Radio Script #641

Little Talks on Common Things

February 14, 1965

A few months ago I happened to be seeking some information at the State Library in the legislative reports for the year 1841. Almost always, when I am perusing such records, my eye catches something quite different from what I am looking for, but interesting enough to note down for future use on this program.

This time, what I noticed was the identity of several members of the Maine Legislature in 1841. Bear in mind that the time was 124 years ago, long before anyone now living was born. At that time Maine had only 13 counties, instead of the present 16. Not until after 1841 were there created the counties of Androscoggin, Knox and Sagadahoc. The whole state then had about 500,000 people, half the number it has today. The most populous of the 13 counties was then, as now, Cumberland, but York was a close second. Kennebec was third with 51,000 people. The smallest county was then Aroostook with only 9,000. Washington County, now much smaller in population than Aroostook, then had three times as many inhabitants as the great potato county. Despite rapidly growing Bangor with its booming lumber industry, Penobscot County had about the same number of people as Somerset.

Maine was well represented in the U.S. Congress in 1841. In the Senate were Reuel Williams of Augusta and John Fairfield of Saco, who had been Maine’s Governor during the Aroostook War of 1839. Instead of two members of the national House of Representatives, as at present, Maine then had eight, thus wielding considerable influence among the then 27 states. Our eight Congressmen in 1841 were George Evans of Gardiner, Thomas Davee of Blanchard, Herbert Anderson of Belfast, Albert Smith of Portland, Benjamin Randall of Bath, Virgil Parris of Buckfield, Nathan Clifford of Newfield and Joshua Lowell of Machias. Although several of those eight men were prominent in Maine, especially George Evans who was a noted trial lawyer, spectacularly so in murder cases, only one of the eight gained national fame. He was Nathan Clifford, for whom a school in Portland has long been named. From 1846 to 1848 Clifford was Attorney General of the United States in the administration of President Polk, who sent him on a diplomatic mission to Mexico that culminated in the treaty ending the Mexican War. In 1858 President Buchanan appointed Clifford to the Supreme Court of the United States, where he served with distinction until his death in 1881. He was the first Maine resident to be appointed to the nation’s highest court. Thirty years later a man then residing in Illinois, but who had been born in Maine, was appointed Chief Justice by President Grover Cleveland. That man was Melville W. Fuller.

But I said what I noticed in the old legislative record was a few names of men in our own legislature in 1841. Waterville was represented by Joseph Hitchings. As I have frequently mentioned on this program, the left bank of the Messalonskee below the Memorial Bridge that crosses what we now call the Kennedy Drive was the site of several large mills. That stretch of bank behind the present Flo’s Greenhouse was lined with prosperous factories. One of the earliest of those mills, erected about 1795, was a combined saw and grist mill owned by Silas and Abijah Wing. In 1810 they sold the property to Samuel and Joseph Hitchings, who added another building to manufacture wool carding machines and turn out bed posts. Samuel Hitchings turned his attention gradually away from wood industries to machine making, and was instrumental in promoting there on the lower Messalonskee the plant that Webber and Philbrick later developed into the prosperous Waterville Iron Works. By 1840 Joseph Hitchings was a well known manufacturer and prominent citizen; so his fellow townsmen sent him to the legislature.

Augusta’s representative at the time when that place had had the state capital only six years was Luther Severance, the prominent founder and publisher of the Kennebec Journal. From New Sharon there came to the legislature Holmes Boardman, son of the town’s Baptist minister, Sylvanus Boardman, who in 1813 had been one of the original incorporators of the Maine Literary and Theological Institute, now Colby College. Holmes Boardman’s brother was George Dana Boardman, one of the two members of Colby’s first graduating class in 1822, and the first of Colby’s long list of missionaries to foreign lands, who died young of malarial fever contracted in the Karen hills of Burma.

Maine’s outstanding German colony was Waldoboro, started in the middle of the seventeenth century when Gen. Samuel Waldo acquired a large tract of land along Muscongus Bay and decided to populate it with immigrants brought from the Palatinate in Germany. Still standing on a hill south of Waldoboro Village, on the road to Round Pond and Pemaquid, is the old German cemetery, where tombstones carry the names of many of the original settlers from old Germany. To this day in Waldoboro German names still abound, many of their bearers being descendants of the early settlers. One such family name is Ludwig, and in 1841 Waldoboro’s representative at Augusta was Jacob Ludwig. If Ludwig is a common name in Waldoboro, Hinckley is no less common in Blue Hill. You will find the name mentioned frequently in books by Mary Ellen Chase.

In 1841 that region’s representative was Bushrod Hinckley. That is not a common first name, and one can only speculate that this particular Hinckley may have been named for George Washington’s relative, Bushrod Washington.

Fairfield sent to the state capital in 1841 Joseph Burgess, ancestor of William Burgess, who only a few years ago retired after many years of distinguished service as judge of the municipal court.

Because this program owes so much to the contributions through the years of both Bert and Josephine Drummond, I note with interest that in 1841 the representative from Buckfield was a relative of Mrs. Drummond’s, Noah Prince. Mrs. Drummond herself came from Buckfield, where some of her ancestors had settled, while others had gone to Thomaston. There her most prominent relative in an older generation was Hezekiah Prince, who like Slyvanus Boardman, was an original incorporator of Colby College.

Last of the names that I spotted was the representative from my native town of Bridgton. The Gibbs family was one of the town’s most prominent in the early 19th century. They were merchants, lumbermen and land owners. They started the town’s first woolen mill and developed the neglected water rights of the stream that runs through Bridgton Center Village, connecting Highland and Long Lakes. Even as late as my own boyhood days, one of Bridgton’s three woolen mills was known as the Gibbs mill, and three Gibbs families still resided in the town. I know, because as a delivery boy from my father’s store, I carried groceries to all three of them.

How big were some of Maine’s well known communities in 1840? Even then Maine’s largest city was Portland, but how many people do you think it had in order to rank largest? Its total population was 15,218, about 4,000 smaller than the present size of Waterville. Bangor had about half as many people as Portland, 8,634. Remember that at that time there was no Androscoggin County. Above Brunswick on the Androscoggin River at a conspicuous fall of water was a little place called Lewiston Falls, now Maine’s third largest city. In 1840 it had only 1,800 people, fewer than my own little town of Bridgton, which even then had 2,000. The largest Kennebec town was then Augusta with 5,300, chiefly because five years earlier it had become the state capital. Gardiner had 5,000, surpassing Hallowell by about 300. Forty years earlier, at the turn of the century, Hallowell had been by far the largest town above Merrymeeting Bay.

Now comes a surprise for you. In 1840 Vassalboro had 12 more people than Waterville. Its population was 2,951, while Waterville’s was 2,939. Clinton, in fact, was nearly as large, having 2,818 people. Four other towns in the county had populations exceeding two thousand. They were, in order of size, China, Pittston, Litchfield and Readfield. Waterville’s neighboring Fairfield had grown in 1840 to a population of 2,198.

Dover has always been Piscataquis County’s largest town, but I am sure you would never guess what was its second largest town in 1840. It was neither Foxcroft nor Dexter, but what is now the little town of Parkman. Though that town has lost population in the past 125 years, it has by no means lost influence and significance in our state. It still has citizens who are well known far beyond its borders.

Of these the most famous today is octogenarian Carroll McKusick, a former state senator and since 1949 a valued and very active member of the State Board of Education. A prosperous dairy farmer who has never forgotten the Greek and Latin he learned at Bates College, he gained lasting fame as a teacher before he returned to the Parkman farm. There are a lot of Maine people who, when you mention Parkman, will think at once of Carroll McKusick.

One more interesting comment about Maine in 1840. At that time each town clerk had to make an extensive report to the state. Some of the items are familiar and to be expected: the number of taxable polls; the number of people supported by the town, listed by sex and age; the number of blind, deaf and dumb; and the number of insane. But some of the other reportable items are not so familiar. Each town must declare annually its number of dwelling houses, of barns, of shops and stores, and of warehouses; and its acres of tilled land. Then it had to state the town’s production of corn, wheat, other grains. beans and peas; its pounds of wool, flax and hops; its barrels of cider and its yards of woven cloth. Of course reportable was the number of oxen, cows, horses, sheep and swine but, interestingly enough, not dogs. It was important to list how many pounds of butter and cheese had been made, but nothing was said about ground meal. Reportable vehicles were listed as coaches with four wheels, chaises and other two wheeled carriages, and horse wagons. The last item on the list was number of granite quarries.

Year: 1965