Radio Script #376

Little Talks on Common Things

April 13, 1958

In the days long before automobiles, when a journey was a memorable event, a traveler often kept a kind of diary account of his travels. Such a man was Drummond Farnsworth of Norridgewock, great-grandfather of Miss Meroe Morse of Waterville. In 1845 Farnsworth made a trip to the national capital in Washington.

One of the things that interested the Norridgewock judge — he was judge of probate of Somerset County — was the traffic, both vehicle and pedestrian, that he encountered in the cities. He estimated that at least 200 persons passed a given point every minute on downtown Broadway in New York. About a hundred a minute was the traffic past the old Court House in Philadelphia.

Passing the Dix and Fogg Hotel in Baltimore, Farnsworth’s estimate was 60 a minute. He found the traffic in Washington so much more leisurely, and the persons walking or riding on Pennsylvania Avenue so few that the number per minute wasn’t worth estimating.

Judge Farnsworth arrived in New York on May 27, 1845. At that time, in comparison with other American communities, New York was already a large city, with 375,000 people. The modern visitor to New York is well acquainted with the Astor House in Times Square. But when Farnsworth stopped in the city on his way to Washington, the Astor House was to him ria splendid building with marble front standing opposite the park”. He means City Hall Park, which is far downtown from the present Astor House.

The Judge was impressed by Trinity Church. He says: “It is 192 feet long, 86 wide and 280 high, a magnificent structure of the Gothic order.”

He says nothing about the old church that preceded what he saw as the new building on the same site. He might well have commented that the first Trinity Church was built there in 1696. It was burned right at the start of the Revolution in 1776. Not until 1790 was the second building completed, and it served only until 1839, when the vestry decided that the important ministry of the church~ with its many wealthy members, warranted a larger and more magnificent structure. It was that third church which Judge Farnsworth saw nearing completion in 1845, and which is the historic Trinity Church that stands there at the head of Wall Street today.

It is interesting to note how the Judge traveled from New York to Philadelphia. He crossed to Jersey City by ferry and there took the train (which, like all men of that time, he called “the cars”). Now let us allow the Judge to tell about that train trip in his own words: “After passing through very rocky land with deep cuts, we came to the Pasaic River, then went on ten miles to Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, with about 12,000 people. Then came Elizabeth and Rahway, and thirty miles from Jersey City we entered Brunswick on the Raritan River, only slightly smaller than Newark. Its buildings are old and delapidated, but it enjoys great trade in coal by way of the Raritan and Delaware Canal, which’ connects Brunswick with Philadelphia.

“Seventeen miles beyond Brunswick, on the canal, is Princeton, the college town, and 20 miles still further is Trenton, which has 8,000 people. We crossed the river a short distance below where Gen. Washington crossed to surprise the Hessians in the Revolutionary War.”

As a Maine man, used to farming no matter how numerous his other interests, Judge Farnsworth had his eye out for the quality of the land, wherever he traveled. Of New Jersey he wrote: “The land and buildings look poor, hardly a good farm to be seen. The soil is red, coarse sand of a deep brick color.When you cross the Delaware into Pennsylvania, the soil and everything about looks better.” In parts of Maryland he found the land “poor and hilly”, but between the Susquehanna River and Baltimore he commented, “land tolerably good but badly cultivated. Judge Alden told me this land brings not more than 6 or 7 cents an acre.”

On the other hand he found quite a different situation when, in the fall of the same year, he visited northern New York State. He wrote of the land just north of the Mohawk River, ffgood land worth $50 to $60 an acre.”

In Philadelphia Judge Farnsworth stayed at the American House on Chestnut Street, opposite the old Court House, which had been the seat of the Continental Congress in 1775 and the place where the Declaration of Independence was signed.

On May 13 he left Philadelphia by train for Baltimore. He comments that, as they passed through” Wilmington, he and his fellow passengers were within a short distance of the creek where Washington fought the important Battle of the Brandywine.

On Sunday Judge Farnsworth attended the Charles Street Church in Baltimore. He was surprised to find that the congregation stood while singing. In the old church back home in Norridgewock, he was used to singing sitting down. He noted that in Baltimore the Negroes worshipped in the afternoon at a separate church. “Anyhow”, he added, lithe Sabbath is not so well observed by all classes here as it is in the North. 1I

On June 2 he went outside the city to view the estate of the grandson of Lord Baltimore, a huge tract comprising several thousand acres with an imposing mansion. Farnsworth says: “I saw more than a dozen Negroes working in the field near the mansion.”

When Farnsworth reached Washington on June 3, he and Judge Chandler of Calais at once called upon the venerable Albion K. Parris, Maine’s former Governor, who then held an important position, though not a cabinet post, in the federal government. In the afternoon they visited the White House, about which his only comment is on the magnificence of the East Room. “The most striking feature of all the government buildings”, he wrote, “is their great size.”

On June 4 Farnsworth spent nearly all day at Mr. Williams’ slave market near the capitol building. He was apparently fascinated by his first sight of slaves being sold at auction. He makes no comment either favoring or condemning the practice. He simply says: “Saw eight negroes, three of them women, sold to highest bidder. A dozen other slaves stood there unsold when I left, though I stayed at least three hours.”

In those simple days more than a hundred years ago, any citizen of the United States who took the trouble to visit the national capital had a chance to call on the President. The President expected it, and in truth the travelers were not so numerous as to be any great burden on his time. So on June 6, 1845 Judge Farnsworth recorded: 1’1 called today on President Polk. He appears older than one of his age (51). He is constantly employed, applications being continually made for various situations.” (That was the problem that was so vexingly to harrass Abraham Lincoln 15 years later.)

Farnsworth found the man who was to precede Lincoln in the presidency, James Buchanan, a large and fleshy individual, while George Bancroft, the distinguished historian who was the Secretary of the Navy, was, said Farnsworth, “a small, wizened man”. The judge was intrigued by a delegation of Cherokee Indians he encountered at the capitol. He was duly impressed by what, in the century since he visited it, has become one of the world’s famous museums, the Smithsonian Institution. Farnsworth refers to it as the National Institute.

He wrote, “Various articles collected by the U. S. exploring expeditions and donations by individuals fill the rooms. I saw there a gun 7 feet long, presented to Pres. Jefferson by the Bey of Tunis, inlaid with silver and carmelian; also Gen. Washington 1 s camp furniture used in the Revolution, and a military coat worn by him. Also saw the mounted body of a orang — large torso, short legs, strong resemblance to the human race.”

On his return from Washington, Judge Farnsworth made much of the journey by water. He left Washington early in the morning on June 7, by stage for Baltimore, where he arrived at three in the afternoon. There he took a boat for Philadelphia. They went down the Patapsco 12 miles to Chesapeake Bay,then up the bay past the mouth of the Susquehanna to Chesapeake City, where they entered the canal for Penn City. After traveling 14 miles and going through four locks, they finally came to the Delaware Bay. Proceeding some 30 miles, they at last reached Philadelphia in the sweltering heat of 95 degrees.

On June 9 Farnsworth boarded a steamer at Philadelphia for Bristol at the head of Delaware Bay. They touched at Burlington, New Jersey, which the judge calls a “pretty village”. At Bristol, for the first time since he had left Washington, the judge again boarded the cars, crossed the Delaware at Trenton, and returned to Jersey City by exactly the reverse route by which he had left it a fortnight earlier.

On June 13 Farnsworth left New York for Boston by the steamer Narragansett. He tells us that they passed the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the prison on Blackwell Island. He was quick to note both agriculture and signs of landed wealth. “The Long Island shore along the Sound”, he wrote, “is rather poor land, but highly cultivated. Beautiful country seats are to be seen along both sides of the Sound.”

When the steamer stopped at South Torrington, Connecticut, that port was still a noted center of the whaling industry. Stopping at Pawtucket, Westerly, Greenwich and Providence, it took a long time for the vessel to reach Boston, but soon after they passed by Sharon, which the judge called “a small village in a rocky and poor soil”, they came to country more to the liking of the farmer-lawyer from Maine. As they neared Boston he made this final comment: “A good market and great industry and economy give to the country a neat and thriving appearance.”

As I have previously indicated, Judge Farnsworth took another journey a few months later, when in the autumn of 1845 he made a trip from Troy, New York to Montreal. This was’ through country made famous by the disastrous British campaign of 1777, and the judge found many historic sights to interest him.

Just as when he had gone from Boston to Washington and return, his methods of traveling were quite different from ours today. He went by train from Troy to’Mecnanicsville, New York, crossing the Hudson at Waterford, andcrossing the Mohawk three times within a distance of four miles. At Mechanicsville he took the canal packet boat for Whitehall, 50 miles away. They passed Stillwater Village, where General Gates had set up headquarters in 1777, pushed on past the site of the Battle of Bemis Heights, and past the fields where, on the fatal 7th of October in 1777, Burgoyne had turned his whole army back toward Schuylerville. Then around a bend in the river, they came to a wide, flat expanse of land which was the very place where Burgoyne had surrendered after the defeat at Saratoga.

Coming at last to Whitehall, Farnsworth boarded the boat Francis Salters to go down the river into Lake George, at the foot of which lay Fort Ticonderoga. “The old fortifications ll, wrote the judge, “are yet to be seen and appear quite extensive. The old barracks are in decay.”

Then on the traveler went into Lake Champlain. Passing Crown Point, he entered the widest part of the big lake, where it is two miles from the New York to the Vermont shore. Eventually they passed the international line, still journeying by boat through the winding bays and streams above Rouses Point, until they came to the little Canadian village of St. John. There they took a train 15 miles to La Prairie, an old French village on the bank of the St. Lawrence only 6 miles from Montreal. It was only a short steamer ride from there to Canada’s big city, which even in 1845 boasted a population of 60,000.

On his way home from Montreal Judge Farnsworth traveled all the way from Burlington to Dover, New Hampshire by stage. There he took the train for Portland. That was as far as he could get by rail in 1845. So, although his account ends at Portland, he must have arrived home at Norridgewock by stage.

Year: 1958