Radio Script #605

Little Talks on Common Things

March 8, 1964

On today’s broadcast I want first to correct two errors in what I said last week about Oak Grove. I named one of the original trustees as Alden Simpson. I should have said Alden Sampson.

The other mistake was more serious. Because most boarding schools in Maine during the first half of the 19th century were called either academies or seminaries, I took it for granted that the name by which the Vassalboro school wa~ long known, Oak Grove Seminary, was its corporate name. Because the school was incorporated in 1854 and because Sam Burleigh’s 1892 newspaper quoted the official record of 1857 concerning the election of a principal of Oak Grove Seminary, I concluded Seminary was in the legal, corporate title. I was mistaken. When the institution got its corporate charter in 1854, its legal name was exactly the same as it is now — Oak Grove School. The present administration by dropping the title of seminary, were not proposing something new. They were merely asking for a revival of the school’s original, corporate designation. Oak Grove School it was in 1854, and Oak Grove School it still is.

A picture of what Maine religious denominations were like 140 years ago is shown in a curious old book that recently came into my hands. It was written by Jonathan Greenleaf, pastor of a church in Wells and only a year after Maine had become a separate state. Entitled “Sketches of the Ecclesiastical History of the State of Maine from the Earliest Settlements to the Present Time”, it gives a chronological story of churches in Maine from 1673 to 1820.

It all began when Shubael Dunmer, a minister of the orthodox, established Congregational Church of Massachusetts, was ordained at York in 1673. Most ministers in those days were well educated; in fact the minister was usually the best educated man in a New England community. Mr. Dunmer was no exception. He had graduated from Harvard in 1656, when that oldest college in America had been in existence for only twenty years. He continued his ministry at York for nearly twenty years until, in January, 1692, there came an especially vicious Indian attack on the settlement, during which Mr. Dunmer was killed and his wife taken a captive to Canada.

The second church in Maine, also of the established Church of the Commonwealth, was organized at Wells in 1701, and it was the pastorate of that church that Mr. Greenleaf held when he wrote this history in 1821.

At the beginning of the 18th century a large area on the Maine side of the river dividing Maine from New Hampshire was called by the name of the river, Piscataqua. It comprised the present towns of Kittery, Eliot, Berwick, North Berwick and South Berwick.

There, in what is now Kittery, was set up Maine’s third church in 1702. Not until 1727 was there any church east of York County. Then the minister whose famous diary gives us much information about the early days became the first pastor in Portland. He was the Rev. Thomas Smith and, like Mr. Dunmer of York, was a graduate of Harvard.

I was interested to see what Greenleaf’s book had to say about my native town of Bridgton. I discovered that in 1821 the first pastor of Bridgton’s first church, an orthodox Congregational, still presided over that parish. He had been ordained as the first settled pastor in 1789, although the church had been served by itinerant ministers for five years after its organization in 1784. That Congregational Church is still the leading denomination in Bridgton.

Waterville was quite a different story. Although the town had been separated from Winslow for 19 years when Greenleaf’s history was published, the book does not mention Waterville. At that time the Baptist Church had been organized for three years, but as yet had no meeting house and was of slight importance compared with the old church of the Massachusetts establishment, the Congregationalist in Winslow.

Greenleaf, at the end of a chapter on the Baptists in Maine, gives this explanation for no mention of Waterville Baptists: “A more particular account of the several Baptist churches in Maine cannot be given, because most of them have been established within the past thirty years, and their ministers have often moved from one church to another without much formality, making it difficult to trace them.”

Concerning the establishment of the first church in this area, the old Congregational Church of Winslow, Greenleaf had this to say: “Fort Halifax was in Winslow, and a small settlement was made there about as early as the settlement at Hallowell. The town then lay on both sides of the Kennebec and included what is now Waterville as well as the present town of Winslow. In the early part of the year 1796 Mr. Joshua Cushman was employed to preach at Winslow, and on June 10th in that year he was ordained as the minister. But there was no church organization in the town, nor was any established during Mr. Cushman’s ministry. At the time of his settlement a number of persons subscribed to certain articles of belief and were considered by some of the people as a substitute for a church, but the sacrament of the Lord’s supper was never administered to them, nor were they acknowledged as a church by those in the neighborhood.”

Greenleaf pointed to a significant paragraph in the report of the Maine Missionary Society for the year 1819. It said: “Seven in Winslow have united with our church (the established Congregational). In November we held communion there. This was the first time the Lord’s supper was ever administered to a Congregational Church in Winslow.”

Greenleaf’s account, corroborated by local records, makes it clear that religion first came to this particular region on the Kennebec in no denominational form whatever. The laws of Massachusetts required that each incorporated town must supply regular preaching, though not necessarily maintain a settled minister. When the town of Winslow was incorporated in 1771, it came under that Massachusetts law. The records of early town meetings show that for the first 25 years of the town’s existence the law was loosely regarded. Sometimes the town appropriated money to pay itinerant preachers; at other times it neglected to make any such appropriation.

Not until the town voted to arrange for the settlement of a regular, resident minister in 1796 was there anything like a church. Even then it was not an organized church body, but was run by the town. The town built the first meeting house on what is now Lithgow Street in Winslow, and shortly thereafter built another meeting house across the river, where the Waterville City Hall now stands. Both houses served for town meetings as well as for religious services, and they were open for preaching by any minister who happened to come to town, regardless of his denomination. When the community got a settled pastor in the person of Mr. Cushman, his salary was paid by the town from money raised by public taxation.

It was natural that, as denominations came to this area, the first church, long presided over by Mr. Cushman, should become Congregational, because that was the denomination of the established church of Massachusetts — what old timers meant when they spoke of the orthodox church.

By 1820 several Protestant denominations had become well established. The Baptists had 25 churches in Central Maine. The Congregationalists had ten churches in the area, and the Episcopalians had three. The Methodists were growing fast, from seven circuits and 200 members in 1800 to 27 circuits and 7,000 members.

When Greenleaf published his book, the Quakers were already prominent in Maine, especially in the Kennebec Valley. We know that they had held a meeting for worship in the Bowerman settlement at North Fairfield as early as 1786, but they had come to Maine much earlier — to Kittery in 1730, to Portland in 1743, to Berwick in 1749, and to Harpswell in 1750. They had held their first meeting in the Kennebec Valley at Vassalboro in 1780, and that place became the location of the Friends Quarterly Meeting for this area. By 1820 there were organized meetings of Friends at Belgrade, China, Sidney, Fairfax (old Albion), Unity and Athens.

Although the inhabitants of Maine were almost entirely Protestant when Greenleaf’s book was published, he did not ignore the Roman Catholics. He considered them predominantly missionaries to Maine’s remaining Indian tribes, the Passamaquoddys and the Penobscots. He tells us that, outside the tribal reservations, there were in 1820 only two Catholic churches in Maine. He says: “Four meetings of Roman Catholics are held in Maine: two among the remains of Indian tribes, one at Newcastle, and one at Whitefield. Under the French missionaries the Indians became Catholics. The Penobscots now number about 350, the Passamaquoddys about 400. Little is known of their religious affairs after their dispersal in 1724 until the year 1797, when both tribes were visited by the Rev. James Romagne, a native of France, who assumed their pastoral care. He was succeeded in 1819 by the Rev. Stephen Cailleaux, also of French birth and educated at Paris.

“The Catholic societies at Newcastle and Whitefield are only a little more than twenty years old. Seven families had moved into the area, all coming from Ireland, and in 1798 Bishop Cheverus visited them. He preached in a barn at Damariscotta Bridge and celebrated mass in Mathew Cottrill’s house. The next year a store was remodeled into a chapel, and in 1807 a brick church was erected. It cost $4,000, of which $1.431 was raised by general subscription, while all the rest was paid by two men, James Kavanagh and Mathew Cottrill.

“The Catholic society at Whitefield came later, and only a few years ago a wooden building was erected for their worship. The members of the Newcastle and the Whitefield societies are widely dispersed throughout Lincoln County, but they endeavor, on the great festival days of the Church. to assemble for mass either at one town or the other. The present number of persons in the two societies is unknown, but about 108 families are connected with them.”

Greenleaf goes on to explain that in 1820 the Catholics of Maine were in what was then called the Eastern Diocese. under supervision of Bishop Cheverus of Boston.

That prelate had been born in France in 1768, was educated at the Sorbonne, and had been ordained a priest in 1790. Driven from his native land by the excesses of the French Revolution, he went to England. whence in 1796 he embarked for America. In 1810 he was consecrated Bishop of Massachusetts.

It is a very interesting volume. that old “Ecclesiastical History of Maine”.

Year: 1964