Radio Script #71
Little Talks On Common Things
June 4, 1950On this program two weeks ago we were talking about the year 1845. As a consequence someone asked our distinguiShed waterville citizen, Harvey D. Eaton, whether the original portion of his house on Silver Street was standing as long ago as 1845. Mr. Eaton replied that it probably was, because only two years after that in 1847 the man who lived in it was murdered.
That is how we come to refer tonight to Waterville’s famous murder of 1847. Waterville has been remarkably free from capital crime. In fact, Dr. Whittemore states in Chapter III of the Centennial History of Waterville:
“On September 30, 1847 occurred the first and only murder in the entire history of waterville.” Dr. Whittemore wrote that in 1902. Ho’tl.” many murders have occurred here in the succeeding 48 years? I recall three: the Abie Levine murder, the killing of a taxi driver, and the brutal slaying of the little Proulx girl. Perhaps there have been more. At any rate it says something for our times when we note that in the first century of its history Waterville had only one murder, while it has had three murders in the past twenty years.
In a town as small as waterville was in 1847 any serious crime was noteworthy.
A capital crime was a sensation. When both the murdered man and his alleged slayer were prominent persons in the community the sensation assumed grand proportions.
One of Waterville’s most famous early families was that of Mathews. Jabez Mathews, founder of the Waterville branch of the family, was born in Gray in 1743. He had seen this little conununity before he settled here, because he had been in Col. Ward’s division of Benedict Arnold’s army when the bateaux loaded with those troops went up the Kennebec in 1775. A quarter of a century later in 1794 Jabez came to Winslow with his two sons, Simeon and John. For a time he kept a tavern in a house on the north side of Silver Street near the corner of Main Street. Later he lived in a small house on the east side of Silver Street near the Fred Arnold property. Jabez’ son Simeon went into partnership with Nathaniel Gilman in a store on Main Street near Where the Montgomery Ward building now stands. It was he Who built the big house on Silver Street so long owned and occupied by the Terry family. It was Simeon Mathews also Who is said to have planted the long line of elm .trees on the west side of Silver Street from the Elm Street corner to the head of Gold Street.
The second son of Simeon Mathews, and grandson of the original Jabez, was Edward E. Mathews, born in Waterville in 1822. His older brother William started one of Waterville’s early newspapers, the Yankee Blade, in 1842. Almost immediately William took his brother Edward into partnership, and the masthead of the Yankee Blade announced its publishers as W. and E. Mathews, doing business at the southwest corner of Main and Silver Streets. Here too Edward started one of Waterville’s earliest bookstores. So Edward Mathews was an established business man of Waterville by the time he was 25 years old in 184_7.
On the morning of October 1, 1847 the body of Edward Mathews was found in the cellar of what was then Shorey’s clothing store, on the site now occupied by the Peavey Building or possibly by the latest addition to the Federal Trust Company. There were no marks of violence on the body. Expert toxicologists were not then known in this part of New England, but scientific advice was at hand in the person of Rev. Justin Ralph Loomis, professor of Chemistry and Natural History at Waterville College. His examination revealed that Mathews had died of prussic acid. The authorities soon learned that, on the previous evening, Mathews had paid a visit to a room in the near-by Williams House occupied by Dr. ValorUs Coolidge, a successful young physician, who was straightway accused of the crime.
The trial was held at Augusta in March, 1848. One of the prosecutors was Lot M. Morrill, who six years later would be the new governor so loudly praised by Editor Drew in the Rural Intelligencer. Hon. George Evans and Edwin Noyes conducted the defense. After being out 24 hours, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty.
Now this story has been retold in some detail more than once. On its hundredth anniversary in 1947 both the Waterville Sentinel and the Lewiston Journal devoted some space to it. In a number of Waterville homes are copies of a ballad that went the rounds at the time. Verses of that sort were commonly circulated in connection with all hangings for murder. Readers of Mary Ellen Chase’s biography of Jonathan Fisher will recall that the stern, Puritanical Blue Hill preacher had an interesting and somewhat profitable sideline of writing and selling broadside sheets containing verses about murders and hangings.
What I want to know now is, can anyone show me a contemporary account of the murder of Edward Mathews or the trial of Dr. Coolidge? Do there exist early copies of the Eastern Mail containing those accounts? In April, 1847 Charles F. Hathaway, founder of the Hathaway Shirt industry, had started a paper called the Waterville Union, but it lasted only 14 weeks. The Union plant was taken over by Ephraim· :rvaxh3rn, .:v;ho, on July 19, 1847 published the first issue of the Eastern Mail from the third floor of the Boutelle Block on Main Street. We believe the paper was issued every week without interruption until the name was changed in 1863 to the Waterville Mail. So, if anyone knows where there are copies of the Eastern Mail for the fall of 1847 and the spring of 1848, I should like to see them.
Let us now take a few minutes for a more timely subject. Let’s jump completely over the years from 1847 to 1950. Those of you Who are waiting patient1y for delivery of a new car may be interested to know what the Chrysler strike cost.
In substance the Chrysler workers traded nearly a thousand dollars each in 10st wages for pensions some of them will never get. The strikers won a funded pension they could have had three weeks earlier. The overall losses amounted to a billion four hundred million dollars in wages and sales. Twenty-nine millions were lost by some 50,000 workers Who were not on strike at’all, the men in parts plants Who had to be laid off as a result of the strike.
The loss was not confined to the strikers and the workers in affected plants, and I want you to get this: assessments levied on auto workers not on strike amounted to seven million dollars. Other unions dipped into their reserves to contribute several hundred thousand dollars. Even the taxpayers were directly hit to the tune of two million dollars in relief payments to Detroit strikers.
We do not question the workingman’s right to collective bargaining nor to the final weapon of the strike. It is a debatable question, however, when and Where he ought to use that costly weapon.
Now back to some of the old-time scenes in Waterville. Our town was founded much too late to partake of the witchcraft furor that blackened New England in the seventeenth century. But in the early days of the community belief that certain people possessed supernatural powers had not disappeared.
Such a person was Aunt Hannah Cool, whose name appears as one of the customers of the old storekeeper whose account book Walter Heath still possesses.
In the early years of the 19th century there stood on the south side of Silver street, near where it is joined by Kennebec Street, a building,the first floor of which was used as a tannery. The tanner had a double occupation, because in addition to his tanning business he was a Free Baptist preacher. That preacher-tanner, Elder Jeremiah Powers, was very fond of fishing, but he was also embued with superstit·ious beliefs, including witchcraft.
One night he went fishing with a neighbor and didn’t get a bite. He laid their bad luck to the magic of Aunt Hannah Cool, saying they should have promised her the first fish before they set out. “She bewitched the fish away from our hooks”, said Elder Powers.
Aunt Hannah lived in a low, unpainted house on Silver Street. Her garden was full of roots and herbs which she carefully prepared into medicines free for·all sufferers. She is said to have had a piercing eye and a sort of eerie look, but even that description may be prejudiced. Aunt Hannah was anything but a witch. Her deeds of kindness are recounted to this day. She brought up a homeless orphan, and she tended the sick without thought of recompense. Yet this woman was regarded by some of her own townsmen, even by a preacher, as in league with the Devil, and quite able to bewitch the fish if she disliked the fisher.
We recently made it clear that Waterville a hundred years ago was predominantly an agricultural community. We gave some figures about the wheat, corn and oats then raised in this town. Now another of those old account books gives witness to the same general fact — the agricultural character of the vicinity. This is a book of accounts kept by a Waterville blacksmith in 1833, and like the account of the Augusta merchant I told you about, this book too is the property of Burleigh Nichols of Fairfield Center. On November 16, 1833 this blacksmith entered the following charge against Josiah Morrill:
Sharpening 32 harrow teeth $ .65
Sharpening 3 plows 1.00
Sharpening and pinting 2 plows 1.50
Making 17 harrow teeth 1. 70
Other charges to various customers run:
Making pitch fork 1.00
pulling off horse shoes .06
Making 23 nails .17
Bailing tea kittle .25
Making cant irons 1.42
Making mill bar .50
Two words used by this blacksmith have me puzzled: gripe and snickel.
By gripe he may have meant some kind of handle or part for the hand to grasp, since the dictionary gives as one of the old meanings of gripe, a handle or hilt. At any rate his entries are
Gripeing a harrow 0.50
Gripe on wagon spring .04
1 gripe .25
Gripeing 2 plows .70
On April 24, 1833 he charged Daniel Dexter 33 cents for making a snickel, and on June 13 he entered against Stephen Denton: 1 snickel, 28 cents. Now who can set me right on those two words? What was a gripe? What was a snickel?
Year: 1950