Radio Script #631

Little Talks on Common Things

December 6, 1964

My request for informatlon about the Ticonic Mineral Spring Company brought immediate response. Mrs. Ina Stinneford of the Cushman Road, Winslow, who is a veritable mine of information about the old days, called me soon after the broadcast to give me the exact location of the old spring. A few minutes later Daniel Wing of Clinton Avenue in Winslow loaned me a scrapbook in which had been placed a complete account of the old spring written for the Waterville Sentinel by Fred McAlary only ten years ago in 1954. Thanks then to Mrs. Stinneford, Mr. Wing and the late Fred McAlary, I can now tell you more about the Ticonic Mineral Spring.

The spring, still active, is located on the Hapworth farm in Winslow. The farm is on a side road, leading off to the east from Benton Avenue, not far from the deep gully crossed by that highway as it approaches the Benton town line. The Hapworth house sits back from the side road — a square, white structure on top of a hill, approached by a long lane.

The spring is in the woods back of the house. Before the place came into possession of the Hapworth family, it was owned by Hillard Dunning, who was the first to exploit the spring’s potential value as a commercial venture. Over the spring Dunning built a large spring house, with facilities for filling bottles, washing containers and providing plenty of storage. The spring had a flow of nine gallons per minute, and was said to be of even temperature the year round. So constant was the flow that the grass around the spring was green summer and winter. By the turn of the century in 1900 Mr. Dunning had incorporated the Ticonic Mineral Spring Company. Although his plans to distribute the water in metropolitan centers, as was done by Poland Spring, never materialized, he did develop a large local business. He sold the enterprise to Fred Libby who, after a short try at it, sold to John Phillips, a retired railroad engineer. He in turn sold to the well known, life-long Winslow resident, Herbert Simpson, who lived in the century-old Simpson home on Benton Avenue, not far from the location of the spring.

By 1910 Mr. Simpson had built up a prosperous business with his Ticonic Spring water. He made the rounds of Waterville and Winslow twice a day, selling the water at 15 cents for a 5 gallon carboy. Simpson supplied hotels and restaurants, as well as private homes, and he made arrangements for several stores in Waterville and Winslow to accept orders that he would later deliver. Among such stores were the grocery of Whitcomb and Cannon, where the Montgomery Ward building now stands, and the drug store of S.S. Lightbody. At one time Simpson used two vehicles, a twohorse team for large deliveries, and a one-horse cart for home calls.

Colby College was brought into the story as early as 1877, when the spring was called to the attention of William Elder, the college professor of chemistry. After using the water for his own family over a period of time, Elder agreed with Mrs. Dunning’s mother, that it was worthy of chemical analysis. Elder turned that job over to his assistant Samuel K. Hitchings. The analysis showed the water to be rich in minerals considered beneficial to human health, and especially rich in sulphurated hydrogen, which gave the water its distinctive taste. It was especially notable in being entirely free from organic nitrogen that so easily finds its way into many springs.

Herbert Simpson operated the spring for fourteen years, continuing the business for a time even after China Lake water was pumped into the Waterville mains. It was the quality and safety of China Lake water that finally put the Ticonic Spring out of business.

But previous to the tapping of China Lake for Waterville’s water supply, local conditions were highly favorable for the development of such an excellent spring.

This community’s first public water supply, as of course you all know, came from the Messalonskee Stream. In those days not much thought was given to pollution from mill wastes, and in fact before the time of scientifically developed modern chemicals, pollution was indeed much less than it is now. Yet even at the turn of the century, 65 years ago, the Messalonskee was by no means a pure, unadulterated stream. People were afraid to drink the water and a typhoid epidemic one summer spread alarm through the community. The way to keep healthy, people felt, was to drink pure spring water. So Ticonic Springs five-gallon carboys became a common sight in Waterville homes.

There is evidence that this spring had a reputation long before Mr. Dunning’s mother and Prof. Elder arranged for its analysis in 1877. Herbert Simpson remembered a story told by his father, Hollis Simpson, who had enlisted in the Civil War at the age of 16, and had served in both the 21st Maine Infantry and the First Maine Cavalry. Hollis Simpson was taken ill with typhoid fever while in the service. He became delirious and dreamed he was at home in Winslow, stretched out on his stomach, drinking from the old spring.

Probably the spring was known also to the earliest settlers as they opened the farms near Fort Halifax in the latter part of the 18th century and even before that, Abnaki Indians, coming to their familiar fishing grounds below Ticonic Falls, may well have quenched their thirst from the cool waters of the Ticonic Mineral Spring.

This Waterville area might well make regular practice of an event that occurred ten years ago in Winslow. How much do the young people of Waterville, Winslow, Fairfield, Oakland and Vassalboro know about the historic places in this truly historic part of Maine? In 1955 the Fort Halifax Chapter of DAR arranged for the 4-H club of Winslow boys and girls to see, under competent guidance, some of the historic spots of Winslow. The group assembled at the Fort Schoolhouse on Lithgow Street, now a dwelling. In the yard is a plaque commemorating the landing here of Benedict Arnold’s expedition in 1775. The boys and girls next went to the brick schoolhouse on the Cushman Road, owned by Spofford Giddings. The house still has the original fireplace, taking four-foot logs; wainscotting with boards as wide as 26 inches and hand split lathes. It was the old brick school that was attended by Mrs. Ina Stinneford’s father back in the by-gone time when Andrew Jackson was President of the United States. From the schoolhouse the 4-Hers went into the nearby Giddings home, the older part of which had been built in 1795. There the youngsters saw many articles that had been in use in American homes at the time when this house was built.

Knowing how little attention most folks pay to even notable historic sites near home, I was not surprised to learn that only one of those 4-Hers had ever visited Fort Halifax right in their own home town. Plenty of Portland people have never been inside the Longfellow House, and many Skowhegan citizens have never stepped foot into their town’s famous History House.

Anyhow, representatives of the DAR chapter took those youngsters inside the fence and into the old blockhouse that had been built in 1754, almost exactly 200 years before those 4-Hers inspected it. Mrs. Eugene Overlock read them the story of the old fort as it had been recorded by Mrs. Eldwin Wixson.

The group’s tour ended at the Winslow Congregational Church, where Mrs. Overlock read to them the account of that famous church, as it was recorded for the 125th anniversary of the founding of the church society. Authorized by vote of the town of Winslow in 1794, when Winslow included what is now Waterville, the building was completed and opened for community religious services in 1796. At that time no religious denomination had any organization in this area. Of course there were settlers who considered themselves Congregationalists or Baptists or Universalists or some other faith, but there was no denominational church society. The Massachusetts law required that every incorporated town provide for regular preaching, and do it by levying a tax on all property owners. That is how what is now the Winslow Congregational Church got its start. It was erected as a combined religious meeting house and town hall.

After 1796 the settlement on the west side of the river grew rapidly, and the people there became restive at the necessity of crossing the river by boat by the old ford in order to attend church or town meetings. More than a quarter of a century would elapse before there was any bridge. So it was decided to build another church on the Waterville side. That edifice, placed on the Waterville common where City Hall now stands was what twentieth century local citizens knew as the Old Armory. Before the City Hall was built, that was the Waterville Town Hall, and earlier, when Waterville first became a separate town in 1802, it was the community meeting house for the west side of the river. The building originally faced Common Street but, to make room for the new city hall, was moved back to face Front Street.

Well, in order to explain the combined use of old meeting houses and how we got two of them here — one on each side of the river — before there was any denominational church, we have wandered a bit from that 4-H tour ten years ago. Suffice it to say that when those youngsters were shown over the old church in Winslow, they were seeing the oldest meeting house on the Kennebec that has been in continuous use since its erection 160 years before their 4-H visit.

For more than 30 years that Winslow church remained a community church supported by the town, and was long presided over by the first settled minister, the famous Joshua Cushman. But by the end of the first quarter of the 19th century denominations had come to be firmly established in Central Maine. The Baptists had organized and had built a church in Waterville, followed closely by the Universalists. The Episcopalians were well established at Gardiner, Hallowell and Augusta.

It was natural that the Congregationalists, successors to the orthodox church of colonial Massachusetts should make headway in Maine. When their dynamic leader, Rev. Thomas Adams, came to Vassalboro, he soon had his eye on communities farther up the river and it was Adams who saw to it that the old community church in Winslow became a Congregationalist church, which it has staunchly continued to be for more than 135 years.

Year: 1964