<\/p>\n
This is the last broadcast of Little Talks for the current season. With it we close the fourteenth consecutive year of these talks, and it is the 542nd broadcast in the long series. As I have often told you, when these talks started in the fall of 1948, no one, least of all myself, had any idea they would continue for fourteen years. And we confidently expect to resume them in September for the opening of Little Talk’s fifteenth season. People often ask me if the supply of material isn’t running out. By no means. It keeps coming in, wholly unsolicited, from trunks and chests, sheds and attics, and all sorts of unsuspected places. Next fall I plan to tell you more systematically about the wealth of material discovered in the Waterville City Hall this spring. Some of that material has already been casually referred to on these broadcasts, but the whole story of that important historical find still remains to be told because we are now in the midst of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, that conflict, as it related to Central Maine, has deserved and received frequent reference on this program during the past year. I have already mentioned what a financial burden fell upon Maine towns to support the families of men who went off to battle in the 1860’s. Tonight I want to tell you more in detail about how that burden hit Waterville.<\/p>\n
During the year 1863, according to a report signed by Selectmen Noah Boothby and L. E. Crommett, and attested by Justice of the Peace Everett R. Drummond, the town of Waterville spent $2,427 in aid of 51 soldiers’ families. Unlike subsequent American wars, in which the combatants were predominantly unmarried men, the Civil War saw many a young man in the twenties or early thirties leave a wife and several children behind while he marched South with the Union army. Some of those men had large families in Waterville. Levi Bickford, a private in William Heath’s Company E of the Third Maine, left a wife and six children to be cared for by the town. The same number made up the family of William Chapman of the Bth Maine. John King of Joshua Chamberlain’s famous 20th Maine had a wife and five children. Those three Waterville families alone accounted for 20 persons who must have town care while husband and father went off to fight for the Union.<\/p>\n
In 1863 no fewer than 11 families of men in that fine Company E of the Third Maine, recruited right here in Waterville, were dependent upon town aid. Six families, also needing aid, had men in the 16th Maine, the famous Gettysburg regiment, headed by Col. Tilden, about whose sensational escape from Libby Prison I told you several months ago. Seven aided families had men in the 21st Maine.<\/p>\n
Especially interesting are the recorded ages of the wives who had to turn to the town for aid to support their children. Most of those wives were under 25 years of age. Though only 20, Mary Gurney was left with two children when her husband went to war. The same was true of Georgia Jones. Harriet Simpson, aged 21, had three children, the oldest of whom was six years, showing that Harriet had been married very young indeed. One of the largest families helped was that of Maria Chapman, aged 32, who had six children ranging in age from one year to twelve. The youngest wife on the list was Harriet Knox, who had two children, although she herself was only 17 years old.<\/p>\n
After the war, when pensions first went into effect, a prominent pension agent Was Everett Drummond, and in response to a request from the selectmen, he filed at the Waterville Town Hall a report on each pension family. Let us note what some of those reports had to say:<\/p>\n
“Martha Ellis, widow of Stephen Ellis, Co. B, 21 st Maine. No children. Age about 23. No property. Has pension of $8 a month. Not much energy. Has usually got so much in debt that it takes all of her pension each month to pay back bills.”<\/p>\n
“Henrietta Simpson, widow of Joseph Simpson, Co. A, 20th Maine. Age about 28, three children, 8, 6 & 4 years. Has a small, poor dwelling. Her mother lives with her. Henrietta goes out washing to support herself and her children. Has a pension of $8 a month. Her husband, prior to his enlistment, worked in a marble shop. She has a pretty snug time to get along. She is economical and saving.”<\/p>\n
“Lyman , Tibbetts and Hiram Cochran, three children aged 10, 8 and 5, are children of the late Hiram Cochran, Co. H, 3rd Maine. The mother is married again. Not much property. Father left a small place worth $200 under attachment. Mother paid debts out of the bounty. Children have pension through E. R. Drummond, their guardian. Nothing else except a few dollars from rent. They are dependent upon their mother for part of support, and she is poor and not able to support them. When pension is due, it is more than used up.”<\/p>\n
“Moses Cook, Co. A, 20th Maine. Wounded through jaw and mouth and otherwise disabled. Habits good. Has a small place partly paid for.”<\/p>\n
“Judith Bickford, widow of Bennett Bickford, Co. E, 30th Maine. Has a small, poor house. Age about 50. Has three children under 16. They live and chat is all. Have been helped some by the town but are still in great need. She is in poor health.”<\/p>\n
“John and Charles Murray, children of Lewis Murray, Co. B, 16th Maine, supposed to have been killed at Fredericksburg. Widow has not yet been able to get pension, being unable to prove his death. Children have no property, but are supported by mother and her present husband, whom she recently married on assumption that Murray is dead. The family barely make out to live.”<\/p>\n
We could go on, but that is enough to show the pitiful plight of many a family whose husband and father laid down his life to save the American union a hundred years ago.<\/p>\n
A picturesque Maine seacoast town will celebrate the 200th anniversary of its first settlement this summer. A man named William Eaton first settled the Hancock County island of Deer Isle in 1762, and in 1789 the place had enough people to become incorporated as Maine’s 63rd town. In 1897 a part of the island was set off as the separate town of Stonington. For many years the only access to the island was by boat, but for the past quarter of a century a beautiful bridge With an unusual, steeply inclined central span has connected Deer Isle with the mainland.<\/p>\n
The two present towns of Deer Isle and Stonington are joining together in this bicentennial celebration, which begins on July 1st, with special services in all the island churches and official opening exercises in the Stonington gymnasium. On July 4th there will be a parade With bands and floats, a lobster dinner served by the Stonington P.T.A., and topped off in the evening with fireworks. On July 27 and 28 will be given the bicentennial pageant. All through August there will be other events, culminating in a tree planting ceremony and an operetta at the memorial park. Historical exhibits will be on display all summer at both the Deer Isle and the Stonington Public Libraries.<\/p>\n
Altogether the old island will be an interesting place to visit this summer. I venture there are a lot of Central Maine people who have never seen Deer Isle.<\/p>\n
As this season’s Little Talks draw to a close, I want again to devote a few minutes to our neighboring town of Fairfield. I have mentioned more than once the big lumber center that Fairfield Village, then called Kendalls Mills, was in the middle of the nineteenth century, a hundred years ago. But that period did not see the peak of the lumber business in Fairfield. That peak came in the decade just preceding the turn into the twentieth century, in the years between 1890 and 1900. Seventy years ago, on the banks of the Kennebec at Fairfield Village, there were five big saw mills and half a dozen smaller ones. The five big processors of lumber at that time were Laurence, Newhall and Company, whose mill turned out in 1892 the huge amount of eight million feet of sawed lumber. Next in size was the mill of G.A. and C.M. Phillips, responsible for five million feet. S.A. Nye sawed 3-1\/2 million; N. Totman and Sons one and a half million; and V.P. Connor a million feet. Those five mills altogether produced nineteen million board feet of merchantable lumber in 1892.<\/p>\n
‘fhe broad, four-lane highway from Waterville to Fairfield invites so much traffic today that few people travel the back road via Drummond Avenue, though a lot of us used it regularly when the College Avenue highway was being widened a few years ago. That Drummond Avenue route was laid out as a county road, and as roads go in this vicinity, it is not very old, although most of us consider seventy years a long, long time. In June, 1892 the Fairfield Journal said: “Work has begun on the new county road from here to Waterville. The lower half has been built almost to the Fairfield line. When the road is finished, it will open up a good many building lots and will be the principal road between the two places.” So much for prophecy in 1892, the reality turned out to be not quite so rosy. The river road continued to be the principal road.<\/p>\n
In old issues of the Fairfield Journal, one in 1893, the other in 1894, I ran across two items that concern well known family names in Fairfield. The 1893 item said: “A strictly private wedding at the home of Hiram Burgess was that of Miss Mabel Archer to John P. Lawry. The bride is a member of the well known society, Club Thirteen. After the ceremony they were taken to Benton to catch the train to Boston.”<\/p>\n
The 1894 item concerns the man who, during the first decade of this century, was professor of Mathematics at Colby College, and whose early death was a tragic loss to college–and community. This is what the Fairfield Journal said; “A wedding of local interest Was the recent marriage of Hugh Ross Hatch to Cora Curtis, daughter of the Rev. N. D. Curtis, former pastor of the Fairfield Baptist Church. The groom comes from Islesboro, was graduated from Colby in 1890, and only last month received his bachelor of divinity degree from Newton Theological Institution. The Ceremony was performed by the Rev. K.P. Small. The ushers were Walter Kenrick, Fred Bragg, Harry Brown and Harry Plummer.”<\/p>\n
And so we come to the end of the fourteenth season of Little Talks on Common Things. With profound gratitude to the many kind listeners who have contributed material for this program, and with a special word of thanks to the Keyes Fibre Company, which has generously sponsored the program for all fourteen of its years, I must now say Good Night until September.<\/p>\n
Year: 1962<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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