<\/p>\n
We come today to the last that the Flood diaries have to say about the railroads.<\/p>\n
When the spring of 1872 came to Kennebec County, George Flood was having trouble. His diary entry for March 1st reads: “Hersey called at my room and brought a letter from J.M. Lunt, Supt., dated February 29, in which Lunt says the office of Assistant Freight Agent has been abolished and my services are no longer needed. I am ordered to turn the property belonging to the Railroad Company over to Hersey. March 12 – I have been sick for the past week and seldom out of the house. But today I went to Augusta to see Judge Rice. He knew nothing about my discharge until yesterday. He does not consider it fair and says he will inquire into it. March 18 – Judge Rice has given me a letter to Lunt. He seemed to talk fair, but insisted that my office must be in Augusta, not Waterville.”<\/p>\n
Flood at once went looking for another job: “March 21 – In Portland. Saw Wm. Merrill, Superintendent of the B & M, who will consider hiring me as agent. Mr. Lunt tells me there is to be a new division of the Maine Central and if there should be one I shall have it. I do not know when this will be decided.”<\/p>\n
Matters dragged along until June, with Flood meanwhile doing some survey of wood at Lunt’s request. On June 17 Flood himself came to a decision: “In Augusta I had a plain talk with Judge Rice, and I am now finished with any work for the Maine Central. He is an old hypocrite.”<\/p>\n
Flood spent the summer of 1872 working on the Clinton farm and helping the Noyes family. Then on September 11 he tells us: “Called on B & M RR to make some sort of bargain with them for an agency in Maine. They are not yet ready.” Nothing came of this plan, and Flood spent most of the fall and early winter in Clinton, caring for his ailing mother, who died on December 29.<\/p>\n
In February, 1873 Flood was back in Waterville, making his home at Mr. Noyes’, but having no regular job. The diary often speaks of “doing chores at Mr. Noyes'” and “studying French”. But he still was on the watch for railroad employment. He received a letter from the Eastern RR suggesting he work for them to look out for their business on the Maine Central. He also talked with an official of the B & M.<\/p>\n
Nothing came of those ventures. As late as April 9 Flood wrote in the diary: “Saw some of the Eastern and B & M officers, but got no employment.” But if he no longer worked for a railroad, he saw to it that rail news got into his diary: “April 23, 1873 – Kendalls Mills railroad bridge burned this afternoon, some 1,050 feet, just after a freight train went over.” That was the fire which caused temporary laying of tracks up the east side of the river from Winslow to Benton, through the area now occupied by Scott Paper Company mills. On May 18th Flood took a walk up what he called “the new railroad across the river”.<\/p>\n
George Flood’s last hope of getting back into railroad work was the proposed restitution of Edwin Noyes into the good graces of railroad directors. On March 19. 1875 Flood wrote: “Mr. Noyes says the old board of Maine Central directors will be thrown out. The new board will elect Mr. Noyes General Manager.” Then on March Flood was even more optimistic: “Old board of Maine Central directors nearly all turned out and new ones put in. in the interest of the Eastern Railroad. The new directors are favorable to Mr. Noyes. Payson Tucker is the new Supt. of the Maine Central. W.F. Berry is General Freight Agent.”<\/p>\n
But nothing came of it all for Flood. The diary does not make it clear why Noyes could find no place for his friend Flood on the Maine Central, but a possible explanation is that there was no place Flood would accept. The appointment of Berry as General Freight Agent filled the particular position on which Flood had cast his eye. He continued to reside in the Noyes home. kept up his interest in buying and selling wood, did a big trade in wool. and was constantly adding to his substantial holdings of valuable railroad securities, some of them bonds that paid as high as eight per cent.<\/p>\n
With George Flood’s start of the Waterville fuel business that still bears his name we shall deal in another series of broadcasts later in this season. They will tell us a lot about business and social life in Waterville in the latter half of the 19th century. But before we take up those interesting features from the Flood diaries, we shall have another series that goes back long before the time of George Flood — in fact to Waterville’s early days more than 50 years before the coming of the railroad.<\/p>\n
The new series beginning next Sunday will deal with what I call the Gettens papers, the very important collection of ancient manuscripts dealing with Waterville’s two prominent pioneers, Obadiah Williams and Abijah Smith. I am sure you will find the broadcasts based on these papers interesting and informative. For the remainder of the program today, let us turn to other items.<\/p>\n
Some time ago I mentioned on this program that it was in 1887 that electric street lights came to Waterville. Previously there had been about the community called Ticonic Village a number of the old, now dimly remembered, lamp posts, with a four-sided glass enclosure at the top, in which there was an oil lamp, something like a lantern. Every night the lamp lighter. with his little ladder, made the rounds. lighting those lamps, and every morning he made another round to put them out. One of Waterville’s oldest residents. Mrs. Albert Drummond, has a vivid recollection of the ceremony that attended the coming of electric light to this community. She tells me that the lamp lighter piled up his lanterns in the square. Crowds were lined up on the sidewalks and in buggies along the curbs. Someone made a brief speech, a signal was given, and all the lights came on at once, amid rousing cheers.<\/p>\n
When we read about the bitter controversy going on in more than one Maine town in 1963 concerning the public schools. we wonder if anything like it ever happened before. Human nature doesn’t change very much, despite all the changes in our ways of living, and we may be sure that the same bitter disputes were prevalent in Maine towns long, long ago.<\/p>\n
Recently I received information about just such a controversy in the town of Naples 68 years ago in 1895. The fight was so heated that it became known years afterward as the Battle of the Schoolhouse. In those days party politics was taken just as seriously in town affairs as in state and national elections. In Naples it is said that parents even made their children toe the party line by entering separate Republican or Democratic doors of a schoolhouse, though I confess I never heard of measures as drastic as that in my own home town, which was right next to Naples.<\/p>\n
An old gentleman of that place says that there was always available a double teaching staff, half of them ready for work when the School Superintendent was a Republican, the other half ready to come in when the Superintendent was a Democrat.<\/p>\n
In 1894 the entire Naples school board was Democratic, but in 1895 there came a sweeping Republican victory for all town offices. Since the school board was elected for three year terms, there was only one vacancy to fill, leaving a two to one majority for the Democrats. The Republicans controlling the town meeting voted to increase the board to five members and proceeded to elect two additional Republicans.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the two hold-over Democrats had held a legal board meeting and elected their retiring member Superintendent of Schools. They locked up the school records and kept the keys to all the school houses. The five man board then chose a different Superintendent. Each superintendent appointed teachers — 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans — twice the needed staff. Two teachers were assigned to each classroom, one to teach the children of Republicans, the other the Democrats. In the same class at that time were two sisters whose mother was a Republican and the father a Democrat. The family compromised by having one sister sit on the Republican side of the schoolroom, while the other sister sat on the Democratic side.<\/p>\n
The controversy finally went all the way to the Maine Supreme Court, which ruled that the five man board was illegally set up because the article calling for it had been inserted into the warrant after the town meeting had started.<\/p>\n
Illfeeling from that controversy extended for several years until a certain Fourth of July celebration. When the parade and the speeches had ended, a couple of beer kegs were tapped, forgiving Republicans shook hands with friendly Democrats, and the Battle of the Schoolhouse was over.<\/p>\n
Now I want to tell you about something that happened only 28 years ago in 1935, because it reveals clearly what a public spirited citizen will do at some sacrifice.<\/p>\n
Franklin W. Johnson, President of Colby College from 1929 to 1942, is known as the man who moved the college to Mayflower Hill. In 1935, in the midst of the worst business depression of modern times, Johnson was struggling desperately to raise money for the first buildings on the Hill. Not a single building had yet gone up.<\/p>\n
Not until two years later would the now beautiful Lorimer Chapel have as much as its bare walls with unfinished interior.<\/p>\n
In the midst of that situation, so frustrating to Johnson, he generously gave his help and his influence to another cause — an addition to the Waterville Senior High School. He agreed to be chairman of the “Buy a Brick” campaign, and his name was signed to an appeal to all citizens and friends of Waterville. Here is what it said: “Plans are under way for raising enough money to build two additions to the present high school building. Recently more than 100 citizens, assembled in City Hall, agreed that the additions are sorely needed. The only question is how to secure the money. The City Government cannot undertake that; it has already reached the limit of the city’s borrowing capacity, and the taxpayer’s burden is heavy enough.<\/p>\n
“Hence the resort to popular subscription. The Federal Government has made an outright grant of $50,000 on the condition that the City shall raise an equal amount. If we do not match that offer now, we shall have to do the whole task ourselves only a few years hence. At best the proposed additions cannot be abandoned, but only postponed.<\/p>\n
“We insist there must be no postponement. $50,000 can and will be raised. Our campaign slogan is ‘Buy a Brick’. A brick costs 20 cents and may be bought in any quantity.”<\/p>\n
As everyone now knows, the campaign was successful and the additions were built. Thus it came about that, long before his cherished dream for the college was fulfilled, Franklin Johnson helped Waterville get a larger and better high school.<\/p>\n
Year: 1963<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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