Radio Script #950

Little Talks on Common Things
December 3, 1972

Today I want to turn again to that large collection of papers loaned me last summer by Buford Grant, former Waterville superintendent of schools. Admittedly those papers themselves have nothing to do with the Kennebec Valley, with which this program primarily deals. But as regular listeners know by this time, I have often included information from other parts of Maine. Those Grant papers are concerned chiefly with a prominent early 19th century citizen of Brewer named Samuel B. Stone.

Today let us first see how a partners lip agreement was worded 140 years ago. In 1832 this was the agreement between Stone and a man who had the impressive name of Theophilus Nickerson

“For the purpose of buying and selling, all kinds of goods and merchandise under the firm name of S. B. Stone and Co. The stock or funds to purchase it to be supplied in equal shares, all expenses to be shared equally, all losses to be equally sustained, and all profits equally divided. Nickerson shall have 2%% on the amount of goods furnished from the company stock to carry on his private business, that is, on such amount of goods which would be sold if said Nickerson were not concerned in the business. Stone, giving his full time to the business of the company, shall have annually $350. When absent on company business, Stone’s expenses shall be paid. Nickerson, when engaged in company business, is to be paid a fair price and his expenses.”

My listeners are familiar with the method of starting many public projects in the early years of the last century. That method was to form a stock company and sell shares. It was this way most bridges were built. Then, if the charged tolls provided any profits, the shareholders got dividends. On some projects the investors knew from the start they could expect no financial return. That was what happened when shares were issued to form a circulating library. All a shareholder could get in return was the right to borrow books without charge and have a vote on policy. If the fees paid by non-shareholders were insufficient to pay operating expenses, the shareholders were subject to additional assessments. Such a holder of stock in a library was Samuel Stone. That paper reads: “February 6, 1844. This certificate entitles Samuel B. Stone to one share in the Social Library of Brewer, subject to such assessments as may be legally assessed thereon.”

A prominent feature of every sizable town in the 1850’s was a militia company. Like all similar Maine towns, Brewer had one, and in 1856 it had persuaded the state legislature to make an appropriation to build a storage arsenal in which to keep the company’s ammunition. At the time of the Revolution, 75 years earlier, such places were called Powder Houses, and it was to get the contents of such a building that the British troops were sent from Boston to Concord on that fatal 19th of April in 1775. The building of the powder house, which local people in Brewer called the gun house, explains the following letter sent from Brewer to Samuel Stone, their representative in the legislature at Augusta on January 26, 1857.

“I have examined the gun house at Brewer to estimate the expense of properly finishing the same. It appears that the appropriation was woefully insufficient, and the building is not completed. I estimate that $200 is needed to put this state property into good condition. The artillery company wants an addition of 20 feet to make a hall long enough for drill. If that is done, the appropriation should be $300 instead of $200.”

Another letter that reached Stone when he was in the legislature came from the Judge of Probate of Penobscot County, who complained about his salary. This is what Judge John Godfrey wrote to Representative Stone: “You may be assured I have no desire to press before the legislature anything improper. My petition asks only that my salary be put upon the same footing as the salaries of other probate judges. If the legislature refuses my request, I shall make no fight. I rely on their sense of justice and fairness. Every man I have heard express an opinion about the salary of the probate judge of Penobscot County considers it inadequate for the services demanded by the office. From the start I have found them greater than I expected and the business continues to increase. In the month of January, 1856 the entries were 60. This January of 1857 they have been 77. When judges doing half the business of the Penobscot judge get more salary, is my request not reasonable? While I appeal to you as a friend I do not ask you to make your public duties subservient to friendship. I ask only for what you would do for a stranger in a similar case.”

Then Judge Godfrey turned to another subj ect. He wrote: “In the matter of coal, our merchants get their coal 2240 pounds to the ton and sell it at 2000. It is a great wrong, and even then it is difficult to know whether you get true weight. No one sees a load weighed except the dealer.”

In 1972 we hear a lot about the failure to enforce certain laws, the reluctance of police, the jam-up in the courts, the leniency of judges, and a lot more. Don’t get the idea that such talk is new. Whether justified or not – and often it is not justified – criticism of law enforcement is very old. Listen to what Judge Godfrey wrote to Stone ,in 1857. “Something should be done to make officers do their duty. They are very lax now. What is the sense in having laws if they are not enforced?” I suspect Godfrey could have referred to violations of Maine law prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages, which Neal Dow had got on town statute books in 1851. There was liquor violation in 1857 just as there is liquor violation today. I suspect there has never been a time in Maine when we needed not so much new laws as the enforcement of laws we already have.

In the 1830’s, just before the coming of railroads to Maine, the state was swept by a furor of places to build canals. I have told you on previous broadcasts about the plan to build a canal beside the Kennebec from Winslow Bay to the smooth water above Fairfield, by-passing Ticonic Falls and the rips above them. Many such short canals reached the drawing boards, but were never built. One such was planned at Brewer. A subscription paper in 1835 reads as follows: “We the undersigned agree to pay the sums opposite our names toward the expense of a survey for a canal from the Penobscot River at Brewer to the Great Pond.” The list was headed by S. B. Stone with $ 5.00. Twenty-two other names pledged a dollar each.

The town of Brewer began with a purchase of land on the Penobscot from the State of Massachusetts by a number of men in the vicinity of Wrentham, whose original proprietary records are in the collection held by Buford Grant, and next week I’ll tell you about that proprietary in Eastern Maine.

Trouble over such lands did not end when the proprietors went out of business. Just as the principal heir of Kennebec lands, Robert Hallowell Gardiner, had quarrels and litigation long after his grandfather’s Plymouth Company had closed their books so the same was true at Brewer.

In 1846 Samuel Stone received a letter from one David Fisher in Wrentham, Mass. The letter said: “I have received notice that you have been chosen agent to come here to obtain information about the settlement of Brewer and Orrington. You shall have my assistance to the extent of my power, and I will devote my time, home and carriage to your service. It is most important that you see Cornelius Kalloch and get his deposition to be kept in perpetuity. He possess more accurate information than anyone else in Norfolk County, and he is now 92 years old. Captain Plimpton’s papers are at Medfield, eight miles from here. Plimpton was the surveyor and he should have left valuable documents. Kalloch can describe the tm·ffi landing with great accuracy. He recalls the reservations for landings, roads and other matters. He knows all about the power rights given to Robert Crossman, obligating Crossman to maintain a corn mill for the use of the inhabitants, and his information may be valuable in settling the present power dispute.

“When you get to Boston, go to the Washington Coffee House and inquire for the Wrentham stage. You will be told to go to the Providence depot at 3 p.m. and take the cars to Foxborough, then the stage to Wrentham. At the depot the agent will give you for one dollar a ticket covering both cars and stage. You will get here at 6 p.m. Come to my house and I will endeavor to make your time pass pleasantly. Be sure to bring wih you the books of Proprietors’ records. They may serve to refresh Kalloch’ s memory.”

As indicated at the start of this broadcast, Samuel Stone ran a general store at Brewer. Here are some of his prices in the 1830’s. Sugar, 13 cents a pound, thread three cents a skein, tobacco 20 cents a pound, four foot stove wood $3 a cord, a corn broom 30 cents, a scythe 88 cents, calico 14 cents a yard, a whip lash 17 cents, a bean pot 25 cents. For 50 smoked fish, Stone got 42 cents. ”

An unusual item among the Grant papers is a printed folder called “Political Map of U.S .” Unfolded it reveals a map, 36 by 30 inches. It was printed in 1856, the first year that the Republican Party entered a national election campaign. The map reveals the existence then of three parties, Democrat, Republican and American. At the top of the sheet appear pictures of the six men who were those parties’ candidates for president and vice-president. The Democratic presidential nominee, who was to be the man chosen in the coming election in November, 1856, was James Buchanan. The Republican nominee was General John Fremont. The American Party was led by Millard Fillmore, who had already served as president by accident, being vice-president when Pres. Zachary Taylor died in 1850. At that time Fillmore was a Whig, but when that party went out of existence, rather than become either a Democrat or Republican, Fillmore, like George Wallace in 1968, preferred to form his own party. It was the last the nation ever heard of him.

There was reason for any party to woo the Maine voters in 1856. The nation then had 31 states, and in population Maine stood 16 or 31, most exactly in the middle. Today it may surprise you to know that in 1856 Maine was larger than New Jersey or Michigan, and larger than any other of the six New England states except Mass. At that time our present most populous state of California ranked 29th among the 31 states, and the huge state of Texas ranked 25th. Maine population was twice that of Florida and three times that of Iowa.

Year: 1972