Radio Script #845

Little Talks on Common Things
March 22, 1970

How many of my listeners have ever seen Louds Island? It holds a unique place in the history of Maine, for at one time it proclaimed its independence and insisted it was not a part of Maine at all.

Two miles from the village of Round Pond in the town of Bristol, out in Muscongus Bay, lies Louds Island, which has had white people living on it for 225 years since it was first settled by William Loud in 1745. Some of his descendants still live there. Nearby Marsh Island has been owned by the Poland family since 1780, and there are many Polands still in the region.

In the 1850’s there was made the first U.S. Geological Survey of that part of Maine, and through some inexplicable omission, Louds Island was left off the map by that survey. When the Civil War came, neither Abe Lincoln in Washington nor Governor Washburn in Augusta had any control over them, for the map showed that they were neither in Maine nor anywhere in the U.S. According to the map, Louds Island didn’t exist at all. Certainly, if it did exist, its people were independent and owed allegiance to no foreign power. Throughout the war Louds Island successfully resisted the draft, though several of the islanders did enlist in the Union Army.

I first visited Louds Island in 1941, while I was vacationing at New Harbor. I found its lobstermen-fishermen residents fine, hospitable people, but I had a friend who got, at first, a colder reception on that island. Because he had a son at Colby College, I had become friendly with Grover Loud, telegraph editor of the New York Times, and I was often Mr. Loud’s guest at the Players Club in New York. Mr. Loud’s ancestors had lived on Louds Island, but until 1935 Mr. Loud himself had never seen it. With many chuckles he used to tell, in front of the big fireplace at the Players Club on Grammercy Park, about that visit to the island of his ancestors. Rowed across from Round Pond, he received a polite but not cordial reception. When, after several days, the natives warmed up a bit, Mr. Loud said to the postmistress, “Why have the people here been so suspicious of me? After all, I am a Loud.” “Oh yes”, said the woman, “but that doesn’t mean a thing. How’d we know it was your real name? We thought you might be a revenuer from ‘Gusty.”

Some rich old yarns are told about Louds Island. One of the best concerned the death of an aged resident. After he had been laid out in a home-made coffin and placed in the home parlor, a ten-year old grandson was taken in to view the remains. After one quick look the boy said: “Hey grampa, I see you got a new punt. Huh, it’s cedar. You’ll go through Hell snapping.”

Enough about Louds Island. Now for another subject.

In 1970, when life is so easy for most of us, when many people have forgotten how to walk, and perhaps too many have forgotten how to work, preferring to let Uncle Sam take care of them, it is well for us to be reminded about the hardships of pioneer days in Maine. In this region, for several years after the building of Fort Halifax in 1754, the most convenient mode of travel away from the river was on foot, or at best on horseback. Carriages were unknown. It was common to see a man in a saddle, with his wife sitting behind him on the pommel and a child in her arms, on their way to Sunday meeting. On one occasion a father, mother and young child were all on the same horse, making their way from a Fairfield farm to the Quaker meeting house at North Fairfield. Believe it or not, a log laid across Fish Brook was so huge that the horse carried his three riders safely across on it.

When General Kendall brought to Kendall’s Mills the first two-wheeled cart ever seen there, neighbors came from miles around to borrow it, and the General, to discourage the practice, set a charge of one penny a mile for its use. Even when Waterville got its first four-wheeled carriage, that vehicle rested right on the axletrees without any springs whatever. Traveling was indeed tough in those pioneer days. Grown men and women went barefoot in summer time. Waiting for grain to ripen often meant long, hungry days. Families were often in extreme want. In winter the deep snow prevented the people at Ten Lots from getting into Ticonic Village for supplies. During Elihu Bowerman’s first winter at North Fairfield in 1792, his family went for three months without sugar or molasses to get relief only when they could tap the maples in the spring. A settler on Belgrade Hill once walked to West Waterville to borrow a horse, which he then rode to the McKechnie mill in Waterville to get a little ground corn.

The thrifty settlers learned to prepare for the long Maine winters. The grain had to be reaped and threshed, then stored in the barn and hauled to the mill for grinding before the deep snows set in. Potatoes were dug and placed in the underground potato hole, apples were picked and some of them dried and strung, while others were pressed into cider, and a few went into the necessary barrel of applesauce. When the beef creature was killed in the fall, not only was its meat frozen to be used through the winter, but some of it was salted, the hide was tanned, and the tallow molded into candles. A big barrel of soft soap was made for winter use.

Like the ancient English manor, the Maine pioneer farm was self-sustaining except for millstones and salt. In earliest Maine times few settlers ever tried to buy tea or coffee, and the maple trees provided their sugar. Their tea came from steeped herbs out of the woods. Wool and flax raised on the farm was spun and woven right there for clothes. Every home had its spinning wheel and its looms. There was no such thing as matches, and to start a fire with flint and steel was so arduous that every household carefully preserved the embers fromthe fireplace. Every member of the family old enough to work at all toiled from dawn till dusk the year around. In time a community got a school, but even then boys over ten years of age seldom attended except in the winter. Other seasons they were needed on the farm.

Life was not easy in pioneer days, and perhaps for that very reason the people were the sturdy stock out of which America began.

Now for a bit devoted to the town of Winslow. On all the times I have talked about that town on this program I think I have never told you the exact words of the act of incorporation that established it as a town in 1771. So I want today to quote that document word for word. Here it is: “To Ezekiel Pattee, Esq.: By virtue of power to me given by a law of the Province for incorporating a certain tract of land in the County of Lincoln into a town by the name of Winslow, abutted and bounded as below mentioned, you are hereby required to notify and warn the freeholders and inhabitants of said town, qualified by law to vote for town officers, to meet at Fort Halifax on the second day of April, 1771, at eight o’clock before noon, to choose selectmen, town clerk and such other officers as shall be necessary to manage the said town.

At the same meeting the freeholders are to bring in their votes for a Register of Deeds and a Treasurer of the County of Lincoln. The town of Winslow is abutted and bounded as follows: Beginning on the east side of the Kennebec River at a hemlock tree standing on the bank of said river and one rod west northwest of a large rock and 2t miles northeast from Fort Halifax, and from said tree to run east southeast five miles to a marked beech tree, thence south southwest five miles; thence west northwest to the northeast corner of the town of Vassalboro; thence on the northerly line of that town five miles to the Kennebec River; thence across said river to the end of five miles on its west side; thence northerly as far as to meet the west end of a line from the hemlock tree afirst mentioned, and on that line to the river and across that river to the hemlock tree. Given under my hand and seal this eighth day of March, 1771. James Howard, J.P.”

The records of Winslow’s early town meetings contain some interesting details. At a meeting on September 7, 1771 Timothy Heald was chosen as a suitable person to serve on the petit jury at Pownal borough, and after much discussion it was voted to clear the banks of the Kennebec near Fort Halifax for the advantage of boating, but the voters turned down the proposal to hire preaching for the ensuing year.

In 1772 a town meeting decided there was no need for shutting up hogs, but to let the critters continue to roam at large. In the same year they appropriated 20 pounds, somewhat less than $500 for town roads. If hogs could run at large, horses were another matter. They were valuable and ought to be held for rightful owners. So at another meeting in 1772 the town of Winslow voted to build a pound. The people also felt the need for a town cemetery, and John McKechnie, who five years later would move to the Waterville side and build the first mill on the Messalonskee, was delegated to bargain with the Gardiner heirs for land to make a burying ground.

In 1772 also the Winslow voters agreed to accept as a town highway the road laid out on the west side of the Kennebec to the north line of the town. That road was later called the Road to Fairfield Meeting House. It is now Main Street and its continuation to Fairfield Center. In 1774 a Winslow town meeting established wages for work on the roads, and appropriated 64 pounds to cover that expense for a year. A man was allowed 2/6 for a day’s work, for a yoke of oxen 1/4, for a plow one shilling. So if a man used two of his own oxen, his own plow, and gave his own time, he got 4/10 per day, the equivalent of $1.12.

And with that reference to high wages in Winslow nearly 200 years ago, we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1970