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This is the last broadcast of Little Talks on Common Things for its twelfth consecutive season. In September we shall again be on the air to begin the program’s thirteenth year. It is notable in radio circles allover the nation that from its start this program has had only one sponsor. Everyone of the 463 broadcasts that has gone over the airways has been sponsored, not as advertising, but as a public service, by the Keyes Fibre Company.<\/p>\n
I want first tonight to call your attention to the interesting fact that in colonial times certain tracts of land in Maine came to be known by strange names. Let me first tell you about the lottery lands.<\/p>\n
The close of the American Revolution left Massachusetts heavily in debt, and it was decided to raise money by the sale of unsettled lands in Maine. Because sales through the land office dragged, the government organized a lottery for the disposal of fifty townships between the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Rivers. Put on sale were 2,720 tickets, each for a tract varying from a quarter section (t mile square) to an entire township, and the price of each ticket was 60 pounds. Payment could be made not only in cash, but also by notes of indebtedness which Massachusetts had given to her Revolutionary soldiers. Only 437 tickets were sold. The drawing took place in March, 1786, and 165,280 acres were allotted to the ticket holders, the first drawn receiving the larger lots. For many years that territory, most of it in present Penobscot County, was known as the Lottery Lands.<\/p>\n
What is not generally known is that those lottery lands played a part in the famous Bingham Purchase. Present at that lottery drawing in 1786 was William Bingham, the Philadelphia merchant and financier. He relieved the State of Massachusetts of such of the lottery lands as were not drawn by the ticket holders, and also purchased of the latter many of the prize lots. His holdings totalled so big a tract that it became widely known as the Million Acres. When the Rangeley region was settled, many sales were designated as such and such a distance west of the Million Acres, and likewise Aroostook sales were described as north of the Million Acres.<\/p>\n
Now let me tell you about the Burnt Lands. In 1795 a violent hurricane uprooted thousands of trees in the virgin forest on the west side of the Penobscot above Old Town. There they lay, in a tangled mass of slash for eight years. In the fall of 1803 the whole tract was swept by an enormous fire. Because settlers had begun to come into the region, many people lost homes and livestock. Multitudes of wild animals also perished and their bones were often found in the region for many years afterward.<\/p>\n
It was the Civil War that created the great lumber boom in the Penobscot. Between 1860 and 1866 sawed lumber in that region increased from 75 million to 235 million feet a year. But long before the Civil War the Penobscot was famous for lumber. In 1845 10,000 men and 10,000 oxen were busy in the Penobscot woods. Even then the Penobscot mills were producing annually 400,000,000 laths from as many as 200 lath machines in mills along the river. By 1872, seven years after the war, lumber production at Bangor alone had reached the prodigious annual total of 250 million feet. Something of what the cutting of trees in the north woods meant in the third quarter of the nineteenth century is shown by the mere statistical figure of lumber production between 1850 and 1875. The total came to more than seven billion feet.<\/p>\n
Speaking of the north woods reminds us again of the Aroostook War. Since it is the only war, though a bloodless one with many farcical aspects, in which Maine ever engaged on its own sovereign account, without authority from the federal government, we ought to remind ourselves about it occasionally.<\/p>\n
After the War of 1812 Great Britain claimed the whole of the St. John River Valley, about half of which had been occupied by Maine. Britain demanded all territory north of the 46th parallel. The King of the Netherlands, to whom both sides referred the dispute for arbitration, decreed that the boundary should run midway between the lines claimed by the two sides. His decision was completely unsatisfactory to the people of Maine. In a few years the disputed tract was overrun by timber thieves from both sides of the border.<\/p>\n
In 1838 came the so-called war. In secret session the Legislature authorized Sheriff Strickland of Penobscot County to callout 200 volunteers, march them north, and drive out the Canadian trespassers. The first company thus called out marched to the mouth of the Little Madawaska River. Rather stupidly the company fell into ambush and their captain was captured and rushed off to jail in Frederickton. The Canadian settlers, who called themselves legal residents of the tract and whom the Maine claimants called squatters and trespassers, took up arms and defied the Maine authorities.<\/p>\n
Then the state and provincial governments actually entered upon planned war. The Governor of New Brunswick called out 1,000 militiamen. The Maine Legislature appropriated $800,000 for protection of its territory and ordered a draft of 10,000 men. Within a week most of those men were on the march. At that point the federal “government got into the act. Congress authorized the President to support the claims of Maine with 50,000 troops and $10 million.<\/p>\n
General Winfield Scott, commander of the U. S. Army, came to Augusta with orders to “maintain the peace and safety of the entire northern and eastern frontiers.” For a time a shooting war seemed inevitable, but through General Scott’s efforts both sides withdrew their forces — that is, both the Maine and the New Brunswick militia were removed from the region. Prisoners taken by both sides were released, including the unlucky captain who had been held in the Frederickton jail. The Maine Legislature established Aroostook County, and matters remained comparatively quiet until 1842 when the Webster-Ashburton Treaty settled the boundary as it remains to this day.<\/p>\n
All the Maine militia companies that marched to Aroostook rendezvoused at Bangor, and from there set but for the disputed land. At one time a line of mounted minute men, ready to set out at any moment with an urgent message, stretched all the way from Bangor to Masardis.<\/p>\n
I am always on the watch for stories about Maine murder trials. Recently I ran across the account of a trial for homicide held thirty years before Maine became a state. In 1790, before a session of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held in Portland, the first settler of the town of Otisfield, and a man of such prominence that he was called Squire, was tried for murder.<\/p>\n
It seems that a young Scotsman named John McIntosh, who had recently come to Otisfield from Gorham, wanted to marry Squire Pierce’s nineteen year old daughter Molly. The Squire didn’t like McIntosh and refused his consent to the match. One October afternoon in 1789 McIntosh, well fortified with Jamaica rum, went to Pierce’s house and, according to subsequent witnesses, physically attacked the Squire, after an exchange of angry words. Anyhow Pierce picked up a big wooden mallet and brought it down on McIntosh’s head. When a few days later McIntosh died of his wound, Squire Pierce was arrested and was brought to trial in Portland in June, 1790.<\/p>\n
Before the trial Pierce had been handed over to three local justices, who, when presenting him to the court, asserted their belief in his innocence. When the case came to trial, as was then customary, not a single judge, but a panel of four judges sat as the court. The prosecuting attorney was James Sullivan, at that time attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and afterward Governor of Maine. Curiously the two attorneys for the defense both bore the unusual given name of Theophilus. One of them, Theophilus Parsons, was later Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
That the authorities did not consider Pierce’s conviction likely is shown by the fact that he was released on bail between his arrest and his trial. An interesting point to us is that two of his sureties, Asael Foster and Enoch Perley, were residents of my own native town of Bridgton, which at that time adjoined Pierce’s town of Otisfield.<\/p>\n
Allowed in evidence were the written depositions of several persons, including Pierce’s daughter Molly — the very cause of the quarrel between McIntosh and her father. The record tells us: “Molly Pierce testifies that she saw John McIntosh and Squire Pierce talking together but did not know they were differing, because it was through a dirty window that she saw them. But after a while she saw McIntosh go away, holding his hand up to his head, but she insists she did not see the Squire strike McIntosh.”<\/p>\n
Several witnesses testified to McIntosh’s threats against the Squire, thus supporting the defense contention that Pierce had struck the fellow in self defense. One witness said: “One day I saw McIntosh with his gun and sword. He said he didn’t want to hurt the Squire, but he wanted me to tell the Squire to come out and meet him half way. Instead of coming out, the Squire sat down and wrote McIntosh a note.” That note was produced in court, and this is what it said: “Mr. John McIntosh: I understand you are with your broadsword, and by that I suspect you are on some ill design and in liquor. Therefore I do not think it prudent to come near you. I do not intend to differ with you on any account, but if I am attacked I shall defend myself in the best way I can. George Pierce.”<\/p>\n
Surprisingly the jury found Pierce guilty of manslaughter, and he was sentenced to eight months in prison. On appeal, however, the law court overruled the verdict as contrary to the evidence and the Squire was finally acquitted.<\/p>\n
Like so many of early American homicides in rural areas, this case had an aftermath that sprang from the superstitions of country people. When, in 1792, Squire Pierce moved from his old log house into a new brick house on another site. the old house stood empty, and not far from it stood the empty hut that had been occupied by McIntosh. Often at nightfall. when the winds howled through the decaying structures, people said the ghost of the departed McIntosh came out. entered the old mill that was likewise falling into decay near the two empty dwellings and started the mill machinery running and all night long the up-and-down saw banged back and forth. sawing the empty air. An Otisfield historian solemnly wrote: “The place was believed to be haunted and men were afraid to go there after dark because the disturbed spirit of the departed McIntosh used to come and hoist the gate and set the mill running.”<\/p>\n
And with that story of a homicide in old Otisfield. we bring this season’s broadcasts to a close and say Good Night until September.<\/p>\n
Year: 1960<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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