<\/p>\n
Two persons who are vitally interested in Maine history are Mr. and Mrs. Ellerton Jette of Sebec. As my listeners well know, Mr. Jette was for many years president of the C.F. Hathaway Company, and was personally responsible for the production of Hathaway shirts from unusual fabrics. Mrs. Jette is president of the Friends of Art at Colby College. She and Mr. Jette gave to the college their famous collection of American primitives; and that part of the Bixler Art and Music Building in which Colby’s rapidly growing art collection is exhibited has been named for the Jettes.<\/p>\n
Early this summer Mrs. Jette supplied me with a copy of one of the most interesting letters I have ever seen in description of a Maine community a hundred years ago. The letter was written from Sebec on June 10, 1866, fourteen months after the close of the Civil War, but contains just one reference to that war. The letter was written by a man named Hinchcliffe Taylor, who (the text reveals) had been in this country only a few years. He had been at Sebec about two and a half years. How much longer he had been in the United States, we can only guess, but it could not have been long, judging from what he wrote to his correspondent. R. C. Bottomley in England.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately the letter does not give the identity of the British town where Bottomley lived. but it does make clear that at one time both Bottomley and Hinchcliffe had lived in the same town, and when the latter wrote this letter to England, he was writing to a friend. That is shown by the way the manuscript begins: “Sebec, Piscataquis Co., Maine. U.S., June 10, 1866. Mr. R. C. Bottomley. Dear Friend.”<\/p>\n
It is apparent that Hinchcliffe wanted his friend to join him in America. Yet he was solicitous not to commit an act of over-selling. So he said to Bottomley: “Your chances of success in this country are greater than in England, provided you can leave your prejudices at home. I have seen many Englishmen in this country doing better than they could ever hope to do at home. yet were discontented and miserable. They were foolishly prejudiced to old customs and habits. Persons coming to this country must not expect to find things exactly as at home. They will find some things worse and not so convenient, but they will find far more that is better. I assure you that to make money and win an independence is much easier here.”<\/p>\n
Then follows that part of the letter which makes it a valuable item of social history, the writer’s description of the village of Sebec in 1866: “This is a very pretty and lively place of about 400 inhabitants. It is situated at the outlet of a large lake. 12 miles long and six miles wide at its widest part. We are really way back in the woods of Maine, 40 miles from the nearest railroad station. I have not heard the whistle of an engine for more than two years.”<\/p>\n
Then Hinchcliffe tells his friend about Sebec’s industries: “We have one woolen mill (the one where I am employed), a saw mill, and corn mill (note that he uses the British term, not our New England term ‘grist mill’). There is also a shingle mill and a clothespin factory. We have three mails a week, brought over the road from Bangor.”<\/p>\n
Hinchcliffe wants his friend to know how the place had improved within a few years: “When we first came here. two and a half years ago, there was no minister, no doctor, no lawyer, no shoemaker or tailor. Now we have two ministers, a doctor and a shoemaker.”<\/p>\n
Then the writer makes it clear that the frontier American settlements were still do-it-yourself places. He wrote: “We do a great many things that we should never have dreamed of doing ourselves in England. My wife can and does make most of our clothes. We make our own soap and candles, all we use. When we want meat, we do our own butchering. There is no running to the shops (Note the British word. We say “store”.) for an ounce of tea or a pennyworth of cheese. Everybody buys flour by the barrel, sugar by the bucketful, molasses by the gallon. I have never known anyone here to buy part of a cheese. He always buys a whole one. I could go on this way for page after page.”<\/p>\n
At that point in the letter it occurred to Hinchcliffe that he might be painting too bright a picture, and he didn’t want his friend Bottomley to come to Sebec under any false impression. So he wrote: “You must not get the impression that there are no poor people here. On the contrary, some of those in our village have to scratch pretty hard to get along. But I assure you we have no starving, pinching poverty as even I myself experienced in England. Almost every man here owns the house he lives in, with land enough to grow all his own vegetables.<\/p>\n
“For myself I certainly cannot complain. I have a house, and I farm four acres of land. We keep a cow and two heifer calves, and about 40 hens. Last December I killed a pig that weighed 278 pounds, cut up. So we have all the bacon, butter, milk and eggs we can eat. Last year I grew in my garden 16 barrels of potatoes and everything else in proportion. We also grew about two barrels of red currants.”<\/p>\n
Bottomley had asked Hinchcliffe about wages and the cost of living in the American village of Sebec. This is what Hinchcliffe replied: “Everything is high now because of the late rebellion, but at the worst it is no worse than what we called decent times in England. Wages range from a dollar to $1.50 a day for common labor, and from three to four dollars for skilled labor. I was paid three dollars a day in the woolen mill since I came here, until I recently decided to accept pay by the hundredweight, and I like it better than work by the day. You can safely reckon on earning at once from 10 to 12 dollars a week. You can get boarded for three dollars a week, so you have as much, after your living is paid, as you now have altogether in England.”<\/p>\n
Hinchcliffe took it for granted that his friend would come to America, for he concluded the letter thus: “Please write me again before you start, in time for me to answer. Tell me what port you intend to land at in America. I will send you full directions, with distances and fares, for you to come right forward to us. Be sure to come here first and I will advise you. Remember that I have had some experience amongst the Yankees.”<\/p>\n
Another interesting item that recently came to me from the estate of the late Arthur Robinson of Wellesley, Mass. is the published program of an entertainment in the Waterville City Opera House on May 26, 1902. Arthur Robinson graduated from Colby in 1906 and from Waterville High School in 1902, just two weeks after this particular entertainment. Arthur was a fellow who never threw away any scrap of paper that concerned his life, and that life included eventful years as a missionary in China. So after Robinson’s death about a year ago, his widow asked me to place respectively with Colby and with the Waterville Public Library hundreds of items that concerned Arthur’s life as boy and youth in Waterville.<\/p>\n
The entertainment of May 26, 1902 was called a Cantata of Queen Esther, presented by students of Colby College. It was directed, not by someone on the college staff, but by the well known band leader and composer, R. B. Hall, whom the program listed as “Professor” R. B. Hall. The stage director was F. L. Edgecomb, the manager F. W. Thyng, and the pianist Miss Vera Nash. The production was for the benefit of the Colby Athletic Association. The program is a large four-page sheet, 9t by 12 inches, and is filled with ads surrounding the brief text. On one page is a synopsis of the story of the cantata, actually a summary of the biblical Book of Esther, the Queen who saw to it that Haman was hanged on the very gallows he had prepared for her uncle Mordecai.<\/p>\n
It was a long cantata — five acts divided into nine scenes. Now let us see who were some of the characters. Haman was Cecil Daggett, who would later marry the daughter of Horace Purinton and be associated with the Purinton Construction Company. Mordecai was Leon Saunders, then a Colby junior who had been born in Armentieres, France, and who ten years later would win the world’s fly casting contest in Madison Square Garden. The leading part of Queen Esther was taken by a Colby senior, Edith Bicknell from Rockland. About the time her Mordecai of French birth was winning that fly casting contest Miss Bicknell was herself studying in France. Other names in the big cast, names that will be familiar to some of my listeners, were Edna Owen, Albert Towne,Bill Cowing, Linwood Workman, Edward Winslow, Nellie Lovering, Eunice Mower and May Harvey.<\/p>\n
Waterville business in 1902 is revealed by the ads that adorn all four pages of the program. One ad tells us that Sam Preble had photographed the cantata group.<\/p>\n
H. E. Judkins declared that, at the Elmwood, cuisine and service were unsurpassed.<\/p>\n
A merchant we used to call “Bydam” Moore drew attention to his sale of textbooks, blank books and mileage books. At 122 Main Street W. B. Blanchard was both confectioner and florist.<\/p>\n
Mrs. A. C. Johnson operated the City Dining Hall, which she declared was a favorite resort with ladies and gentlemen wanting a first class meal or a dainty lunch.<\/p>\n
One ad said simply: “Do you know that Thompson sells fudge of all kinds at twenty cents a pound?” L. R. Brown declared: “The hang of them will be entirely satisfactory if we make your trousers.”<\/p>\n
George Dorr, the druggist, didn’t advertise prescriptions or patent medicines\u00a0 His ad said: “The most fragrant and lasting perfume is Dorr’s Tropical Lily. Try it.”<\/p>\n
If you wanted to save and improve your teeth, you were invited to see Dr. Ett Kidder in the Flood Building, who was proud of his work with Jenkins’ Porcelain Inlay System. At 139 Main Street M. E. Fitzgerald ran a Night and Day Lunch, while Otten the Baker called attention to his Mother’s Bread. The straw hat season was on, and G. S. Dolloff offered a new line of nobby straw hats.<\/p>\n
The refreshment place of W. A. Hager was so well known, especially to college students, that everyone knew what was meant when, in that cantata program he read: “Why, of course, go to Hager’s for the best.” And that is how the printed program of an entertainment produced by students of Colby 63 years ago gives us a picture of Waterville in the early years of this century.<\/p>\n
Year: 1965<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #661, Broadcast on October 10, 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\/8535"}],"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=8535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}