I promised you that tonight we should hear more about cows in the streetsof waterville. No subject mentioned on this program has brought a more generous response. If I mention only a few names, it is not because other contributions have not been valuable, but simply because we haven’t the time for more.<\/p>\n
The first person to call me — even before I had left the studio two weeks ago — was Chester Hussey of Walnut Street, who has more than once supplied me with information for these programs. Mr. Hussey says that sixty years ago cows were pastured on what was then a vacant lot on the east side of Elm Street, directly opposite the entrance to Winter Street.<\/p>\n
Ted Branch thinks there is something wrong about Mr. Hussey’s memory, ei ther of time or location. Ted says his memory goes back well beyond sixty years and he can recall no cows pastured on that section of Elm Street. But Mr. Hussey is sure that, between the Abbott house on the corner of Elm and Spring Streets and the Smith house at Elm and Temple Streets, was a vacant lot that stretched back of the Congregational Church all the way down to the rear of buildings on Charles Street. Temple Court was then only a lane through the pasture. Were cows pastured there in 1895? Can anyone support Mr. Hussey’s contention?<\/p>\n
Mr. Branch was himself a cow driver of experience. He is the man who used to drive cows from the corner of pleasant Street and Western Avenue out to pasture beyond the Messalonskee.<\/p>\n
A lot of people remember when the land between the Hayden Brook gully and the Messal0nskee was known as Burleigh Field, and there seem to be scores of citizens who attended circuses there. But I was especially pleased to re- ceive a call from the man whose father purchased that field and gave it its best remembered name. Mr. Hall Burleigh of the Augusta Road tells me that the land between Gilman Street and western Avenue on one axis and between gully and stream on the other axis was once two distinct lots with a board fence, running from gully to stream, dividing them. Mr. Burleigh recalls that he and his brother John, as young fellows, had the job of tearing down that old fence after their father bought the two lots.<\/p>\n
The old name of Western Avenue was Mill Street and at one time there were at least four different factories operating on the stream near what is now the Western Avenue bridge. One of those was the first factory in this part of the state to make the old brimstone matches that I talked about a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n
But let’s get back to the cows. Lucien Audet of the Exchange Hotel calls my attention to Mr. Boudreau, a resident of the hotel, a man over 80, who recalls that back in days when the old covered bridge connected Waterville with Winslow, fully 70 years ago, cows used to be driven from Pleasant street to Winslow for pasture. Mr. Boudreau once sold pond lilies, two for a nickel, on Waterville’s Main Street. Where did he get his stock in trade? From the swamp between Charles and Elm Streets.<\/p>\n
In spite of all these responses, I do not yet have the answer to my original question. That question was, how long has it been since cows were driven to pasture through the streets of Waterville? A local citizen whom I consider to be still a young lady recalls distinctly that her father kept a cow in the family barn on Silver Street, not far from the corner of Spring Street, and she naturally assumes that Bossy must have been driven somewhere to pasture.<\/p>\n
By my figuring that urbanized cow of downtown Silver Street must have been cropping grass in some pasture as late as 1915. Can anybody beat that? Of all the communications that have reached me about cows, I now come to the best. I think you will agree that it is a grand story, because it not only deals with old-time things and ways, but it is a wonderful example of what American democracy really means. It is the story of one of Waterville’s best known business men, Mr. Napoleon Marshall. Fifty-five years ago Mr. Marshall, then eleven years old, drove three cows from a barn on Ash Street down across Ticonic Street, up Kelsey to Upper Main Street, and into a pasture across the street from the Bartlett homestead. The pay was 25 cents per week, but Mr. Marshall says what appealed to him even more were the good things to eat, provided to a growing boy by the wife and daughters of the man who owned the cows. Sometimes young Marshall would show up at the house right after dinner. The good lady would make him lie down on the lounge -notice the word, not couch or divan, but that good old piece of furniture called the lounge. She would make him lie down for rest, then stuff him with cake or cookies and milk before he went after the cows. In 1895 the owner presented the boy with a heifer calf, and Marshall was then the proudest youngster in the neighborhood. For seven years that good Jersey supplied milk to the Marshall family.<\/p>\n
Now I told you this story had special significance as an instance of true American democracy. You will note that up to this point I haven’t named Marshall’s employer, the owner of the cows. It was Samuel Osborn, the negro janitor of Colby College. An ex-slave, finding freedom and respected standing in this Maine town, far from his land of servitude, was an employer now. He could pay a white boy 25 cents a week to take his cows to and from pasture, and the white boy was proud to call that gracious colored gentleman not only his employer, but his benefactor and friend. That is real democracy.<\/p>\n
When I was a boy in high school favorite selections for speaking contests\u00a0 were taken from both the prose and the verse of Holman Day. It was then that I first encountered that rollicking ballad in which Day recounts how the steamboat Ezra Johnson tooted up the Kennebec, floated inland on an early autumn dew, and came to rest on a Sidney farm. A lot of people have heard of that fictitious river boat, the Ezra Johnson, thanks to the popularity of Holman Day.<\/p>\n
The time is approaching, however, when no one will remember a real Kennebec steamboat which had an experience something like the Ezra Johnson. for that real boat sailed the Kennebec just sixty years ago. Certainly there must be Waterville citizens who remember the boat, but I believe Dr. J. Fred Hill and Fred J. Arnold were the last survivors of the joyous crowd that went on that vessel’s maiden voyage. She bore the proud, local name of The City of Waterville, and the occurrences of her first trip would have provided Mark Twain with a story equal to his best Mississippi River yarns.<\/p>\n
In the late 1880’s William T. Haines, later to be Governor of Maine, but then a waterville attorney, proposed that navigation between Hallowell and waterville be reopened in order to secure cheaper freight service. His plan to build a steamer to make daily round trips between the two cities met with approval. Waterville business men formed the Waterville Merchant Steamboat Company with L. H. Soper as president, and many merchants and professional men subscribed to the stock.<\/p>\n
A contract was let to a boat builder at Brewer who in July 1890 had ready for delivery to the Waterville company a flat bottomed, keelless boat, 90 feet long, with a 20 foot beam, powered by the most up-to-date steam engine of the time.<\/p>\n
Just who first suggested a big party cruise to bring the boat to Waterville history does not record. Anyhow the stock holders agreed that it would be good publicity to have the sponsors themselves sail the boat down the Penobscot, round the coast to the mouth of the Kennebec, and up the Kennebec to Waterville. So it came about that forty of the more prominent stock holders gathered at Brewer, having selected as skipper for the trip Erastus Warren of Winslow, who had a reputation for being one of the best log drivers that ever worked the Kennebec. Events were to prove that his knowledge of navigation was limited to keeping on a pine log as it shot down river rapids -no mean accompliShment indeed, but hardly the training for piloting a 90 foot keelless boat.<\/p>\n
The story goes that there was plenty of refreshment aboard, including much in liquid form, though several of the touring stock holders were staunch prohibitionists. At any rate, when the boat reached Rockland, the whole party agreed that they were having a wonderful time. To be sure, the big sternwheeler was drawing more water than she should, and when she neared the Rockland landing and tried to give an appropriate salute, water spouted through her whistle and the expected blast fizzled into a dud. The next evening they’ had another celebration at Bath, where the City of Waterville, after a calm, eventless voyage along the coast, had tied up for the night. One day more would see the new boat at her home port of Waterville.<\/p>\n
On that last day fortune took another turn. Fog set in, as it often does in dog days down river. Cruising aimlessly and sightlessly in Merrymeeting Bay the steamer came to a sudden stop. She had run onto a ledge. When the sun broke through the clearing mist, close by was the riverbank and a farmer working in a field. Captain Warren hailed him. The farmer ran to the river bank and with frantic gestures yelled, “Get to tarnation out of there. It’s full of rocks.” That was no news to the joy riders, because the sunlight now showed them almost high and dry. Like Holman Day’s “Ezra Johnson”, the City of Waterville had very nearly landed in a field.<\/p>\n
As a result of strenuous labor they finally got the steamer back into the main channel, probably, to accomplish that task, the party had changed from the tall silk hats and Prince Albert coats which they had worn the previous evening at Bath.<\/p>\n
By noon they had reached Augusta, where a boisterous welcome was given by officials and townspeople. Sure that they could reach Waterville before dark, they started out again but got only a few hundred yards. For just under the Augusta railroad bridge they ran on to a gravel reef, where they had to stay overnight. The next morning, with the aid of river drivers and horses, they managed to get free and headed for the locks on the east side of the river. By this time the party had enough of captain Warren’s navigation, so they demoted him to deck hand and selected a new skipper, Warren C. Philbrook, a young man who later was to be a distinguished justice of the Maine Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
When the boat emerged from .the locks the new skipper met a real test. Without a keel the craft was poorly fitted to fight the stiff current just above the Augusta dam. The steamer started to move sideways, heading toward the dam, with the passengers getting more and more sure that they were in for a river bath. But Skipper Philbrook and his crew won the day when the ship finally began to gain on the current, and the last leg of the journey home was under way.<\/p>\n
For the new steamer the company had built a brand new dock. The old city dock was located near Ticonic Falls, on the west bank, not far from where the Lockwood storehouse now stands. The new landing place for the City of Waterville had been erected farther down the river, on Pooler’s Point, almost exactly opposite the junction of the Sebasticook with the Kennebec. As word came that the new steamer, expected the day before but disappointingly delayed, was at last nearing Waterville, the whole town turned out. When the big barge for that was what the square-boxed freighter looked like — came into view, a brass band burst into tune and cheers arose. The passenger stock holders smoothed out their Prince Alberts and polished the sheen of their silk hats. All was now ready for triumphant landing. But, alas, the bad luck that began two days before in Merrymeeting Bay had not yet departed. Just as the steamer started to turn from the Winslow bank to head into her smart new landing, she again struck a ledge. And there, just off shore from the Winslow Congregational Church, she refused to budge. Her chagrined and disgusted stock holders could only take to row boats and make an ignominious landing on the waterville side.<\/p>\n
As for the sequel, the Waterville Merchant Steamboat Company did operate for a brief period between this city and Hallowell, but that ill-fated steamer, the City of Waterville, last-of the river’s old stern-wheelers, never achieved its goal of daily return trips between the two cities. After brief, intermittent use here on the upper river, under Captain Bradford Mitchell, it was sold to a Virginia firm, and stern-wheeled her way to a southern port, never to return.<\/p>\n
Year: 1949<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #44, broadcast on November 27, 1949<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[741,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7071\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}