Radio Script #1323

Little Talks on Common Things
October 17, 1982

We begin today’s broadcast with some interesting and seemingly inconsistent facts about Maine’s present municipal population.

Annually the World Almanac publishes the population figures as shown by the latest census. for every municipality in the U. S. with more than 5000 people. In the 1980 census Maine had only 55 towns and cities of its more than 400 incorporated places in that list. Maine has 22 cities. and in 1980 three of them had fewer than 5000 people. Those were Calais. Eastport and Hallowell. That is indeed quite a change from 1820. when Maine became a separate state. Hallowell was then its second largest community. exceeded only by Portland.

Most Maine people know that Portland, Lewiston and Bangor are in that order Maine’s three largest municipalities. but few can name the fourth. It is Auburn with 23,149 people, closely followed by South Portland with 22.752. Augusta is sixth with 21,617.

Ten years ago Waterville was the state’s seventh largest city. It is now in eighth place, having been passed by Biddeford, whose 1980 population was 19,638 compared with Waterville’s 17,779.

Some of Maine’s towns are indeed larger than some of the cities. The World Almanac contains 36 Maine towns in its list and everyone of them is larger than Maine’s three smallest cities. Maine’s largest community under town rather than city government is Brunswick which with 17, 366 people is almost as large as Waterville. Brunswick is larger than any except eight of Maine’s 22 cities.

Besides Brunswick, Maine has five towns having more than 10.000 inhabitants. They are Scarborough. Windham, Gorham, Sanford. and Orono. Maine has twelve towns with population between 8000 and 10,000. Two, Cape Elizabeth and Millinocket, have between 7000 and 8000, and there are three between 6000 and 7000. The 55 communities listed in the World Almanac account for 340,860 of Maine’s 1,124,660 people. That means that 31%, less than a third of Maine’s population is located in its 55 largest places.

Our listeners may be interested to learn the listed towns that are in the area covered by the Waterville Morning Sentinel. They are Waterville, Winslow, Fairfield, Oakland, Belfast, Farmington, Skowhegan and Jay. What is clear is that Maine is still a rural state. Its many communities with fewer than 5,000 people account for two-thirds of the state’s population.

Now for another subject. However fantastic many old legends are, they keep cropping up. Last summer there appeared in the Waterville Sentinel an article attributing the origin of Maine’s Norway pines to droppings from horses in Arnold’s famous expedition to Quebec in 1775. There is not a particle of evidence to support that assertion. Norway pines are indeed numerous in Maine, ‘though much less so than the more abundant white pines. They were plentiful in York and Cumberland counties a hundred years before Arnold’s army arrived in Maine.

The reason why attributing our Norway pines to Arnold’s army cannot possibly be true is because there were no horses with that army. In the many contemporary accounts of the expedition, written mostly by officers who accompanied it, there is no mention of horses. Under different circumstances Arnold and his top officers might well have ridden horses, but not on that march to Quebec. The expedition had been carefully planned by General Washington’s staff in Cambridge before he ordered Arnold to lead 1,100 men on that ill-fated expedition. It was to be made, so far as possible, by water, using bateaux built at the Cotburn shipyard in Pittston, to carry the army up the Kennebec to the Carrying Place just above Bingham, then through the Chain of Ponds to the Dead River, and up that river to the swamps south of the Height of Land that separates American from Canadian waters.

In those bateaux there was no room for horses. Some of the most difficult terrain had to be covered on foot.
around the numerous carries and over the mountainous area south of Lake Megantic. No horse could penetrate that kind of land. Arnold knew all this before he left Pittston. A number of scouts. including Nehemiah Getchell of Vassalboro. had carefully followed and mapped the whole trail. and some of them including Getchell went with the army as guides.

In the middle of this century the leading authority on the Arnold expedition was the historical novelist Kenneth Roberts. Although his account of the expedition is fiction, it is based on facts. He readevery printed source and every unpublished account he could find about that expedition. Nowhere in Arundel does he mention Arnold’s riding a horse.

After Arnold’s army left Norridgewock, they encountered no roads until they reached the Chaudiere in Canada. There were only the Indian foot trails. Most of the Indians still left in the region in 1775 had never seen a horse.

Norway pines still dignify many Maine regions, including the famous Cathedral Pines in Eustis, where Arnold’s army certainly stopped. But those pines were there long before Arnold arrived. The story that his horses were responsible for them is entirely fiction.

Now let us give a few minutes to Maine’s oldest existing newspaper, the Kennebec Journal. It was not the first newspaper in Maine. That was the Falmouth Gazette, first published in 1785 when Portland was still called Falmouth. But the Journal is Maine’s oldest paper that has been continuous under the same name since 1825.· That makes it now 157 years old. In its first issue the publishers, Eaton and Severance, used three front-page columns to set forth reasons why Augusta should have a paper. They said: “It may be argued that there are already a sufficient number of political publications in the state, but surely the public cannot suffer by adding another. Competition strengthens exertion. When we consider her rapid increase in population the extensive resources, and the commercial advantages we believe }~ine is destined to rank high among the states. Maine already ranks fourth in ship tonnage, and has some of the best harbors on the Atlantic coast. “In moral energy, in diffusion of books and newspapers, in attention to education, Maine is not lacking. She may in time produce an Aristotle or a Petrach. If Maine does have a bleak and rock-bound coast, and her fields are not as fertile as the Mississippi Valley, her hills are covered with flocks of the finest wool, and she is not scourged with the yellow fever that infests other regions. “Maine is only a younger sister in the federation of states, the political liberty she enjoys is inherited from Mother Massachusetts, but Maine yields to no other state in devotion to American freedom and democracy.

“The Constitution of Maine gives all her citizens a voice in government. It is therefore necessary that all of our people be fully informed on every issue that calls for legislation, and be able to choose officials who are honest and competent. To give them the information on which to exercise their judgment is the purpose of every reputable newspaper. That is the reason for starting this paper in Augusta.”

Noting that Maine was an agricultural state, the publishers said they would zealously promote the interest of farmers, but would by no means neglect the state’s merchants, manufacturers, mechanics, fishermen and lumbermen. The long announcement ended with these words: “In the composition of this newspaper we shall be careful to make such selections as will not only amuse every fireside, but will tend to elevate moral faculties, and make our citizens sensible of the duties they owe to God and country.” After more than a century and a half of putting its issues into Maine homes, The Kennebec Journal may still say that it continues to be a voice for God and country.

With that we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1982