Radio Script #768

Little Talks on Common Things

May 12, 1968

I like to give you on this program an occasional glimpse of old Waterville as seen in letters written by boys and girls from other localities, who came to this community to attend college. One such letter that recently came to my attention was written by the man who later became a prominent Massachusetts physician, and whose widow provided the funds to make possible the Colby Infirmary in the Roberts Union. For that man the infirmary is named the Dr. Sherman Perry Memorial Infirmary.

The Perry family of Camden was a well known Colby family. The father, Wilder Perry, graduated from the college in 1872. and was for several years publisher of the Camden Herald, as well as state representative of the publishing house of Houghton Mifflin. An ardent prohibitionist, he supported that cause in the Maine Legislature, where he was a representative for several terms.

Wilder Perry sent five children to Colby. The oldest was Sherman, in the Class of 1901. In my own time as a Colby student were James Perry, 1911; George, 1914 and a few years later came Gleason Perry, 1920. Their sister Florence made the fifth Perry sibling from the Camden family to enroll at Colby. She was nearer the age of the older brother Sherman and was in the Class of 1903. James Perry, after an outstanding career as YMCA worker in World War I, was killed by bandits while on an errand of mercy in the Balkans. George and Gleason still reside in the old home town of Camden.

Florence I have mentioned several times on this program. She married Dr. Hahn from Friendship, Maine, who assembled during his lifetime one of the finest collections of books and manuscripts about Maine to be found anywhere. It was my privilege to be chosen by Mrs. Hahn to serve on the committee which distributed to college and university libraries that famous collection, after both Dr. and Mrs. Hahn had died.

Now let us get back to freshman Sherman Perry and the letter he wrote home when he had been at college only a few weeks, on October 9, 1897.

Sherman Perry roomed in North College with Edward Bean, who, like Perry, had prepared for college at Hebron Academy. In the letter addressed to his mother in October, 1897, Sherman told about getting settled. He wrote: “I have just been working two hours on my room and have got it as clean as I could. You know I am slow, but I can do pretty well if I try. I have not put up any of my pictures yet, and Bean has only a few of his up; so it does not look very homelike yet.”

Perry’s letter refers to the customary treatment given Colby freshmen 70 years ago: “Ed and I got hazed the other night”, he told his mother. “The boys came around about midnight and made us sing and dance but did not hurt us any. Of course the sophomores made bigger fools of themselves than we did.”

The letter shows how fond the students were of the college janitor, Sam Osborne. Perry wrote: “I can see Sam from where I sit. He is mowing grass back of our dormitory. He is a smart old man. This morning he said that Papa told him I was a good boy. Sam said he was going to look after me sharply to see if what Papa said about me was true.”

The previous Saturday the football team had won an unexpected 4 to 0 victory in Boston over the team representing the Boston Athletic Association. Perry tells how the students celebrated the victory: “We went wild with joy. We got out our horns and did the town up. We had a bonfire on the campus and burned a whole barrel of tar. We made the rounds of the homes of the professors. not forgetting the Negro janitor whom everybody calls ‘Professor Sam’. Sam favored us with a speech, saying he felt highly honored to be recognized with the rest of the faculty.”

Sherman tells about an experience that made him resolve to assert hereafter his dignity and rights as a true Perry. He wrote: “I did not sleep very well last night. because another fellow got into bed with Ed. Instead of waking him up and turning him out. I slept on the sofa. where I had hard work to keep covered up and warm. The next time I won’t get kicked out in the cold so easily. I’ll remember that my name is Perry.”

Although it was only early in October. that college freshman was already beginning to feel the cold. not only when he got ousted from his bed, but also under more normal conditions. He ended his letter thus: “I have got nothing but my nice gloves to put on when it is cold. Had I best buy something here, or have you anything that will be good for me? By the way, my stamps are most gone and money is low.”

I submit that that ending is typical of many a student’s letter home through all the 150 years of Colby’s history. I suspect that over and over again such letters said: “Money is low.”

Mrs. Josephine Hanscom of Fairfield has shown me an account book kept by Charles Fish at his store in Fairfield Center 150 years ago in 1819. It reveals the typical operations of the general country store of the time, the kind I have described in “Kennebec Yesterdays” in the chapter on “Rum and Gingerbread”.

Indeed both rum and gingerbread are .included among the items charged in the pages of this old day book. As for the former, we encounter repeatedly such items as “two quarts N.E. rum, 50 cents; one quart W.I. rum, 44 cents; 1 gill rum, 3 cents; one quart brandy, 75 cents; one gallon cider, 30 cents; one pint gin, 25 cents; 2 quarts Jamaica rum, $1.00.”

In those old stores gingerbread was always sold by the sheet — the size of the pan in which it was baked. Its price in the Fish store was 12 cents a sheet.

On August 21, 1819 Asa Weston bought half a sheet for six cents, along with half a yard of crape for 16 cents. There is no evidence that the gingerbread, as well as the crape was wanted for a funeral. On September 10 John Cayford was charged with one-half sheet of gingerbread, 6 cents, and one pint of rum for the road. 17 cents. On September 29 Hezekiah Lancaster had a sheet of gingerbread and a noggin of rum.

The range of food items sold in a country store early in the 19th century was amazingly small. The foods for which charges were made in the Fish accounts consisted of molasses, sugar, salt, a lot of tea but little coffee. cream of tartar, cheese, raisins, crackers (which were then called biscuit), spices (of which the most expensive was nutmeg). lard, large quantities of salt pork. but no fresh meat at all.

If the food products were few, other items sold in the Fish store at Fairfield Center were numerous and of almost infinite variety. In 1819 much cloth was still spun and woven at home, but it was becoming more and more common to buy such goods at the store. So among the Fish items we find cambric, calico, muslin, silk, quality cloth and shirting. With these went ribbons, tape, pins, needles and thread. The only ready-made items for men that I have noted in that Fish day book are vests, hats and suspenders.

Of course there were numerous items that would come under the heading of either houseware or tools. On April 26, 1819 Noah White bought a knife and fork for two and sixpence. or 42 cents. George Pooler had eight pounds of nails for a dollar and a pair of sheep shears for $1.25. Daniel Worthley was charged 25 cents for a penknife, and David Ireland 38 cents for three spoons. Benjamin McDaniels had to pay 56 cents for a one inch auger and 50 cents for four pounds of steel. Asa Varney was charged 8 cents for 8 fishhooks and 14 cents for an axe helve. Thomas Robinson bought an inkstand for 25 cents, and Joseph Emery a goad stick for 13 cents. James Curtis got three milk pans for 20 cents apiece, and James Wheeler paid 38 cents for a chest lock. There were charges for candles and bees wax, for oxbows and gimlets. for buckets and bed cords, for writing paper and quills.

Learning was not neglected. Sylvanus Pitts bought a grammar for 25 cents, Alvin Weston a speller for two shillings and Ebenezer Ames an arithmetic for three shillings.

Despite considerable dependence on home remedies, made from garden herbs and roots gathered in the woods, the stores of 1819 had begun to sell medicines. It was before the day of the patent medicine craze. In 1819 no one had heard of Swamp Root, Lydia Pinkham’s, or Pink Pills for Pale People. What Charles Fish sold to alleviate the ills that flesh is heir to was oil of peppermint magnesia, calomel, oil of almond, ja lops, and vast quantities of castor oi 1. Occasionally we find the unexplained item, one box of pills.

In 1819 a status symbol among country people was the silk handkerchief. A good one cost a dollar, and when Charles Fish charged one of them he was probably sure the customer was able to pay for it. There are only about half a dozen such charges in the whole day book.

Of course there are many charges for tobacco, but there are almost as many for snuff. Tobacco came in what were called twists of considerable length, from which pieces were cut and sold by weight. Fish’s charge for it was forty cents a pound. While cigars had already been introduced in the large cities, none had apparently reached Fairfield Center by 1819, at least not to Fish’s store. As for snuff, it was charged frequently to women, designated as Miss Harriman, the Widow Pierce, etc. Its price was 13 cents an ounce.

The hunting was good in this region-in 1819. Every month in the year Fish sold powder, shot and flints. He got 55 cents a pound for his powder and 17 cents for shot regardless of size, though most of it was of a single size for the old muzzle loaders. For flints he charged one cent each.

When I examine one of these old account books, I am always alert for oddities, even when I am frustrated by being unable to explain some of them.

Of course I know what is meant by a pair of spectacles, but did you know they were once sold in general stores without test or prescription? But I’m not sure exactly what was a wheelhead for which Fish charged $1.34. Nor do I know what is meant by half a pound of Venetian soap, or by two ounces of stannum. And how does a snuffer tray differ from a snuff box?

They were wonderful places, those old country stores. That is why Farwell Brothers store at Thorndike was such a treasure trove until it closed a very few years ago.

Year: 1968