Radio Script #769

Little Talks on Common Things

May 19, 1968

A few weeks ago, when I told about the Mayflower ancestry of a Winslow woman, I said there must be many more Mayflower descendants in this vicinity. The Mayflower passengers were a prolific lot, and their numerous children had more numerous children, and so on through seven and more generations. So I am not surprised to find another Mayflower descendant in this region.

This one is Mrs. Donald Currier, the former Helen Claflin. who lives at Nye’s Corner in Fairfield. Nye’s Corner is itself an historic place on the Kennebec. being situated near the river crossing once known as Noble’s Ferry, and not far south of the more important and longer lasting Pishon’s Ferry at what is now Hinckley.

Mrs. Currier’s Mayflower ancestry is indeed distinguished, because she is descended from all three persons concerned in the colonial romance that immortalized the question, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” Yes, Mrs. Currier is descended from John Alden, Priscilla Mullins and Miles Standish. She is indeed a ninth generation descendant.

Everyone knows the story of Miles Standish’s wooing of Priscilla Mullins through the agency of his younger friend, John Alden and everybody knows that it was John Alden, not Miles Standish, who married Priscilla. What most people never knew, or have long forgotten, is that Sarah Alden, daughter of John and Priscilla, married Alexander, the son of Miles Standish.

Anyone at all familiar with Pilgrim history knows that one of the most prolific of Mayflower families was the Delanos. A Delano granddaughter of the Mayflower Delano, a girl also named Priscilla. married Benjamin Simmons, and their daughter, likewise named Priscilla. married Samuel Taylor. Jr. That was the fourth generation from John and Priscilla Alden. Through son. grandson, great-grandson and great-great-grandson. the name Taylor continued into the eighth generation from the Mayflower couple. That eighth generation Josie Ortin Taylor married Mark Claflin, and their daughter is Helen Claflin Currier, now living at Nye’s Corner.

Fourteen years ago, when I wrote “Kennebec Yesterdays”, I made in it several references to an Augusta newspaper called Drew’s Intelligencer, popular in the 1840’s and 1850’s. Bit by bit through the years, I have learned more about that publisher.

The outstanding liberal religious group in Maine, early in the 19th century, was not the Unitarians. but the Universalists. It was the middle of the century before Unitarianism secured strong following in the Kennebec Valley, but Universalism had secured a hold even before Maine became a separate state in 1820. Before the Civil War, Universalist churches had been established in more than 40 Maine communities.

One of the strongest Universalist churches was in Waterville, where Sylvanus Cobb had organized a Universalist Society in 1821, and made it an official Universalist Church in 1826. Another early Universalist minister and a close friend of Cobb’s was William A. Drew. Born in Kingston, Mass. in 1798, he was compelled by financial adversity to leave Harvard College at the end of his sophomore year. He went to Bath, Maine where he was employed briefly as a clerk, then spent four years on a farm in Hallowell.

From 1819 to 1824 he was Principal of Farmington Academy, and in that town he also preached the Universalist doctrine. There he started a Universalist paper, the Christian ViSitant, but in a few months merged it with the Christian Intelligencer, a similar paper published in Portland.

In 1827 Drew moved to Augusta. Since he had meanwhile purchased the Portland interest in the Intelligencer, he could, as the sole owner, put out that paper in Augusta and he did so for more than thirty years. He also started another Universalist journal. the “Gospel Bannerll , which, under the shorter name of “Banner”, continued for many years after Drew had died.

In 1833 Drew organized the First Universalist Church of Augusta, and was its pastor until 1848. He traveled allover the state, especially after he gave up his regular pastorate. The Intelligencer was filled with accounts of his travels. While many of his comments on the towns he visited and the people he met were laudatory, some of them were openly critical. He condemned the bad roads, especially the spring mud. He lay awake one night in Dexter fighting mosquitoes. Once in Norway he found people more interested in horse racing than in religion.

One thing I remember best of Drew’s vitriolic comments in the Intelligencer came in 1854, when he wrote an attack on stoves. Nothing, Drew contended, should be allowed to replace the open fire places. Stoves. he said, were unhealthy, unsanitary, and dangerous. As late as 1853 a man as intelligent as William Drew ought to have realized that stoves had come to stay. But such, with most of us, is the power of prejudice, that we are likely to see only what we want to see.

All in all, he was quite a man. that hater of stoves, William Drew; and the Maine historian Hatch is probably quite right when he states: “The most outstanding figure in the life of Maine Universalism was William A. Drew.”

Mrs. Ruth Richardson of Sunset Home has shown me an interesting postcard of nearly a hundred years ago — interesting for two reasons: first, because it shows there was once a Maine post office named Pishons Ferry, as well as a way of crossing the Kennebec at what is now Hinckley and second. because the card was signed by one of the most prominent men in Maine a century ago, Henry S. Burrage.

On August 1, 1872. when the postcard was dated. Burrage was the editor of the venerable Baptist weekly. Zion’s Advocate. then published in Portland. The message, as well as the signature. is in Dr. Burrage’s handwriting, and it says: “I have received $3.00 for Zion’s Advocate. Where is your paper sent now? I do not find it on my list of papers sent to Pishon’s Ferry. Please answer at once so that credit may be given.” The card was addressed to Ruth Woodsum, Pishons Ferry, Maine.

Another thing the postcard reveals is that those religious journals, of which Maine had more than a dozen in the 1870’s, were hopelessly under-staffed and had very loose methods of keeping their subscription lists. In 1872 our modern card filing was unknown. When in the 1880’s Dr. Edward Hall introduced a library card file, instead of the all-too-infrequently printed catalog, into the Colby Library, it was an innovation in Maine.

Henry Burrage was not only a prominent Baptist minister and editor. He was a true historian, with remarkable instinct for historical importance and striking ability to ferret out the past. He became official historian of the Baptists of Maine, and his 400 page “History of Maine Baptists” is the standard work in that field to this day. Interested in all of Maine history, not merely its sectarian or even its religious aspects, Burrage delved into various aspects of colonial and early 19th century Maine. He published several volumes, including “Colonial Maine”, “Maine in the Northeast Boundary Controversy”, and others. Burrage served notably as State Historian and was the first prominent figure to urge the creation of State Archives — a goal not achieved until long after his death.His daughter, Miss Mildred Burrage, creator of the excellent museum located in the old jail at Wiscasset, indeed had much to do with the successful campaign for State Archives in 1965.

I recently told you about an account book kept in the Fish store at Fairfield Center in 1819. Someone used that book later for a scrapbook. so that a few, but not many, of the original accounts are covered by pasted clippings. One of those clippings I find especially interesting. It is an ad for oleographs. What are they? Frankly, I have never heard of them. The word, from its Latin derivation, ought to mean oil writing, but of course I turned to the dictionary.

At first that didn’t help much. Oleograph was defined as a kind of chromolithograph, printed in oil colors. A lithograph is a process of printing an impression by stone, especially the impression of a picture and a chromolithograph as such a piece of printing in color. So I figured out that an oleograph must have somehow differed from the usual colored lithograph by using oils rather than inks.

In 1890, when this ad was published. the oleograph, a colored lithograph in oils, was something new. And the Augusta advertiser announced that he was going to give them away. That is, he would present a beautiful oleograph, without charge, to every subscriber to either The Illustrated Family World or The Farming World and Household magazine. He wanted agents, and he assured them of rich rewards. His ad said: “Every new agent will be taught as carefully and thoroughly as though our entire business depended upon his success. A handsome business with handsome profits is sure for every conscientious worker.”

That advertising publisher was Henry True and his Augusta firm went by the name of True & Co. The firm had the endorsement of the Augusta Board of Trade, whose president, E. C. Allen, said: “These enterprising publishers have done business in Augusta for more than twenty years, and they are highly esteemed. In enterprise and sagacity they have few equals in America. With our nation’s progressive business leaders. they stand in the front ranks.”

The owner of this old book in the 1880 f s and 1890’s must have been a staunch Democrat. for many of the pasted clippings favor the campaigns of Democratic candidates, and not a single clipping has a good word for the Republicans. Several clippings concern the presidential campaign of 1888, when Cleveland. the incumbent President was defeated by Harrison, whom Cleveland was in turn to defeat four years later in 1892. One clipping said. after the 1888 election: “Cleveland deserved better treatment by the voters. He did his duty, regardless of political considerations. and he has always been a true champion of the people.”

The outstanding national lecturer and pulpit orator of the 1890’s was the Rev. Dewitt Talmadge. Listen to what he said, as told by one of these old clippings, five years before the dawn of the twentieth century: “What about the 20th Century?

That will be a time to see great sights and do great deeds. Oh, young man, get ready for the rolling in of that mightiest and most glorious century. The old 19th century of victories and defeats, of nations born and nations dead, will expire five years from now. But a new century will then be born to reign for the next 100 years. I urge you to be ready for it. It will bring things you cannot even dream of today.”

Year: 1968