Radio Script #980

Little Talks on Common Things
September 23, 1973

A famous dining and entertainment resort for Maine people in the early 1900’s was Merrymeeting Park between Brunswick and Bath. It was one of several such promotions by Maine’s trolley pioneer, Amos Gerald, who not only built a number of electric railway lines in this state but who also put up in his home town of Fairfield, the ornate and celebrated Gerald Hotel. On this program I have long ago told you about that hotel and about Amos Gerald’s resort called Casco Castle at South Freeport. But until new I have neglected his Merrymeeting Park.

That park flourished at the time of the Gibson Girl and just before Henry Ford made his Model T. Although like all of Gerald’s similar parks, Merrymeeting was a device to lure riders to the electric cars, that park was unusual. It was one of the most beautiful in Maine developed in a natural, wild glen overlooking the bay. Everything necessary to make it a popular resort was installed. It was within easy trolley ride of Lewiston and Portland. It could be visited from Boston with trolley connections all the way. There was a special Merrymeeting trolley car with upholstered seats and an observation platform. Built at a cost of $7,000 that car was said to be the finest ever constructed for an electric read in U.S. It had large windows with stained glass trim, olive plaid drapes, four tables for card players, and on the floor a deep-piled red carpet. All the woodwork was mahogany. In many respects it resembled a Pullman car. In hot weather, open cars were popular. Sometimes as many as twenty of them were on the siding at Merrymeeting Park. Trips were often made in a train of three linked cars.

The fifty acres of park grounds were beautifully landscaped. The ravine afforded picturesque views, and its winding stream was spanned by a number of rustic bridges. In the lowest depression was a pond with white swans. For entertainment a hillside theatre provided open stage, tiers of seats, and log cabin dressing rooms. Performances were concerts, vaudeville, and sometimes full-length plays from the Broadway stage. There were frequent appearances of Maine’s leading bands, including R. B. Hall’s of Waterville.

Another feature at Merrymeeting was the zoo. Best remembered are not the mangy lions or the sleepy elephant, but the deer and buffalo from our own country. But most delightful to the children were the dozen monkeys. Put up a on the lawn was a stuffed quadruped, advertised as the world’s largest horse.

Associated with Merrymeeting Park was the much longer lasting New Meadows Inn, where full course shore dinners were widely renowned. There was also a dining room in the park’s casino, a brown shingled building trimmed in white and crowned by a domed cupola. Its entire first floor was the lobby. The dining room on the second floor was reached by elevator and could serve 100 persons at a time. There one could get dinner for 50 cents, and for a dollar a big shore dinner consisting of lobster stew, steamed clams, fried clams, whole boiled lobster, vegetables, salad, dessert and beverage. The lobsters came from Cundy’s Harbor and it took two barrels of them to supply a single Sunday’s patronage at Merrymeeting Casino.

Besides the restaurant the place had refreshment booths scattered over the grounds. One was the Rand House with its long soda fountain that was dubbed the Shanghai Bar. Basket boys roamed the park, selling peanuts, popcorn, and spun candy. Arthur Hill, who had the popcorn concession, claimed that all his corn was raised in Topsham.

Fireworks displays were not only on the Fourth of July but on several other evenings during the season.

Although all signs of it have long ago been obliterated, much of it by the Naval Airport, there are still elderly persons who remember the good times and good food at Merrymeeting Park.

In the middle of the 19th century a flourishing educational institution in Waterville was the Liberal Institute. It had been started in 1837 by local Universalists as a rival to the Baptist Waterville Academy. Both prepared boys for college and also served as what were called finishing schools for girls. The Liberal Institute and the Waterville Academy were physically not far apart. The Academy stood where the later large building built for it by Governor Abner Coburn was erected next to Monument Park on Waterville’s Elm Street, and the Liberal Institute was only a few rods farther down the same Elm Street at the corner of School Street.

What the Waterville Liberal Institute was like is shown by its catalogue for the year 1852. It announced that the school’s purpose was to prepare young men for college and to train teachers for the common schools. It said: “The female department has been made permanent and superior accommodations have been furnished for young ladies. Valuable additions have been made to the apparatus. (That was the old name for laboratory equipment). Instruction is systematic and thorough, to train students to think, and to lead them to true acquirement of knowledge.”

The year was divided not into three terms, but four, called respectively fall, winter, spring and summer. The course was three years, not four, and they were called junior, middle and senior years. The curriculum was much like that in other Maine academies of the time, including the Waterville Academy that later became Coburn. The college preparatory course required Latin and Greek all three years. In Latin the students read not only the Caesar, Cicero and Virgil of my own later generation, but also Sallust, Ovid, Plautus and Terence. Amazingly four modern languages were taught at the Liberal Institute, but only a few terms of each. A student could thus get a meager introduction to French, German, Spanish and Italian.

In the 1850’s instruction in what we now call English was very scanty in all Maine academies. There was no course of that name. In the first year the study of English grammar, begun in the common schools, was continued and re-emphasized, the method being that of detailed parsing of sentences. No attention whatever was given to English Literature and at that time no one recognized any such thing as American Literature. There was no instruction in English composition, but at weekly exercises on Friday, the students were required to read original compositions or recite declamations. The catalogue said: “From these weekly exercises none are excused except for very exceptional reasons.” That may mean that some poor chap with a cleft palate could get out of that weekly performance.

The Universalists did not let the Baptists outdo them in religious zeal. The Liberal Institute’s catalogue said: “The scriptures are read daily as an opening exercise in which all are expected to unite. All members of the Institute are expected to attend public worship on the Sabbath with the congregation which parents or guardians may select.”

As for discipline, this is the published statement: “The government of the school, though strict, is designed to be kind. Obedience is secured, if possible, by awakening the student to a sense of his moral obligations and by appeals to his better feelings. Those who cannot be induced by such means to correct their perverse habits and submit to wholesome discipline, will be removed from the Institute as unworthy of its privileges and harmful in their influence upon others.”

As for the school calendar, the fall term began on what we now celebrate as Labor Day, the first Monday in September. The winter term began on the first Monday in December, the spring term on the first Monday in February and the summer term on the first Monday in May. Each of the four terms lasted eleven weeks, so that the Institute’s school year was 44 weeks. That is how it could cover four years of work in three years. Since 52 weeks make up a calendar year, that left only eight weeks for vacations, and they were distributed as follows: Two weeks between fall and winter terms, one week between winter and spring terms, two weeks between spring and summer terms and three weeks between close of the summer term and beginning of the new school year in September. Graduation came early in August.

Concerning the apparatus already referred to, the catalogue commented under the heading “Apparatus and Cabinet”: “The Institute is furnished with an excellent philosophical and astronomical apparatus. The chemical items have lately received valuable additions. The mineralogical and geological specimens are extensive. There is a full set of Cutler’s physiological plates. ”

What did it cost to attend that Waterville school in 1852? Tuition was $5 a term, $20 a year. Board was in private families, where room and meals were obtained for $1.50 to $2.00 a week. Management was in the hands of a board of trustees headed by Calvin Gardiner, the local Universalist minister. Prominent Waterville citizens on the board included Jediah Morrill, Silas and Isaac Redington, and Joseph Percival. Trustees from other places were William Drew, the well known Universalist publisher of Augusta, Wyman B.S. Moor of Bangor, U.S. Senator, and Alpheus Lynn of Bangor.

In 1852 principal of the Liberal Institute was a Universalist clergyman, James P. Weston. His preceptress in charge of the girls was Sarah Buck. Other teachers were A. K. P.Townsend, William Cary, J. B. Martin and Samuel Peabody – an unusual percentage of males. Teaching music to private pupils from the enrollment was Mrs. S. E. Phillip. The enrollment in 1852 consisted of 95 boys and 70 girls, a total of 165.

Some of the students in that year who later became prominent Waterville citizens were Willard B. Arnold, Silas Bates, Charles Crommett, Frank Dunbar, Charles Gilman, Frederick Haverland, Francis Heath, Charles Heywood, Daniel Moor, Henry and George Percival and Charles Stackpole. There were girls enrolled from the families of Arnold, Bacon, Boothby, Crommett, Dorr, Getchell, Nudd and Percival.

By no means did all the students come from Waterville and vicinity. They were from Gardiner, Turner, Cape Elizabeth, Wayne, Starks, Paris, Sumner, Brewer, Hampden and even Houlton and Caribou. From outside the State there were students from Boston, New York, Lawrence and Gloucester and from St. John and Moncton in New Brunswick.

And with that salute to old Waterville Liberal Institute we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1973