Radio Script #948

Little Talks on Common Things
November 19, 1972

One of Maine’s fine old schools is Kents Hill, known in its early days as the Maine Wesleyan Seminary because of its Methodist origin. It is interesting to note what the Kennebec Journal had to say about this school, when in the 34th year of its existence in 1859 it got its first large building. The Journal said: “At the top of Kents Hill in Read field, the new seminary edifice is now externally completed. The main building, 95 by 40 feet, with wings on each side 41 by 38 feet, is four stories high, plus a large, finished basement. The building will contain chapel, recitation rooms, teachers’ rooms, and boarding accommodations for 140 students.”

The seminary was established in 1845 by Luther Sampson, a wealthy farmer who formerly resided on Kents Hill. He founded it as a manual labor school, but as in many other such attempts in Maine, including that at Waterville College, the manual labor aspect proved disastrous and was abandoned. The institution was turned solely into an academic school, and prospered under the Methodist elders Merritt and Zenro Caldwell.

The Journal continued: “Now in 1859, a female department is an important feature. The school takes pride that it is supported chiefly by generous individuals, and has less aid from the state than any other similar institution. The trustees now intend to raise the female department to the rank of a college for young ladies, where they may achieve regular college graduation. Females now do most of the teaching in our public schools, and they should have the means to qualify thoroughly for that work. The old prejudice that excludes females from the scientific lecture room should be abandoned and the temple of science opened to those of both sexes.”

In that same 1859 issue of the Kennebec Journal I noted a list of debts owed by the different states of the Union at that time. Believe it or not, Maine then had the largest debt of any of the six New England states. Its debt of $1,194,000 was? 30,000 larger than Massachusetts’ $1,164,000. Rhode Island owed $382,000, while New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut has no debt at all. As one might suspect, the largest state debt just before the Civil War was New Yorks’ $31 million, with Virginias’ $29 million running it a close second. Missouri, which had achieved statehood in 1820, the same year as Maine, had already piled up a debt of $19 million. Well anyhow, ever since it had this debt of a bit more than a million dollars in 1859, Maine has never been out of debt, and probably never will be.

Most of the listeners to this program have heard me many times refer to Waterville’s first full time physician, Moses Appleton. While others, including Dr. Obadiah Williams, had practiced medicine on the side, Moses Appleton was the first in this place to make it his true profession. He not only ministered to the sick, but also operated the first apothecary shop – that is, the first drug store in Waterville. During the first half of the nineteenth century, when Waterville had a number of wealthy and brilliant citizens like Nathaniel Gilman and Timothy Boutelle, Dr. Appleton was turned to for leadership in many civic affairs.

I have told on this program about the doctor’s medical accounts, unique methods of healing that, many years later, captured the admiration of Dr. F. T. Hill, so that Dr. Hill published articles about Dr. Appleton in leading medical journals. But Moses Appleton, like all enterprising men of his day, had other interests besides his extensive medical practice. He bought and sold land, helped start the town’s first bank, and in his last years promoted the plan to bring the railroad to Waterville. He did not see that latter fulfillment, because he died in 1849, just a few months before the first train puffed into town.

Among Dr. Appleton’s interests was a large farm which, during the second quarter of that century, was carried on by his son Samuel, though the doctor himself gave it some supervising attention. Preserved are Samuel’s financial records of that farm, and those records reveal much about the agricultural interests of even professional men a century and a half ago.

Samuel Appleton was 27 years old when he began those accounts in the year 1830. In April of that year, he paid 80 cents for 10 pounds of clover seed and 60 cents for two bushels of oats for the oxen. He hired a succession of different men as laborers for planting, harvesting, wood-cutting, hauling,and fencing, and it was those laborers who, with Appleton’s oxen and plow, worked out the Appleton taxes on the roads. Among the workmen were Elias Tozier and George Waters, to each of whom Appleton paid 50 cents a day. David Pries seems to have been worth more. At least he got 75 cents a day. When Sam Appleton was running that farm in 1830, it may actually have been a new project, because in the first pages of his accounts there are many items for cost of seed, not only clover and other grasses, but wheat and corn. In those days few farmers bought seed; they raised their own. But Appleton bought and sowed a bushel of wheat and a peck of seed corn in 1830. Another evidence that the venture may have been new is that in the same year he paid $11 for a plough. Also, besides using his own oxen, he paid John Clifford $1.50 for a day’s work with Clifford’s two yoke of oxen breaking up new land.

Somewhere in Waterville was a place called Irish Hill. Appleton noted that he paid John Burleigh 13 cents for use of Burleigh’s wagon to Irish Hill on a Saturday, then for another 13 cents kept the vehicle over Sunday to, in Appleton’s words go to the neck and home with it at.

Those old Appleton accounts include a mixed miscellany of items.

For instance, in a single entry he charged Lewis Allen for pasturing two horses three weeks $1.50, 3 bushels of salt bought at auction $1.05, five trips with horse to Augusta $2.90, and wagon to Sidney 50 cents. One of Appleton’s workmen was Timothy Heywood. The interesting feature of that arrangement was that Heywood paid Appleton 67 cents a week (that is, four shillings) for house rent, while Appleton paid Heywood 67 cents a day for labor. Heywood had a boy, whom Appleton also hired at 25 cents a day.

The old book carries a list of products of the Appleton farm for the year 1830. They included 112 bushel of oats, 18 of corn, five of peas, 5 of white beans, 97 of potatoes, 76 of wheat, 40 of apples, and 7 tons of hay. The whole lot was rated at $119.50.

For a time Samuel Appleton was in business with Nathaniel Gilman in retail trade. So we find in this same book charges to various persons of such items as a bushel of plaster, 4 yards of sheeting, and a comb, as well as milk pans, scythes, tobacco and the usual groceries.

Appleton’s account with Gardner Waters charged Waters with groceries and rum, while it credited him with three days work on a barn frame, and ten days for himself and his boy digging ledge, on the last day of which Waters drilled and got water. For completing that well, Appleton paid Waters $ 10.38.

Oliver Marston was apparently a shoemaker. Appleton sold him 12 pounds of sole leather at 23 cents a pound. While Sam Appleton operated the farm, it is clear that ownership remained in the hands of his father Moses. That is attested by a paper enclosed in the old account books. That paper says: “Waterville, Oct. 2, 1837. I hereby certify that I have assisted in cleaning and measuring the wheat raised by Moses Appleton, and that there is 53 3/4 bushels, and I verily believe said wheat was raised by said Appleton during the year 1837. (signed) George Young, Jr.”

In the back of the account books is a brief, running diary, with all its items concerned with the Appleton farm. The record covers only two years, 1830 and 1831. Let us note a few of the entries.

“April 14, 1830 – Timothy Heywood and I got in the rye. April 15 – Tim and I plowed. April 22 – I sowed five bushels of oats while Tim harrowed. May 15 – Took account of Burleigh’s stock in the village. May 24 – Went to the farm, mended fence and Hashed sheep. June 9 – Worked on the highway. June 23 – Commenced getting timber for the barn. June 30 – Raised the barn. July 22 – Worked at the village in the morning. Got in a load of hay at four in afternoon. July 24 – It rained all the forenoon with 133 cocks of hay out. July 25 – Rain. July 26 – More rain. July 27 – Fourth day of rain. Hay mostly destroyed. Aug. 3 – Finished mowing the Chaplin field and got in two loads from the house lot. Aug. 4 – Finished haying on home place at the village. Aug. 7 – Cradled wheat at the farm.”

On August 10 to 12, Sam Appleton made a trip to Boothbay, but he does not say for what purpose. The last day of that month he spent plowing sward and stubble. Several references mention what Appleton called the Eaton place, where he was repeatedly cutting bushes, burning brush, and building fence. On Sept. 15, he wrote: “Finished fence between Hunt and myself.” At the end of that month, he was hauling boards from the village to the farm, where he threshed peas and picked rocks. The last entry for 1830 was on November 15, when he tells he pressed cider.

Because Sam Appleton actually lived in Ticonic Village, there was nothing doing on the farm during the winter. In 1830 he got out no lumber from it. His 1831 account begins with April 11, when he records a high freshet on the Kennebec. All through April he was using a bucksaw on the woodpile outside the village house.

When the old-timers talked about building fence they did not by any means refer always to rail or stump fences. Even more often they meant stone walls. On April 23, 1331, Appleton says he hauled stone to make fence, and three days later he ploughed a rocky potato field and hauled stone from it for a fence. On May 3, he recorded a fall of two inches of snow at the farm.

“May 27 – Went to the farm, planted beans, put up crow twine and drove down the sheep, and made a hog yard.”

On July 4 he celebrated. His record for that day says: “Bought grindstone from Gilman for $3 and hung it. In the afternoon, I worked a bit at the brickyard, then went celebrating – rather poor time. Cider provided was really vinegar.”

And with that sour ending, we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1972