<\/p>\n
Several times on this program I have referred to the town of Norridgewock, one of the truly ancient points of interest on the Kennebec. Long before there was any English settlement at the place, it had been used for many years, perhaps even for several centuries, as an Indian campground, and by the middle of the 17th century it had a permanent Indian settlement.<\/p>\n
It was there, at Old Point, that there came in 1645 the first white man to take up residence with the Indians. He was the well educated and eloquent Jesuit priest, Father Gabriel Druillettes. In 1646 he built a rude chapel and converted the entire colony of Old Point Indians to Christianity.<\/p>\n
It was at Old Point also that Father Sebastian Rasle was killed in 1724, and the monument erected to his memory in 1833 still stands in testimony there on the left bank of the Kennebec.<\/p>\n
The tribe of Abenaki Indians that called themselves Norridgewocks had their principal village at Old Point, and the name of the tribe was later taken as the designation of the American town that sprang up slightly farther down the river.<\/p>\n
It is not about the Norridgewock Indians, but about the Anglo-Saxon town of that name that I want to say a few words today.<\/p>\n
When Sylvester Gardiner and his Boston associates incorporated the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase in 1749, they acquired title to all the land between the entrance of the Cobbossee Stream into the Kennebec at Gardiner up to the falls at Norridgewock, for a width of fifteen miles on each side of the Kennebec.<\/p>\n
In 1767 Waterville’s most famous pioneer, John McKechnie, entered the picture. The proprietors employed him to survey what were called the Great Lots -and great they indeed were — 306 rods on the river and fifteen miles in depth. McKechnie was also instructed to layout on each of the great lots two settlers’ lots of 100 acres each, fronting the river. Each settler’s lot was 75 rods on the river, so that about half of each great lot frontage was available to settlers. The proprietors soon found that even the inducement of a hundred-acre river lot was not sufficient to induce settlers to take up land far from the protection of Fort Halifax at Winslow. So in 1770 the proprietors raised their offer to settlers’ lots of 200, rather than 100, acres. Their conditions were that the settlers must actually reside on the lot for ten years, build a house, and within three years clear and put into grass or crops at least five acres. Later settlers were required to work two days a year on the public roads, but when the first settlers came there were no roads at all. The highway was the river, and that is why the first settlers’ lots were river lots.<\/p>\n
In 1771 Joseph Weston of Littleton, Mass., together with Peter Heywood and Jonathan Oakes, started the settlement that became Skowhegan. Two years later the Kennebec Proprietors employed Black Jones, the best known of the Kennebec surveyors after John McKechnie, to layout settlers’ lots through what is now Skowhegan and part way up the river toward Norridgewock. The next year, 1774, another surveyor, Thomas Farrington, was hired with instructions to survey lots in Norridgewock, 75 rods on the river and extending back one and a third miles. Each lot thus contained 200 acres. Farrington began his survey at Lot 61 on Skowhegan Falls. His method of surveying up to Old Point was to set a stake on the west side of the river, point his compass across, send a man over in a canoe, and set a stake on the east side. He then took the canoe up stream and let the chainmen work their way along the bank as best they could until they had run out 75 rods. Farrington would then come ashore and guess at the necessary adjustment to be made for crooks and turns. It was a careless. haphazard way of conducting a survey and naturally led to many land disputes in later years. It was Farrington who gave to the whole surveyed tract the name of Norridgewock.<\/p>\n
It is a well known fact that the first settlers of Central Maine towns were usually young men. In many instances the settlements were made without any women at all. Young fellows came, cleared land, built cabins, stayed a year or more to reap the first crop of oats and corn, then returned to the places they had come from, usually in Massachusetts, to bring to the Maine wilderness the new brides or perhaps the young wives they had left behind until the new homes were ready.<\/p>\n
When they first came to the Kennebec wilderness to claim a lot, those young men had little else save an axe and a gun, a knapsack of provisions, and a few clothes. Even when the wives came, or later when whole families joined the settlers, a canoe was sufficient transport for all they possessed. Norridgewock’s first settler was William Warren of Ashby, Mass., who came in 1772. He was soon joined by William Fletcher. Others joined them until, by the spring of 1774, there were ten families in Norridgewock. Then came tragedy. On April 24, 1774 Warren, Fletcher and three other heads of families went down the river in a large canoe. In the great eddy below Skowhegan Falls, around which they had made a carry, the craft was suddenly overturned and all except Fletcher were drowned.<\/p>\n
The most memorable event in early Norridgewock was the passage of Benedict Arnold’s army on their disastrous march to Quebec in the fall of 1775. It was early in October when the first detachment, with artillery and provisions, passed through Norridgewock. Stopping at the home of Thomas Farrington, the surveyor, Arnold patted the head of fourteen-months old Abel Farrington, the first white child born in the settlement. The settlers assisted the troops in getting the boats and equipment over the Norridgewock Falls.<\/p>\n
For many years the settlers had difficulty getting provisions from the outside, such as the absolutely essential salt, and even the grinding of their grain. It is not generally understood that it took many years after the building of Forts Western and Halifax before any extensive trading centers developed either at Augusta or at Ticonic Falls. For some time the nearest supply center to Norridgewock was Hallowell. For almost everything they ate or wore, the early settlers were dependent upon their own ingenuity with what nature provided close at hand. One such provision was the moose. His meat and his hides were readily available and moose hunts became common events all along the Kennebec.<\/p>\n
When the town of Norridgewock was incorporated in 1788 it had 79 families with a total population of about 320. In 1794 the town erected a meeting house and hired the Rev. Calef as the first resident minister. As was usual in those days, spirits as well as spirit, were involved. The town meeting record tells us: “Voted to get one barrel of good West Indies rum and 100 pounds of maple sugar, to be used in raising the meeting house.”<\/p>\n
In Norridgewock at the time were three denominations, and each was given use of the bUilding in proportion to the number of pews owned by its members, but ownership of the building was retained by the town. When in 1809 the county of Somerset was established. Norridgewock was made the county seat, John Ware, who was later to become a prominent citizen of Waterville. was then a merchant in Norridgewock. He gave an acre of land for a court house lot, and $800 toward the cost of the building.<\/p>\n
We have already referred to the presence of rum in erecting the Norridgewock meeting house. It is interesting to note what the town historian. William Allen, had to say about alcoholic beverages when he wrote his history in 1849. This is what Allen wrote: “When the settlers began building frame houses instead of cabins, all men of the settlement were rallied to the raising. and they thought no building could be erected without rum. It was the practice to treat every caller, even the minister, with a big mug of rum. Intemperance soon reared its ugly head in every Kennebec town, and Norridgewock was no exception. The consequences were deplorable. Some Revolutionary patriots saw the evil and avoided it. Others had the power to break the chains of habit. Intemperance, however, was more common than sobriety. The evil received new impetus at the close of the War of 1812, when the price of rum was so reduced that a man could get drunk for six cents. Conditions in Norridgewock became so bad that, in 1816, a society was formed with the aim of suppressing the improper use of ardent spirits. Public opinion, however, was not yet in favor of repressive measures, and it was not until 1828 that a genuine temperance society took hold in the community.”<\/p>\n
Mr. Allen insisted that, when he wrote his history in 1849, conditions had improved. He said: “One can hardly believe that there was a time when a hogshead of rum was retailed from a single store in this place in one week, but that is true.”<\/p>\n
Some time ago on this program I told you how the early roads in Maine developed. Let me repeat it now, for it is just the way that roads came to Norridgewock. The earliest foot paths were often ancient Indian trails, but few overland trails were near Norridgewock. In that region the Indians more commonly used the river.<\/p>\n
The first overland route from one settlement to another was by what was called a spotted line. The trees were marked by hewing off a chip on each side of the trail, near enough together so that the marked trees could be seen from spot to spot. The underbrush was cleared so that a man, with a pack on his back, could pass without obstruction. Such marking of a trail usually required a man’s work for two days to cover a single mile. That sort of foot path was sometimes used for three or four years before it saw any improvement. The next step was to cut out sufficient width for a pack horse in summer or a sled in winter, and that required four days work per mile. That first road was commonly called a sled road.<\/p>\n
Next, by expending six man days per mile, bridges were built across small streams, obstructions were cleared, and high-wheeled carts could now be used. The final step was to smooth out the road surface so that it was passable for carriages. From the making of the blazed trail to the completion of the carriage road, as many as ten years frequently elapsed.<\/p>\n
That is exactly the way the road from Norridgewock to Waterville through Ten Lots was made, and it was sixteen years before a carriage could pass over it.<\/p>\n
Such are some of the facts about old Norridgewock; and now we must say good-bye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year :1967<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #724, Broadcast on April 2, 1967<\/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":[752,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8700"}],"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=8700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}