{"id":7148,"date":"1950-09-24T10:10:27","date_gmt":"1950-09-24T14:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/specialcollections\/?p=7148"},"modified":"1950-09-24T10:10:27","modified_gmt":"1950-09-24T14:10:27","slug":"lt076","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/1950\/09\/24\/lt076\/","title":{"rendered":"Radio Script #76"},"content":{"rendered":"

Little Talks On Common Things
\nSeptember 24, 1950When our broadcasting season closed last spring we had left unanswered\u00a0the question about Ten Lots. What is the story of that settlement? How did :it\u00a0get its name? How did it happen to play a prominent part in the early history\u00a0of Waterville?<\/span><\/h3>\n

Gathering the” exact facts about that interesting settlement has not\u00a0been easy. Mr. H. F. Sturtevant, descendant of the most prominent of the early\u00a0settlers, has been most helpful, putting me in touch with several persons\u00a0who have documentary information to support their own memories.<\/p>\n

In a short article in the Portland Sunday Telegram of August 13, 1950\u00a0(this year) the reporter states: “The community of Ten Lots was settled in\u00a01784 When a colony of Quakers contracted with the Plymouth Colony of Massachusetts\u00a0for an 8,000 acre tract of land to be located by their agent. The agent,\u00a0Elihu Bowman, surveyed and charted the tract. Then the Quakers came. There\u00a0were only three families settled there at the time. Later ten other families\u00a0made application to the colony, and another grant of 2,000 acres was procured.\u00a0This has been known ever since as Ten Lots.”<\/p>\n

Now none of my sources — and I think they go back pretty accurately to\u00a0the old settlers say anything about Quakers. It is, of course, possible\u00a0that one or two Quaker families had preceded the official Ten Lot settlers,\u00a0and did live somewhere in the vicinity. But if that is true, Rufus Jones\u00a0ought to have heard about it. In 1892,\u00b7 when Kingsbury produced his History of\u00a0Kennebec County, he asked the young principal of Oak Grove Seminary to write\u00a0a chapter on the Society of Friends. That young principal was the man destined\u00a0to become the greatest Quaker of our times, Rufus Jones. In careful detail\u00a0he wrote for Kingsbury I s history the story of Quaker settlements and the\u00a0establishment of Friends’ meetings in Kennebec County. He makes no mention\u00a0of Ten Lots. When we recognize the care with which Dr. Jones always assembled\u00a0his historical data, that silence is significant. Of course, Ten Lots\u00a0is now in Somerset County, but that was not true when the settlement was\u00a0made.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Electa Mitchell of Oakland, though now entirely without her eyesight,\u00a0has gone to the trouble of typing me an account of Ten Lots, which\u00a0she obtained many years ago from Mrs. Alice Gilman, a descendent of the same\u00a0Lot Sturtevant who was H. F. Sturtevant’s ancestor.<\/p>\n

As Mrs. Gilman told the story\u00b7 to Mrs. Mitchell, Lot Sturtevant was a\u00a0Revolutionary soldier. “After receiving his discharge from the army, he came\u00a0to Maine with two other young men. They came up the Kennebec River by canoe.<\/p>\n

When they reached the mouth of the Messalonskee Stream, they decided it\u00a0would be interesting to follow it. They were looking for good corn land,\u00a0and held the belief, common in those days, that reddish rocks indicated good\u00b7\u00a0soil for corn. Along the shore, near what is now Ten Lots, they found such\u00a0rocks. Moreover the land sloped to the east. Here was the place to settle.”<\/p>\n

Interesting as is the account attributed to Mrs. Gilman, it is at variance\u00a0with the documentary evidence. The best of that evidence is a paper\u00a0read before the Pine Tree Club of Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1896 by Martha\u00a0Sturtevant Coolidge, grandaughter of Lot Sturtevan~. For the principal facts\u00a0in this paper I am endebted to Mrs. E. P. Chaney of Freeport, grand niece of\u00a0Mrs. Coolidge.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Coolidge wrote this paper when she was 76 years old, and of course\u00a0it is possible that some of the facts originally told her by her grandfather\u00a0and other elderly neighbors had been dimmed by the years \u2022. At. any rate she\u00a0told a different story from Mrs. Gilman’s. Her grandfather, she says, joined\u00a0the Continental Army in 1776, when he was only 16 years old. His father and\u00a0two older brothers also fought in the Revolution. Lot w~s honorably discharged\u00a0from the army in 1780. He and nine other men secured a grant from the proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase. Probably this was one of those Revolutionary\u00a0grants common at the time. There was very little cash to pay the soldiers,\u00a0but there was plenty of land.<\/p>\n

So Lot Sturtevant and his nine companions came to Maine to take up their\u00a0claim. They came, of course, by boat along the coast to the mouth of the\u00a0Kennebec, then up the river to the head of navigation at Ticonic Falls. They\u00a0probably spent several days in the town of Winslow, which had sprung up not\u00a0only around Fort Halifax, but across the river as well.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Coolidge says, “They penetrated the woods and about five miles west\u00a0of the river found a stretch of country with an immense growth of hard wood.\u00a0They chose it for their own and pitched their tents, all ten adjoining one another. From the beginning the ten adjoining tracts of land were called Ten\u00a0Lots.”<\/p>\n

Now in respect to the way these settlers penetrated the woods, Mrs. Gilman\u00a0may be right. Mrs. Coolidge implies, but does not state, that they went\u00a0on foot. It is more likely that they went by canoe up the Messalonskee to the\u00a0vicinity of Rice’s Rips. But it is not likely that they picked a settlement\u00a0because of reddish rocks. They were taking up land already surveyed with lots\u00a0already charted.<\/p>\n

Having found the place, Lot Sturtevant and his nine companions built log\u00a0cabins, planted corn and flax, and one after another returned to Massachusetts\u00a0to marry and bring back the girls who had been waiting for them.<\/p>\n

The names of Lot’s nine companions were apparently unknown to Mrs. Coolidge,\u00a0but there must be some record about them. Mrs. Chaney, my Freeport\u00a0correspondent, says she had long been convinced that one of Lot’s brothers\u00a0was one of the ten. She says that when she was a small child and stayed with\u00a0her grandmother at Ten Lots, nearly every house was owned by a sturtevant.\u00a0Yet a good many years had already gone by since the original settlement, and\u00b7\u00a0the descendents of Lot’s eight children would fill many houses. Lot’s son,\u00a0Reward Sturtevant, had eleven children, among them the Mrs. Coolidge who\u00a0wrote the 1896 paper. Another of ReWard’s children was Mrs. Chaney’s grandfather,\u00a0Reward Augustus Sturtevant, who brought his bride to Ten Lots in 1866.<\/p>\n

I am sure my listeners all know that the great benefactor of Oakland\u00a0was Milton LaForest Williams. It was he who built the lovely little chapel\u00a0at Ten Lots in memory of his grandfather, Asa Bates. Was a Bates one of the\u00a0ten original settlers, or did that family come later?<\/p>\n

Mrs. Chaney\u00b7 tells an interesting story about Mr. Williams’ first trip\u00a0to New York. Determined to go there, he was trying to raise the money. He\u00a0approached Reward Sturtevant, Mrs. Chaney’s grandfather, who paid him $13 for\u00a0a few sheep. As all Oakland knows, Mr. Williams made a fortune in New York.<\/p>\n

He not only gave Oakland a high school and Ten Lots a chapel, but he remembered\u00a0the old friends and neighbors at Ten Lots. To Reward Sturtevant he gave\u00a0a thousand dollars for every dollar Mr. Sturtevant had paid him for the sheep,\u00a0a splendid gift of $13,000, coming to Mrs. Chaney’s aged grandfather just\u00a0before his death in 1919, When he was 90 years old.<\/p>\n

The original chapel is said to have been built at Ten Lots in 1836. It\u00a0was from the first a union church, but its association with the Baptists was\u00a0very close. As one of the tablets on the front of the chapel testifies, Samuel\u00a0Francis Smith, author of America, was its early minister. Smith had become\u00a0pastor of the First Baptist Church in Waterville and Professor of Modern\u00a0Languages at Colby in 1834. Like most of those early pastors, he ministered\u00a0to more than one church, and from 1838 to 1842 he regularly preached at Ten\u00a0Lots as well as at his principal church in Waterville.<\/p>\n

Vital interest in religion at Ten Lots had long preceded the building of\u00a0the 1836 chapel. The old records of Waterville’s First Baptist Church, to\u00a0which I have had frequent access, make that point clear. In that church’s\u00a0third pastorate, that of Rev. Harvey Fitts in 1830, ten persons from Ten\u00a0Lots united with the Waterville church, seven of them being members of the\u00a0Bates family. Of this incident, Mrs. Minnie Philbrick, the church historian,\u00a0writing a hundred years later said: “In 1830 a revival sprang up, beginning\u00a0as has many another at Ten Lots. These new members formed a strong corps\u00a0of helpers, and their relatives and descendents are still in our church and\u00a0hold the same high ideals as those who first came to us in 1830.”<\/p>\n

In his “Personal Recollections”, written when he was a very old man in\u00a01890, Samuel Francis Smith said: “I found my congregation at Waterville somewhat\u00a0peculiar, being made up of three elements — the college, the village\u00a0people, and the families from the farms in different directions for five\u00a0miles. In 1838 there was a season of deep religious interest which had its\u00a0origin in the families at Ten Lots and thence extended to other parts of the\u00a0town. The singing of familiar hymns had a large place in the social services,\u00a0especially at Ten Lots. There was no visible excitement and no sensational\u00a0disclosures. The spirit spoke with still small voice, and human hearts listened\u00a0and obeyed.”<\/p>\n

I’m sure this isn’t the last we shall hear about Ten Lots. There is much\u00a0more than the names of Lot Sturtevant’s nine companions still to be learned.<\/p>\n

Who will help us?<\/p>\n

\n

We have just a few minutes left to turn to a contemporary subject. In\u00a0these very troublous times, when the cold war of diplomacy and economics has\u00a0turned to the hot zing of bullets and the crash of bombs, it is well for us\u00a0to reflect how the Russian government has maneuvered this situation so that\u00a0not a single Russian soldier faces our troops in Korea. That is the Russian\u00a0strategy — to take over, by native communist domination the government of\u00a0one nation after another. Then, when a situation like that in Korea forces\u00a0u. N. intervention, it is the natives, not the Russians, who fight the u. N.\u00a0forces.<\/p>\n

So, just for a moment, notice how Stalin and his Kremlin company proceed\u00a0to take over a country. Let us look at Rumania. In 1940 Rumania with a population\u00a06f 16 million had less than a thousand Communists. In 1945 Soviet\u00a0troops occupied Rumania and forced King Michael to name a Communist stooge,\u00a0Peter Groza, as prime minister. By 1946 the Communist government had broken.<\/p>\n

up the big estates, given land to the peasants and increased wages; had, in\u00a0short, made their usual bid for popularity. Opposition parties were still\u00a0tolerated. But in 1946 all voters were ordered to approve a single slate of\u00a0candidates picked by the Communists. Russian managers now ran Rumania’s industries.<\/p>\n

In 1947 the Communist government adopted another well known Russian\u00a0device — <\/strong>they put on a nation-wide purge of non-Communist leaders,\u00a0jailing thousands and executing more than a hundred. King Michae~ was forced\u00a0to abdicate.<\/p>\n

In 1948 the Rumanian parliament, without debate, approved by 414 votes\u00a0to none, the new Rumanian constitution. Under it, Stalin’s friend, Mrs. Aria\u00a0pauker, got full power. In 1949 Moscow ordered a Rumanian party purge, ousting\u00a0all who deviated from the party line. Leaders of the church were especially\u00a0persecuted. Rumania’s entire economy was now run from Moscow.<\/p>\n

In this autumn of 1950 what is the situation? All opposition to Moscow’s\u00a0will has disappeared. Rumania can at any time be incorporated into the Soviet\u00a0union by a mere telephone call from Moscow.<\/p>\n

That is quite a story of ten short years. In 1940 less than a thousand\u00a0Communists in Rumania; in 1950 completely Communist, and, what is more,\u00a0complete Russian domination of the country. That, my friends, is the way\u00a0Joe Stalin takes over a nation in these very troublous times.<\/p>\n

Year: 1950<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read the script for “Little Talks” program #76, broadcast on September 24, 1950<\/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":[1153,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7148"}],"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=7148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}