Radio Script #59
Little Talks On Common Things
March 12, 1950
Several persons have commented favorably on the time we devoted a few weeks ago to pertinent facts about the State of Maine. One lady wrote that these things should be emphasized in our public schools. I think so too.
Maine is much more than a state of watermen, woodsmen and hunters, as Arnold Toynbee called us.
I have no intention of repeating tonight those facts about Maine which I gave on a previous broadcast. I want rather, on this program, to point out a few interesting items in Maine history. For instance it occurred to me that it might be well to find out which were Maine’s first ten incorporated towns.
And do you know that hasn’t been so easy a task as I thought. The names changed so many times, the records are so much in dispute, and the authorities so disagree that it has taken some digging to arrive at an accurate list.
I wonder if our present high school generation knows which is Maine’s oldest town. A little thought should prompt the guess that our oldest towns are those nearest Boston, and that is the fact. The town just this side of the Piscataqua River, across from the ancient Portsmouth, is indeed Maine’s oldest town. Kittery was, in fact, incorporated in 1652, only 22 years after the establishment of Boston. Our second town, York, was incorporated later in the same year. In 1653 came Wells. Then we strike some confusion because of changes in name. The fourth town was incorporated as Saco, but it was actually on what is now the Biddeford side of the river. Fifth was Kennebunkport, which in its history has gone by four different names.
The first five towns, therefore, were all in what is now York County.
The first town to be incorporated in what is now Cumberland County was Scarboro in 1658, and soon after came Falmouth (not the present town of Falmouth, but the old name for Portland) • Only one other town was incorporated before 1700 – North Yarmouth in 1680.
Brunswick is one of Maine’s very old towns, but strange as it may seem to present-day people, not so old as the now much smaller Georgetown. The latter in fact was the first town incorporated in the Androscoggin-Kennebec area, getting its charter in 1716. Brunswick’s incorporation was in 1737, making it the eleventh town, for meanwhile another York County town, Berwick, had been created in 1713.
Maine’s first ten towns, therefore, incorporated between 1652 and 1716 were Kittery, York, Wells, Saco, Kennebunkport, Scarborcr,~Falmouth, North Yarmouth, Berwick and Georgetown.
What about the towns in Kennebec County? In what is now the County of Kennebec no town can-claim the sole honor of being the first. Four of them were incorporat~ on the same day, April 26, 1771. They were Hallowell, ,X Vassalboro, Winslow and Winthrop. The next town was Pittston in 1779. After those first five Kennebec towns twelve years elapsed before the incorporation of the sixth, Readfield in 1791. After that new towns were created rapidly, with Monmouth, Mount Vernon and Sidney in 1792; Clinton, Fayette and Litchfield in 1795; Belgrade and China in 1796; and Augusta in 1797.
Before 1800, therefore, Kennebec had fifteen incorporated towns; but note that, of what are now the four largest in the County, only two had then been separately incorporated: Hallowell and Augusta. Waterville and Gardiner, although settled much earlier, did not get separate incorporation from their parent towns until after the turn of the century.
Now for another subject. When I occasionally present some of the statistics from government or industrial reports, I try not to bore you with them.
I hope you agree that some of them are important, if we are to keep our thinking straight about protecting and perpetuating the American way of life.
The cash receipts from farming, according to figures supplied by the Department of Agriculture, are impressive. In 1910 they were $5,793,000; in 1929 they had risen to$ll, 296,000. In 1939 after the depression years they were down to $8,684,000. Last year, 1949, they had reached the previously unheard of total of $30,803,000. Since 1929 labor income has increased 192%, business and professional income 360%, and farm income 408%.
Now take a look at some of the figures regarding strikes. We have. seen much in the papers lately about the severe loss to the miners by the prolonged coal strike. All the nation was affected, but it is the miners themselves who, individually, were hurt most.
The whole industrial picture, according to the u. S. Department of Labor, is this: in 1929 strikes affected 289,000 workers who lost 5 million man days; in 1939 they hit 1,171,000 workers with 18 million man days lost; in 1949, even before the coal strike got going at its worst, strikes had made idle 3,059,000 workers, who lost 53 million man days. In spite of those strikes,the industrial production index, using the year 1939 as the guage of 100, stood at 170 in 1949. The great boom year of 1944, when production shot the index up to 235, was in the past, but in 1949 we had the highest peace-time production in our history.
Just one more item; then I will keep still about figures for the rest of tonight’s program. But I do want you to let these particular figures sink in.
During the past ten years, while the population has increased 25% and prices have increased 69%, retail sales have increased 310%. Those sales shot up from $42 billion in 1939 to $130 billion in 1948, and will exceed $120 billion for 1949 when that year’s figures are all in. Sometimes I wonder if we realize, under the private enterprise system of America, just what a wonderfully prosperous nation we are.
How many of you know about a building you have probably passed and glanced at many times a building with historical significance? It is located at Riverside, four miles this side of Augusta, and before the construction of the latest stretch of new highway, the main road from Augusta to Waterville used to pass directly by it.
At the place locally known as Brown’s Corner stands a big colonial house flanked by two big barns and a shed. This house, still occupied, was once one of the best known taverns and stage stops between Portland and Bangor.
There it stands, stately and impressive, on a hill on the ·east bank of the Kennebec. Straight down to the river is the site of the old ferry which operated across the river until only a few years ago.
The land on which the old tavern stands was deeded by the New Plymouth Company to Bunker Farwell of Vassalboro, who built the house and sold it to Benjamin Brown of Bath. He operated it as a tavern for many years, and made it a famous stopping place for the traveler and change· of horses for the stage.
Wooden pegs instead of nails fastened many of the beams and rafters.
Beautiful scroll carving may still be seen on the stair case. Waist-high wainscotting decorates all the first floor rooms. There is a thick, handhewn attic door. The huge beams and wide floor boards mark it as a very old house.
Benjamin Brown grew very prosperous. Besides the tavern he had a general store, kept in the building which is now the hall of Cushnoc Grange. For 25 years he was postmaster at Riverside. He owned a big lumber mill and built ships for the Kennebec traffic.
In the historical records of the state Brown is best remembered as the principal founder of the insane hospital at Augusta. He donated the first $10,000 toward its construction. In fact his portrait, like that of other early directors, hangs in the hospital chapel today.
That portrait has a curious history. Although a man of wealth and prominence, and living in a day when all such men had their portraits painted, Brown was too busy and too constantly on the go to find time to sit for an artist. After his death the hospital directors wanted his picture. His daughter, then living in Philadelphia, remembered that Judge James Dascombe of Skowhegan greatly resembled her father. So up she carne, all the way from Philadelphia, bringing a ruffled shirt, a velvet coat, high collar and other clothes that her father used to wear. She persuaded Judge Dascombe to don the garments. She combed his hair as her father’s used to be combed. Then the artist went to work and did his job so well that few people who saw the portrait of Innkeeper Brown, even in days when Brown himself was well remembered, had the slightest idea that they were really looking upon the features of another man.
Although Maine had for many decades very little foreign population, it now owes a great deal to those who have come here from foreign lands. Not only the French Canadians, but the Syrians and Lebanese have contributed to the advancement of Waterville.
Sometimes a colony of immigrants takes over a whole community and spreads its influence for years afterwards. Such was the Thomas colony ofSwedes who came to Aroostook in 1870. Eight miles northwest of Caribou they settled and called the settlement New Sweden. By 1873 their leader, W. w. Thomas, could report that the original 50 colonists had now expanded to 1,300, and the Maine Register of 1873 proudly said of them: “These colonists have brought with them $60,000 in cash, have taken up 20,000 acres of land, and have thoroughly cleared 600 acres.
Thus began the towns of New Sweden and Stockholm in Aroostook County.
The descendents of those Swedish settlers are now some of the County’s leading citizens, and many young men from those Swedish towns have achieved distinction far beyond the borders of Maine.
Someone has said that the map of the world is pretty well peppered on the map of Maine. The number of our communities bearing foreign names is truly conspic.uous. Here in Waterville we have Italy on one side of us and Sicily on the other side, for to the west of us is Rome and to the east is Palermo. But we have to cross Asia to get to Sicily, because between us and Palermo lies China.
I was born in the midst of Scandanavia, Maine. Within 15 miles of my birthplace, in three different directions, were Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but in the fourth direction I too knew Italy, for the adjoining town to the south was Naples. Once I got there it was only a step into Eastern Europe, for the town of Poland was near.
During the eight years that I lived:in that good old Biblical town of Hebron, over in Oxford County, I had Europe, Asia and South America within easy distance. The nearest town was paris, off to the north was Canton, and a little farther away was Peru.
Over in Franklin County most of the towns bear old English names, but one at least, Madrid, is of no English origin. With or without its much disputed narrow guage railroad station, it is remindful of old Spain, even though it is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable.
Down in Lincoln County the towns of Bremen and Dresden remind us of the German settlements in that region; up in Aroostook Mars Hill testifies to the religious zeal rather than Greek relationship of the early inhabitants. The same is true of Canaan in Somerset County and Lebanon in York County. Bangor, as I am sure many of you know, is named not for Bangor in England, but for the name of a hymn tune.
Year: 1950