Radio Script #1092

Little Talks on Common Things
September 19, 1976

This first broadcast of our 29th season begins as we near the last quarter of our nation’s bicentennial year. The Central Maine communities have observed it appropriately. On July 5, Waterville put on one of the largest and best parades the city has ever seen. The local Bicentennial Commission, under the leadership of Rene Plante has conducted other events, and the list is not yet complete. Before the year ends there will be several more significant observances. The major goal of the Commission is restoration of the City Opera House, one of the few fine early 20th century opera houses still left in the nation.

The year has seen locally two important publications. The Waterville Historical Society put out a 48 page volume entitled, “Old Waterville.” It contains nearly 200 pictures of old-time local scenes. The cover shows a fireman’s muster of the 1850s, with all the firemen wearing tall silk hats. Historic objects now gone that are shown in this volume include the old hay scales in Castonquay Square, the two covered bridges across the Kennebec, the Wiliiams House and the nearby building where was committed Waterville’s first murder, the Phoenix Block, our first large business structure, a circus parade with ten elephants, the first of three Elmwood Hotels, the old campus of Colby College when it had only three buildings; and the old East Meetinghouse on the common.

Perhaps rarest of all the photos shows the depot of the Somerset and Kennebec R.R. at the foot of Temple Street. It was abandoned soon after the railroads in Waterville merged to form the Maine Central in 1870. That caused the building of the large station opposite the old Colby campus, torn down only a few years ago.

When the photo of the station at the foot of Temple Street was taken, the building was the second railroad depot to be put up in Waterville. The first had been the station of the Androscoggin and Kennebec R.R. in 1849. It stood near the junction of Main and Pleasant Streets. It was then the terminus of a wide gauge road 5 ft. 6 in., which a few years later was extended on to Bangor as the Penobscot and Kennebec. It came to Waterville via Lewiston, Winthrop and Belgrade.

In 1855 another railroad of narrower gauge, 4 ft. 8 in., came to Waterville from Augusta. The previous year a line called Portland and Kennebec had reached Augusta, and enterprising promoters secured a charter to extend it to Skowhegan, calling it the Somerset and Kennebec. It passed through Waterville, crossing the tracks of the Penobscot and Kennebec near the Waterville-Fairfield line. Of course the S. & K. road needed their own station in Waterville, and they built it on Front Street at the foot of Temple.

In 1870, the four railroads – Androscoggin and Kennebec, Penobscot and Kennebec, Portland and Kennebec, and Somerset and Kennebec merged to become the nucleus of what gradually became the Maine Central system. The two different gauges made transportation awkward, and in 1874, the wider road was narrowed to that of the other, as 4 ft. 8 in. became standard gauge for all American railroads.

Another picture shows the last steamboat to ply the Kennebec between Waterville and Augusta, the “City of Waterville” built in 1890 at the instigation of William T. Haines, the local attorney who later became Governor of Maine.

People who like horse racing will be glad to see a picture of Waterville’s world champion trotter, Nelson, not hitched to a racing sulky, but to a top buggy in which is seated his owner Hod Nelson. That horse held the world’s record for trotting on a mile track for several years at the turn of the century.

Another publication recognizing the Bicentennial is “Waterville in 1976” produced by a committee of the local Bicentennial Commission. Recognizing that the Historical Society had presented in its “Old Waterville” a splendid representation of Waterville’s past, the Bicentennial Book Committee decided to concentrate on Waterville today, fully cognizant of the fact that 25 years from now that book, too, will be an historical item.

While “Old Waterville” contains only pictures with appropriate legends identifying them, “Waterville Today,” besides its many illustrations, contains a dozen articles on various phases of Waterville life in the Bicentennial year. Some of the topics covered are municipal services, business and industry, education, religion, recreation, medicine, law, militia, housing, and cultural facilities. A feature is an article by two young people called “Growing up in Waterville.”

The book contains a complete list of organizations with their present heads, a list of all churches and their pastors, and a list of the city’s public and private schools.

Both of these books, “Old Waterville” and “Waterville in 1976” are on sale at various stores in the city. Every Waterville home ought to have both books.

It happens that 1976 is not only the 200th year of our republic. It is also the 100th anniversary of the organization of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, which that church will celebrate before the end of the year. It also marks the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Waterville Universalist Church, and was appropriately celebrated last spring. A third Waterville church has an anniversary this year, that will be appropriately recognized in December. That is the First Baptist Church. It celebrated 150 years of organization eight years ago in 1968, and this year it recognizes the 150th year that worship has been conducted in its building at the corner of Elm and Park Streets. That building is not only Waterville’s oldest church since the demolishing of the old East Meetinghouse on Front Street, the First Baptist Church is Waterville’s oldest still standing public building. It was built in 1826 at a cost of less than $4, 000.

Besides publication of “Old Waterville”, the Waterville Historical Society has seen another significant event in this Bicentennial year. Through the generosity of Reginald Laverdiere, the entire Laverdiere family, and Laverdiere Enterprises, now Maine’s largest chain of drug stores, the Society has, in a new annex to the Redington Museum, an authentic 19th century drug store, completely fitted with items collected during a quarter of a century from allover the nation by Reginald Laverdiere. Already a museum whose excellence has been widely recognized, the Redington Museum, with this notable addition has become indeed unique. Under the leadership of its new president, Waterville’s former mayor, Cyril Joly, Jr., the Waterville Historical Society is a very lively organization. It continually welcomes new members. It is not a secret society or a restricted group. Anyone can become a member by applying to the Treasurer, George F. Terry, III, at the Terry Cosgrove, Worthen Insurance offices and paying to him the modest dues.

In the library at the Redington Museum is a rapidly growing collection of manuscripts dealing with the Waterville vicinity. There are diaries, account books, letters, wills, deeds, and other items in abundance. It has become a storehouse of information on Waterville of long ago.

One item that has recently come to light is the auditor’s report for the town of Waterville in 1856, a hundred and twenty years ago. Finances were decidedly modest compared with today. During that year, five years before the Civil War broke out the Waterville treasurer took in $16,865, and paid out $15,604. That looked good until one examined more closely. $3,220 of the surplus, which included a balance from the previous year, had been used to pay previous debts, leaving in the town treasury only $41.

There were still some debts to be paid. Outstanding town orders amounted to $1,546. The firm of G. H. and H. Pressey held contracts both for repair of highways and support of the poor, and they had an unpaid claim of $1,500. Due to the several districts was $959. Dr. Nathaniel Boutelle had a claim for $395 for his services in small pox cases, and the Misses Moor were owed $100 for seven weeks use of a house as a pest house during the small pox epidemic. That epidemic caused a wave of vaccinations for which the town still owed $90. However those debts could be paid if the town could only collect back taxes of nearly $6,000, and $46 owed it by the town of Rome.

Some of the expense items for 1856 are interesting. It cost $575 to put in sidewalks, $385 for a night watch on the streets, $350 for setting out trees on the common, $22 for fencing the town lot at West Village (now Oakland), $50 to the town’s liquor agent, $25 for ringing bells in east and west villages. East Village was the present heart of the Waterville business section then called Ticonic Falls. Total amount spent to support all Waterville schools in 1856 was $2,830. The town auditors were Joseph Percival, William Dyer and Joseph Hutchins.

A recent acquisition at the Redington Museum is a catalogue of the Kennebec Boat and Canoe Company in 1914, a gift of Doane Eaton of Skowhegan and Cornville, an avid collector of historical items.

Older citizens will remember the factory of the Kennebec Boat and Canoe Company near the railroad station on Chaplin Street. The building still stands, and since the demise of the Canoe company has had several other occupants. By 1914 the company had built up such a business that its canoes were sold allover the eastern United States. The last pages of the catalogue are filled with testimonials from satisfied buyers in all the New England states, New York and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin, the Carolinas and Florida, and as far away as Houston, Texas.

The catalogue contains a photo of the big building on Chaplin Street, and the caption says: “Kennebec Boat and Canoe Company’s factory, Waterville, Maine. The machinery used for building our boats and canoes is located in this building of 20,000 square feet. The bulk of our big stock of manufactured canoes is stored in large warehouses in different parts of the city, so that in the event of fire in any section of the city only a part of our supply will be endangered.”

The company offered a dozen varieties of canoe priced from $30 to $60. Special mention was made of their Kineo 17 foot canoe that sold for $35. The ad said: “This is one of the strongest canoes we make, capable of carrying a great deal of weight, and goes through rough water with safety. It is also well adapted to use on small streams. For the pleasure of cottage owners on lake shores we do not know of any canoe that will give greater satisfaction.”

Unique was the Kennebec Sailing Canoe. The reader was told: “Sailing a canoe is a distinct art that becomes more popular every year. The sailing outfit of our canoes includes complete sail and mast, boom, step jams, and sail ropes. The craft has a set of lee boards, so fastened to an arm across the canoe that, if an obstruction is encountered, the boards will sway upward like the pendulum of a clock.”

While most of those Waterville canoes had names connected with Maine, one recognized a famous canoeing stream in Massachusetts. Persons of my age remember Norumbega Park on the Charles River, where on a summer Sunday you could see as many as a hundred canoes come in and out of the park landing. Most of those canoes were called the Charles River model made in Waterville, Maine.

Of course the company made and distributed all sorts of boat and canoe accessories: oars and paddles, row locks, seats and cushions, back rests, and monograms for oars and paddles. Canoes often had to be carried around falls. For that purpose the Kennebec Company sold a carrying yoke for $2.50.

And with that reminder that yokes were once used by humans as well as by oxen, we say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1976