Radio Script #912

Little Talks on Common Things
December 19, 1971

We ended last week’s broadcast with an item from the diary of Camilla Dunbar, written in 1855. Let’s begin the program today with some more extracts from that diary.

“Sept. 10, 1853 – Spent last night at grandfather Lemuel’s. Some of the ladies want me to start a school, so I went about the upper part of the town to get scholars. I got little encouragement because the town school commences so soon.”

“Oct. 26, 1853 – Mr. Rich came in the cars tonight and will probably stay a number of days. He is the most feminine man I ever saw.”

“Feb. 25, 1855 – The last day of winter. Have been running along the shore of the Kennebec today. This noon Fanny Pierce called me and we went down on the ice and over to the island.”

“April 23, 1854 – James is very sick.”

“April 30 – This is probably James last day with us, and how appropriate that it is a rainy Sabbath.”

‘May 1 – Our dear James passed to a higher world. As night advanced, he grew more easy, could breathe with less effort. When Mother went into his room at 10 o’clock, he said, ‘I’m glad you haven’t left me. Under his head Mother placed a cool pillow and soon noticed that his eyes did not move. He was gone.”

“Sept. 6, 1855 – Dreadful accident as people were returning from camp meeting. The horses on the Williams House hack took fright and ran down Main Street. Several persons were crossing the street, including Marcella Bean. She was knocked down and the coach passed over her. Taken to Mr. Nason’s house, she lived only two hours.”

In that same year, 1855, Otis Dunbar left Waterville to try his luck on the prairies of Illinois. He left his family in Waterville for another year, then moved them to Princeton, Illinois, which became the home of three generations of the Dunbar Richardsons.

In 1850, Dunbar relatives had been hit by the California gold fever. Josiah Pulsifer, father of Dr. N. G. H. Pulsifer, whose grandmother was a Dunbar, went to the gold fields in company with one of the Waterville Cortrells. An old record says that on October 30, 1850 Cortrell sold his interest in their property partnership to Josiah Pulsifer. Their claim was in the so-called Mother Lode, north of Sacramento. They had made the long journey around Cape Horn, Pulsifer hoping to make a fortune in gold. He came home nearly as poor as he went out, but his son became a well remembered Waterville physician.

Cornelia Kelley Wolfe remembers the old Dunbar house on Sherwin Street. She wrote, “Our house was on the corner of Silver and Sherwin. The second house from ours on Sherwin Street was a large, square, brick house, with a big shed and barn back of it. There was a large garden extending down behind Silver Street. That brick house, I understand, was built by Otis Dunbar.”

The first Lemuel Dunbar, in 1810, built a house on the corner of North and Main Streets. It was later removed, and his son, Lemuel, built another on the same site. In the first, Lemuel’s carpenter shop was taught a school, fostered by the New College in 1820. Made into a dwelling house, that shop was in 1900 the home of A. M. Dunbar, the book binder.

Of another Dunbar, Miss Frances, the Centennial History of Waterville says: “A leader in the Waterville Woman’s Association is Miss Frances Dunbar. Women in need of work or service instinctively turn to her. She is the Association’s General Secretary.” That was in 1902, the year when Waterville celebrated its centennial.

The trustee records of Colby College tell us that after the original construction for the first building, a man named Scott had absconded. The trustees, on May 1, 1822, voted to resume construction with Peter Getchell, contractor to erect the brickwork, and Lemuel Dunbar to do the carpentry.

Mr. Richardson in his book, offered a different explanation rather than, alleged shiftlessness, for Lemuel Dunbar’s son, Otis moving to Vassalboro, then after an unsuccessful return to Waterville, going far away to Illinois. The letter said: “Otis sought work at Getchell’s Corner and then at Unity. The most profitable land near Waterville had already been taken by the first generation and the second had to scramble for the hinterland. Maine does not provide deep and level soils. Otis simply couldn’t get a living in Waterville, though no doubt some of the houses that he built may still be standing. On its shelf above the Kennebec, Getchell’s Mills are now closed. Many of the, old buildings of Otis Dunbar’s day have long since burned. But there remains a snug little hamlet where once Otis tried to get a living. As for Unity, it is still a town of little houses like that in which the Dunbars may have lived. But the back country in Maine cannot afford too many good, substantial houses. We wonder, as we walk about, how settlers could pay for all we do see. As time went on, the pickings got smaller and smaller. At the age of 48, when most men prefer to make the most of what they have already done, Otis Dunbar moved his family to the new prairie settlements of Central Illinois.”

That kind of writing is typical of what people far away often say about Maine. Mr. Richardson doubtless believed his statement good for 1971, when he wrote, “The back country in Maine cannot afford too many good, substantial houses.” Now we humbly recommend that Mr. Richardson read the numerous pages of real estate ads in any issue of Down East Magazine. There he will see, accompanying the ads, pictures of very substantial back country Maine homes – some of them selling for as much as $50,000.

We must admit that, while Maine has some very profitable farms, Mr. Richardson is in general right when he describes Maine soil as poor. Cyrus Hamlin, father of Lincoln’s vice president, whose farm was at the top of Paris Hill, once said, “In Maine we have to sharpen the sheep’s noses so they can graze between the rocks.” And Arthur Roberts, President of Colby College from 1908 to 1927, commented if in Maine farming isn’t an occupation, it’s a misfortune.”

Anyhow most of Lemuel Dunbar’s children did leave Waterville, and the old man’s will indicates that he may have felt it necessary to bribe Lemuel II to stay. Otis Dunbar, in his own writing, left some vivid recollections of his father, the first Lemuel. He wrote: “I learned a lesson very young. My father was in the shipyard finishing the cabin of a vessel. One night when he came home he said to Mother, ‘Where s that two gallon jug.’ ‘Down cellar’, replied Mother. ‘What you want it for?’ ‘I’m taking it with me in the morning’ said Father. He took the jug and put it in a corner of his big tool chest. When in the shipyard, they came around with the rum ration , and that was several times a day, Father would point to the jug and say, ‘Pour mine in there.’ Two gallons were poured into the jug in a short time and Father brought it home. He told us ‘That’s pretty poor stuff. It may do to wash our feet in, but it’s not fit to drink.’ That’s when I learned a lesson. If it was no good for him to “drink, it was no good for me, and I never drank rum from that day to this.”

Inheriting all of his father’s property, Lemuel Dunbar II, unlike his brother Otis, had no need to get out and scramble. Lemuel II is said to have been somewhat like his famous cousin, Henry David Thoreau. He took up painting, not for money, but because he liked somehow to record what his eyes saw. Having sufficient income, Lemuel decided to go to Paris and study art. Today Cornelia Kelley Wolfe has half a dozen landscapes painted in Europe by Lemuel Dunbar. She says they are not nearly as good as the Waterville landscapes he did after his return to Maine.

A letter written in 1906, describes Lemuel Dunbar II as he appeared on his 80th birthday in that year. “Uncle Lem just wouldn’t wear glasses. He liked to get letters, but they had to be read to him. He can still make out some of the print on his local newspaper. He is a very busy man looking after his property and doing his housework, as he now lives alone and gets his own meals. Uncle Lem said this was the first party he had ever had. Nora made him a big chocolate cake ornamented with candles. We ate it with ice cream. ”

We have already noted that Cornelia, a daughter of Lemuel Dunbar, married William Moor. That was a Waterville family even better known than the Dunbars. Daniel Moor, born in Pembroke, N. H., in 1770, came to Winslow in 1779 with his father, Capt. Daniel Moor, who had been in General Monhgomery’s march to Quebec via Champlain, in the attempt to join Arnold, when he completed his march up the Kennebec and down the Chaudiere an attempt that ended in disaster for both Arnold and Montgomery.

The younger Daniel in 1797 built a home on the west side of the Kennebec, in what a few years later became the town of Waterville. Their sons, William and Daniel were for many years in business in Waterville and owned considerable land in what later developed into Waterville’s business section. It was William and Daniel who conducted the firm long known throughout New England as W. and D. Moor. They owned a whole fleet of river boats and coasting schooners. They launched the first steamboat built at WaterVille. They also conducted a general store close by. their shipyard which stood near the present site of the Hathaway Shirt factory. In 1846, the Maine Legislature granted them the right to improve the Penobscot at Old Town, and there they operated the Penobscot River Navigation Company for several years.

Their younger brother, Wyman B.S. Moor, born in 1813, became Attorney General of Maine and U. S. Senator from this state. He was financially interested in the Penobscot and Kennebec R. R., an extension of the Androscoggin and Kennebec from Waterville to Bangor. His bitter quarrel with the Portland and Kennebec, which came to Waterville via Augusta, culminated in what was popularly called ‘Moor’s Battery’, his threat to mount guns at Waterville to prevent the trains of the Portland and Kennebec crossing the Penobscot and Kennebec tracks.

William Moor moved to Chicago, where he made profitable investments on Michigan Avenue, and lie died there in 1872. Before he brought his family out to the Windy City, he wrote to his wife back in Waterville “I have about $12,000, which I shall invest tomorrow here in Chicago at 24% interest.”

They were enterprising Waterville families, those Dunbar and Moors of more than a hundred years ago. But now we must leave them and say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1971