Radio Script #85
Little Talks On Common Things
November 26, 1950
One of the commonest things for all of us is pride in our own state. Let’s begin tonight’s broadcast with a few facts about Maine. Do you know what is Maine’s largest crop? It is trees. Forest trees occupy 84 per cent of the land area of our state. From the days when they produced the best masts for His Majesty’s ships down to the present day of sawed lumber and pulp wood, they have been Maine’s abounding source of wealth.
Did you know that nearly seven per cent of Maine’s total area consists of lakes, ponds and rivers? To say nothing of the waters that comprise our incomparable ocean front, we are near the top of all the states in respect to inland waters. That’s why we’re the great Vacationland of the nation.
Is Maine doing anything to preserve its wild life? Indeed, yes. Our state has more than 50 game preserves and sanctuaries, varying from small, fenced areas to the 141,000 acres of Baxter State Park. And in Acadia’s 28,000 acres we have one of the few national parks in the East.
When one fishes a closed brook or kills an animal in a game preserve, he is of course breaking the law. But he is doing something else quite as reprehensible.
He is stealing the property of every man, woman and child in Maine. In this country our common law is based not only on British precedent, but also on a fundamental document, the Magna Carta, which holds that all fish and game in their natural habitat are public property, not the possession of whomever happens to own the land.
Every loyal citizen of Maine should take active interest in the persistent attempts by state authorities to conserve our natural resources. Reforestation, fire protection, game preserves, closed streams, fish hatcheries and fish stocking are all important. It is a remarkable fact that, although Maine saw the earliest settlements on the Atlantic seaboard, save only that at st. Augustine, our state remains one of the few in the whole nation with natural resources that can not only be maintained, but can actually be increased if all of us citizens will get behind the plans for conservation.
throUgh the courtesy of Mrs. Christine Hume of Fairfield I have had the privilege of examining both the account book and the diary kept by her greatgrandfather, William Bryant, a prominent citizen of Fairfield in the first half of the nineteenth century.
This man, who meant so much to our sister town, was born in Sandwich, Mass. in 1781. He died in 1867 at the age of 86 at the home of his daughter, Susan Totman, on Bunker’S Island. He came to Fairfield in 1817 and lived in the Emery House at Nye’ sCorner, just south of the old cemetery. Nye’ sCorner, as I am sure many of you know, is where the road from Fairfield Center to Hinckley joins the Fairfield-Skowhegan highway, just south of the present site of the Good Will Homes and School.
William Bryant married Lydia Haley from Rhode Island. They had five children. Mary, the oldest, born in 1810, married William Connor and was the mother of Maine’s Governor, Selden Connor. Harriet, the second child, married into the Drew family. Then came the twins, SUsan and Cyrus, born in 1818. Susan’s marriage linked the Bryants with the Totmans, as her sister Mary’s had linked them with the Connors, and the result was that her twin brother Cyrus was operating the lumber interests of either Connors or Totmans most of his life. The fifth child was Samuel. Every large family usually has one wanderer, a boy with itChing feet who is determined to see the world and seek his fortune far from home.
William Bryant’s diary has in it the makings of a complete novel. What a story could be written around its varied and picturesque items. And not the least sparkling of those items concern young Samuel.
Up in the Moosehead region the Connors, Nyes and Totmans did a lot of lumbering. One of those regions was called “the sapling”. On February 15, 1842 Mr. Bryant wrote in his diary an item that showed that young Sam, or, as his father more often called him, Haley, had a mind of his own. Though he was apparently starting out on the usual occupation of a Fairfield youth of 19, his way of doing it caused the anxious father to write as follows:
“Samuel Haley started for the saplin with William Connor about 8 o’clock. It growed cold most all day, and was a terrible tedious day to ride against the wind. I fear ~at Haley got frost bitten, for he had not any outside coat except a short jacket, because he could not be plagued with any.”
Evidently Samuel Haley did not like it on the sapling with William Connor’s half dozen six-ox teams, for he was home again in three weeks, though the Connors crew stayed in the woods until April. Six years went by, with Samuel coming of age, working at odd jobs for the Connors and the Totmans, occasionally helping with a neighbor’s haying, and doing what he had to do on the home farm. Although the father makes no comment about it, we can read between the lines and picture hard-working, home-loving Cyrus getting more and more put out with his younger brother, who was daily itching to set off for distant parts.
On October 22, 1848 father William wrote in the diary: “Samuel left home this evening to take the five o’clock boat at Waterville. He is going to the State of pennsylvania with several young men, logging, running and sawing.” Something went wrong, for on January 25, 1849 the diary recorded: “Samuel returned from Pennsylvania.” Just that and nothing more. No hint as to why he returned, or whether the fatted calf was killed, or how the elder brother greeted him. But anyhow he was back home, with the itchiness apparently out of his feet, ready to settle down on the Nye’s Corner farm.
Remember this was in January of 1849. Something happened in that year to stir the imagination and tickle the feet of every young man bitten by the bug of wanderlust. Gold was discovered in California. On August 6, 1849 William Bryant wrote in his diary: “We suppose that Randall Hall, Daniel Hall, John Nye, Marquis Cayford, and John Hodgdon sailed this day from Bangor for California in the ship.”
Why Samuel Bryant was not also in the party we do not know. Perhaps something in the Pennsylvania experience made him reluctant to break away again so soon. Perhaps an anxious mother persuaded him to stay •. The father’s diary tells us nothing about it except by its silence. Sam’s name is not mentioned among those who even planned to take ship from Bangor.
But on December 28, 1852 the father had something to record about young Samuel Haley, who was then 29 years old. This is what we read in the diary: “samuel left home this day to sail in the ship Baltimore from New York to Port Phillip, Australia, in quest of gold. The following went with him: Bartlett Nye, B. H. Brown, Rodney Wyman, Briggs Emery, George Holland, Edward Philbrook, and Thomas Judkins.” On the margin of the same page, opposite the appropriate names, Mr. Bryant later recorded that Wyman returned home in 1856, Briggs died in California, and Holland died in Australia. Of his own son, Samuel Haley Bryant, not another word.
The diary continues until the spring of 1867, a few weeks before Mr. Bryant’s death. Yet among all the remaining entries the only mention of Samuel is a touching reference to the dying mother calling for and embracing her son’s tintype miniature.
Still preserved in the family is an old envelope addressed to Mr. Samuel H. Bryant, Melbourne, Australia, care of Adams Express, to remain till called for. It is postmarked Kendalls Mills, January 5. Unfortunately the postmarks of thattime seldom included the year, and it is missing in this case. In the upper right-hand corner is written in numerals “45”, which is apparently the postage. Whether this envelope actually reached Samuel in Australia and somehow found its later way back to Fairfield, whether it was returned unclaimed, or whether it never went to Australia, we do not know. The name and address are in the father’s handwriting, but the words “care of Adams Express” have been written in by another hand.
Did Samuel Bryant ever return home? Does anyone of the many surviving Fairfield relatives know the answer?
We have said that William Bryant was a prominent man. In January I 1889, twenty-two years after his death, the Fairfield Journal said the followin about him: “William Bryant, Esq. was a very prominent citizen at Nye’ sCorner for many years. He kept a hat store and manufactured hats. He was chairman of the
Selectmen, also a very correct accountant. It was said of him that he could tell the financial standing of the town any day of the week and any hour of the day.”
In 1865, two years before he died, Mr. Bryant recorded in the diary a statement of his public offices. He wrote: “I attended the General Court (that is, the legislature) in Boston two sessions, 1819 and 1820. I was chosen to the Maine Legislature in 1826 and 1828. I was elected selectman of Fairfield nineteen times.”
Historians like to cull the old diaries for record of great events. They are usually disappointed. These Maine farmers and traders were not unmindful of national affairs. Some of them were indeed deeply immersed in politics. But they were first of all intent on getting an honest living and getting their children comfortably started on useful, worthy lives. They were folks who very strictly minded their own business, and minded it well.
Knowing this trait of the rural diarists, we did not expect to find mention of many national events in William Bryant’s book. But one thing did surprise us, and it has surprised us in the case of at least three other diaries that cover the years of the Civil War. From 1861 to 1865 you can read these diaries including William Bryant’s and scarcely know that a war was going on. Yet many young men of Fairfield served in that war. Somehow it wasn’t so important as the weather, the crops, the winter lumbering, and the family happenings.
Mr. Bryant makes just two references to the war. The first is when he notes in 1862 that Selden Connor has left for Fort Monroe. The other is dated May 10, 1865 and reads: “General Lee, the rebel, surrendered his army this day.”
In contrast to this brevity and silence about the great war between North and South, Mr. Bryant wrote on March 4, 1857: “This day Mr. Buchanan enters upon the duties of his office as President of the United States. We shall soon know what to depend upon respecting his stand between freedom and slavery. We cannot remain muCh longer as we are now. It belongs to the free inhabitants to choose whom they will serve, Freedom or Slavery. I say no union with slavery as thingsgotime. No more slave states north or south hereafter. What will Buchanan do about the great question? Let us wait and see.”
Eighteen years earlier, in 1839, Mr. Bryant’s pen was stirred into action about another incident which hit Maine muCh closer than did the opening weeks ofthe Civil War. Let us have that 1839 occurrence in Bryant’s own words:
“February 23, 1839. All is bustle here respecting the northeastern boundary. Two hundred men started about a fortnight ago to drive off trespassers. The Governor informs us that other militia to the amount of 1,500 have marched for the boundary line, and he has called for a draft of 8,000 more. My wife is fixing Cyrus’ stockings and washing them with tears. But Cyrus has returned home and got clear of the draft this time.”
This reference is, of course, to the Aroostook War, a bloodless but exciting matter while it lasted. The Hay-Ashburton Treaty settled the boundary peaceably and it has remained unfortified by either Canada or the United States to this day. There is much more of interest in William Bryant’s diary, and a lot to be gleaned from his account book — the only accounts of an old-t~e hatter that I have ever seen.
But that’s all we have time for today, so you shall have more of it next week.
Year: 1950