Radio Script #905

Little Talks on Common Things
October 31, 1971

In the Waterville Historical Society, besides the many articles of furniture, kitchenware, tools and household implements, there are important manuscripts that cast light on early days in Waterville. Very important among such papers are the diaries of James Stackpole, one of our pioneers. There were in fact three James Stackpoles, all of them leading figures in Waterville during the century between 1780 and 1880. While it is the first, the author of the diaries, who claims our attention today, his son, known as James Stackpole, Jr., was a leading merchant, shipbuilder, and land owner, and the old man’s grandson, James Stackpole III was a graduate of Bowdoin College, and served for 17 years, in the middle of the 19th century, as treasurer of Colby College.

The first James Stackpole was born in Biddeford in 1732, and died in Waterville in 1824 at the age of 92. He came to Winslow in 1780 and for ten years lived near Fort Halifax, moving to the west side of the river in 1790, twelve years before Waterville became a separate town. His first store was conducted on the Winslow side in the 1780’s, but soon after his removal to the Waterville side of the river, he established another store with his son James, who as the father approached old age, took the business into his own hands. So, when old letters and other writings of this area 150 or more years ago mention a Stackpole store, they usually refer to the one operated by James Stackpole, Jr. because by 1800 the father no longer ran the business.

In fact James Jr. had just come of age when the family moved from Winslow to Waterville in 1790, for he had been born in Biddeford in 1769. Soon after taking up residence here, the younger man married Nary McKechnie, daughter of the man who surveyed the Waterville lots for the Plymouth Company and the builder of Waterville’s first mill, situated on the Messalonskee near where the pumping station of the Water District now stands.

The elder James Stackpole conscientiously kept a diary, beginning in 1796 and ending in 1821, three years before his death. There may have been earlier records kept by this man, even before he left Biddeford in 1780, because besides the diaries there are account books kept by Stackpole that date as far back as 1759, only five years after the building of Fort Halifax, and scattered through these accounts are items we would today call diary records.

In Biddeford, Stackpole did a lot of business with one Jeremiah Hall. On July 5, 1759 he credited Hall with six shillings 8 pence for five days use of Hall’s wheels, 11 pence for Hall’s pasturing two of Stackpole’s oxen, and 12 shillings for “your son and 6 oxen 1 day”. Ten years later, in 1769, he was still doing business with Hall. This time, instead of his owing Hall, Hall owed him 6 shillings for a pair of sled sets, six more for a yoke, and one shilling for 1/4 pound of indigo. In 1772 Stackpole charged Hall 1 shilling 4 pence for “my mare to the mill,” and in 1773, the charge was 10 shillings for “one day’s work myself and son, two oxen and plow.”

One Biddeford man with whom Stackpole did business in 1775 had an interesting name, Shadrack Witherbee. Stackpole charged that man 4 shillings for two bushels of potatoes. Bear in mind that the New England shilling was 16 2/3 cents. So the price of potatoes at that time was 33 1/3 cents a bushel. A charge made also in 1775 to Stephen Jones makes me wonder whether Stackpole cut hay on the Biddeford marshes, or whether he treated ordinary meadow hay. Anyhow the charge was for 850 pounds of salt hay.

James Stackpole had 13 children, born between 1755 and 1781. His namesake James Jr. was the eighth child. As we examine the diary we shall encounter the other sons, Joseph, Samuel, Abiel, John and Jothan. Jothan was the youngest of the 13 children and the only one born in Winslow. All his brothers and sisters had been born before the family left Biddeford. Shortly before James Stackpole left Biddeford he saw two of his daughters married. How he felt about the marriages and the provisions he made for the girls are sandwiched in between financial accounts. “January 2, 1777. Hannah Stackpole was married to Andrew Goodwin. I gave her two pewter dishes, six earthenware plates, cups and saucers, half a dozen teaspoons, 6 knives, and forks, an iron pot, a tea kettle, one feather bed, two pairs of sheets and pillowcases, one wool blanket, 6 kitchen chairs and a table.” “March 21, 1780. Phoebe Stackpole was married to Eleazer Tarbox, not with my consent. I gave her one feather bed, two pair of sheets and pillowcases, one pewter dish, and 3 kitchen chairs.”

While we have no diary records for Stackpole’s ten years of residence on the Winslow side of the river, his account books do contain a few items for that period.

A leading citizen of Winslow in the 1780’s was Squire Arthur Lithgow, for whom Lithgow street was later named. In September, 1784, Stackpole charged Lithgow six shilling (or exactly one dollar) for a day’s work on the foundation of Lithgow’s new mill. A month later the charge was 18 shillings for a man, a boy and 6 oxen to haul string pieces and head blocks for the mill. On November 18, 1784, Stackpole did a bigger job for Lithgow, charging him one pound ten shillings to haul stores from Fort Western to Fort Halifax. At that time Lithgow was keeping a store in Winslow, and against the 1784 items charged to Lithgow, Stackpole credited him for two quarts of N. E. rum, 12 pounds of sugar, 2 yards of red cloth, and 9 pounds of cotton wool. A year later Stackpole had a store himself. He then charged Lithgow for 5 gallons of NE rum.

When the diary opened in 1796 James Stackpole was well established in Waterville. He had built a saw and gristmill below the Getchell and Redington dam across the Kennebec, was doing with his son James a good business in a general store, and was captain of the local militia company.

The first diary item is dated April 1, 1796 and reads: “Hauled meetinghouse timber for Esq. Lithgow.”  He hauled more such timber on three following days. This is reference to the meetinghouse erected in Winslow on land given by Lithgow. It still stands there on Lithgow Street, strong and sturdy 175 years after its erection in 1796.

The town had already called Rev. Joshua Cushman as settled minister,  but until the fall of 1796 he had no church building in which to hold services. That accounts for several such items in the Stackpole diary as this one: “April 4, 1796. Mr. Cushman preached at Joseph Caley’s house.”

Did you know that 175 years ago on went hunting in the spring as well as in the fall. “April 1. Went to look for partridge, found none. April 6. Killed a partridge and gave it to Samuel.”  Samuel was another son, ten years older than James, Jr.

Ice went out of Ticonic Bay on April 17, 1796, and on the next day James Stackpole caulked his canoe and got ready to use it on the river. Canoes were the vehicles commonest for travel along the upper and middle Kennebec for many years later than 1796. In that year there was not a single four-wheeled carriage owned on either side of the river at Ticonic Falls. Later the diary has much to say about Dr. Appleton’s chaise’s cleB:r1.y, a status symbol and an indication of wealth.

On April 21, Stackpole started assembling his logs into what he called a raft. Later such a structure would he called a boom. It seems that logs did not go down the river from Waterville singularly as they did in later years, but in the bay below Ticonic Falls were tethered into rafts and booms, and in that fashion were guided down the stream.

Like most men of his time, James Stackpole consumed a lot of rum and he got most of it at his son’s store near the wharves in Waterville. “April 30, 1796. Got a gallon of rum for Pierce and a quart for myself. May 31. Got a gallon of rum and half  a gallon of brandy. July 5. Went to the Hook (Hallowell) and got for James’ store a bbl rum, a bbl brandy , a bbl of raisins, 4 J rolls of tobacco, and a bundle of goods. ”

I had long known about the Southwick potash kiln at Getchells Corner and had been told by the Skowhegan historian, Miss Louise Coburn, that early settlers of Skowhegan took their ashes down to that kiln. Now the Stackpole diary informs us, that as early as 1796 there was a potash kiln on the west side of the river at Ticonic Falls, six years before the town of Waterville was incorporated. That kiln was run by James Stackpole himself. His diary makes many references to it. On April 3, 1796, he hauled a load of ashes to his kiln, and in every year for the next fifteen the diary has several references to that kiln, indicating its enlargement, its repair, end where it got its ashes. Except for references to his wife and daughters making soap, Stackpole doesn’t say how he disposed of his potash.

We do know, however, something about the importance of potash at the turn into the nineteenth century. The wool industry of England then used vast quantities of soap for the frequent washings of wool before it reached the spinning wheel, and potash was the principal, indeed almost the only source of soap. So entire shiploads of potash left the ports of Boston and New York, and sometimes even Portland, for Liverpool and the British ports. Wholesale shippers in the American ports bought potash from the operators of kilns allover colonial Maine. The demand for potash made it possible for the early settlers to sell their very first crop, which was not oats or corn, but the ashes from the trees they burned to clear the land. Ashes sold to the potash kilns provided the first income from many a pioneer Maine farm.

Waterville’s main highway in 1796 was the Kennebec River. There were very few roads. The oldest road of any length was a crude path suitable only for big ho:'” wheeled carts, and very narrow, from Fort Western to Fort Halifax along the east side of the river. On the West side, a road led from Ticonic Falls to Fairfield Meetinghouse, now Fairfield Center. Another led to the tL~ new settlement at what is now Oakland Village, going via the McKechnie Mill on Western Ave. There was a bridle path, but as yet no road, to the farms in Sidney, along what we now call the West River Road. That road was not opened until after 1800. So it was the Kennebec that provided the main avenue for transportation especially of goods. And next week we shall continue this examination of the Stackpole diary with a glimpse of what the river meant to him and his business.

Year: 1971