Radio Script #632

Little Talks on Common Things

December 13, 1964

The years have seen the closing of many rural post offices, but some of them clung tenaciously to business for a long time. One such long-lived office was the one at Benton, near the west end of the Sebasticook Bridge. Established while Benton was still a part of the town of Clinton, the first post office there opened its doors in 1821 under Gushom Flagg. He was succeeded by Sewall Prescott in 1826 and by John Lunt in 1827. Then Israel Herrin got the job and moved the office into his store in what is now the Benton Town Hall.

In 1842, when the southern half of Clinton became the town of Sebasticook, the post office cancel stamp was changed to Sebasticook P.O., and Crosby Hinds became postmaster. Then, when the town name was changed to Benton in 1852 and the post office name had to be changed again, Mr. Hinds was still in charge.

The location of the old Benton Post Office through most of its existence was in the building long known as the John Lunt House, built about 1810. When the government closed the Benton office in 1956, Mrs. red Grant, who was then postmistress, was surprised to learn how eagerly collectors are to secure postal covers bearing the stamped date of an office’s closing day. Orders came to her for cancellations to be mailed as far away as Colorado, North Dakota and California, as well as hundreds of requests from the nearer states of Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.

Of course the town of Benton had other post offices besides the one near the Sebasticook Bridge. The office at Benton Falls was established in 1878, that at Benton Station in 1888, while the office at East Benton was older than either, having been opened in 1858. The rural free delivery has now closed them all.

It was 33 years ago last October when Waterville was the scene of a sensational murder, the now almost forgotten Abie Levine case. On the evening of September 26, 1931 the body of Abraham Levine, containing four bullets, was found face down at a desk in the home of his father, cattle dealer Louis Levine, on the Sidney Road. To this day the murder has never been solved, locally as baffling as was nationally the disappearance of New York’s Judge Crater in the same year.

When Abie Levine was killed, he was in the act of writing a check to someone named Leland Gray. No such person was ever found.

Waterville police first received news of the crime when a city hall janitor answered a telephone call, but the informer did not speak of a crime. He said there had been an accident down on the Sidney Road. The police responded, but seeing no sign of an accident, they returned to headquarters. Then they learned from a telephone operator that the accident was inside the Levine home. When the medical examiner arrived, he established that at least one of the shots into Abie’s body had been made by a gun held at very close range. The Levine housekeeper was a colored woman, Mrs. Eleanor Johnson, who had been in Waterville since 1913, when she came here as a maid in the family of the Methodist minister.

Shortly after 11 o’clock on the night of the murder she was taken home from the Waterville business section by a neighbor, merchant tailor Herbert Hart. Mrs. Johnson was therefore the first to discover the body, but her screams alerted Hart and Ralph Dusty, both of whom closely followed her. State and local police soon heard reports of bad feeling between Mrs. Johnson and Abie Levine. Abie was said to have the intent to get the housekeeper fired, and she was said to have made threats against him.

At the time of the murder Abie’s father was in the west. When he and Abie’s brother Milton returned home, they declared that more than a year earlier a 32 caliber revolver had disappeared from a bureau drawer. It was 32 caliber bullets that had caused Abie’s death. Mrs. Johnson was arrested and on February 5, 1932 she was indicted by the Kennebec Grand Jury for the murder of Abraham Levine. The trial was sensational and not entirely free from the emotion of race. Popular opinion was aroused both for and against the Negro woman.

One lawyer for the prosecution was County Attorney Harold C. Marden, now a justice of the Maine Supreme Court. Heading the defense was Waterville attorney James Boyle. On the jury were Waterville railroad men Henry Kelley and Chester Winslow. Clearly money had not been the object of the crime. More than $300 remained in the victim’s pockets. He had failed to make his usual Saturday night deposit at a Waterville bank.

A police officer testified that he found in a box of magazines, all addressed to Mrs. Johnson, an unused 32 caliber cartridge. The defendant declared the cartridge must have been planted there to implicate her. Another witness had talked with Abie on the telephone about 7 o’clock on the fatal evening. The time of death was established as approximately 9:15. Witnesses in Mrs. Johnson’s defense were numerous. One placed her near the Gilman Street dump — the gully of old Hayden Brook back of West Street — during the evening. Others substantiated her story that she had attended the movies at the Haines Theater.

The jury was out more than three hours. When they returned, they declared Mrs. Johnson innocent.

When the case ended more than 30 years ago, newspaper headlines were worded: “Who killed Abie Levine?” A third of a century later, that question is still unanswered.

I am indebted to Mrs. Eunice Beale of Eastport for a delightful story concerning the Waterville authoress of a generation ago, Martha Baker Dunn. Mrs. Beale was Eunice Mower, the daughter of Rev. I.B. Mower, Baptist state secretary. For many years the Mowers lived in a house on the south side of College Place. When the Women’s Union was built near Foss Hall, two houses on College Place, including that of the Mowers’, were moved nearer to Main Street, where they still stand. By that time both Martha Baker Dunn and her husband, Reuben Wesley Dunn, had died.

So Dr. Mower moved his family into the old Dunn home on College Avenue, a commodious house that stood just south of the Lanigan property, now the Ferris Arms motel. Where Martha Baker Dunn used to dispense literature and wit, a shop now dispenses doughnuts. The Dunn house itself has been torn down.

Mrs. Beale tells me that her mother, Mrs. I.B. Mower, was a member of a neighborhood club that provided a convivial atmosphere to the College Avenue area more than half a century ago. The club had no officers or other formality; it just met more or less regularly in the homes. The group called themselves the F.H. Club. The initials, Mrs. Beale says, stood for Fond Hearts. Among the members were Mrs. Reuben Wesley Dunn, Mrs. Arthur Roberts, Mrs. Hascal Hall, Mrs. Frank Philbrick, Mrs. Julian Taylor, Mrs. I.B. Mower, and Mrs. Caswell who, at that time, was matron of one of the women’s dormitories of Colby.

Now for Mrs. Beale’s story about that club. In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt was so impressed by an essay in the “Atlantic Monthly”, written by Martha Baker Dunn, that he asked the magazine editor for the author’s address. The President then wrote a very commendatory letter to Mrs. Dunn, which one of her friends insisted she read at a meeting of the club. Of course the members were very much impressed. Deciding to have some fun at Mrs. Dunn’s expense, the other ladies presented at the next meeting of the club what they solemnly announced as letters from the President. Each recipient’s letter commended her for some trivial accomplishment, such as washing the dishes after every meal instead of letting them pile up in the sink. After each lady had played her part in the hoax, Mrs. Dunn extracted from her handbag a second letter from President Roosevelt in reply to her acknowledgement of his first letter. It was quite evident that Teddy’s appreciation of Mrs. Dunn’s writing had been no merely perfunctory gesture, and there was no more joking about it.

Mrs. Beale has preserved some momentoes of that old club, many of them in the hand-writing of Martha Baker Dunn. They consist largely of records of the old time parlor games people played half a century ago. There are puzzles, instructions for charades, quizzes, anagrams, and other plans for an evening’s diversion. We may be very sure those ladies did not play cards. That was frowned upon in most church circles of the time, and those FH Club folk were devoted church members.

One of the preserved items is a quiz calling for names of magazines: “A singer should be accompanied by ” The missing word is “Harper”. “The sailor should study the ‘Atlantic’~ “A devourer of books should try the ‘Literary Digest’.” “A sick man should cling to ‘Life’.” “A clock maker should have the ‘Dial’.” “A widow should look for ‘Woman’s Home Companion’.” There was a similar game to identify authors: “What is small talk and heavy weight? Chatterton.” “How does one author lead to another in the kitchen? Browning and Burns.” “A sick place of worship. Churchill.” “To agitate a weapon over an oyster heap. Shakespeare and Shelley.”

To our modern generation that kind of an evening would seem downright insipid. Our teenagers would declare it decidedly corny. But I assure you that 50 years ago it was good, wholesome fun that relied not at all on the liquid stimulation that seems essential to many parties today.

Year: 1965