Radio Script #971

Little Talks on Common Things
April 29, 1973

As listeners to this program well know, I like now and then to give you some items from old almanacs. For more than 150 years the favorite almanac for Maine people has been the Maine Farmers Almanac, originally published at Hallowell, but now for more than a century at Augusta. Today I want to select a few items from that almanac for the year 1822, only two years after Maine had become a separate state.

In 1822 there was no such thing as standard time. Each community went by what it called sun time, though for convenience a number of small places would set their clocks by the time in the nearest large town. So people in Gorham and Windham had Portland time, Hallowell and Gardiner had Augusta time, Brewer and Old Town went by Bangor time. However that 1822 almanac says nothing about time as such. Its interest was in the tide, and tide for Portland was computed for every day of that year l822,and the difference in time necessary to determine the time of high and low tide on all other points of the Maine coast was given. To learn the times of the two high tides of July 1, 1822, for instance, at Bar Harbor, one had only to find in the almanac those tidal times for Portland, then add or subtract a given number of minutes, as indicated by the table.

There was reason why a Maine almanac should be concerned with tides. Even today exactly half of Maine’s sixteen counties front the ocean, and three others, Androscoggin, Kennebec and Penobscot have tide coming some distance up their major rivers. When most Maine business was done by boats, as it was in 1822, a lot of people were concerned about the tides.

At that time one of Maine’s largest counties was Lincoln, with the county seat then, as now, at Wiscasset. That town was so important that it was the only place in the state besides Portland where the U. S. Circuit Court convened, and it also had
regular sessions of the Maine Supreme Court.

In 1822 the Maine Literary and Theological Institution was so new that the Almanac did not mention it. The way it announced the college calendars for Bowdoin, Harvard and Dartmouth was not by the dates of each college’s three terms in the year, but rather by the dates of vacations. In all three of the listed colleges those vacation dates were nearly uniform. The long vacation was in the winter, not the summer. I have often told you that the principal reason for that practice was to allow the students to teach winter terms in the common schools and academies. Harvard’s long vacation was from the fourth Wednesday in December for seven weeks. The shorter vacations were three weeks from the third Wednesday in May and four weeks following Commencement, which was held late in August. Bowdoin and Dartmouth had only slightly different dates.

It is interesting that, in those days, students attended college through the hottest months of the year.

The Almanac for 1826 did note the existence of Waterville College. When that college was chartered anew by the Maine Legislature, the petition of the trustees asked not only that the name be changed from the Maine Literary and Theological Institution to the College at Waterville but also asked that, if they should so wish, the trustees might have authority to add to the title “the name of any gentleman who should donate the largest amount to the college.” It turned out that no early gift was deemed worthy of such recognition, and it was not until 1867, after Gardner Colby had coughed up $50,000 that the name was again changed from Waterville College to Colby College.

At any rate, in 1826, Waterville College held commencement the last Wednesday in August, followed by a vacation of four weeks. The fall term ran from the fourth Wednesday in September to the last Wednesday in December. Then came the long winter vacation of eight weeks. The spring term ran from the last Wednesday in February to the third Wednesday in May, and finally the summer term from late May until August commencement.

In all New England colleges at that time, the terms were designated fall, spring and summer. There was no winter term. Now note a curious point. Since the Colby fall term did not end until the last Wednesday in December, the last Wednesday frequently came after Christmas Day. Why didn’t the vacation include Christmas? The reason was that in 1822 Christmas was not a legal holiday. On Christmas Day all workmen were expected to be on the job, schools were in session, no stores, banks or post offices were closed, and in all colleges classes were held as usual. As late as 1870, a laborer in Boston was fired for refusing to work on Christmas Day.

In 1822 no Almanac was worth printing unless it contained postage rates. Bear in mind that 1822 was a quarter of a century before our nation had postage stamps, which didn’t appear until 1847. Postage for nearly half of the 19th century was paid by the receiver, not the sender of mail. The amount of postage was marked in handwriting on the outside fold of a letter – there were no envelopes – and the postmaster at the place where the addressee lived collected the postage, or at least was supposed to collect it before he handed the letter over. That was how the kindly, easy-going Abraham Lincoln got into trouble when he was the young postmaster at New Salem, Illinois. He let people have their mail without paying the postage. Hence, when his term ended, the 23 year old Lincoln had to borrow the money he owed the government for uncollected postage. The Fairfield, Maine, postmaster in the early years of that century had a much tougher reputation. He wouldn’t part with a piece of mail until he got the postage, setting a precedent that successors found it best to follow.

What were the postage rates in 1822? Let us note the exact wording: “For every single letter by land, if not over 30 miles, 6 cents; between 30 and 80 miles, 10 cents; between 80 and 150 miles, 12 cents; between 150 and 400 miles, 18 cents; over 400 miles 25 cents. For every letter containing more that one piece of paper, the rate is increased by the basic single sheet charge for each extra sheet.” Thus a three sheet letter from New Orleans to Maine would then cost 75 cents, or three times the basic 25 cent charge. Letters sent by ship and received at a post office for delivery cost 6 cents, regardless of their starting point. Thus a ship captain could hand to another captain in St. Petersburg a letter addressed to Boston, and pay much less than was charged for an overland letter from New Orleans to the same New England port.

The rates for newspapers was one cent apiece up to 100 miles, l~ cents if over 100 miles. Magazines and pamphlets were one cent up to 50 miles, l~ cents beteen 50 and 100 miles, and two cents if over 100 miles.

In 1822 Maine’s chief business was agriculture. The Almanac therefore had interesting sections on such matters as clover, harrowing, irrigation, and culture of the potato.

Distributed through the Almanac were items called miscellany. One in that 1822 issue was entitled “The Pirate.” This is what it said: “One of the most remarkable shipwrecks off Cape Cod occurred in 1717, when the Whilo, carrying 23 guns and 130 men, commanded by Samuel Bellamy, a noted pirate, sank off Wellfleet. All but two men perished. Captain Cyrus Southback was sent to search for survivors and found 102 bodies washed up on the shore. He found no one alive, though later two seamen claiming to be from the Whilo showed up in Boston. Previously some of Bellamy’s crew had been arrested aboard one of his captured ships, which had blown into Cape Cod Harbor. Of that band, sixteen were tried, convicted and hanged in Boston. But the pirate himself was lost with the Whilo in that 1717 gale.”

Just as newspapers do today, the old Almanac had paragraphs we now call fillers. Here is an especially good one from the Maine Farmers Almanac of 1822: “A good wife should be like the town clock, keep time with regularity, but she should not speak as loud as the clock so that the whole town could hear her. She should be like an echo, speak when she is spoken to, but unlike the echo she should not have the last word. She should be like a turtle and keep within her own house, but not like a turtle by carrying all she has on her back.”

Do I need to remind you that 1822 was a long, long time before the days of Women’s Lib?

Chancing to look at the Waterville city directory of 80 years ago, I was interested to note where certain prominent people lived in 1892. On the Mountain Farm at the upper end of Main Street, near the present reservoir, lived lawyer and race horse breeder, Appleton Webb. That is the fine, scenic place now owned by Robert Fairburn, Chairman of Keyes Fibre. At 86 Silver Street, the site of the present State Police Academy, lived Henry Ware, while George Ware lived at 12 Elm Street. In 1892 the founder of the Hathaway Shirt Co. was still living near his factory at 9 Appleton Street. Charles Johnson, who would later be a U. S. Senator and federal judge, lived at 37 Pleasant Street, and in the big house at 101 Silver Street, present convent home of a Catholic sisterhood, was Nathaniel Meader. Sarah Lang, the local genealogist, who later had a fine home on Pleasant Street, then resided at 22 Sherwin Street. In the 1892 directory were the names of six Redingtons living respectively on Main, Park, Silver and Sherwin streets. Francis Heath, the Benton Fal manufacturer, was then living at 60 Front Street, a fine historic residence still in the Heath family, the present residence of Mrs. Emily Heath Hall. Horace Purinton the contractor was at 42 Pleasant Street, and George K. Boutelle lived in the old Keely residence on College Avenue. Prof. Julian Taylor had already moved into his new house next to the railroad tracks on College Avenue, and his older colleague, Samuel K. Smith, was farther up the avenue at the corner of Abbott Street. On that part of Winter Street where I now live, between Elm and Pleasant, there were in 1892 Llewellyn Morrill, Dr. George Howard, Miss Lizzie Blaisdell, Carroll Dunham, Etta Clark and Charles Barney.

Year: 1973