Radio Script #650

Little Talks on Common Things

April 18, 1965

Several times on this program I have mentioned two well known Waterville maiden ladies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Julia Stackpole and Sarah Lang. I don’t think I have previously told you that the two women were related.

Both were descended from James Stackpole, who came to New England from Ireland in 1680, but their ancestors were different sons of that immigrant. Julia Stackpole was descended from the oldest son, John; Sarah Lang from the third son, Philip. Philip Stackpole’s great-grandson, Thomas Stackpole, was born in Dover, N.H. in 1774 and became a manufacturer of woolen cloth in North Berwick, where he died in 1816. His oldest daughter married John Damon Lang at North Berwick in 1821. He, like his father-in-law, manufactured cloth, and on the side he was a Quaker preacher. He moved to Vassalboro in 1841, and there he launched the “Ocean Bird”, the only ship built on the upper Kennebec that crossed the Atlantic. From Africa the Ocean Bird brought the first peanuts to America. John Damon Lang and Ann Elvira Stackpole had seven children, the youngest of whom was John Alton Lang, born in North Berwick in 1840. At the age of 79 he died in Waterville in 1919. He too was a cloth manufacturer, owner of the mill at North Vassalboro. In 1861 he married Caroline Redington Drummond. Their only child was Sarah Lang.

Another James Stackpole, great grandson of the James who had come from Ireland in 1680, arrived in Waterville in 1784, and was soon in business as a trader on the bank of the Kennebec near the later site of the Lockwood Mills. He had thirteen children, six boys and seven girls. His namesake son, known locally as James Stackpole, Jr., married Mary, the daughter of John McKechnie, Waterville’s surveyor for the Plymouth Company and builder of the first sawmill in this town.

The third Waterville James Stackpole, and the seventh James since the Irish immigrant, was the son’ of James, Jr., and was born in Waterville in 1798. In 1816 he entered Bowdoin College and became a Maine attorney. He served 17 years as Treasurer of Waterville College (now Colby). James Stackpole. Jr. father of the Waterville college treasurer, had a brother. Jotham Hill Stackpole, who was born in Waterville in 1781 and in 1819 married Susan Parsons Getchell. His fifth child, a daughter born in 1829. was christened Juliana, but all her life was known as Julia. She had a long, useful life, dying in 1918 at the advanced age of 89. Sarah Lang was much younger than Julia Stackpole, who was 34 years old when Miss Lang was born in 1863. But both never married, both were descended from the original American Stackpole, and both were teachers. Miss Lang taught art in the Waterville schools, and for many years Miss Stackpole conducted private school of outstanding quality here in Waterville.

Among our present elder residents who attended Miss Stackpole’s school is Dr. Ralph Reynolds.

In my History of Colby College, published in the fall of 1962, I have told how the college was prevented from getting a substantial supplementary land grant from the Massachusetts Legislature in 1819 because of a heated quarrel between William King, who in the very next year would become Maine’s first governor, and his political enemy, General Alford Richardson of Portland. Both were trustees of the new college at Waterville. When King, then a member of the Massachusetts Senate presented the petitions of several Baptist associates in Maine that the college be granted an additional township of land, Gen. Richardson declared the petitions illegal and opposed the bill in the Legislature. As a result the college never got the much needed grant.

William King was a Jeffersonian Democrat and Gen. Richardson was a staunch Federalist. That difference accounted largely for the feud between them, which so vitally affected the interests of the new college in Waterville.

In the early nineteenth century every newspaper had either a political or a religious bias, sometimes both. So naturally there were newspapers in Portland ready to defend each side in the King-Richardson controversy. The leading Democratic paper in the whole state was then, as indeed it was a hundred years later, the Portland Argus. The medium of Federal propaganda was the Portland Gazette.

In its issue of April 16, 1822 — three years after the college land bill had been defeated — the Gazette, noting that the battle between the two men still raged, said in substance that it was time for Governor King to “put up or shut up”. It said: “Not a single assertion in Gen. Richardson’s statement, defending his character against the aspersions of Governor King has been denied, and the Governor dare not deny them lest Truth should assume a more terrific frown. The Governor can no longer avert his head and seek to escape by strategem. Though a sinking man may clutch at a straw, a straw will not hold him up.”

The Gazette went on to say: “The Argus makes much of a meeting between King and Richardson at King’s lodgings in Portland at the time of the State Constitutional Convention. The Argus says, ‘The deposition made by Henry Ames regarding that meeting, proves conclusively that Gov. King is friendly to Waterville College. We admit that Mr. Ames’ deposition does not show the Governor unfriendly to the college, but whether he is or not, we will let the public judge. What Gen. Richardson does charge and fully substantiates is that Gov. King has inconsistently acted a double part, having objects more important to himself than giving aid to the Waterville institution.

“Gen. Richardson charges that, at the January session of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1819, King asserted that certain petitions did originate from an act of the Waterville corporation, when he well knew they did not so originate, but had their beginning straight from himself. The General also charges, with compelling argument, that the Governor’s friendship for the college was subservient to his own political views, that his principal object was to build up his own popularity and effect his own promotion, and that while he was manifesting great zeal for the institution, he was actually pursuing a cause directly opposed to its interests.

“We will go a step farther now than did Gen. Richardson. Although, in his message to the Maine Legislature in June, 1820, Gov. King recommended the Waterville Institution for financial aid by the state, he secretly endeavored to defeat the bill providing for such aid by expressing his adverse opinion to the Speaker of the House.

“Gen. Richardson has never denied that Gov. King signed an act of the Maine Legislature granting $1,000 a year for seven years to the Waterville College. It would indeed have been strange had the Governor not signed the bill. If he had refused to sign it, even the Argus would have had to abandon his cause in utter despair.

“The Argus tirade has nothing to do with the real controversy between General Richardson and Governor King. At heart that controversy has nothing to do with Waterville College. It has much to do with the followers of Thomas Jefferson, who would upset and ruin the best interests of the country, so nobly instituted by the party of Adams and Hamilton, and so ably represented today in the State House at Boston, and so ignobly suppressed at the State House in Portland.”

Now all that sounds as if Gen. Richardson was the hero and William King the villain. My own investigation of the case, when I was preparing the Colby History, led me to believe exactly the opposite — that, because Richardson would go to any extreme to upset King’s political applecart, he sacrificed the desperate need of Waterville College for another land grant, in an attempt to sully the reputation of his political enemy.

That 1822 copy of the Portland Gazette, from which I have quoted statements about the King-Richardson controversy, contains other interesting items. In the early years of the 19th century there were many organizations passing out pamphlets called religious tracts. One of those organizations was the Portland Tract Society. which put the following notice in the Gazette: “The members of the Portland Tract Society are informed that the tracts are received and are ready for delivery at William Hyde’s Bookstore. If not called for within 90 days, they will be distributed by the Distributing Committee.”

Good window glass was not easy to get in 1822. Plenty of the old, cloudy variety, domestically manufactured, could be obtained, but the best window glass still had to be brought from Europe. That accounts for an ad in the Gazette inserted by H.A. Dana and Company: “We have just received by the Schooner Julia a large supply of 10 x 8 and 9 x 7 Chelmsford Glass, which is for sale at factory prices, recently reduced 25 per cent. We also have a few cauldrons of coal.”

Now just listen to the variety of goods offered by A.J. Mason, with a store at the head of Ingraham’s Wharf in Portland:

150 quintals of Pollock Fish

20 boxes of Moulded Candles

8 hogsheads of West Indies Rum

200 straws of Tumblers

Speaking of rum, I don’t recall that I have previously pointed out the distinction between the two kinds of rum that warmed the stomachs of Maine citizens 150 years ago. West Indies rum was made in the islands of the West Indies and brought to Maine ready to drink. A cheaper product, called New England rum, was distilled in Boston and other New England towns from molasses brought from the West Indies. So you find the old account books filled with both charges — N.E. Rum and W.I Rum.

In 1822 the stately minuet was still the fashionable dance. So we find this ad in the Gazette: “Mr. Withycombe, professor of the art of dancing, has the honor to inform the ladies and gentlemen of Portland that his spring quarter will commence on Saturday, April 13 at 2 p.m. From the liberal patronage he has received from many of the first families in town, Mr. Withycombe flatters himself that his mode of instruction is the very best designed for society dancing. Mr. Withycombe devotes himself entirely to perfecting his pupils in the ease, elegance and dignity of the Ball Room.”

Year: 1965