Radio Script #1252

Little Talks on Common Things
November 9, 1980

Over the years this program has made frequent mention of Somerset County’s county seat, Skowhegan. We have paid too little attention to the neighboring town of Madison, and today we intend to redress that neglect. The first inhabitants of what is now that Kennebec River community were of course American Indians. They were a branch of the Abnaki nation that extended across Maine from the Piscataqua to the St. Croix. Once the larger tribal units had the name Canibas or Kennebecs, divided into sub-tribes all along the river from Merrymeeting Bay to Moosehead Lake. One of the sub-tribes had the name Norridgewock, and their principal village was at Old Point, between what are now the villages of Norridgewock and Madison.

While their first contact with white men was probably with a few French voyageurs de bois, the fur traders who penetrated the region early in the 17th century, the first recorded such contact was the coming of the Jesuit missionary, Father Druillettes in 1646, who for several years lived with the Indians at Old Point, Christianized them, and built a chapel. It is understood that, by the time of Father Druillettes arrival, the Norridgewock Indians had reached an advanced stage of culture. They were no longer wandering nomads living entirely by hunting and fishing. While they still went in group parties to hunt and fish – going to several camp sites down the river – especially for the spring runs of salmon and shad – those Indians were already agriculturists, settled down on permanent sites where they planted, tended and harvested their corn fields. The earliest extant writings about Old Point all mention the large corn fields cultivated at the place.

In 1693, the Jesuit priest at Old Point was another Frenchman, Father Rasle. Although like Druillettes, he was sent out from Jesuit headquarters in Quebec, he had been born in France, and made regular reports to the Jesuit Superior in Paris.

Connection between both religious and political headquarters in Quebec and the Indians at Norridgewock was made by the reverse route later taken by Benedict Arnold in 1775 – namely up the Chaudiere from the St. Lawrence to its source at Lake Megantic; over the Height of Land to the headwaters of the Dead River, then down the Kennebec to Old Point.

From the start of King Philip’s War in 1676, English settlers on the lower Kennebec were constantly harrassed by Indian raids, often led by French soldiers. Old Point, especially after the arrival of Father Rasle, became so often the rendezvous for staging those raids that the English came to look upon Rasle as more a political French agitator than as a Christian priest. So there developed a British determination to get rid of Rasle. Three attempts to capture the priest failed. Warned in time, he fled to the forest, only to return as soon as the British raiders had left. Finally in 1724, the Massachusetts Bay government ordered Captain Moulton of Falmouth (now Portland) to lead 200 men in an early autumn attack on the Old Point Indian village. Many of the inhabitants were killed, including Father Rasle himself. A few escaped to Canada. The invaders burned the buildings, most of which were more substantial structures than the conventional Indian wigwams as depicted in fiction. The Indian departure was permanent and Old Point was never rebuilt.

One reason why the Norridgewocks chose Old Point for their village, long before the white man came, was the existence there of a spring which the Indians considered to have medicinal value, much as Americans came later to value such springs as Saratoga and Poland Springs. Norridgewock Falls, the first steep descent of the Kennebec north of the falls at Skowhegan became a natural place of settlement for those who would take advantage of water power, and there grew up the village of Madison on the east side, while on the opposite west bank developed the smaller village of Anson. The original name of the place was Barnardtown, but when it was incorporated in 1804 it took the name of the fourth President
of the U.S., James Madison. The place had been near the northern limit of the Kennebec Purchase in 1749, when a group of Boston merchants led by Sylvester Gardiner, gained possession of 15 miles on each side of the river from Merrymeeting Bay to Solon. Having disposed of most of this land by 1790. the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase were eager to get rid of the northern section, and they made very generous offers to settlers. Nine families accepted, whose heads were all veterans of the Revolution.

Madison’s leading pioneer was Benjamin Weston, who had come to Old Canaan (now Skowhegan) in 1772. Fourteen years later, in 1786, he came to Norridgewock Falls, and a short distance above the falls built a cabin, which not long afterward he replaced with a spacious frame residence that became known as the Weston mansion. A few scattered settlers had come to the region even before the Revolution. One had built a cabin at Old Point as early as 1773, but the land near Norridgewock Falls further up the river became more attractive to those who followed him.

The island in the river between Madison and Anson became especially useful for commercial purposes. On it was the community’s first mill as well as its first general store. Soon the place boasted a tannery. Early in the 19th century a stage line was opened from Augusta to North Anson. The route passed through Belgrade, Waterville and Norridgewock and had change of horses at Madison. By 1840, it was a Concord stage drawn by four horses, and it continued operation until the opening of the Somerset R.R. from Oakland to Bingham in 1875.

The railroad caused rapid deyelopment of Madison. After the Civil War Madison’s population had steadily declined until the railroad caused a revival that started a population increase which continued into the 20th century.

This program has frequently pointed out that it was the Civil War that changed American industry from small mills to large factories. The demand for cloth to uniform the troops caused big mills to spring up, and after the war they proliferated rapidly.

That was true of Madison. In 1881 came its first mill to employ more than a dozen workers – a woolen factory. By 1887 the town had two woolen mills. The larger the Indian Spring Woolen Co., employed 100 men and women. The next year, 1888, saw the formation of the Manufacturing Investment Co. for the purpose of reducing wood to pulp by a new process. That was the beginning of Madison as a paper town. In 1899 the mill was taken over by the Great Northern Paper Co., which installed machines to produce newsprint.

At first the mill used only long logs, piled high on the river bank. They were sawed into two-foot lengths, barked, then worked into blocks an inch thick. Quite different from the chips afterwards used. The blocks were fed piece by piece into the crude grinders. There were two coal burning boilers. The coal piled in the yard was brought by cable in small cars, over a narrow-gauge track, into the boiler room.

In 1917 the long logs gave way to four-foot pulpwood. A pulp yard was formed that often held as much as 20,000 cords, about 20 weeks’ supply. The mill turned out five carloads of paper a day. The Hollingsworth and Whitney Co., that long operated the mill at Madison, might have made it the company’s big plant had it not been for failings by Madison local interests. So says the Madison historian. Plans for the big mill had been agreed upon by the Manufacturing Investment Co., which controlled the power rights at Norridgewock Falls, when at the last minute the Investment Co. instituted a claim preventing H & W from including a sulphite mill as part of the project, and declaring that H & W must buy sulphite from the Investment Co. H & W refused, abruptly changed plans, and built the big mill at Winslow.

Nevertheless, the Madison paper industry, though often in changing hands, was a successful enterprise until well into the 20th century, when it was hit by less prosperous times. Today, under European ownership it is enjoying a much needed revival. A Finnish company in cooperation with the New York Times now controls Madison’s paper industry.

As one enters Madison village on the highway from Norridgewock, he passes a handsome little building, the Madison Public Library. A public library had been started on the second floor of the Towne Block, near the Main Street railroad crossing in 1887. After occupying several sites, it got its own building in 1907 in the same way many other towns got theirs – through a gift of $8,000 from Andrew Carnegie. The fire-proof stack room contained all the books until 1916, when the creation of a children’ room took over the juvenile volumes. Before World War II the library’s circulation was exceeding 40,000 volumes a year.

No account of Madison can neglect Lakewood. So many people think Lakewood is situated in Skowhegan, it has been frequently pointed out that the famous resort and theatre are actually in the eastern part of Madison. An old manuscript tells us that, as early as 1799, Jedediah Hayden made a clearing on Wesserunsett Lake where now stands the Lakewood complex. Eighty years later, his grandson, William Hayden, was taking boarders in his large house that stood where the clubhouse of the Lakewood Country Club now stands, and a few people were building cottages on the stream.

In 1895 an electric railroad was opened between Madison and Skowhegan, going by way of Lakewood, and, just as took place at similar electric car routes allover Maine, a vaudeville theatre was started. Before the First World War, Herbert Swett had taken over the property. He changed the theatre from vaudeville to drama, and brought in leading actors from Broadway. As time went on several later stars got their start at Swett’s theatre. Among them were Humphrey Bogart and Charles Coburn. The theatre also attracted playwrights, and it was there that Owen Davis saw the debut of several of his plays. The theatre became famous for the try-out of “Life With Father.”

Following Mr. Swett’s death the theatre and resort property remained successfully in his family. After it was sold to outside interests, it suffered a decline that became severe when fuel shot up and the high cost of gasoline added to the lack of patronage. Whether it can be saved as “Broadway in Maine” now remains an unanswered question.

And with this tribute to the town of Madison, we now say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1980