<\/p>\n
Recently Webb Noyes of the Colby College Library brought to my attention a reference in print to another and very ancient Waterville. This leads me to ask what was the first place in the English speaking world to be given that name.<\/p>\n
Three years ago the American Philosophical Society published as one of its Transactions “The Trial of Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, 1307-1312”. The account of that prolonged trial refers to a place called Waterville, and that trial occurred more than 650 years ago. The trial account tells us: “Thorpe Waterville and Aldwinkle in Northamptonshire belonged to William of Louth, Bishop of Ely. In 1307 William Touchet claimed that Thorpe Waterville had been given to him by his uncle William Langton.”<\/p>\n
The word thorpe or dorp occurs in many English place names. It was derived from the Danish, and meant hamlet or village — that is, a cluster of houses usually at a crossroads. Thorpe Waterville was located not far from the town that later developed into the great steel and cutlery city of Birmingham.<\/p>\n
I am somewhat puzzled by the evidence that Waterville was a place name as early as 1307. That was only two hundred years after the Battle of Hastings that sealed the Normans’ conquest of England, and was at least a century earlier than what we call hybrid place names, that is, a name of two parts, each from a different language. Water, the first part of the name Waterville, is of Germanic origin, the word having only slight variation in German, Dutch, Flemish, all the Scandinavian tongues. and of course old Anglo-Saxon. The last half of the word is not Germanic, but Romance, coming into English from the French, and into the French from Latin. The Latin ville became the French ville and the English village. In its French form — v ill e — it was attached as the last part of numerous place names.<\/p>\n
In Anglo-Saxon times before the Norman conquest, one never finds these hybrid combinations, and they are very rare before 1500. But now Webb Noyes has found evidence that as early as 1307 the Anglo-Saxon water and the French ville were combined into one word. Of course, the name originally meant a village on some place near water. Therefore the name Thorpe Waterville is actually a redundancy, for it means Village Water Village, just as when one says Lake Victoria Nyanza, he is really saying Lake Victoria Lake, because Nyanza already means lake.<\/p>\n
The quotation I have given is not the only reference to Waterville that Mr. Noyes found in the account of the Bishop of Lichfield’s trial more than six centuries ago. On another page it says: “Castle Ashby was one of Langton’s most important buildings in Northamptonshire. He bought it in 1305. In 1314 it was said said to be worth two knights’ fees. There and at Thorpe Waterville Langton did extensive building. In acquiring Thorpe Waterville he seems to have been increasing his Northamptonshire holdings by getting rid of more scattered lands. He got it, together with its hamlets of Aldwinkle, Achwich and Cotton, about 1300 from William Touchet.”<\/p>\n
The old volume contains also a personal name that interests us. We read: “In 1292 Langton bought three acres of woodland from Guy de Waterville and had license to enclose it into his park.”<\/p>\n
Guy de Waterville means in English Guy of Waterville. In the 1300’s there were no established surnames, but to distinguish persons with the same first name, various methods were used. One was to say where he came from. So this Guy was Guy of Waterville. Who was the William Langton that owned a town in England called Waterville 650 years ago? We do not know the year of his birth, but we do know that he died in 1321, and was at the height of his prosperity in the first decade of that century. He became not only Bishop of Lichfield, but also Treasurer of England, and was chief adviser to Edward I. So fully was he in the confidence of that king that he was made executor of Edward’s will. The accession of Edward II brought Langton’s enemies close to the throne, and he was summarily removed from office. His lands and tangible assets were seized. Accused by the barons, he was arrested and imprisoned until 1312, when he again came into favor. Falling out with high authorities of the church, he was again arrested. He appealed to the Pope and fled to France. Restored again, his death in 1321 assured him ostentatious burial in Lichfield Cathedral.<\/p>\n
He lived in stormy times, but unlike so many contemporaries, William Langton managed to die in bed, not in battle or by an assassin’s dagger. Such was the man who owned England’s village of Waterville more than 500 years before the first white settler built his cabin in Waterville, Maine.<\/p>\n
Several times during the past thirty years I have attended a summer service at the Bell Hill Meeting House in Otisfield, Maine, and once I spoke from its pulpit. Like several other such church structures in rural Maine, it is opened for only one service a year, though it is occasionally used for weddings or funerals. My reason for occaSionally going to Bell Hill is an acquaintance of more than half a century with the Pottle family of Otisfield, the most distinguished member of which, in my own generation, is Dr. Frederick Pottle, Sterling Professor of English at Yale, and the world’s most distinguished authority on James Boswell, author of the Life of Samuel Johnson.<\/p>\n
When today one comes upon the Bell Hill Meeting House in a truly isolated part of Otisfield, he is quite likely to wonder why a church was ever built in that out-of-the-way spot. The answer is that the place was not always so isolated. When the church was built in 1838, Bell Hill was the most populous part of Otisfield, because on all sides of the high hill crops were sheltered from the early frosts.<\/p>\n
Even before Otisfield was settled the proprietors, meeting in Boston in 1773, acted in accordance with the Massachusetts practice of the time, setting aside one lot for the support of the ministry, and another to be given outright to the first settled minister.<\/p>\n
In 1795 the first meeting house was erected in the town, slightly northwest of the present Bell Hill Church. An old record tells us: “The dedication was attended by a great concourse of people and by pastors of churches in all the neighboring towns. In order that the occasion might be suitably observed, the proprietors had furnished a half-barrel each of New England and West India rum and ten pounds of loaf sugar.”<\/p>\n
Just as was the case here in Waterville and in many other Maine towns, that first Otisfield church was truly a meeting house, serving for town meetings, political rallies, and lectures, as well as for religious services. When that early building proved inadequate for a growing community, it was decided to put up a larger and more solid edifice. So in 1838 was built the church building that still stands there on lofty Bell Hill and to which some 200 people gathered on a beautiful, sunny day last July.<\/p>\n
The story of the old church has been written by Mrs. Nellie Pottle Hankins, sister of Dr. Frederick Pottle and wife of Professor John Hankins of the University of Maine. Concluding her account Mrs. Hankins wrote: “Since 1913 the Bell Hill Association has seen that an annual service is held in the old meeting house on the last Sunday in July. The collection is used to keep the building in repair; the occasion calls together the people of Otisfield, their relatives and friends from afar; and the service assures that at least once a year the Gospel of Christ is preached from the old meeting house on the hilltop.”<\/p>\n
There are few persons still living who remember the colored janitor of Colby College during the last 40 years of the 19th century, but many here have known his son and his daughters, one of whom, Miss Alice Osborne, is still living. Samuel Osborne, a former slave, was at the close of the Civil War brought to Waterville by Col. Fletcher of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and Sam spent the rest of his life here, serving faithfully as the Colby janitor, a devout member of the Baptist Church, and a leader of the Sons of Temperance.<\/p>\n
Sam’s daughter, the well known local singer, Marian Osborne Matheson, wrote about 20 years ago a sketch of her father that gives a splendid account of Sam’s coming to Waterville. Mrs. Matheson wrote: “A boy was born to the Osborne family on October 20, 1833 in Lanesville, Virginia, on the plantation of Dr. William Welford. The child was the youngest of four, and his parents named him Samuel. The family were Negro slaves owned by Dr. Welford. Another Negro family of the Welfords was named Iverson, and Maria, the oldest of that family’s two girls, later became Mrs. Samuel Osborne.<\/p>\n
“When Sam was a small child Dr. Welford moved to Fredericksburg where Sam spent his childhood and youth. His playmates were the two white sons of Dr. Welford.<\/p>\n
“Because of her devotion to both the Osborne and the Iverson families, Mrs. Welford, after the doctor’s death, specified in her will that the members of those families should not be separated, but should always remain, with the Welford heirs on the Fredericksburg Plantation. Mrs. Welford further specified that her favorite, Sam, should have an education.<\/p>\n
“But it was not to be. The Civil War came. The Welfords lost everything, and their Negro families were dispersed. But Sam had already had some good luck. Before the war he had learned to cook, and the Welfords hired him out to a boys’ school where he was brought into contact with teachers and with boarding school life. When war broke out Sam had been recalled by Dr. Welford and had been made overseer of the plantation.<\/p>\n
“Toward the end of the war Sam found employment in the office of Col. Stephen Fletcher, Provost Marshall at Danville, Virginia. Staying with the Col. when the latter was placed in the Freedmen’s Bureau, Sam accompanied Fletcher when the latter returned to Maine in 1865.<\/p>\n
“On their arrival in Waterville, Col. Fletcher got Sam a job in the Maine Central shops. The next year Sam returned to Virginia to get his family. Long separated from his wife by the war, they were at last united, with Sam’s father also a member of the family in Waterville. In a short time Sam left the Maine Central and became the Colby janitor.”<\/p>\n
Year: 1967<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #747, Broadcast on December 17, 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\/8768"}],"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=8768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}