Radio Script #580

Little Talks on Common Things

June 9, 1963

I recently examined a number of letters written nearly 120 years ago by a young man of Turner, Maine, who had gone out to make his way in the world. His name was Calvin Daggett and the man to whom he wrote and addressed as “Dear Friend” was Chandler Bradford, Jr. of Turner. On March 19, 1845 Daggett wrote to Bradford from Lowell, Massachusetts: “Last Monday I went with Sullivan down to a blacksmith shop on the purpose of getting Sullivan into the shop to work. The man gave him some encouragement and was anxious to have me come as an apprentice. The idea struck me favorably, and in a few days we completed the bargain. He hires Sullivan by the month and me by the year, and we board ourselves.

“I suppose you would like to hear about our journey here. We went to the depot house in Portland and took the cars to Lowell, with no mishap and on time. We have enjoyed it here first rate. I decided I had better learn a trade. This blacksmith carries on several lines of business, making and painting wagons and harnesses, as well as doing all kinds of blacksmith work. He employs about 30 hands and he is called a very nice man.”

“Calvin is going to work for a man with whom Mr. Merrill is well acquainted. He is deacon of the church of which your brother was pastor. He will pay Calvin $40 a year and two dollars a week for his board. He can get board for nine shillings a week ($1.50). If Calvin is prudent, I think he can save enough to spend something on the improvement of his mind. There are evening schools here that he can attend for a small fee.”

More than a year had elapsed when Daggett again wrote to Bradford in June, 1846, this time proudly signing the letter “Calvin K. Daggett, Blacksmith”:”I am still working at the same place, but for a new boss who is not quite equal to the old one. Sullivan is now getting eleven dollars a month. The blacksmith business is first rate here in Lowell. The town is growing fast. Four hundred new buildings were built last year, and there are mills of every sort.”

During the year Daggett’s father and mother had come to Lowell, where the father had gone to work for a wheelwright while the mother kept a boarding house.

But Calvin confided to Bradford that father couldn’t get the Wisconsin fever out of his system. His mother had begun to feel the same way, and Calvin feared the couple might soon depart for the West. He wrote: “Some of our relations have gone there and like it very much. They can raise tremendous crops with little labor. I shall not go with them, but shall stay here and finish my trade.”

Calvin then proceeded to answer a question Bradford had evidently asked him about clothes: “I wear the same pantaloons I brought with me to work. but I got a new pair for Sunday. I still wear the same coat. I am no larger and no heavier than when I left Turner and can still wear the same clothes.”

Then Calvin issued an urgent invitation: “Chandler, why don’t you come down for a visit? The fare is cheap. Come for the 4th of July, so we can go together to Boston to see the fireworks. It is a great sight and will make your eyes stick out.”

Two more years went by, and Daggett then wrote to Bradford, this time from Nashua, New Hampshire. He said: “I am here in Nashua, alone among strangers. Father and mother have gone to Wisconsin. and Sullivan and his wife have gone with them. Sidney and his sisters did not go. Sidney is in Amherst College, and the girls are working in the Lowell mills. I have no intention of going to Wisconsin. The paper stated that girls are so scarce out there that the finest gentleman can ride 40 miles on horseback without seeing even a petticoat hanging on a clothesline. Tell the Turner girls they must fly around and get ready to go to Wisconsin with me, if I change my mind and decide to go, for I want to take a dozen good. likely girls with me to supply the urgent demand for wives out there.”

The next November Daggett wrote to Bradford about his reactions to a trip to Turner a few weeks previous: “Mr. Pinkham and I started down east with anticipation that we would be wrapped in the affections of some of the fair sex and if luck crowned our wishes, we might soon walk in the pleasant path of matrimony.

Instead we found the girls all as cool as cucumbers and acting as if their mothers could not get along without them. So here we are back in Nashua, looking around among our old friends. The Nashua girls are quite good enough for us. There has been a lot of excitement here about the election. I have been on Old Zack’s side all along and am mighty glad he has triumphed.” That reference was to the election of General Zachery Taylor as President of the United States.

Calvin disclosed that he had received just one letter from his parents since they went to Wisconsin, but they seemed to be doing well out on the prairies. Calvin’s next letter to Bradford was dated August 2, 1849. Calvin was still in Nashua and told his friend that he was now considered the mainstay of the shop.

“I did give Tolman at Wayne some encouragement that I would come down and work for him, but it is very difficult for me to leave here. Work is too plentiful and the pay is too good to make a change now.”

Then Calvin proceeded to tell his old friends in Turner about serious trouble. He wrote: “Trufant has gone to state prison for six years for housebreaking. His trial was in Concord, Massachusetts, and before that he was confined for three months in the East Cambridge jail. It has cost me time and expense, which is the main reason why I have not paid you a visit this fall.”

Evidently the gold rush fever had hit both of these young men, Calvin in Nashua and Chandler in Turner. Calvin wrote: “In regard to California your views are similar to mine. Evidently we agree that we did wise not to rush off with the fellows who have gone there. I think many will sing sweet home before they get home again. ”

Calvin still had girls on his mind. He wrote: “Tell Bradford that the girls here have not forgotten him. Elizabeth sends her love and will be ready as soon as he gets that little farm. She is getting real fat, weighs 134 pounds, four pounds more than I now weigh.”

Two years later in December, 1851 Calvin Daggett was a settled, married man. He wrote to his Turner friend: “My wife and I are well and are living at Mother Cross’s as happy as two well fed chickens. Henry Pinkham has bought a house for $750. Tell Freeman I have got a fiddle, and I saw at it almost every day. My folks in the West are all prosperous.”

Another series of old Turner letters concerns Truman Bradford. From Westbrook Seminary, where he was a student in May, 1854, he wrote to his parents in Turner: “I am enjoying myself quite well here, although I do not have very luxurious living. Perhaps I learn faster than I should if I ate more strengthening food, but I must say I don’t feel as strong as I would on home food. You write considerable about my coming home. The truth is I would like to be at home and here too, but that is impossible. I feel it is my duty to respect your kindness in sending me to this school; hence I will do as you think best. It was very kind of you to leave the decision to me, but I want you to make it. There are eight weeks more of this term, and I think I had better stay to the end. Now let me know what you think.”

The flamboyant style of letter writing a hundred years ago is revealed in a  letter that Truman Bradford himself received from a friend, Robert Leighton, who in the summer of 1854 had been on a visit away from Maine. Leighton wrote: “Let me give you a description of a few of the splendid cities I have just seen. First comes the metropolis of New England, the home of arts and letters, the city of merchant princes, of poets and historians; and almost within view lies the famed University of Cambridge, from whose shades of lore many a young man has gone forth to world renown. Thence I went to the far famed city of New York with its marvelous Broadway thronged with the gayest and prettiest females.”

In the fall of 1855 Truman Bradford was back at Westbrook Seminary and like all young men who faced the long winter vacation in those years, was thinking about teaching a country school during the six or eight vacation weeks. That explains several sentences.in a letter that Truman’s mother wrote him from Turner on November 15: “With regard to your taking the school in Cumberland, your father thinks you must decide for yourself. I f you th ink you can get a long wi th the school and not have to knock down and drag out — in other words, if it will not be too hard for you –. it would be quite an object to take it.Perhaps you had better bring your trunk and all your things home, so that your clothes can be repaired, which surely they must need by this time. Do that, whether or not you take the Cumberland school. We shall meet you at the depot next Tuesday.”

At Westbrook Bradford formed a close friendship with S.B. Rawson, who went on to Tufts College, and in early March of 1857 was teaching school in Whitesville. Massachusetts, waiting for the spring term to open at Tufts. Rawson wrote to Bradford: “I finish my school next Friday. It was the most lazy and backward that I have ever taught. College life, to which I soon return, is quite different. Think of going three or four months without speaking to a woman!”

In the fall of 1862 Truman Bradford himself entered Tufts, and his schedule of classes is preserved to this day. Each day from Monday through Friday saw recitations at 7 a.m., 11 a.m., and 5 p.m., and on Saturday at 8 and 11 a.m. Bradford’s freshman subjects were Latin, Greek, Mathematics and Physiology. From Tufts in May, 1864 Truman wrote to the same Calvin Daggett, whom we mentioned in the first part of this Little Talk. He urged Calvin and his wife to go to Turner that summer “for”, he said, “it is a great occasion to Down Easters when you and Rebecca go to see them.”

Truman found the food at Tufts better than he had found it at Westbrook. He once wrote his sister in the fall of 1864: “We have beef steak today. We have it regularly once a week, and we get pie twice every day.”

In June, 1866 Truman Bradford was facing the end of his junior year when he wrote as follows to his mother in Turner: “Our examinations begin in about two weeks. I have thought of a project of making money fast and I may try it, so do not expect me to come home at once. I bought a suit that cost me $28 and had a few other expenses for which I borrowed money. I wish you would send me $25 to  clean up my debts and see me through the two weeks until examinations are over.”

The old bundle of letters contains nothing further from that Turner student at Tufts, but we assume he graduated and made his mark in the world.

Year: 1963