Radio Script #822

Little Talks on Common Things
November 30, 1969

I am glad, whenever possible on this program, to bring up some item concerning the town of Vassalboro. It is, as many of you know, one of the oldest towns in Central Maine, incorporated on the same day in 1771 as the towns of Winthrop, Hallowell, and Winslow. Vassalboro also provided many of the early citizens of Waterville, who had settled first in the down-river town.

Again, as so often in the past, I am indebted to Mr. Raymond Manson for providing me with the information about old Vassalboro that I want to share with you today. Mr. Manson has unearthed the tax records of Vassalboro for the year 1814. Long ago on this program I told you that in the late 18th century that town’s wealthiest citizen was Jacob Southwick, to whose potash kiln settlers brought ashes from as far north as Skowhegan.

In 1814 Jacob Southwick’s son Edward was Vassalboro’s largest taxpayer. When we consider our high taxes today, when the owner of a modest home often pays a property tax exceeding $400, it is interesting to note that 155 years ago Edward Southwick’s home, store, tanneries, and other property cost him all together a tax of only $169.80; yet he was the heaviest taxpayer in the town. The second largest taxpayer was Benjamin Brown of Brown’s Corner, now Riverside. He paid $103.99. Brown gained fame as the leading promoter and financial patron of the first insane hospital established by the state — the original very modest, single building that grew into the extensive facilities of today’s State Hospital at Augusta.

No other resident of Vassalboro except Southwick and Brown paid property tax of as much as $100 in 1814. The Webber brothers, who ran a sawmill on Seven Mile Brook, paid $84.17. Moses Sleeper, who operated a satinette factory at North Vassalboro, paid $53.17.

In the old taxbook appears a much-repeated phrase, the interpretation of which neither Ray Manson nor I can be sure about. One instance of the phrase concerns the tax charged to another of the Southwick sons, Joseph. The item reads: “Do in right of Edward Southwick, $47.96.” The do is obviously abbreviation for ditto, but did the entry mean that Joseph was paying a tax on property actually owned by Edward, or had it some other meaning? Does any listener know?

One of Waterville’s most prominent early citizens, Asa Redington, came from Vassalboro and, with his father-in-law, Nehemiah Getchell, built the first dam across the Kennebec at Ticonic Falls. The name of Asa Redington’s brother Samuel appears on that 1814 Vassalboro tax list, for unlike Asa he remained in the downriver town. He had substantial property, for he was then the town’s sixth highest taxpayer at $45.03. Jonas Priest, whose tax was $44.08, was the first inhabitant of Vassalboro to build a home away from the river. Tradition has it that he blazed a trail from the Kennebec to Priest Hill and carried a plow on his shoulders to his new farm. Priest was an ancestor of Winslow’s highly respected elderly citizen, Mrs. Ina Stinneford.

One of the most difficult areas of local research is to ascertain the origin of place names, especially ponds, hills and roads. As early as 1766 a man named Charles Webber signed a petition to the General Court, showing that he was then a settler on the lands of Florentius Vassau the Plymouth Company proprietor. Is it possible that Webber Pond was named for him? Again, perhaps some listener can tell us for sure.

Joseph Southwick, the man who paid in 1814 “in right of Edward Southwick”, is listed 19 years later, in a Winslow valuation book as owner of a log landing at Ticonic Bay. Because Joseph and Edward are known to have operated tanneries, Manson wonders whether they may not have shipped hides down to Getchells Corner from Ticonic Bay. Yet, a log landing is not a regular wharf, and it is quite possible the Southwick landing at Winslow was used only for lumber.

As our listeners know, I am always interested in old account books. Several years ago I told you about such a book kept about 1800 by Jacob Southwick. On another occasion I told about the accounts of this owner and operator of a longboat between Augusta and Waterville. Now Mr. Manson tells me about an account book kept by a man who operated a trucking business, principally for the old Vassalboro paper mill. On May 26. 1840 he hauled a load of rags to Hallowell. On June 1 it was a load of rags and paper to Augusta, and on the return trip rags from Hallowell. On June 15 he conveyed 6 casks of lime. On November 5 he hauled 4,800 pounds of rags to Hallowell and returned with 2,300 pounds of lime. Just before Thanksgiving he brought up from Hallowell 2,300 pounds of rags, a barrel of flour, and a barrel of resin.

Another transporter in old Vassalboro was Merrill Lee, whose method of transportation was a longboat which he operated all the way between Vassalboro and Bath. Mr. Manson insists that one item in Lee’s accounts definitely states that he carried 60 barrels of flour from Bath to Vassalboro in 1863 for one dollar. Mr. Manson and I agree that there is some error in that item. One dollar is altogether too low a price for carrying 60 barrels of flour so long a distance especially right in the middle of the Civil War when prices were high. Furthermore, 60 barrels of flour is an unbelievably large load for one of those Kennebec longboats.

Crews often lived for several days at a time on those old longboats. Hence Merrill’s list of supplies for his boat in 1865 should not surprise us. It included a bushel of potatoes, 60 cents; half a peck of beans. 25¢; l1t pounds of cod fish. $1.15; half a pound of tea. 60¢; seven pounds of pork. $1.75; and half a gallon of molasses, 50¢; total supply cost of $4.85.

The flour Merrill recorded in 1863 was for the Bridge and Sturgis store at Riverside. Those partners ran a general store, saw mills, and a three-story wood-working plant where they made such items as pill boxes, clapboards, shingles, fence pickets, laths, window sash and doors. Charles J. Webber was door maker for the company. The old records tell us that in 1851 Thomas Lang of North Vassalboro bought 37 doors from Bridge and Sturgis. This was about the time that Lang built the large house now known as White Haven.

What is referred to as the old Vassalboro Paper Mill was situated on Seven Mile Brook and was operated by George Cox. Preserved is a record showing that later his son Quincy Cox sold wrapping paper to Bridge and Sturgis at seven cents a pound. He took his pay in merchandise. It is a mistake to think of clergymen in the old days as exclusively preachers and pastors. We have plenty of evidence that they were engaged in other enterprises as well. Readers of Mary Ellen Chase will recall that Jonathan Fisher, the famous minister in the early days of Blue Hill, was a shrewd business man and farmer.

Likewise Mr. Manson has run across the record of a minister in Vassalboro a hundred years ago who made a business of collecting eggs from housewives allover the countryside and shipping them to the Boston market. On one occasion the Waterville Mail carried an account of a mishap to the egg-dealing clergyman. The newspaper story said that at the old Waterville railroad station the clergyman’s horse was so frightened by the locomotives that, before he was calmed down, 40 cases of eggs were broken.

Now I want to share with you information I have received from Mr. Manson that casts light on old-time river traffic between Augusta and Ticonic Bay. Mr. Manson says there was once a detailed plan to build a dam at the rapids a short distance north of Getchells Corner near the old Burleigh farm. The dam’wasto be built in the shape of the letter L; that is, straight across to where the river dispersed on the Sidney side, then up river for the shorter side of the L.

That information explains something about which I have long wondered. Why did the longboats come up the Sidney side of the river, rather than to the older and larger settlements at Getchells Corner and Fort Halifax? The answer seems to be that drop in the river with rapids and shallow water on the Vassalboro side just above Getchells Corner. On the Sidney side the river was apparently deeper, and on that side was laid out the tow path along which oxen sometimes pulled the longboats.

That accident of topography may have had much to do with the development of wharves and mills at Waterville, making the west side of the river at Ticonic Falls more easily accessible to river craft.

Anyhow, for all this interesting information about old-time Vassalboro we are again indebted to that indefatigable digger into old records, Mr. Raymond Manson.

Now for reference to another Kennebec town. We eagerly await publication next summer of General Carleton Fisher’s History of Clinton. I have seen some of the chapters in manuscript, and I can assure you it will be one of the most complete and most readable town histories ever published in Maine. Gen. Fisher and I have long been interested in the origin of a very unusual Clinton place name — the Bellsqueeze Road. There are several well known, but utterly unprovable traditions as to how that road got its name. One says that a church bell for the old Benton Falls Church was hauled over that road and got stuck at a narrow spot. But there is no reason why that bell should have been carried so far up the Kennebec, when it could have been boated up the Sebasticook right to the foot of the falls at Benton. Another story has it that a family names Bell opened up a lane so narrow to their home that any vehicle had a tight squeeze to get through. Now General Fisher comes up with a theory that seems quite logical. His diligent research reveals no record of a family named Bell. He suggests that the road was named for the Bell apple, which was raised in large quantities in that area 150 years ago, and was especially renowned for the cider squeezed from it.

And with that latest squeeze to a Clinton road, we say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1969