Radio Script #112
Little Talks On Common Things
June 10, 1951
On this program we have frequently referred to old diaries, account books, Journals and letters. Tonight, for the first time, we turn to another kind of historical record of the Kennebec Valley, an old hotel register. Thanks to Mrs. John Pi per, we have had a chance to exami ne thorough Iy the regl ster of the Forks Hotel for the years 1872 to 1874. Even today The Forks, 24 mIles aboye Bingham, where the Dean River Joins the Kennebec, Is an interesting place. It isa common resort of hunters and fishermen, and maintains some of the most accomp I I shed gui des I n the north woods. Only five years ago Wateryi lie had a unique and Important connection with The Forks. A contract was arranged by which all the chi Idren of high school age were sent to Coburn Classical Institute. The gi rls In this group were housed In what was formerly the Ware House, now the George otis Smith house on Park Street.
As long ago as 1872 a few people from out of the state came to The Forks for hunting and fishing. Summer seems to have been the time of their appearance, atleast those who registered with landlord A. D. Murray at The Forks Hotel. WhetherG. F. Seave’rof Boston who registered on May 13, 1872 with Gen. R. B. Shephard ofSkowhegan, came on pleasure or business we do not know, but it seems clear thattwo men who registered on July 16 were not on business bent. They were CharlesTheodore Russe I I, Jr. and WI II i am E. Russe II wh 0 set down the I r res f dances asHarvard College, Canbridge. Vacationing also were G. E. White and mother ofBoston, who fl rst registered on August 17 for supper, lodgi ng and breakfast, andagain on AugUST 20. On the 21st came Miss L. A. DaYls from New York City, andon the 25th a party of four men from Ebston. Throughout September scattered registratlons from Boston fi II the register. But altogether the out-of-state registrations are very few. The old book Is filled chiefly with persons engaged in lumbering, from the big operators to the husky men who cut the t”lmber and ran the drives down the rushing streams. The very first entry In the book Is Sam L. Whitten and two horses, Skowhegan. On that fl rst page a Iso is a record that will stl r memod es I n at least one Waterville man. It reads: t’H. Whipple and one horse, Solon.” On March 13,1872 appea red W. B. Snow of Skowhegan with four oxen. On the same day Fa i rf I e I d made Its first entry with A. Drew of Kendalls Mills. By the middle of March business was picking up. On the 16th came F. Stewart with four rnan and sewn horses; on the 18th Will iam Grant” with nine men; on the 19th O. Clark with nine men, ten oxen and two horses. Watervi lie appears for the fi rst tl me on Apri 14th, when Ernest Getche II arri ved.
Some of th~ old n~s are Interesting. Jackman Is always referred to as Jackmantown, Fairfield as Kendal Is Mills, Oakland as West” Waterville. There are sewral references to “Main River”, variously spelled “Main” and “Maine”. This seems to Imply that part of the Kennebec above The Forks, but I am not sure. It may have some other meaning. Coburn, Olnsmore, Square Town, Burnham Depot, Sandy Bay, and Cleaveland are s.ome of the res I dences gl van. Moose Ri ver Is invari ab Iyspelled “Mo()S” and Pari in Pond, “Parlen”. Scores of patrons put down their address Simply with the single word “Canada”. The truth is that very few people actually signed the register themselws. The proprietor or one of his employees evidently wrote In t”he names, for whole pages appear in the same handwriting. The spellings are at times weird. St. AIbans appears as one word “Stalbons”. Belgrade Is “Bellgrad”, Watervi lie is1:’Watervil”. Caratunk Is spelled at least five different ways. But always landlord Murray found. some way TO des i gnate his guest – .. as when he put down “4 of Coburn’s men”, or “Cleaveland’s -teamster”. Occasionally when a guest personally signed the register he spread him.-self. On June 8, 1814 we read: “James Welch, mas~r driver on Dean River”. On Apri I 9, 1812 Land lord Murray gave a ba II, and the attendance was du Iy recoraed. I nei denta Ily th f sis the fl rst record of women regl sterl ng at the hotel, though many came afterwards. The Ham family was very much in evlaence. There were Roscoe Ham and lady, Moses Ham and lady, Charles Ham and lady; Joseph Durgin and lady came up from Bingham. There were Fords and Taylors, Halls and WI “i amses, Dud leys and Thompsons, Fardys and Smiths. On Iy one coup Ie stayed overn I ght, E. Ha II and lady. We wonder how much quiet sleep the good woman got that night, for lodged In the same building were eleven lumbermen, most of them from Canada. Nine of them are named, the others described simply as “two Frenchmen”. Indian guests were not unknown, though seldom named. On May 22nd the register records E. L. Tucker and one Indian, East Branch. There are very few references to children, but In July, 1812 appeared S. M. Perkins of New York with two boys. What a time those Manhattan youngsters must have had on the edge of the Maine wilderness 80 years ago.
When the spring drhe was underway The Forks Hotel was a busy place, but there is no evidence that the little vi II age saw the wild carousing and the tavish spending that made Bangor notorious. Landlord Murray ran a strictly temperance hote I, but probably he had Just as hard a time as any other proprietor in Maine of those days in keeping his inn free of bootleg liquor. The fact that whole faml lies, I Ike the Wymans of Malden, Mass., a father, mother and two daughters, came In three success I ve summers proves th~t The Forks Hotel was a hi gh grade, respectable hostelry. I suspect there were many like them scattered all over Maine I n those days when General Grant was Pres i dent of the Un I ted States.
As the time nears for opening of the harness racing season In Maine, It Is appropriate that we recall some of the old-time Maine racers. I suspect that few of our listeners realize that Kennebec County was once the most famous breeding ground of race horses in the whole nation, quite as famous as the Kentucky Blue Grass regi on is in our own day. Through the second and th I rd quarters of the19th century the fame of Kennebec horses spread throughout the land, but It wasin the last quarter of the century that the county gained world-wide fame 1 whenthe WaTerville horse, Nelson, established the world record of 2:10 at Grand Rapi ds, M I ch i gan • I T was more than a hundred and forty years ago, in 1819, when the Kennebec Agricu I Ttlral Society offered a I iberal premium for bringing a good stock horse into the county. The first great horse t:ehlnd the Maine breed was “Imported Massenger”, who founded a race of trotters that long had no superiors. That great horse was brought from England to New York State in 1791.
Though “Imported Messenger” himself never saw Maine, his son “Winthrop Messenger” was brought from Oneida County, N. Y. to Winthrop by Alvin Hayward in 1819. That horse died at Anson In 1834, but before h is death he had bred .a line of troTters that won fame throughout the nation. In 1852 Sanford Howard, a noted authori 1″y. on race horses, wrote: “Mal ne has furnished nearly all the trotting stock of any note in the country.” And, in that respect, we may be sure that Maine meant Kennebec County. Thompson’s History of Maine horses says: “ToWln throp Messenger Maine is more largely indebted for the superior speed of her horses tha n to any othe r source.”
The first famous horse to claim WatervIlle as home was Emperor, bred by Samuel Pullen in 1827. Two horses, Winthrop Morri II,-·Iocally known as “Slasher”, and WinThrop Boy were brought to Waterville by Asher Savage in 1862. Thomas Lang started his famous stud farm at Vassalboro in 1859. He started with three stallions, Genera I Knox, Bucepha I us, and Black Hawk Te legraph. Genera I Knox was one of the most remarkab Ie horses ever owned in Kennebec Coun ty . He cau sed more money for pu rchase of horses to corne Into Ma I ne from other states than did any other horse. In 1871 Lang sold him for $10,000, which was a huge pri ce for any horse I n those days. It was in 1882 that Charles, better known as Hod, Nelson established Sunny side Farm. Bes ides his most famous Nelson, he owned Susie <Men, Medora, Aublne. and Artist, all with records under 2:30, which was a good average mark In the BO’s and 90’s.
Nelson, Hod’s world famous horse, was foaled in 1882, the year that Hod started Sunnys i de Farm. The great horse was 20 years 01 d when he paraded at Watervi lie’s CenTennial in 1902. As a two-year old his record was a modest 2:50, but the next year as a three-year old he made 2:26 3/4. When he was five, he hit 2 :2tL On SepTember 10, 1890 ,when he was eight years old, he made the lowest mark known in Maine up to that time — a mark of 2:15* at the Bangor Fair. But Nelson did not stop there. Seventeen days later, at Kankakee, Illinois, he 10″” wered his mark TO 2: 12, and two days afterward on the same track, lowered It another notch TO 2:t H. But he was not done, even for that year. On October 9 at Terre Haute, Indiana, he hit 21:1U, and on October 21 at Cambridge City, Indiana, he came In under 2:11, winning the champion trotting record of the world at 2: 10 3/4. Everyone “thought a horse of that age had reached his peak, but in the next year he astonished experienced horsemen when, on September 21, 1891, at Grand RapidS, Michigan, he lowered his own world record to a flat 2:10. But he was not yet done, for two years later, in 1893, in his own State of Maine, at Portland he made the then unthinkable record of 2:09,. which stood as the world record for someT i me •
By 1892 Hod Nelson’s Sunnyside Farm was nationally famous. In a stable of 75 he had eight of the most prominent breed horses in the United States. A ri va lof Sunnys I de was Mountal n Farm, estab I ished by Appleton Webb • In 1892 he owned more than 30 famous bred trotters. When the raci ng season of 1891 started, there were 34 horses I n Kennebec County with records under 2:30. None of these horses were owned in Watervi lie. Besides the four owned by Hod Nelson, already mentioned, Charles B. Gilman had a 2:27 horse named Bay; A. C. Marston’s Startle had made 2:26; Foster Brown’s Nellie M had done 2:28; and John Judkl ns’ Arthur 2 :29. The earliest troTting track in the county is saia to have been Oakland Park, Gardiner, opened in 1855. Tracks long since abandoned were opened at China In 1868, litchfield In 1870 and Monmouth in 1871. A track was opened at Augusta In 1858. When Ne Ison made his worl d ‘s record In 1891, Tracks were In regular operation at Readfield, Waterville, Windsor, Pittston and West Gardiner. In addition to tbe public tracks, four private tracks were then In operation. Two of them were in Watervi lie, the tracks of Hod Nelson and App leton Webb. The other two were operated by A. J. libby at Farmingdale and W. H. Merrl II at West Gardl ner.
How any real sportsman can think of the high powered, racket-following sad die raei ng as bel n9 I n the same class of Mal ne ‘s venerab Ie harness racing is be yond my eo~rehensJon. No sport can quite take the place of the spinning sulky wheels, The skilful reining of the great drivers, the smell of liniment and harness oi I. As the years go by fewer and fewer of us remember those wi nter races on the river and on lower Si lver Street, the low, single-seated sleighs dashing madly over the snow. Those races, along with Nelson and Winthrop Messenger, are but memori es, but it does no harm to reml nd ourse I ves that the Kennebec Va I ley was once the home of America’s greatest racers.
Year: 1951