Radio Script #863

Little Talks on Common Things
October 18, 1970

In the middle of the 19th century a prominent religious leader in Maine was Dr. Joseph Ricker, for whom the old Ricker Classical Institute, now Ricker College, in Houlton was named. In 1894, toward the end of his long life, Dr. Ricker published a book entitled “Personal Recollections”, which contained much information about Maine places and Maine people of long ago. Dr. Ricker’s memory covered events of three-quarters of the century, because he was born in 1811 and lived until 1897, a rich, full life of 86 years.

Dr. Ricker graduated from old Waterville College, now Colby, in 1839 and served as a Colby trustee from 1849 to 1897. For nearly 30 years he was executive secretary of the Maine Baptist Convention and was a distinguished editor of the denomination’s weekly paper, “Zion’s Advocate”.

Dr. Ricker recorded some interesting details of his college student days in Waterville. When he entered in 1835, the first president, Jeremiah Chaplin, had already resigned, and his successor, Rufus Babcock, was head of the college. Before Ricker graduated, Babcock also had gone, and Ricker received his diploma from the hands of President Robert Pattison.

In his memoirs, Ricker tells us how the college was operated in 1835: “So far as administration was concerned, an oligarchy, pure and simple, was in supreme control. To the president and faculty alone were accorded the right to govern in completely arbitrary fashion. Dr. Chaplin, president for the first 13 years of the college’s existence was a father to the students, but like most fathers of that day, and like all college presidents, he kept a firm hand on the reins. If a student had occasion to speak to him, even out of doors in a pouring rain, and failed to remove his hat, the good doctor would instantly remove his own in stern reminder. To learn how to submit to legitimate authority was then regarded as essential part of a college education. The president and faculty exercised jurisdiction over all comings and goings and all behavior, public or private.

“Frequent mingling in the village society was discountenanced, and in some cases prohibited. Not only bar rooms and taverns, but all places of amusement were off limits. And woe betide the student who failed to attend daily chapel or the two long church services every Sunday.

“Although Maine then had no prohibitory law, the temperance movement had begun, and use of liquor and tobacco was frowned upon at the college. As for recreation, baseball and tennis were unheard of, but students indulged in the old pre-baseball game of rounders, in tossing horseshoes, and impromptu running races.”

When we consider today’s pollution of the Kennebec, it is interesting to note what Mr. Ricker said about that part of the river that ran behind the old Colby campus: “It was especially fortunate that the limpid and sparkling waters of the Kennebec were within such easy reach. The swimmer had to but walk a few rods down the lane between two long rows of willows to gain the shore of the beautiful river that supplied oceans of fun. From thirty to forty students in the water at one time was no unusual spectacle. Among them were such fellows as Martin Anderson, who later founded Rochester University; Samuel Caldwell, president of Vassar College and Benjamin Butler, the stormy Civil War general.

“Student life was regimented. The warning sound of the bell, late in the afternoon, sent every student to his room for study, or subjected him to a fine.”

Dr. Ricker’s book paid rather dubious respects to what was then called the manual labor system at Colby. In order to give students a chance to earn something toward college expenses, a carpenter shop had been started. It was never a financial success, causing every year a substantial deficit until it was abandoned. The shop was, however, at the height of its popularity when Joseph Ricker was a student. Let us now see what he wrote about it: “The manual labor fever, connected with educational institutions was then at its height and Waterville did not escape the epidemic. The shop did somewhat improve a student’s finances and it gave needed exercise, in later times supplied by athletics. With eagerness most students embraced the opportunity. The music of hammer, saw, mallet and plane pervaded the college premises. Ben Butler made several usable chairs. At least he sold them, perhaps as much through his colossal audacity as through the merits of the articles. But on the whole the products of the college workshop were considerably below standard.”

Ricker says that during his sophomore year he was janitor of the dormitory known as North College. He had to sweep the halls and build the fires. He wrote: “As public prayers and one recitation came before breakfast, the janitor had to bestir himself long before daylight during the coldest part of the year.”

“As for curriculum”, said Ricker, “it was the same fixed subjects for every student. Electives had not been heard of.” Writing in 1894. nearly 60 years after his own entrance into college. Ricker said: “Progress in the field of discovery within the last half-century has been rapid to the verge of wonder, and many changes in subjects and methods of instruction have occurred. In my time, 1835-39, we had in mathematics what was known as the ‘Cambridge course’. It was rigid and the professors held us rigidly to it. No student was permitted to take the textbook into the classroom. He had to commit to memory the entire lesson and depend upon that memory in the presence of the professor. As for the ancient languages, to my class was assigned the task of reciting completely from memory, first in Latin, then in English translation. 400 lines from the Odes of Horace, and we actually did it.”

Dr. Ricker also tells us about college expenses in the 1830’s. He says that the cost of tuition, room rent and fees did not exceed $15 a term, or $45 a year. Table board in the college commons was only one dollar a week, but the more affluent students paid $1.50 for better meals served by some family in the village. The poorest students felt obliged to board themselves. Many went home for the weekends, the luckiest of whom were transported by parents, who picked the lad up in the family buggy Saturday noon and brought him back Sunday evening, stocked with provisions for the ensuing week. Others walked many miles to get a few hours at home, and brought back the week’s food in a sack over the shoulder.

Ricker paid his respects also to faculty salaries. He wrote: “Compensation of president and faculty further illustrated the forced economy of the times. When Dr. Chaplin left the presidency, two years before I entered, he was getting $800 a year and use of a house. His colleague, Dr. Chaplin, got $500. When I graduated the President’s salary was only $1,000, while no professor got more than $700. We had two young tutors, each of whom was paid $300 a year.” (President Chaplin’s “colleague”, to whom Ricker referred, was actually his son.)

Ricker paid deserved tribute to the many persons who had sacrificed to maintain the young, struggling college. He said: “Too much honor cannot be done to the memory of the heroic men who laid the foundations of Waterville College. Somehow they had the faith to believe that their labor was not in vain. The college was poor and often on the verge of bankruptcy. The buildings became woefully dilapidated, and the college had no endowment. But somehow its supporters kept it open.”

Now in this day when Colby conducts financial campaigns in terms of millions, listen to these prophetic words that Dr. Joseph Ricker wrote 76 years ago: “If Colby is to do for young men and women what it ought to do, the college must keep crying for more money and get it. The more it gets, the more it will need. The possibilities within reach of the college are in exact proportion to the willingness of its friends to pay the cost.”

Another part of Dr. Ricker’s memoirs concerned the way people lived in his boyhood days early in the 19th century. Among the old-time things that had become unusual when Ricker wrote his memoirs were tallow candles instead of oil lamps, tinder box and steel, open fireplaces with crane, and beside it the brick oven, the spinning wheel and hand loom, the homespun clothes and home-made furniture. In the days before matches, if one lost his fire, he often found it easier to borrow coals from a neighbor’s hearth than to go to the tedious trouble of starting a blaze with flint and steel.

Transportation, Ricker recalled, was accomplished largely on foot. Fortunate was the man who had horse, saddle and pillion, so that man and wife could both ride, the man in the saddle, the wife on the pillion, often with a child in her arms. Even in 1970 there can still be found an occasional old mansion, in front of which is the big, stone horse-block, used for mounting and dismounting in those days early in the 19th century. Ricker says he never saw a wheeled carriage until he was more than ten years old. Even to own a farm wagon was a mark of distinction.

For recreation in Ricker’s boyhood there were corn huskings, apple-paring bees, and barn raisings, but the big annual event was the militia muster, with sellers of ginger bread and tin horns roaming the grounds. Both musters and town meetings often became boisterous in those days when cider and New England rum were plentiful.

Postal facilities were primitive in Ricker’s boyhood. Weekly deliveries were regarded as good fortune, but twice a month was more common in the sparsely settled sections. In some areas a postman did make rounds on horseback with his diminutive mail pouch. There were no daily papers, and the receipt of a weekly was so rare that a single copy was often read aloud in the country store. Letters were few, partly because of the high cost of postage. Ricker said that, as late as 1842, he had a correspondent in St. Louis from whom letters cost 25 cents. Note that Ricker said not “to whom” but “from whom” because in those days before postage stamps, postage was paid by the receiver, not the sender.

Interesting indeed were the memoirs of the old gentleman who, as a youth, had attended Waterville College in the third decade of the 19th century.

Year: 1970