Radio Script #269
Little Talks On Common Things
June 5, 1955
This is the final broadcast of the season of Little Talks on Common Things. Incidentally, it is the 269th broadcast since this program began in 1948. We plan to be back with you again in September.
Not long ago, looking through an old almanac of the year 1798, I noted certain fees fixed by the 1796 legislature for the whole commonwealth of Massachusetts, including its district of Maine. Each justice of the Court of General Sess ions was to recei ve $1 .00 for each day of court attendance. The court _.cri-er was pa i d 80 cents for ca II i ng a jury, 15 cents for announci ng a judgment or verdict. The jai ler got 20 cents for turning the key for each prisoner committed or discharged. What did it cost to get married in 1798? This is what the almanac says: “To every minister or justice of the peace who shall lawfu Ily so lemni ze a marri age and certi fy the same – $1 .25. H You have heard me say — and I mention it in !’Kennebec Yesterdays!! — that for many years after the eSTab I·ishment of the U. S. Consti tut i on the sh i II i ng as a money des i gnati on remained common in Maine. Although U. S. currency knew no coin equivalent to the British shi I I ing, articles .and services were long priced at one shi I ling, two shi Ilings, three. shi I lings, etc. And al I the old account books show that the way this was computed in Maine was at six shi I lings for a dollar.
The almanac of 1797 shows that this arrangement was actually official. One of the almanac pages is headed by the words ‘~he several currencies of the U. S. compared with do I I ars and cents!!. Then we discover that there was no un iformity about it in the various states, for here is the list:
New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia, Kentucky,
Vermont – 6 shi Ilings to $1.00.
New York, North Carolina – 8 shi I lings to $1.00
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland – 7 shi I lings 6 pence to $1.00.
South Carol ina, Georgia – 4 shi Ilings 8 pence to $1.00.
Then follows the I ine !~Official U. S. exchange in Maine”.
shilling 16.7¢
2 shi I lings – 33.3¢
3 S h i I lings – 50¢
S tranges t of a I I, to us i n 1955, is th is tab Ie:
k of a Pistareen or half dime
Four pence half penny
Half·Pistareen or dime
Nine pence piece or 1/8
Hal f a crown, French
Hal f a crown, English
Crown, French
Crown, Engl ish
dollar
5¢
10¢
12i¢
55¢
55i¢
$1 • 10
$1 • 11
I n that year 1797, the very one wh i ch was to see the estab Ii shment of 8011- doin College, when the almanac came out at the year’s beginning, there were ‘-, only five col leges in al I New England: Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and the newly established Wi Iliams. Evidence of the neglect of Christmas Day at that ti me is shown by the fact that every one of those five co I leges was listed as being in session on December 25.
In 1797 Massachusetts levied di rect state tax on houses, land and slaves.
This was, of course, in addition to local taxes. There was not a fixed rate on property va I uaTi on. The rate was on a s Ii di ng sca Ie. with the va I ue of property, starting at 20ft on a hundred dollars for properTy not over $500 and rising by steps to one do II ar on a hundred on property over $30,000. Th is, of course)’ applied in 1797 TO all property in the District of Maine, as did also the unusual item, “Upon every s I ave wh i ch sha I I be en umerated, there sha II be assessed 50 cents. ”
Several times during the years of this program we have referred to Sylvester Gardiner, founder of the community of that name down the river. Most of you know that he was a steadfast Tory who was opposed to the American Revolution, and that after that war he never returned to Gardiner, Maine. He did not, however, as many people think, spend the rest of his life abroad. It is time we got the facts straight about this remarkable man.
Sylvester Gardiner wasn’t born in England, as I have heard many people say.
He was born on this side of the Atlantic at South Kingston, Rhode Island in 1707, which made him about 25 years older than George Washington and already nearly 70 years old when the Revolution broke out. Educated for the medical profession by studies in England and France, he returned to settle in Boston, where he ·;gained fame as a doctor. He established a firm for the wholesale import and distribution of drugs, and that business became the basis of his large fortune. He became one of the proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase, and in the distribution of those lands his holdings lay south of those assigned to Benjamin Ha I lowe I I •
Sylvester Gardiner never set up a permanent home on his Maine lands. Unti I the Revolution he continued to live in Boston, but often visited his holdings on the Kennebec, and through resident agents directed settlement and improvements.
He leveled extensive tracts of forest, bui It several mi lis, erected a church, and became known as the father of the Kennebec lands.
The Revolution changed the tides of his fortune. An unflinching Loyalist, devoted alike to his king and to his Church of England, Sylvester Gardiner left Boston when the British Arrrryevacuated it, leaving behind all his possessions, save only $400. To the patriots of Boston, he was a traitor. His Boston pro- perty was confiscated and sold at auction. His library of nearly a thousand valuable books was ~-scattered among many purchasers, defeating the intent of his wi I I that it was to go to the town of: Gardiner in Maine. His Kennebec estate was also confiscated. Proceedings for its sale were held up by the troubled times, and before any sales could be concluded, the war was over, peace was declared, and finally the Gardiner heirs came again into possession of the property Although he did not come again either to Boston or to the Kennebec, Sylvester Gardiner did return to America. He went back to the region of his birth and made his home at Newport” Rhode Island, where he resumed the practice of medicine and surgery.
The man who i nheri ted and rehab iii tated those Kennebec I ands was, as I tol d you severa I weeks ago” Robert H a I lowe II Gardiner, grandson of Sy I vester Gardi ner. I t was he who had that live Iy, but blood less, quarre I wi th the squatters, a story that was made the chief theme of one of these broadcasts. In his journal R. H. Gardiner wrote this interesting sentence: “It is a I ittle remarkable that the only three grandsons of my paternal grandfather, Benjamin Ha I lowe II, who left descendants changed the i r names to Boynton.; Carew and Gardiner, so that there is no descendant of his that now bears his name”. Let us see how it happened that all three of those grandsons changed their names., The 0 I dest son, Ward Ha I lowe I I, was made the he i r of an un c Ie, a notori ous Boston miser, Nicholas Boynton. How the benefactor uncle managed to save his Boston fortune during the Revolution, whi Ie Sylvester Gardiner had lost his, has never been told. One thing we do know, instead of taking out of Boston only four hundred dollars” as Gardiner had done, Boynton got away with a hundred Thousand. His miserly ways persisted to the end. As he lay dying, the day began to end and the room became dark. A servant lighted cand les in the bedroom.
“Put them out”, cOlTl’Tlanded old Nicholas. !TBut sir”, protested the servant, !lit is geTTing quite dark”. ”\~hat of it!!, yelled Nicholas. “stop wasting candles. Nobody needs light to die by.”
The story of a second change of name in the Ha 1 lowe II fami Iy is more romantic.
Old B~injamin’s oldest son and namesake, Benjamin Hallowell, Jr., became an admiral in the British Navy. As a young naval officer, he had fal len in love with a cousin who was wi Iling to marry him. But he had no means of his own except his meagre earnings as a navy man, and she was entirely dependent upon her mother, a poor widow. The mother persuaded the gi rl to marry a rich man, old enough to be the gi rl ‘s father. That gentleman’s older brother left his large fortune to the younger, and on his death the latter left it al I to his wife, the girl who had once been in love with Benjamin Hal lowe I J. Apparently she had not forgotten him through the years, for on her own death her will was found to decree that al I her wealth should go to her early lover, Benjamin Ha II owe I I, on condi ti on that he change his name to her own marr·ied name of Carew; so Benjami n Ha II owed I Carew.
The th i rd grandson of the Ha II owe II patri arch to change his name was the Gardiner squi re and great landowner whom hi story knOtis as Robert Hall lowe II Gardiner.
Dr. Sylvester Gardiner’s daughter Hannah had married Benjamin Hallowell’s son Robert, and they named their oldest son Robert HallQlell, Jr. When the old doctor died he left his great estates in Maine, though their Revolutionary settlement was sti I I in the courts, to this grandson, Robert Hal lowell, Jr., on The provision that the young man would change his name to Robert Hallowe I 1 Gardiner, which he at once proceeded to do.
BUT Dr. Sylvester Gardiner had a son of his own. HOH did it happen That he disinherited that son and left his Maine fortune to his daughter’s boy? The answer I ies in the doctor’s unforgiving stubbornness. Just as he wouldn’T give an inch on his Tory principles, his loyalty to King George 1 I I, he was just as stubborn about his religious views. That his oldest chi Id and his natural heir, John Gardiner, should turn into a Whig follower of William Pitt was bad enough, but when he forsook the Church of England and became a Unitarian, that was just too much.
One who has written most appreciatively about the Gardiners was another famous Gardiner resident of not so long ago — Laura E. Richards, famous daughter of a famous mother. Daughter of J u I i a Ward Howe, author of the Batt’le Himn of the Republ ic, Mrs. Richards became herself a nationally known author, writer of more than sixty books. I n one of those books, “stepp i ng Westward’!, pub- I ished in 1931, Mrs. Richards says of the disinherited John Gardiner: “I have always had a warm feeling toward John; not only because I am of the Unitarian fold — or sha II I say rather open pasture? — but because my OlIn peop Ie were patriots. Whi Ie John’s father was, in fiery loyalty to church and king, turning his back on America and cutting off his eldest son with a legacy of one lone guinea, one of my great-grandfathers was throwing tea into Boston Harbor, another was fortifying Bunker Hill, and a third was a lieutenant in Washing;… ton’s army.
As Mrs. Richards pointed out, it was a pity that stubborn old Sylvester could not have lived to see his revenge, for John’s own oldest son re-entered the Church of England, was ordained a minister of it, and eventually became Rector of Boston’s famous Trinity Church. The story goes that the Unitarian father, who had been cut off from his own father’s wealth with a paltry five dollars, would every now and then say on a Sunday morning, HI must go and hear Jack preach.” Taking his Unitarian prayer book under his arm, the book then used in the services at Kings Chapel on Boylston Street, he would march off to Trinity Church. There, when the congregation made their responses from the Book of Common Prayer, old John Gardiner would shout out in sonorous tones the heretical responses from the Kings Chapel liturgy.
And so, for old times sake, we say good-bye unti I September.
Year: 1955