Radio Script #774

Little Talks on Common Things

September 22, 1968

Here is information about the old quarry near the County Road and down the steep hill west of the Mountain Farm, just south of the present Colby Ski Slope.

Mr. Cyrille Masse of Winslow, a stone mason, is probably the last person now living who once worked in the old quarry. He tells me that he worked on what he is sure was the last job done with that beautifully colored stone. The year was 1923. The Central Maine Power Company was putting up a new power house in Oakland, near the Cascade on the Messalonskee. The company arranged with owners of the land to extract, by day labor under their own engineer, stone from that old quarry that had been operated intermittently for a period certainly longer than sixty years.

We have some evidence that the land in 1923 was owned by the Flood family, and that it was with the Floods that the power company made arrangements to extract stone for their Messalonskee station. Even before George Flood built his home on Upper Main Street on the last residential site before the area where the Elm Plaza Shopping Center is now located, he had begun to buy land in that general area between the street and the Messalonskee Stream. After George Flood died in 1894, his heirs thus acquired a very large tract of land. On it are now situated the Thayer Hospital, the homes of Eustis Drive. Johnson and Roosevelt Avenues. Much of this land later became the property of Lewis Rosenthal. Those of us who used to play on the golf course developed by Mr. Rosenthal, before the laying out of Johnson Heights, and long before Eustis Drive, were chasing the little ball entirely on land once owned by the Floods.

Not yet do we know who owned the quarry land when its stone was first extracted, nor do we know the date of that quarry opening. Can anyone help me get the answers to those questions?

One public building still standing. that was built of that quarry stone, is the Lawrence Library on High Street in Fairfield. I have recently had an engaging correspondence with an elderly gentleman in St. Petersburg. Florida, named Roland Jones. He has been trying to identify certain locations in North Fairfield. He has been most helpful in giving me information about original lots parceled there from the Nye-Dimmock survey of the 1780’s. As a boy Mr. Jones lived in that region. Their farm was on a lot of 170 acres that extended from a point some distance west of the Middle Road. across that road some distance east. It was about a mile beyond the Quaker church.

Mr. Jones has furnished me with a Xerox copy of the original lot assignments from Fairfield Center through North Fairfield. Those lots consisted each of 185 acres — 825 feet wide and 2 miles deep. On the chart appears this notation: “Forty Quakers from Sandwich, Mass., together purchased 8,000 acres of Eastern Land for purpose of settlement. Elihu Bowerman was chairman and clerk. Each purchaser was a member of the Society of Friends. Lots sold at $200 each. To accommodate later purchasers, 2,000 more acres were acquired, adjoining and west of the original purchase. Those 2,000 acres were called Ten Lots. The deed to the Fairfield property was recorded at Wiscasset in 1782.”

Some familiar names appear on that chart. Since Elihu Bowerman was the first settler, his name and that of his brother Stephen are prominent. Elihu owned Lots 16 and 20 in the first tier. while Stephen owned Lot 13 in the first tier and Lot 28 in the second. Between the two ran a proposed road to Norridgewock, though in 1782 no road had been built.

Everyone knows the present location of Holway Corner. Joseph Holway originally owned Lot 43 near Fairfield Center. but he also had original title to Lot 30 farther north. Barnabas Holway owned Lot 23 near the present Holway Corner. Men who actually settled on their lots and whose names appear in the federal census of 1790, besides the Bowermans. were Philip Wing, Odlin Fuller, John Jones, John Mendell, Barnabas Holway, Gideon Hoxie, Ebenezer Alling, Thomas Lander. Seth Fuller, Benjamin Blossom, Deacon Tozier and Samuel Tobey. Joseph Dimmock owned two lots, showing that the Dimmock family held on to parcels of the big grant. even though they never settled on it. Other family names on the chart are Bates. Bisbee. Weeks, Basset. Freeman, Dillingham. Swift, Atwood, Burgess. The two lots nearest the Center in the first tier were owned by men whose names have been long familiar. Lot No. 1 was the property of Samuel Fish, who gave his name both of Fish Brook and Fish Hill. The former retains its old name, but the latter became better known as Pung Hill, the steep rise from the brook to the Mountain Farm on the road from Fairfield Center to Waterville.

Besides Gideon Hoxie, already mentioned, were a number of his relatives. Juddock Hoxie had a second tier lot. Hezekiah owned Lot 12 in the first tier, and further to the north James Hoxie held Lots 14 and 17. Lot 14 was just north of the lot owned by Stephen Bowerman, and just north of Hoxie’s was Lot 15, the property of Sylvanus Swift. It was that lot which Paul Jones, ancestor of my Florida correspondent bought of Swift in 1786.

The Nyes and the Fishes intermarried. Temperance, daughter of Joseph Nye. married Joseph Fish, and her sister Jane became the wife of Josiah Fish. Mr. Jones has found evidence that the original owners of the grant, Joseph Nye and General Joseph Dimmock., did not themselves settle in Fairfield.Dimmock seems to have sold his share early, but Nye’s sons, E1isha,Bartlett. Samuel, Bryant and Joseph. did come, and it was the son Joseph who settled on Lot No.2. Nye and Dimmock received the grant as a reward for military services in the Revolution.

Mr. Jones says that near the Bigelow Hill Road from Larone to Skowhegan there was (and perhaps still is) a granite marker with the letters BF, signifying the line between Bloomfield and Fairfield. Mr. Jones tells me that early settlers dug for buried treasure in the region east of Holway Corner. Yes, I too have heard that story, and it is said to be the origin of Pirate’s Lane. the road running east from the junction of present Routes 139 and 104.

Few Waterville persons now remember that we had in Waterville, during the early years of this century, a company that did a big business in buying and shipping to the metropolitan markets many carloads of potatoes, apples. and other produce of Maine farms.

About 1910, for some reason that is not now apparent, the son of a New York commission merchant decided to move to Waterville and set up a similar business here. He was John H. Graham, son of James E. Graham, a shipper’s agent and commission broker in produce in New York City. The father had begun in 1908 to take a special interest in Maine produce and had obtained especially a list of Maine shippers of potatoes. It was a long list of more than a hundred names, with of course the greater number concentrated in Aroostook County, and their headquarters in Caribou, Presque Isle, Fort Fairfield, Easton, Mars Hill and Houlton. In fact nearly every Aroostook town was represented on that list. Communities outside Aroostook that marketed spuds in metropolitan areas were Abbott, GUilford. Patten and LaGrange. It seems likely that Graham’s Waterville office was originally a Maine adjunct of his father’s larger business. but the record shows that he was soon on his own.

Preserved in the company’s old papers (discovered recently by Dr. Nawfel. prominent Waterville dentist) are lists of produce shipping rates, not only on the Bangor and Aroostook, but also on the Maine Central and the Boston and Maine, the New Haven. the New York Central and the Pennsylvania railroads. Graham called his Waterville firm the Maine Produce Company, and the oldest extant paper in the file is a letter from a New York commission merchant, Nicholas Zeo. Although Zeo’s letterhead said his specialty was bananas, he did not overlook Maine potatoes. Zeo had already done some business with the Waterville company, and was dissatisfied. He wrote: “I do not see why you have not been more businesslike on this deal. I paid you two cents more than I could have bought from others the same day. I had some business with you this season and liked your stock. Why did you not fill my order by shipping me a car oT potatoes at once? You have never replied to my urgent wire. I always take what I buy, regardless of any subsequent drop in price, and I expect to get what I buy if the price goes up.”

The amount of business done by Graham in his office on the second floor of the Gallert Block sixty years ago is revealed by the many freight bills among the papers, also by the charges for telegrams over both Western Union and Postal Telegraph, the two largest competing telegraph lines at that time. For instance, Postal billed Graham for 18 telegrams in January, 1912, and for 22 in February.

It seems that Nicholas Zeo frequently had trouble with the Maine Produce Company. On December 20, 1911 a letter signed Maine Produce Company, with no individual’s name, told Mr. Zeo: “Mr. Graham has been aWay for the Christmas season, and the writer does not know whether or not he can accept your order. Mr. Graham will wire you quotations on his return.· The market seems very dull just now.”

Graham bought potatoes mostly from Aroostook shippers in carload lots, and sold them to New York wholesalers without ever seeing the goods. The tubers went directly to New York or Boston from the Aroostook shipping points. The only contact they had with Waterville was when the cars passed through here on the Maine Central.

Graham had a contact man in Bangor, who wrote Graham on November 28, 1911: “The farmers here have decided to hold their potatoes a while longer. They are hauling a few to Bangor and are getting a dollar a bushel for them. (Note that the shipping unit is given as bushel, not barrel.) I have engaged a good many when they get ready to sell, but I cannot compel them to sell until they do get ready.”

In 1911 a reciprocity bill between the United States and Canada was in the making. That is why Graham received in August of that year a letter from St. Anne de Shediac in New Brunswick which said: “In anticipation of the adoption of the Reciprocity Bill by the Government of Canada. I will ask you to take a few carloads of potatoes and what you will pay for them. Please let me know at once, as the early varieties, such as Early Rose, will be ready to ship soon after the September election.”

The fall and winter of 1911-12 was a bad time for the potato men. On December 2 Graham received a letter from a big New York buyer, F.W. Higgins and Co. that said: “The market here is very quiet. It is absolutely impossible to sell potatoes here for the last few days. As soon as we can get an order at anything like a reasonable price, we will send it along.”

The unit for selling New Brunswick potatoes seems to have been 165 pounds — a barrel containing 2 3/4 bushels. A Montreal dealer wrote to Graham that he could get him a carload at $2.25 per 165 pounds. That came to about 80 cents a bushel. In 1911 there was competition from foreign potatoes. The firm of A. Rosenblum of New York wrote to Graham: “Up to three weeks ago we did extensive business in Maine potatoes, but since then the receipt of foreign stock has been so heavy that our business has declined by two-thirds. Fifty thousand sacks of foreign potatoes have been arriving every week. I bought some Maines the other day for $1.05 a bushel delivered. I also paid $1.10 for some extra fancy stock.”

On January 3, 1912 Graham’s Bangor representative informed him that the farmers were beginning to move their potatoes, but he added: “The price you have so far allowed me to offer is five to seven cents under what other buyers are paying. The morning I received your letter to offer 80 cents, other buyers were paying 87. Last night the price shot up to 95 cents. Mr. Graham, if you will not meet competing prices. you will not get the trade.”

It seems that some of Graham’s buyers demanded sacked potatoes. In January, 1912 the Lawson Bag Co. of New York wrote him: “We offer for prompt delivery regular three-blue-stripe potato sacks at eight cents each, also plain, heavy rough top Dundee bags at 6 cents.”

In April, 1912 Graham was threatened with a law suit. Here is Graham’s indignant reply: “If a suit against us means the appearance of someone of your firm in Maine, we certainly hope you will sue. In addition to enormous losses you have already caused us, you got us to ship a carload to New York by using the name of a person whom no dealer in the trade ever heard of. Of course the car was not accepted and we lost all of it. We should certainly like to get you to Maine.”

Well, that in substance is the story of a short-lived, but once very active, produce firm that operated over the Gallert store in Waterville fifty to sixty years ago.

Year: 1968