Radio Script #77
Little Talks on Common Things
October 1, 1950
This year of 1950 marks the one hundredth anniversary of a well known Waterville store. In the hundred years that store has changed hands several times, but it has always been a drug store. I refer to Dexter’s Drug Store on Main Street, known for many years as Allen’s Drug Atore, and earlier still by the names of other proprietors.
The store was started in 1850 by William Dyer, and Mr. Dexter has kindly let me examine the first prescription book. Unfortunately Prescription No.1 is not dated, nor is No.2, but No. 3 was made out for John Richards on May 22, 1850; so presumably the store was opened in May of that year. Most of the prescriptions bear the name of the person to whom delivered, often written in pencil at the bottom of the document, but none of the first ten are signed by a physician or even bear a doctor’s name. On Prescription No. 11 appears the name “Dr. Boutelle” in different handwriting from the prescription itself. This physician was the son of Waterville’s leading citizen of the time, Squire Timothy:.;Boutelle. Many prescriptions in 1851 and 1852 bear the name of Dr. J. F. Noyes, who had opened his medical practice in Waterville in 1849. Almost as frequent is the name of Dr. Joseph Potter. It was with him that Dr. V. P. Coolidge, the notorious Waterville murderer, at one time studied medicine. Other doctors Whose names occasionally appear on the old prescriptions are Dr. Robert Davis, Dr. Nathan Pulsifer and Dr. Byron Porter, Who purchased and occupied the mansion on Silver Street Which had been built by Simeon Mathews, and Which in later years was the home of George Fred Terry.
In the 1850’s prescriptions were apparently issued and filled rather casually. In those days death-dealing drugs could be bought freely and without question. The druggist often issued prescriptions of his own. Dyer ,for instance, seems to have had his own remedy for whooping cough. The prescriptions abound in opium, laudanum, and chloroform. Many contain more harmless olive oil. Was that to assure getting some of the nauseous concoctions down? The common herbs 1ike wintergreen, peppermint, and sassafras were used again and again. Of the chemicals potassium is mentioned most often. Camphor was a common ingredient, as was also spirits of ammonia. That old favorite of my childhood, ipecac, was prescribed very frequently. Some of the drugs we encounter rarely nowadays, but seen often in these old prescriptions, were aqua rosa (water of rose), nux vomica, pulverized aloes, gentian, and gum arabic. Surprising are the number of prescriptions which call for elixir of vitriol. One interesting item calls for syrup of squills, wine, and tincture of opium compound. In our boyhood we were familiar with ipecac and squills, but this is the first time we have seen squills without ipecac. This prescription sounds like squills to strike at the disease, opium to deaden the pain, and wine to get it down.
About the Dexter Drug Store there is a more interesting item than that it is a hundred years old. It is the oldest existing business building on Main Street. No less an authority than our IlII1ch revered citizen, Harvey Eaton, is quoted as saying that , with the exception of the building in which the Dexter Drug Store is now located, he personally has seen erected every other building between the Lockwood Mills and the Elmwood Hotel. Since Mr. Eaton came to Waterville in 1881, this means that no other building on the street is more than 70 years old. In the original prescription book of the Dexter store the prescriptions were written on slips of paper about 4 x 2 inches in size and then pasted into the book. As was common in those days, a previously used book was the medium, not new white pages. And this old book over whose pages the prescriptions are pasted interests me very much, for just enough of those pages remain unpasted and unmarred to reveal what it originally was. It was obviously the account book of the town liquor agent, who in the decade before Maine’s prohibition law of 1851 was authorized to dispense wine and spirits.
Who were the liquor agent’s customers? One of the most frequent was Professor Loomis of Waterville College (now Colby) who won fame by identifying the poison in the stomach of the murdered Ed Mathews. In 1844 and 1845 Professor Loomis bought rum by the half gallon, brandy by the quart, and gin by the pint. On June 21, 1844 Professor Keeley bought40 cents worth of brandy. Dr. Nathaniel Boutelle was a frequent customer, as were also such well known worthies as Joshua Bates, Samuel Robinson and Ansel Shorey. On July 27, 1844 the Congregational Society purchased one quart of wine, surely for sacramental purposes. Although the names of women purchasers do occur, they are more frequently covered by the one word “lady”. On a single page this word occurs three times, once for wine and twice for brandy. But of all the names in the liquor agent’s book those that interest me most are V. P. Coolidge, the murderer, and Edward Mathews, the murdered man, of Waterville’s famous murder of 1847. Mathews’ name occurs just once, when he bought a quart of wine for 13 cents on February 17, 1844. But Dr. Coolidge was a frequent customer. Most of his purchases were wine, which he bought most often by the pint, but occasionally by the quart. In 1844 he bought a quart of wine every month from May to October, with an occasional pint between times. In November he paid 31 cents for a pint of brandy.
I don’t pretend to know much about the war in Korea, and I can’t find that anyone knows with any accuracy what really got us into this situation. It is easy to cast blame according t~·one·s political leanings, and I for one deeply deplore the partisan politics on both sides that has been injected into the problem. For a serious international problem it indeed is. Only one thing seems to me clear — namely, the issue that has so strikingly divided the military from the state department. And that issue is whether, with all our resources, we can effectively wage war on two sides of the world at the same time. Now five years after VJ Day of World War II, it is no secret that our Pacific operations were long slowed up because of our commitments in Europe.
In a powerful article in his syndicated column on September 5 of this year, Walter Lippman pointed out that General Marshall, more than any other living man, faced the practical question daily of nourishing two wars simultaneously. In 1947, after the war. ‘was over, he made the crucial decision to save Europe by proposing what became the Marshall Plan and to give up Chiang Kai Shek by rejecting the Wedemeyer report. General Marshall, after a long, close, personal investigation of China, concluded that Chiang could not be saved except at the exorbitant price of an American protectorate over China,and American intervention in the Chinese Civil War. We could save Europe, General Marshall decided; only at great cost could we save China, and we could not possibly save both Europe and China. Mr. Lippman concludes in these words:
“This kind of choice always confronts us, with MacArthur and the military on one side and General Marshall’s successors in the state department on the other side. It is a question that cannot be settled finally and absolutely. We have vital interests in both directions, and among reasonable and responsible men the question is not the one or the other, the Pacific or the Atlantic, but of priority at any given time and of calculated risk. We must continually face the problem, for whether we like it or not, geography has made the the United States a continental island, facing Europe across the Atlantic and Asia across the Pacific.”
Did you ever have trouble with railroad freight? Well, they had trouble in the early days of Maine railroads. In 1855 Editor Drew published the following in his Rural Intelligencer at Augusta: “Last Saturday our friends Adams and Morrill of Westbrook sent us by railroad a package containing two large grape vines, one twining honeysuckle, one Chinese wisteria, and a stalk of Egyptian corn. They reached us on the following Thursday, very well dried up, having evidently been exposed all the week to wind and sun, with a freight bill for us to pay for the care, or want of it, which was taken to kill them.”
Editor Drew had other complaints. He objected to the spelling of our state name. He insisted it should be spelled M E Y N E, for that was the spelling of the French province in Charles I’s time and is the spelling in the charter given to Fernando Gorges. Drew accepted the common interpretation that Charles I named this New England province for his queen, who came from Meyne in France. The prevailing opinion today is that it was simply the Mainland.
Before the advent of standard time railroad passengers had a lot of trouble. Editor Drew commented: “The New York Central arranges its timetables according to the Albany meridian, and woe to ‘the-Buffalo or Rochester man Who regulates his arrival at the depot by the sun in his own sky, as he will then be 12 or 15 minutes behind time.” The explanation of the editor’s comment is that each degree of longitude makes four minutes difference in time, and in those days every city in the country set its own local time by its own longitude. Another of Editor Drew’s complaints concerned a stray horse. He wrote:
“The person who turned his horse into our wheat field on Monday evening last, with a view to his filling himself during the night, is kindly informed that the next time he performs this neighborly office, he will find his horse in the city pound.”
May 26, 1888 was an important day in the U. S. Postal Service. On that day registered letters were first introduced, at a fee of 25 cents. The year 1888 was not only the year of the big blizzard; it also was the year of a big flood on the Kennebec. And most unusually, it came in June, long after the clogging ice had left the river. On June 10th it carried out 130 feet of the Augusta dam, which had been built in 1835 at the then huge cost of $300,000. One newspaper said of it: “This dam is the largest in the state, in the nation,in the world, so wide is the Kennebec at this place, the whole waters of which are thus forced to create power for the use of man.” Repairs after the 1888 flood took all summer and cost $30,000.
Augusta was originally called cushnoc, and after its creation as a separate town was named Harrington. Why was the name again changed? Because the wise-cracking gentry of Hallowell, who deeply resented the building of the 1797 bridge at the Fort (now Augusta) rather than at the hook (Hallowell), began at once to refer to the new town as Herring Town. That was more than the up-river folks could stand; so the name was changed to Augusta.
Not long ago, in an old-time newspaper, I ran across the meaning of the word refugee as it was used in Maine in the l850·s. It seems that most of the Tory families, which fled New England at the time of the Revolution, went for refuge to the neighboring province of Nova Scotia, which did not unite with the the other colonies for independence. Said this 1854 newspaper: “Those who fled and their descendents we still call refugees. 11
Do you want some home-made vinegar? Editor Drew told you how to make it in 1855. Take three gallons of rain water, one quart of molasses and one pint of yeast. Mix and let it set. It will ferment and turn to vinegar in four weeks. He claimed that was a quicker way than waiting for cider vinegar.
Last winter you may recall that I had a good word for Nodhead apples. I was therefore delighted to run across a letter by John C. Jewett of Machiasport, written to a Maine newspaper in 1856. This is what he wrote:
“The Nodhead apple had its origin in the orchard of my grandfather, Deacon Stephen Jewett of Hollis, New Hampshire. The name originated as follows: As the Rev. Dr. Cummings of Billerica, Masaachusetts, who was my grandfather’s half-brother, was on a visit to grandfather’s farm, he was one day eating some of that new tree’s first fruit, accompanying each bite with a satisfied nod of his head. My grandfather at once decided to call the apple the Nodhead. I have heard my grandfather relate this circumstance so many times while I lived with him from 1807 to 1813, that I have no doubt of its accuracy. When I was last in Hollis in 1832, with feelings almost of reverence I visited that original Nodhead tree, which then was showing signs of decrepit old age.”
Well, I guess that’s enough for tonight. So we’ll say goodnight until next week and the Coolidge-Mathews murder case, which will then be our principal subject.
Year: 1950