Radio Script #711

Little Talks on Common Things

January 1, 1967

A Waterville woman of long ago who deserves mention on this program was Mrs. Sarah Crosby, who became known allover the nation as one of only seven female court stenographers in the United States in the 1880’s. Born in 1832, she married Albert Crosby of Waterville, and she was 38 years old when in 1870 she took up the study of stenographic transcription. She became so noted for the speed and accuracy of her work that she was named official stenographer of the Maine Supreme Court.

When court was not in session, Mrs. Crosby found her services in wide demand. In 1897 she was called to Lynn, Mass. to report a course of lectures in medicine and surgery. The Waterville Mail said: “The selection of Mrs. Crosby for this service, so near Boston where professional stenographers are numerous, is not only a compliment to her qualifications, but also a token of liberality on the now heated woman question.”

What the Mail meant by “the woman question” was the agitation started by Susan B. Anthony for women’s rights. Mrs. Crosby was one of Mrs. Anthony’s early converts, and in the scrapbooks preserved by the Crosby-Wing family there are numerous references to the beligerent Susan.

A contemporary described Mrs. Crosby as decisive, brisk to the point, but withal amiable and motherly. He continued: “There is something so motherly about her face that any child would be immediately attracted. All honor to such a woman, who can muffle the motherly instinct long enough to tackle the prosaic world; who can win bread and fame, yet keep warm the dearest ties of motherhood.”

By 1893 Mrs. Crosby was recognized allover Maine as a leader in the crusade for woman suffrage. In that year she wrote many columns on the subject for the Waterville Mail. Let us note some of the things she had to say: “Our politicians are beginning to run scared. A bill to grant the vote to Maine women passed the Senate and was only narrowly defeated in the House. No doubt the timid politicians breathe more freely now that they have been saved what they regard as the horror of 125,000 Maine women turned loose with the ballot.”

Mrs. Crosby on another occasion wrote: “The presence of good women at the polls on election day might interfere with the whiskey used to secure votes, but that might not be the worst thing that could happen.”

At another time Mrs. Crosby waxed sarcastic on the subject: “Our Waterville representative in the Legislature would protect the fair name of womanhood. He insists that women do not want to mix up in the dirty game of politics. What he means is, they must be perverted to want to mix into the affairs of men. When it comes to voting, women must be classed with children, idiots and animals.

“Think how the peace and harmony of the neighborhood would be disturbed if women could vote on town affairs. Think how the ladies would lose their social standing. Think of a decent woman attending a town meeting amidst the tobacco-chewing, spitting males. Of course there is in Waterville no one intelligent enough to believe that not every woman who turned out to vote had lost her prestige, her social standing, and her morality.”

The Waterville representative to whom Mrs. Crosby referred was Simon Brown, and the Waterville Mail took pains to print just what Brown had said that so incensed Mrs. Crosby. The Mail quoted Brown as saying: “I have, in social gatherings where I have met the ladies, taken a great deal of pains to get their views on this subject. I have not found one woman in two hundred who has any desire to vote, or who believes other women should have that right.

“Most of the women with whom I have talked feel that any woman who has regard for her social standing will oppose giving women the vote. There may be two or three women in Waterville who want it, but I find them decidedly scarce. I am told over and over again, ‘We don’t want to mix in politics; we want to remain ladies.’ If this bill becomes law, instead of making our politics cleaner and more honorable, it will do exactly the opposite. The most intelligent and most respectable women will shun the polls as they would the plague. Only the flauntingly bold Susan B. Anthonys and Lady Parkhursts, clad in bloomers or trousers, will cast the ballot. I know I should misrepresent my Waterville constituency if I voted in favor of this bill.”

In 1887 Mrs. Crosby visited in Montana and the Dakotas, and her keen observations were published in the Waterville Mail. From Montana she wrote on July 12, 1887: “I came here with the desire to learn all I can regarding the three branches of Montana’s one great industry of ranching — namely, horses, cattle and sheep. One week I visited the horse ranch of Hussey and Crosby, where I saw 300 horses in one band, corralled every night. During the spring and summer they are turned out to care for themselves. In the fall riders are sent out in all directions to gather them in. The horses never require feeding in winter, unless kept in use, and they are usually fat and sleek when spring comes.

“It is not the same with cattle. They do not go to the hills like horses and sheep, but seek sheltered places in the valleys. In very severe winter thousands of them die of starvation and cold. In the spring dead cattle are seen along the creeks and low lands in enormous numbers. On a little creek that runs close to this house, I counted forty dead cattle.

“I have been on a sheep ranch lately, and I am amazed to see a single herder take a flock of 2,500 sheep in any direction he pleases, with the help of a single dog — the dog doing all the work, guided by the motion of the herder’s hand. In Maine I have seen half a dozen men attempt to drive a hundred sheep into a farmyard. rushing frantically hither and thither, with arms extended, screaming at the top of their voices, while each individual sheep was bent on going in the opposite direction. Yet, with it all, I must admit I have seen no ranch life here as comfortable or as pleasant as is farm life in Maine.”

A week later Mrs. Crosby wrote from the Dakotas: “Only four weeks have passed since I left Waterville. I am now in western Dakota, where every road is like the trail of a serpent, winding through sharp defiles until the eye tires of the somber, barren mountains. How one longs for the green hills of Maine! All along the railroad through Dakota and Montana one sees low-built log cabins with dirt-covered roofs, and other cabins made of sods cut squarely and laid up symmetrically. I begin to think we eastern people, with our passion for fine houses and furniture, are much too unappreciative of the people who have won for our nation the vast West.”

In 1893 the Waterville Mail honored Mrs. Crosby with an editorial. It said in part: “Mrs. Sarah Crosby of this city has served for twenty years as a highly competent and widely recognized court stenographer. She has taken evidence at Supreme Court sessions in everyone of Maine’s sixteen counties. Her last work for that court was in 1886, in the suit of Charles Gilman against his brother. Since 1886 Mrs. Crosby has been stenographer for several courts and for the State Board of Agriculture. Now she has retired from all such work and says she will probably make her home in Florida. Hundreds of volumes of court records transcribed by this lady are in the court libraries of Maine. Into all this work Mrs. Crosby threw competently directed and devoted energy. That is the secret of her success and the cause of appreciation of her services.”

And that is the story of a successful professional woman of Maine more than 80 years ago — the court stenographer and battler for woman’s rights — Sarah G. Crosby.

Another Waterville woman of worthy memory was Madam Sarah Scott Ware, wife of the prominent railroad promoter, John Ware, who came from Athens to Waterville in 1857 to take the presidency of the Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad, following the death of its first president, Timothy Boutelle. A graduate of Kents Hill Seminary, Sarah Scott married John Ware in 1842. After her husband died in 1877, Mrs. Ware survived for twenty years. When she died in 1897 the Waterville Mail devoted an entire column to her memory. Already her generous gift of the Ware parlors to the Unitarian Church had become well known.

Pointing out that Mrs. Ware had been a Methodist who turned Unitarian, the Mail said: “No sectarian prejudice found lodgement in her mind. She insisted that it makes little difference what we believe so long as our faith makes us live up to our ideals.”

Mrs. Ware’s funeral was held at her home on Silver Street. There was music by a male quartet led by Warren C. Philbrook, who would later be a justice of the Maine Supreme Court. The pastor of her church, Rev. T.J. Valentine, and Rev. F.A. Gilmore of Haverhill, Mass., whom Mrs. Ware had assisted when he was a student at Colby, took part in the service. and the principal addresses were by Rev. J.L. Stewart of Boston and Rev. J.A. Bellows of Portland, both former pastors of the Waterville church. The Mail ended its account of the funeral as follows: “Mr. Frank Redington officiated as undertaker, and the bearers were E.F. Webb, Charles F. Johnson, Frank L. Thayer and Willard B. Arnold. Interment was in Pine Grove Cemetery, where committal service of the Unitarian Church was read by Rev. J.L. Stewart.”

I am sure most of us are aware that, by modern standards, wages were very low a hundred years ago. I recently ran across an old volume from the Government Printing Office that shows what people working at the various customs ports were paid in 1858. The port of Portland at that time did a large annual business and its office of collector was considered a political plum. In fact the Portland customs office employed 24 persons in addition to the collector. His salary was $3,130 a year, not bad at all for a time when the average man earned little more than a dollar a day. But even at that, the Portland collector got only half as much as his counterpart at Boston, and considerably less than the $10,000 paid the collector at San Francisco. That San Francisco salary was certainly munificent for that time. In today’s purchasing power it was the equivalent of at least $50,000.

But note what the Portland Collector’s assistants were paid. The annual salary of his deputy was $1,500. His Superintendent of Warehouses got $1,300, his inspectors $1,100 each, two night inspectors $600 apiece. Two boatmen each received $365 a year, which was exactly one dollar a day based on a seven-day week. The porter got only $350. The collector with the top job at Belfast was paid less than the night inspectors at Bangor. The Belfast boss got $435 a year.

And with that salute to Uncle Sam’s wages 115 years ago, we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1967