Many times I have told you this program is made possible by the constant\u00a0stream of helpful contributions which pours in from listeners. A few weeks ago\u00a0I asked who knew anything about the opening of the resort area on Bunker Island\u00a0in Fairfield. Mrs. Mildred Pettee of Oakland Street, Waterville, has kindly\u00a0sent me an item taken from the Bangor Daily News of August 15, 1889. It 1:eads:<\/p>\n
liThe Watervil1e Horse Railroad Company opened the Bunker Island Park last evening.<\/p>\n
Fully 2,000 people from Waterville and Fairfield were present. The city\u00a0band of Waterville gave a fine concert and afterwards furnished music for dancing\u00a0in which over a hundred couples participated. The grounds are fitted up in\u00a0a most convenient manner. A long pavilion, 40 x 50 feet, furnished ample space\u00a0for dancing, while within a few feet of it is erected a bandstand. On the point\u00a0of the island the company has built a little observation house, and scatteted\u00a0allover the park are a large number of folding settees. A baseball ground and\u00a0a tennis lawn have also been laid out. The island makes an admirable summer\u00a0resort for local people who are wearied with a day’s toil or seek cool shelter.<\/p>\n
The horse rai1road will undoubtedly make a big go of Bunker Island Park.”<\/p>\n
There is the proof we sought — proof that the Bunker Island resort was\u00a0connected with the horse railroad. Mr. Ralph Patterson of Fairfield assures me\u00a0that his town’s well known resident and builder of the residence called the\u00a0“Cas-tIe in Spain” was promoter both of the horse railroad and of Bmker Island\u00a0Park. That man was Amos Gerald, among whose other interests were the Central\u00a0Maine Fair and Cascade Park, between Waterville and Oakland, which was in its\u00a0heyday when I was a student in college. It was Amos Gerald who built the Fairfield\u00a0and Shawmut , Railway, had a hand in promoting Merrymeeting Park\u00a0Dear Brunswick, and may have been interested in the interurban electric lines\u00a0that connected Bath, Brunswick, Lewiston, Gardiner, Augusta and Waterville. Quite<\/p>\n
a man was Amos Gerald, even if he did put that hideously ornate ceiling on the\u00a0dining room of the Gerald Hotel, now one of the rooms where the Lawries display\u00a0their furniture.<\/p>\n
When I last talked about Kennebec ice, little did I realize that there\u00a0exists a documented chart of all ice houses on the river in 1882. Through the\u00a0courtesy of a listener I have had a chance to examine carefully that old chart.<\/p>\n
The listener prefets to remain anonymous. I can only say that this is not the\u00a0first instance of his help. It was the same man who put me on track of the\u00a0saddle bags owned by Coolidge, the murderer.<\/p>\n
This old chart is a valuable historical item. It bears the heading, “1882.<\/p>\n
Issued by T. B. Chase and Son, Dealers and Brokers in Ice, 51 Commercial Street,\u00a0Boston, and Gardiner, Maine.” On the left hand side is a map of the Kennebec\u00a0River from the Augusta Dam to Bath, showing boat channels, position of buoys,\u00a0depth of water, position, capacity and ownership of ice houses. In the lower \u00a0left\u00a0hand comer is a list of tow boats on the river. There were nine owned by the\u00a0Knickerbocker Company: Adelia, Resolute, Knickerbocker, Popham, S. J. Macy, City\u00a0of Lynn, American Union, Clara and Clarita. There were two operated by the\u00a0Kennebec Company: the Charlie Lawrence and the Stella.<\/p>\n
On the right hand side of the chart are listed the names and capacity of\u00a0commercial ice houses on the Penobscot and Cathance Rivers, and at ports along\u00a0the coast from Biddeford to Vinal Haven.<\/p>\n
Now this old chart explains something that has troubled me. Some time ago\u00a0I referred to the Knickerbocker Ice Company of New York. Three different persons\u00a0have called me to task, saying they remember well the wagons of the Knickerbocker\u00a0Ice Company in the streets of Pbiladelphia. Yet they admit that Knickerbocker\u00a0is a good old New York name. It was Washington Irving’s Diedrich Knick-\u00a0erbocker who became to New York what John Bull is to England.<\/p>\n
This chart clearly shows that there were two companies. The KnickeIbocker\u00a0Ice Company of New Yotk was in 1882 the smaller company, so far as its Kennebec\u00a0houses were concemed, having only two with a combined capacity of 58,000 tons.<\/p>\n
Tie larger company was called the Philadelphia Knickerbocker Company and had six\u00a0big houses with a total capacity of 188,000 tous. It boasted one of the largest\u00a0houses on the river, in the town of Pittston, where 65,000 tons of ice could be\u00a0stored under one roof. But not even that huge capacity was the river’s record.<\/p>\n
That was held by the ice bouse of Abram Rich at Farmingdale, where winter after\u00a0winter were stored 80 ,000 tons. Haynes and IEWitt had a house at Richmond that\u00a0held 62,000 tons, and 50,000 tons could be stored by the Baltimore firm of Ober\u00a0and Son at Richmond.<\/p>\n
Altogether, between the Augusta Dam and Bath there were 41 ice houses from\u00a0which ice was shipped to distant ports. Those 41 were in addition to the countless\u00a0small houses used for storage of ice for local use. The Philadelphia Knickerbocker\u00a0Company was by far the largest operator, but not to be scoffed at were\u00a0the four big houses of Russell Brothers on both sides of the river at Richmond \u00a0and Dresden. Interests from the national capital centered at Pittston, where the Great Falls Company of Washington and the Independents of Washington together\u00a0accounted for 100,000 tons office a year.<\/p>\n
Among these giants, controlled from the big cities, the local operators\u00a0strove valiantly for control of what was left of the holdings which had once\u00a0been entirely in neighborhood hands. The Kennebec Ice Company, owned by Gardiner\u00a0and Augusta interests, had big houses at Richmond and Pittston. Even the small \u00a0operators hung tenaciously on: G. E. Weeks~ with a house just below the Augusta\u00a0Dam for a mere 2,000 tons; C. A. and J. D. White, storing 5,000 tons at Farmingdale;\u00a0George Brown, with his little 2,000 tons near the entrance to Mer’IYmeeting\u00a0Bay; and Thompson Brothers, with the smallest house of all, storing only\u00a01,500 tons opposite Swan Island.<\/p>\n
Thanks to this chart we know that the Kennebec held the record for the harvest\u00a0and export of Maine ice. For, here recorded, is a complete list of all\u00a0commercial companies in Maine which shipped ice out of the state.\u00a0On the Penobscot River were 15 companies, storing and shipping in 1882 a\u00a0total of 146,000 tons. On the cathance River were 12 companies with 39 ,000 tons.<\/p>\n
Along the coast from. Biddeford to Vinal Haven were 34 companies with 349,BOO\u00a0tons. And on the Kennebec were 41 companies with the huge total of 1,029,200\u00a0tons. The grand total for Z,Jaine’s exported ice in 1882 was 1,563,000 tons, and\u00a0that is a lot of ice.<\/p>\n
Perhaps you are getting tired or just plain sore to have me keep referring\u00a0to prices in the old days. I cannot refrain, however, from. bringing to your attention\u00a0the cost of painting a house half a century ago. I have before me an\u00a0old account form, showing the cost of painting the big two-story house at 275\u00a0Main Street, Waterville, opposite the end of Boutelle Avenue. ‘!be owner engaged\u00a0the well remembered local firm of Spaulding and Kenniston to paint that house in\u00a0May, 1900. Here is what their bill called for:<\/p>\n
100 lb. lead $ 6.00<\/p>\n
4 gal. oil 2.40<\/p>\n
Color for blinds 1.50<\/p>\n
Priming for blinds 2.00<\/p>\n
Paint for steps and floors 2.00<\/p>\n
Paint for sash .20<\/p>\n
Total for material 14.10<\/p>\n
Labor for painting house 25.00<\/p>\n
Labor for hanging blinds 5.00<\/p>\n
Total for labor 30.00<\/p>\n
Complete cost of job $ 44.10<\/p>\n
During the past month I have seen the homes of four of the fOlmders of our\u00a0nation: George Washington, our first president; Thomas Jefferson, author of the\u00a0Declaration of Independence; James Monroe, prcmolmcer of the independence of the\u00a0western hemisphere from the domination of Europe; and John Marshall, the great\u00a0chief justice who, more than any other man, molded legal precedent in the nation.<\/p>\n
I also walked the same streets where once walked George Hason, author of the Virginia\u00a0Bill of Rights, which became the model for the first ten amendments to _our\u00a0federal constitution, the document which we call the American Bill of Rights.<\/p>\n
In a vehicle which his ingenious mind would readily comprehend, though the internal\u00a0combustion engine was undreamed of in his day, I rode through Benjamin\u00a0Franklin’s long, straight Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, devoutly wishing that\u00a0old Ben were with us again to resolve some of the hopeless confusion that now\u00a0befuddles the national capital.<\/p>\n
And I had some serious thoughts as I contemplated the lives of those men\u00a0of Revolution and Construction, those men who risked all to face the anger of a\u00a0British king, and succeeded in what we today know to be a harder task than winning\u00a0a war, the task of winning the peace. For out of thirteen bickering, jealous,\u00a0quarreling colonies, those men and their gallant compatriots from Massachusetts\u00a0to Georgia made a united nation.<\/p>\n
But it was not their political achievement, their successful statesmanship,\u00a0that focused my attention on my recent visit to the old colonial capital\u00a0of Virginia. It was rather the evidence which surrounds the visitor at every\u00a0turn that those great Americans of the late eighteenth century were, above all\u00a0else, broadly educated men. They were not men of fixed specialization, ignorant of, and uninterested in all fields except their own specialty. Washington\u00a0surveyor, fanner, professional soldier, statesman, courtier — was a man who\u00a0read books on many subjects, who liked to talk about music and art, about philosophy\u00a0and religion. Mason knew the law; he was a master of jurisprudence\u00a0but he also knew flowers and trees and birds, and he was absorbed in several \u00a0aspects\u00a0of medicine. John Marshall, giver and interpreter of our laws, was a\u00a0great classicist, to whom Latin and Greek were as familiar as English, but he\u00a0also carried on interesting experiments in what he called natural philosophy,\u00a0and what we would call physics and chemistry.<\/p>\n
Probably the outstanding examples of liberally educated Americans of all\u00a0time were two of those founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Either could have been called the American Leonardo da Vinci, for as with the\u00a0great Florentine no subject the mind of man could touch was foreign to their\u00a0interest. Everyone knows that Franklin was printer, scientist, author, editor,\u00a0inventor, statesman and diplomat. He signed both the Declaration of Independence\u00a0and the Constitution, secured the friendship of France for the colonial\u00a0cause, reconciled the belligerent Philadelphia merchants and the peace-loving\u00a0Quakers, and was a great national figure; but he also identified lightning with\u00a0electricity, made the Franklin stove, organized America’s first municipal\u00a0fire department and first public library, started the academy which was to become\u00a0the great University of Pennsylvania, and in his famous Junto Club was ever\u00a0ready to discuss intelligently any subject under the sun.<\/p>\n
Those of you who have visited Jefferson’s stately home at Monticello have\u00a0seen with your own eyes the numerous objects which sprang from his inventive\u00a0genius. For this statesman and political philosopher was not only an architect,\u00a0designing his own Monticello and the magnificent buildings of the University of\u00a0Virginia; he also made clocks and thermometers, double doors both of which swung\u00a0open when one was turned, musical instruments, revolving tables and desks, laborsaving\u00a0devices for cooking and other household tasks.<\/p>\n
Yes, these American forefathers of ours were broadly educated men. They\u00a0had succeeded in doing what we so much yearn to have the modern college do for\u00a0its students — make them not narrow specialists, but truly educated men and\u00a0women. We think that we live very busy lives, but perhaps by the standards of\u00a0Washington and Jefferson our lives are merely hectic rather than busy. They too\u00a0were busy men. But, when we read their diaries and their notebooks, and the\u00a0long, seemingly leisured letters that comprise their correspondence we know\u00a0they did something too few of us ever deign to do — they took time to think.<\/p>\n
That is the lesson I brought back from Old Virginia — the lesson that\u00a0perhaps the great changes in modem civilization, the multitude of its technological\u00a0gadgets, don’t make so much difference as we like to think. In 1951,\u00a0as in 1776, we still need men of broad understanding who take time to think.<\/p>\n
Year: 1951<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #104, broadcast on April 15, 1951<\/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":[786,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7219"}],"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=7219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}