Radio Script #881

Little Talks on Common Things
February 21, 1971

Last week, in telling the story of Waterville’s first bank, I said that the disputed lot on which the bank put up its building had been owned by the shipbuilder John Clarke. Who was John Clarke, and what do we know about him?

He was born in England in 1741, came to Boston in 1772, and was said to have participated the following year in the famous Boston Tea Party. With his son George, John Clarke came to Waterville in 1797, five years before Waterville separated from the mother town of Winslow. He engaged in trade, especially lumber, and soon began to build his own ships, in several cases putting his sons in command of the vessels. His largest ship, the second largest ever launched at Waterville, was the Ticonic. Clarke had been married in Vienna to an Austrian girl, Maria Theresa Lake. They had fifteen children. A daughter, Ann married Mr. Moses Appleton.

John Clarke moved to Canterbury, Conn. in 1803, but his son George remained in Waterville until his death in 1823. George built and occupied, about 1808, the house on College Avenue later purchased by Colby College as its first dormitory for women, named Ladies Hall. It stood where the A&P store now stands. In 1907, after Foss Hall was built, Ladies Hall was occupied for nearly 40 years by the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which left it only when their new house was ready on Mayflower Hill.

At one time, several buildings stood at the lower end of Waterville’s Main Street on the triangle that became known as Lockwood Park. The most imposing of those buildings was a large structure facing up Main Street, and it is conspicuous in all the early photographs of that locality. The oldest known photograph of Waterville is dated 1856, and during the following half century pictures of Main Street are common. More than a score are preserved at the Waterville Historical Society. All of those pictures that were taken with the camera facing south show the big house on Lockwood Park. That house was built in 1802 by Asa Faunce. In 1840 it was enlarged into a tavern, which soon after the Civil War got the name of the Continental House. In the early 1900’s, when the triangle was cleared, the house was reputedly moved to Kennebec Street. That is why the Centennial History of Waterville contains this brief statement: “Capt. Asa Faunce came here about 1800. He built and occupied a two-story house at the foot of Main Street which was later enlarged and was for a time known as the Continental House.”

In 1902, assisting Dr. Edwin Whittemore in preparation of the Centennial History, Aaron Plaisted made copious notes which are now preserved at the Waterville Historical Society. Let us see what those Plaisted notes tell us about early Waterville.

Plaisted quotes the pioneer Asa Redington as having said then, when he came to Waterville in 1792, there were only two small houses at the Head of the Falls. where dwelt Isaac Temple and John Searle, two small houses near where the Elmwood later stood, the Samuel Dunbar house near what would later be the junction of Main and Temple Streets, and the John McKechnie house on the Messalonskee, where now stands the pumping station of the water district.

The first house put up on Silver Street was erected shortly before 1800 by Reuben Kidder. It stood on the south side near the corner of Main Street. At that time, of course, there was no such thing as Main Street. What later became that business street was then known as the road from Ticonic Falls to Fairfield Meeting House; that is, Fairfield Center, which in 1800 was the only part of Fairfield to have a church building.

It was the merchant and industrialist Elnathan Sherwin, whose name is perpetuated by Sherwin Street, who built Waterville’s first tavern. Taken over quietly by Henry Dow, it was called the Dow House and stood on Main Street opposite Silver, where now is the Federal Trust Co. In mid-nineteenth century it was better known as the Williams House. Next to his Silver Street house, Reuben Kidder put up a small building which he used as his law office and next to it, Mr. Moses Appleton built his apothecary shop. On the other side of the street Appleton erected his own dwelling house, which was later moved to Appleton Street. Kidder’s Silver Street law office was later occupied by Timothy Boutelle, until Boutelle put up the town’s first business block, the Phoenix Block, near the corner of Main and Temple Streets in 1836. Before 1800 Nathaniel Gilman, who became the town’s wealthiest citizen, opened a store on the east side of the lower end of Main Street, where later the Dunn family put up the big Dunn Block, afterwards converted into the Crescent Hotel.

Opposite the Kidder House, on the north side of Silver Street, was Waterville’s first two-story house, erected in 1790 by Obadiah Williams. The Mathews and Jakins families operated the place as a tavern early in the nineteenth century. Next door to the west was a house built by Frederick Jakins and soon taken over by Mr. Cook, an early physician. Next to the west was the home of the saddler, Jonathan Heywood, whose descendants later erected the large building known in recent years as the Heywood Apartments, torn down in the urban renewal project. The only other house on that side of Silver Street before 1805 was that of Isaac Stevens, near the present site of the Sentinel building. In 1804 on the south side of the street, and next to the Mr. Appleton apothecary, Jeremiah Fairfield built a house, which he soon sold to Nathaniel Gilman. Opposite Charles Street, and where the Arnold house long stood, Mr. Chase Hall built a house in 1810, and around the corner, where are now the studios of WTVL, was the home of Jabez Mathews, ancestor of our present elderly citizen, Norman Mathews.

The Plaisted notes give us information about the business section of Waterville in 1814. It was located almost entirely on Water Street near the later site of the Lockwood Mills. Mr. Plaisted wrote: “In 1814 on present Water Street below Ticonic Bridge were James Stackpole’s store, Moses Dalton’s blacksmith shop, Major Poule’s store, the Moor house opposite the town landing, the Redington store, all on the west side. On the water side were the Jerry Kidder store, the large Redington house, an older and smaller Redington house, the Parker house, the Miller house, then Moses Healey’s on the Plains, the Leman house on Sherwin Street, the Sherwin house on the corner of Sherwin and Silver, and Dr. Appleton’s, now Wheelers.”

The Jeremiah Kidder store, to which Plaisted referred, was built in 1807. Plaisted wrote of Waterville’s several shipyards: “The yard of John Clarke, where he built the Ticonic, was at the foot of Sherwin Street. Just above was the Gilman yard. Asa Redington had a shipyard opposite his house. Farther up, the Moors built what became the town’s largest shipyard. The first ship built here appears to have been the Sally, launched by John Getchell in 1794. ”

A humorous item given by Plaisted concerns the meat stall of Edward Esty, between the Kidder house on Silver Street and the Main Street corner. Apparently, Esty sold something besides meat, because he put up a rhyming sign that read: “Cider and beer when I am here; brandy and gin when I’m within.”

Plaisted tells us that in 1796, Dr. Moses Appleton arrived for the first time on horseback, and as he came into town on a May morning he met a company of men going out to cut the timber for the first meeting house, the one erected on the common where now is City Hall.

Another interesting item from the Plaisted notes says that Waterville’s first Sunday School was organized by Deacon John Partridge of the Baptist Church in the Dow Tavern on Main Street in 1821. Among the scholars were Partridge’s own son Orlando, Sophia Dingley, William and Julia Moor, and Emily Redington, who later married Solyman Heath and gave the name Emily to later generations of the Heath family.

In 1810, Waterville had two distilleries, both on Silver Street. One was operated by Dr. Appleton, the other by Nathaniel Gilman.

Concerning Waterville’s separation from Winslow the Plaisted notes tell us: “On January 1, 1795 the first petition for separation into a new town of Williamsburg was signed by several petitioners, among whom were Obadiah Williams, Elnathan Sherwin, Isaac Temple, John Searle, Thomas McKechnie, Asa Emerson and Abijah Smith.” Nothing came of that petition, and on February 17, 1796 the petitioners tried again, but still in vain. Success finally came in 1802 when 38 citizens signed a petition for separation. By that time the intent to name the town for Dr. Obadiah Williams had cooled, and the name chosen was Waterville. Some new names that had not appeared on the petition of 1795 were Jediah Morrill, John Clarke, Moses Healey, Moses Appleton, Nehemiah Getchell, Daniel Moor, Asa Faunce and Russell Blackwell.

One of Waterville’s early industries was a pottery on Silver Street operated by a Mr. Fish as early as 1820.

An early local tragedy was the drowning of Elizabeth, daughter of James Stackpole, in the Sebasticook on July 28, 1787.

An early court case that concerned Waterville industry came in 1795. By that time water rights, made important by the building of the dam in 1792, were held by Nehemiah Getchell, Asa Redington, Elnathan Sherwin, Ebenezer Bacon, Ebenezer Heald and Chris McFadden. In 1795 those six men made a mutual agreement that they would share expenses in defending a suit that had been brought against them for preventing the passage of fish up the river past the dam. At the same time they agreed that no additional grist mill should be built on the dam below the one already operated there by Obadiah Williams and Ebenezer Bacon.

Plaisted comments that James Stackpole planted a field to flax in 1799.

Concerning the first building for Waterville College, the President’s house that stood near the junction of College and Front Streets, Plaisted wrote: “On April 26, 1819, at Mr. Chaplin’s request, there turned out about 60 men to clear a piece of the college lot for him to set his house.”

What happened to the old saw and grist mills below Ticonic Bridge? Aaron Plaisted wrote that in 1902, at the time of the Centennial, no one Waterville living remembered the original buildings. Two great fires, ten years apart, had wiped out all those that had not previously fallen into decay. Those disastrous fires occurred in 1849 and 1859. Mr. Plaisted said: “The old store and mill sites were so changed by the Lockwood Mills that the exact location of the early buildings is hard to establish.”

Year: 1971