Radio Script #1124

Little Talks on Common Things
May 1, 1977

From our schooldays, most of us remember the names of a few persons associated with the first two English colonies in the New World. We all have heard of Miles Standish, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of the Plymouth colony, and very familiar are the names of John Smith and the Indian girl Pocahontas of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia.

John Smith, like Miles Standish was a captain, but while Standish was a military commander, Smith was a competent and highly respected sea captain. After a few years at Jamestown, he returned to England, from whose ports he infrequently made several voyages, not only to the Jamestown colony, but to hitherto unexplored parts of the American coast farther north. Like many another explorer, he kept a record of his voyages, and in one he made in 1614, he set down the first recorded description of New England. This is what John Smith wrote: “In the month of April, 1614, with two ships from London, I arrived in New England, a part of America, at the Isle of Monhegan. Our plan was to take whales and attempt to find a mine of gold and copper. If that failed, we would turn to fish and furs.

“We saw many whales and spent some time in chasing them, but could not kill any. Nor did we find any gold. Fish and furs thus became our concern, but by the middle of June the fishing failed, but during August we took some and dried about 4000 fish. Ranging the coast in a small boat, we got from the savages 1000 beaver skins, 100 martens and nearly 100 otters.

“From 30 to 45° north latitude, His Majesty has granted his letters patent to the London Plantation (by that, Smith was designating the Jamestown Colony). Southward is the part discovered by Sir Walter Raleigh, and Northward by a few degrees is the River Sagadahoc, where was planted a short-lived Colony by Sir John Popham, Lord Chief Justice of England. There is also a plantation of Bartholemew Groswold on Elizabeth Isle and another by Captain Weymouth at Pemaquid.

“Of the 2000 miles of coast between Virginia and the Sagadahoc (that is, the mouth of the Kennebec) most is unknown and uninhabited. The part we call New England is between the 41st and the 45th parallels, but I will write only of some 75 leagues between Cape Cod and Penobscot, within the bounds of which I have seen at least 40 habitations and have sounded 25 good harbors. I have seen more than 200 islands covered with good timber.

“The principal habitation where we went ashore was Penobscot. Southward along the coast and up the rivers we found Mecadacut, Segocket, Pemaquid, Muscongus, Kennebec, Sagadahoc, and Androscoggin.

“From Penobscot to Sagadahoc the coast is mountainous, and there are islands of huge rocks. Between Sagadahoc and Sowocutuck there are only two sandy bays, but between these and Cape Cod there are many.

“The Bay of Penobscot extends both East-West and North-South more than ten leagues. The river runs far up into the land and is inhabited by many natives. On the east side of the bay are the Tarratines. Up the Sagadahoc are the Androscoggins,
the Kennebecs and other tribes at whose villages we saw cornfields.

“Westward of the Sagadahoc is Casco Bay, full of many great isles. Sowocutuck is next on the edge of a long sandy strip (this certainly refers to Old Orchard beach). All the coast from Penobscot to Sowocutuck is nothing but high, craggy cliffs. It is a country both to delight and to affright a person.

“Westward still are Aggamenticus and Piscataqua, both with good harbors (this of course. refers to York and Portsmouth). Beyond, jutting into the sea is the fair headland of Tragabigzanda (Cape Ann), then the country of the Massachusetts natives, which is the paradise of these parts. Then you come to Accomack (Plymouth) and at last to Cape Cod.

“Fish are very plentiful. A little boy with a single hook and line, can take in half an hour from the ship’s stern as many cunners and pollock as ten persons can eat in a day. There is scarce a place along the whole coast of New England where cod, halibut and mackerel do not abound, and every river is full of salmon and sturgeon.”

Now let us have a bit about colonial education in Maine. This information comes from an address read before the Maine Historical Society in 1878 by James T. Champlin, then President of Colby College.

In 1691, when the charter of William and Mary gave to Massachusetts all the territory that is now Maine, there were about 8000 inhabitants in the entire district. A hundred years later, near the end of the 18th century, there were 100,000.

Until 1800, there was almost no education in Maine except the short-termed and woefully irregular common schools. But the District had at least 100 men, mostly ministers, who had been educated at Harvard. Besides the ministers there were at least a score of educated lawyers pleading cases in the Maine courts.

Since 1647, under Massachusetts law, each town under its jurisdiction that had as many as 50 families was required to employ a teacher of reading and writing; and every town with 100 families had to set up a grammar school- that is, some instruction beyond the common school level. But Maine had before the Revolution few communities with as many as a hundred families, and even in those few the law was more often ignored than it was obeyed. Enforcement by authorities in far away Boston was by no means easy, and most towns obligated to have grammar schools continued to have none until toward the end of the 18th century. By 1800 there were 16 incorporated towns in Maine, yet only seven had made any attempt to start a grammar school.

Maine schools before 1800 were small, were in service only a few weeks in the year, and many teachers were woefully incompetent. For most Maine boys who secured any education beyond the common school, Phillips Academy at Exeter, N.H. offered the best opportunity, but few Maine families could afford to send their boys there. In fact the Maine youth at Exeter in the early 1800’s were largely sons of merchants and shipowners of Portland and other ports.

Movement for Maine education beyond the common school began at about the same time in two communities some distance apart, Berwick and Hallowell, where academies were chartered in 1791. What in early colonial days had been called the grammar school had, all over Massachusetts by 1790, taken the name of the academy.

The territory of the District of Maine was so large, much larger than Massachusetts proper, that a few academies, however centrally located by population, could not possibly serve the entire district. So a movement was started and rapidly gained strength to start academies allover the area. The State of Massachusetts had little money, but it had plenty of unoccupied land, especially in the District of Maine. To encourage the founding of an academy, the state would grant to the new school’s trustees one or more townships of Maine land. Such grants were made to many new academies in Massachusetts proper, but it is the grants to found Maine academies that interests us on this broadcast.

Between 1791 and 1820, when Maine became a separate state, 25 academies were founded in Maine, each receiving a grant of land, the sale of which, or even the sale of timber rights on it, provided funds in lieu of endowment. After Berwick and Hallowell in 1791, came Fryeburg and Washington Academies in 1794, Lincoln Academy and Newcastle in 1801; Blue Hill, Hampden and Gorham in 1803; Hebron in 1804; Bath in 1805; Farmington and Bloomfield in 1807; Warren, Belfast, Wiscasset, Bridgton and Limerick in 1808; Monmouth in 1809; Saco in 1811; North Yarmouth in 1818; Cony and China in 1818.

Two early Maine academies were for girls: Bath Female Academy and Cony Female Academy at Augusta. The others at first did not admit girls, but many were enrolling them by the middle of the century.

In 1820 Maine had two theological schools: Bangor Theological Seminary, founded by the Congregationalists, and the Maine Literary and Theological Institute at Waterville, started by the Baptists. The latter soon abandoned its theological course and became a liberal arts college with its name later changed to Colby.

In 1820 Maine had no medical school and no law school.

Books, pamphlets and newspapers published in Maine during the first quarter of the 19th century bear witness to the public interest in education. The press, as everywhere else, was a promoter of knowledge. A printing office was first opened in Falmouth (now Portland) in 1784, and the next year saw the first issue. of Portland’s first newspaper, the Falmouth Gazette. Its printer, Benjamin Titcomb, was one of the original incorporators of Colby College.

Rapidly after 1785 presses appeared in Brunswick, Newcastle, Wiscasset, Buxton, Bath and Hallowell, as well as in towns nearer Portland. From the press of Thomas Waite in Portland. there was issued in 1807, for the use of lawyers and students of law, an edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries.

At Hallowell, Ezekiel Goodale and other printers brought out, between 1800 and 1820, more textbooks for the schools than did any other town in all Massachusetts except Boston. Some of those Hallowell printed schoolbooks are in the splendid collection of old school texts at the Redington Museum of the Waterville Historical Society.

We conclude this broadcast with reference to a distinguished Waterville family.

One of Winslow’s early and most prolific families was the Drummonds. John, Clark and Charles Drummond all had homes on the Augusta Road between Fort Halifax and the Vassalboro line before 1800. Another Clark Drummond, son of John, was the father of the most famous of the Winslow Drummonds, Judge Josiah Drummond, in the latter part of the 19th century Maine’s most prominent Mason.

Josiah was born in Winslow in 1827. His father, Clark, was six times elected a selectman of Winslow. His grandfather, John, operated one of Winslow’s early gristmills. A brother of Josiah was Everett Drummond, who as head of the Waterville Savings Bank was succeeded in that position by his son Bert Drummond, well known to persons of my generation in Waterville.

Neighbors of the three Drummonds on the Augusta Road in Winslow in the early 1800’s were the families of Nathan Taylor, Mordecai Blackwell, John Folger, Joseph Wheelwright, David Hutchins and Daniel Hayden.

Year: 1977