A few weeks ago’ mentioned that I recently had access to the Watervi! Ie\u00a0tax assessments of many years ago. ‘told you about the road supervisors and\u00a0their collection of Taxes. tet’s take a look tonight at the assessments of pro..,.\u00a0perty made for tax purposes. On these were based the road tax, the school tax,\u00a0and a II other town Taxes.<\/p>\n
The records for The year 1830 are typical of those early days in Waterville.\u00a0That, let me remi nd you, . was 123 years ago, when Andrew. Jackson had Just be …\u00a0come Presi dent of theUnj t~d States. ,t .was 19 yea rs be fo re the ra i I road rea~\u00a0ched Waterville, and manyWatervi I Je men who became heroes in the Ci vl’.Warwere\u00a0not yet born.~ ButWaTervi l1ewas already a. thriving vi llage and had cO~s1derable\u00a0taxable prope’rty::,<\/p>\n
What was taxed in 1830?Prettynearly everythfrig — fand, buildlngs;c,r0ps ..\u00a0stocks and bonds, ~neY~j2a+.~pte … est, stock in frade, and anything else the as $'”\u00a0‘,'”,’I’ ”\u00a0essors could uncover. Dr. <\/em>Moses Appleton, who once charged a fellow citizen\u00a0two doJ lars for’Ucuring Y01Jtfami Iyot the itch’l, was assessed at $5,,972. His\u00a0e,’:,,};\u00a0I isted property included 140 acres of land, 7 head’of cattle, two horses .. two\u00a0swine, five shares of bank stock, six shares in the new tol J bridge, two car.”.\u00a0riages, $300 out at ,interest, and what is somewnatmysterlously called an in ..\u00a0come fund of $1,000, The doctor’s total tax in 1830 was $41.44.<\/p>\n Much wealthier than Dr. Appleton were those long friendly rivals, NathanielGllman\u00a0and Timothy Boutel\/e \u2022. The latter’s 1830 tax was $142.72, and Gilman’s\u00a0was $132.13. At that time Gi Iman had not the wea Ith that made him Watervi lie ‘$\u00a0richest man, but he was on the way to it. Although much of his property was\u00a0outside of Watervi lie, in fiveyears.1 by 1835, he had so increased his local\u00a0holdings that his tax was then $300 compared with Boutel Ie’s $172.<\/p>\n Interesting\/y enough, the biggest taxpayer in 1830 was neither GJlman nor\u00a0Boute I Ie. I twas Simeon Mathews, whose tax exceeded e i the r of the othe rs by\u00a0mora than a hundred dollars. While Boutelle was paying $142 and Gilman $132,\u00a0Mathews paid $246.\u00a05i meon Mathews was the son 6f Jabez Mathews, whose fi rst sight of Water~\u00a0vi lIe had been when he passed through the p lace as a member of Arnold’sexpedt””\u00a0tion to Quebec. In fact Simeon was born tnGray, Maine, Just after his father\u00a0started on that i I I-fated expedl t Ion — on June 8, 1785. In 1794, at the age of\u00a09, Simeon came with his father TO Watervil Ie, where Jabez kept a tavern on .the\u00a0north side ofSi Iver street .. about where the old Redington Furn.iture store now\u00a0.stands. The building ,which M~theY’s used a~ a tavern had been buHt by Dr,. Dba..,\u00a0<\/em>qiahWJ II lams in 1795 .and lssaid to have been the first two-story house on the\u00b7\u00a0Wate.r ville. side of the river.<\/p>\n Whell S i~orl gtewto’manryoo’dhewent Into partnership with ,Nathaniel!?; Iman ..\u00a0ancj together they operated a sTore about where the Montgomery Ward bullding now ,- \\:,..’ ,- . ‘.\u00a0~tand~. They did an’,mmense’ bU5,l ness for so smafJ a town.\u00a0‘”.\u00a0I n one year they\u00a0shippeclout on the old river boats 2,000 bushels of wheat, 4,000 of corn.~ _.and\u00a020 ,000 .. ofoq <\/em>ts, a I J bought from fa rmers within a few miles.<\/p>\n Irf1826 Slmaon ~athews .but 1T Tneb i 9 mansion house onS II ver Street .. later\u00a0the home of George Fred Terry. Perhaps through the years his best rememberedact was his planting the long I fne of shade trees on both sides of 51 Iver Street. \u00a0Simeon Mathews had a son who was given the Hmelfght on this program three\u00a0yea rs ago — Edward Mathews, the young man whom Dr. Va lorus Coo I t dge murde red on that September nl ght 1 n 1847.\u00a0We II, anyhow, Simeon r~athews .. store keeper, sh i pper I <\/em>bui I der of a mans i on,\u00a0father ofa murdered son, was Waterville’s heaviest taxpayer in <\/em>1830.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The total Watervi lie assessment 1 n that year was $582,065. The tax rate\u00a0was 7.3 mi I Is, $7.30 on a thousand. That indeed seems to have been a high rate\u00a0for those times. In 1828 it was only 7 mi’ Is flat, and in 1834 it WqS 6* mills,\u00a0and in 1835 it went way down to 5.7 mi 115. In 1830 IA\/atervi lie had exactly 400\u00a0po II tax payers. Each was taxed $2.08, 75 cents for highway tax and $1.33 for\u00a05 tate 1 county and othe r town taxes.<\/p>\n ~”ho were the big taxpayers in 1830 besides ~1athews and Gilman and Boutelle?\u00a0They were Asa Redington, founder of that famous v4atervi lIe fami Iy, who paid\u00a0$103; Dr. Daniel Cook, who had been an Army surqeon In the \\~ar of 1812 <\/em>t <\/em>and who\u00a0had then come to Watervil Ie to associate in the practice of Dr. Moses Appleton, \u00a0and who built the first brick house in Watery; lie — his tax was $90; and Daniel\u00a01,100r, whose sons became Waterv i II e ‘s best known sh i p b u i I de rs, who pa i d $82.\u00a0Baxter Crowell, who isn’t even listed in the Centennja I History of Waterv! Ile,_\u00a0paid $80. How a man could have that much property and yet leave no record for\u00a0local historians is a mystery. James Stackpole and James Shorey each paid a tax\u00a0of more than $70.<\/p>\n Stackpole was one of the real pioneers of this region. Descendant of the\u00a0first James Stackpole, who had come to Boston from Ireland in 1680, our James\u00a0came to \\’Iinslow from his birthplace in Biddeford exactly a hundred years later,\u00a0in 1780. Ten years later he established his home on the west side of the river”\u00a0one of the first settlers to bui Id a house on the Watervi lIe side. He bui It a\u00a0sawmi I I on the Messalonskee, kept a store, bui It several Ships, and was captain\u00a0of \\t\/atervi lie’s first mi I it\/a company. His commission in the mi litia carried\u00a0the same signature as the first, name on the Declaration of tndependence, that\u00a0of John Hancock. On November 25, 1812 he wrote in his diary: “1 am this day\u00a080 years old and carried a bushel of corn on my back to the mi IJ.<\/p>\n It was not this James Stackpole who paid the 1830 tax. He died in 1824 at\u00a0the very ripe age of 92. It was his son, James Stackpole .Irq who paid the\u00a0col lectors $78.48 on his property in 1830. He too was a lumberman, trader, and\u00a0builder of Ships. His store was where the Lockwood No.1 mill now stands.<\/p>\n As for J ames Shorey 1 he, I j ke Baxte r Crowe I I., is not ment i oned in the l.entennial\u00a0History. The Shoreys and the Shores originally the same name-\u00b7\u00b7, were\u00a0numerous, and I suspect James Shorey was one of that important \\~atervi lie faml IV.\u00a0Early in this talk we mentioned the i temsi n Dr. Moses App J eton I s assess\u00b7\u00b7\u00a0ment in 1830. Let’s look at some of the others. Here is Timothy Boutelle’s:<\/p>\n 6 houses, 4 barns, 5 shops and stores, 12 tons hay, 15 acres pasture,. 7 acres\u00a0wood, 2 acres for roads, 75 shares bank stock, 7 shares in the toll bridge. 10\u00a0acres ti Ilage; 35 bu. corn, 25 bu, wheat, 40 bu, oats, 100 bu. potatoes, 8\u00a0acres mow i ng I and, 20 ounces p I ate.<\/p>\n That laST item is interesting, and only one other Watervi lie taxpayer is\u00a0simi larly I isTed. He, of course, was Nathaniel Gi lman, and in that ownership\u00a0of si IVer he and Boutelle were equals; each was taxed for 20 ounces of plate.\u00a0Gilman’s list included 7 hoftSes, 5 barns, 4 shops and stores, 10 tons hay.\u00a0t5 acres pasturage, 200 acres wood, 10 acres un improved .. 8 acres reserved for\u00a0roads, 261 shares of bank stock, 10 shares in the toll bridge, 6 acres ti Ilage”\u00a050 bu. corn, 1 00 bu. oats ,and 150 bu. potatoes.<\/p>\n For most of these taxpayers potatoes was the big crop. Boutelle’s hundred\u00a0bushels and Gi Iman’s 150 were small lots compared with some of their neighbors.\u00a0James Stackpole had 300 bushels, Asa Redington 350f Baxter Crowell 400, and AIpheus\u00a0Lyon the unbel ievable quantity of 2,500 bushels.<\/p>\n The Redington property was alre,ady beginning to be shared. Samuel and Wi II\u00a0i am each owned one-ha I f of a shop; each had five shares of bank stock. S i I as\u00a0shared with Asa Jr. the ownership of a lath machine which produced 300~OOO laths\u00a0annua II y.<\/p>\n John (‘..001 p <\/em>brother of Aunt Hannah Cool, who was vari ous Iy known as a kind Iy\u00a0lady and as the local witch, was taxed for three houses and a barn -” no crops,\u00a0no bank stock, no toll bridge shares, no lands. That singles him out as an unusual\u00a0case for a hundred and twenty years ago. James Hasty had no oats or corn\u00a0or potataes~ but pa ida tax on a stock in trade va I <\/em>ued at $1,000 and on money\u00a0out at interest? $500. He had salted away also ten shares of bank stock and four\u00a0shares in the toll bridge.<\/p>\n That bridge, by the way, was the first bridge across the Kennebec between\u00a0\\lJinslow and \\~atervi lIe, It had been bui It less than five years and was already\u00a0beginning to pay for itself when the great flood of 1832 washed it away.\u00a0By the way, let ‘sgee who owned the Watervi lie Bank in 1830. I ts stock\u00a0seems to have been pretty widely distributed in small holdings, but Nathaniel\u00a0Gi Iman owned 261 shares, the Redingtons 110, Boutelle 75, Crowell 30 and Stackpole\u00a020. No one else in the 1830 Waterville tax fist owned more than 12.\u00a0From a record kept by Dr. Appleton himself we learn the assessed value of\u00a0these bank and toll bridge shares. Appleton’s five shares in the bank were\u00a0carried at $350, $70 a share; his six shares in the toll bridge were down for\u00a0$200, $33 1\/3 a share.<\/p>\n We <\/em>hear so often that management and labor are always enemies, that they\u00a0can do nothing together, I <\/em>think we ought to cal I repeated attention to the mini\u00a0ature train that had such a prominent place in the celebration of the Watervi\u00a0lIe Sesquicentennial last summer. After its fi rst appearance in the pageant\u00a0and the big parade of the Watervi lIe celebration; the train was shown at Rockland,\u00a0at lewiston, at Skowhegan# at Scarboro and other places.\u00a0The bui Iding of that unique train was a wonderful example of cooperation\u00a0in industry. Bui It exactly to scale, it consisted of an authentic repl ica of\u00a0an early locomotive, tender~ box car, coach and caboose. Coupled up, it made a\u00a0train 65 feet long,<\/p>\n The idea of the;tra I n was conce.i ved by Shops Supt. Frank H. Bennett of the\u00a0\/>’1a j ne Centra I’s major shops in ‘;tatervi lie. The draft; n9 room then I aid out the\u00a0plans under Laurence Sparrow, and the actual construction was supervised by rllli I I\u00a0Foreman Ernest Bickford~ whose chief assistants on this job were R. L Johnson1\u00a0Chris Carstenson and Ray Libby.<\/p>\n The locomoti ve was bui It on one of the tractors of the stores department.\u00a0Reminiscent of the first train to pullout of ~~atervTlle at 8:45 A.M. on Decem~\u00a0ber 3,1849, this locomotive bore the number 3 , as did the old A&K engine on\u00a0that historic morning 103 years ago. The little engine had a real locomotive\u00a0bell, and its brass whistle was taken from an old snow plow.<\/p>\n The wheels of both engine and cars were sawed from plywood to imitate real\u00a0car wheels. The boxcar was bui It by Leon Day and Ted Jewett and was completely\u00a0authentic down to the shining black grab irons, ladders and hand-brake wheels.<\/p>\n The passenger coach had the old fashioned overhang roof, familiar on early\u00a0rai froad cars. It even had miniature shades at the windows. An authentic oldtime\u00a0coach down to the ‘ast deta j I, it was the hand i work of Foreman Gh i ck Poo-\u00a0I er, Glen McCorri son and Roy ‘flebste r \u2022\u00a0. The color scheme and antique lettering on the whole train was worked out\u00a0by Ken stevens, assisted by Earl fJlcCaslin and Harvey Dusty.\u00a0AI’ the various builders depended a lot on the road’s old timers for sug~\u00a0gestions. Frank Bennett himself has a rich fund of memory about the rolling\u00a0stock of by-gone days, as do also such men as Percy Grant and old-time conductor\u00a0Ned Tra inor.<\/p>\n The numerals on the I ittle cars, as well as the No.3 on the locomotive,\u00a0had spec i a lsi gn j f i cance. The boxca r date, 1887, rep resents the year the Wate rvi\u00a0lie shops of the Maine Central were founded, and the car number~ 1862, is the\u00a0year the Maine Central itself was incorporated, born from the consolidation of\u00a0the A&K and the P&K. The number 90 on the caboose stood for the 90 years that\u00a0the rvJa i ne Centra I has served the state of Ma i ne.<\/p>\n Everyone who has seen it will <\/strong>not soon forget this miniature train, but\u00b7\u00a0even more close Iy will <\/strong>it be cheri shed and remembered by both the management\u00a0and the workers of the Ma i ne Centra I Ra i I road as an examp Ie of coope rat ion in\u00a0industry at its best.<\/p>\n Year: 1953<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #172, broadcast on January 25, 1953<\/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":[740,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7367"}],"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=7367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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