\nIt has always been common to give a mortgage deed to protect a loan on real\u00a0estate, but it is not common to find in the old deeds of the early nineteenth\u00a0century a fixed plan for partial payments. The banks and the bui Iding loan companies\u00a0now operate such plans as their standard practice, but in the old days it\u00a0was more-usual to give a time note in the expectation of renewing part or al I\u00a0of it on expiration.<\/p>\n
One of those partial payment mortgage deeds was issued by Israel Chaney of\u00a0Lunenburg, Vermont to James Goodwin of Fairfield on June 4,1810. For $760\u00a0Goodwin sold to Chaney a lot of 100 acres, bordering on the Kennebec River in\u00a0Fairfield. It was the north half of the proprietor’s lot No. 65 under the old\u00a0Nye-Dimerick survey_ Goodwin deeded the lot to Chaney, and in return Chaney\u00a0gave Goodwin a mortgage deed with interesting conditions. He was to pay Goodwin\u00a0$200 in cash on February 1, 1811. On February 1, 1812 he was to pay $100,\u00a0then on February 1, 1813 the payment was to be $50 in cash and $50 in meat\u00a0stock. A fourth payment of $100 was due on February 1, 1814. Interest was to\u00a0be $25 in cash and $25 in meat stock. The same arrangement applied to 1815\u00a0and 1816. That made a total of $700 for which Goodwin must wait nearly six\u00a0years _ The rema in i ng $60 Chaney was to pay before February 1, 1811.<\/p>\n
So here was a sale of land for which the seller had to wait eight months\u00a0be fore he got any money at a I I. The re was no down payment whateve r. The firs t\u00a0payment, totaling $260, eight months after the sale, was to be without interest, \u00a0but the other payments included interest from March 20, 1810. Interestingly\u00a0enough the instrument does not state the rate of interest, but in 1810 it may\u00a0we II have been hi ghar than what became I ater the customary six per cent. It\u00a0certainly was not lower.<\/p>\n
The ancestor of ma,ny of the Centra I Mai ne Goodwi ns was Stephen Goodwi n,\u00a0born in Ki ttery in 1733. In 1763, after his marri age to 0 live Fi Tch of Newcas~\u00a0Tie, he petitioned the General Court for payment for his services in the French\u00a0and Indian War. He was then living at Bagaduce. That was one of the old\u00a0names for Casti ne. At the age of 44 he en listed in the Revol utionary Army and\u00a0served in the i II-fated Penobscot campa i gn, wh i ch ended in the routed retreat\u00a0from the very Casti ne where Goodwi n had once lived. Stephen’s brother Ca leb,\u00a0also a Revolutionary soldier, died of smallpox whi Ie stationed with Washing-:-‘ ,Ton’s\u00a0army outside Boston. In 1785 Stephen Goodwin settled at Clinton, buying\u00a0lot 13 on the proprietor’s map of the Kennebec Purchase. In 1795 he bought 1\/6\u00a0share ina mil I near Kenda I I s ~-1 i I lsi n Fa i rf i e I d \u2022<\/p>\n
Stephen Goodwin died in 1805, and his widow Olive petitioned for her son\u00a0Mi les to be administrator of hi s father’s estate. The inventory of that estate\u00a0included one horse, one cow, farm tools, household utensi Is, and clothing including\u00a0two black stocks.<\/p>\n
That Stephen Goodwin, in spite of his ownership of only one horse and one\u00a0cow, was a man of respected position and some substance, is revealed by his son\u00a0Mi les’ final report to probate. That report contained an item of $3.00 paid\u00a0TO Sam Gibson for making a coffin. Since $1.00, or at most 9 shi Ilings (which\u00a0was $1.50> was the usual price for a coffin, Stephen Goodwin must have had an\u00a0unusua Ily fi ne one.<\/p>\n
Watervi lie comes into the Goodwin picture through the person of our most\u00a0noted early physician. When Israel Chaney issued his mortgage deed to James\u00a0Goodwin in 1810, it was acknowledged and sworn to before Justice of the Peace\u00a0Moses App leton \u2022<\/p>\n
Another of the early Goodwins was Daniel Goodwin who lived aT Pownalborouqh\u00a0(now Dresden) in the days of the famous Parson Sai ley, the first settled minis-\u00a0ter on the Kennebec above Merrymeeting Bay. On October 22, 1761 Daniel issued\u00a0a deed to John Small, which I find so interesting that I want to share with you\u00a0its exact word s :<\/p>\n
t’l, Daniel Goodwin of Pownalborough in the County of Lincoln, the Province\u00a0of Massachusetts Bay, blacksmith, in consi deration of the sum of eight pounds”\u00a0(approximately $40) Hlawful money duly paid, do absolutely give, grant, bargain,\u00a0sell and convey unto John Small of Pownalborough, tanner, a certain parcel of\u00a0land, lying and being in said Pownalborough, on the western side of the Eastern\u00a0River, containing twenty acres!? (The boundaries are then described’> Hln witness \u00a0whereof I, the said Daniel Goodwin and Prudence, my wife, in token of her\u00a0consent hereto, and relinquishment of all her right and title in the premises,\u00a0have hereunto set our hands and sea Is, th is 22nd day of October, A. D. 1761, and\u00a0in the first year of His Majesty’s reign.”<\/p>\n
I have often told you that the best picture of social and economic conditions\u00a0in our early Maine communities is revealed by the ads in the old newspapers.<\/p>\n
What life along the Kennebec was like 125 or more years ago is shown by\u00a0some of the ads in the very first issue of the Kennebec Journal, which appeared\u00a0on January 8, 1825. B. Nason & Company announced that they had just received\u00a0and were eager to sell 10 hogsheads of West Indian rum, three of Jamaica rum,\u00a030 of molasses, and 150 of salt, as well as 30 barrels of sugar and 30 chests\u00a0of Souchong tea. They were sure that prospective purchasers would be glad to\u00a0know a scarci ty of nai Is cou Id now be re Ii eved for they had just got in 120\u00a0cases of assorted si zes.<\/p>\n
Means and Brooks wanted to buy 500 yards of good wai led cloth; a II woo I;\u00a0also 100 prime fox skins. Alexander Johnson said he was in the market to buy\u00a0from Kennebec farmers pork, oats, white beans, peas:~’ and a few barrels of cider~\u00a0as wei I as 200 cords of hemlock bark, and 20 thousand white ash barrel staves.<\/p>\n
Moses Safford informed the public that he had on hand, and would keep constant\u00a0I y on hand for sa Ie, a I arge assortment of cha irs of every descri pti on. He\u00a0wou I d se II them for cash, country produce, or on cred; t at pri ces wh; ch coul d\u00a0not fail to please those who would favor him with their custom. Innkeeper Thomas\u00a0Hamlen informed his friends and all travelers that the Kennebec Tavern was\u00a0now we II repai red and handsome Iy furni shed. GraTeful for past favorSt Hamlen\u00a0respectfu I I Y so Ii ci ted the i r conti nuance.<\/p>\n
The movement for circulating libraries began early in our Maine communities.<\/p>\n
The plan which Benjamin Franklin had started in Phi ladelphia before 1750\u00a0spread throughout the colonies, and when the Kennebec Journal was first published\u00a0in 1825, the people of Augusta already had a library. The Journal said:\u00a0“A meeting of Thefproprietors of the Common Library in the town of Augusta, for\u00a0the purpose of organizing themselves into a socieTY or body politic, by the\u00a0name of the Social Library of the Town of Augusta, wi I I be held at the Reading\u00a0Room on Friday, January 14,1825 at six o’clock p.m .\u2022 A punctual attendance is\u00a0requested. ”<\/p>\n
I n those days every loca I newspaper 1 however sma I I, pri nted fore i gn news.\u00a0In fact, excepT at election time, little attention was paid to national news\u00a0within our own country. Readers seemed more eager to know what was happening\u00a0on the other side of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
Of course such news reached this country slowly. The Journal, in its initial\u00a0issue, was therefore proud to announce that The packet ship Pacific had\u00a0arr i ved at New York from Li ve rpoo I, whence s he sa i I ed on Decembe r 19. 1’The Pacific”,\u00a0said The Journal, “brings us papers from England up to ~cember 19 \u00a0i ncl usi ve, from wh i ch the New York edi tors have made for us a vari ety of extracts.”<\/p>\n
One of those extracts concerned the war between Greece and Turkey:\u00a0another covered the do; ngs of Genera I Lafayette after his recent return to\u00a0France from a visit to the United States; a third told of the capture of pi-rates in the Mediterranean. But the most interesting item concerned the British \u00a0invention of a steam gun. “It is simply formed~’, said the Journal, !!by introducing\u00a0a gun barrel into the steam generator of any engine, then adding two\u00a0pipes toward the chamber of the gun, introducing a quantity of bal Is] which by\u00a0action of a handle on the chamber are dropped into the barrel and fired out one\u00a0at a time, at the rate of four or five hundred to the minute.”<\/p>\n
Some election returns, which recently noted for the year 1824, give us\u00a0a striking contrast between the population in three Kennebec communities then\u00a0and now. Ha II owe II, now the sma I lest of the Kennebec ci ties, was then the I argest.<\/p>\n
In the presidential election of 1824 it cast 337 votes; Augusta was second\u00a0wi th 176 votes; whi Ie Ii tt Ie \\vatervi lie was far be low the other two wi th\u00a0only 79 votes. Today Augusta and Watervi lie are of about equal size and Hal lowe\u00a0I lis much sma Iler. Vassa I boro then had a I most as many peep Ie as V”atervi lie.<\/p>\n
Barter rather than cash was the principal medium of trade in the first half\u00a0of the last century. In some of the ads which I mentioned earlier tonight, you\u00a0have noti ced the merchants’ readi ness to take produce and other goods i n ex~.\u00b7\u00b7>’\u00a0change for thei r commodities. Let’s se lect a few other samp les from the\u00a0first issue of the Kennebec Journa I. Chand ler & Nason had for sa Ie at the i r\u00a0new store, on the si te where thei r former store was previous Iy burned, a general\u00a0assortment of English, West Indies and American goods which they were wi 11-\u00a0ing to exchange for other articles. They particularly wanted 600,000 fi rst\u00a0quality shingles and 4,000 bushels of oats. W. F. Hallet & Company were readyto take produce, especially corn, oats and honey, in exchange for their assortment \u00a0of household needs, which included cognac and Spanish brandy, Holland and\u00a0American gin, West Indies and New England rum, loaf and brown sugar, coffee and\u00a0tea, salt cod and pollock, window glass and nai Is, logwood and redwood, shirting\u00a0and sheeting, calicoes and cambrics.<\/p>\n
Year: 1957<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #351, Broadcast on October 20, 1957<\/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":[761,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7776"}],"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=7776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}