<\/p>\n
For a full century one of the most honored names in Waterville was that of Stackpole. Among our older citizens there are a number who were taught at the famous private elementary school conducted by Miss Julia Stackpole. It is her grandfather, the pioneer Stackpole in Waterville, who interests us tonight. He was the first of three James Stackpoles, the father, son and grandson, who became prominent and respected citizens of our town. Last summer I had opportunity to examine some of his papers and letters preserved at the Waterville Historical Society.<\/p>\n
James Stackpole was born in Biddeford in 1732, of Irish descent, his grandfather having come to America in 1680, which, by the way, was the same year that my ancestor, John Marriner, arrived in Boston, fleeing from the Huguenot persecution in France. James came to Winslow in 1780 and first settled on the east side of the river near Fort Halifax. He held many town offices and was one of the commissioners who settled the line between Winslow and Vassalboro. He ran a farm, kept a store and built a saw mill. In 1790 he moved across the river to the Waterville side, which was then still a part of the town of Winslow. He soon became a man of prominence, and was commissioned by Gov. John Hancock as captain of Waterville’s first militia company. He became interested in ship building, and even before the Moor family made that enterprise a thriving business in Waterville, James had built several vessels to be floated down to Hallowell to be rigged.<\/p>\n
James Stackpole had thirteen children, one of whom, Jotham, was the father of Miss Julia Stackpole. James lived to the advanced age of 92, dying in 1824. His oldest son, James Jr., was a successful lumberman and ship builder, and kept store at the head of the bridge, where one of the buildings of the Lockwood mills now stands. He was one of the surveyors of the famous Canada Road.<\/p>\n
The third James Stackpole was the first of the family to have a college education. Attending Bowdoin College, which he entered in 1816, he frequently went back and forth by canoe to Hallowell, thence by ship to Brunswick. He was a successful lawyer, a member of the legislature, and a director of the Waterville Bank. For 17 years he was treasurer of Waterville College, now Colby. He died in 1880, a full 148 years after his grandfather, the first James Stackpole, had been born.<\/p>\n
With that brief sketch of three generations we now return to the first James Stackpole. In 1798 he received a letter which shows that he had business as far away as Boston. Here is the letter:<\/p>\n
“Boston, August 29, 1798<\/p>\n
Mr. James Stackpole,<\/p>\n
Sir: I have received your esteemed favor by Captain Given and agreeable to your request I have shipped to you on board his vessel, for your account and at your risk, one puncheon of the best St. Croix rum, good retarding proof; one cask of port wine, and a half cask of Malaga wine. I have charged you for this at the new currency, agreeable to the enclosed bill at sixty days credit. The balance of your former account was settled by Captain Given, and I have given to him your canceled notes and the statement of that account, which I believe you will find to be right.”<\/p>\n
Three years later, in 1801, James received another letter from a Boston supplier:<\/p>\n
“Boston, April 11, 1801<\/p>\n
I have the pleasure of your favor of February 26, inclosing fifty dollars, yours of March 10 inclosing $50 and yours of April 2nd with $100. These make a total of three hundred dollars you have now paid on your note to me.<\/p>\n
“I have sent you by the schooner Swallow, Captain Hall, one barrel of rum, one cask of sherry wine, one keg of port wine, and one cask of ten penny nails. I should have sent you more port wine, but it is extremely scarce and dear. I did not think it would answer for you to sell again, and I know you are too prudent a man to drink it all yourself. Sherry is also very high and I am afraid will still be higher. I intended to have got nails of American manufacture, but when I saw the difference in the quality I thought it more to your interest to have the English nails, as I am sure there is at least 25% difference in the goodness of them.<\/p>\n
“Captain Hall expects to sail this evening if the wind is fair. As he has a small vessel, he intends to go as high up the Kennebec as the bridge at Fort Western. I hope your goods will reach you and meet with your approbation.”<\/p>\n
Because that letter carried, on another of its four pages, the bill for the goods, we learn what such items cost in 1801. The barrel of rum, 31t gallons, cost $36.37. The 33 gallons of sherry came to $45.38, and that dear price that the supplier apologized for in respect to the port wine was $9.50 for six gallons. Figure it out for yourself, on a price per quart basis, and you will discover that James Stackpole paid 29 cents a quart for his rum, 35 cents for his sherry, and 40 cents for his port. It is especially interesting to note that nails were then sold, not by weight, but by count. For twelve thousand ten penny nails Stackpole paid $20, or $1.67 a thousand.<\/p>\n
Forty-seven years later, in 1848, another of the Stackpoles, Lovell, wrote a letter to his mother Susan. Just which one of the original James’ sons his father was I am not sure. But the letter itself is interesting:<\/p>\n
“Leominster, Mass. May 12, 1848<\/p>\n
“Dear Mother,<\/p>\n
“Your last letter made me infer that you are somewhat alarmed about the money that you thought I sent by Mrs. Soule. I will now proceed to unfold the mystery. I sent the letter with the money enclosed by Ezra to Mrs. J. S. Soule. She gave the letter to Mr. Soule. I supposed until last Sabbath that the letter was carried. On returning from church with Mrs. Soule, she said she was cleaning up her room that morning when she found the letter lying on her wardrobe table safe and sound. You will soon get it.”<\/p>\n
The letter continues: “I have not had time to see Louise, but shall go tonight if nothing happens and Mr. L. will let me go. You wrote about new things that you have had since we left. I think you have been very prudent. We will let you know when we are coming so that you can have a clean-up. But do not be disappointed when I tell you that, even if we all live and are well, we shall not be home until a year from this time. We did intend to go home this summer, but now think it is best for us to stay where we are. I feel contented now. Mrs. Morgan will give Olive ten shillings a week if she will stay with her. I have one favor to ask now, and that is for you to let May come here in September. I think that will be for the best. She can work in the room with me, and board and lodge with us. Lizzie Jacobs wants her to come. I will not be insistent about it, but you think about it and let me know. You need not fear for her welfare, for we will protect her.”<\/p>\n
Except for a one-line postscript that is the end of the letter, but how we should like to know to what that postscript refers. It says: “P.S. You were not far out of the way in your imaginings.”<\/p>\n
The first James Stackpole kept a diary, or rather a kind of journal with brief jottings set down, not every day, but on occasions when James felt he had something worth recording. He kept that journal at the very time when Jeremiah Chaplin came to Waterville. Concerning that event Stackpole wrote nothing, but on the first Sunday in July, 1818, he recorded, “Mr. Chaplin preached at the meeting house.”<\/p>\n
In May, 1819 the Stackpole diary contained this interesting item: “Six men turned out to help Mr. Chaplin erect his dwelling house on the college lot.” That item is historically important, for it refers to the erection of the first building put up for the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, which later became Colby College. It was built on the present site of Memorial Hall, and the Stackpole diary gives us the hitherto unpublished information that it was built with the volunteer help of Waterville citizens. Relations between town and gown in Waterville have long been more cordial and mutually helpful than is the case in many college communities, and it gives us all pride to know that the same feeling was evident 140 years ago, when busy men of Waterville took time from their own labors to help President Jeremiah Chaplin put up his house.<\/p>\n
We must now turn from the Stackpole family to another subject. People have often asked me who were the men from Central Maine who had a part in gaining our independence from Massachusetts. Did any men from this region help Maine become a separate state in 1820?<\/p>\n
As you doubtless know, the president of the Constitutional Convention, which drafted the document that the Great and General Court of Massachusetts approved in 1820, was William King of Bath, who by his leadership in the cause, rightfully earned election as the new state’s first governor. William King was interested in the new college at Waterville and was influential in securing for it a charter as a degree-granting college, instead of a literary and theological institution, as it was before 1821. King was well acquainted with Waterville’s leading citizen, Timothy Boutelle, and he hoped Boutelle would be a member of the constitutional convention. When election in Waterville was held, the delegates turned out to be Abijah Smith and Ebenezer Bacon. King knew Smith casually, but he had never met Bacon. Boutelle wrote to King, heartily endorsing both men, and assuring King that both could be depended upon to work for the cause of separation.<\/p>\n
Fairfield was also entitled to two delegates, for, believe it or not, in 1820 its population was slightly larger than Waterville’s. Fairfield had 1,348 people. Waterville only 1,314. Fairfield’s constitutional delegates were Stephen Thayer and William Kendall. The first was one of Waterville’s best known early physicians, Dr. Stephen Thayer, the doctor who presided at the autopsy on the body of young Ed Mathews, murdered by Dr. Valorus Coolidge in 1847. In 1820 Dr. Thayer was practicing medicine in Fairfield.<\/p>\n
General William Kendall was one of the best known men in the Kennebec Valley. In 1780 he purchased the land on which Fairfield Village now stands and built his home there — the first frame house erected in the place. In 1781 he built the first saw mill and grist mill to be put up between Winslow and Skowhegan. He was a soldier of the Revolution with three years of enlisted service. He was a lumberman and trader with many business connections. For many years the village he founded bore his name, and a few elderly people on the Fairfield farms still refer to it as Kendall’s Mills. It was my personal fortune to know the elderly Mr. Jotham Hobbs of Shawmut and to hold several conversations with him before his death three years ago. Mr. Hobbs, when speaking of Fairfield Village, always referred to it as Kendall’s Mills.<\/p>\n
Norridgewock’s representative to William King’s convention was William Allen, the man who later wrote a notable history of that town. Lawyer and judge, he applied his trained legal mind to the task of making Maine an independent state.<\/p>\n
It was inevitable that Skowhegan should be represented by the Coburn family, because in 1820 that was by far the most prominent of all Skowhegan names. Eleazer Coburn thus helped King draft the Maine constitution.<\/p>\n
It is worthy of note that, while Waterville and Fairfield each had only two constitutional delegates, Vassalboro had three. In fact, in that year 1820, Vassalboro was the second largest town in Kennebec County, and it came very near being the largest, for while Hallowell had 2,068 inhabitants, Vassalboro gave it strong competition with 2,063. Two of Vassalboro’s delegates had family names that became very prominent in Waterville, Samuel Redington and Abial Getchell. The third man was Moses Sleeper. Because Winslow then had only 605 inhabitants, it rated only one delegate, and the town chose William Swan. But Sidney, having 1,396, a bit larger than either Waterville or Fairfield, could have two representatives, and it chose two relatives, Reuel and Ambrose Howard. Readers of “Kennebec Yesterdays” will remember Dr. Ambrose Howard, the physician who charged three dollars for delivering a child and one shilling for pulling a tooth.<\/p>\n
John Hubbard and Samuel Currier represented Pittsfield; John Colbath Rome; Rufus Burnham, Unity; and William Pullen, China. From Augusta went Daniel Cony, James Bridge and Joshua Gage; the first with the family name given to the old academy that became later Cony High School; and the latter the man who once entertained Nathaniel Hawthorne at his home near the western end of the Augusta dam.<\/p>\n
Altogether Central Maine was well represented by its leading citizens in the convention that drafted the Constitution of Maine.<\/p>\n
Year: 1959<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #402, Broadcast on January 4, 1959<\/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":[800,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7921"}],"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=7921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}