Radio Script #436

Little Talks on Common Things

November 29, 1959

Allover Maine fifty years ago there were being published tiny newspapers like the Clarion, put out by Sam and Nettie Burleigh in Vassalboro. I have written about their paper in my book, Kennebec Yesterdays. Recently I saw a copy of a similar paper called the Star, published at North Wayne. The paper had evidently enjoyed a good run before this particular issue appeared, for it is Vol. 4, No.1, dated January 5, 1907. It was a tiny publication of twelve pages, each page measuring only 4t x 6 inches. It came out twice a month, on the first and third Saturdays. It sold for two cents a copy, or 25 cents a year for hand delivery of the year’s 24 issues, if paid in advance. It would be sent by mail for fifty cents a year.

Now North Wayne was a tiny place in 1907, as indeed it is today. In 1900 the whole town of Wayne had only 720 inhabitants. But the north part of the town was by no means to be ignored. It had the North Wayne Tool Company, famous makers of edged tools, and it boasted two general stores, operated by W. L. Morrill and F. I. Brown. It had its own post office under Mrs. Addie Hayden, and its own lodge of the Order of Good Templars. It even boasted a hotel, whose proprietor was H. D. Nason.

Such was the community of about two hundred people in which the Star was published in 1907. Only three pages contain local news. All the rest is either what the printers then called boiler plate — articles provided on press mats by some central syndicate — or local ads.

One item tells us that the scythe shop had shut down for a week because of lack of fuel. Scarcity of cars was such that it took ten days to get a car of coal from Boston to Winthrop.

There was social life in that little village. Miss Clara Lovejoy had entertained a few friends on the Saturday evening before Christmas. The paper said that whist was the leading attraction. The young men of the place were holding weekly dances at the school house, but attendance was reported as only fair.

There was trouble as well as gaiety in the village. Almost everybody had a cold. R. L. Morrill had lost a horse from colic. Mrs. G. E. Gove, when going down cellar, had fallen and sprained her ankle. Fred Hayden had departed for California to seek a climate to improve his health. But the Star assured its readers that the John O’Brien who had been killed by a train at Oakland was not North Wayne’s John O’Brien.

Business was brisk. The Wings were hauling bark on Oak Hill in Fayette. J. P. Drinkwine had spent Monday in Augusta on business, but the paper didn’t say whether the business was connected with the man’s name. J. M. Pike had sold fifty barrels of apples to his son, A. J. Pike, who planned to ship them immediately to the Boston market. Appleton Moore wanted to know if people had bought their fruit trees yet, and everywhere farmers were cutting their year’s supply of wood.

Except for a small ad by the printer himself, saying that the North Wayne Printing Company was ready for all sorts of job printing, the whole paper had only four ads. One urged the readers to try Weeks’ Break-Up-A-Cold Tablets, 25 cents a box at the Star office. A second ad sang the praises of the Ideal Steam Cooker, also to be purchased at the Star office. That cooker, said the ad, enabled the housewife to cook meats, vegetables and dessert all at the same time, without mixing flavors, and thus save a lot of fuel. The two remaining ads were by North Wayne’s two general stores. W. L. Morrill offered four pounds of prunes for a quarter. He would sell you either an Elgin or a Waltham watch in a nickel case for $6.50. He offered a bargain in certain remedies — a 50¢ bottle of Johnson’s liniment for 45¢ and a 25¢ bottle of Dyer’s pills for 15 cents. F. I. Brown was selling ten pounds of sweet potatoes for a quarter, a pound of tea for 40 cents. His most expensive coffee was 25¢ a pound, and he had some rank black Rio he would part with for twelve cents a pound.

Prices were indeed low in 1907. From either Brown or Morrill a North Wayne resident could get a barrel of flour for $4.75, a whole box of English herring for twenty cents, twenty pounds of sugar for a dollar, three cans of pink salmon for a quarter, pickled tripe for five cents a pound, and cranberries without any insecticide, three quarts for 25 cents. Wearing apparel was correspondingly cheap. Men’s heavy woolen drawers were only fifty cents, overalls 75 cents. An entire three-piece suit could be had for eight dollars. A pair of heavy wool socks cost twenty cents.

It is indeed true that even those tiny, long forgotten newspapers of small Maine villages tell us a lot about what life was like in rural Maine half a century ago.

I knew that some time during the Civil War the Elmwood Hotel had burned and I wonder if there is in existence any picture of the original hotel. Most of the early pictures of the Elmwood are of the structure built to replace that first burned building. Those early pictures show a two and a half story structure with gabled roof and big front piazza facing the junction of Main Street and College Avenue with no ugly filling station to obstruct the view. It took several successive additions to bring finally the sizable Elmwood of the present day. But I should very much like to know how the Elmwood looked before fire destroyed it on the night of December 3, 1863. In order to see a contemporary account of that fire, I looked it up in the Waterville Mail. The Mail’s issue of December 6, 1863 had this to say: “At 3:00 on Monday fire broke out in the rooms over the office of the Elmwood Hotel, supposedly from a defect in the chimney. The engines were promptly at hand, and as there was little wind, hope of saving the structure was at first high. Soon, however, it became apparent that the main building could not be saved, so the firemen’s efforts were turned to the preservation of the hall and stables. Soon after dark Victor Engine arrived from Kendalls Mills with a good force of stout hands and kind hearts. About 10 PM the engines ceased. The beautiful Elmwood, so long an ornament to our village, was a heap of ashes. The hall on the north, connecting the house with the extensive stables, was unscorched.

It and the stables stood as eloquent witness of the firemen’s good work. The Elmwood was owned by John L. Seavey, the proprietor. He had insurance of $1fi,000 on the buildings and furniture. The furnishings were saved from all rooms except the attic, where were stored 37 beds, all lost. Several boarders lost their clothing and small articles. C. J. Wingate, who boarded there with his family, lost $200 worth of clothing in trunks in the attic.”

Now that fire had an interesting sequel. How do you suppose the rebuilding of the Elmwood was financed? Who helped Proprietor Seavey restore the hotel?

Believe it or not, his benefactor was Colby College. The college trustees let Seavey have $15,000 and took a first mortgage on the property. All went well for a few years, but the depression of the early 1870’s brought hard times to inns and taverns, as it did to all other businesses. Seavey was unable to meet the interest on his mortgage, and for more than ten years Colby College was virtual owner of the property, paying Seavey an annual salary to run the place for them. It was well into the 1880’s before the college got rid of the troublesome property. It was only one of the many real estate ventures in which Colby engaged during its first half century. It was well after 1870 before the college sold the last of its Argyle lands on the Penobscot River above Old Town, and not until after 1900 did it get rid of the last of its Maine legislative grants in the dense wilderness north of Moosehead Lake. And from time to time the college was always buying and selling small pieces of real estate in the heart of Waterville. Yet in 1840, when the Chairman of the Trustees, Timothy Boutelle, had asked the Board to take back certain Argyle mortgages which he had taken from the college to help in a time of earlier exigency, Boutelle’s fellow trustees refused on the ground that the college was not engaged in the real estate business. The fact is that, financially, it was engaged in little else.

You are well aware how partial I am to old time advertisements. Here are a few more, taken at random from the Waterville Mail in the 1850’s: “Notice. As I have a great many calls for ladies’ boots made to measure, I will here state that I make to measure nothing but men’s calf boots. G. A. L. Merrifield.”

“William B. Brown, the great comic genius, and Miss E. A. Marsh, the eminent contralto, will give one of their unique concerts at Hogan’s Hall, Kendalls Mills, on Tuesday evening, November 17, and at Town Hall, Waterville on Friday evening, November 20.”

“The New Skirt for the year 1858. A new and great invention in hoop skirts. See the duplex elliptic or double steel spring. M. Blumenthal, Waterville, is agent for these skirts. The springs are ingeniously braided together, edge to edge, making the toughest, most elastic spring ever used, enabling the wearer to place and fold the dress when in use as easily as can be done with a silk or muslin dress. It completely silences the only objection to hoop skirts — their inconvenience to the wearer, especially in crowded assemblies, carriages, railway cars, and church pews. This invention entirely removes that difficulty, while giving the skirt full and symmetrical form, as well as the lightest and most stylish appearance for the street, opera, promenade or house dress.”

Early in the 1860’s John Lang had established the mill at North Vassalboro. Where did its operatives come from? At first they came from the immediate vicinity, but it was not until the building of the cotton mill at Waterville that any large number of French Canadians came to Central Maine factories.

The mill at North Vassalboro was a woolen mill, and it attracted skilled weavers from the same place whence they came to other woolen towns in Maine. My own town of Bridgton had three such mills and they attracted many weavers from the century-old woolen mills of England. It was the district of Lancashire that sent hundreds of men and women to the woolen mills of Maine.

When the Civil War created a boom in the manufacture of woolen cloth, the North Vassalboro mill had to secure more workers. What happened is revealed by an item in the Waterville Mail of February 26, 1864: “A band of English operatives from Lancashire, about 40 adults and a number of children, came over the MCRR on Thursday from Portland. They go into the employ of the North Vassalboro Manufacturing Company, having crossed the Atlantic in the Hibernia. Shorter by a head than the average Maine Yankee, they are a hardy, intelligent people. Being familiar with the work, they will make valuable laborers in John Lang’s mill.”

Year: 1959