Radio Script #1093

Little Talks on Common Things
September 26, 1976

This program has often referred to the Winslow Congregational Church, the oldest church building in constant use in the Waterville/Winslow area. It is time we called attention to another house of worship almost exactly the same age, perhaps a
bit older. That is the Quaker Meeting house at North Fairfield, where services are still held by the small group of the Society of Friends in that area.

The Town of Winslow, which then included what is now Waterville, voted in 1794 to build a meeting house on the east side of the river. For two years no action to build was taken, and in 1796 the town voted to build two meetinghouses, one on the Lithgow lot on the east side and another at Ticonic Falls on a lot given for the purpose by Obadiah Williams. Both meetinghouses were to provide for town meetings and other public gatherings as well as for services of worship. Those two buildings were both erected in 1796. The one at Ticonic Falls was, in the early years of this century, turned around to face Front Street, and was used principally as an armory for the local unit of the State Militia, and was torn down some 25 years ago to make room for the parking lot behind City Hall. But the old meetinghouse on the Winslow side still stands,
although substantially renovated. Over the entrance lobby, up the stairs, the ancient huge timbers can still be seen. What is most significant about the building is that it has never lacked regular religious services and has been the home of Winslow Congregationalists since soon after their organization in 1828.

There is evidence that the Quaker meetinghouse at North Fairfield was opened about the same time. In his old age – he died in 1854 at the age of 96 – Elihu Bowerman, the first settler at North Fairfield, wrote a memoir, in which he said the following about the Quaker building:

“About 10 years after we came to Fairfield, we had a First Day meeting set up among us, held in the log house of Brother Harper. Soon after we had a preparatory meeting granted us, held in a log house where the meeting house now stands. We decided to build a house 25 feet square, the dimensions of which we later changed to 30 feet square. It took us nearly four years to build the house.”

Admittedly the time reference in that statement are vague, but we can arrive at an approximate date for opening the N. Fairfield building. Elihu Bowerman had come there in 1781. Ten years later would be 1791. For his phrase “soon after” let us allow a year, that is, to 1792. If it took four years to get the building completed, that would be 1796, exactly the same year when services were first held in the Winslow meeting house. But in what month of the year either building was first used, we do not know.

Before building his cabin at North Fairfield, Elihu Bowerman had tarried a Remington while with the prominent Quaker. A Hobby at Vassalboro, had in fact stayed long enough to raise a crop of potatoes on Hobby’s land.

It was natural that the Bowerman family and other Quaker settlers in Fairfield should have close ties with the Vassalboro Quakers. Bowerman tells us about their early religious services. For the first ten years of the settlement, until they could form a Friends Meeting of their own, the Fairfield Quakers had to go to Vassalboro for meeting. This is what Bowerman said about it: “Our Friends Meeting was first held in Vassalboro, in a house a little below the town landing on the river. In 1781, it was moved to John Taber’s farm. In 1784 the Friends, including us at Fairfield, decided to build in Vassalboro a meetinghouse 30 by 40 feet. I subscribed six dollars and went to work in the hay harvest at 75 cents a day to raise the money.

“When that house was built, the Fairfield Friends belonged to Vassalboro meeting for sometime afterward. At that time, our roads were no better than paths and we had no horses. We had to go on foot to Vassalboro. When the water was low, we could all ford across both the Kennebec and the Sebasticook easily, but when it rose our young men frequently carried the women and girls across on their backs. After we got horses, it was easier, but even then a horse would sometimes slip on a slippery rock and give the rider an unwelcome bath.”

While I am on this subject of Quakers, I want to tell you about an experience I had this summer. Because Elizabeth Vining, author of the best biography of the great Quaker,Rufus Jones, was suddenly unable to fulfill her engagement to speak at a Friends’ gathering in China this summer, I was asked to pinch hit for her, telling something of my acquaintance with Rufus Jones. Not being told what the meeting was for or who would attend, I had envisioned a small group of 25 or 30 people from the immediate vicinity.

The place of meeting was the old Quaker Meetinghouse that stands now infrequently used on the road between China Village and South China. It is directly in front of the newer building that is headquarter and dining center for the Friends’ Summer Camp area, and is near the Catholic Church.

Instead of 30 people, I found nearer 130, crowded into the small room into which had been brought chairs and benches. It was a challenging audience, and I fear my remarks would have been hopelessly flat except for a fortunate accident. I happen to have the same Yankee twang that characterized Rufus Jones’ Maine accent. The audience may not remember anything I said, but they kindly commented that I sounded like Rufus.

I tell you this incident because it is typical of Quaker practice. Here was a meeting attended by Quakers from allover the world, yet there was not a word about it in the public press. The Society of Friends renders significant service on all of the
world’s five continents, in quiet, sacrificial manner, with no advertising and no self-praise.

This meeting in China, Maine, was one of several being held in various parts of the world by the Friends Committee on Reconciliation It was attended not only by Friends from this area, but by persons from many other states and several foreign countries. I talked with people from Nebraska, Oregon, and South Carolina, and I saw very attractive young people from Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia. From European countries there were Germans, Scandinavians, and other nationalities.

Here was an international gathering held a few miles from Waterville, and most of our people knew nothing about it.

I am sure most of my listeners know how restless people get in church today. If a service lasts more than 45 minutes, folks complain. How rare it is that we see children in church who do not fidget. What would most of us think of the Friends’ customary periods of silence – not silent prayer for 60 seconds or less – but a period of five to ten minutes when
there is just silence – no human sound. I assure you it is extremely impressive to a non-Quaker. At this meeting in the old China church there was a simple, uncontrolled period of silence of more than five minutes, and I assure you there was complete, respectful quiet even among the many teenagers and even younger folk who were there.

That is the way the Quakers arrive at their decisions in meetings – a consensus of opinion impelled by devout silence the Society. A striking example of it was told by Rufus Jones. Although the account appears in his writings, and he also told it from the public platform, I remember best the way he told it to a small group of us gathered one afternoon on the porch of his cottage at Pendell Hill in South China. There he told how the committee of Friends Service, of which he was chairman, had an interview with the Hitler govermnent of Germany in the 1930s regarding the Friends’ proposal to feed hungry children. The group was met by Gestapo officers and ushered into a very large room where they were told to sit, and the officers departed.

One of our Waterville group on the porch then burst out, ”Rufus, what did you do?” “Why,” said Dr. Jones, ”we acted naturally. We held a Quaker meeting.” Knowing that the room was probably fitted with electronic devices that could pick up for Germans in another room everything said by the visitors, the Quakers simply said nothing – a typical Quaker action.

Everyone knows the happy ending of that visit. The Committee, largely thru Rufus Jones’ own quiet persuasion, succeeded in convincing the Gestapo officers that they had no political axe to grind, no ideology to support, no spying to perform –
that their business was simply feeding German children.

In the middle of the 19th century, a well known Waterville resident was Moses Hanscom. Some of his papers preserved at the Redington Museum show the breadth of his interests. One is a receipt dated September 5, 1848. which reads, “Widow Frances Hasty, paid to Moses Hanscom for balance of contract entered into in 1847, $4.48.” Another paper deals with Hancom’s supervision of repairs to the Ticonic Bridge in 1849. It is a bill from Henry Nourse and Company for materials that included nail plates, iron, a whole gross of large washers, and something called square banks. The whole bill amounted to $41.17. Another item is an Adams money order of August 12, 1853 for $50, made out in San Francisco to the order of Moses Hanscom in Maine, and payable at the Adams office in Boston.

Of more historical interest is a copy of a letter that Hanscom wrote in 1851 to the U.S. Post Office Department. It seems that Hanscom held the contract to transport mail from Waterville to certain post offices in Somerset County, and he had been called to task for failing to fulfill details of the contract. Now listen to his defense.

“Dear Sir, I find that my son and I was given fines because of complaints originating at the post office in Norridgewock and South Norridgewock. You are aware that Routes 11 and 12 were merged with Route 128, and that the contract was taken out in the name of my son, W. C. A. Hanscom. Time of mails at Norridgewock was subject to the arrival and departure of a train of cars between Boston and Waterville. The whole trouble is at Norrodgewock with Mr. Blunt, who fixes the time as he dictates. Yet Norridgewock is, on my route, an intermediate post office. I am supposed to leave Waterville on arrival of the cars and drive through Norridgewock and Madison to Anson, including mail for the old route 11 and 12. My mails in 11 and 12am usually on time from Augusta, but have to wait for the mail that comes by way of the railroad to Waterville. Those cars are often from one to six hours late. Last week they were two hours late, two nights in succession. One of the fines is for a day when the roads were made impassable by a freshet. Two bridges were out, causing an increased distance for me of about ten miles. Am I to be fined for Acts of God?”

Year: 1976