Radio Script #814

Little Talks on Common Things
October 5, 1969

The Maine Historical Society has always had its headquarters in Portland, and to this day is still dominated by Portland interests. Nevertheless it h~s~from its beginning been concerned with the history of our entire state, and among its very substantial holdings are documents, maps, letters and papers from allover Maine. All that is well known by anyone acquainted with the society.

What is not so well known is that three quarters of a century ago the Maine Historical Society had the custom of taking what they called excursions or pilgrimages to various parts of Maine. Such a pilgrimage to Waterville was described in the columns of the Waterville Mail in September, 1890. This is the way that story began:

“The annual excursion of the Maine Historical Society began in this city yesterday. In the afternoon Fort Halifax in Winslow was visited. In the evening the Ware parlors were filled with people eager to hear the papers on the Rev. Sebastian Rasle, the Norridgewock martyr.” J. Percival Baxter of Portland (yes, that is the man who was later Maine’s governor and who gave to the State the huge acreage of Baxter State Park, in which is situated Mt. Katahdin) read the historical paper on Father Rasle and Rev. E.C. Cummings of Saco read the eulogy. Among those present from Portland was Hon. Josiah Drummond, who had spent his boyhood and early adult years in Waterville.

Rev. C.F. Allen of Augusta contributed a paper on the Indian settlement over which Father Rasle had presided at Old Point in Norridgewock. Mr. Allen pointed out that as early as 1610 two French Jesuits, Fathers Main and came to the Kennebec to convert the Indians to Christianity. They so impressed the Norridgewock tribe that these Indians asked for a permanent priest, and Father Gabriel Druillettes settle::] ~~. In 1640 he built a rude log chapel covered with bark. In 1668 that chapel was burned by English trappers. When a temporary peace followed King Phillip’s War in the last decade of that century, the provincial authorities in Boston sent workmen to build at the Norridgewock site a new church hewn from timber cut on the spot.

Other missionaries succeeded Father Droulette at that station until the coming of Father Rasle in 1692. Rasle was a devoted priest, an experienced explorer and worker with Indians, and a high-spirited, energetic man. Arriving in Quebec from his native France in 1690, he was sent at once on a journey of 2,400 miles to serve as missionary to the Hurons on the western Great Lakes. Two years later he was transferred to the Abnaki settlement of Norridgewock on the Kennebec. He found there a neat church and a Christian people.

The rest of the story is well known. Several years ago I told it at length on this program. and it can be found in several books. Believing that Father Rasle was more French than Christian, and that he was stirring up the tribe to take the French side in the long war between French and English for possession of the continent, the Boston authorities were determined to do away with Rasle. In 1721 a party of militia men from the Portland area tried to capture the French priest, but he escaped into the forest. The invaders carried away the strong box that contained Rasle’s correspondence with the Governor of French Canada. Nearly 250 years have elapsed since that seizure, but today in 1969 anyone who wishes to see Father Rasle’s strong box can view it in the collection of the Maine Historical Society in Portland’s Monument Square.

In 1724 the colonial government of Massachusetts Bay authorized a larger and better planned attempt to capture Father Rasle. In August of that year Captains Harmon and Moulton left Portland with 200 men by whaleboats, which they sailed up the Kennebec to Ticonic Falls in what would later be Waterville and Winslow. From there they marched up the west bank of the river to the present site of Norridgewock Village. There a few of the party crossed to the east bank and proceeded up to the shore opposite Old Point. while the main body did the same on the west bank. The Indians were taken completely by surprise.

The two captains always thereafter contended that their intention and their orders to the men were to take Father Rasle alive and carry him to Boston for trial. But some hot-head fired at the priest as he emerged from his hut and other shots followed. Father Rasle was killed as were many of the Indians. some of them by the smaller party on the east side when the Indians, especially the women and children, were hastily put across the river. The invading English spared no red man and gave no quarter. The few Abnakis who did get away joined fellow tribesmen on the Chaudiere in Canada and never returned to the Kennebec. The few Indians who were later found in the region, especially those who helped guide Arnold’s expedition in 1775, had never lived at Old Point, but had later. especially after the T~eaty of Paris in 1763, drifted in from Canada.

The monument that today marks the spot where Father Rasle’s chapel is supposed to have stood was erected by the Bishop of Boston in 1831 as a memorial to the martyred priest.

When that Maine Historical Society pilgrimage visited Fort Halifax in 1890, they saw a crumbling ruin. If the society should visit it today they would see a careful restoration of the only existing original blockhouse built for any colonial fort in Maine, and for that restoration we are all in debt to the DAR.

I have frequently talked on this program about Maine regiments in the Civil War, and especially about companies formed in Waterville. But until recently I had no detailed information about the only two Waterville men from the same family who lost their lives in that bloody conflict. Those two were William and Edwin Stevens, sons of Deacon W.A.E. Stevens of Waterville’s First Baptist Church. The son William was a lieutenant in the 16th Maine, who had been promoted to Captain when he was killed in the hard fighting before Petersburg, Virginia, on May 19, 1864. His brother Edwin was a sergeant in the same regiment when he was killed at Ream Station, Virginia three months later on August 18.

Recently there has come to my hands correspondence by and concerning those two soldiers lost from the same Waterville family. One item is a telegram over the lines of the American Telegraph Co., dispatched from Washington on December 19, 1862. It was from William Stevens to his father in Waterville, and it said: “In the Fredericksburg fight I received a flesh wound in the thigh. Edwin was sick in Hospital. Charles Lyford and both Soule boys were wounded.” In the following July William sent his father another telegram saying: “Edwin is well but a prisoner on his way to Richmond. I am paroled.”

On August 30, 1863 it was the other brother Edwin Stevens who wrote a long letter to his mother from Annapolis, Maryland. In that letter Edwin wrote: “I am now out of Rebeldom and in good care.”(He had been exchanged — one of a few fortunate war prisoners of 1862.) He continued: “Already my appetite has returned. I am gaining strength and can now run about a little. In a fortnight I expect to be as well as ever. I have been waiting impatiently for the time when I can get letters from home. While a prisoner I received none. I want to know how you all are, where Will is and how he fares. Then too I am away behind on news, not only from home, but concerning this awful war. I want to know all about the college commencement and what is going on in Waterville.

“Another lot of paroled prisoners came in last Wednesday, including about 20 from the 16th Maine, but none from Co. E. Three hundred more of our paroled sick came in this morning. How I pity the poor fellows still in the prison on Belle Isle. If not soon removed, I fear they will all starve. You simply cannot imagine a place like Belle Isle. Crowded together, with food wretched and scanty, vile water, dirt and filth, the mere thought of such existence is enough to kill a strong man. The Rebs, I trust, will have their reward for the sufferings they inflict on our brave boys. For my own part, I am eager to return to the dear 16th and meet the rascals again.

“After I was taken prisoner, I passed over the field where we had fought, and the slaughter of Rebels there was terrible. Our own generals were to blame for our capture. Robinson, in command of our division, was so drunk he had to cling to his horse’s neck to keep from falling off. May I never see him again.

“Please, please ask all the family to write to me. With much love, your son, Ed.”

Especially tragic is a letter that Edwin Stevens wrote to his brother William on March 26, 1864, less than two months before William died. In that letter Edwin wrote:

“Gen. Grant was here last Friday and reviewed our brigade. He is the most dignified and at the same time most modest specimen of a military man. The army likes him, and when we move again, under his leadership, I hope we shall do something. I believe that Richmond, the object long desired, will be taken. By the time you receive this we may already be on the march. Don’t allow homesickness and the blues to affect you.”

Then the letter ends with an optimistic note that was to be shattered by the death of both brothers. Edwin wrote: “We have served 20 months that seem but a short time and we have only 16 months more to serve. We shall be at home almost before we know it.”

One other item among those precious papers is a letter written to the father after the death of his son William in the war. It was written from Washington by a prominent Maine man, Hon. Percival Bonney, for many years secretary of the Board of Trustees of Colby College. It was Bonney who saw that the body of William Stevens reached Waterville. On June 25, 1864 Bonney wrote to Deacon Stevens: “I send the body as it came from City POint, thinking you would prefer to have it prepared for burial in Waterville. His sword will be sent with the body. He has a trunk here in the storehouse of the Maine Agency, which I will forward in a day or two.”

And that is how tragedy struck a Waterville family 105 years ago.

Year: 1969