Radio Script #1083

Little Talks on Common Things
April 18, 1976

I am sure many who listen to this program have been seeing on television the excellent documentary series called the Adams Chronicles, depicting scenes in the careers of members of New England’s most noted family. The family produced two presidents, John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, a noted diplomat and historian, Charles Francis Adams, and Henry Adams, author of one of the nineteenth century’s keenest observations on American thought and action, a volume entitled “The Education of Henry Adams.” The family is still prominent in Massachusetts banking and finance, and there has been an Adams on the governing board of Harvard for more than 250 years.

Our interest in Adams on today’s broadcast deals solely with John Adams’ relation to Maine, for indeed he had something to do with the progress of events in the Kennebec Valley just before the Revolution.

John Adams was a young, rising attorney when, in 1749, a group of Boston merchants decided to form the company known as the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase. Because of personal acquaintance with those proprietors, especially the Bowdoin brothers, for whom later Bowdoin College and the towns of Bowdoin and Bowdoinham were named. Adams was, as early as 1760, employed to represent the Company in some of its litigation.

There were rival claims to some of the land claimed by the Kennebec Purchase. The Pejebscot Company, founders of Brunswick, sued the Kennebec Proprietors for encroachment, as did also the heirs of Clark and Lake, holders’ of the original patent to lands from the mouth of the Kennebec up to Merrymeeting Bay. Also, from the earliest settlements,
the Kennebec Company had trouble with squatters. The result of all the disputes meant almost constant litigation, and in those court cases John Adams was often the attorney for the Company or some one of its members. On several occasions he represented the interests of the leading proprietor, Sylvester Gardiner.

One commodity in which John Adams’ legal counsel was often involved was the King’s Broad Arrow, the great pines marked by royal commissioners as the property of the crown of England, never to be disturbed by private lumbering operations, but reserved for masts for the British navy.

In 1743, Benning Wentworth, Royal Governor of the Province of New Hampshire, was appointed Surveyor General of the Woods for both New Hampshire and Massachusetts, which then included Maine. As such, it was his duty to protect the King’s masts. He was succeeded as Surveyor General by his nephew, John Wentworth, who was even more determined
than his uncle to carry out the royal law.

In 1767, John Wentworth seized a quantity of the so-called King’s logs at Kennebunk and brought suit in Vice Admiralty Court for forfeiture of the seized logs. He lost the case, and when a similar situation occurred two years later in 1769, he employed John Adams as his lawyer, and this time he won, the case being tried in the court at York.

In 1770 John Adams’ most famous case was his defense of the British officers and soldiers involved in what history has somewhat extravagantly called the Boston Massacre. However, he found time to take another case for Wentworth involving logs cut in York and Cumberland Counties. In a case tried in old Falmouth, now the City of Portland, in the fall of 1770, Adams secured for Wentworth the right of seizure to 606 logs and 9 full masts.

Adams appeared at least once in court at the old Pownalborough Court House in what is now the town of Dresden.

In Vol. I of the huge collection of Legal Papers of John Adams, we find this record: “In April 1773, Adams drew a writ of ejectment for one of the Kennebec Proprietors’ actions at Pownalborough Inferior Court. Representing the plaintiff, Adams
put up so good a case that the Proprietors won an important decision that became a precedent for other legal actions in their favor.”

This is probably the case referred to elsewhere in the Legal Papers where we read: “Adams traveled once to Inferior Court at Pownalborough in Lincoln County, District of Maine, the farthest extent of Massachusetts justice to the eastward.”

The best known biography of John Adams was written by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams. In that book, the author said: “In the spring of 1765, Mr. Adams was engaged by the Kennebec Company to attend the Superior Court at Pownalborough on the Kennebec River. The place was then at almost the remotest verge of civilization, and it was with great difficulty that he was able to reach it. After encountering the obstruction of nearly impassable roads through an inhospitable region, and falling sick on the way, he reached Pownalborough and won his case, much to the satisfaction of the Kennebec Company. It contributed much to his reputation. It induced the Company to engage him in all their cases, which were numerous, and required much of his attention at Superior Court in Falmouth for the next ten years.

Although it is hard to explain why that 1765 trial at Pownalborough is not mentioned specifically in the Adams Legal Papers, it may very well have happened eight years before Adams’ appearance there at Inferior Court in 1773, as we have already mentioned. Charles Francis Adams was a very thorough and conscientious biographer, and he would never have recorded his grandfather’s case at Pownalborough in 1765 if it had not actually occurred. In fact, his comments about the difficulties of that wilderness journey must have come from some record kept by John Adams himself, who was one of the
most voluminous diarists and letter writers of colonial times.

Preserved in the huge collection of Adams papers is an account of John Adams’ expenses on the eastern circuit in 1765, and the eastern circuit definitely meant the district of Maine. There are numerous charges for lodgings and meals, such as “Goodwin’s for dinner 10 shillings, Lovejoy’s for lodgings 8 shillings, Sewall’s for supper, lodging and breakfast, 5 shillings, 6 pence.” But in the account is one most unusual item: “Highwaymen, 8 pence.” Does this mean that Adams was held up by one of the highway robbers so common in colonial times, and if so, how did he get away with parting with only 8 pence, two-thirds of a shilling, equivalent of about a dime in later American currency?

Anyhow we can be proud that today, in perfect restoration, there stands on the left bank of the Kennebec, opposite Richmond, the old Pownalborough Court House, whose most famous visiting attorney from Boston in the days just before the Revolution was John Adams, destined to become the second President of the U.S.

Now for a subject closer to Waterville. I have recently seen what is called a rate card of the Oakland Electric Company 75 years ago in the early days of the century. That was before a number of companies were merged by Walter Wyman and Harvey Eaton to form our present giant utility, the Central Maine Power Co. The rates are given in three categories: dwelling houses, stores and motors. For dwelling houses, the card says: “Three 16 candle power lamps $1.00 per month. One light will be put in for 75 cents per month, but no lower rates than this will be made. More than three lights, 30 cents each per month. We run our wires to the outside of the house, but inside work must be done at the expense of the customer. Special rates made on large installations.”

Here is the rate for stores: “0ne 16 c.p. light, 75 cents per month. More than one, 40 cents each per month. The Company furnishes the lamp and hanger board, but inside wiring must be at expense of the customer.”

A significant part of electrical consumption is now industrial. That area of service was very small three-quarters of a century ago. The card said: “Power for very small motors (one horse power or less) will be furnished at the rate of $30 per horse
power per year, but no rate will be made for less than one-half horse power. Motors from 2 to 10 horse power will be charged at the rate of $25 per horse power per year. Rates on larger motors furnished on application. In all cases the motor will be the property of the customer, although the Company will furnish them at cost.”

The card ended with some promotional advertising under the headline of one word, “Remember”, it said, “Remember that we are willing to wire your house or store for just what it costs us, and do the work promptly and well. Remember that we have a telephone at the store of F. L. Hersom, which is at your service anytime for communication with the Company. Remember that our aim is to give the best possible service, and if you don’t think we are doing so you will be conferring a favor by telling us just as soon as possible. Remember that we are trying to work for the best interests of Oakland, and we want your patronage as far as you can give it to us.”

How different that all was from the high-powered professional promotion of the big power companies of today.

Now let us close this broadcast with an item concerning the famous Two Cent Footbridge across the Kennebec at the foot of Temple Street. One of the most disastrous floods that ever hit our river was the freshet of 1901. During that big flood, this is what the Waterville Mail said about the Two Cent Bridge.

“The footbridge between this city and Winslow is in grave danger and may be carried away at any minute. A man who crossed it since midnight says it is swaying badly. The toll house is on high posts which have been boarded up, and the water is pounding against the barrier with great force. The people living in houses at the Head of Falls are packing their goods, preparing to move to safer quarters.

“At 1:30 a.m. the bridge was still standing, but in extreme peril, ice and logs beating down upon it.

“At 3:00 a.m. the toll house looked on the point of going out. If it jams against the bridge it will cause serious trouble to the structure.”

The final item read: “At 6.15 a.m. on Monday, December 16 the footbridge went out. We now know that the bridge was soon rebuilt, withstood safely the river’s biggest flood, that of 1936, and is still standing today, recorded on the National Register of Historic Places.”

Year: 1976