Radio Script #885

Little Talks on Common Things
March 21, 1971

How many towns had been incorporated in Maine before the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775? The answer is that there were only 29, and more than half of them were in the southern part of the state in what are now York and Cumberland Counties. Nine were in York and seven in Cumberland. Of the other 13 towns, five were in Sagadahoc and one in Waldo. There was no incorporated town east of the Penobscot River. In 1775 there was no white settlement at all at Bangor. The four Kennebec towns, only four years old in 1775, had been all incorporated on the same day in 1771 by the Massachusetts Legislature. They were Hallowell, Vassalboro, Winslow and Winthrop, all celebrating their 200th anniversary this year.

Eight Maine towns had received incorporation before 1700. Five of them were in York County. Kittery, York, Wells, Saco and Kennebunkport had been made legal towns between 1647 and 1653. They were followed by three towns on Casco Bay, originally named Scarborough, Falmouth and North Yarmouth. The first two were incorporated in 1658, the latter in 1680. Then for 33 years there were only those eight Maine towns. The ninth, Berwick, did not come until 1713.

Three years later came the first town on the Kennebec, Georgetown at the mouth of the river. Then 21 more years went by before the 11th town, Brunswick, was incorporated. The first town above Merrymeeting Bay came after the creation of the Plymouth Company in 1749 and Sylvester Gardiner’s encouragement to settlers. That town, Maine’s twelfth, was Pownalborough whose still standing court house is the oldest building on the Kennebec. On the coast there was no town beyond Georgetown until the 1760’s when Boothbay became Maine’s 17th town in 1764, and Bristol the 18th in 1765. The 28th and 29th towns, both incorporated in 1774, just before the Revolution, were Edgecomb and New Gloucester. Between the incorporation of the first town, Kittery, in 1647, and the 29th town, New Gloucester, in 1774, 127 years had elapsed.

In the middle of the 19th century Waterville had several citizens prominent in state affairs. Wyman B.S. Moor was attorney-general in 1844 and represented Maine in the U.S. Senate in 1848. Josiah Drummond was Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives in 1858, and Solyman Heath was Reporter of Decisions. The first Waterville man to represent Maine in the national congress after Maine became a separate state was the town’s first regular clergyman, Joshua Cushman.

Employed as the town preacher, as required by Massachusetts law, Cushman had served in that capacity until 1814, after which time he developed his farm on the Cushman Road, engaged in land speculation and lumber interests, and held high political office. Before 1820 he had represented this area in the Massachusetts Legislature, then in the Maine election of 1821 he was made one of the new state’s representatives to Congress, where he served two terms ending in 1825.

Now that Maine’s two newest cities are located in Aroostook County, it is interesting to note how few people there were in that whole area in the 1850’s, when Waterville had so many citizens prominent in state affairs. The largest community in Aroostook was then Houlton with 1,450 people. The only other Aroostook town that had more than a thousand was the St. John River town of Madawaska. What are now Aroostook’s two cities, Presque Isle and Caribou, were not even incorporated towns in 1850. Fort Fairfield and Fort Kent were only a cluster of cabins about wooden forts put up by the state at the time of the Aroostook War in 1839, and named for two successive Governors, Fairfield and Kent.

The period between 1820 and 1850 was one of rapid population growth for Maine. In 1820 Lewiston did not even exist. By 1830 it had 1,500 people; by 1850 it had grown to 4,600, an increase of 200 percent. Belfast was quite a town in 1820, having 2,000 people, a considerable expansion from its 250 inhabitants at the time of the first national census in 1790. The town of Bristol that contains several villages, including New Harbor, Pemaquid Fort, and Pemaquid Point, as well as South Bristol and Round Pond, had 900 folks in 1790, and had grown to 2,800 in 1850.

As for our part of Kennebec County, in 1850 Augusta was by far the largest place with a population of 8,154. Gardiner was next with 4,200, and Waterville third with 4,000. Hallowell, now Maine’s smallest city, had 3,200 people in 1850, and in fifth place was Vassalboro with 3,100. Long ago on this program I told you that, when Maine became a state in 1820, Vassalboro had more people than Waterville. But long before 1850 Waterville had forged ahead, and by 1850 exceeded Vassalboro by 900 persons. In 1850 Portland was already Maine’s largest community with a population of 20,800. Brunswick and Westbrook were nearly tied for second place in Cumberland County, both having about 4,900 people. Gorham, one of the oldest inland towns in in the county, had 3,100, and in fifth place was my own native town of Bridgton with 2,700 inhabitants.

Now let us turn to some of the old records of Waterville College, the institution founded in 1813 that later became Colby. Strangely enough, these items reported in the middle of the 19th century, came not from records of the trustees, but of the faculty, which in the early days had charge of everything including buildings and grounds.

On March 2, 1849 the faculty voted that Jonathan Libby, a student, be employed to clear and keep in order the grounds, and keep out the cows during the summer.

In 1848 it was voted to authorize Professor Champlin to repair the stove pipe in his recitation room. On another occasion Professors Anderson and Champlin were made a committee to examine and get repaired the back side of North College. In November, 1848 President Sheldon was instructed to procure gravel and planks to repair the walks on the college premises. In 1849 the college chapel was located in Recitation Hall, the middle one of the three brick buildings on the old Colby campus. When it was built, the basement was an unfinished storeroom. That explains a faculty vote taken in December, 1849 that Professors Loomis and Anderson be a committee to see to clearing out the northeast section under the chapel and making it into a recitation room. At the same time Prof. Champlin was to pay Samuel Francis Smith for putting a staple on the wood closet in a recitation room. Somebody had to see that the students attended church regularly on Sunday, as required by college laws. Hence in 1850 George Rounds was appointed monitor of the junior and senior classes at the Baptist Church at $2.75 a term.

Students had to be on time for daily chapel or be shut out, in which case they had to pay a fine. So Henry Tarbox was allowed fifty cents for shutting the chapel door during the term. George Washington Dow got a good job. On July 13, 1849 the faculty elected him glass setter. In August he was allowed $13.10 and in September $8.95 for that work, but probably he had to pay for the glass out of that compensation. In August 1850 Professor Loomis was paid 75 cents for getting the President’s chair to the Baptist Meeting House on Commencement Day.

Damage had been done that year to North College and immediately after Commencement Professor Loomis was authorized to put up two doors and plastering in No. 29, and stop up the scuttle door.

In 1851, by a single vote, the faculty filled several student positions. Pierce was allowed 75 cents as monitor at the Congregationalist Church and Smith $2.50 as monitor and door shutter at the chapel and $5.00 as the chapel sweeper. Lamb got $2 as a chapel monitor, Lowell had 75 cents as monitor at the Baptist Church, and Dow got the big sum of $18 for glass setting and other services. The money to pay for these services came from special fees charged on student bills. That explains a faculty vote of May 1, 1851 which reads: “Student charges for the term shall be: Repair average one dollar; bell ringing and sweeping 40 cents; monitors 10 cents; wood 40 cents.”

Discipline was always a problem, and the faculty records are filled with such cases. In July, 1850 sixteen students were told that their conduct in leaving town to attend a picnic in Winthrop was severely censured, and it must not happen again, at risk of suspension from college. That picnic demands a word of explanation. In November, 1849 the railroad had come to Waterville and in the summer of 1850 it ran weekly excursions at reduced rates to the lake at Winthrop, where there was a pavilion and picnic facilities. Naturally the college students took advantage of those excursions, but so strict were the college regulations that it was considered a serious offense for them to leave town.

On July 31, 1851 William Pitt Bartlett was called before the faculty and told that he was under college censure for horn blowing about the premises, and if he was again apprehended in that offense, he would immediately be dismissed from college. Apparently in later years Bartlett was well able to blow his own horn. He became a member of the Maine Senate and the state’s attorney-general.

The most serious punishment fell on a fellow named McLellan, when on Nov. 10, 1850 the faculty passed the following vote: “Whereas the faculty have knowledge that McLellan has been repeatedly engaged during the term in breaking glass in Prof. Champlin’s room, also in eating and drinking carousals by night and in making disturbances during religious exercises in the chapel, therefore it is voted that his connection with the college is closed from this day, not to be restored during the present academic year, and after that only on evidence of improvement in character.”

A year later the faculty were apparently satisfied with this fellow’s improvement, for he was reinstated and eventually received his degree.

Year: 1971