Radio Script #658

Little Talks on Common Things

September 19, 1965

Seldom do Maine people have a chance to see 300 year old history suddenly revealed for the first time. I don’t mean in the pages of some new book, but in an actual, visible scene. Such a chance came only last month with the excavations at Pemaquid. On one of those delightful days that August weather provided I drove down to the Bristols to take a look. I have long been partial to that area, because Mrs. Marriner and I spent a fortnight during each of five consecutive summers at New Harbor, and I contend that the Back Cove at New Harbor is the most picturesque spot on the entire Maine coast.

If the Maine Archeological Society wanted deliberately to publicize its work, it could pick no better spot than’ the general area known as Pemaquid Fort. There, on the site once occupied by a log fort built before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, now stands the granite pile of Fort William Henry, inside of which is a massive boulder. Displayed about the walls are relics of colonial days. The fort is not the only attraction that draws thousands of tourists to the area. Nearby is a nationally known lobster pound, where the hungry traveler can see his lobsters and clams cooked in gigantic boilers, then eat them at a table on the open wharf.

For antiquarians who like to prowl in old graveyards, right in the same area is one of Maine’s oldest and most interesting cemeteries. It is one of the few in which I have ever observed the evolution of the weeping willow carved on tombstones 150 years ago. That device began with the gruesome figure of skull and crossbones, the symbol of death. As time went on, that ugly image became offensive and the skull changed to a female face and the hair looped under her chin replaced the bones. From face and hair it was only another step to a tree with drooping branches. That is the evolution of the tombstone weeping willow.

It has long been known that somewhere in that small area near Pemaquid Fort there must be the remains of the early settlements. Though several times wiped out by Indian raids or foreign marauders, the place was repeatedly rebuilt. From it, as early as 1621, the Pilgrims received provisions that kept them alive until their meager crop could be harvested. There, for at least 150 years before the American Revolution, was a trading post well known in the English ports of Plymouth and Bristol.

But just where were those early buildings located? Sensing that the trade buildings and the early shipyard must have been within the shelter of the river harbor, not on the side facing the sea, the present investigators of the Maine Archeological Society decided to explore an area just to the seaward of Gilbert’s Lobster Pound, and some 300 yards inland from the fort.

Those investigators immediately struck pay dirt. Old walls began to appear as top soil was removed. The exact outlines of half a dozen buildings came to view. Artifacts by the score were turned up — tools, kitchen utensils, pewter and iron dishes, coins, hand wrought nails, and other objects in bewildering variety.

Then, about the middle of August, came the supreme find: the opening of two graves near the landward extremity of the excavation site. One was clearly the grave of an Indian, buried in the traditional manner with flexed knees. The other was heralded in the press as possibly the grave of a Viking, because it was wrapped in a metal-studded leather corselet that miraculously had not entirely deteriorated with the centuries.

I believe it is now agreed by scientists who have seen the bones that the alleged Viking skeleton is contemporaneous with the other, and may also be that of an Indian. My own guess and it was only a guess — had been that the skeleton is that of some military figure of the old colony, some Englishman who, like John Smith and Miles Standish, was accustomed to wearing what the early 17th century called armor. The heavy metal suits worn by the knights of an earlier time had long since disappeared with the coming of gunpowder, but old customs of dress die hard, and something of the ancient armor remained. So in old woodcuts of John Smith and Miles Standish we find them wearing a corselet, not of metal, but of leather or some very tough fabric, studded with brass knobs. I think that is the kind of fellow the archeologists have dug up at Pemaquid.

Anyhow, if you want to know what an archeological excavation looks like and how trained persons work it, just drive down to Pemaquid Fort before winter closes the operation, and you will see history revealed before your eyes.

Now let us turn our attention to an athletic event of 62 years ago. It was the first week of June in 1903, and the Maine college baseball series was drawing to a close. On June 3 Bates played Colby in Waterville. Remember that those were the days of Colby’s fabulous pitcher, Jack Coombs, who later won fame with Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. Coombs became such a legend in Colby lore that one would suppose he never lost a game, but regularly struck out a majority of the batters who faced him. Old timers who remember Coombs may therefore be surprised to learn what the Waterville Mail had to say the day after that game in 1903. Here is the account: “The Colby nine struck its colors to Bates yesterday on the Colby diamond and landed in a heap in the last position in the Maine series. The score was 12 to 5, and it was a wonder it was not larger, so listless were the Colby players. Coombs pitched for Colby, and he was hit harder than at any time before this season, but the fielding behind him was even worse. When the score stood 3 to 2 in Bates’ favor, there was still hope in the Colby camp. But suddenly, with two men on the bases and two out, and two strikes on the third man, the Bates hitter batted a grounder to the Colby shortstop, who lost his footing and sat down on the ball. Before the inning ended. Bates had made three more runs and clinched the game. Coombs can hit as well as pitch, but one of his clouts misfired when he vainly tried to stretch a double into a triple. We must admit the game as a whole was devoid of interest except for the Bates men.”

Well, anyhow, that is the way a Waterville newspaper reported a Colby baseball game 62 years ago.

In that same spring of 1903 the Waterville Mail had on its front page two sentences that especially attracted my attention when I examined the old paper a few weeks ago. The sentences said: “The play at the Opera House was a good one, but most of the audience didn’t wait for the end of it. The outside excitement was too much.”

Let us see what that outside excitement was. It was 8:35, and the play in the Opera House was nearing the end of its first act when the fire alarm sounded. The fire was close by, in the Burleigh Block on Main Street. Although the all-out blew in about an hour, only smart work of the fire department prevented a disastrous conflagration in the Waterville business section. The Burleigh Block at that time contained the tobacco shop of Peter Herbst, the Pierce photograph studio, the offices of the Waterville and Oakland Street Railway, and storage space for household goods.

Rather interesting was the Waterville Mail’s account of what the fire did to the Pierce studio: “The rear of the studio was pretty well cleaned out, what was not burned being ruined by water. Among the negatives spoiled were several class groups recently taken for Colby, Coburn and the High School. Captain Besse had there a large number of plates that he had taken in the Philippines, and the captain was mourning their loss when he joyfully learned that they were not damaged. since Mr. Pierce had locked them in a desk.”

Aware of what one finds today in a tobacco store, the major loss sustained by Peter Herbst is interesting. The paper tells us: “Outside of the damage to the studio, the greatest loss was sustained by Peter Herbst whose leaf tobacco was ruined. That supply of leaf from which Mr. Herbst makes his famous cigars, was stored in the rear of the building, where it was drenched by water. Mr. Herbst valued the stock at $1,000 and tells us it was fully covered by insurance.”

The story of that Waterville fire was enlivened by the account that two Lacomb brothers gave to a reporter for the Waterville Mail. The boy and his brother were in the vacant area behind the Waterville Armory — the old building that then stood back of City Hall facing Front Street. On the other side of that vacant lot was the back of the Burleigh Block which faced Main Street.

Let us see how the Mail now told the story: “The Lacomb boys saw a man whom they did not know light his pipe and throw down the match. Some loose paper on the ground caught fire, the blaze swiftly spreading to an empty box, and thence to the boards enclosing an open space under the Burleigh building. The boys say that, instead of attempting to put out the fire, the man ran to the fence back of Hanson, Webber and Dunham’s store and disappeared on the other side. The boys then ran to Common Street and gave the alarm.”

It was on Friday evening, June 5, 1903 that occurred the break-up of the Colby Freshman Reading that led to the Colby Student Strike which I have described in the published History of Colby College. A reminder of that event, but of course with no inkling about how it would end, was an ad in the Waterville Mail of the preceding day, June 4, 1903. The ad, just one column wide, but an entire page in length, appeared on the front page of the newspaper, and all it said was this: ” ’06: Colby Freshman Reading. Baptist Church, Friday Evening, 8 o’clock. ’06”

When Friday evening came, that Freshman Reading had just one speaker, a Waterville boy named Karl Kennison, who later gained fame as engineer of Boston’s Metropolitan Water District. While Kennison was speaking, the sophomores riotously invaded the church, hurling about the audience copies of their scurrilous sheet, the War Cry. President Charles Lincoln White stopped the program right there and told everyone to go home. The next day the Colby faculty supported White in suspending from college all the sophomore men. That precipitated the Student Strike of 1903.

Year: 1965