and other facilities, and there many members of the train crews made their homes. Too many town histories are dry reading — little more than tabulations of events and numerous family lists. While Mrs. Wiggin has been careful to include significant events and make clear the importance of families, she has done much more.

She gives explanations where they are needed; she does not hesitate to interpret events, a ticklish necessity for any true historian. Best of all, her book is filled with delightful anecdotes, a few solemn, but most of them humorous. These make the reading of the book as pleasant as reading a novel. Furthermore the book is copiously illustrated. The pictures include the town’s first horse-drawn school bus, the arrival of Peter Taylor at the end of his record-breaking hike from Eustis, a Fourth of July parade, the Wellington Inn that burned in 1898, and the famous Crosby mansion, also destroyed by fire.

The book tells the full story of George H. Crosby, inventor of the Crosby Safety Valve and many other improvements on steam engines, and the man who was chiefly responsible for building the narrow gauge railroad into the town. Mrs. Wiggin’s account of that unusual career includes a floor plan of the mansion as drawn by Mrs. Hortense Crosby Plummer. It shows such designations as Blue Room, Old Rose Room, Red Room, Auntie’s Room and Boys Bedroom. The building was of four stories and a cupola. There were piazzas on both the west and east ends, and another along the east side of the wing. The fourth floor was a big, open attic, but the other three floors had furnished rooms, 22 in all. There were 17 bedrooms, but only one bathroom in the entire big house.

Mrs. Wiggin gives due attention to Albion’s most famous son, Elijah Parish Lovejoy.

The past four years have seen three full-length biographies of Lovejoy, the latest by an Illinois state senator, whose district includes Alton, where Lovejoy met his tragic death. But not one of those biographies tells much about the famous martyr’s brothers and sisters, except his Congressman brother Owen. Mrs. Wiggin makes it plain that there were other worthy members of the family. Elijah was not the only clergyman in his family generation. His brother Joseph graduated from Bowdoin in 1829, became pastor at Old Town, where he was joined by his sisters, Sybil and Elizabeth. A chaplain in the Aroostook War, Joseph was a man of considerable means compared with the usual impecunious clergyman of his day. He was listed as having two servants and three horses.

Another brother, John Ellingwood Lovejoy, was appointed Minister to Peru by President Lincoln.

Illustrating her Lovejoy chapter, Mrs. Wiggin shows us pictures of the huge Lovejoy monument in Alton, Illinois; the Lovejoy Memorial Tablet in Albion; the Lovejoy homestead on Lovejoy Pond, reproduced from an old painting and a close view of the house in which Elijah Lovejoy was born, taken shortly before the building was destroyed.

Mrs. Wiggin makes clear Lovejoy’s connection with Colby throughout the years. She tells us how the Class of 1921 brought to the campus and suitably inscribed on a stone from the base of the chimney of the old Lovejoy home; how the college, with the help of American editors and publishers, erected a classroom building memorializing Lovejoy’s stand to the death in the cause of freedom of the press; the now nationally famous Lovejoy Convocation, held annually at the college and that Colby has assumed responsibility for the upkeep of the family cemetery, where Lovejoy’s parents and many other relatives are buried, on the shore of the little pond where the famous martyr, his father and his grandfather used to fish.

Now for a few of the delightful episodes that so enliven Mrs. Wiggin’s book.

Concerning school transportation, Mrs. Wiggin writes: “Therese Hall Carroll first began carrying scholars almost as soon as she was able to drive alone, with the little brown pony called ‘Bob’. How that little pony loved to run away. As long as he stayed on the road, we simply hung on until he was tired of running. When he decided to take off across the fields, we usually rolled out. No one was ever hurt and no one seemed to be afraid he might be.”

Mrs. Wiggin brightens up her section on the Baptist Church with this anecdote: “Near the church lived the Copelands, who raised turkeys. In the woods back of the house were many beech trees, and there. in the fall of the year, the turkeys were apt to wander in search of beechnuts. At night the wandering fowl were rounded up by members of the family. One night not a turkey was in the woods. Early the next morning the family resumed the search. Finally the birds were discovered. A more solemn congregation probably never spent so long a time at a single church sitting. There were the turkeys lined up on the church pews, facing the pulpit. Some of the birds were perched on the stovepipe overhead. They must have been the choir, or perhaps they were a few saintly birds that desired to be a little nearer heaven.”

Equally amusing is Mrs. Wiggin’s own girlhood experience with a hooped skirt.

Far from old enough to have been even a child in that bell-bottomed era, Mrs. Wiggin’s wearing of the garment was for a Chatauqua costume. Children were offered free admission to the Chatauqua one afternoon if they came in costume. Let Mrs. Wiggin now tell the story her own way: “I chose a dress with a small hoop skirt, and with the help of my mother and grandmother I finally got dressed and set out with horse and wagon. Driving to the sheds under the Grange Hall, I stopped the horse outside, cramped the wheels to the left, put the reins over the dasher, and started to get out in a lady-like manner. As I stepped down on to the wagon step, my hoop skirt caught over the whip socket and held me fast. By the time I got disentangled the horse, eating grass all the while, had cramped the wheel in the other direction so far to the right that there wasn’t room for me to get between the wheels. After several tries I gave up, put my foot on the wheel and jumped over like any tomboy. But that wasn’t the end of my troubles. When one walks sedately along the street, hoop skirts are no problem, but when one sits down, the front either comes down and the back goes up. or the back goes down and the front comes up. Being a well dressed lady in the middle 1800’s must have been an art.”

Although much has been written during the past ten years about Maine’s narrow gauge railroads, there is much still to be said. Mrs. Wiggin’s long chapter on the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railroad is therefore a welcome addition to our knowledge about the two-footers. Quoting the Biblical proverb, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”, Mrs. Wiggin makes it plain that Albion had more than sentimental treasure tied up in that little rail line. A lot of town money went into that laudable, but hardly profitable, venture. I myself have a bond issued by the original corporation, the Wiscasset and Quebec R.R., for which some trusting soul paid a thousand dollars. Attached to that bond are more than twenty uncollected coupons. The certificate long ago became worthless.

Despite such investment losses, Mrs. Wiggin shows that the little railroad did mean much to the town of Albion and for a few years brought material prosperity. But it is mostly sentiment that prompts nostalgic memories of that two foot line whose initials WWF came to be designated by the scoffers as “Weak, Weary and Feeble.” This is the way Mrs. Wiggin puts it: “A train came into Albion every night. where the run for the day was completed and the engine put in the roundhouse for the night. While others up and down the Sheepscot Valley knew the joy of seeing her pass or hearing her whistle, Albion knew the thrill of a train come home.”

A mere collection of good stories about Maine’s narrow gauge lines would easily fill a volume of 300 pages. Mrs. Wiggin includes some choice incidents of life on the W Wand F. One was about the engineer called the Irishman. On a winter day he had just blown the whistle for a crossing when he spotted an old fellow with a load of hay on a set of sleds. The driver was frantically flicking his whip to urge the team over the crossing before the train got there. Sticking his head out of the cab window, the engineer gave one of his unearthly yells and at the same time opened wide the whistle. That would have been enough to scare both man and beast, but at the same time the engine suddenly jumped the track. Instead of tipping over, it simply swung crosswise and headed in the same direction as the farmer with his load of hay. The old fellow had indeed cleared the crossing ahead of the train, but when he looked back there was that infernal monster still headed right for him. He must have thought that engine was bewitched and he was its sure victim.

One day while the cars were being shifted in a train yard, several of them were shunted down a siding toward the station, where a bent rail bumper was supposed to stop them. But those cars had been given an unusually hard push. They broke the bumper and crashed right into the station. The agent was sitting at his desk making out a report, using an old-fashioned pen and a bottle of ink. When those cars came crashing in, the agent got the bottle of ink full in the face. Wearing a full beard, he was a sight to behold. Not only was his face covered with ink, but his beard was dripping with it. What a mess!

I hope what I have told you will make you want to read Mrs. Wiggin’s book for yourself. Next week I shall tell you about another new book devoted entirely to that same narrow gauge road, written by Clinton Thurlow of Weeks Mills.

Year: 1965