Radio Script #1151

Little Talks on Common Things
February 5, 1978

February is designated as Brotherhood Month and I think we can all agree that a better sense of brotherhood is one of the needs of this tumultuous world.

In recognition of the month, the Waterville Clergy Association has planned a number of meetings. Today, designated Rally for Brotherhood. Sunday, there is an ecumenical gathering at Notre Dame Church on Silver Street. Speakers are Frederick B. Wolf, Bishop of the Maine Diocese of the Episcopal Church, and Rabbi Harry Z. Sky of Temple Beth El in Portland, Bishop Wolf and Rabbi Sky were recently together on a joint Ecumenical Pilgrimage to Israel. During the month the Clergy Association plans several other meetings to be announced in the press and on this station, WTVL.

It thus seems appropriate that this broadcast on the first Sunday of February in 1978 shall give attention to the development of religious brotherhood in the Greater Waterville area.

When the Winslow-Waterville community was first settled just before the American Revolution, the Province of Massachusetts Bay, to which all of Maine then belonged, had a law requiring every incorporated town to provide what the statute called religious teaching, which meant the attendance of a properly ordained minister. The law had originally requested that the minister’s religious instruction be that of the orthodox, state-supported church of Massachusetts, the Congregational, with its then stern Calvinistic doctrine of predestination and its unbending code of belief in a single fixed creed. By 1750, however, the law had been relaxed to permit a town to have as its tax-supported minister any preacher of any faith desired by a majority of the voters. Furthermore, any group that had their own denominational preaching on a regular basis, could have their payments to the ministerial tax diverted to their own denomination in the town.

While most of the first churches in early Maine towns were Congregational, with associated relationship to the orthodox hierarchy in Boston that was by no means the uniform case. The first minister to be settled in Waterville supported by local taxation was indeed a Congregationalist, but he turned out to be anything but orthodox. Rev. Joshua Cushman did not insist that his parishoners should all subscribe without question to the doctrines of the trinity, the virgin birth, and a, number of other tenets of the Massachusetts Church. That he was ahead of his time, in his liberalism and his attempt to establish brotherhood among persons of different beliefs is shown in the preserved record of how his Waterville ministry ended when the people voted to pay Mr. Cushman $1200 to preach to us no more.”

The first minister at Old Canaan, now the, town of Skowhegan, was a Presbyterian. At Buckfield the first was a Baptist. At Gardiner the first was Episcopalian. But a lot them were recognized as the town minister preached in the meetinghouse put up by the town, and occupied the parsonage lot required by law for the town to provide.

After the Revolution, denominations expanded rapidly in Maine. For a time the different sects often shared use of the town meetinghouse on a pro rata basis, that is, according to the number of their members. That was true in Waterville until 1826, and it was true in Winslow until the old meetinghouse, built in 1796, became the exclusive property of the Congregationalists, and a group of Winslow citizens of other denominations formed a religious society to build another meetinghouse to be shared by several denominations. The leader of that society was a prominent Winslow citizen of the early 19th century, Clark Drummond.

In Waterville, the first denomination apart from the orthodox state church of Massachusetts, was the Baptist. Jeremiah Chaplin, a Baptist minister in Danvers, Mass., was brought to Waterville in June 1818, to start the first classes in the Maine Literary and Theological Institution that is now Coiby College. The college trustees had rented for Chaplin the farm house that stood at the junction of Main Street and College Avenue, where later was built the Elmwood Hotel. There he instructed the seven theological students he had brought with him from Danvers, and in the fall of 1819 was able to occupy, with 12 students, the first building on the old Colby Campus farther up the Avenue.

So eager was Jeremiah Chaplin to propagate the Baptist faith that only two months after his arrival in Waterville, he assembled the few Baptist families he found in the community, and organized the First Baptist Church of Waterville in August 1818. Eight years later, in 1826, they were worshipping in their church building, which still stands on Elm Street, and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

The second denomination to be organized in Waterville was the Universalist, started by Rev. Sylvanus Cobb in 1826, the very year the Baptists entered their newly erected building. In 1832 the Universalists occupied thier own meetinghouse at the junction of Silver and Elm Streets. Originally that building faced Silver Street, but was later turned around to face the point of the junction, making it for many years the most conspicuous structure in the town, with its handsome, spire and its oft consulted clock.

Waterville’s third denomination was Congregational, the independent denomination that grew out of the old state church of Massachusetts. However, long before the Waterville Congregational Church was organized by Thomas Adams in 1828, the Congregationalists had severed all ties with the state, and in their independence were no different from other denominations. Their meetinghouse on Temple Street was erected in 1836.

Roman Catholics have an honored history in Waterville. While very early in the 19th century there were a few scattered Catholic families in the protestant population, it was the coming of French Canadians that enabled the Catholic faith to get a firm foothold. By 1835 there were about 30 Catholic families in Waterville, ministered to by visiting priests from other places, chiefly from Bangor. In 1850 the number had increased to the point where they felt they could erect their own place of worship.

An issue of the Waterville Mail of that mid -century time announced: “We are glad to learn that efforts are in progress to secure erection of a small chapel for worship of the Catholics. Gaspar and James Pooler are entrusted with the raising of funds.”

When Father D. J. Halde became the local resident Catholic pastor, in 1870, he started at once to plan for a church structure adequate for the growing Catholic community. It was opened and consecrated in 1874, and stands today as St. Francis de Sales Church on the corner of Elm and Winter Streets.

During subsequent years, as Waterville grew rapidly, came other Catholic parishes, Sacred Heart and Notre Dame, both with impressive, modern church buildings, and also a Catholic church of the Maronite faith with a new building on Union Street.

In 1863 was organized the Waterville Unitarian Church, of which, interestingly, the first minister was a former Baptist, Rev. David Sheldon who had at one time been President of Colby College. Their fine building on Main Street, near Post Office Square, was torn down about 30 years ago, after the merger of the Universalist and Unitarian denominations.

Methodism is very old in Maine, but the denomination was slow to form centralized churches. Their faith spread widely and effectively through what were called classes, groups of Methodists meeting in homes and only occasionally served by itinerant preachers, the circuit riders. So Methodists had considerable strength in Waterville long before their meetinghouse was erected at the corner of Pleasant and Center Streets in 1870.

Episcopals, despite the fact that the leading proprietor of the Kennebec Purchase was of the faith, were slow to get a foothold in the Kennebec Valley except in Dr. Gardiner’s own town of Gardiner. It was 1876 before they were effectively organized in Waterville. In that year the Bishop sent to Waterville Mr. Henry Jones, then only a candidate for holy orders, to remain long enough to fairly test the desire of any considerable number to have the services of the Episcopal Church. The result was a petition to the Bishop to establish a mission in Waterville. It was set up in December, 1876. Today that mission has become St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, a strong element in the religious life of Waterville.

The Advent Christians organized here in 1896, and early in this century erected their building on Nudd Street. They have now become so large and prosperous that they will soon have an expansive new building on Pleasant Street.

Just at the turn of the century came the Free Will Baptists, putting up their building on Getchell Street.

The denominations we have so far mentioned were all that existed in Waterville at the turn into the 20th century when Waterville celebrated its 100th anniversary as a separate town. Other respected and thriving denominations have come during the three-quarters of a century that has since elapsed. Also some of the older groups have in recent years occupied fine new structures, among them the Congregationalists, the Methodists, and the Notre Dame Catholics. And of course the new sects rapidly put up churches of their own.

It is with no intent of slighting those newer denominations that we do not list them on this broadcast, but because we need the brief remaining time to speak of the ecumenical movement of brotherhood in our midst.

Because there was indeed a lot of hard feeling at times between different denominations, it is wrongly assumed that they did not get along together at all. That is not true. Though indeed there are records of persons being dismissed from the Baptist Church because they committed the sin of attending Universalist meetings, what is more important is the cooperation of the Baptist Timothy Boutelle and the Universalist Sylvanus Cobb in the Maine Legislature in behalf of Colby College. While David Sheldon’s leaving the Baptist Church to be the first minister of the local Unitarian’s certainly caused some hard feelings, it is important to note that, when the Baptists remodeled their church building in 1875, they accepted an invitation to hold their services during the remodeling in the Unitarian Church. In the early part of this century Colby President, Arthur Roberts, a Protestant and Father Charland, the Catholic pastor went together to deliver Thanksgiving baskets to the poor.

In short, a feeling of true brotherhood has been evident for more than a hundred years in Waterville. Out of the growing recognition that each person’s religious faith should be respected, and all sects given equal recognition, f¥’l:1 COlf.e today the Waterville Council of Churches, with its membership comprised of Protestants, Catholics and Jewish congregations, making it possible on this fifth day of February in 1978 for those three major religious groups of the Judeo-Christian tradition to meet together in a Roman Catholic church and hear messages from a Jewish Rabbi and an Episcopalian Bishop.

Year: 1978