<\/p>\n
It is hoped that some day there may be displayed again the old locomotive that for several years was an attraction in front of the railroad station in Waterville.<\/p>\n
Now not only the locomotive, but the station also, are both gone from that location. The hope that Colby’s famous Memorial Hall may be preserved still persists. It is the only one of the old Colby structures still standing on the original campus. If Memorial Hall could be made into an attractive museum, there could be placed on the grounds near it the old steam locomotive and other historical objects.<\/p>\n
Of all items that ought to have historical display is the vehicle that made Waterville known allover the land, the Lombard Log Hauler. It is interesting that the men most interested in preserving remaining specimens of the Lombard machine and gathering historical information about it live outside of Waterville. Two of them live respectively in Massachusetts and Connecticut; the other in Biddeford, Maine. The Biddeford man is Prescott Howard, who in a letter expressed himself as follows: “There is little doubt that no other man in all history has done so much to change the surface of the earth as did A.O. Lombard. The results of the crawler-type tractor are so obvious that we take them for granted. Wherever there is heavy construction, crawler units are always present, whether it be dams, levees, multiple lane highways, excavations, pipe-laying in the jungle, tractor trains at the North and South Poles, or hundreds of other industrial uses.<\/p>\n
“Crawler treads were used on tanks in both World Wars, and appear today on troop carriers, heavy guns, bridge carriers, and many other military vehicles.<\/p>\n
“But the crawler tread was not devised for purposes of war. It was an industrial enterprise, designed to reduce the number of horses required to haul logs in the woods, and at the same time increase the number of logs hauled over difficult terrain. ”<\/p>\n
Mr. Howard is quite right. At the turn of the century great drives of long logs were coming down the Kennebec to mills at Fairfield, Waterville and Augusta.<\/p>\n
Those logs had to be moved out of the woods to the streams. One of the big lumber operators was the firm of Lawrence, Page and Newhall of Fairfield, and they were one of the first to make extensive use of the Lombard Log Hauler. Powered by steam, the machine was propelled by an endless metal belt or crawler, the first of its kind in the world.<\/p>\n
Mr. Howard ended his letter: “You folks should not forget that Waterville was the birthplace of the crawler mechanism in use all over the world today.”<\/p>\n
Lawrence Walker of Salem, Mass., knows a lot about the Lombard machine. He says: “Well do I recall, the two or three gas Lombards that used to sit outside the machine shop on the Fairfield road. The log-hauler was not A.O. Lombard’s only achievement. He developed a rotary snowplow of unusual power long before anyone had conceived of using a gas-motored rotary for clearing highways. He patented and built a few diesel-powered log haulers in the days when diesel motors were far from popular. I understand there is one of the old log haulers in pretty good shape, stored at the old Lacroix lumber camp at Clayton Lake.”<\/p>\n
Mr. Walker continues: “I was a guest of Great Northern Paper Co. one winter in the mid-20’s at their camp on Cooper Brook, near Kokadjo. Four big Lombards were in use there, and the famous Cooper Brook Trestle at Jo-Mary Mountain was then being built for the exclusive use of the Lombard haulers. That trestle was entirely of wood, spanning a gulley nearly half a mile wide, and was located many miles from any highway. Previous to its completion, it was necessary to use two steam Lombards, and sometimes three, to haul a pulpwood train up the grade.”<\/p>\n
One fine achievement of Prescott Howard of Biddeford was to establish beyond doubt that A.O. Lombard, and not other claimants, did produce the first crawler-tread vehicle. At considerable expense, Mr. Howard had the records in the U.S. Patent Office carefully examined, and he ascertained that the Lombard patents were the first on record for any vehicle using the crawler principle.<\/p>\n
Certainly Waterville ought to be proud of the fame of A.O. Lombard, and ought somewhere in the city to preserve one of the old log haulers.<\/p>\n
Now let us clear up a few facts about Waterville’s earliest churches. I have mentioned several times on this program that the first church built by any denomination in either Waterville or Winslow was the Baptist Church, built in 1826, and still standing on Waterville’s Elm Street. But, previous to that building, the two towns had no fewer than three churches. The first one was erected on Lithgow Street in Winslow in 1797. It is the present Congregational Church of Winslow. The second one was called the East Meeting House of Ticonic Village, and stood on the common near where the present city hall was later built. The name East Meeting House was actually not applied to the building until after Waterville became a separate town in 1802, and then it was a name to distinguish that meeting house from the West Meeting House erected in that year in West Waterville, now Oakland.<\/p>\n
It is interesting that those old meeting houses, though under charge of town officials and not controlled by any denomination, were not actually financed by the town. Legal title did lie with the town, but the expense of building was met by the sale of pews.<\/p>\n
The East Meeting House might well have been the first on either side of the river, if it had not been for one of those neighborhood rows that has plagued more than one Maine town in its history. Plans for the East Meeting House were indeed well advanced before building of the church in Winslow had started. Dr. Obadiah Williams generously offered the gift of a lot on what is now the Common for both a meeting house and a school house. But in 1794, when that offer was made, the section near the Common and the wharves where later were erected the Lockwood Mills was only slightly more populous than the rapidly growing industrial section at Crommett’s Mills on the Messalonskee, near where the pumping station of the Water District now stands. Promoters of those industries and eager sellers of homestead lots in that area were Asa Emerson and David Pattee So prominent was the former that the Messalonskee was then called Emerson Stream.<\/p>\n
They insisted that, if the meeting house couldn’t be erected at Crommett’s Mills, it ought at least to be put up somewhere between that place and Ticonic Village. The result was an impasse in a long series of town meetings, and four years went by before the Ticonic Village faction won the battle and the meeting house, which was actually designed for both religious services and town meetings, finally went up in 1798.<\/p>\n
Pews were reassessed and sold several times. For one reason or another pews were forfeited, others were subscribed but never paid for, and ownership of a few was even disputed in the courts. Sometimes a pew was jointly owned. A deed dated November 15, 1804 reads: “Know ye that I, Abijah Smith, agent for sale of pews in the East Meeting House, find that Pew No. 25 was originally purchased by James McKim, who transferred all right and title to Ebenezer Bacon and Nathaniel Gilman, and I do now declare said Bacon and Gilman to be rightful owners of Pew No. 25.”<\/p>\n
One of the oldest deeds extant, in respect to those pews, was signed on March 2, 1800 before the bUilding got the name of East Meeting House, and while Waterville was still a part of the town of Winslow. That deed said: “I, Benjamin Tupper of Winslow, in the County of Kennebec, yeoman, in consideration of $12.50 paid to me by Asa Faunce, cabinet maker, do convey to said Faunce, his heirs and assigns, of Pew No. 42 in the Meeting House on the west side of the Kennebec River.”<\/p>\n
Sometimes one man would own a number of pews. In 1820 a single deed conveyed 15 gallery pews to Lemuel Dunbar as part payment for Dunbar’s building those gallery pews. As time went on, the pews depreciated in market value. In 1842 Dunbar deeded back to the town eleven of the fifteen gallery pews, for which he received $4.40. Previously Dunbar had sold one pew to James Crommett for $10. In 1843 Crommett turned it over to the town for 40 cents.<\/p>\n
Something had happened in 1840 to make these pews of so little value. In that year the Legislature authorized the Town of Waterville to sell the old meeting house in West Waterville, known as the West Meeting House and to have an appraisal made of the value of the pews, and pay to the owners of the pews accordingly.<\/p>\n
On June 30, 1840 there was filed with the town clerk the following statement: “We have, on request of Samuel Appleton and others, appraised the pews in the old meeting house in West Waterville to be valued at 70 cents each and no more. David Page, Charles F. Gilman. Thomas Woodman.”<\/p>\n
That led to a movement to payoff the pew holders in the East Meeting House, and a similar committee was appointed to appraise the pews in that building. Their report was made on June 3, 1842: “We, having been requested by the Selectmen of Waterville to appraise the pew property in the East Meeting House, do hereby certify that, according to our best judgment, the pews are valued as follows: The 29 wall pews, 90 cents each. The 12 body pews on the middle aisle. $1.50 each The 8 body pews on the side, 60 cents each. The 24 gallery pews, 40 cents each. Charles F. Gilman. George Sylvester. Thomas Dunbar.”<\/p>\n
So when owners handed their pew deeds over to the town between 1842 and 1845, it was in every case for the values established by the appraisal committee. That is why James Crommett parted with his gallery pew in 1843 for 40 cents. As for the higher priced pews on the floor, note what happened to a few of the 90-centers. In 1805 Abijah Smith sold Pew 36 to Asa Redington for $23. In 1845 Redington passed it over to the town for 90 cents. It was the same with Joseph Hitchings, who had paid Jonathan Soule $30 for Pew 33. Pew 15 passed through several hands. John Pierce, gentleman of Sidney, paid $32 for it in 1805. In 1819 he sold it to John Cool, veteran of the Revolution, for $20. In 1840 Cool passed it on to the town for 90 cents.<\/p>\n
Such is the story of Waterville’s venerable East Meeting House, which continued into this century as town house and first city hall, until the present city hall was built.<\/p>\n
Year: 1965<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #649, Broadcast on April 11, 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\/8498"}],"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=8498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}