Radio Script #797

Little Talks on Common Things

March 2, 1969

Last week we had brought Sumner Wheeler’s description of Waterville in 1810, down from High Street along College Avenue as far as the present Post Office Square. Remember this was from the recollections of Wheeler as told to Daniel Wing, editor of the Waterville Mail, when Wheeler was 93 years old. in 1880. Last week we left Wheeler’s account at the Wood house on the later site of the Elmwood Hotel. He now takes us up Main Street toward where the railroad would later cross. The story in the Mail said: “Continuing up Main Street from the Wood house we come to the home of Lemuel Dunbar, an old time carpenter, on the corner of North Street above, on the other side of Main Street, the small house of Jonathan Clark. A long way above that, near the top of the hill, on what later became the Boutelle farm, was the very next house.” (That means that, in 1810. there were no houses on Main Street between what are now Getchell Street and the home of Mrs. Francis Bartlett at the top of Main Street hill.)

The long hill that leads to the area of the Colby ski slope and long known as the Mountain Farm was in 1810 called Allen Hill, where Joseph Allen then had his home. On the flat where the Elm Plaza shopping center is now located. was the home of David Hasty. and across Main Street. where the old trotting park was later laid out. was the house of Jonathan Rines.

The account continued: “It was the elevated region on Allen Hill where men were lifted above the plain prose of life, where Uncle Jerry Tozier wrote his well remembered couplet about his neighbor Commodore Preble. who when caught short of wood in a long storm was compelled to cut down a fine oak tree near his door: “The royal oak before the door saved the poor old commodore.” But the Commodore had his revenge. Shortly afterward Uncle Jerry was caught the same way and had to sacrifice a window frame. Ben Rose, who lived farther on toward Fairfield Meeting House got in his dig at Uncle Jerry by posting the following on the meeting house door: “Old Jerry Tozier killed a sheep thirteen years old, just as old as his daughter Sal. He carried it to Waterville and sold it for rum, and he didn’t give a drop to Ben Rose and John Hart. The mean old skunk.”

Sumner Wheeler’s recollections next take us back again to Post Office Square, whence he guides us down Main Street with these words: “Going down Main Street from the Jackins house, we come to Major Clark’s tannery. on what is now the Eldon lot; then we find no other building until we reach the Blackwell house at the corner of Temple Street. A little below. on the west side of Main Street. where the Phoenix Block was .later built. was the law office of Timothy Boutelle. a low. square building afterward removed to East Temple Street and fitted up for a dwelling.”

The account continues: “Next below. still on the west side of Main Street, was the home of Dr. Wright, then the store of James Hasty.” Wheeler affirmed that not all goods sold in the Hasty store were dry. though the customers often were. Opposite Hasty’s on the east side of the street was the big store of Mathews and Gilman next to the village common. Just back of it was the saddlers shop of Jonathan Heywood.

On the common itself stood the East Meeting House — the venerable building that was moved to face Front Street when the City Hall was built. It is a mark of Waterville’s neglect of historic buildings that the ancient meeting house that became known later as the Armory was torn down about thirty years ago. Its preservation, even if moved to another site. would have meant the saving of the oldest historic heritage on this side of the river at Ticonic Falls. Built by vote of the town in 1794, it served many years for church services and town meetings. In it was held Waterville’s first town meeting in 1802, and in it Jeremiah Chaplin founder of Colby College, preached a sermon on his first Sunday in Waterville in 1818. But it is useless to shed tears over spilled milk. The old East Meeting House is gone, but thanks to the invention of printing, the records of it remain carefully preserved.

Just at the rear of the Meeting House in 1810 stood the only school house in the village. a little yellow building which was burned about 1850. On the corner of Main and Common Streets stood the two-story house of Jediah Morrill. and just below it was the David Nourse house. On the opposite side of Main Street was Mr. Nourse’s barn. Below the Nourse house, just across from the entrance to Silver Street, was a large bUilding that had since the dawn of the 19th century been a tavern. Some time after 1840 it was to become the famous Williams House, regular stop for the stage that came from Augusta up the west side of the river through Sidney.

Across the street on the lower corner of Silver was another tavern, called Bacon’s, and just below it was a house that Wheeler said stood “catty-cornered”, where lived Henry Lowe. It served as a store and dwelling for many years, and the little green in front of it was the scene of wrestling matches. where the shout “Wrestle or Treat” meant a challenge to try one’s skill at wrestling or bring out the rum. The Lowe house was so old in 1810 that only older people remembered its builder, Dr. Obadiah Williams, who had been proud to erect it as the first two-story house in the town.

Well, that (combined with what we told you last week) is the story of what the old village of Ticonic Falls. our present City of Waterville. looked like in two years a quarter of a century apart. 1810 and 1834.

Now for something about a Waterville pioneer. When talking about the area of Post Office Square in last week’s broadcast, we mentioned the original mile-long lots, surveyed by John McKechnie in 1768. We have often referred to this old surveyor and Waterville’s first mill owner. Today let me tell you what an account in the Waterville Mail in 1882 had to say about him. The story tells us that John McKechnie was the first proprietor of Lot 103, next north of John Cool’s and south of Obadiah Williams’. It was the lot that controlled the power site at Ticonic Falls. McKechnie had come to Winslow in 1771 from the fort at Pemaquid, where his family had lived with his father-in-law, Captain North. In 1774 McKechnie moved to the west side of the river and built a combined saw mill and grist mill on the Messalonskee.

To show how small Waterville (or rather what was then the part of Winslow west of the Kennebec) was at the time when McKechnie built his mill, the Mail quoted one of the town’s most important early settlers, Asa Redington, as saying that, when he came here in 1792, there were only half a dozen wretched shanties on the west side of the river. Yet in 1792 John McKechnie had been dead for ten years, so this community must have been nearly wilderness when McKechnie set his millstones and his saw on the Messalonskee.

No wonder there has been some dispute about the exact location of the old cemetery near Western Avenue. When John McKechnie was buried there, only four or five graves had preceded his, and early in the 19th century the old burying ground was abandoned and a more convenient one opened on what is now Monument Park on Elm Street.

The only persons of whose burial we have a record as being in the original cemetery near Western Avenue were John McKechnie and his wife. Mary North, the first wife of Simeon Tozier and their son Obadiah. both wives of the first Morrill in Waterville, Abraham, and the first of the McGrath family, for whom McGrath Pond was named. David Pattee. second husband of Mary North McKechnie. was not buried there. The story is that Pattee took such a dislike to Nathaniel Gilman, who at the time of Pattee’s death owned the land where the old graves lay, that he left orders to be buried elsewhere. Years later the old cemetery became part of the property of Theodore Crommett who proudly asserted that he never ran a plow over the old graves. Yet not even Crommett could be sure exactly where those unmarked graves lay.

Part of a plan to clear the Kennebec of pollution includes rebuilding the old lock near the falls at Augusta. so that small boats will be able to go all the way up the Kennebec as far as Waterville, as they did more than a century ago. The idea would not be to open a passage for commercial use, would not be deep enough to float an oil tanker. the river above Augusta

Probably the  plan would rather be to enhance Maine’s appeal as Vacationland. opening a delightful river trip for motor boats, just as the recently rebuilt lock on the Songo River has made it possible for boats again to go from the extreme south end of Sebago Lake to Harrison at the north end of Long Lake.

In 1834 a company was formed at Augusta to build a dam and lock, stating that their project would be one of a series of improvements that would make navigation possible all the way to Moosehead Lake. They didn’t say what they would do about the steep falls at Skowhegan. The plan at Augusta provided for a dam 15 feet high. with a lock 100 feet long and 28 feet wide. with a 60 foot sluiceway for lumber and also a fishway.

The project was not completed until the fall of 1837. On October 12 of that year “the first of the new river craft entered the lock. was gradually raised. and gently glided into the pond above, amid peals of cannon and shouts of the spectators.”

North’s History of Augusta gives the following description of the lock: “The walls were of granite. The west wall formed the east end of the dam, 28 feet at the base and 25 feet at the top. The face of the walls was hammered bed and joint laid in cement. The floor of the lock was of five-inch pine planks, set on timbers, 15 inches deep. The main gates were made of Chesapeake white oak, with wickets of cast iron.” There were canals at both the east and west ends of the dam, but only the east one had a lock for the passage of boats.

The Augusta lock was the scene of a tragic disaster. Waterville had been very proud when its home-built steamer, Halifax, commanded by Captain Charles Paine of Winslow, began regular service between Waterville and Bath. She made just one successful round trip in 1848. On her second trip she left Waterville early in the morning of May 22, with a crew and passengers totaling 17. At the same time, from a nearby wharf off Water Street, left the steamer Balloon. In those days rivalry between river boats was keen

determined that the new Halifax should be beaten.

The captain of the Balloon was

The Balloon did reach the Augusta lock first, and the Halifax had to wait until her rival passed through. When the Halifax got her turn, the water had again been raised, and the gates opened, her boiler exploded with terrific force, killing six persons including Captain Paine. So great was the explosion that the boiler door, weighing 70 pounds, was thrown 900 feet up the river. The accident, the resulting inquiry confirmed, had been caused by careless attention to the steam, in the urgency of racing another boat.

Year: 1969