Last week we promised you more information about old-time floods on the\u00a0Kennebec. Here it is. Winslow’s famous freshet oak stood at a distance which \u00a0is described by T. o. Paine as 363 steps below Ticonic Bridge. The tree no\u00a0longer stands. In August, 1942 H. B. Pratt, Jr. and L. A. Fitch noted that\u00a0the tree had recently been cut down. The annular rings in the stump were so\u00a0clear, however, that Mr. Pratt could count 183 of them, showing that the tree\u00a0was standing from the earliest days of Winslow’s incorporation as a town. Logs\u00a0carried by freshets marked that tree at various heights. On one side of the\u00a0tree was a deep gash, shaped like a new moon. This was identified as work of\u00a0the great ice freshet of 1869. During a whole century no scar was higher, except\u00a0an older one, fully a foot above. That was the log-made scar of the champion\u00a0of all Kennebec freshets, the flood of 1832, which we described in detail\u00a0last week.<\/p>\n
When Mr. Paine was making his investigation of Kennebec freshets, Charles\u00a0Getchell went with him to the freshet oak, which was then still standing. He\u00a0pointed to the highest scar and said: “The’ 32 freshet was up there. The ground\u00a0is about as it was then. Mr. William Redington said to my father, William Getchell,\u00a0who stood near by, ‘The freshet was there’, and where Father showed him,\u00a0Mr. Redington painted a red mark. I was then ten years old, and I could just\u00a0reach Mr. Redington’s mark.” Mr. Getchell also told Paine that in 1832 the oak\u00a0was round, straight and smooth, and that its great and highest scar was certainly\u00a0made by the great freshet of 1832.<\/p>\n
How many of my listeners remember the old covered bridge across the Sebasticook\u00a0near Fort Halifax? In 1887 that bridge withstood a big freshet. The high\u00a0water mark was above the floor of the bridge, so that no logs could pass under,\u00a0and a huge jam piled up in the river between the dam and the bridge. Mr. John\u00a0Runnels told Paine that the water stood at its height for three hours, and the\u00a0bridge would certainly have gone out under the battering of logs if the drop had\u00a0not come very rapidly and the logs went through with a rush.<\/p>\n
In 1887 the railroad bridge across the Sebasticook was down stream from the\u00a0highway bridge, just as it is now. The railroad bridge formed a sort .of boom,\u00a0which obstructed the logs, except in a narrow channel close to the pier. A crew\u00a0of men worked frantically to keep the logs in that channel and save the bridge.<\/p>\n
A large hemlock log, fourteen inches in diameter, lodged on the bottom chord at\u00a0the south end of the bridge. It took mighty high water to lodge a big log in that\u00a0place.<\/p>\n
Plenty of my listeners remember Bassett’s store in Winslow. It was only nine\u00a0years ago, in 1941, that it was moved a few rods south to the position where it\u00a0now stands, below the gasoline station near the corner of Lithgow Street and the\u00a0Augusta Road. Josiah Bassett told Mr. Paine, “The freshet of 1887 landed big\u00a0logs up in the field back of my store. Water came up to within 20 feet of the\u00a0northeast corner of the building.” But Mr. Bassett said he had been told that the\u00a01832 flood touched the floor of the store.<\/p>\n
On lower ground, east of the Bassett store, once stood a cooper shop, in\u00a0which at the time of the 1832 flood was located the Winslow post office. This is\u00a0what Josiah Bassett wrote for Mr. Paine in 1891: “A high water mark of the 1832\u00a0freshet was cut on the old time post office partition in my father’s cooper shop\u00a0about 18 inches above the floor. There were two steps into the shop, one stone\u00a0step and the threshold on the sill. The shop was torn down by my brother Benjamin\u00a0many years ago, and its precious mark is now lost.”<\/p>\n
Another old mark was on the Eaton store, at the head of what was known as\u00a0Eaton’s Landing. This was a two-story building with four-sided roof. Mr. Bassett\u00a0when a small boy, had heard Solomon Eaton say that in the 1832 flood a canoe\u00a0entered his store and its bow shot over the counter.<\/p>\n
Winslow Simpson told Mr. Paine his recollections of the freshet of 1869.<\/p>\n
Just as in 1832, said Mr. Paine, a long, heavy, northeast wind blew the water\u00a0out of Moosehead Lake. That accounted for the tremendous swell of water which\u00a0Mr. Paine saw cover the intervales belonging to his father, Frederic Paine and\u00a0their neighbor, Nelson Dingley_ “The wind would pack and pile the river, and\u00a0get up a great, surging body full of all kinds of trash. Old pig pens, old\u00a0mills on the river, all clustered together, were crowded in among the logs. Once\u00a0I saw a load of lumber on a cart with a dog sitting on top of it, all going madly\u00a0down the river.”<\/p>\n
One amazing feature of the ’32 freshet concerned a flock of sheep. They\u00a0grazed on the lower end of the flat just above the Pond Hole, near where the H &\u00a0W Mill now stands. They slept under a flat boat turned bottom up. That flock of\u00a0sheep, without leaving the flat, lived through the flood.<\/p>\n
Fortunately Mr. Paine put into the record an explanation of the phrase “Pond\u00a0Hole”. He wrote: “It <\/strong>is important to know that the word ‘hole’ often meant a very \u00a0bad place. This meaning comes from the use of the term in Ezekiel, Chapter 8: ‘He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, I beheld a hole. Then he\u00a0said to me, Son of Man, go in and see the wicked abominations that they do here.\u00a0I found my walk up through the Pond Hole a difficult one. The hole was a gully or\u00a0ravine, cluttered, clogged and tangled, full of trees, rocks, bushes, and all sorts\u00a0of trash — a very hole of a place.”<\/p>\n It was Winslow Simpson who assured Mr. Paine that the river rose 26 feet in\u00a0less than 12 hours in the great freshet of 1832. Mr. Simpson’ s father, who lived\u00a0to be 104 years old, used to keep a record of all freshets by marks on a cedar tree\u00a0at the foot of Simpson’s Landing. A larg~ limb shot out horizontally from the main\u00a0trunk. No freshet recorded by the elder Simpson quite reached that limb, except\u00a0the tremendous flood of 1832. The mark which Simpson placed to show how far up\u00a0the tree the water then came was well above the limb. On May 23, 1832, the day\u00a0after the flood was at its height, measurements taken from that mark showed a\u00a0rise of 26 feet in the flood waters. Long before the elder Simpson’s death, the\u00a0cedar was cut down and its valuable record of flood marks was lost.<\/p>\n Mr. Paine felt that stories about the 1832 freshet had been somewhat exaggerated.<\/p>\n He collected evidence to show that, while it was probably the highest, the\u00a01832 flood did not rise much higher than many other freshets between 1761 and\u00a01891. Mr. Paine wrote: “In Nathaniel Dingley’s front yard, and between the Winslow\u00a0post office and the railroad bridge, I can stand and, on my own body, mark\u00a0off with considerable accuracy, all the freshets since 1761. No freshet can I\u00a0call great unless it wets my feet, as I stand inside Mr. Dingley’s gate. Some\u00a0freshets in the ’30’s and 140lS would then come to my knees, the great flood of\u00a0’32 coming only a little higher, not more than half way to my hips. When I was a\u00a0boy, I used to be disgusted with a freshet that was even a few inches lower than\u00a0the last.”<\/p>\n Evidence that the freshet of 1936 was higher than even the big flood of 1832\u00a0comes to me in the form of a photograph, looking west down Lithgow Street past the\u00a0Bassett house. The whole area is completely flooded. No street can be seen at\u00a0all. The water covers almost up to the sill of the northeast window of the first\u00a0floor. Now Mr. Paine’s little book quotes Josiah Bassett as saying that no flood\u00a0had ever cov.ered the floor of that old house — then called the Eaton house — but\u00a0that the 1832 flood came to the under side of the floor beams. The 1936 waters\u00a0came higher than that.<\/p>\n We shall welcome anything more our listeners can tell us about Kennebec\u00a0freshets, especially any facts or measurements that relate the flood of 1832 to\u00a0the better remembered flood of 1936.<\/p>\n When I talked about the Coolidge murder case, little did I think that any\u00a0property which once belonged to the murderer was still in existence. But I now\u00a0have in my custody what are declared to be the saddle bags used by Dr. Valorus\u00a0P. Coolidge when he was practicing in Waterville. These saddle bags came, some\u00a0fifty years ago, into the possession of a Mr. Merrill of Fairfield, and were by\u00a0him passed on to another person, whose name I am not at liberty to mention.<\/p>\n Mr. Merrill’s nephew, Judge William Burgess of Fairfield, says he knows nothing\u00a0about the history of these saddle bags, but he is joining me in the search\u00a0for proof that they actually belonged to the murderer, Coolidge. We shall let you\u00a0know what we discover.<\/p>\n When the consuming public got jittery after the Korean War started and proceeded\u00a0to raid the stores for certain commodities, the story goes that a certain\u00a0aged lady, who has long lived alone, ordered from her grocer 25 pounds of coffee\u00a0and a hundred pounds of sugar. “Why, Aunt Mary”, said the grocer, “what can you\u00a0possibly want with so much coffee and sugar?” “Young man”, said Aunt Mary, “don’t\u00a0you know there’s a war on? I’m going to build up my inventories before a lot of\u00a0greedy people start hoarding.”<\/p>\n Not long ago Ben Fairless, the distinguished head of U. S. Steel, told a gathering\u00a0in Philadelphia that even in the heavy industries and the building trades\u00a0there are unfortunately too many Aunt Marys. That, said Mr. Fairless, is the only\u00a0way one can explain why today our nation is <\/em>using 100 million tons of steel to\u00a0produce a smaller quantity of goods than it manufactured out of only 88 million\u00a0tons seven years ago.<\/p>\n But Mr. Fairless made it equally plain that hidden inventories do not alone\u00a0explain our shortage of steel, nor do war demands of the government complete the\u00a0explanation. He points to the undeniable fact that strikes have cost the American\u00a0people 29 million tons of steel production since VJ-Day in 1945. Now right here\u00a0in Waterville we are getting first-hand knowledge of What a construction strike\u00a0can mean.<\/p>\n Mr. Fairless made no accusations. He refused to place the blame on anyone.<\/p>\n He said, “I believe that any man who, in this critical hour,. impugns the motives\u00a0or the patriotism of any group of Americans, is playing the Kremlin’s dirty game.”<\/p>\n Mr. Fairless went on to say: “Some men tell us that those strikes occurred\u00a0because management was stubborn and unyielding. Others say that labor was willful\u00a0and headstrong. As an interested party, I am not qualified to judge which is\u00a0right. But of one thing I am sure. If the patriotic men of steel — the men who\u00a0make it and the men who manage it — are fully determined to put America’s security\u00a0above all else, any problem they ever face can be settled peaceably, with\u00a0patience, forbearance arid reason.”<\/p>\n These are hopeful words in a critical time.<\/p>\n Year: 1950<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #82, broadcast on November 5, 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\/7166"}],"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=7166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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