Radio Script #851

Little Talks on Common Things
May 3, 1970

How many of you remember the days when the automobile was new, when few people owned one, and when horses were scared into rearing and trying to run away every time they saw one of those snorting machines?

Ten years ago the Lewiston Journal published in one issue a number of pictures with accompanying legends, all under the general title of “Motor Milestones”. Some of those pictures certainly bring back vivid memories of my childhood. One picture shows a line of old-fashioned, open motor cars on a rough, country road. The driver and passengers are all swathed in linen dusters and wear goggles. The story with the picture says: “Most famous of the endurance runs conducted when the automobile was still a novelty and some said a nuisance, did more to break down prejudices against motor cars than could have been done by a hundred speeches. The tours began in July, 1905, and were made annually until 1911. Thirty-three cars were on the first tour from New York City to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a return trip of 870 miles, requiring eight days. It was a hazardous experience, filled with break-downs, bad weather, and washed-out roads. On that first trip 28 of the 33 cars made it through to the finish. The trophy named in honor of the auto enthusiast, Charles Glidden, was won by Percy Pierce in his newly invented Pierce Arrow.”

I remember those Glidden tours very well, because everyone of them passed through my native town of Bridgton, and stopped for the night at the Bridgton House at the top of that village’s Main Hill, and opposite my father’s store. I was 14 years old and big enough to work every Saturday in the store when that first Glidden tour went through, and I was still working in the store during my college vacation when the last Glidden tour was made in 1911.

Every kid in town, having seen the tour come into the village and make its puffing way up Bridgton’s long Main Street, came to the top of the hill that evening to inspect at leisure, those strange vehicles parked inside the big Bridgton House stable. I do recall it was the Pierce Arrows that attracted most attention, for if any automobile was then associated with wealth, it was the Pierce Arrow that meant millionaire. When a Massachusetts uncle of mine acquired a Pierce Arrow, I thought he must have a huge fortune. Of course, I was soon disillusioned.

One recollection about those Glidden tours is that some of the motors used kerosene rather than gasoline. Because oil lamps and oilstoves and heaters were common at that time, our store sold hundreds of gallons of kerosene every month, but no gasoline. In 1905 there was not a single gasoline pump in town, not even the old hand-operated pumps long before the coming of the electric pumps. In 1902 my father had indeed put a hand pump into the store’s back room, so that kerosene no longer had to flow directly from the barrel into a tin measure, but if anyone wanted gasoline at the few hardware stores that stocked it, he had to wait for it to be drawn from a barrel. As I look back on those Glidden tours, I am amazed to recall the large number of cars that took on kerosene at our store.

Bridgton saw the Glidden tour only on its trip into the White Mountains, as it went on to Crawford Notch. The return trip to Boston and New York was by a different route.

Strangely I cannot remember any Stanley Steamers on the Glidden tour, but there must have been some, because that car had become popular by 1908. It was not until I went to teach at Hebron Academy in 1913 that I became familiar with the Stanley. One of the inventing twin brothers who produced that car was Freeland O. Stanley, chairman of the Hebron trustees, and just before I came to Hebron, the Glover family, who operated the village livery stable and the stage from Hebron to the railroad station at West Minot, had bought a big, seven-seated Stanley Steamer to take parties on trips. Mr. Stanley often came to the school in the newest model of his car from the factory at Newton, Mass. It was in a Stanley Steamer, with Mr. Stanley at the wheel, that I took my first ride to the top of Mount Washington, and during my Hebron years my wife and I were often guests at his Newton home, whence we always went for an afternoon ride in a Stanley to Revere Beach, to the Upper Falls of the Charles River, to Norumbega Park, to Concord Bridge, or to some other sight near Boston.

William McKinley was the first American president to ride in an automobile, and that was one of the very first Stanley Steamers. The year was 1889, and the driver was F.O. Stanley himself. It was President Taft, in 1909, who decided the automobile must replace the horse at the White House. Out from the White House stables went the horses, and in went a fleet of autos.

The truck came into its own in 1919. It had of course been used earlier, especially on city streets, but it proved its long distance usefulness when an army convoy of twenty trucks crossed the continent from Washington to San Francisco. It took them 56 days to make the journey. Its success marked the development of motor vehicles in war time, for one of the young officers who made that trip in 1919 was named Dwight Eisenhower.

There is still dispute about what was the first American automobile and where it appeared. Wherever and whatever it was, it must have had slight resemblance to the automobile of the Glidden tour in my boyhood. Most auto historians accept the claim that Sylvester Roper put on the highway the first successful steam powered automobile as long ago as 1863. It was a four-wheeled vehicle built just like an ordinary buggy with iron rimmed wheels of ordinary carriage size. In it was installed a small steam engine capable of only 20 pounds pressure. But that was enough to create a speed of twenty miles an hour. Enough coal could be stored under the seat to power the vehicle for a day’s run.

It was 1910 before any auto appeared with underslung chassis. Before that, car frames were placed over the axles, resting on leaf springs, just as the bodies of the best buggies had long done. One of the first of the underslung cars was the Norwalk. The frame placement was inverted, hanging down from the leaf springs, rather than resting on them. The trouble with the first such cars was that they hung too low for most highways of the time. In 1910 paved roads, except the city streets, were almost unknown, and an automobile had to sit rather high off the ground to clear the rocks on most country roads.

Do you remember when automobiles were always stored away for the winter? To preserve the tires, the car was usually set on four wooden blocks and left in the garage until spring. That was being done as late as 1923, when I came to live in Waterville, bringing the small open car that I had bought the year before in Portland. There may have been other cars on the Waterville streets in the winter of 1923-24, but the only one I remember is the sort of pre-snowmobile, an auto with runners instead of front wheels, driven by Dr. John Towne.

So much for early automobiles. Now, before we close, I want to talk a bit about old Pemaquid. Some of you have already heard me say that it was to the fishing settlement at Pemaquid that the Pilgrims visited for supplies in 1621, and that the Indian who greeted them in English from the Plymouth hilltop that spring had probably learned his bit of English at Pemaquid. Long before that, the English fishermen had been coming regularly to Pemaquid, though it had then no permanent settlement.

What I want to note today is that Pemaquid became the storm center of the contest between the Plymouth Colony and New York interests in the middle of the 17th century. In 1664 King Charles I granted to his brother James, Duke of York, the territory of New Netherlands, won from the Dutch along the Hudson, and the territory of Sagadahoc in what is now Maine. The grant defined the Maine area as between the St. Croix River southwest along the coast to Pemaquid, and inland to the St. Lawrence.

No settler paid any attention to this land grant until Pemaquid was attacked by the Indians in King Philip’s War in 1676. At that time the Council in New York sent a sloop to take off any settlers who wished to leave and settle in the more peaceful lands along the Hudson. Contesting the Massachusetts claim to the Maine lands, the New York Council sent a commission to lay claim in the name of the Duke of York and to make peace with the Indians. They built Fort Charles at Pemaquid and garrisoned it. They set up a custom house, the foundations of which were uncovered in the recent diggings at Pemaquid. There the New Yorkers required all ships to register and pay duties. The land was claimed for the Duke, and every settler was required to pay a quit-rent of one shilling a year for each hundred acres.

In 1683, when New York itself was divided into counties, the Duke’s lands in Maine were designated as the County of Cornwall.

Rents were often in arrears. Smugglers from Boston were clever in avoiding the customs house. Gradually the settlers came to have the same animosity toward New York that the people of Boston had already developed.

Meanwhile more trouble was caused by conflicting claims of France and England. Both claimed title to all the land between the Penobscot and the Kennebec. That struggle did not end until the fall of Quebec in 1762, but the Duke of York’s sway was ended by the 1689 uprising in England that caused the former Duke of York, by that time King James, to flee, and the reign of William and Mary began. New York’s control of the Pemaquid lands was ended.

Year: 1970