<\/p>\n
On this program I have often said that a fertile source of information about the ways of our ancestors a century ago is the old account books. One such contains accounts kept by Erastus Wheeler of Waterville in the years from 1852 to 1855.<\/p>\n
Wheeler operated a saw mill on the Messalonskee Stream, and many of his charges were either for lumber that he sold or for sawing for someone else.<\/p>\n
In May, 1852 he sold 311 feet of hemlock boards to Alphonso Bates at what today we would consider the absurdly low price of six dollars a thousand feet. He charged Abner Sturtevant 34 cents for sawed timber for a harrow. Curtis Tobey paid him 17 cents (the old-time New England shilling) for lumber for an axletree. To John Bates he sold 248 feet of what he calls lath boards. Those were long, thin strips ready to cut into laths. His biggest sale that month was 969 feet of bridge planks to the Town of Waterville for $5.81.<\/p>\n
In June he was having a part in installing Theodore Crommett’s new carding machine at Crommett’s Mills, the site on the Messalonskee where now is the pumping station of the Kennebec Water District: “June 10 – To to foundry, ordering shafting, pulleys, etc for carding machine. June 15 – Half day’s work on the carding mill, $1.25. June 18 – 6t days’ work on carding mill by several persons, $10.12.”<\/p>\n
Like all fathers at that time, Wheeler put his sons Abel and Joseph out to work and, of course, kept their wages for himself. That was the common practice until a boy reached the age of 21: “May 10 – One day’s work for Abel shoveling manure, $1.00. May 21 – One day’s work myself and Abel trimming apple trees, $1.50. May 26 – One day’s work for Abel hoeing corn, 50 cents. June 5 – 1! days’ work for Abel picking rocks, 50 cents.” The varying rates for Abel’s labor seems hard to explain. Many fellows would think picking rocks harder work than hoeing corn.<\/p>\n
Perhaps that double rate of a dollar a day for shoveling manure was well justified. On the other hand the two shillings (34 cents) paid for a full day of Abel’s work cutting wood seems unjustly low. Wheeler’s saw mill did not keep him so busy that he had no time for other work. In fact the account book is filled with items like these: “One day assisting Silas Redington layout road from Burgess’ Corner to Blakes, $1.50. Scaling 29 small white ash logs for William Redington, 1,073 feet, 25 cents. Hauling one large log from dam to mill pond for William Marston, 25 cents.”<\/p>\n
Now we come to two very interesting items. Here’s the first: “Feb. 2. 1853 -To going to Farmington, making bill for timbers, etc. for flour mill to be carried to Sandwich Islands. $6.00. Railroad fare to Readfield, 70 cents. Returning from Belgrade, 45 cents. Drafting a plan for the flour mill, $3.00.”<\/p>\n
The other item reads: “To cash returned to S.A. Wheeler which was borrowed by my wife to pay Abel’s tuition to writing school.”<\/p>\n
Canning of corn was just beginning in the 1850’s. but we find Wheeler’s account book taking cognizance even of that new industry: “May 29, 1853 – To Silas Whitmore, t day preparing for building Waterhouse and Penison’s cannery.”<\/p>\n
In June 1853, Wheeler was involved in a paper mill being constructed at West Waterville: “June 15 – Part of day’s work laying out ground for paper mill. $1.00. Sept. 20 – 1.623 feet of hemlock boards for paper mill, $12.98.” On October 1, Wheeler hired Herman Gibbs to use his oxen to haul four loads of lumber from Ten Lots to Sawyer and Appleton’s paper mill. On October 14 Wheeler put in a day’s work making a diary and estimating cost of a Kendall water wheel, shaft and curb gates for the paper mill. Throughout the fall he worked many days installing that wheel. It was January before he wrote: “A day’s work preparing to put rock in paper mill flume. 2 days putting it in.”<\/p>\n
In the midst of his work on the paper mill Wheeler kept up his own saw mill business. He got 50 cents for 1\/3 cord of slabs for the school house, $1.80 for 150 feet of hard wood joist. He thought belatedly of a debt owed him by Benjamin Benson, which Wheeler recorded as follows: “A lot of fence boards delivered by my brother some time in April, 1853, quantity not known, but supposed to be about 700 feet.”<\/p>\n
Now let us take a look at the other side of Wheeler’s accounts — the credits he set down for what he owed to others. He got many commodities from the Burgess Farm. On May 1, 1852 it was 27 pounds of veal at five cents a pound. Three days later it was a bushel and a half of wheat for $1.87. He paid Esty & Kimball 25 cents a gallon for molasses, which he bought ten gallons at a time, and 12t cents for a pound of ginger. He agreed to board men grafting apple trees on the Burgess Farm, then let out the whole job to Herman Gibbs for a dollar. From the Burgess Farm he got four pounds of butter for 67 cents. He credited his brother with 25 cents for paying Wheeler’s highway tax in Waterville. In September, 1853 he paid 67 cents for four bushels of apples. Does that amount, 67 cents, occurring so often make you curious? Well, just note that, like the 34 cents I mentioned some ten minutes ago, it referred to the value of the New England shilling, rated at six to the dollar. The two instances of 67 cents that we just encountered were both multiples of four — four pounds of butter, four bushels of apples. Since a shilling was 16 2\/3 cents, 4 shillings was 66 2\/3 cents, and the nearest whole number was 67.<\/p>\n
The early 1850’s was still a time of home industries. Wheeler credited Mary Sturtevant with $2.17 for weaving 31 yards of cotton and woolen cloth at seven cents a yard.<\/p>\n
When I recall that in the first decade of this century the price of kerosene oil was 12 cents a gallon, I am astounded at the high price Wheeler had to pay for illumination fifty years earlier. For two gallons of what he called lamp oil he paid $2.34 — at the rate of seven shillings a gallon.<\/p>\n
So much for Erastus Wheeler’s accounts. We now turn to another subject.<\/p>\n
The intense feeling that existed between religious denominations a century or more ago is shown in a letter written to a Vassalboro doctor from a friend in Cincinnati in 1840. The letter said: “I was sorry to learn that some of my old acquaintances in Vassalboro have embraced Universalism. I believe their doctrine is radically false and that its practical tendency is not to make men better, but worse. I regard it as a dangerous doctrine — the most dangerous that has been promulgated by any sect of Christendom.<\/p>\n
“As you know, there are two kinds of Universalists — those who hold that all men will go to Heaven without any suffering after death, and those who hold to a kind of purgatory where the spirits will be punished or suffer according to the evil done in the body. The first doctrine, I presume, is the most common and the most absurd. I believe that the universal world of all being, as well as the material universe, is subject to a fixed law of cause and effect. I believe we go to Heaven or to Hell entirely on this principle. I hold free agency as essential to humanity, and I am therefore not a predestinationist. I believe, by our acts, we choose our destiny.”<\/p>\n
Much has been written about the woman, Mary Low, who was the first female ever to attend Colby College. She was admitted in 1871, the only girl among a hundred men. She graduated in 1875 at the head of the class, and that class contained such brilliant men as Leslie Cornish, who later became Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
It is time we paid attention to the man whom Mary Low married, for he was a very distinguished citizen of Maine. He was Leonard Carver, born at LaGrange, Maine in 1841. His grandfather, Nathan Carver, had come from Massachusetts to Livermore in 1799 and was that town’s second settler. A collateral ancestor was John Carver, first governor of the Plymouth Colony.<\/p>\n
Leonard Carver was in his senior year at the Foxcroft Academy when the news of Fort Sumter reached Maine. He enlisted in the Milo Light Infantry Company, which became Company D of the Second Maine Infantry. It was the first Maine regiment to report for duty in Washington. Honorably discharged in 1863, after participation in eleven battles, Carver entered Waterville College, graduating in 1868, just after the name was changed to Colby. Like the girl whom he would later marry, he too stood at the head of his college class. He then taught for six years in academies in Maine and other states, after which he studied law in the Waterville office of Reuben Foster. Admitted to the bar in 1876, he practiced law in Waterville until he became State Librarian in 1890. He married Mary Low in 1877, two years after her graduation from Colby.<\/p>\n
Carver served as town clerk of Waterville for five years, and was the Republican who, with S.S. Barrows, Democrat, drew up the city charter. He was the author of that part of the charter that relates to the public schools, and was himself a member of the Board of Education for three years. As State Librarian he made his residence in Augusta and there made a distinguished record organizing the law library of the state, as well as starting a plan to have a general collection of books for loan to citizens anywhere in Maine.<\/p>\n
We have time to mention one more Waterville man of prominence 60 years ago, and I think I have not previously used his name on this program. I refer to the father of our late distinguished attorney Carroll Perkins. The father’s name was Horace Perkins. He was born in Penobscot, Maine in 1839 and was a descendant of John Perkins, who had come to Boston with Winthrop in 1630. Horace graduated from old Blue Hill Academy and shipped before the mast at the age of seventeen, and was shipwrecked on the coast of Nova Scotia. During the Civil War he was master of a vessel making voyages to the West Indies. When he moved to Waterville, Perkins engaged in real estate and insurance with Mrs. A.M. Drummond, under the firm name of Drummond and Perkins, a partnership that lasted until 1902. Leaving the insurance business then to Mrs. Drummond, Perkins devoted himself to real estate.<\/p>\n
The 1903 book, called “Representation Citizens of Maine”, that contains the biographical sketch of Horace Perkins, ends with these words: “His youngest child is Carroll W., born in 1880, and now a student in Colby College. He intends to study law.”<\/p>\n
Year: 1966<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #706, Broadcast on November 27, 1966<\/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":[42954,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8648"}],"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=8648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}