<\/p>\n
Fifty years ago the summer business in Maine was much different from what it is today. People came by train, or by steamer from Boston and New York. Families would come to one resort for the entire season, bringing with them huge trunks and boxes filled with their needs for the summer.<\/p>\n
When Al Burnham’s Concord stage used to meet the little steamers of the Sebago Lake-Songo River Line at the Bridgton landing on Long Lake, the big rack on the rear and a good part of the roof would be piled high with trunks, bags and boxes. As Al’s four horses drew that clumsy old coach up Main Hill, past my father’s store to the Bridgton House, I am sure the weight of the luggage often exceeded that of the passengers.<\/p>\n
The Bridgton and Saco River narrow gauge had no Pullman car; so the summer people, as we called them, came to the beautiful lake region around Bridgton either by getting off their Pullman at Sebago Lake station on the Maine Central’s Mountain Division and taking the little steamer to Bridgton, or by changing to the narrow gauge at Bridgton Junction and riding the 16 miles to Bridgton in the little coaches of the Bridgton and Saco River two-footer — coaches in which each seat held only a single passenger.<\/p>\n
The Sandy River Line was more fortunate. It boasted of the only parlor car ever built for any two-foot railroad in the United States. Thus, visitors to the Rangeley region, when they reached Farmington, had only to change from a big Pullman to a smaller one. The Sandy River Pullman was, of course, not a sleeper, but a day-time parlor car. There were no night trains on that narrow gauge line.<\/p>\n
At Greenville, when the booming month of August began, sometimes two Pullman cars would be on the Bangor and Aroostook train arriving there at the foot of Moosehead Lake. Besides the guests getting off at the Greenville Junction station to stay at hotels in or near that village and the adjoining Greenville, others stayed on the train while it backed on to the wharf at Greenville Junction, where boats of the Coburn Steamboat Company took the passengers to Kineo, East and West Outlets, and other resorts. My friend Webb Noyes has sent me a picture recently published in the Piscataquis Observer, showing a B & A train at Greenville Junction with three coaches and a Pullman waiting to load passengers for the trip to Northern Maine Junction, there to connect with the Maine Central and points west.<\/p>\n
If you will look at the insert map in a current timetable of the Maine Central Railroad and examine the branch marked from Pittsfield to Harmony, you will note a station designated Wild Goose Club. Passenger trains no longer operate on that branch, but fifty years ago the wealthy sportsmen from Boston and New York, who were members of the Wild Goose Club, came to their luxurious camp by Pullman, and often the car stood overnight on a siding at Wild Goose station. Some of my listeners will recall that I told you about that famous sporting club at some length on this program two years ago. The place is now the site of the Wild Goose Camp for boys, operated by a teacher from New York.<\/p>\n
Sometime ago I told you about Skowhegan’s spectacular physician of the 1850’s, Dr. Angier Mann, and I have given a brief sketch of his exploits in my book “Remembered Maine”. But only a few weeks ago did I discover that Dr. Mann had any connection with the Coolidge murder case in 1847, and that another name brought into the same story was a childhood acquaintance of mine, Charles Stickney of Bridgton, who was a regular reporter for the Bridgton News and a feature writer for the Portland papers. The story to which I refer was told by D. W. Ames of Portland to a reporter for the Portland Press in 1898.<\/p>\n
At the time when Dr. Valorus Coolidge murdered his friend Ed Mathews in the Coolidge office on Waterville’s Main Street on that September night in 1847, Ames was a young man residing in Norridgewock. His comments to the reporter were caused by the publication in the Sunday Telegram of an article by Charles Stickney. Stickney had told of the rumored escape of Coolidge from the State Prison at Thomaston and his later appearance in California. Ames did not credit that story. He told the Portland Press reporter: “That story of Coolidge’s escape was pure fabrication, started by Dr. Angier Mann of Skowhegan, who called himself’a stripp’ings and molasses doctor. Mann published a paper, solely for the purpose of advertising himself.<\/p>\n
In that paper, after Coolidge’s death at Thomaston had been reported, Mann started the sensational report that Coolidge had escaped with the collusion of prison officers. The report put into circulation by Mann became so wide-spread that during the session of the legislature in 1850 a resolve was introduced for a full investigation. Although the resolve was not passed, individual members of the legislature did investigate, and they concluded that Mann’s charges were completely false.”<\/p>\n
Although living in Norridgewock when the murder was committed in 1847, Ames was working as clerk in a Boston hotel in 1849, when Mann printed the sensational story. He told the newspaper reporter that one of the frequent guests at the Boston hotel was Richard Robinson, bank president and wealthy ship owner of Thomaston, Maine. Ames asked Robinson if there was any truth in the rumor of Coolidge’s escape. Robinson replied that he had talked with the chaplain of the prison, a man of unimpeachable reputation, who said: “If Coolidge ever came here, Coolidge is dead.” The chaplain meant that if the man who was committed to prison in the spring of 1848 was Valorus Coolidge, it was the same man who died there in 1849. That the man committed as Ed Mathew’s murderer was Coolidge, there is not the slightest doubt Ames also remembered something about the part played by the Flint family of Anson in the Coolidge case. As I have told the story in “Kennebec Yesterdays”, the principal witness against Coolidge was his young medical student, Thomas Flint, who had helped the doctor remove the body from his office, carry it down the stairs and place it on the wood pile in the cellar. Flint later went to California with relatives from Anson and Madison, where he became a wealthy rancher and financier.<\/p>\n
Let us have in Ames’ own words what he remembered about the Flint family on that first day of October in 1847. “I remember”, Ames said, “that the father of Thomas Flint, also accused of having a hand in the murder, was William R. Flint of Anson. He was an influential man in the region and a state senator. He had sent his son to Waterville to study medicine with Dr. Coolidge. Hearing that Thomas had been arrested, he drove to Norridgewock, arriving in the evening at the hotel kept by Ezra Pike. When he told Pike of his intention to remain over night and get an early start for Waterville in the morning, Pike and his wife urged Mr. Flint to drive on at once to Waterville, so as to be there when the morrow’s investigation started.<\/p>\n
They offered him their own horses to replace his tired pair. Flint agreed and arrived in Waterville about midnight, going straight to the Williams House, where his son had a room. He found the lad there, in custody of a deputy sheriff, who allowed the father to question his son alone. Mr. Flint succeeded in getting Thomas to tell the truth about what had happened. He told how Dr. Coolidge had come to him at the Williams House to tell him that Ed Mathews had taken poison right in the doctor’s office and was now dead, and that the doctor desperately needed Flint’s help to move the body lest suspicion be directed upon the doctor himself.”<\/p>\n
Mr. Ames insisted that Senator Flint’s long night ride and his timely action when he met his son at the old Williams House provided the critical evidence that caused the jury to indict Dr. Coolidge at once.<\/p>\n
Preserved at the Waterville Historical Society is a letter written from the State Prison at Thomaston by Dr. Valorus Coolidge to Rev. William A. Drew of Augusta on March 30, 1848. Drew was a publisher as well as a preacher. In “Kennebec Yesterdays” I have told”about his publication at Augusta of a paper called Drew’s Rural Intelligencer, and how he made persistent attack on the use of stoves instead of the old open fires. Drew had taken an interest in Dr. Coolidge, who by all accounts was an attractive young man. After Coolidge had been convicted and sent to Thomaston, Drew wrote to him frequently and sent him books. Dr. Coolidge had been in prison only four days when he wrote to Rev. Drew the letter now preserved at the Waterville Historical Society. He had been sentenced to death, and was now awaiting execution. He knew, however, that he had a year to live, for Maine law then decreed that a year must elapse between sentence of death and its fulfillment. So the doctor sat in his cell at Thomaston and wrote Rev. Drew as follows: “Permit me to address you, though our acquaintance was of but short duration. My journey here was one of the deepest distress, as it is my last journey to an abode here on earth. Oh, friend! I am here in my cell, my home as long as life continues, unless Divine Providence sees fit to direct otherwise.<\/p>\n
“Having been somewhat unwell since I have been here, I have not as yet done any labor. The officers, so far as I have seen them, have been kind in all respects. My books came with me without damage and I am allowed to have them in my cell. Mr. Carr (the warden) says he will allow me to have your paper sent me, because I am alone and no other convict can see it. It will help wear away the lonely hours, and I can also keep up with the times.<\/p>\n
“You spoke to me about what I said in the Court House in relation to a future state. Your explanation on that point would give me great satisfaction. For the past 12 years the study of my profession has engrossed almost my whole attention. I have therefore held little discussion upon the subject of religion, at least not sufficient to clear away all doubts from my mind. Any information that you will give me will be received with respect and gratitude.<\/p>\n
“Does Mr. Evans entertain the same views that he did when you held that private interview with him?” (By this question Coolidge meant, did Evans, who had been the head of his defense counsel, still believe there was a chance of persuading the governor to commute the sentence to life imprisonment?)<\/p>\n
The letter ends with these words: “Will you give my respects to all inquiring friends, and particularly to Dr. Hill and Levis Moor. A thousand thanks to you for those books.”<\/p>\n
A note attached to that letter, apparently by the person who gave it to the Waterville Historical Society, says: “This letter was written by Dr. Coolidge while awaiting the sentence of death at Thomaston. Afterward his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Gov. Dana.”<\/p>\n
That is not correct. There remains no record of such commutation. It is much more likely that what occurred is exactly the same as what followed the conviction and imprisonment of George Knight for the murder of his wife in Poland ten years after the Coolidge case. In “Remembered Maine” I have told that story — how George Knight spent 43 years in the prison at Thomaston although his sentence of death was never commuted. What happened in Knight’s case was that no governor could be induced to sign the order of execution. I suspect that is what happened to Coolidge during the year and a half he spent in prison before he died there. The governor simply didn’t order the execution.<\/p>\n
Year: 1958<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #401, Broadcast on December 28, 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\/7919"}],"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=7919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}