Radio Script #1055

Little Talks on Common Things
June 8, 1975

This broadcast closes the 27th consecutive season of Little Talks. As usual, repeats of selected earlier broadcasts will go on the air during the summer, and in September we plan to begin our 28th year of this long-run program. This broadcast is Number 1055. Yes, we have indeed had 55 broadcasts since the 1000th went on the air in February, 1974. It is fitting that this last broadcast of our 1974-75 season should be concluded with a Maine event that occurred 200 years ago, in 1775. Next Thursday, June 12, there will be fittingly celebrated on its exact 200th anniversary, the first naval engagement of the American Revolution. The place was at sea just off Machias, and it is that Maine town that holds next Thursday’s celebration.

So I want to tell you today what happened down at Machias 200 years ago. Soon after news of the fighting at Lexington and Concord reached the little maritime settlement at Machias, a band of eager patriots organized a unit of the Sons of Liberty. Toward the end of May they set up a Liberty Tree in the Village, after the custom that had started in Boston. Gathering around the tree, most of the inhabitants made solemn pledges to resist the oppression from England. Then two British vessels under cover of an armed cutter cast anchor in the harbor off Machias. They had come to get lumber, boards, pickets and planks to be used to build barracks for the King’s troops assembling to bring Boston to submission.

The armed cutter, with four stationary guns and 16 swivels, was the Margaretta, commanded by an Irishman named Moor.
Sighting the Liberty Tree, Capt. Moor shouted, “That pole must come down.” The people, led by John O’Brien, just as testy an Irishman as was Moor, refused to take down the symbol of liberty.

Anxious to maintain the peace. merchant Ichabod Jones persuaded Capt. Moor to take no action until the people could hold a town meeting and consider their situation. The meeting was held, but instead of discussing the matter of the Liberty Pole, the only matter considered was how to repel any attack Moor might make. They sent a messenger some twenty miles to Pleasant River to urge the inhabitants there to come to Machias and join in its defense.

Knowing it was the custom of all ship captains, when anchored near a port, to have the officers attend church on Sunday, the Machias resisters decided to take advantage of that attendance. When the service ended, they proposed to seize Capt. Moor as he left the church. John O’Brien claimed the privilege of personally making the arrest.

That Sunday was a warm day and the windows were open in the church. In the middle of the service Moor was startled to see through an open window, men crossing the river on logs, apparently with guns in their hands. They were indeed men coming in from neighbor settlements to help defend Machias. The Capt. sprang from his bench, leaped across the intervening seats, jumped out of the window, and ran to his boat. By the time the patriots had seized their guns and started in pursuit, Moor was already on the water rowing briskly to his ship. In a short time, the Magaretta spread her sails and was heading down the river.

Late Sunday afternoon about 60 men met at O’Brien Brook. When discussion was getting nowhere, Reuben Foster stepped across the Brook and as if he were Caesar crossing the Rubicon, invited all to join him who favored taking Capt. Moor and his Margaretta, as well as the two cargo ships. A large majority responded.

Hunting ammunition, the planners found only a few charges of powder and ball and twenty fowling pieces, 13 pitchforks. and a dozen axes. O’Brien’s crew that planned to board the Margaretta had only three rounds of ammunition. They intended to push O’Brien’s sloop alongside the Margaretta and board her in true battle fashion, or perhaps more accurately, pirate fashion.

As the O’Brien sloop approached the British cutter, Capt. Moor shouted that, if she did not haul to, but came nearer, he would open fire. O’Brien demanded that Moor surrender. Instead of either surrendering or opening fire, Moor maneuvered the cutter into Holmes Bay, and headed out to sea to escape the O’Brien sloop, but O’Brien was the better sailor. Moor opened fire on the sloop. O’Brien’s crew returned the fire with determination.

Soon the two vessels came together. There followed musket fire at close range, and Capt. Moor began to throw hand grenades. A lucky shot from a musket on the sloop hit Moor, just as the ship’s crew swarmed aboard the Margaretta. The mortal wounding of their captain threw the Margaretta crew into disorder, and O’Brien took over the cutter without further resistance. Of the Machias resisters three men were killed and several were severely wounded. Moor was taken ashore at Machias Village and given careful attention, but he died the next day.

When Capt. Moor came to Machias he had on board, as passengers, two young ladies from Boston – neither they nor the Captain suspected any such reception as he got. The British Govt, acting through General Gage in Boston, declared the seizure of the Margaretta an act of piracy, but the aroused people of New England viewed it, as we now do in historical retrospect, as one of the opening incidents of the war that won American independence.

So this week, on the two hundredth anniversary of the seizure of the British armed cutter Margaretta, we can certainly say that off the Maine coast, and between Maine colonists and a British naval captain, there occurred soon after Lexington and Concord and a few days before the Battle of Bunker Hill, the first naval engagement of the American Revolution.

Now it seems appropriate that we close this broadcast with items taken from the Waterville Mail in the years just after the close of the Civil War.

For the first time, on May 30, 1867, Waterville celebrated Memorial Day, with appropriate exercises on the common. In charge was the town’s highest ranking Union officer, Gen. Isaac Bangs.

On May 4, 1869, the Mail announced the organization of an institution still in existence today, and one of which all local citizens are proud – the Waterville Savings Bank.

That fall of 1869 saw the opening of the Methodist Meetinghouse at the corner of Center and Pleasant Streets. The builder was Anthony Douglass of Norridgewock, who in the same season built a house for John Ware an the east side of Silver Street, at the corner of Redington, also a Catholic rectory on the Plains, and a double house at the corner of College and Getchell Street, that later became Mary Low Hall, a girls’ dormitory for Colby, and has now been converted into the business premises of Robert Drapeau.

On December 30, 1869, a man who was to achieve outstanding prominence in Maine came to Waterville. The Baptist Church ordained as its pastor the Rev. Henry Burrage. He left after three years to become editor of the Baptist weekly, Zion’s Advocate. Always interested in Maine history he proceeded to write several books, among which were “Beginnings of Colonial Maine”, “The Northeast Boundary Dispute”, and “History of Maine Baptists”. He was appointed Maine’s first official state historian.

Today his daughters, Mildred and Madeleine Burrage live in the beautiful Burrage home at Wiscasset and maintain active interest, despite advanced age, in Maine’s historic heritage.

As the new decade opened, Colby’s Memorial Hall was completed, and the Mail announced its dedication at the August commencement in 1871.

July, 1872, saw start of construction of Waterville’s first Catholic church. The Mail said “The Catholics have broken ground for their new church at the corner of Elm and Winter Streets. The old Sanger house, built early in the century by Rev. Sylvanus Cobb, Waterville’s first Universalist minister, has been moved to the south line of the lot and set back about six feet. The front of the church will be in line with the house. It will be a Gothic structure 50 x 120 feet with 26 foot posts, and will have a spire 120 feet high. It will seat 600 persons. The outside will be of brick with heavy buttresses. Altogether it will be an ornament to the street.”

On Dec. 12, 1872, the Mail announced the death of the Waterville pioneer, Jediah Morrill, who had reached the age of 95. The account said that, up to his 90th year, Morrill could beat any hired man mowing with a scythe. Until a week before his death he had never been confined to bed by illness. Morrill was a leading member of the Universalist Church, to which he gave $3,000 for a permanent fund. He was an original director of Waterville’s first railroad, the Androscoggin and Kennebec.

In 1872 also the Mail announced the opening of another building at Colby, Coburn Hall. That was the building, where for nearly half a century, beginning in 1903, the beloved Prof. Webster Chester would teach biology.

Among the many interests of Henry Burrage, whom we mentioned a few minutes ago, was libraries. He supplied the Mail, in April, 1873, with a report of the Waterville Library Association. It had started in 1871 with the formation of what was called the Waterville Book Club, with 30 members each paying dues of $3 a year. In the first year it bought 51 new volumes. In 1873 it was incorporated. In this 1873 account the Mail said, “This is a subscription library. Waterville is not yet ready for a free public library, but this association may prepare the way for it.” The Mail was right. That is just what the Association did, and it was members of that body, especially ladies, who persuaded Andrew Carnegie to give Waterville a building for a new free library, 30 years after Henry Burrage sent his report to the Waterville Mail.

Did you know that, for a time, the MCRR ran up the east side of the Kennebec from Winslow to Benton. That happened for only a short time in 1873, and the cause was the burning of the RR bridge across the Kennebec between Winslow and Waterville. Passengers for Skowhegan were transferred at a temporary open air station called “Waterville Bridge”, and were transported by team across the highway bridge to the Waterville station.

On Sept. 19, 1873 ground was broken for the first Lockwood Mill.

By September, 1874, the old wooden, covered railroad bridge had been replaced by an iron one, and the temporary track up the east side from Benton to Winslow was taken up.

Now for the last item of this broadcast.

In 1873 the area on the east side of Elm Street between Temple and Spring was a large vacant space known as Gilman Field. But late in that year it was divided into house lots, and the first residence built on it was by William Dow. That was the house later occupied by Frank Hubbard, Treasurer of Colby College.

Next week will begin the summer series of selected repeats.

Year: 1975