Patricia Burdick
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Radio Script #1188
Little Talks on Common Things
January 28, 1979
As we closed last week’s program, I told you this week you would hear more from the remarkable diary of that store clerk in Bangor 130 years ago, Benjamin Brown Foster.
In October, 1848, Foster recorded a scene of consternation at a wedding in Orono. “There was a horrid scrap at Elizabeth Parsons’ wedding. Dr. Perry was expected to marry them. He indeed prepared the usual bond certificate and had written her name on it. The day came, Sam Parsons, the bride’s brother, upon Dr. Perry’s failure to show up, rushed to Bangor to get Dr. Shepherd. He could not be found. He tried Dr. Pond, who declined. Off Sam sped to Dr. Pomeroy, but he too could not be located. Meanwhile at the Parsons’ house there was great agitation. At last someone found Dr. Perry, who had forgotten all about his appointment. It is the custom to place the fee in the bride’s book, when it is handed to the minister for final endorsement of the marriage, and the book is usually handed to the clergyman at the start of the ceremony. Sam handed the book to the clergyman, who opened it and seeing no fee, insisted that without his fee he could not proceed with the ceremony. So Sam took out his wallet and gave the clergyman two dollars. Perry pocketed the money, made the couple man and wife, donned his beaver, and speedily departed. After the splice, the young people were serenaded by horns and tin pans in a good, old fashioned chivaree. It was throughout a disgraceful performance.”
In November Foster made reference to liquor. “Did $7.50 worth of trade with one man from Bradley, including a quart of rum. This liquor business causes great influx of customers, especially from across the river. The rum we sold today amounted to a full quarter of our whole day’s business.”
Early in 1849 Foster made a change of employment. For an uncle he agreed to manage a general store at Weston, about 100 miles northeast of Old Town. That B. F. Brown store was not a typical country store, even for that time. Its principal business was in supplies for lumbermen, much like a much more famous store known to many people still living – the Saunders store at Greenville. Nearby the Brown store in Weston was the owner’s huge house that he used as a tavern, where he put up not only transient lumbermen, but gave more permanent residence to hired men, teamsters, cooks, carpenters, and a swarm of relatives.
In a February item Foster refers to a man who became renowned in the lumber industry. He wrote: “Peavey with two teams arrived today, and loaded here molasses, oil, raisins, and two barrels of flour. This helped make our days business the largest for some time, over $350.” Peavey was the man who invented the implement that bears his name, a most useful tool on the log drives.
In March 1848 Foster had an experience with wolves. Driving from Weston to a nearby lumber camp, he met two workmen who said they heard wolves off in the direction Foster was driving. Foster thought they were playing a joke and trying to scare him, but as he approached the thickest part of the woods, his horse picked up his ears, gave a snort and started to run. Foster looked back and saw what he described in the diary as “two lank, long specimens of the genus lupus. Luckily my horse’s speed was faster than theirs.”
In April Foster recorded the death of one of America’s first millionaires in these words: John Jacob Astor is dead. His fortune was at least 20 million. He finally eked out his life a complete imbecile, childish, weak, amused with toys and rags. Now he is gone. Each of his executors, one of whom is Washington Irving, will be paid $5,000 a year until the estate is settled. I suspect they will take their time settling it.”
Foster describes a common business practice of the time – what was known as transferred accounts. He wrote: “The 275 accounts we had opened are now reduced to half that number, yet not a dollar has been received on any of them. A lumber operator may have as many as twenty hired men, each with a separate account at our store. When settlement day comes, they are all charged over to the employer. Private citizens also transfer accounts from one to another. It is also common custom for a man to bring us a written order to let him have goods and charge them to the employer’s account.”
I may have neglected to say that running a store came easily to Ben Foster. His father had long operated a general store in Orono. When Ben returned home from his stint at his uncle’s store in Weston, he wrote: “Father’s liquor license expired and his trade has dropped sharply. We all had to pool funds to prevent foreclosure on the homestead mortgage. Father finally settled with his creditors on a percentage basis and closed the store.”
In July, 1848 Foster referred to the rising prominence of William Lloyd Garrison. “He shouted in Faneuil Hall that liberty and slavery cannot exist together, therefore the American Union is not one of liberty until slavery is abolished. I fear fanatics like Garrison do more harm than good.”
Evidently Ben Foster would not have approved of the heroic stand of a Maine man, Elijah Lovejoy, who twelve years earlier had been killed in Alton, Illinois because he persisted in printing in his paper articles demanding abolition of slavery.
That autumn Foster stated in the diary his reaction to a Somerset County man who was winning wide recognition, Dr. Mann of Skowhegan, a maker and distributor of remedies who also published a newspaper, about which I spoke on this program several years ago. Foster said: “For the first time I saw Dr. Angier Mann and heard his fearless attack on pepper sauce and calomel. He was not the raw, ignorant native I expected to see, but a well-dressed, fat, good-looking man. He may be a quack, but he is certainly original that Dr. Mann.”
“Nov. 7 – Father voted for Taylor instead of Van Buren. His call of self-service and independence speaks louder than Van Buren’s Free Soil. Van’s promised good times are a phantom ghost.”
In Maine, or elsewhere, people were always looking for the rainbow. In December Foster wrote: “There are reports of gold found near Katahdin. It is said that it has been assayed, that Veazie has bought 7,000 acres and will make a fortune without going to California.”
One of Ben Foster’s prejudices was his dislike for colleges. He wrote: “Deliver me from a collegiate course. How much precious time is wasted in committing useless absurdities in extinct languages. The company of one of those college men is a perfect bore. They can converse upon no subject but their studies.”
In April, 18.49 Foster made more direct mention of the gold rush. “The California fever has taken many from this community. Just to outfit them has taken a lot of money from these Penobscot towns. For one who finds gold, a dozen will find poverty.”
On another occasion, Foster deplored the poor farming soil of Maine. He wrote: “The lumber business is our total dependence. Maine is no farming country and has no other profitable resource except shipbuilding, and that does not affect our part of the state. We do have in our water power an undeveloped source of wealth, but we do not have the capital to make it profitable.”
Here is the entry for July 4, 1849: “Smell of powder, booming of cannon, snapping of crackers, rub-a-dub of drum, and blasting of a tuneless brass band, rockets and roman candles after dark.”
Many are Foster’s comments on the times in general that distinguish this diary from the more common kind that deals only with local events. In July, 1849 he wrote: “This is an age of change. Reform is the watchword. Dissatisfaction with all existing things is universal. . There is, however, one institution that presents a barrier to change in our nation. That is slavery. The Southern slaveholders have much political power, and they will, to the bitter end, oppose its abolition.”
In September, 1851, Foster tells of a journey. “Took the stage at 7:30 P.M. for Waterville, arriving there at 4 A.M. There I embarked on the nasty little steamer Baloon for Augusta, where I transferred to a better boat the J. D. Pierce for Bath, where I arrived at 1:30. Passed an hour in that dirty, seafaring place, then took the cars for Brunswick, which I reached at 3 P.M. Went to the Congress House, where the united literary societies of Bowdoin College provided an oration by Luther Bell, Supt. of the Vermont Insane Asylum. Bowdoin’s old president presided, wearing gown and square academical cap. The exercises were very ceremonious, interesting but not remarkable.”
Foster did not think well of the relatively new town at the falls of the Androscoggin, where he next visited. “Went to Lewiston, which seems hardly designed by nature for any great importance. With its five factories already built or under construction, anew railroad, and a canal being built, they expect wonders in fact another Lowell. But they will be disappointed. They are too far from the big markets.”
Let me close this account of Benjamin Foster’s diary with his single reference to Colby College. Written on July 19, 1852, it said: “Waterville students stole their college bell and sent it to Bowdoin’s president, with a note ‘Please exchange ‘. The president took it as a bonafide gift and paid the freight. Bowdoin students were human, suspicious. At night the freight house was entered and the bell was seized and shipped on to Jared Sparks, president of Harvard. A few days later the bell appeared again in Brunswick, but has now been restored to Waterville.”
And with this final reference to Colby’s Revere bell we must say goodbye until next week.
Year: 1979
Radio Script #1187
Little Talks on Common Things
January 21, 1979
Radio Script #1186
Little Talks on Common Things
January 14, 1979
Radio Script #1185
Little Talks on Common Things
January 7, 1979
This program has several times referred to the dependence of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth on the region to the northeast now known as the State of Maine. Today I want to give you more details about that dependence.
In his book, “Of Plymouth Plantation,” Governor William Bradford, who succeeded the Pilgrim’s first governor Carver when the latter died in 1621, records the colonists’ first personal encounter with an Indian. They had seen natives at a distance, but none in close contact until on a spring day following their first terrible winter in America, they heard a shout from the hilltop, uttering the English word “Welcome! Welcome!”
There they saw an Indian without bow and arrow or other weapon, with hands extended in peaceful fashion,repeating again and again that word ”Welcome.” When a few of the Pilgrim men approached the Indian, they discovered that his English was broken and very limited, but that his vocabulary was extensive enough for him to reveal, with the help of many gestures, that his name was Samoset, and that he was of a tribe located not far away in what is now the town of Bristol. Despite the cold spring weather he was almost naked. He asked for beer, but Bradford says, “Having no beer, we gave him strong liquor.”
The Pilgrims became wary when Samoset showed no sign of leaving, but they finally sheltered him for the night in the house of Stephen Hopkins. He left the next morning, saying he would soon return with companions. The Pilgrims were especially glad to see this English-speaking Indian because of their terrible winter experiences. During December, after their decision to settle at this place on November 30, they had put up 17 dwellings and a storehouse. But between December and May repeated deaths occurred. When spring finally came, the original 102 passengers of the Mayflower had been reduced exactly 50% to 51, augmented by two births.
What had caused such unusual depletion of their ranks? First, the long, late-season voyage had made them weak and with little resistance to disease. Also, they had been mostly in-door workers, quite unready for the outdoor, wilderness tasks, especially in winter. Much hard tramping for animals and birds to supply food had further weakened the men. Frequent sleeping out on the cold ground did not help. But, according to historians, the probably most likely reason why so many more men than women died, in proportion to their respective numbers, was day after day of wading ashore from the Mayflower’s boats while they were building the houses, for they then spent nights on the Mayflower, whose boats could not quite reach shore, necessitating wading in waist-deep water. The single greatest cause of death seems to have been pneumonia. Whatever the cause, when April came, 13 of the 24 married men had died, and 21 of the single men and servants. Sixteen families had lost one or more members. To conceal from the Indians the fact that the colony was losing so many men, all graves were smoothed over and no markers placed. Hence the arrival of English-speaking Samoset was a great relief, revealing that not all Indians were hostile.
Where had Samoset learned his English? He made it clear to the Pilgrims that he had several times in recent years visited the British fishing stations at Monhegan and Pemaquid on the Maine coast, where the fishermen always gave him plenty of beer, and with whom he traded fur for knives, axes and trinkets. Bradford makes no mention of Samoset saying he ever got firearms from the fishermen, though it was not long before the Indians had muskets, powder and ball, and knew how to use them.
So impressed was Gov. Bradford with Samoset’s story that when the Mayflower returned to England late in April 1621, he and his counsel decided to send the little shallop left with them to Pemaquid to get badly needed provisions from the British fishing fleet that Samoset said would be assembled there. That trip was successful, and the Pilgrims did get enough to tide them over until June when the second ship to come to Plymouth, the Fortune, arrived from England.
When one considers the wretched state of the colony at the end of the first winter, it seems unbelievable that not a single survivor returned to
England with the Mayflower. The explanation is of course chiefly due to the determination of those colonists and their devout, religious conviction that, despite all the winter’s suffering, God would see them through. But perhaps almost as important in the decision for no one to leave was the help that came from those fishermen drying their fish at Pemaquid.
On his original visit Samoset said he would return with others. Sure enough, two days later he came with five other Indians. One of those was named Squanto, who was to play a conspicuous part in the development of the Plymouth Colony.
Squanto spoke much better English than Samoset, and, though an Indian, he showed remarkable acquaintance with English customs. He had, as we say, “been around.” The Pilgrims learned that Squanto had been one of a group of Indians kidnapped by an unscrupulous sea captain, Thomas Hunt, in 1614, and he had been taken to Europe. Sold into slavery in Spain, he had somehow escaped and made his way to London. For six years he had been in England, a part of this time in the home of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the· man who would later secure a royal title to lands in Maine. At least once, and perhaps a second time, Squanto had come to Monhegan and Pemaquid on a Gorges ship, and he became thoroughly familiar with that region at the mouth of the Damariscotta River, and with the Kennebec Indians who frequented the area. He was able to tell the Pilgrims much more about the British fishing fleet than Samoset could, and even gave the names of some of the ship captains.
From the spring of 1621 on for several years, Squanto was a valuable person for the Plymouth Colony. He served as their interpreter at meetings with various tribal chiefs, he was the most influential figure in the Pilgrims’ negotiation of a treaty with Massasoit, Chief of the most powerful of the Cape Cod tribes. Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to plant their corn, using fish for fertilizer, and he paved the way for the colony’s growing fur trade that enabled them to payoff their debt to the company of Plymouth Adventurers who had financed the Mayflower voyage. Governor Bradford said of Squanto, “He never left us until he died.”
Despite this Indian’s value to the Pilgrims, he did have a darker side. Although he had been chiefly responsible for getting the Pilgrims in touch with Chief Massasoit, he was extremely jealous of that Chief, and sought to discredit him with the colonists. On one occasion, Squanto sent a message to Plymouth with word that Massasoit intended secretly to attack and annihilate the colony. When a month passed and nothing happened except clear evidence of Massasoit’s friendship, Miles Standish and Gov. Bradford made a careful investigation. They learned that the whole notion of an attack had originated in Squanto’s mind, and was the result of his obsession to gain favor with the Pilgrims at Massasoit’s expense.
But Squanto did not outlive the year 1631. Before that year had ended he was taken on a fishing expedition to the south shore of Cape Cod, and according to Bradford, died of “Indian Fever.”
The real nub of this story is that a turning point in the Plymouth Colony from catastrophe to hope and eventual success came when an Indian shouted the English word “welcome” from the Plymouth hilltop. Samoset’s welcome, Squanto’s friendship, and the peace with Massasoit were not the only results of the Pilgrims’ connection with Maine. In 1629 they obtained a royal Charter that not only gave them exclusive right of trade with Indians along the Kennebec River, but also granted them complete ownership to a tract of land fifteen miles on each side of the river from Merrymeeting Bay to the falls above Norridgewock.
It was that huge tract of land that the colony sold in 1661 to four men, whose heirs in turn sold it in 1749 to the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase. Through that chain of transactions the deeds of all land 15 miles on each side of the Kennebec, where are now all four of Kennebec County’s cities, date back today to the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth. When they received their Kennebec grant, the Pilgrims at once set up a trading post at what is now Augusta, and placed a manager in charge of it.
In his History of Augusta, James North tells us that Cushnoc, the old Indian name for the place, had often been visited for trading purposes before 1629. Anxious to payoff their debt, the Pilgrim leaders pulled all sorts of political strings to secure exclusive rights of trade there. After getting the grant and establishing the trading post, the Pilgrims placed on the river two magistrates empowered to try all cases of trespass.
In the spring of 1634 a vessel commanded by one Captain Hawkins appeared on the river and started trade with the Indians. In disregard of the magistrates Hawkins persisted. That led to an incident involving a Pilgrim made romantic by Longfellow – John Alden, winner of the hand of Priscilla Mullins, whom Miles Standish wanted to marry. From the episode we know John Alden was in Maine in 1634. With three others he proceeded to cut the anchor cables of Hawkins’ ships. But Hawkins’ men discharged guns, killing two of Alden’s men. In the skirmish Hawkins himself was fatally wounded. Alden was arrested and charged with murder of Hawkins. The trial resulted in complete acquittal on the grounds that Alden represented interests that had exclusive rights to Kennebec trade and was lawfully trying to protect those interests.
And with that story we end our account of the Pilgrim Fathers’ relations with Maine.
Year: 1979