<\/p>\n
Weather forecasters have’ always led a precarious existence. When their predictions turn out right, they are great fellows; when they are wrong, they are condemned by everyone. It was the same way long before the modern era of scientific broadcasting, and we all realize that even these modern predictions are doubtful enough.<\/p>\n
Yet long ago certain persons had enviable reputations for predicting the weather. One such was Joshua Pool, the post rider in Norway, Maine early in the 1800’s. Pool carried the mail on horseback between Norway Village and what is now Bryant’s Pond. and of course he came to know every resident along the route. Pool seemed to know a lot about sun, moon and stars, though his knowledge was more astrology than astronomy. Like the ancients, he believed that the starry universe affected human living, and that each planet and each brilliant star cast its own particular influence. Pool insisted that through study of certain celestial bodies, especially the moon and the planet Venus, he could assure people of the proper time to plant their crops, to cut their hay, to get in the fall harvest. Pool so often hit it right, once going so far as to predict snow in August, and snow it did, that many residents along the post road came to rely faithfully on his weather predictions.<\/p>\n
But, as was sure to be the case among Maine Yankees, there were always a few skeptics. One morning in haying time the post rider noticed a farmer in his dooryard anxiously gazing at the sky. Apparently he had doubts about the weather. So Pool hailed him with “Hello, Steve. You think it’s goin’ to rain?” “I dunno”, the farmer replied, “but it looks mighty dubious.” “Now, now”. advised Pool. “the Good Book says that he who watches the winds will not sow, and he who keeps his eye on the clouds will not reap. Them clouds will break up before noon, and all afternoon the sun will be out.”<\/p>\n
Half an hour later, discovering one of his saddle buckles had come off, Pool turned back to find it. As he passed the same farm, he noticed to his satisfaction that the farmer was now busily preparing for the hayfield. Exultantly the post rider shouted, “Hy, Steve, I see you’re taking my advice and are going to cut more grass.”<\/p>\n
“No, Josh”, replied the farmer. “You’re as wrong as my pup was when he mistook a skunk for a coon cat. I am going into the hayfield, but I ain’t cutting no more grass. I’m humping to get in the hay I’ve already got bunched out there. I’ve always noticed that, when you predict fair weather, it generally rains.”<\/p>\n
And those who love to tell that story up along the shores of Pennesseewassee Lake always ended it by saying that, sure enough, that late afternoon saw a heavy shower with torrents of rain flooding the hayfields.<\/p>\n
Today one of the most expensive of fish sold in the markets is salmon. It seems hard to believe that once salmon were so plentiful on the Kennebec that during the height of the spring run they often brought less than five cents a pound. Here is a breakfast recipe that appeared in an Augusta paper in 1852: “Smoked salmon is a cheap, but delicious breakfast dish. Soak a whole salmon for several hours in plenty of water, then dry it in a towel; broil until hot all the way through; butter and serve very hot. The butter and the extreme heat make the salmon very palatable.”<\/p>\n
It is well known that Abraham Lincoln, who has been considered almost a divine figure in American history during the past hundred years, was, during his presidency, an extremely controversial figure. Many Maine people had no use at all for him, and hoped ardently for his defeat for reelection, when Gen. McClellan was the opposing candidate, in 1864.<\/p>\n
One especially violent anti-Lincoln paper in Maine was the Franklin Patriot, published in Farmington. A month before the 1864 election, that paper published the following bit of crude verse:<\/p>\n
“Eternity’s history never
\nA leader so wretched records,
\nSo foolish in action forever,
\nSo shamefully foul in his words.
\n0, Suckerdom’s honest I ago,
\nGo back to your flatboat, go back.
\nThe people have been to Chicago;
\nThey’re after you sharply with Mac.”<\/p>\n
The Patriot called Lincoln “tyrant, usurper, widow maker, Constitution breaker, a third-rate pettifogger and an uncultured, foul-mouthed buffoon, whose obscene stories were a disgrace to the nation.” In one issue the Patriot said: “No Republican of good moral character who desires to maintain a reputation for truth will for a moment pretend that Abraham Lincoln is either an honest or a capable man. If Lincoln should win”, said the Patriot, “we must bid farewell to every constitutional right, and our nation will be forever doomed.”<\/p>\n
Like other anti-Lincoln papers, the Patriot accused Lincoln of making money out of the war: “While the poor soldier receives only sixteen dollars a month in questionable greenbacks. Abraham Lincoln rides in a royal railway car and draws his princely $25,000 a year in gold.” The Patriot went so far as to accuse Lincoln of amassing five million dollars during his first term in the White House. The charge was, of course, blatantly false. Lincoln was not a poor man when he went to Washington; as a corporation lawyer he had for some time received large fees, especially from the western railroads. And there was never a shred of evidence that he ever profited by any of the war contracts.<\/p>\n
When Lincoln was elected and Maine’s Franklin County gave him a good majority of its votes, the Patriot by no means admitted it had been wrong in its judgment of the President. A week after the election the paper said: “The heart of the people in the electionwas for McClellan, but his devoted supporters could not prevail against the horde of blood-sucking office holders. Yet they got out a big vote. Even Farmington, which we regard as the blackest Republican town in the county, gave Lincoln a margin of less than a hundred votes.”<\/p>\n
But that 1864 election was too much for the Franklin Patriot. Within a month it had given up the ghost, having neither sufficient subscribers nor advertisers to keep going. But in its last gasp, at the end of November, 1864, the paper held to its anti-Lincoln guns. It said: “Although we shall publish the Patriot no more, we have not changed our views. We swear eternal hostility to the traitorous crew who are now ruling this once free and happy people. Lincoln’s election will soon result in the dissolution of the Union. With that tyrant at the head of our government, there is no hope for reconciliation between North and South.”<\/p>\n
The publisher of the Franklin Patriot was a stormy Democrat named Eben Pillsbury. After his paper folded in Farmington, he moved to Augusta, where he published the “Maine Standard”, a’lother rabi d Democratic paper. He ran for governor three times, in 1866, 1867 and 1868. At that time Maine governors were elected for terms of only one year. Although never elected, Pillsbury did not run too badly, considering that his Republican opponent was then the most popular man in Maine, Civil War General Joshua Chamberlain, the hero of Gettysburg. In 1866 Chamberlain won by 69,000 votes to Pillsbury’s 41,000, a shattering defeat. But the next year Pillsbury polled 47,000 votes to Chamberlain’s 57,000. Then in 1868 Chamberlain again swamped the vitriolic publisher, 75,000 to 56,000.<\/p>\n
When Grover Cleveland defeated Maine’s James G. Blaine for the presidency in 1884, Pillsbury was apPOinted Collector of Internal Revenue at Boston. He died in 1887.<\/p>\n
One of the largest land purchases ever made in Maine comprised the vast extent of territory in Penobscot, Piscataquis, Franklin and Oxford counties, so large that it was long popularly known as the Million Acres. It was bought by the Philadelphia millionaire William Bingham near the beginning of the 19th century. Bingham died in 1804, and the astonishing fact, which prompts me to mention him again on today’s broadcast, is that it took 160 years to settle his estate. Not until last October, 1964, did the Bingham trustees, whose personnel had changed repeatedly during the 160 years, liquidate the last remaining pieces of the man’s vast real estate holdings.<\/p>\n
The New York Times carried the story in its issue of November 15, 1964.<\/p>\n
While Bingham’s original Maine purchase covered about a million acres, he later had added by subsequent purchase an equally large area, so that at his death his Maine holdings totalled more than two million acres. He also had extensive lands in New York and Pennsylvania, including thousands of acres on New York’s Canadian border.<\/p>\n
Bingham was one of only two millionaires on this side of the Atlantic when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. The trust set up by Bingham provided for no termination date. but in 1964 the trustees decided that the heirs had now become so numerous and the expense of handling the estate had become so heavy, that final sale and distribution was called for. Since much of the estate had previously been liquidated, there remained after final sale only $838,000, which was distributed to a large number of heirs, one of whom got $55,000, while some 200 got only $25 each.<\/p>\n
Rich as William Bingham was, he was not wealthy enough to swing alone his enormous purchases of land. He got help from the family into which his two daughters married. Their husbands were two of the famous Baring Brothers, international bankers of London. It was the same firm with which the engineer Herbert Hoover had profitable association 100 years later. The Barings staked Bingham in his acquisition of his Maine lands.<\/p>\n
Maine had, in 1842, another indirect association with William Bingham. His grandson was Lord Ashburton, who negotiated with Daniel Webster the treaty that settled the dispute over the boundary between Maine and Canada.<\/p>\n
Year: 1965<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #645, Broadcast on March 14, 1965<\/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":[792,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8484"}],"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=8484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}