Radio Script #683

Little Talks on Common Things

March 13, 1966

Last week saw the passihg of Waterville’s oldest citizen, Albert F. Drummond. The guns of the Civil War had ceased firing only a year before he was born on May 26, 1866. Had he lived less than three months longer, Mr. Drummond would have been 100 years old. The late Henry Winters, long a Waterville resident, lived longer than that, but Mr. Winters was not a Waterville native. Mr. Drummond was born, lived all his life, and died in Waterville.

Graduating from Colby in 1888, when George Dana Boardman Pepper was president, Mr. Drummond was always closely associated with the college. He served many years as a trustee, was frequently an officer of the old alumni association, and a member of the more recent alumni council. At the time of his death he was Colby’s oldest graduate as well as the oldest living member of the national fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon. Mr. Drummond had keen interest in athletics, was one of the founders and first members of the old athletic council at Colby, and attended games, especially football, even after he had reached the age of 90.

It was inevitable that a man of Bert Drummond’s interests and ability should be active in civic affairs. He served in both branches of the City government, was a trustee of the public library, and for several years president of the board, was a high ranking mason, an honorary Rotarian, and a leader in numerous community enterprises.

It was, of course, as Treasurer of the Waterville Savings Bank that Bert Drummond was best known. Entering the bank’s employ immediately after his Colby graduation in 1888, he was an active banker until his retirement in 1947, and even after that remained a member of the corporation, attending his 76th meeting in May, 1965.

It was my privilege to know Bert and Josephine Drummond well, especially during the past twenty years. We had a mutual interest in local history, and I frequently turned to them for information about the Waterville of earlier days. I had a delightful visit with Mr. Drummond only a few weeks before his death, and his memory was still keen as we talked about the Waterville of days gone by. Bert and Josephine Drummond will be missed not only by the numerous descendants, but also by hundreds of citizens who profited by their splendid influence.

By mere coincidence I received, during the very week of Bert Drummond’s death, a directory of Waterville that was published when Mr. Drummond was a junior in Colby College, in 1887. It is an interesting year in Colby history because it was the year when a man who would one day become a Colby President entered the college as a freshman. Frank Johnson came, a country boy from East Wilton, to attend his first classes at Colby in the fall of 1887.

So it is interesting to see what Waterville was like 79 years ago when Frank Johnson was a freshman and his fellow Deke, Bert Drummond, was a senior. The town was just on the verge of becoming a city, and the very next year would see the selectmen give way to a mayor and city council. But it would be nearly twenty years before the new city hall would be built. Aldermen and councilmen would continue to meet in the old meeting house and town hall on the common. It was the building later moved to Front Street where it long served as an armory for the local militia company.

The town offices were not in the old meeting house, nor in any other central place. In fact there were no full-time officers of the town. Every man in a town office served in it only as a side-line, devoting his major time to private business or profession. The selectmen and the chief of police both had their headquarters at 112 Main Street, near the present site of the Depositors Trust Company. The town clerk, Sidney Moor Heath, conducted the town’s business in his own law office at 29 Main Street. His residence, by the way, was far out near the corner of Silver and Grove Streets. Charles Johnson, another lawyer who would one day be a U.S. Senator, was the town treasurer who handled the town’s money in his law office at 116 Main Street. Municipal court was held in the private law office of the local judge, H.W. Stewart, at 77 Main. Some of the officials needed no office. One such was the pound keeper, John Lublowe.

For many years the town employed a night watchman. By 1887 the community was large enough to warrant two such officers, R.A. Call and C.H. Weeks. It is a curious fact the old colonial office oftythingman, to see that people behaved themselves in church, still existed in Waterville as late as 1887, though I suspect the town’s two tythingmen, T.J. Emery and Moses Roderick, had as little to do as the measurers of wood and bark have today.

Chairman of the school committee in 1887 was Albion Woodbury Small, professor of history at Colby. In a few years he would be president of the college and later, at the University of Chicago, would become America’s foremost sociologist. His colleagues on the school board were Attorney Jonathan Soule, and Waterville’s accomplished writer, Martha Baker Dunn.

In 1887 Waterville had about 4,000 population. A few facts will make plain how much the community has grown since that time. College Street, as College Avenue was then called, extended from the junction of Elm and Main to the upper railroad crossing at the north end of the old Colby campus. Beyond that point the highway to the Fairfield line was called College Road. On that road, beyond the upper crossing, there were only four stree’ts off to the left: Maple, Oak, Ash and High. In that part of the City between Pleasant Street and the Messalonskee, West Street extended only from North Street to Gilman. Bartlett and Burleigh Streets did not exist, nor did Carroll Street. Winter Street west of Pleasant ended at Nudd Street. It did not then cross the gulley. In 1887 there were no such streets as Lawrence, Pearl, Nash and Crummett, and no one had then heard of Sheldon Place. The place where Bert Drummond later built his attractive home, now the corner of Burleigh Street and Morrill Avenue, was just one part of a big, empty field sometimes used for a circus lot. Upper Main Street, which has seen such rapid development in recent years, had only three streets off to the west in 1887 — Dunbar Court, Boutelle Avenue and Prospect Street.

What we now call Castonguay Square was then the Common, though after the City Hall was built it would be City Hall Square until its name was changed to honor a war hero. But I wonder if any listener remembers the old name for the area of the present rotary at the head of Ticonic Bridge. In 1887 that section was called Barney Square and is described in the directory as “the junction of Main, Water and Bridge Streets”. Much more familiar in the memories of our older inhabitants today is the expression The Plains. Note how the 1887 directory describes that area: “Water Street from Sherwin to beyond Grove”. Water Street itself was listed as “from Barney Square to the foot of the Plains”.

At that time Western Avenue still had its old name of Mill Street, and the directory tells us it ended at Cool Street, just across the bridge where the pumping station now stands. Its extension to Oakland line was called the, Neck Road. Except for a few dwellings near the bridge on Mill Street, around the Crummett mills, on Cool and on the end of newly built Oakland Street, there was nothing west of the Messalonskee except scattered farms.

Of course, when it came to examining streets, I couldn’t resist the temptation to find out who lived on the street where I have made my home for the past 35 years, Winter Street. To my surprise I discovered that in 1887 the street might well have been called widow’s lane. To be sure the woman who lived in the house where I now reside was not a widow, but a maiden lady, Miss Lizzie Blaisdell. At 9 Winter Street, with Dr. and Mrs. George Howard, lived Mrs. Horace Parmenter and her daughter, Hattie. At No. 11 was a teacher, Belle Carpenter. At No. 7 was Mrs. Elizabeth Merrick. On the other side of the street at No. 10 was Mrs. Adeline Moor, while next door at No. 12 was Mrs. Emily Gifford and at No. 16 was Mrs. Louise Wheeler. At the corner of Winter and Elm was the residence of Mrs. Ann West. Quite an array of female domination for one street, wasn’t it?

Of course even Winter Street and its immediate vicinity had its men, some of them prominent in business and civic affairs. Until only a year ago the big white house at No.5 was still the Morrill house, and there in 1887 resided Mr. and Mrs. Llewellyn Morrill and their four brilliant daughters. At No.8 lived Frank Perkins; at No.9 the well known Dr. Howard; on the southwest corner of Winter and Pleasant was the home of Wellington Dinsmore; and on the northeast corner the big, high-ceilinged residence of the master builder, Increase Robinson.

So new was the development of Winter Street west of Pleasant that the houses there had no numbers in 1887. The residents are listed as follows: Luther Soper, Winter west of Pleasant; Ellsworth Dunbar, Winter west of Pleasant; Irving Townsend, Winter near Nudd; Howard Cook, Winter opposite Nudd.

Now let us see what the 1887 directory has to say about the town’s larger structures. They are listed under the heading “Blocks and Large Buildings”. Forty years earlier there had been just one big building on Main Street, the Phoenix Block, built by Timothy Boutelle. It was the block that long housed a drug store and was recently torn down to make way for urban renewal. But by 1887 business in Waterville had so prospered that Main Street had six blocks. In addition to the Phoenix they were the Dunn Block on Barney Square at the foot of Main Street, the Peavey Block at 29 and 31 Main, the Milliken at 24 to 30, the Plaisted at 40 to 44, and the Ware Block at 70 to 74. Noteworthy is the fact that in 1887 there was no big block on the east side of Main Street anywhere between what is now Post Office Square and the Common.

The only other large buildings noted in the directory were Coburn Classical Institute, the M.C.R.R. buildings at College and Chaplin Streets, and the Colby buildings across the way.

The fraternal orders all had meeting rooms on Main Street — the Odd Fellows at 28, the Knight of Pythias at 44. the Masons at 50, the Grand Army at 72, and the Ancient Order of United Workman at 77.

One major surprise confronted me in that old directory — the location of the Waterville Post Office in 1887. I knew, of course, that before the erection of the present Post Office in 1910, the office was for many years located on Common Street, and I knew that in the early part of the 20th century it was on Main Street near the Common where part of the Montgomery Ward Building now stands. But in 1887 the Post Office, believe it or not. was at No. 30 Main Street, which was then exactly atthe corner of Main and Silver, where is now the Rancourt Building.

On another broadcast I’ll give you some more information from that old directory, but we’ve used up our time today. So goodbye until next week.

Year: 1966