Radio Script #892
Little Talks on Common Things
May 9, 1971
Because Waterville was once part of Winslow, it is right that this station and the local press should give attention to the current Winslow celebration of its 200th anniversary. Beginning with a program held at the Winslow Senior High School on April 25, this recognition will continue with appropriate events throughout the summer. This appropriate recognition of Winslow should not obscure the fact that its neighboring town of Vassalboro is celebrating its 200th birthday also this year, and during the summer that town will stage a number of anniversary events.
The fact, rather outstanding historically, is that the first four towns to be incorporated in Kennebec County were all authorized by the Massachusetts legislature on the same day, April 26, 1771. Those towns were Hallowell, Winthrop, Vassalboro and Winslow. Vassalboro was named for Florentius Vassall, a merchant of Boston and a descendant of William Vassall who had come to Boston in the first settlement with Governor Winthrop in 1630. Florentius Vassall was one of the original incorporators of the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase in 1749, the company that bought the huge tract on the Kennebec from Gardiner to Skowhegan and extending 15 miles on each side of the river. Part of the purchase allotted to Vassall was the territory that later became the town of Vassalboro. Florentius Vassall never saw his Maine land. A staunch Tory, when the Revolution made life too hot for him in Boston, he fled to England, where he died in 1778, and his Kennebec property passed into other hands.
The Kennebec proprietors encouraged settlement in all their territory, including the Vassall lands, but they had little success until 1760, and as late as 1768 there were only ten families in what is now the town of Vassalboro. But the next three years saw an influx of settlers so that by 1771 the place had enough people to secure incorporation as a town. In 1800 the population was 1,188, and in the next ten years it nearly doubled, so that in 1810 Vassalboro had 2,063 people.
When Maine became a state in 1820, Vassalboro was the second largest community in Kennebec County, exceeded only by Hallowell. It was larger than Augusta or Gardiner or Waterville. Vassalboro owed much to the denomination of Friends or Quakers. They arrived early in the town’s history with their established and enviable reputation for integrity, morality and industry. Their leader, Remington Hobby, helped many other settlers, including Elihu Bowerman of North Fairfield, get a foothold in this part of Maine. It was the zeal of the Quakers, the opportunity for expanding trade, in lumber, and the building and operation of ships that made Vassalboro the leading town on the Kennebec north of Hallowell.
In our time, when all shipping has disappeared from the Kennebec above Augusta, it is hard for us to realize the importance of Getchells Corner as a port of call during the first half of the 19th century, before the railroad came to Central Maine. In the year 1849 alone, there sailed out of Getchells Corner the bark Sarah Moores, the schooner Sally, and the Brigs. Mary E., Minerva and Maria. By 1856 several steamers made regular stops at Getchells Corner, including the Balloon, the Clinton, the Halifax and the Ticonic. Sometimes their northern terminus had to be Vassalboro, because the water was too low for them to continue on to Waterville.
Of the numerous vessels built in Vassalboro, the most famous was the Ocean Bird, launched at the shipyard of John Lang, a short distance above Getchells Corner in 1848. It was the only ocean-going ship ever built at Vassalboro. Its completed hull was floated down the river to Hallowell, where it was stepped and rigged, which meant putting on the masts, spars and sails. It was then sailed to New York for its first voyage across the Atlantic to the west coast of Africa. The Ocean Bird’s master, Captain Gustavus Dickman, was taking no chance of armed mutiny, something that was all too common on long sailing voyages.
Every sailor who joined the Ocean Bird had to sign this statement: “It is agreed between the master seamen and mariners of the Ocean Bird of Vassalboro, now bound from New York to the mouth of the Zambia River in Africa, from thence on a general freighting and trading voyage for six months, that no sheath knives or profane language shall be allowed on board.” Those sailors got $15 a month; the second mate got $20.
In Africa, the Ocean Bird took on a Negro boy, but not as a slave, although slavery was then legal. The boy agreed to serve on the ship for a full year at a monthly wage of 25 cents. The Ocean Bird’s return cargo included 8,000 bushels of peanuts, said to have been the first importation of those nuts into the U.S.
John Lang, builder of the Ocean Bird, was Vassalboro’s foremost business man in the mid-nineteenth century. Besides building and operating ships and river longboats, Lang had interest in grist mills, sawmills, and tanneries. At North Vassalboro he started a woolen mill – the first in this part of Central Maine and by 1855 he was employing 200 workers. The demand for woolen cloth to make uniforms and blankets for the Union Army encouraged Lang to enlarge his mill, so that a grand opening was held on New Years Day in 1863. Let us see how the Waterville Mail described that event: “The employees of the North Vassalboro Manufacturing Co. made the opening of their new factory an occasion for New Year’s celebration. The huge throng that gathered declared the enterprise the greatest ever undertaken in Vassalboro. Two hundred feet of tables were laden with beef, pork, ham and turkey, pies and cakes of every description, luscious raw oysters, all washed down by gallons of hot coffee. The workers presented a silver plate to Mr. Lang, who replied in grand style. Dancing to music of a fine band continued until two o’clock in the morning.”
Workers for that enlarged mill did not all come from the local community, nor even from Maine. Just as my own native town of Bridgton could not man its three big woolen mills with local skilled labor, but had to import it from overseas, the same was true of Vassalboro. So we should not be surprised to read in the Waterville Mail of February 26, 1864: “A band of English operatives from Lancashire, about 40 adults and a number of children, came on the MCRR Thursday from Portland, where they had arrived across the Atlantic on the steamer Hibernia. They go into the employment of the North Vassalboro Manufacturing Co. Shorter by a head than the average Maine Yankee, they are a hardy, intelligent people. Being already familiar with the work, they will make valuable workers for John Lang’s mill.”
Next to John Lang, the foremost business man of Vassalboro was Jacob Southwick, who had come to Getchells Corner nearly half a century before Lang arrived. Southwick got a flying start by setting up the first potash kiln north of Augusta. It is not generally known that the first salable product which a settler could reap and trade was not grain, nor even lumber. It took time for grain to grow, and lumber was dependent on saw mills. The first thing a new settler, just clearing a farm, had to sell was ashes. Ashes made potash and the fast expanding wool factories of England used vast quantities of soap in the repeated washings of wool between its shearing and spinning. Soap was made from potash, and any man who could set up a region’s first potash kiln could make money. That gave Jacob Southwick, who also had a general store, his start as a wealthy trader. He was soon operating saw mills and grist mills, long boats and coasting vessels, and importing goods, especially West Indies rum, for use in a wide area of Central Maine. When the first pioneers of Skowhegan cleared their farms, it was at the Southwick kiln at Getchells Corner that they sold their ashes.
How did the settlers happen to have so many ashes? To cut down the trees, pull the stumps, and make open fields required years of patient, back-breaking labor. In order to plant oats, rye and corn as quickly as possible, the settlers cut down only a few trees and ringed the rest; that is, injured them by notching a deep ring so that the tree died. That let in the sunlight for a few scratched seeds. The next step was to burn the dead trees as they stood. That created vast heaps of ashes. So it came about that the first cash crops of many a settler was ashes that he sold to be made into potash at Southwick’s Vassalboro kiln.
Some of Vassalboro’s settlers before 1780, besides the Southwicks and Remington Hobby, were Nehemiah Getchell, Charles Webber, Mathew Hastings, Daniel Fairfield, Isaac Farwell and Abial Lovejoy. Three leading pioneers of Waterville first settled in Vassalboro before they came farther up the river. They were Obadiah Williams, Asa Redington and Daniel McFadden. In 1855 an Augusta newspaper had this to say about Vassalboro: “The town lies just above Augusta, on the east side of the Kennebec, and is open to boat navigation along its entire length of eight miles. Vessels are sometimes built in town, and passing through the lock at Augusta are here rigged and fitted for sea. Twelve Mile Pond (now China Lake) lies on the eastern border of the town and divides it from China. At the pond’s outlet is a powerful mill stream where is located Outlet Village (now East Vassalboro), a pretty place of several stores, two churches, an inn, and several factories. Just below at North Vassalboro is one of the largest tanneries in the state, and a woolen mill where John Lang employs 200 hands.” With that salute to Vassalboro’s 200th birthday, we must say goodbye until next week.
Year: 1971