<\/p>\n
An interesting Maine town is Buckfield in Oxford County. I knew it well forty years ago, because it is the next town to Hebron, and during my years as a teacher at that old academy I had many occasions to go to Butkfield Village.<\/p>\n
The town had a moment’s prominence in our national history in the year 1898, because it was from the tiny telegraph office then located in the Buckfield railroad station that there went out the coded message to Admiral Dewey, ordering him to engage the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. The message was sent by the man who was then Buckfield’s leading citizen, John D. Long, Secretary of the Navy in the cabinet of President McKinley. I had that story directly from the lips of Mr. Long, who told it to me on a hot June commencement day at Hebron in 1915, as we sat in friendly chat on the rock pile at the edge of the Hebron athletic field.<\/p>\n
Waterville’s connection with the town of Buckfield is through one of our oldest and most prominent women, Mrs. Albert F. Drummond. She left Buckfield to become a citizen of Waterville nearly seventy years ago, but she has never forgotten her native town. She is a member of the Prince family, famous in several parts of Maine. When Hezekiel Prince of Thomaston made his horseback journey from Maine to Virginia, just before the beginning of the 19th century, one of his stops was at Buckfield to visit relatives.<\/p>\n
An interesting bit of Buckfield history concerns the town’s first meeting house. In many Maine towns the first meeting house was erected by vote of the town through taxation of all citizens. That is what happened when the old town of Winslow built what has since been remodeled into the Congregational Church on Lithgow Street. It happened again when the so-called West Meeting House was built; that is, the one on the west side of the Kennebec in that part of the town of Winslow that is now Waterville. In later years that old meeting house on the Waterville common was moved back to make room for the Waterville City Hall, and it became the city armory. All that is now left is the site where it once stood — a parking lot back of City Hall.<\/p>\n
The Buckfield meeting house was not built by public taxation, but by another method somewhat common at that time, voluntary association. In 1830 a number of inhabitants of Buckfield, Hartford and Sumner formed a society to erect what was known as a Union Chapel at Buckfield. Provisions for its use were very carefully spelled out: “Voted, that the house shall be for the use of the pew holders inpropotion to the number of their pews, each denomination having the use of the house for such proportion of the time as their number of votes bears to the whole number, and no denomination shall deprive any other from use of the house when they shall not occupy it themselves, even during the time in which it belongs to them.”<\/p>\n
The money to build the meeting house was thus raised by sale of pews to whomever would buy, regardless of his religious affiliation. The same method was often used by a single denomination. That is what happened when the first denominational meeting house was erected in Waterville, the Baptist building at the corner of Elm and Park Streets. The members knew that they were neither numerous enough nor wealthy enough to build the edifice by themselves; so they formed a society entirely apart from the church organization itself.<\/p>\n
It was the Society, not the church, which owned and controlled the meeting house, and into the membership of the society anyone who would buy a pew was welcome. That accounts for the membership of the First Baptist Society including the names of such prominent non-Baptists as Timothy Boutelle and Nathaniel Gilman. The First Baptist Church, the religious denominational body, and the First Baptist Society, owners and managers of the building in which the First Baptist Church conducted its worship, went on side by side for more than a hundred years, until all was legally incorporated into one body in 1932.<\/p>\n
Over in Buckfield the Society that built the Union Chapel decided that each pew should entitle the owner to two votes. The probable reason for that action was that, in every such society, the ownership of a pew was frequently divided between two persons, and by assigning two votes to each pew, each owner could cast one vote. The Buckfield Society divided the pew holders into five classes, representing a total of 122 votes for the 61 pews in the building.<\/p>\n
It may surprise you to know that the largest holders were the Universalists, because we have long thought of that denomination as much in the minority. But we need only go back to 1830 to learn that the strongest denomination right here in Waterville at that time were the Baptists and the Universalists. In fact, when the Baptists organized the Waterville Academy (now Coburn) the Universalists soon started their rival school, the Waterville Liberal Institute.<\/p>\n
Eastern Oxford and western Cumberland counties was fertile Universalist territory. My own town of Bridgton had a thriving Universalist Church, which in my boyhood had an ex-Congressman for its minister. There were strong Universalist churches at Norway, South Paris and Waterford. Long before I was born one of the largest and most influential was the Universalist Church at Buckfield.<\/p>\n
So, when Buckfield’s Union Chapel was built in 1830, the Universalists got the right to use that chapel 37 of each year’s 52 Sundays. Class II was designated Liberals. Whether it meant Unitarians only, or included other sects like the Free Baptists, is not clear. Anyhow it got 8 annual Sundays. Class III consisted of four individuals who didn’t agree about religion even among themselves. One of them owned two pews; so the class was entitled to the right of four Sundays a year. Thus each of those four pew holders could all by himself name the preacher for one Sunday. Class IV consisted of the Baptists, led by Noah Prince, ancestor of our Mrs. Drummond. They got just one Sunday out of the 52. Class V was even smaller. It consisted of just one person, Rev. William Pidgin, a Congregationalist, whose rights entitled him to less than one day’s use of the house, but since there were small surplus fractions left over from some of the other classes, he was given one full Sunday. Altogether it makes quite a story.<\/p>\n
But, believe me, it is the way more than one church building was built and used here in Maine a century or more ago.<\/p>\n
Over in Buckfield they still tell stories about Elder Nathaniel Chase. When someone expressed surprise that a church member had been caught stealing sheep, the elder commented: lilt takes a good man in the first place to be a good Christian. If a man will steal a sheep before he is converted, he is quite likely to steal one afterwards.”<\/p>\n
Well known for his harsh Calvinist theology, the elder had a contradictory reputation for leniency toward human frailty. One winter night he caught a man in his corn crib. The intruder had already shelled out about a bushel of corn that he intended to get away with. “You good for nothing heathen”, yelled the elder, “I ought to have you arrested — but I suppose you’re poor and needy. I’ll give you half that bushel for shelling out the other half for me. Take it and don’t let me ever catch you stealing again.”<\/p>\n
The elder had a mischievous nephew who decided to play a joke on the old man himself. When the elder started off for church on Sunday, he always carried in his pocket one of those old fashioned hymn books containing the words only of favorite hymns. It was a small book no larger than a pocket testament. One Sunday morning the nephew pulled the hymn book out of his uncle’s coat as it hung on a nail in the entry, and in the book’s place he put a deck of playing cards. When, early in the service, the elder stood up in the high pulpit and pulled from his pocket what he thought was the hymn book carefully folded in a handkerchief, there fell in all directions a veritable shower of playing cards. “Hah” , said the elder, “look at the Devil’s work.” Then he proceeded to lambaste the Devil in a rousing sermon. The story doesn’t tell us what he did to the nephew.<\/p>\n
You have heard me tell on more than one occasion how zealous the town fathers were inmost of Maine’s pioneer communities to see that poverty-stricken settlers didn’t stay long enough to become charges on the town. In 1798 the town of Buckfield warned sixteen families to depart within two weeks, because they had come into town for the purpose of settling without having first obtained the town’s consent. Some of them, however, must have obtained permission to stay, for among those warned out was a man who later became one of Buckfield’s most prominent citizens, Dr. Samuel Frink. How many equally desirable persons the harsh action drove out of town it is not easy to say.<\/p>\n
Sometimes there was as much trouble about the boundary line between two towns as there was about that between Maine and New Brunswick. In 1817 it was decided to do what they called “perambulate” the town line between Buckfield and Turner. The perambulators experienced some difficulty, as is shown by their report: “In finding the corner between Buckfield and Turner, we first looked on the line extending from that between Turner and Hebron, and was found by the selectmen of those towns while running their line on the same day. We did find a corner formed by a beech tree, but we could find no continuing line toward Hartford. We then turned west, and about 10 rods in the direction we found a stake and stones marked 1812. From this we found a line which we all agreed to be the true boundary between Buckfield and Turner. We followed it throughout and found it to agree with the compass. So we renewed the marks along it. On coming to the Hartford line, we found that the old corner had been destroyed by fire. We therefore set up a stake and stones where we supposed the true corner to be, and where Mr. Herman Wood, owner of the land, assured us the old corner formerly stood. We marked the stake 1817 and spotted it on three sides.”<\/p>\n
The history of every Maine town mentions the famous Year of No Summer, 1816. Buckfield’s official history, written in 1915 by Alfred Cole and Charles Whitman, is no exception. Like the other town histories, it states that there was frost every month in the year, the corn and potato crops were nearly total failures, and there was much suffering among the people, especially the poor. But what I did not know was that the autumn of 1816 saw many bad forest fires. I knew it had been a cold summer, but I hadn’t thought of it as a dry one. The Buckfield history says: “In the fall fires raged in many parts of Maine. In this section one, starting from a fire in Woodstock, ignited some brush and spread through the forests to Buckfield. Hundreds of acres of fine timber were burned. The vegetable covering of thin soil was consumed and lands which before were called good never recovered from the fearful ravages of the flames.”<\/p>\n
In closing let us see what Hezekiah Prince of Thomaston said about Buckfield when he visited the place in 1793: “There are about 500 inhabitants, happy and industrious in their forest homes. They assist each other in all heavy work, joining forces in house building, wood clearing, husking and quilting bees. Homespun clothing of flax or wool is principally worn. Farm hands are paid $8 a month and female help 50\u00a2 a week. Letters are carried by private parties and delivered as opportunity offers.”<\/p>\n
Year: 1958<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #381, Broadcast on May 18, 1958<\/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":[744,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7871"}],"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=7871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}