Radio Script #299
Little Talks #299,
April 1, 1956
Next week wi II be the 300th broadcast of “Little Talks on Common Things”. We shal I celebrate the event by giving special attention to the company which has sponsored this program from the beginning, the Keyes Fibre Company. That we do so is my suggestion, not that of the company. Not once during the eight years that th i s program has been on the ai r has the Keyes management asked me to make any menti on of the company or its products, and am sure you wi I I agree that few sponsored programs begin or end with so little mention of the sponsor.
So it is Ernest Marriner and not Keyes who has decided to devote next week’s program to one of Watervi I Ie’s fi nest i ndustri a I organ i zati ons. On the program with me next Sunday will be Mr. Wa II ace Parsons, Pres i dent of Keyes Fi b re, and Mr. Ralph Robbins, president of the union which represents the workers at Keyes.
Management and I abor wi II be on the same program, our 300th broadcast. I hope you wi II be Ii steni ng.
Now let us finish the story about Edward Lovejoy, son of Colby’s martyr, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who in 1837 was ki lied defending his press in Alton, I I I i no is.
After his mother’s death and his own marriage, Ed Lovejoy says he had an annual income of about $4,000, equivalent to about $15,000 today. But it seems it was not enough. He wrote to his uncle, Henry Hammond, “We lived expensively.
was extravagant in rrtf expendi tures, and after my rrother’s death I became di scontented, wanted to acqui re a fortune speedi Iy and go trave ling. I had become disgusted with the law, because I regarded many of our judges as venal and unjust. again went into mining on a large scale and with disastrous results. Immense fortunes had been made in Virginia City and friends urged me to join them there. Without any reasonable investigation I closed out everything and went to Virginia City in the fal I of 1877. When I arrived, I found the bottom had dropped out of the market and my friends were all broke. It required strong influence to obtain even a day’s work on the streets. I started to run a smal I hotel, but found it a losing venture and gave it up without a do II ar. I knocked around from pi I I ar to post unti I the summer of 1880, when went to work on the construction of a new rai I road as a common laborer. I was fortunate enough to attract the attention of the president of the road, and in a week I was given charge of a gang of men as their foremen. When the road began running, the president appointed me agent at Wabuska, Nevada, furnished me with materi a Is to bui I d a house, and recommended me favorab Iy so that I was ab Ie to get cred it to put ina stock of goods and start a store. So here I came to Wabuska, where I am now postmaster, We lis Fargo express agent, and owner of an estab I j shment where I keep a sma II stock of goods, entertai n trave lers and operate a bar.”
This is the story of how the son of Elijah Parish Lovejoy rose to a respected place in the California bar and ended his career tending quite a different kind of bar in a Nevada town. He was the last of Elijah Lovejoy’s immediate line. Though he was married, it was late in life and to a woman ten years older than himself. They had no chi Idren, and there are now no living descendants of EI ijah Parish Lovejoy.
On thi s program and in “Kennebec Yesterdays” have many ti mes menti oned the cabins of the early settlers, but I don’t think I have ever described one in detai I. It is time we knew what those primitive one-room cabins looked like.
Those cabins were usually not more than 20 feet long and 16 or 18 feet wi de. Posts, beams and rafters were frequent Iy of oak, and the logs that made the walls were calked with moss. After a saw mi II had been bui It in a comTlunity, the roof was often covered with slabs, but in the earliest times it was thatched when a settler coul d get marsh grass or straw, but more often, like the wa lis, it was made of logs, smaller than the side logs, but calked in the same way, resulting in a leaky roof whenever it rained. Most of the early cabins had a cat-and-clay chimney. That was made by driving into the ground four crotched sticks for the corners of the fireplace. Bars were laid in the crotches; and on those bars, which were high and commonly of wood, was laid a mixture of clay and chopped straw. Lengthwise in that mixture was laid a stick about an inch in diameter, which was then covered with the mixture. Thus were bui It the sides of the chimney. In a few days the clay was hardened by the heat. Flat stones were placed agai nSt the wa I I logs to prevent them from taki ng fi re. Long back-logs for the fireplace were slipped in under the bars on which the cat-andclay chimney rested.
At first there were no glass windows. Besides a door, the early cabins often had only one opening, a glassless window with a sliding shutter. A crane was made by extending a pole across the fireplace and resting its ends on crotched sticks driven into the ground, for the ground itself was the cabin floor, and those floors cou I d get terri b Iy co I din wi nter. No wonder many a pioneer housewi fe kept after her husband unti I he coul d get out the boards to bui Id a plank floor.
The cabi ns had very Ii tt Ie furni ture — just sene sort of homemade tab Ie, stools but no chairs, and the crudest of beds. A lot of space was taken up by the loom and sp’i,nning wheel. In these one-room cabins often lived six or ei ght persons, though most of them were ch i I dren. Sma II wonder that an enterpriSing settler not only put in a floor as soon as he could, but bui It a larger cabin with at least two rooms and a garret and oi Jed paper or isinglass in the windows.
Some of the 01 d records te II us what the pioneer bri des took into a cab in when they started housekeep i ng. One such dowry, down in Knox CounTy, cons i sted of a coverlet, a pair of sheets, a chest with one drawer, a mirror about 8 by 10 inches, a tea kettle, a spider, two pewter pitchers, three knives and three forks, three plates and three cups and saucers from an 01 d set of crockery, and th ree wooden trenche rs to eat from regu I ar I y • The crocke ry was on I y for company occasi ons.
Did you ever hear of the method used by our Maine pioneers to save labor in clearing land for crops? When a large stand of trees, an acre or more, was to be cleared, the settler observed the direction in which the trees leaned. He se I ected a I arge tree at the head of th is stream of lean i ng, mak i ng sure that the chosen tree was a Ii tt Ie elevated and had heavy, wi de-b ranch i ng limbs. That tree was ca lied the dri ver. The other trees were then cut about ha I f through.
When the driver was then cut through, it fell against other trees, starting a chain reaction that brought the whole group down at once. Thus a lot of labor was saved.
When we cons i der the cost of I umber today, it is hard for us to comprehend its comparative uselessness to the early settlers. Of course they used it for cabins, for furniture, for sleds and carts, for boats and rafts, and they used a lot of it to cook their meals and keep themselves warm. But there was not only plenty of wood; there was far too much of it. The trees were in the way; the precious land was needed to grow grain and potatoes and hay. Hence the pioneer years in Maine saw almost unbelievable waste of the primeval forest.
After the trees, often fe lied by that chain reaction method, had been left to dry for some time, the whole area, called the “cut-down” or “fe II-piece!T was set fire. It burned for several days, sending up dense clouds of smoke that dri fted for many mi les. Someti mes the fi re spread far beyond the cut-down, and a genuine forest conflagration ensued. It would run over dry grass-fields faster than a horse could gal lop, would destroy cattle, barns, houses, and sometimes human lives. Nothing but a deluging rain could stop it.
Yet, dangerous as the burning of the cut-downs was, it was the quickest and surest way for the settler, even working every day from daylight to dark, to get land for his crops. As soon as the heat would permit it, the settler and his boys would enter the cut-down and proceed, with the aid of oxen, to pullout the blackened and not wholly burned logs. These were stacked in pi les and reburnt. But sti II many stumps and big blackened logs remained on the piece. Sometimes it took years before time and weather had weakened the strength of the huge stumps, so that they could again be set fire and at last uprooted from the soi I.
The kind of havoc I have described lasted wei I into the nineteenth century, even in southern and central Maine. But through it al I, many a tree found valuable use. In colonial days tal I pines, with graceful trunks rising a hundred feet without limb or knot, were marked with the king’s broad arrow to be converted into masts for His Majesty’s ships. Almost as soon as it had a grist mi II, each community acquired a saw mi I I, and sometimes both were served by the same mi I I wheel. The log houses did not continue for many years. The old up-and-down saw mi I Is made possible the fine frame houses that were bui It in many a Maine vi Ilage a century and a half ago.
More than once I have referred to old almanacs, not only the standard ones like Thomas’s and Robinson’s, but the many put out by makers of patent medicines and other concoctions in the 1870’s and later. But I think I have never before mentioned the almanacs published by political parties. In my collection is one such party almanac, the Whig Almanac of 1845. That was the year when a 36 year old lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, by the name of Abraham Lincoln, was first coming into prominence as a leader of the Whigs. Two years later he would be representing his district in Congress and be violently opposing our war with Mexico.
The cover of this almanac carries a statement by the national leader of the Whig party, Henry Clay. The Democrats had won the election of 1844 and had put James K. Polk in the White House; so it is not strange to see Henry Clay’s set of noble principles preceded by a decidedly partisan statement of the almanac’s editor. It says: “The Whig Party beaten, not conquered; overborne by fraud, not vanqui shed by argument nor outnumbered by lega I voters.”
In 1845 slavery had not become the burning issue that it was to reach ten years later when Abraham Lincoln would be talking about a house divided against itself. Henry Clay’s statement of principles says not a word about the subject.
What they do declare for is a sound currency, not left to the whims of the several states, but backed firmly by the national government; further restriction on the use of presidential veto, restraint against interference in free elections, and a proposal that has been repeatedly put forth even as late as the 1950’s — namely, to limit the presidential office to a single term.
Because the almanac gives election returns of every county in the nation for the presidential contests of both 1840 and 1844, we are able to note how the counties of Maine voted in comparison with other parts of the Union. The Whigs had been victorious in 1840, electing Old Tippecanoe, Wi I liam Henry Harrison. In that year Maine cast one of the closest presidential votes in its history, 46,612 for Harrison, and 46,201 for Van Buren. Four years later something happened to cause many voters to stay away from the polls. Instead of the total vote of nearly 93,000 of 1840, the 1844 total reached only 84,000, and Polk, the Democrat, carried Maine with a sma I ler vote than that with which Van Buren had lost the state in 1840. It is i nte rest i ng to note that, in 1844, just one Maine county went for Henry Clay over Polk, and that county was our own Kennebec.
Whi Ie other counties went for Polk, some of them by a two to one majority, Kennebec cast 5,200 votes for Clay and only 3,600 for Polk.
Like Maine, New Hampshire also went Democratic in 1844, but Vermont stood firm for the Whigs, just as she stands firmly Republican today. Rhode Island, where on I y 12,000 votes we re cas t, was a I so for Clay, as we re both Massachusetts and Connecticut. So we see that, of the six New England States, only Maine and New Hampshire deserted the Whig banner which both had fol lowed in 1840.
By this time regular listeners to this program know of my interest in old advertisements. So you wi II not be surprised that I find especially interesting the ads published on the back of this old Whig Almanac of 1845. They are al I advertisements for books. First is Farnham’s Travels, described as an account of journeys over the Great Western P lai ns and the Rocky Mountai ns to Oregon Terri tory. Then comes Ell sworth ‘s Reports, descri bed as gi vi ng an account of recent improvements in the mode of bui Iding houses, making fences, raising grain, disposing of hogs, preserving pork, raising si Ik, al I complete with a treatise on agricultural geology.
Speci a I attenti on i s ca I led to Gri ff i th ‘s Lectures on Chemi stry. He re , says the ad, are famous lectures on the chemistry of the four ancient elements — fire, air, earth and water. The printed lectures, the ad boldly tells us, are founded on oral lectures delivered before f-Br Majesty the Queen. The book a I so conta i ned an account of “ph i I osoph i ca I expe ri ments i I I ustrai’ i ng the curi ous phenomena of e lectri ci ty, ga Ivani sm, magneti sm, chemi stry, opti cs and heat”. The p rice wa s one do I I a r •
And with that introduction to science, as readers found it 110 years ago, we must say good night for old times’ sake.
Year: 1956