Radio Script #1242

Little Talks on Common Things
May 25, 1980

Today I want to tell you about the Colby College land grant. Near the close of the 18th century and in the early years of the 19th, a number of academies and colleges were founded in Massachusetts, which then included Maine. The constitution of Massachusetts decreed that aid should be given by the states to those new institutions. But the Revolution had hit the Massachusetts treasury hard, and to make that financial situation even worse it was quickly followed by the Embargo Act and the War of 1812, nearly crippling Massachusetts trade.

While Massachusetts had no money to devote to aid to the new academies and colleges, it did have, in its District of Maine, an immense area of unsettled public lands. It became a common practice to grant to a new educational institution a township of land, usually a six mile square consisting of 36 square miles. In some cases the aided institution was expected to establish its school upon the land grant. In other instances, particularly in regard to schools in, the old part of Massachusetts, the Maine land was granted to help the school financially through the sale of lots and timber rights.

In 1813, largely through the efforts of Senator William King, who soon afterward would become Maine’s first governor, the Massachusetts legislature granted a charter to the Maine Literary and Theological Institute – the school that later became Colby College. At the same time, the state authorized the Commissioner for the Eastern Lands (meaning the lands in Maine) to designate a township within the state’s public lands in Maine to be awarded to the new institution. Two years later, in 1815, the Commissioner carried out that order. The delay was caused by the hardships and obligations or the, War of 1812.

When that war was ended in 1815, the Massachusetts authorities felt they could go ahead with the Maine land grants to schools. Earlier, in 1792, Maine’s first college, Bowdoin, had received a grant of’ two townships in the wilderness around Bangor. The Colby township was in the same general area. It was Township No. 3 on the west side of the Penobscot River, just above Old Town. It consisted of 29,674 acres, and was later divided into the two towns of Argyle and Alton. Colby was one of the institutions whose land was granted with the stipulation that the new college should be located on the land grant. But the place was so far into the wilderness that it seemed to the college authorities a very poor place to get students co come from the more settled areas of central and southern Maine, and not a very attractive place to induce new settlers. While the college trustees made valiant attempts to induce families to settle on the grant, they early became convinced that the best hope of income from the land was the sale of timber rights. So, very soon after receiving the grant, they persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to rescind the stipulation of placing the college there, and the legislature then granted the trustees the right to establish the college anyplace in Kennebec or Somerset counties.

Five towns in those counties then entered the competition for the new college. Franklin County had not then been organized, and Farmington was in Kennebec. That town launched hot contention for the prize. The Coburn family was determined that the site should be Bloomfield, now that part of Skowhegan on the west side of the Kennebec. Readfield and Winthrop were in the competition. It was the fifth town, Waterville, that won, largely because of the generosity of its two wealthiest citizens, Timothy Boutelle and Nathaniel Gilman. Those two men agreed to guarantee a Waterville contribution of $5,000 if the college trustees would establish the institution in Waterville.

So the trustees purchased a lot from Robert Hallowell Gardiner. grandson and principal heir of the wealthy Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, who headed the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase that took over the ancient Pilgrim grant, 15 miles each side of the Kennebec River from the Cobbossee to the falls at Solon. It was Lot 108 of the McKechnie survey of 1762 which had divided into lots all the land from the Augusta line on the west side of the river to the south line of Old Canaan (later Skowhegan).

The river frontage of the old McKechnie Lot 108 was where the college buildings were erected. The first was a frame house for the president in 1819. Three years later that was followed by the big brick building, always known as South College, and two years later by its companion North College. In 1835 between those two buildings was erected another brick building that contained classrooms and chapel. It was long called Recitation Hall. Until ten years before the Civil War those were the only buildings on what is still known as the Old Colby Campus.

During the last 90 years of Colby’s location on that old campus, from 1862 to 1952, people knew the college lot as that bit of land between the railroad and the river, a space containing only 30 acres. Originally it had been one of the conventional lots of the McKechnie survey, an eighth of a mile on the river and one mile back from it, bringing its western border just beyond the Messalonskee Stream.

From the very beginning its ownership of that lot, the college began to sell off pieces of it. Some of the earliest sales were to members of the faculty, who built down near what later became Chaplin Street and the site of the Maine Central Railroad Station. Larger pieces were sold west of Main Street, but until just before the Civil War the college still owned the height on Sanger Avenue, where it built an astronomical observatory. Meanwhile the college was deeply concerned with its Argyle lands on the Penobscot. The trustees knew that the sale of settlers’ lots would depend on access to the tract. In earlier times, a few daring settlers had come into the Maine wilderness without use of roads. It was lots bordering on rivers that sold most easily, and that proved true of the Argyle land on the Penobscot, although the college trustees made early plans for roads.

There were already three families in the area when the college grant was made. One or them was Thomas Pennock, who had already blazed a trail north and south to his small acreage. That was improved and widened into a main road through the tract five rods wide. On each side of it and parallel to it were four rod roads. Two four-rod roads were also laid out, running between the river and the western border of the tract.

The surveyor employed by the college was instructed to layout the township in 24 squares, 16 of them with 1200 acres each and 8 with 480 acres. Then, bordering on each side of the inside, central road, always called the Bennock Road, were laid out lots of 100 acres each, to be sold as rapidly as possible to settlers. Other parts of the tract were put up for sale in larger units for the value of the timber.

During the fifteen years from 1815 to 1830, the college got very little cash revenue for its Argyle land. It did manage to sell a half a dozen settlers’ lots on the Bennock Road, but it received in cash less than $500 for all of them. To make the sales at all, the college had to take mortgages at six percent. As the years went by, many of those mortgages had to be foreclosed. At one point, Timothy Boutelle, the college treasurer, personally took over $5,000 of mortgages. When he later suggested the trustees take these off his hands, because good reserve had come in, through sale of timber, the trustees refused, even though Boutelle offered to waive all interest payments, asking only for return of his $5,000. The reason given in the trustee records for the refusal is that they were not in the real estate business. The fact was that at that time, the entire college investment was in real estate. It took 45 years for the college to get clear of its Argyle lands. In 1860 the last of the remaining lots were sold to lumber interests. During that nearly half a century, when the college owned the land, it had actually received more money from the sale of timber rights than it did from the sale of lots. To secure and keep settlers, every new township in the Maine wilderness had to have 2 mills to, saw lumber and grind grain. So when it offered lots for sale, the college offered to give a 100 acre lot on the stream nea r the Pennock Road to any settler who would agree to erect a mill and operate the needed saws and grinding stones. They were not immediately successful probably because they were not so generous as were the proprietors of several other Maine townships. Nearly half a century earlier the proprietors of what became the town of Gray had at their own expense built a sawmill and gristmill, and given the lot with the mill on it to a man who agreed to run it for them for a period of five years. Much nearer to Argyle, the proprietors of the town of Brewer had done the same. To get anyone to take the risk of building a mill, buying the saws and grinding stones, and taking the risk of having enough patronage to pay off the debt, was just too much to expect, and it was a group of settlers who banded together that finally made possible an Argyle mill. The traders did sufficiently improve the Pennock Road so that in 1830 the U. S. government made it a mail route over which mail was delivered once a week from Bangor.

In the early 19th century, all proprietors of land in Maine were troubled by squatters. In what was the town of Windsor, part of the huge acreage owned by Robert Hallowell Gardiner, his attempt to remove squatters resulted in a fracas called the Malta War, in which one man was killed. The college trustees had the same kind of trouble, though less severe, on their Argyle land. It came not from illegal settlers, but from lumber thieves, who took off several thousand board feet before they were driven out. Only a few were prosecuted and the legal fees cost the college more than the damages it received.

In 1860 the college had left 2400 acres at Argyle. It was divided into 12 lots of 200 acres each and was sold in twelfth shares to five men, one of whom was George Wing, grandfather of the more famous George Wing of Auburn, long a Colby trustee. During the 45 years that the college held the land, it got about $25,000 for all its sales of land and timber, an average of about $550 a year. When the Civil War broke out, the college was out of land grant and had no other prospects of similar income, little as it had been. It turned to the State of Maine for help, and the 1861 legislature granted two half-townships north of Moosehead Lake, but not adjoining tracts. One was in Township 11, Range 16; the other in Township 6, Range 17, five townships southwest of the first. This land to this day has no organized settlements, only a few widely scattered dwellings.

The college hoped for rapid disposal of the land to lumber interests. It appointed as their agent Isaac Lane, who reported: “It is impossible to assess accurately the value of these lands until they are actually converted into money. Land in Maine is worth from nothing up to $300 an acre, and such land is valuable in proportion to its kind and spread of timber and its access, when cut. to mills and market. There are about 90 townships of such unsettled land, covering two million acres, in the state. So competition is great.”

As late as 1893 the college still had half of the land on its hands. Then the remainder was sold to one big lumber company for $1.40 an acre. Between 1861 and 1893 the college received $47,370 from that grant of the Maine legislature, more than twice what it got from its whole Argyle township between 1815 and 1860.

And that is the story of the experience of Colby College as owner of wild lands in the State of Maine.

Year: 1980