Radio Script #1239

Little Talks on Common Things
April 20, 1980

This program, during its 32 years on the air, has had much to say about the Kennebec Valley from Moosehead Lake to the Merrymeeting Bay. It may be interesting today to take a look at that valley a hundred years ago.

In the 1880’s there appeared a little book of 120 pages, published by the firm of Sprague, Burleigh and Flint in Augusta, one of whose number became a governor of Maine. The book was written by S. H. Whitney, who said in the preface: “The Kennebec Valley was the birthplace of the writer of this little volume. His childhood was spent in a small town on the river’s bank, and his mature years have all been at work in this peaceful valley. We hope this record will be read at every Maine fireside.” In its opening chapter, Mr. Whitney described the river itself, flowing through Somerset, Kennebec and Sagadahoc counties to the ocean. We must admit that his language is flowery, but, anyhow, here is some of it.

“The peaceful river, as one follows it up into the mainland, with its magnificent islands, its bold outline of distant mountains, and its green forests, presents one of the most charming views that nature provides in our whole country. At the river’s mouth stands Fort Popham, built of granite and guarding the valley’s inhabitants from invasion by an enemy.

“Up the river a few miles is Merrymeeting Bay where the Androscoggin joins the Kennebec, coming down past the busy mills at Rumford, Lewiston and Brunswick. Up past Swan Island, Richmond and Gardiner, one comes to Hallowell and Augusta. There is the head of tidewater and of navigation for any ocean-going ships. At Augusta is Fort Western, built by the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase in 1754.”

Then Whitney says that, above Augusta, the water is mostly smooth all the twenty miles to Ticonic Falls except for gentle rips at Vassalboro. Ticonic Falls form the river’s southernmost obstruction that is natural, the drop at Augusta being artificially caused by the dam. When in 1775 Benedict Arnold’s army made its way up the river, Ticonic Falls was the first place where they had to take the heavy bateaux out of the water and carry them around the falls. Before they reached the Chaudiere on their way to Quebec, they would encounter many worse obstructions.

When Whitney wrote his account in 1887 most of the woodland between Waterville and Skowhegan had been cleared to feed the big mills at Fairfield and WaterVille. So the writer was able to say, “As we pass Ticonic Falls, all the way to the big falls at Skowhegan we encounter the fertile fields of Fairfield, at the site of the first settlers of old Canaan, where all is left is the cemetery containing the remains of the early settlers. At Skowhegan Falls, on the west side is old Bloomfield and
on the east old Milburn, now joined in the single town of Skowhegan.”

Bloomfield Academy is the oldest secondary school in Somerset County.

“Skowhegan Falls are themselves spectacular with a drop of 28 feet, and spread out around them is one of the first and most populous communities in the county. It was not always so, for six miles above those falls is the village of Norridgewock, which already had a dozen families when Benedict Arnold’s army passed up the river, more than ten years
before there was any settler at Skowhegan. Norridgewock was the original county seat of Somerset and a lively commercial town. It still has residences, stores and factories on both sides of the river, and it too, boasts
an academy.”

“Between the village of Norridgewock and Madison is Old Point, site of an ancient village of the Abnaki Indians, and there a granite monument marks the burial place of Father Rasle,the Jesuit missionary to thetribe who was killed when the British attacked the settlement and dispersed its Indian occupants in 1724. At Madison is another fall of water supplying power for mills. On the east side is the village of Madison, on the west, Anson”

Then Whitney tells us that between Madison and the falls at Solon, the traveler passes a region of rich, fertile soil. He notes
the prosperous village of North Anson where the Carrabasset joins the Kennebec, then comes to Solon Village and the falls. Those falls, says Whitney, have the steepest drop on the Kennebec between Moosehead Lake and Merrymeeting Bay. Between Madison and Solon, he says, the river is dotted with fertile islands from which the inhabitants on the mainland reap large quantities of hay. Above Solon, he says the scene changes. The plowed fields and pastures give way to forest except for a broad interval near Bingham. He says it is a very rocky region, indicating that it must long ago have been visited by a terrific shock. We now know that it was not an earthquake that caused that kind of landscape, but the work of a mile thick layer of ice that covered the area more than 20,000 years ago in North America’s last ice age.

One bit of Whitney’s information of historical importance is that the name Caratunk now given to the little hamlet above Solon was the Indian name for the whole region from Solon Falls to Moosehead Lake. Just before reaching Bingham, the traveller passes on the west bank the “Great Carrying Place,” where Arnold’s army had to carry their bateaux across land for the first of the chain of three ponds on their way to the Dead River. At the forks the Dead River, also called the west branch of the Kennebec, joins the east branch flowing directly from the Lake. That lake, noted Whitney, is the largest body of fresh water in New England. Of the area across the lake, he wrote: “Paradise itself, when God created it. could not have presented a fairer picture.”

The author also gives us valuable information about land titles in the Kennebec Valley. After pointing out the claim to all New England by the British crown when the flag of England was placed on its shores by John Cabot in 1497, he traces claims of both France and England through the Popham Colony at the mouth of the Kennebec in 1607, the French claims sweeping westward from the St. Croix and Mount Desert. to 1629 when the Pilgrim Colony at Plymouth received from the crown a grant on the Kennebec of 15 miles each side of the river from the Cobbossee at Gardiner all the way up to the falls at Solon.

In 1661 the Plymouth Colony, having pretty much exhausted the Indian fur trade at their Augusta trading post, sold the whole, still unsettled tract to four men. Nearly a century later in 1749, a group of Boston merchants and professional men, led by Dr. Sylvester Gardiner bought the tract from the heirs of the four men. The new company was called the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase, and it was they who conducted land surveys and made generous offers of lots that brought in settlers.

The company’s first group settlement came in 1751, when they brought a few people from the Boston area to what they called Pownalborough, now the town of Dresden, where in our time has been restored the oldest courthouse still standing in any part of Maine east of Kittery. Across the river in Richmond was erected the first fortification above Merrymeeting Bay, Fort Richmond built in 1722. Pownalborough’ settlement was quickly followed by the development of Gardiner, where the proprietor for whom it was named, Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, used his wealth freely to build saw mill, grist mill, stores, and homes for settlers.

In 1754 the Proprietors decided that the best way to secure settlers farther up the river was to see that they had protection from French and Indian raids. The company therefore agreed, at their own expense, to construct a fort at Augusta, if the Massachusetts government would build another fort 20 miles up the river at Ticonic Falls and would agree to man both forts with Massachusetts troops. Governor Shirley persuaded the legislature of Massachusetts Bay to grant that request. At that time Massachusetts had governmental control over Maine because of its purchase from the heirs of Ferdinando Gorges in 1678. The two forts enabled rapid settlement of the stretch between Augusta and Waterville including the prosperous town of Vassalboro which in the early 19th century had more inhabitants than any other Kennebec Valley town above Augusta, larger than Waterville, Winslow, Fairfield, Skowhegan or Norridgewock.

Interestingly, Whitney described the towns at the mouth of the river: Phippsburg, Arrowsic, Georgetown and Woolwich, and the much larger community upstream that became the big ship-building center of Bath. He gives an amusing but apochryphal account of how Arrowsic got its name. He says that an Indian, when asked by an English settler about
his chief, said in broke,n English, “Him arrow sick.” The chief had been wounded by an arrow.

Whitney says that as early as 1887 many summer visitors were seen inspecting the granite walls of the new Fort Popham which had been erected near the site of George Popham’s log fort of 1607. We know in 1980 that Fort Popham and Popham Beach are still prominent tourist centers in our state.

All along the river from Bath to the head of Merrymeeting Bay, there were settlers before the end of the 17th century. Alexander Thwart had come to Bowdoinham in 1656; settlers were at Richmond by 1670, and at Pittston by 1672. But wherever they put up their cabins those early comers were driven out by the devastating raids during King Philip’s War from 1675 to 1680. Even when new settlements were made after the war ended. the people were not safe from the Indians and the French, and in 1722 all the whites along Merrymeeting Bay were completely dispersed by further raids.

It was the British expedition out of Falmouth (now Portland) in 1724 that made the region again safe for English settlers, but their numbers were few until the erection of Fort Western and Fort Halifax in 1754. Vassalboro, says Whitney. was an important town as late as 1887. It had long before lost its land on the west side of the river to the new town of Sidney, but its east side had several villages, most prominent of which were Getchell’s Corner, North Vassalboro and the Outlet, now known as East Vassalboro. In 1887 Getchell’s Corner was a lively place with two mills, several stores, a hotel and the ferry across to the Sidney side. Years earlier it had been the site of the first potash kiln on the river above Augusta. That was important because for the first settlers potash was the earliest cash crop. Ashes from the trees they burned to clear arable fields were taken to the Southwick’s kiln at Getchell’s Corner to be turned into potash for the woolen industry of England.

Most of the big expanse in northwestern Maine above Solon had at one time been owned by a single person. Soon after the Revolution, William Bingham of Philadelphia had purchased a million acres from the Massachusetts government that, besides the towns in the Rangeley region and other communities to the east were still largely unsettled forest amidst numerous lakes. Today it is not much different than Whitney found it in 1887. The finest description of its development is contained in Vincent York’s recent book, “The Sandy River and its Valley.” That river, by the way, enters the Kennebec near Old Point, the site of Father Rasle’s Indian mission.

Whitney did find a small but prosperous lumbering community at Moscow, just above Bingham, where is now the big Central Maine Power Co. dam. Above Moscow, except for small settlements at Jackman and Moose River, there were no inhabitants in 1887 all the way to the Canadian border.

That, in brief, is some of our information from a little book of a century ago. Now we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1980