Radio Script #1005

Little Talks on Common Things
March 17, 1974

About the same time that the horse car line was electrified between Waterville and Fairfield, a similar railway was underway between Augusta and Hallowell. On January 23, 1890 the Kennebec Journal printed a long account under the headlines: “It is Settled – The Electric R.R. Will Surely Be Built – Augusta, Hallowell and perhaps Gardiner, to Enjoy its Privileges.”

The Journal went on to announce receipt of a telegram from Amos Gerald, heading a committee that had gone to Boston to see contractors. Gerald’s wire said: “The Augusta, Hallowell and Gardiner Electric Railway Co. has contracted for construction and complete equipment of the road from Augusta to Hallowell. The contract provided that the road shall be opened to the public by the 25th of next June.”

Amos Gerald of Fairfield was the renowned builder of most of Maine’s early trolley lines. He had already built the line between Waterville and Fairfield, and he would later build similar roads allover the state, including the various lines that made up the system which connected Portland with Brunswick and Bath in one direction and with Saco, Biddeford, Old Orchard, Kennebunk, Wells and York in the other direction.

When a Journal reporter asked Mr. Gerald about extension of the Augusta road beyond Hallowell to Gardiner, he replied: “I am personally convinced that it should go through to Gardiner before another winter, but there are some objections to so large an expenditure at one time, especially at present high rates of interest.”

Gerald explained that the project, as it stood, for a line only between Augusta and Hallowell, called for many things besides a track and trolley wire. He pointed out that there would be a car barn, 100 feet long and 33, feet wide, with a pit to enable work on the underside of cars. Three tracks would run the entire length of the barn, and there would be a turntable to facilitate shifting cars from one track to another. Opposite the State House there would be a siding 200 feet long, where north and south bound cars would pass. As for power, the company would buy some existing facility or build its own. Mr. Gerald emphasized: “A steady, positive power of sufficient capacity is one of the necessities for success of any project connected with electricity. This Augusta road is going to have it.”

Much has been said on this program about Father Rasle, Jesuit priest to the Maine Indians at Old Point in Norridgewock, and I have told also a bit about his predecessor Father Gabriel Druillettes who founded the mission there nearly a full century before Father Rasle arrived. There were other zealous Jesuits on the Kennebec during the 17th century, and I want today to tell you about one of them, Father Pierre Biard. Information about this priest, who was an earlier visitor to Maine, comes from that valuable account in the French archives known as “The Jesuit Relations”, a long, detailed narration of Jesuit missions in America.

Immediately following the efforts of duMonts and Champlain to start a French colony at Port Royal in Nova Scotia in 1611, Jesuit priests began to arrive, with the explicit intent of Christianizing the lndians. Among the first to come, in June 1611, was Father Pierre Biard. He was, in fact, one of the first ten missionaries named in that long account “The Jesuit Relations.”

Biard was the first of those missionaries ever to visit what is now Maine. The purpose of that first visit was not to convert Indians, but to get food. The little group at Port Royal was running out of supplies in 1612, and Father Biard, with a group of sailors, set out southwest in hope of encountering other French ships that could let them have provisions. They knew there were Frenchmen on St. Croix Island in Passamaquoddy Bay at the south end of the Bay of Fundy. But at St. Croix they found only a few traders and a short way up the St. John River several others. However, they saw no French ships.

So the Biard party went on to the Kennebec. Father Biard’s account of what happened I now give to you as he recorded it in the Relations” “We arrived at the Kennebec River towards the end of October. The Kennebec is a river in the County of Abnakis at 43 degrees of latitude and about 70 degrees southwest of Port Royal. It has two great entrances, distant from each other by two leagues. It also has many bays and islands at its mouth. For the rest it is a beautiful and great river, but we saw no good land any more than on the St. John. Nevertheless, they say that above, some distance from the sea, there are pleasant places for abode, where natives cultivate the soil. But we ascended the river not more than three leagues. We were turned about by so many whirl pools and shot through so many strong rapids that it was a miracle of God that we did not perish.

“The savages flattered us with hopes of getting corn, then they changed their promise from corn to beans.”

Meanwhile Father Biard had gone, with a boy, to a nearby island to celebrate mass. He wrote: “With great curiosity the savages crowded into our boat. Our people feared their true intention was to take possession of our vessel. So our crew armed and barricaded themselves.” The savages kept coming, and the ship’s captain was restrained from giving orders to fire only by the remonstrances of Father Biard. The Father’s patience was rewarded. “We found the savages not vicious, although we knew they had driven away the English in 1608. They told us the English had committed outrages, but they have heard that we French would not drive them from their river or set dogs upon them. We found them not thieves like the Micmacs, but great talkers. They keep up a constant chatter.”

Father Biard showed them the tokens and images of the faith, which they kissed willingly. They brought to him their children for priestly blessing.

An unusual item in this account is that among those Indians Father Biard found one who knew enough French to serve as interpreter. With what Frenchman had an Indian, as early as 1612, come in contact long enough to learn even a minimum of French words? Perhaps he was one who had at some time been at Quebec and had come down what later was known as the Arnold Trail to the Kennebec.

Father Biard’s account does not indicate that they encountered any French ships, but that they did get some corn and beans from the Indians.

Anyhow, his story of that voyage down the Maine coast ends with this statement: “We were at the Kennebec until the fifth of November. The season was now too far advanced for us to venture farther south. We decided it would be better to endure the winter at Port Royal where we could be warmly lodged. We directed our course to Bagaduce (i.e., Castine) and
on to Port Royal.”

Later in the Relations, Father Biard told of another incident on the Kennebec. Ascending the river, the French met six canoes full of savages coming down. As neither party trusted the other, the two encamped on opposite sides of the river. In the evening the Indians began to sing and dance. Suspecting this to be invocations to the Devil, Father Biard had his Frenchmen sing some church hymns, such as the Ave Maria Steller and the Salve.

Perhaps this was the first attempt at exorcism in Maine, a practice that has a curious revival in 1974. However, the episode ended humorously, as Father Biard describes it. “When our party had sung all the spiritual tunes we knew, they fell to singing others less spirited. When those gave out, they took to mimicking the dancing and singing of the Abnakis on the other side of the river. Since Frenchmen are naturally good mimics, they did it so well that the savages stopped to listen. When our people stopped, the lndians began again. You would have laughed to hear the two groups, for they were like two choirs in antiphonal concert, and you could scarcely have told the real Abnakis from the sham ones.”

Two years later, in 1614, Father Biard again visited the Kennebec, following the French attempt to start a colony on Mt. Desert Island. The Jesuit father fled the island and went to the friendly Kennebec Indians, when the Mt. Desert settlement was attacked and destroyed by the English and one of Biard’s fellow priests was killed. When he tried to return to Port Royal, Father Biard and all his companions on the ship were captured by a British vessel and were carried prisoners to Virginia. The next spring he was released and returned to Port Royal, then he went back to France, where he died in 1622.

His visits to the Kennebec had no substantial results. He made no attempt to set up a mission, as other Jesuits did farther up the river at Norridgewock. But Biard’s narration in the Jesuit Relation does establish an early French visit to the mouth of the Kennebec and it does provide one bit of historical evidence. There long prevailed a tradition, that when the Popham Colony of English settlers was abandoned in 1608, a number did not return to England, but remained nearby. But, surely, if such settlers had been anywhere nearby, even at Pemaquid, Father Biard would have at least heard of them and would probably have sought them out. His account thus demolishes that tradition.

Now as we close, we have just time enough to get in a few items from the Waterville town records of long ago. The first poor farm came right in the middle of the 19th century in 1851. Samuel Appleton and Isaiah Marston were named a committee to purchase farm and buildings for a poor house establishment, at an expense not to exceed $3,000.

That year 1851 saw the introduction of the Maine liquor law. Under the leadership of temperance crusader, Neal Dow, Mayor of Portland, the whole state went dry. That explains the following vote at the Waterville town meeting in March, 1851. “Voted that the Friends of Temperance in Waterville be requested to act as a committee to furnish the town agent in case of any illegal sale of intoxicating drinks.” The town agent referred to was the liquor agent, who was the only person in town authorized to sell liquor, and then only for medicinal and mechanical purposes.

It was also in 1851 that a movement to form a new county failed. The attempt is thus recorded in the town records: “Voted to petition the Legislation to incorporate a new county composed of the towns of Belgrade, Rome, Waterville, Winslow, Benton, Clinton, Albion and China, now all in Kennebec County; and Mercer, Smithfield, Fairfield and Pittsfield, now in Somerset County.”

The plan was to make Waterville the county seat. Rivalry with Augusta had already become so strong that Waterville people conceived the new county as a way to get out from under Augusta control. But Waterville’s political power was not strong enough to form the new county.

Year: 1974