Radio Script #1217

Little Talks on Common Things
November 18,1979

Last week we talked about two Kennebec towns long neglected on this program: Rome and Fayette. Today let us consider a few others.

One of the smallest towns in this county is Vienna, the most northwesterly of our towns. When it was first settled in 1786 it was called Goshen. Two men, Jedidiah Prescott of Winthrop and Nathaniel Whittier of Readfield, purchased the tract from the Kennebec Proprietors. In 1802, when it had about 50 inhabitants, the people petitioned for town recognition and was incorporated as Vienna. No one knows why the name of one of the most noted cities of Europe was chosen, but locally it has always been pronounced Vienna, just as a Franklin County town is called Madrid, not Madrid, and a Waldo town is Bremen, not Bremen.

For the first three years, Vienna’s town meetings were held in private homes; then for nine years in school houses. In fact, no town hall was built until 1855, when the town was 53 years old. For 13 years, the meetings were held in the old Methodist Church, called “the new meetinghouse” in 1815.

Often the boundaries of Maine towns were changed by additions from or loss to neighboring towns. Twice after its incorporation in 1802, Vienna was enlarged by additions from the town of Rome. In 1850 it had 871 people. In 1860 it attained its largest population, 878, then like so many other small Maine towns it lost numbers beginning with the Civil War and continuing almost uninterrupted to this day. By 1870 its population had dropped from 878 to 740. After another ten years it was down to 644, and by the close of the 19th Century it was below 500. Sixty years later, the 1960 census showed only 231 people living in Vienna, and in 1970 the number had dropped to 205, making it the smallest town in Kennebec County.

Through most of the 19th Century mail reached Vienna by stage from Augusta. After the building of the Farmington branch of the railroad, it came by way of Readfield Depot, where it was picked up for horse and buggy transportation to Vienna.
A Vienna storekeeper was an early temperance man. When Lewis Bradley opened his store in the village, he had been preceded by traders all of whom sold liquor by the drink. The very day he opened, Bradley invited the whole neighborhood to come in and have a free drink, then he took a saw and cut away the bar, announcing that he was done with the liquor traffic. That was in 1837, the very year that Colby graduate, Elijah Parish Lovejoy was killed by a mob in Alton, Ill. for publishing abolishment articles in his paper. We have no evidence that Vienna even had slaves, but until Lewis Bradley’s action it had plenty of rum.

As for industry, Vienna got its first sawmill in 1800 and soon afterward its first gristmill. That mill, or its rebuilt successor, was still doing custom grinding as late as 1892, when Kingsbury published his history of Kennebec County. Besides other sawmills, Vienna once had a carding mill, a shingle mill, a fulling mill, and a cooperage factory. The firm of Whittier &
Son became well known as makers of apple barrels for the surrounding region. Vienna never had a shoe factory, but it did make huge quantities of shoe pegs. In that mill were made the first shoe pegs sharpened both ways, a local invention. In 1900 the town still had a factory making handles for hoes, forks and shovels.

Methodism was the sect gaining the first strong foothold in Vienna. Jesse Lee, the traveling missionary, who planted so many roots of Methodism in Maine towns, preached in Vienna in 1794, and he visited the place several times between then and 1808, during which 14 years a so-called Methodist class continued to meet in homes. By 1828 the church in Vienna was so strong that the Maine Conference held its annual meeting there. The people had erected what became known as the Yellow Meetinghouse, used until it was replaced by a larger building in 1841.

In 1820 came the Free Baptist who worshiped for 20 years in the red schoolhouse until their meetinghouse was erected in 1840. Several times this program has mentioned Vienna’s neighboring town of Mount Vernon, but we have never given any comprehensive account of the place. We do not need to tell you how Mount Vernon got its name. Loyal Revolutionary veterans, balked from calling the town Washington because Maine already had a town by that name, settled for giving it the name of the General’s estate on the Potomac, Mount Vernon. Legend has it that, early in the 18th Century a group of tenter prospectors – that is, men roaming the woods to select masts for the King’s Navy, camped over night in what became West Mount Vernon. The next morning they climbed to the top of the highest hill in sight to get a wide view of the forest. They gave the hill the name of their leader, Bowen, and it retained that name through subsequent years. Within Mt. Vernon’s borders, or touching its borders, are six lakes, one of them coming right to the edge of Mt. Vernon Village. The town was incorporated in 1792.

A story is told of Mount Vernon in 1816, the “Year of No Summer”, much like what is told about Henry Simpson of Winslow. Like Simpson, Theodore Marston in Mount Vernon was one of few farmers who had any corn to sell when winter came. When people came ready to pay cash for the precious corn, he said to them: “You can buy of anyone who has corn to sell, I must sell mine to the poor who have no money. I’ll trust them for it.”

In 1799 the town passed the following votes at town meeting: “Voted to build a meetinghouse by subscription on condition that a lot can be reasonably purchased near Benjamin Eastman’s. Voted to appoint a committee of five to oversee this business, and they should receive nothing for their services.Voted to build said house 80 x 60 feet with 23 foot posts, and said house shall be for town business and the worship of God. Said house shall be for the use of the Baptist Society one-half of every month and as much of the other half as is not wanted by other societies. Voted to raise $200 to build said meetinghouse.” Opened in 1800, the building had 53 pews. Benjamin Eastman, the building’s neighbor, bought Pew #1 at auction for $71, the highest price for any pew. The lowest price, for each of these pews, was $37. The sale brought in $2,206.

It took Mount Vernon nearly twenty years after incorporation to get its first post office in 1801. By that time the place had a thousand inhabitants and even then the post office was not in Mount Vernon Village, but in what was called South Mount Vernon. The village, now the most thickly settled part of the town, got no post office until 1828. The town at one time had five post offices, which was not uncommon for many Maine towns. My native town of Bridgton, over in Cumberland County had at one time post offices at Bridgton Center, North Bridgton, Sandy Creek, South Bridgton, West Bridgton and Pumpkin Valley.

Mount Vernon has interesting historical connections with Waterville. A Revolutionary veteran named Obadiah Williams, who had obtained a license to practice medicine was a resident of New Hampshire when in 1783 he became one of the proprietors of a grant for a new township that became the town of Mount Vernon. After visiting the thriving young community at Ticonic Falls, Williams thought his prospects were better there. So he arranged with the Kennebec Proprietors to exchange his Mount Vernon interest for one of the large McKechnie-surveyed lots in Waterville. He got Lot 104, 40 rods from the Kennebec and extending one mile back, the lot that extends along Waterville’s present Main Street from Silver Street to the Depositors Trust Co., so that it developed into the heart of the city’s business section. After Williams’ death the lot was sold to Nathanial Gilman, who became the community’s wealthiest citizen. The next lot to the south, 103, was the power site lot originally owned by John McKechnie the surveyor and the man who built Waterville’s first
mill, a saw and grist mill on the Messalonskee. The lot to the north, originally owned by James Pitts, one of the Kennebec Proprietors, had been the property of Timothy Boutelle, a lawyer and land owner who came to vie with Gilman in wealth and influence.

One of Waterville’s most respected pioneers was Obadiah Williams, and he became such because he decided to leave Mt. Vernon for Waterville. Like most Central Maine towns, Mount Vernon had its grist mills, saw mills, carding and fulling mills, factories for shingles, clapboards, sashes, blinds and other wood products.

In 1850 the village had a disastrous fire that broke out in the stable of Waldo Bloom’s tavern. At that time there were a dozen small inns in the town. Although eight buildings were destroyed in the fire, the total loss was put at only $15,000. Building was cheap in those days. Mt. Vernon at one time had a prosperous brick yard, a potash kiln, and a carriage factory.
As for population, Mount Vernon has suffered the fate of most small Maine towns – a declining population unless the town happened to be near enough to one of the larger Maine communities to become a part of modern suburbia.

Like most of the smaller Kennebec towns, Mt. Vernon had its largest number of inhabitants just before the Civil War in 1860. That census showed 1479 people in Mount Vernon. Ten years later the number had fallen to 1252. At the dawn of the new century in 1900 it was 906. In 1950 it reached the bottom with 653 people. The next ten years, for the first time
since 1860, saw a slight increase to 680, and the coming 1980 census may be even better, because Mount Vernon is one of the towns where people are seeking retirement homes.

We must mention today one more Kennebec town: Litchfield. It is the county’s southwesterly most town situated between Monmouth and West Gardiner. In his history of Kennebec County, Kingsbury noted: “The number and size, as well as the tasteful and durable structure of its, farm houses and barns, everyone created from the products of its forests and its fields, are unmistakeable proof of the sterling qualities and high character of its first settlers and their descendants. Hundreds of miles of stone walls are the encircling monuments of their arduous labor.”

The first settlers were temporary dwellers, hunters who put up crude cabins, hunted, fished and waited for permanent settlers to take up claims. As early as 1776, however,the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase had sold lots to at least six settlers who had brought their families to the place. A group of land speculators in New York then purchased the large tract containing what was to become Litchfield. They sent surveyors to establish lines and place claims on parts of the settlers’ land. In retaliation the settlers, disguised as Indians, attacked the survey party and drove them off. Then followed long negotiations between proprietors and settlers, ending in the settlers surrendering one-third of their claims and warranty deeds to the rest.

A part of Litchfield received the uncomplimentary name of Purgatory. It is said to have got its name from a surveyor for the Gardiner family who finished a job among the squatters there. He was asked where he had been. He replied, “In Purgatory.”

Besides the usual industries, Litchfield had a factory that made potato diggers, and a shop equipped with a triphammer to make hoes and axes. It became the largest factory in town. Different parts of the town came to be known as Litchfield Plains, Litchfield Corner, and South Litchfield, each with its own post office.

Litchfield was one of few small towns that had its own fair. The Town Farmers’ Club was founded in 1857 and its annual exhibition was long held in the yard of the Town House. It grew into a largely attended annual event with its own spacious grounds and gained wide renown throughout Central Maine.

Also, unlike many other small towns, Litchfield early got a school to accommodate pupils who had already completed the common school. Litchfield Academy was established in 1845. It was first opened in the upper story of the Congregational Meetinghouse, but in 1852 got its own building that cost $2,000.

Litchfield began to lose population even before the Civil War. In 1850 it had 2100 people, but in 1860 only 1704. Ten years later in 1870 it was down to 1506. At the turn of the century in 1900, only 1057 people lived in the town. The last ten years have seen a healthy revival. With only 953 inhabitants in 1960, the number rose to 1222 in 1970.

And that is the story of three Maine towns: Vienna, Mount Vernon and Litchfield.

Year: 1979