Radio Script #465

Little Talks on Common Things

September 18, 1960

On this program I have sometimes referred to a map of Kennebec County published in 1856. It was from a picture on the margin of that map that I obtained last year an enlargement of the oldest known picture of the original Elmwood Hotel, burned in 1863.

In the issue of the old Augusta paper, Drew’s Rural Intelligencer, there appeared on September 22, 1855 an advertisement for that 1856 map, in the form of a pre-publication notice. It is of interest because it shows how the makers of the map, more than a hundred years ago, planned to sell it. The map was published by S. Baker and Co. of Augusta, and this is what the notice said: “We are preparing to publish a new and complete map of Kennebec County, the surveys for which are nearly completed under the direction of an experienced topographical engineer. The map will be on a scale sufficiently large to show all public roads, railroads, stations, churches, post offices, school houses, country stores, shops, ship yards, mills, factories, hotels, quarries and mines. The names of property owners who subscribe in advance for the map will be inserted in their respective places. A highly ornamented border of news of public buildings, private residences and natural scenery will surround the map. A separate map of each of the cities and principal villages in the county will also be inserted in the margins. The whole will cover 16 to 18 square feet. We are now engaged in completing the work and shall endeavor to give every citizen an opportunity to order a copy, which will be delivered for five dollars.”

Now let us note what that old advertisement tells us. Interested persons often point out to me that those old county maps, especially the inserts of cities and villages, show plainly where everyone in the place lived at that time, that each house is marked with the name of the residing family. That is wrong, as is clearly shown by the Baker advertisement. The old maps show not residents, but property owners. It is true that many families owned the homes in which they lived, but only in case the owner of the house did live in it do the old maps show where a family lived. For instance, the big 1879 map of Somerset County has a large margin insert of Fairfield Village, then called Kendalls Mills. On that insert eleven different houses are marked Mrs. E. Totman. Of course the wealthy widow of Edward Totman did not live in all eleven of those houses, but they were all her property.

Furthermore, the ad makes it equally clear that only those property owners who subscribed to the map got their names placed on it to designate their property. That is why one finds many unmarked buildings on the old maps. As a sales device, however, the plan worked admirably for the map publishers.

Local pride, something a salesman can usually depend upon, was combined with a desire to keep up with the Joneses. Failure to subscribe for a copy of the map labeled a property owner as a hard-fisted skinflint in the eyes of his neighbors. They knew who owned any property that appeared unnamed when the map was delivered. Nowadays, a hundred years later, we are constantly reminded of the high pressure advertising put out by the men in the gray flannel suits on Madison Avenue.

But how those Madison Avenue fellows would relish such a windfall of social pressure as Baker and Company enjoyed when it sold a map of Kennebec County 104 years ago. In its ad in the Rural Intelligencer in 1855, the year before the map was ready for distribution, the Baker firm announced a list of patrons — Kennebec residents who had already subscribed. Among those early subscribers were three well known citizens of Waterville: the venerable attorney and big real estate operator, Timothy Boutelle, who died before the map came from the press; William Dyer, who operated the drug store in the Phoenix Block and was the town liquor agent under the new prohibitory law; and Samuel Appleton, oldest son of Waterville’s great physician, Moses Appleton.

By the way, did you ever hear about Samuel Appleton’s attempt to make paper from cedar bark? In the very year that the Kennebec County map was published, 1856, in company with Ethan Warren, Appleton built a mill on the Messalonskee, near the present site of the pumping station of the Kennebec Water District, and proceeded to make paper out of cedar bark. The process did not prove successful; the poor, flimsy paper wouldn’t sell. After four years, just before the Civil War, in company with Zebulon Sanger, Appleton changed to making newspaper print.

Like many local men of his time, Samuel Appleton did not spend his whole life in Waterville, although he was born here in 1803 and died here in 1890. When he was 18 years old he went to Boston to work for a leading wholesale merchant, Henry Rice. Three years later he was back in Waterville, in partnership with William Gilman. a son of the wealthy Nathaniel Gilman. Five years later Appleton was back in Boston with the Rice firm, but in 1835 he returned to Waterville, where business interests occupied him for the remaining 55 years of his long life. For ten years he was President of the Ticonic National Bank. Perhaps Samuel Appleton’s absorption in business gave him no time for romance. Perhaps he was just a confirmed bachelor. At any rate he never married.

The old newspaper editors used to take journeys about the state, frequently for the purpose of drumming up new subscribers. When they returned they would publish in their paper an account of the journey. Such an account appeared in the Rural Intelligencer on October 6, 1855, when Editor Drew returned from a tour of Piscataquis County. Let us see what the Augusta man wrote about the Dexter-Dover region a hundred years ago.

“We left Augusta”, he began, “at 4:30 P.M. on October 2 by railroad and stage, for Dover, a distance of 75 miles. At Kendalls Mills we took the cars of the new Bangor Road.” (He refers to the Penobscot & Kennebec RR, just completed from Waterville to Bangor.) “It was nearly dark when we reached Newport, where we took a stagecoach through Dexter to Dover. Two fellow passengers enabled us to while away the tedious hours until we reached Dexter at 9 P.M. where, after a warm supper, we embarked again in another coach, in company with a single passenger for Dover. It rained hard and was as dark as Egypt. It was nearly midnight when we reached our lodging at the hospitable residence of Rev. E. B. Averill, Register of Deeds, who was up and waiting for our arrival.”

Drew’s major reason for this visit was to deliver an address at the annual cattle show of the Piscataquis County Agricultural Society at Dover. He was well known as an authority of several phases of agriculture and was in considerable demand as a speaker at the county fairs. But the weather interfered with his visit to the Piscataquis cattle show. He wrote: “The rain Wednesday put a stop to the fair and cattle show, which had been the occasion of our journey. We delivered our address, however, in the evening at Merrick Hall, which, considering the weather, was well filled.”

Then Editor Drew resumed the account of hi s journey. “We regard the villages of the Piscataquis and Sandy Rivers”, he wrote, “as the two best agricultural portions of Maine, west of Aroostook. Wheat has done well there this year, and there has been an enormous crop of oats. We saw samples of corn that would do honor to old Connecticut. There is no danger of people starving in such a country.

“We had to leave Dover at midnight. Our nocturnal route over damaged roads was very disagreeable, but a little after daylight we reached the public house in Dexter, where we had breakfast and arranged to go to Hartland. Hiring a private team and driver, we started at 9 A.M. for Hartland Village in the east part of Somerset County, thirteen miles from Dexter. We passed through Ripley, named for General Ripley of the U.S. Army in the War of 1812, and speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives when he was representative from Waterville. On we went through St. Albans to Hartland. The town is near the head of the Sebasticook River, which rises out of a large pond just above the village. We were pleased to note a large tannery in process of erection.”

Drew’s purpose in going to Hartland was another cattle show. He wrote: “The cattle show on Monday, notwithstanding the weather, was highly respectable. We seldom met with handsomer butter than we saw at Hartland. We delivered our address at the church at 2 P.M. to a respectable congregation. some of ladies as well as gentlemen.

“On Friday morning we took the stage for Pittsfield station, calculating to change cars at Kendalls Mills at 10:30 A.M. and reach home at 11. But. on reaching Fairfield, we learned that the rains had made a breach in our river railroad, so that it would not be possible to return that way. So at Waterville we took the 10:30 stage and by diligent traveling we succeeded in reaching Augusta in five hours.”

On several broadcasts last year I mentioned those wonderful people, the Shakers. a few of whom are still left at their Sabbath Day Lake community in Poland. In fact, if you visit the place. a most gracious elderly lady. Sister Ethel Peacock. will probably show you around. And that Shaker museum at Sabbath Day Lake is well worth a visit. There you will see samples of the marvelous handiwork of the Shakers more than a hundred years ago. The Shakers are said to have perfected more than a hundred inventions, although they patented very few of them. In that Shaker museum you can now see hand cut nails and hand wrought hinges; blankets made from the wool of sheep raised on the place and colored by home-made dyes; brooms. tubs and pails; horsehair sieves; beautiful woven linens from native grown flax. There is a model of a steam operated washing machine that took a prize at the Worlds Fair in Chicago in 1893.

Close by are the parts for a mowing machine invented at Sabbath Day Lake. There are hand made spikes more than 150 years old. packages of the famous Shaker garden seeds. shelves filled with medicinal herbs. a shingle machine and a shovel carved from a single piece of wood, handle and all.

Among other Shaker inventions were a circular saw, a tongue and groove machine, permanently pleated and water repellant cloth, sock stretchers, and condensed milk. The few remaining members of the Shaker colony are self-dependent, just as were their predecessors a century and more ago. They have never been dependent on either private charity or federal welfare funds. Across the road from the museum is the Shaker store, where one may purchase their wonderful jams and jellies,pickles and preserves, and other delicious foods, as well as products of their dextrous needlework. Sister Ethel and the other members of the sect carry on the great Shaker tradition for diligent labor, unimpeachable honesty and buoyant religious faith that characterized those who founded the colony 166 years ago in 1794.

Year: 1960