Radio Script #779

Little Talks on Common Things

October 27, 1968

An important family of this region was the Pillsburys, who developed the farm machinery business that still thrives on Upper College Avenue near the Waterville-Fairfield line. Last surviving child of Wallace Pillsbury, founder of the business, is Miss Ellen Pillsbury, who still lives in the home at the farm machinery location. Her brother, Ralph Pillsbury, long headed the business, and was prominent in Kennebec politics, serving as chairman of the county commissioners. The business is now in the hands of two of Ralph’s sons.

Miss Ellen Pillsbury, a graduate of Colby in 1911, was for many years a successful teacher and always devoted to community interests. She was a leader in the highly deserving, though regrettably unsuccessful movement to save Colby’s old Memorial Hall. She is still active in church and civic organizations. Miss Pillsbury is an eighth generation descendant from William Pillsbury, the immigrant from whom most American Pillsburys are descended. He came to Boston in 1641, when the English Civil War was at its height. To pay for his passage from England, he indentured himself for three years as a bound servant. Soon after his arrival in Boston he married Dorothy Crosby, another bound servant in the same family. After serving his indentureship and becoming a free man, William Pillsbury bought for 100 pounds 40 acres of land in Newbury, Mass. There he prospered so that on his death in 1686, his estate was inventoried at 306 pounds, a very respectable amount for those pioneer times.

William Pillsbury’s will is typical of those made in New England in colonial days. It bequeathed to his wife one-half of his dwelling house nearest the street, and ordered his executor to keep for his wife’s use six sheep and one cow; also to provide her annually with all the wood she should need. The wife also received all the household furniture. But the entire bequest was good only so long as the widow did not remarry. If that occurred, the will provided that the household goods should be divided equally among three daughters, and that the executor pay to the widow the annual sum of three pounds provided she relinquished her widow’s right to one-third interest in Pillsbury’s real estate.

It is interesting to note the names of those three daughters. While the oldest had the not unusual name of Deborah, the other two were Experience and Thankful. Though unusual today, those names were common among the Puritans in the seventeenth century. I have long been interested in the origin of family names. My own name, Marriner, seems clearly to designate a family of sailors, but actually it originated from a word in Old French, meaning by or beside the sea. The first Marriners probably lived somewhere on the Biscany coast of France. The name Pillsbury is a combination of peel and borough. In Anglo-Saxon a peel was a fortified farmhouse. Borough, which became a common ending in place names, as in Vassalboro and Waldoboro, was sometimes written “burg”, as in Pillsburg, and also “bury”. as we find it in place names like Waterbury and Newbury. Borough originally meant a place of defense.

Where the Pillsbury family originated in England is described as follows in the family history published in 1898: “In the valley of the Dove River, in Derbyshire. 150 miles north of London and 40 miles southeast of Liverpool, is the little hamlet of Pillsbury Grange, a cluster of gray stone buildings amid shrubbery and lofty trees. Its 700 acres are now owned by the Duke of Derbyshire. No Pillsbury has resided here within the memory of the oldest inhabitants.”

The first Pillsbury to come to Maine was William’s great-great grandson. Jacob Pillsbury, who was born in Hampton, N.H. in 1791, moved as a young man to Palmyra, Maine and died there in 1850. Jacob’s son George was Miss Ellen Pillsbury’s grandfather. Among Miss Pillsbury’s family possessions is an account book kept by her great-grandfather Jacob in the 1830’s and 1840’s. The first items in it were recorded in 1832. when Jacob was living in Middleton, N.H., not far from Dover. The first Palmyra item was dated May 17, 1836, so that may have been the year when Jacob Pillsbury came to Maine.

This account book is that of a farmer and ordinary laborer, not that of a storekeeper or a blacksmith. It is, therefore, like most such farmer’s account books that I have examined during the life of this program. It contains charges for Jacob’s labor on various jobs, for like most early farmers in Maine, he was a versatile man, something of a carpenter and wheelwright, and one of the few men in Palmyra who had vehicles he could rent to other farmers. Also, as was the practice of the times, he rented to others the labor of his minor sons. No male child was entitled to any money of his own until he reached his 21st birthday. All his earnings not only had to be paid to his father, but the boy had nothing to say about where he worked. The father worked the boy where and when he pleased.

With that introduction, let us now see exactly what Jacob Pillsbury’s day book has to tell us.

During 1836 a number” of the entries are concerned with the rental of his wagon, for which he seems to have charged five cents a mile: “John McClure, my wagon to Corinna, 4 miles, 20 cents. David Gilman, my wagon to Norridgewock, 30 miles. Sometimes Jacob rented a horse to haul the wagon: “My horse and wagon to Newport, 4 miles, 40 cents.” We note that his charge for the horse was exactly the same as for the wagon, five cents a mile for each. During the summer of 1836 Pillsbury rented that wagon for neighbors to make trips as far away as St. Albans and Norridgewock.

In winter it was a sleigh that he most often rented. The items read: “My sleigh to Pittsfield; my sleigh to Bangor; my sleigh to Newport by our village and to our meeting house.” Sometimes Pillsbury wasn’t quite sure where his wagon or his sleigh went. In 1846 he was especially suspicious of Asa Parkman, against whom he recorded the item: “My horse and wagon to Newport Village and Palmyra Village, and how much further I do not know, but to East Newport, I suspect.”

I was surprised to note the going rate for farm labor in Palmyra in the 1830’s. In 1837 Pillsbury charged Samuel Marsh 75¢ for one and one-half days work cutting wood. I had no idea that, when the 19th century had already more than 1/3 elapsed, any grown man worked at hard labor in the woods for fifty cents a day. In the next year, 1838, we find the going wage raised to 75 cents a day. That was Pillsbury’s charge to Zeba French for a full day’s work shaving shingles. In the same year, when Jacob and his son James both worked one day for Benjamin Field, they together got 54 cents, or rather, as I have said, Jacob got it all, for James as a minor had to let his father keep the son’s earnings.

As early as 1838 the mowing machine was unknown, but two or three winnowing machines were already owned in Palmyra, and in the winter Pillsbury was hiring the use of one or another of them. In November, 1838 it was Gideon Fortman’s machine that winnowed for Pillsbury 31 bushels of oats and 17 bushels of wheat.

Jacob, sometimes having more work than he and his two sons could do, especially in haying and reaping season, then hired other men’s sons, making payment, of course, to the fathers. Such was the case in August, 1839 when he credited to Benjamin Field 2 days’ work by George and day by Lyman.

Evidently Pillsbury had insufficient pasturage, so he had to arrange for others to pasture some of his stock. In 1840 he recorded: “Abram Leavitt took 7 ewe sheep, for which he promised to pay a pound of wool a year as long as he keeps them.”

In 1841 he wrote: “Gideon Parkman took my sheep to pasture — 19 lambs — one sheep with crop on left ear and a notch under the same. The rest of them with crops on left ear and a slit in the upper side of the same.” At the same time Jacob noted that he had put his calves in Benjamin Parkman’s pasture.

Now let us see what return Pillsbury got from some of his farm products. In 1836 he set down a charge against Abram Leavitt, whom he identified as blacksmith at Newport, for one dollar for two bushels of turnips and half a bushel of onions.

Another item read: “David Fros. tone ·plg , $1 • 00.”

Potatoes were very cheap in 1837. For two bushels Pillsbury got only 4 shillings. or 67 cents. Cider also was inexpensive. He sold 37 gallons of it for $1.17, or seven shillings. That was at the rate of three and one-sixth cents a gallon. He recorded numerous sales of single gallons at eight cents. Beef was unbelievably cheap. In 1838 he sold 27 pounds for $1.08. only four cents a pound. He got the same price for veal, selling eleven pounds to Joseph Brooks for 44 cents. His barley and wheat usually brought a dollar a bushel, but his oats frequently no more than 40 cents. In 1842 he sold 6 pounds of butter for $1.00 and 9 1bs. cheese for 90 cents. Sometimes Jacob sold without a fixed price. In 1839 he wrote in the account book: “Samuel Marsh, 3 bushels of oats to be paid July 1, and the price to be what they are worth then.”

Like most farmers, Pillsbury sometimes worked for others with his oxen and plough. When that happened. his charge for use of four oxen all day was exactly the same as for himself 75 cents; and he set 25 cents for use of his plough. So when he took his two yoke of cattle and his plough to work on another’s farm, his return for a full day was $1.75.

Pillsbury seems to have been something of a blacksmith. At least he shod many oxen, though there is no record of his shoeing horses. And he certainly did the exacting work of getting an ox into one of those clumsy oxslips, then fitting the shoes, at outrageously low wages: “Dec. 14, 1836, Jethro Horn, shoeing 8 cattle, hind feet. 50 cents. Jan. 10, 1837 — Alvah Scales, shoeing 6 oxen, hind feet, 50 cents. 1838 Benjamin Page, shoeing oxen 3 days, $1.50.”

Pillsbury also repaired shoes: “1837 – Reuben Cook, tapping and heeling one pair shoes. 33 cents.” He also did a lot of freight hauling: “1836 – Alvah Scales, hauling 213 bundles staves to Pittsfield @ 50¢ a hundred. 1838 — one load of coal hauled from James Bunker’s to Jethro Horn’s shop, 67 cents.”

Pillsbury also did butchering for the neighbors: “1836 — James Goodin, butchering one hog, 25 cents. 1837 — Alvah Slater, butchering ox, 25 cents. 1838– Joseph Osborne.,one day, butchering hogs. 75 cents.”

On one occasion Jacob got 50 cents for 2/3 day’s work tending store for Peter Chadwick. In the book Pillsbury kept some account of his expenditures for commodities, as well as the credit he gave certain persons for labor or machinery. Let us see what prices he paid for the goods he bought. Coffee was two pounds for a quarter, sugar the same price. Tea was 60 cents a pound, salt 50 cents a bushel, molasses 35 cents a gallon. I expected to find purchases of New England rum,but Pillsbury bought only gin, a gallon at a time for 45 cents. As for dry goods and clothing, he paid $2.12t for a shawl, 10 cents for hooks and eyes, the same for needles and 9 cents a yard for ribbon. In 1838 he splurged $8.22 for what he recorded as “Calico and other articles”. In the fall of 1840 school books for Lydia and James cost him $1.04.

Such was the great-grandfather of Miss Ellen Pillsbury and founder of the Maine branch of the Pillsbury family.

Year: 1968