Radio Script #720

Little Talks on Common Things

March 5, 1967

At some time during the nineteen years of this program I have had something to say about almost every town in Kennebec and Somerset Counties, but I cannot recall that I have ever told you anything in detail about one Somerset County town the town of Starks. Starks lies in the southwest part of the county, surrounded by Anson, New Sharon, Mercer and Industry. A part of the town’s southern line is the Sandy River.

The first settler was James Waugh, who had come to Clinton on the Kennebec in 1768, and four years later decided to move farther up the river, if he could find a good place to clear a farm. When he came to the mouth of the Sandy River, where it enters the Kennebec above Norridgewock, he explored up its right bank.

He was at first tempted to take the first lot at the junction of the Sandy River with the Kennebec, but later decided on the second lot. That lot lay nearly opposite the old Indian encampment at Old Point, where Father Rasle had been killed in 1724. The Sandy River lot selected by Waugh had, like Old Point, been long ago cleared by the Indians, and in the field remains of the old men’s ancient cornhills could still be seen. The place was geographically an intervale, formed by the sharp bank of the river, and contained about 100 acres of cleared land with deep, rich soil.

Waugh marked the lot according to settlers’ custom and returned to Sebasticook, which is now the village of Benton Falls, but was at that time a part of Clinton. In the spring of 1773 he went to his selected lot on the Sandy in company with one Captain Fletcher and the latter’s two sons. The four men built a camp, planted corn and oats. They returned to Clinton for the winter, but in 1774 Waugh took up residence on his Sandy River lot with his bride, a girl from Fairfield. At the same time the three Fletchers, with their wives, built cabins near by. There were then so many Indians in the region, and memories of the disastrous Indian Wars were so fresh, that the four women were afraid to stay so far from the nearest garrison protection, which was down the Kennebec at Fort Halifax. So the wives refused to stay and went down to Sebasticook and Fairfield for the summer.

When fall came and no hostile Indians had appeared, the women returned. Just a year later, in 1775, the four families were well settled and had reaped their first crop when Benedict Arnold’s army came up the Kennebec on that tragic attempt to seize Quebec. By 1778 seven family names were found in Starks: Waugh, Crosby, Fletcher, Heald, Gray, Nichols and Wilson. At that time the territory was called Lower Sandy River Plantation. Incorporated as a town in 1795, it was named Starks in honor of John Stark, the hero of Bennington in the Revolution.

Starks was one of the communities hardest hit by the Civil War. Although the entire population numbered only 1,300 in 1861, the little town sent 75 of its sons into the Union Army and 26 of them lost their lives.

Starks has always been primarily an agricultural town, but in 1870 it had several small industries: Eben Rackliff made chairs; J.P. Rackliff turned out hubs and spokes; Reuben Oliver was the carriage maker; and L.G. Sawyer and Son operated a saw and grist mill. In this century the principal industry has been the canning factory, originally for corn, but later used to can different vegetables. The period from 1870 to 1880 saw the town’s greatest prosperity. In 1880 the valuation was set at $312,000 and thereafter began to decline until in 1905 it had dropped to $209,000.

Starks is today known as one of half a dozen Maine communities where the Presbyterian Church has given religion a new lease of life. For a hundred years the Presbyterians had kept out of Maine, under a deal made with the Congregationalists, whereby each denomination would keep out of the other’s way in different selected parts of the United States. But after World War II there was no longer need of observance of that religious compact. The Presbyterians had long ago established an organization that carried the awkward name of the Mission to the Eastward, with headquarters in Boston. That mission started churches in Maine, chiefly in Somerset and Franklin Counties. One of their earliest and most successful was at Starks, where the Presbyterian Church is very active today.

Vanfey’s “Gazetteer of Maine”, published in 1881, makes two interesting comments about Starks. It says: “In 1880 the tax rate in Starks was 15 mills.” Wouldn’ t Starks taxpayers like to see that old rate restored? The Gazetteer also says: “Starks has thirteen public school houses valued at $2,500.” Now, if you divide $2,500 by 13, you get as the average value of those school houses $192. That gives you some idea of what must have been the condition of the buildings in which Starks children went to school in 1880.

Starks had a part in a bunco game that hit Somerset County early in the 19th century. In 1814 a shrewd Yankee from Massachusetts came to Cornville and set to work on the credulity of the people. He told William Young of Starks, Nathaniel Burrill of Canaan, and Joseph Greeley of Norridgewock that he had seen a mentally retarded boy in Massachusetts who possessed strange occult powers. The Cornville newcomer claimed the boy had found a small, perforated stone by means of which he could locate metal and minerals in the earth. The boy, it was claimed, was especially adept at finding buried money.

The men whom the Cornville fellow had interested put up the money to bring the boy to Starks. The boy pressed the stone to his forehead and declared he could see a chest of money. But the money seemed to have a faculty of moving from place to place, for digging in several spots marked by the boy failed to reveal any chest or a single coin.

The Somerset men began to think the boy was a fake and told the Cornville fellow so much. He at once proposed a test. Let each of them place ten dollars in coin in a bag; then place the bags together in a box and bury the box in a selected place known only to themselves. “Then let us see”, said the Cornville man, “whether the boy can find it.”

You may be sure that, by clever spying, the newcomer to Cornville learned where the coins were buried. Assuring his victims that only they knew the spot, he urged them to take the boy only to the general vicinity and see what happened. That they did, and the boy led them straight to the spot. When they dug where the boy indicated, they were convinced of the boy’s magic powers. As the opened hole revealed the buried box, there was nothing inside. The bags of coins had disappeared. Disappearing at the same time was the man from Massachusetts, who found it no longer convenient to remain in Cornville.

The Somerset settlers ought to have been wary of such tricks, for it was not the first time that a swindler had appeared in the region. In 1800 there lived in Bloomfield (now that part of Skowhegan on the west side of the Kennebec) one Daniel Lambert and his son Moses. They had been very poor, when suddenly their fortunes began to improve. Daniel Lambert claimed that, by the aid of a witch-hazel rod he could find not water, like modern dunkers, but buried treasure. He produced a battered brass candlestick, which he claimed to have dug from the earth. He obtained permission to dig in several Kennebec river towns, going as far north as Anson with his magic witch-hazel rod, and as far south as Bowdoinham.

One day Lambert announced that he had discovered the long buried treasure of Captain Kidd. He declared he had sent the gold to Philadelphia to be coined, and when it was returned, he would freely distribute it among the people of Canaan and make them all rich, if they would pay him in advance 10 cents for every dollar he would give them when the coins had been minted. Hundreds of deluded men flocked to Lambert, urging him to accept their horses, cattle and other property to give them a share in the expected riches. Quickly Lambert converted all such property into cash.

Lambert announced that the first shipment of coin from Philadelphia would arrive on Sept. 1, 1801. He issued handbills calling for a meeting in Norridgewock on that day. More than a hundred people assembled, but Lambert did not show up. He had completely disappeared. The bubble had burst and many good people suffered severe loss.

In the small satisfaction gained by Lambert victims, a man who would later be a prominent citizen of Waterville had a part. At that time John Ware operated a general store in Norridgewock. Ware supplied the clothes that angry people filled with straw in order that they might hang in effigy the perfidious Lambert.

It was emotional, but hardly financial, satisfaction for their loss of money. J.W. Hanson, who in 1849 published his History of Norridgewock, Canaan, Bloomfield and Starks, was not exactly complimentary to the people who lived in that region in 1800. He wrote: “Most of the early settlers were much addicted to intemperance. Canaan, despite its Biblical name, was a land that flowed more with rum and molasses than it did with milk and honey. The very name Canaan became a by-word for drunkenness. It was estimated that the people drank up three times the amount of the town’s valuation in a period of thirty years.”

Now let us get back to a few other facts about the town of Starks. During the middle of the 19th century the State Agricultural Commissioner published carefully compiled statistics about agricultural products in every Maine town. In 1840 this is what he reported for the town of Starks: 2,532 bushels of corn, 3,537 of wheat, 8,192 of oats, and 70 of rye; 220 bushels of beans, 31,883 bushels of potatoes, 945 bushels of apples; 5,163 pounds of wool, 400 pounds of beef, 43,785 pounds of pork, 1,876 tons of hay, five barrels of cider, 4,323 pounds of butter, and 150 pounds of cheese. In that same year of 1840 livestock in the town of Starks numbered 165 horses, 173 oxen, 386 cows, 2,300 sheep, 327 swine.

We have already commented on the renewed status of religion in Starks today. If we can credit the Hanson History of 1849, religious life in Starks today is more commendable than it was a hundred years ago. Hanson wrote: “The people who settled Starks would not seem to the uninformed reader to have been very religiously inclined. While in Norridgewock and Canaan support of religion was of immediate concern, it was not so in Starks. Although the town was incorporated in 1795, it was not until 1828 that there was the slightest concern for a church. Until then irreligion was a mark of the town.”

Year: 1967