Radio Script #670

Little Talks on Common Things

December 12, 1965

Several times on this program I have mentioned a leading Maine citizen of the early nineteenth century. Hezekiah Prince of Thomaston. He had two interesting connections with Waterville. He was one of the original incorporators of the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, that later became Colby College and he was the great-great uncle of Mrs. A. F. Drummond. Mrs. Drummond’s great-grandfather, Deacon Job Prince, was an early settler of Buckfield in 1788.

In 1793 Hezekiah Prince of Thomaston visited his brother Job in Buckfield, in the course of a long horseback journey that Hezekiah took to visit Prince relatives in other parts of Maine, in Massachuestts and Rhode Island, and as far away as Virginia. Several years ago I devoted an entire broadcast of this program to the account which Hezekiah wrote of the long, horseback journey.

Hezekiah Prince had a son, named Hezekiah Junior. He had become a prominent figure in the business and civic affairs of Thomaston when he died at the age of 43, only three years after the death of his distinguished father.

Born in 1800, Hezekiah Prince, Jr. was 22 years old when he began to keep a diary. He continued it for only six years, making the last entry just before his marriage in 1828. That diary is such an interesting record of events in Thomaston and the surrounding towns between 1822 and 1828, and is especially such an important source of information on the ships that plied in and out of Thomaston, that the Maine Historical Society has printed the diary in a book of 450 pages. It is edited with careful explanatory notes by Walter Whitehall of the Boston Athenae~rn~ A foreword, explaining the importance of the diary in the history of Maine shipping, was written by the President of the Maine Historical Society, Dr. Robert G. Albion of South Portland, who is the distinguished Professor of Oceanographic History at Harvard.

What I tell you now about Hezekiah Prince, Jr., great-uncle of Mrs. Josephine Drummond of Waterville, comes largely from this recently published diary, but it comes also from certain records of the Prince business transactions which I found long ago among the manuscripts preserved in the most comprehensive private library of Maine items anywhere existing — that of the late Dr. Hahn of Friendship, Maine.

Although Hezekiah Prince, Jr. was only 22 years old when he began his diary, he was already Inspector of Customs at Thomaston, responsible to the Collector of Customs for the district, General McCobb at Waldoboro. Students of the Revolution well know that smuggling had been a common practice of many sea captains during the turbulent years that led up to the Declaration of Independence.

When the United States became a sovereign nation, the smuggling did not cease. New England sailors, including plenty from Maine, felt just as free to escape the revenue taxes laid on goods by the American federal government as they had been when those taxes were imposed by a parliament three thousand miles away in London.

As Inspector of Customs at Thomaston, young Hezekiah Prince had some interesting encounters with smugglers. It was a touchy situation for Prince, because some of those smugglers were Thomaston neighbors, and more than one of them was a business associate of Prince’s father, Hezekiah, Senior.

In July, 1822 Prince was informed that there was suspicion of considerable smuggling in that customs district, and General McCobb ordered his Thomaston inspector to be on the alert. A few days later he learned that there was anchored at Owls Head a vessel that had the appearance of a smuggler. When Prince arrived on the scene he found the ship’s papers in order. Since rum was the most common commodity smuggled into Maine ports in those days. Prince was especially alert for illegally loaded liquor.

On that ship he found a hogshead of rum, two barrels of gin, and a barrel of brandy. But he wrote, “The captain had certificates for all the liquor and I could find nothing out of the way.”

A few weeks later Prince heard rumors that a vessel named Dolphin had taken on suspicious barrels at Schoodic. Of that incident he wrote: “We found the Dolphin at Giles Cove. We went on board, but after making a thorough search we found nothing. We left her, however, with the strong suspicion that some articles not on her manifest had been put ashore before we got there. But we could not prove our suspicions.”

Sometimes Prince’s search for smugglers was worse than his frustration with the Dolphin. He found himself the victim of many a false alarm. One such he recorded on August 15, 1822: “In the forenoon I was informed that a small vessel was in at the Shore (the old name for Rockland) and that she appeared to be a smuggler. I went over immediately. The vessel proved to be Mr. Kimball’s fishing boat loaded with fish. Why even those stupid people at the Shore could not recognize so familiar a boat as Captain Kimball’s I’ll never understand.”

In early September, however, Hezekiah’s search for smugglers paid off. I think we had better let him tell the story in his own words: “I received an order from the Collector to go down to the Geeg (the old name for South Thomaston) and seize a small schooner and some rum said to be on her. I immediately got a search warrant and was off. I employed Asa Coombs as constable and Eph Bartlett as assistant. Our arrival among the rogues was rather sudden, and they began to look a little wild. I went aboard and took possession of the schooner on behalf of the United States, and placed two men on board as keepers.

“Then I went ashore and began to search for the cargo. We looked under the porch of James Spaulding. The only place where the floor appeared loose was covered by a barrel of soap, which the old woman said would surely be split if we should attempt to move it. She didn’t scare me off, because I was determined to have a peek under that barrel. So we started to move the barrel when suddenly its bottom came out and the soap streamed out allover the place. Despite the old woman’s loud yells, we continued our search, and there under the floor were nine barrels. Next, under the hay in an old barn we located nine more, and in the bushes near by we turned out twelve, making in all 30 barrels. Toward night Collector McCobb arrived on the scene and offered a premium of $3 a barrel to anyone who would discover more. That brought out two more barrels. But meanwhile under the cover of darkness, thieves got away with two of the barrels we had already located. So our number was still thirty. We finally managed to get all of them on board the seized vessel, but we had to wait for the tide. We heard that the captain and those concerned with him planned to rescue the property that night. We procured arms and prepared to give any invading party a warm reception. However, they did not show up, and we got safely up the Geeg River about midnight.”

The next day Prince went down to the South Thomaston shore to see if he couldn’t find more of the smuggled rum. He found one barrel buried only slightly in a potato field, another in a house cellar. That afternoon he unloaded the vessel of other cargo, stripped her sails, and stowed the confiscated articles in Snow’s store.

Although not connected directly with the smuggling, the end of the diary account of that incident casts some light on the times: “I got home pretty well tired, not having any sleep for about forty hours. Our house was full of ministers, it being the evening previous to the ordination of our new preacher, Mr. Washburn. I was lucky to have a bed to myself, and I slept tolerably sound.”

But Prince’s work with that particular seizure was by no means finished. On the next day he wrote in the diary: “I went down to the Geeg and engaged Mr. Bartlett to haul up the barrels of rum for seven dollars, one dollar of which I paid out of my own pocket. We loaded the teams immediately after dinner and got home with 24 barrels this night, leaving the remainder till tomorrow. Stowed the rum in my father’s cellar, where it will remain till sold. We removed the rum because the people at the Geeg did not appear friendly, and we feared the property would be destroyed.”

A few days later Hezekiah recorded in the diary: “Received a letter from General McCobb informing me that the trial of the Schooner Fox, which I had seized, would be held on October 4.”

When the trial was held the court ordered the seized rum sold, as well as the schooner itself. It must have been a small vessel, for when the sale was held on October 26 she brought only $94. As for the rum, Hezekiah wrote: “The sale of the rum took place at my father’s house at one o’clock. It was sold to good men and averaged 70 cents a gallon.”

Two days later Hezekiah journeyed to Waldoboro and handed over “all the notes for the rum sold last Saturday”. That statement shows that a century and half ago, when seized contraband was sold at auction, the sales were not always for cash. Evidently even the U. S. Government sometimes took a buyer’s note in those days. The years 1822-28 covered by the diary are a bit too early for the fully equipped circus to be showing in Maine towns. But the predecessor of the circus was what was called the animal caravan — a travelling exhibit of a few wild animals.

On July 25, 1823 Hezekiah wrote in the diary: “In the afternoon I went up to Esq. Gleason’s to see a caravan of wild animals which came along last night for exhibition. There was a large lion and two young ones, a tiger, leopard, catamount, wolf, male and female buffalo, elk, two llamas from Peru, a wild cat, jackall, baboon, many monkeys and the ichnumion.”

That last word was new to me. I had trouble looking it up because Hezekiah was a a notoriously poor speller, and in this case he was probably trying to spell by ear rather than by eye. I found that word is actually ichneumon and the definition is “a slender mammal of Egypt, resembling the weasel, but the size of a cat, and said to devour crocodile eggs”.

That must be enough for today. Next week I’ll tell you something about social life in Thomaston 140 years ago.

Year: 1966