Radio Script #248
Little Talks On Common Things
January 9, 1955
We have acquired the habit of thinking that it is war and defense spending that keeps the wheels of American industry going. Of course defense spending has played a large part, but it is not the only factor. In 1955 American industry plans to spend as much on new p I ant and equi pment as it spent in the recent high defense cost year of 1952. As defense spending is reduced, industry is determined that every effort shall be made to keep production at a high leve I.
The plans for industrial spending on plant and equipment are good news. A dollar spent for capital goods is spent again and again for wages and materials.
In demonstration that it does not need the stimulus of war-created shortages in order to maintain a high level of capital investment, American industry renews our historic national bel ief in private enterprise.
He re is some more in format i on on Wi ns low’s ti n mi ne • F. O. Abbott of North Vassalboro calls my attention to a statement published in the Town Register of Winslow in 1904. This is the statement: “Indications of tin ore were noticed by Charles Chipman in the appearance of stone scattered along a brook on J. H. Chaffee’s farm about 1870. Daniel Moore, Dr. Salmon of Boston, Mr. Chipman and Thomas Long of Vassalboro investigated and believed that the ore could be mined.
A company was formed that sunk a shaft 100 feet or more into the rock. The amount of tin increased as the shaft went down, but the quantity did not pay expenses.
Work was suspended about 22 years ago and has not been resumed ,” That last sentance is the first definite information I have had on when the mine was closed. The nearest I have come to it is about the year 1885. Now for some reason the w rite r of the account in the Reg is te r used the figure 22, not an estimated 20 or 25. Subtract 22 years from 1904, when the account was published, and you get 1882. suspect that is very nearly right. It checks with other facts about the mine. I am now ready to state that the Winslow tin mine was opened in 1868 and was f ina I I y closed in 1882.
The father of Wi lIiam Clapham of PleasantdaleAvenue was foreman of the crew that sunk the mine. The elder Clapham and his wife boarded at Mr. Chaffee’s whi Ie the shaft was being sunk.
Ray Tobey of Fairfield adds the interesting information that he has seen two samples of tin that were taken from the Winslow mine. One was on display in the Dartmouth Col lege Museum 45 years ago, when Mr. Tobey was beginning the study of geology. Many years later he ran across a second sample in the Smithsonian, the national museum in Washington. At that time a Maine man, George Merri I I of Auburn, was the museum’s curator of geology.
Some time ago I mentioned,as an instance of how one life can encompass a long acquaintance in time, the connection of a Belgrade summer resident with the duel between Alexander Hami I ton and Aaron Burr. Last summer I had an interesting calion this woman who has been coming to Belgrade for many summers. I really went to pay a calion her husband who had just passed his 101st birthday. That very unusual man is Mr. Horatio Adams, for many years the active head of the famous Adams Chewing Gum Company. More than 90 years ago Mr. Adams saw his father make America’s first chewing gum on the kitchen stove in the fami Iy kitchen.
I missed Mr. Adams on that call, although I did see him in Waterville a few days later. Was that man, more than a century old, too ill to see me? ~/as he sleeping? Not at all. He was out fishing on Great Pond, where he has regularly fished for more than seventy years. Sprier than many men half his age, Mr. Adams gets into a boat and out of it without help and lets his faithful guide of many years, Leighton Castle, control the boat to the fishing grounds.
But back to Mrs. Adams. She remembers her great-grandmother very we I I. In fact Mrs. Adams was thirteen years old when the old lady died at the age of 90 in 1885. That makes Mrs. Adams herself now 82 years old. Thegreat-grandmother who was born Sarah Bertine, was nine years old in the year 1804. What she told her great-granddaughter many years later was we II remembered fact. After the duel in which Aaron Burr killed Hamilton on July 11,1804, Burr took refuge in the home of Sarah Bertine’s parents on Long Island, and Sarah remembered hiding behind a door and peeking out to get a glimpse of the notorious duelist.
Concerning that famous duel, it was only last year that the official record of the Hami I ton inquest was dug out of the musty arch i ves of the City of New York and placed on exhibition in the law library of the Court of tJ9neral Sessions.
This was done in recognition of July 11,1954 being the 150th anniversary of the due I •
Hami Iton and Burr had long been bitter political enemies. Hami Iton persistently goaded Burr with insults unti I the latter challenged the noted Federali st to a due I. They met on what was then a much used due I ing ground at Weehawken, New Jersey. Hamilton deliberately fired into the air, expecting Burr to do the same mutual acts of courtesy common at a time when ki Iling duels had been pretty much discarded, but exchange of harmless shots were considered saving the face of each party. Burr shot directly at Hami Iton, hitting him in the stomach.
Hamilton survived for 24 hours, but died before night of the second day.
John Burger, coroner of New York County, assembled a jury of fifteen good and lawful men to hold an inquest. Beginning on July 13, the inquiry was not compleTed unti I August 2. On that day the jury rendered the verdict which is now preserved,. in its original written form, in the General Sessions library.
The document says: “Aaron Burr, late of the eighth ward of the City and County of New York, and formerfy Vice President of the United States, not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devi I, on the 11th day of July, 1804, with force and arms, In the County of Bergen in the State of New Jersey, I n and upon the form of Alexander Hami Iton feloniously, wilfully and of his malice aforethought did make an assault, and the sa id Aaron Burr had a certain pi sto I of the va I ue of one do II ar charged and loaded with gun powder and a leaden bullet, which the said Aaron Burr held in his right hand and directed at the right side of the belly of said Alexander Hamilton, and did then shoot off and discharge the said pistol, thereby infl fcting upon the right side of the belly of said Hami Iton a mortal w<)und of which the said Hami Iton, on the 12th of July, 1804, did succumb and die.”
The duel ing pistols used by Hamitlon and Burr are carefully preserved by the Bank of Manhattan Company, of which Aaron Burr himself was the founder.
The oldest I iving graduate of Colby College is Robie G. Frye of Boston.
Born in Be I fast, Ma I ne in 1860, Mr. Frye was 94 years 0 I d two weeks ago on December 29. Just two weeks before Christmas, In hls_ sti II graceful, careful, and easi Iy read handwriting, Mr. Frye wrote me a letter which I cherish greatly.
Let me quote a little of what he wrote:
“Perhaps you may be Interested in my recollections of the Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad, that ambitious line that never got nearer to Mcosehead Lake than Burnham Junction. My first acquaintance with that rai I road was in 1870, when was nearly ten years old. My father drove by horse and buggy from our home in Belfast to Watervi lie, to attend a meeting to organize the rai I road.
He took me with him, parked me at an old hotel on Main Street — not the Elmwood but another whose name I have forgotten. I don ‘t remember much about it except that I was terribly homesick. Anyhow, there I was, a homesick boy, at a Waterville inn, wh i Ie my father was meet I ng wi th other men somewhere in the city, to organ i ze the new rai I road.
“Probably no rai I road was ever more of a local venture than was the Belfast and Moosehead Lake. Although the organizing meeting was held in Watervi I Ie, the capital was supplied almost entirely in Waldo County. The common stock was sold to individuals. of whom my father was one. I sti II own five shares. ”
Mr. Frye continues: ”The iron rails — and they were iron, not steel -came from England in a British ship. It was the first time I ever saw a British flag.” Next Mr. Frye refers to a point I have never mentioned. but one of wh i ch I ought ce rta i n I y to h ave been awa re • He says: “The ra i I s we re I aid wide guage, five feet six inches.” Of course that road was wide guage, not what later became the standard 4 feet at inches, because it was intended to connect at Burnham Junction with the wide guage Penobscot and Kennebec.
”The original roll ing stock”. says Mr. Frye, “consisting of a wood-burning locomotive, a passenger car, a baggage car, and three freight cars, was not destroyed. It was in storage for many years. I don’t know what finally became of it.”
Mr. Frye points out, quite naturally, that when the rai lroad first came to Be I fast it was a great attract ion to the boys. “We used to de light to see the train come in”, he writes. “Then as now the locomotive was uncoupled at City Point, hurried ahead, and was already in the roundhouse when the cars came rolling into the station by gravity. Sometimes a good-natured engineer would let some of us bays ride in the cab to the place where the engine took on wood and water.” And Mr. Frye cautions me to pronounce the word not the sophisticated way “engine”, but the way the boys of the 1870’s pronounced it, Ilenjine”.
Says Mr. Frye, “When was in college, and for several years after I began to Jive in Boston, it was a pleasure to board the train at Burnham. John Mace was the conductor, his son Chari ie was the brakeman, and Jerry Sui I ivan was the baggage-master. would always visit in the baggage car, where the crew would inquire about each member of my fami Iy. And when I arrived at Belfast, there was Bi II fl.1cCabe, driving one of those old coaches, hang-on leather straps._ seats on top as well as inside. And I didn’t have to say a word. It was ‘Hello Robie’, and he knew just where to go without my telling him.li
Do you wonder I am proud of that letter, written by a Maine-born man who, after years of prominent service for the Federal Government, wrote me just before his 94th birthday about the unique railroad in his native town of Belfast?
Year: 1955