Radio Script #700

Little Talks on Common Things

October 16, 1966

This broadcast sets up another record mark for Little Talks on Common Things, for this is the program’s 700th broadcast. For 700 Sundays since 1948 this program has been on the air over WTVL. Most of the seniors now attending Waterville High School were not born when Little Talks’ Program #1 went on the air.

Every broadcast of Little Talks contains about 1,700 words. That means, in the 700 broadcasts a total of 1,190,000 words have gone out over the air on the many subjects covered by this program. They certainly haven’t been very important words, but many people seem to have enjoyed them.

One of the buildings torn down by urban renewal in Waterville was a big block on the north side of Silver Street known as the Heywood Apartments. The name commemorated a family once prominent in the community. Jonathan Heywood came to Waterville early in the 19th century and at once began to acquire property. On April 5, 1832 William Redington, son of the Waterville pioneer, Asa Redington, conveyed to Jonathan Heywood, for the sum of $30, a parcel of land described as “that part of the Coverly lot which lies west of the county road leading from Waterville village to Emerson’s Bridge”.

In 1835 Jonathan Heywood’s son Charles conveyed to his mother, Sarah Heywood, the equity of redemption in six lots of land in Waterville. That conveyance shows what extensive property owners the family had become by the end of the first third of the 19th century.

Description of the first of those six lots shows that in 1835 Silver Street had not received its present name, for the description reads: “On the south side of the street leading from Main Street to the Universalist Meeting House, it being the lot on which my dwelling now stands”.

The second piece of land referred to a lot near the present Castonguay Square: “A lot of land adjoining the Meeting House Common, on which stands a shop formerly occupied by a saddler’s shop.”

Jonathan Heywood himself had been the occupant of that shop, because the 1832 deed to him of land from William Redington described the purchaser as Jonathan Heywood, saddler. The third piece had once been a part of the McKechnie survey’s famous Lot 104, the lot purchased by Timothy Boutelle from the Temple family. It extended 40 rods on the Kennebec from a point almost directly behind the middle of the present Arnold Building on Main Street to a point opposite the Flood Building, and it extended west for a full mile to the First Rangeway. The part of this big lot that Charles Heywood’s 1835 deed described as “adjoining land lately belonging to Isaac Stevens and adjoining the mile-and-a-half stream”, the deed stated had been purchased by the Heywoods from Timothy Boutelle in 1806. The mile-and-a-half stream was the running water later called the Emerson Stream and in our day the Messalonskee.

Another 10 acres from Lot 104 was the fourth parcel described in Charles Heywood’s deed of 1835. It is called in the deed “part of the SW 50 acres of Lot 104, containing 10 acres, and is land set off in a deed from Obadiah Williams to Abijah Smith in 1800.”

A fifth parcel of five acres is described as “a lot bounded on the east by the road leading from the Universalist Meeting House to Augusta, on the west by mileand-a-half stream, and on the north by land of Nathaniel Gilman.”The road from the Universalist Meeting House to Augusta was what is now called the West River Road or the Sidney Road along the west side of the Kennebec through Sidney to Augusta. That is the route which at the time of Heywood’s 1835 deed was traveled by the Waterville-Augusta stage.

The final one of the six parcels listed in the deed was a small piece of three acres adjoined by the lands of Simeon Mathews and Asa Redington. Ten years later, in 1845, Charles Heywood obtained from Silas Redington a small lot described as “lying on the east side of the road leading from Ticonic Landmark to Emerson’s Bridge”. Ticonic Landmark was a stone in the present Castonguay Square from which for more than a century measurements and directions were made. The lot referred to was the lot next south of Silas Redington’s residence, which is now the Redington Museum.

With this background of the early Heywood property in Waterville, let us now come to the very interesting story of the career of Charles Heywood, son of Jonathan, the young man who deeded those six lots to his mother in 1835. The reason why he conveyed that deed was because he was leaving the United States on a hazardous mission, and he knew not whether he would ever return.

In 1825 Charles received an appointment to the new United States Military Academy at West Point. This commission is still preserved. Signed by the Secretary of War who would later become the most prominent statesman of the South, it reads: “Feb. 21,.1825. You are hereby notified that the President has this day appointed you a cadet in the service of the U.S., and that on reporting to West Point, N.Y. in the month of June next, you will be examined for admission, and if qualified will be admitted as a cadet. John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War.”

For some reason now not clear, because documentary evidence is missing, Charles Heywood later became an officer in the Marines rather than in the Army, and it was as a Lieutenant in the Marines that he was on a ship in the Mediterranean three years after he conveyed the six lots to his mother. Among the Heywood papers preserved is Charles Heywood’s certificate of marriage to a Spanish girl in the Balearic Islands on December 28, 1838. It is a long document in Spanish and here is the translation of a part of it: “In the city of Mahon. Province of Baleares, in the parish church of Santa Maria, on the 28th of December, 1838, Don Carlos Heywood, 23 years of age, Lieutenant of Marines in the service of the Republic of the United States of North America, son of Don Jonathan, living in the said United States and Donna Sara Blackwell, his deceased wife, natives of Waterville, Province of Maine, in the USNA, took in marriage Donna Antonia Delgado, 23 years of age, daughter of Don Miguel and Donna Martina Gahona Delgado. Married by Don Gabriel Llambia, Doctor of Sacred Theology and Rector of the Parish Church of Santa Maria in the city of Mahon in the Island of Minorca.”

That Spanish certificate was endorsed in English as follows by the American Consul: “I, Obadiah Rich, Consul of the USA for the Balearic Islands, do hereby certify that the Rev. Gabriel Llambia, who has signed the foregoing certificate of marriage between Lt. Charles Heywood and Antonia Delgado of this place is rector of the parish of Santa Maria at Mahon, and as such full faith and credit ought to be given to his deeds.”

Fifteen years later, on February 16, 1853, Charles Heywood died, still in the Marine Corps service. Whether he died by violence or by disease we do not know, but we do know that his wife was then still living in Waterville — a Spanish woman far from her native Mediterranean home. Only two months after her husband’s death, Mrs. Charles Heywood in Waterville received a paper that read as follows: “Charles Heywood, who was a Lt. in the U.S. Navy, died on the 16th of February, 1853, and having lost his life while in the service of the U.S., Antonia Heywood, his widow, is entitled to receive at the Navy Pension Office in Washington, D.C., $25 per month, payable half yearly, to commence on January 1, 1853 and to continue during her widowhood, and in case of her death or remarriage, the pension shall be paid to the child or children of said widow until they respectively arrive at the age of 16 years.”

One who examines the financial records of a century and a half ago is likely to be surprised when he discovers how infrequently real money changed hands. Very little payment, even for small transactions, was made in cash. The commonest form was the promissory note — a legal promise to pay on a certain future date a stated amount of prinCipal. plus interest usually at 6 per cent.

A striking example of how these transactions were made occurred on March 27, 1819, when donathan Heywood borrowed $260 at the Waterville Bank. To cover the loan, Heywood placed with the bank president, Timothy Boutelle, notes that Heywood himself had taken from other persons in payment of debts. Showing how small such notes then were, it is a fact that, to cover what we today would call a small loan of $260, Heywood deposited as collateral no fewer than 25 different notes ranging in amounts from $3.25 to $22.00. In time the dates of those notes ranged from January, 1815 to September, 1818.

Men who gave notes in those days when ready cash was not easily available were by no means always from the poorer families. Some of the signers of those 25 notes that Timothy Boutelle took from Jonathan Heywood included such prominent early Waterville families as Crowell, Osborn, Pullen, Shepherd and Nye.

Antonia Delgado Heywood needed that $25 a month pension allowed her in 1853.

Six years later, in 1859, Waterville Judge Josiah Drummond signed the following statement: “Whereas it has been proved to the court that the personal estate of Charles Heywood, deceased, is not sufficient to pay the just debts and demands against said estate, and the deceased died possessed of certain real estate in Waterville, the administrator of said estate, Antonia Heywood, is ordered to dispose of said real estate, to wit: beginning at the SE corner of the homestead lot of said deceased, in the N line of Silver Street, thence N to the north line of the homestead lot, thence E to the land of Sumner Wheeler, thence S to the first mentioned bounds.”

And on that sad note ends the story of one of Waterville’s prominent early families, the Heywoods.

Year: 1966