Radio Script #574

Little Talks on Common Things

April 21, 1963

The amount of money spent on schools a hundred years ago was unbelievably small. Among the old papers found last year at Waterville’s City Hall was the distribution of the school appropriation in 1855 among the 17 school districts of the town. You will recall that there was then no general supervision of the schools by the town as a whole, but that each district was an independent unit, spending as it saw fit, within the general and rather loose provisions of the state law, whatever money was allotted it by the town.

The method by which the selectmen made the annual distribution to the districts was to ascertain the total number of pupils in the town. They then took the town appropriation for schools, added to it the money due from the state school fund, divided the total by the number of pupils, and thus arrived at the per capita distribution of the money. In 1855 the town appropriated $2,400. From the state was due $495, making a total of $2,895. There were 1,693 pupils in the town. Thus the selectmen were able to state at the head of the document showing the distribution these words: “The amount of the school money to each pupil is $1. 70 for the year 1855, i ncluding the State School Fund.”

In these days when the average per capita cost of one year’s schooling for each school child in the State of Maine is more than $400, that $1.70 for Waterville in 1855 seems very paltry indeed. Yet there are people always trying to tell how much better the schools were in those old, old days of the McGuffey Readers.

How much Ticonic Village had grown compared with outlying parts of the town is shown by the fact that its School District No. 1 had more than half the pupils in all the 17 districts together, for in its several school houses that district had to care for 930 of the 1,693 pupils. Naturally it got a lion’s share of the money. $1,505 of the total $2,895. The second largest district, No.9, was located in what is now the village of Oakland. With 120 pupils it got $180 of the money. The smallest district was No.2 with only 12 pupils and only $20 to spend on their schooling.

Among the City Hall papers is a bill submitted by Agent William Dyer for the Ticonic Village District No. 1 for that same year of 1855. It is a long, itemized bill, and we have time to note only a few of the items. But those few suggest some of the operational costs, apart from teachers’ salaries, in 1855.

Paid boy for building fires $ .25

Paid girl for sweeping the north school house last term

Paid for latch and butts

Kindling wood for north school house

Broom for red school house

Stove funnel for recitation room

2 Brushes for blackboard

2 Boxes of crayons

Cutting wood at Brick School House

Cutting and hauling 27 cords of green wood

2.95

.25

.58

.33

1.12

.40

1.16

1.00

for the several school houses 16.00

The old records of Ticonic Village’s School District No. 1 reveal some interesting votes:

August 13. 1847 – Voted to pay Noah Boothby $150 for the balance due him for building a school house in Dist. 1, and to make the payment out of any money in the District Treas’lry belonging to said District assessed for building a school house.

April 6, 1853 – Voted 65 yes and 22 no to raise a sum not exceeding $6.000 to be paid in six annual payments for the purpose of purchasing two lots of land in this district and of erecting thereon two school houses.

March 31, 1854 – Voted 5 to 0 to raise a sum not exceeding $50 to carry into effect the subject matter of the article voted last April.

By no means were discussions at town meeting 150 years ago devoted exclusively to schools and highways, though it is true that those two categories accounted for most of the money. Let us note some other items considered at Waterville’s town meeting 155 years ago in 1808. First the town voted to accept the lists made out by the selectmen in the regulation of the jury boxes.

A hot topic allover Maine in that year was the Embargo Act, passed by the Congress in 1807. Severely restricting New England shipping, it was an especially heavy blow to the shipbuilding District of Maine. The Waterville town meeting voted not to comply with the request of Maine’s seaport towns to protest against the embargo, but rather to approve of it, and they chose as a committee to prepare a statement and send it to the Congress such worthy and prominent citizens as Moses Dalton, Asa Soule, Nathaniel Gilman, Elnathan Sherwin and Jonathan Coombs. The town also voted to discharge Asa Soule from a certain bond executed by him to the Treasurer of the old town of Winslow in consideration of a deed of the lot of land on which the West Meeting House stood, the land having passed from Winslow to Waterville by the act of separation in 1802.

Even a hundred and fifty years ago not all marriages were performed by clergymen any more than they are today. During the fiscal year from April 1, 1804 to March 31, 1805 Asa Redington, in his capacity as Waterville Justice of the Peace, united in matrimony just one couple, Abram Morrill and Rebecca Tozier. But in those days marriage intentions had to be published. In 1805 Waterville had no newspaper, and the method of publishing marriage intentions was to post a notice on the door of the meeting house. That followed the even older custom of having the minister read the banns from the pulpit of the town’s official church; for, as this program has often pointed out, the earliest Maine churches were not operated and financed by separate denominations, but by the town. So in March, 1809 Abijah Smith, town clerk of Waterville, tacked to the door of the old meeting house on the common the following notice: “The intentions of marriage between Mr. John Wyman and Miss Sally Burgess of this town have been lodged with me for the past fourteen days, and are now published according to law.”

During the first ten years of Waterville’s existence as a separate town there was no settled minister, and the town had considerable trouble obeying the Massachusetts law which required that the town provide regular preaching. At the town meeting in May, 1808 it was voted to raise $100 for the support of the gospel, provided the Rev. Mr. Allyn of Duxbury “can be procured to preach, but if he cannot be procured, it is understood that only $50 is to be raised. Chose Asa Soule as agent to layout said money and apply it to said Allyn accordingly.”

One town order found among the old papers at Waterville’s City Hall seems at first glance a bit puzzling. It was made out to Samuel Weymouth in the amount of $14 and states that the payment was “for services and exercises· on the new county, 1853.” The Maine Register tells us that Androscoggin County was incorporated in March, 1854, and that it was formed out of parts of Cumberland, Oxford, Kennebec and Lincoln. But no part of the new county came anywhere near Waterville, so this town could scarcely have had even a fourteen dollar interest in the matter. A little investigation among the old records reveals that the payment to Weymouth had nothing to do with Androscoggin at all, but referred to proposals for a new county that was never formed.

The coming of the railroad to Waterville in 1849 gave impetus to the growth of both villages within the town, because what is now the village at Oakland was then within Waterville, and the railroad had stations both at West Waterville and at Ticonic Village. Even while the tracks were heing laid and before any train had arrived in Waterville, ambitious citizens called a special town meeting and secured a unanimous vote to petition the legislature to organize a new county out of towns in parts of Kennebec and Somerset and establish Waterville as its county seat. That action was taken in the summer of 1849 and the petition went to the legislature in January, 1850. In order to encourage favorable action, Waterville voted to give the use of its town hall for a court house and county offices. Such strenuous opposition arose, especially from influential political interests in Skowhegan. that the legislature rejected the petition.

The proposal, with some changes in regard to particular towns, was revived, however, in 1853, and it is that proposal on which Samuel Weymouth must have worked to earn his fourteen dollars. At a special town meeting on January 12 Waterville passed the following vote: “That the selectmen be instructed to petition the legislature for a new county to be called Ticonic, to be composed of the towns of Belgrade. Rome. Smithfield, Fairfield, Waterville, Clinton, Canaan, Burnham, Unity, Pittsfield, Detroit, Albion, Winslow and Benton, and to establish Waterville as the shire town.” It was further voted to give the use of the town hall to the new county, and to authorize the expenditure of a sum not exceeding $200 to procure passage of the bill. Despite the omission of Skowhegan from the new petition — the town that had provided the principal opposition in 1850 the 1854 legislature refused to create the new county.

That was the last ever heard of the movement to make Waterville a county seat. and the town remained in Kennebec County, obliged to this day to conduct all its county business in Augusta.

To us in the middle of the 20th century it is amazing to learn how many prominent persons 100 and more years ago could not read or write. Among the many old papers at City Hall, especially receipts for money paid by the town treasurer, are literally hundreds which have been signed with a cross, to which someone else had appended the name of the person, with the phrase “his mark”. We should not be surprised that the old herb woman, thought by many superstitious persons to be a witch, Aunt Hannah Cool, had to sign with a cross, but we are greatly surprised that the same was true of her wealthy relative John Cool. When the land surveyed by John McKechnie was first distributed in those big, mile-long lots in 1790, just one man was wealthy enough to acquire two entire lots. No one else had more than one lot. That fortunate man was John Cool, of whom we now know that he could not write well enough to sign his own name.

Year: 1963