Radio Script #367

Little Talks on Common Things

February 9, 1958

A little less than a hundred years ago, the bridge across the Sebasticook River near Fort Halifax in Winslow was a subject of considerable controversy. When the State Legislature met in January, 1864, it received a petition from Winslow Bridge Corporation, asking for a renewal of its charter to operate a toll bridge. The bridge had been built in 1834 and had been operated as a toll bridge for nearly thirty years.

There were many citizens who thought the time had come in 1864 to make it a free bridge. A representative of that faction, who signed himself “XYZ”, published a long letter in the Waterville Mail on January 22, 1864. He said it was time people understood the history of the Winslow Bridge Corporation, and he called for an impartial statement of the tolls received, dividends, declared cost of bui Iding and maintenance, and especially of the obligation of the corporation to free the bridge to the public at the expiration of the charter.

“Such a history!” the letter continued, “would demonstrate to the taxpayers of Winslow that they have been compelled to pay into I I s much more than the tax would have been to pay the original cost of construction, repairs, insurance and other charges for the past 30 years. The original cost did not exceed $3,500, repairs not over $100 a year. On the other hand, the tolls have averaged at least $1,200 a year. That means expenses including insurance, of about $7,000 for the thirty years, comppared with income of $36,000. No wonder the corporation has persistently resisted every attempt of the town to construct a free bridge or to purchase the corporation bridge in order to make it free.”

That newspaper appeal continued: “If Winslow chooses to act on the narrow policy of compelling the people of other towns to pay tribute, under the illusion that this. saves a few dollars to Winslow citizens, at least the other towns have a right to remonstrate against the continuance of tol I on this bridge. Except the several bridges across the wide Kennebec, there are no other toll bridges in all Kennebec County except the Sebasticook Bridge at Winslow. The town of Benton supports a free bridge across the Sebasticook, at probably as great expense as would be required to support a free bridge in Winslow. Benton, Clinton, China, Albion and Vassalboro support their own roads and bridges for the accommodation of the people of Winslow, when they have occasion to pass through those towns, and should there not be fair reciprocity on the part of Winslow? When a Winslow man travels in any part of the state, in what town will he be required to pay tribute to cross a bridge no longer than the little span at Winslow?

“While the people have been engrossed in the great calamity of civil war, this chartered monopoly has prevented the very financial relief most needed to meet the difficult times of war. The bridge is a part of the road and demands public support as a part of the public highway, without reference to individual need of it. It has long since ceased to be considered reasonable that towns be relieved from operating such bridges.”

The following week the same correspondent renewed his attack in the issue of the Waterville Mail for January 29, 1864. He began: “The public mind at last is turned to the question whether a toll bridge shall be longer tolerated across the Sebasticook in Winslow. The proprietors of that bridge have been actively engaged in obtaining the names of influential citizens of Winslow to petitions to the legislature for renewal of their toll bridge charter. The corporation contends that the money paid it by any taxpayer in tolls will be trifling compared with his tax for support of the bridge if it is freed.”

Then this XYZ writer proceeded to show how the taxpayers were being deceived. He wrote: “These people have an instinctive dread of taxation, no matter what its object. To these people a tax means a burden and nothing else. They forget that, for the past 30 years, they have been paying an annual tax in the form of tolls. So what they are really asking the legislature is for that body to continue to impose upon Winslow taxpayers this additional hidden tax, just for the benefit of their rich neighbors who own the bridge.”

Then XYZ thought his readers ought to be reminded of a bit of history. He pointed out that the original bridge had been swept away in the great flood of 1832 and that two years had elapsed before the new bridge was built in 1834.

During that interval people got across the river somehow. They would do it again if the charter were not renewed and the corporation abandoned their bridge. XYZ went so far as to advocate the building of a new bridge in a new situation if the corporation would not come to terms. He said: “If the charter is not renewed, and the corporation refuses to surrender to the town what remains of their bridge, some measures should be taken at once to meet the emergency. It may be necessary to obtain some legislation authorizing the laying out of a road across the Sebasticook. A new bridge, properly constructed, need not add to the existing obstruction to navigation. If no legislation turns out to be necessary, why not ask the county commissioners to layout a county road, either over the existing bridge or crossing the Sebasticook a short distance below the railroad bridge?”

Finally XYZ got in a dig at the political machinations he believed to be going on. He said the Senator from Kennebec, who was chairman of the very committee to which this matter would be referred, had been told in no uncertain terms by officers of the bridge corporation what they expected of him. Let us see just how XYZ worded this accusation. He wrote: “The Senator has been admonished by a distinguished member of the corporation in regard to his duty. The delicacy of that admonition needs no comment. We are confident the distinguished senator will act in the public interest.” Who was that distinguished senator? He was Waterville’s famous early citizen, Timothy Boutelle.

The following week the unnamed compilar of an informal history of Wins low entered the fray. His account of early Winslow ran through 15 issues of the Waterville Mail, and had reached its fourth installment when the bridge controversy was at its height. That historian went into even more detail about the bridge’s history than had XYZ. He said that as early as 1791 the town had appointed George Warren as agent to petition the General Court at Boston for a lottery to raise money to build a bridge across the Sebasticook near its junction with the Kennebec. Nothing came of that petition. Not until 1802 did the town appropriate any money, $400, toward building a bridge. In the next year, 1803, the job was put up to auction and was bid in by John Spaulding, who offered to build the structure for $1,500. Spaulding was unable to supply the required bond, and time drifted by. After three years, in 1806, a town committee finally built the bridge, but in the very next spring a freshet washed it away.

That original bridge, said the historian in the Mail account, was a free bridge, built where the railroad bridge now stands. After its early destruction by flood, some of the citizens continued to clamor for rebuilding, but the will of the majority was expressed in the determined pronouncement of one aged citizen: “We will never vote any more money for the Sebasticook Bridge.”

In 1808, after the community had been without a bridge for a year, the General Court granted a charter to a private corporation to build a toll bridge, but for some reason the incorporators were loathe to implement their venture by actual construction. It was not until 1814 that the toll bridge was built. Although constructed with large timbers and with liberal use of iron, it proved to be a weak structure, soon carried away by flood, and again the river had to be crossed by ferry until 1824, when another toll bridge was built. That bridge resisted water, ice and logs until the great freshet of 1832, when nearly every bridge in Maine was washed away.

In his story in the Waterville Mail that Winslow hi stor i an then said’: “The present bridge, built in 1834, has resisted the most violent floods for the past 30 years. It has needed but little repair, and has placed in the pockets of its fortunate owners the pretty little sum of $1,600 a year, if we can credit the toll takers.”

Then the historian joined XYZ in expressing his opinion in no uncertain terms: “Has it been rich men who have paid this toll money? No, it is farmers and mechanics who have paid most. Even when one has employed a doctor, he has been obliged to pay his toll, just as one who drove cattle across. It is the poor man who has been taxed most for this bridge.”

It was the historian, rather than XYZ, who revealed the, name of the principal owner of the toll bridge in 1864. He was Joseph Eaton. After identifying Eaton as the man who reaped $1,600 a year from tolls, the historian somewhat apologetically said: “All of my readers know him, noted as a self-made man and remarkable for his clear perception of anything of a business nature. He has lived in Winslow for more than 40 years, and was formerly associated with a Mr. Safford in mercantile business. He has several times been a member of the legislature and was once for a few hours governor of the State.”

Apparently these attacks in the Waterville Mail were too much for the Winslow Bridge Corporation, including Squire Eaton; for in the Mail of February 19 appeared this notice: “The legislative committee has given Mr. Eaton leave to withdraw his petition to re-charter the Winslow Bridge. On Thursday the Senate voted to accept the committee’s report.”

Can any listener now tell me whether that was indeed the end of the toll bridge over the Sebasticook? When the charter expired in 1864 did tolls then cease? Was the bridge taken over by the town and made free at that time, or was some intervening toll plan worked out? suspect a number of listeners would like those questions answered. Who can tell us?

Let me remind you again that while this Winslow bridge controversy was being aired in the columns of the Waterville Mail, other columns of the same paper were filled with the biggest subject of the time – the Civil War. General Grant was just entering upon the Wilderness campaign, and Sherman had begun his march upon Atlanta, from whence he would continue to the sea. So I want to close tonight with a war item which appeared in the Waterville Mail on February 19, 1864.

One man who had persistently urged Lincoln to issue a proclamation of emancipation was the Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. Papers in Maine which were loyal to the administration and the Union, such as was the Mail naturally applauded that great proclamation as a Hamlin accomplishment. So on that February day in 1864 the Mail announced: “We are pleased to state that, within five days after the Proclamation of Emancipation was issued on January 1, 1863, Mr. A. Kidder, formerly of Chicago, now of New York, commenced illustrating it in an artistic manner, so that from a blank sheet of paper there appears a beautiful picture of the Proclamation, done exclusively with a pen. When finished, it was enclosed in a heavy gilt frame and forwarded to the President of the U. S. Now at last, thanks to the insistence of Vice President Hamlin, that picture has been reproduced by engraving and may be purchased for $1.50, postpaid. Liberal discounts to agents.”

Year: 1958