\nToday I want to tell you a bit about an other prominent family of Waterville, the Thayers. A few weeks ago a member of that family, Mrs. Ann Thayer Rummell, let me see some of the old family papers that cast much light on real estate in the business section of Waterville more than a hundred years ago.<\/p>\n
To Waterville people still living, the best known of the Thayers were Dr. Frederick, for whom Thayer Hospital is named, and Mayor L. Eugene Thayer, Mrs. Rummell’s father. The first of the family in Waterville was Dr. Stephen Thayer, a descendant of the Braintree Thayers who had come to the Plymouth Colony in 1631. Born in 1783, Stephen Thayer studied medicine, not at a school, but with an older, distinguished physician in Ipswich, Masso, and received his M.D. degree from the Massachusetts Medical Society. In 1807 he came to Vassalboro, China and Fairfield. He settled permanently in Waterville in 1835, living in a brick house just south of the site of the Unitarian Church, which stood in the area that is now behind Giguerels store and the Bank of Maine.<\/p>\n
Dr. Thayer was the father of thirteen children, two of whom were Charles and Lorenzo Eugene. That was long before the time of Mayor Thayer, so we learn that he was not the first L. Eugene Thayer, but that his grandfather had the same name. The first Gene Thayer had a son Frank, who was the father of the Mayor. Thus Mrs. Rummell and her sister Mary are great grandchildren of Dr. Stephen Thayer who came here in 1835. Charles, brother of the first Gene Thayer, was the father of Dr. Frederick Thayer, so that Mayor Thayer and Dr. Fred Thayer were cousins.<\/p>\n
Now let us take a look at some of those old Thayer Documents. The oldest in the collection is a deed dated May 8,1837, from Daniel Cook to Stephen Thayer. Cook, who had moved to Ohio, deeded to Dr. Thayer a lot and house where he had lived in Waterville. The land is described as follows: “bounded on the east by Main Street, on the west by Elm Street, on the south by Timothy Boutelle’s house lot, on the north by the Redington and Williams house lots, including the small triangular piece of land that I bought off William Howe, and which lies on the north side of the east part of my lot.”<\/p>\n
That description places the Thayer property in the general area later occupied by the Unitarian Church and its neighboring Thayer Court. It includes part of the land where the Public Library now stands.<\/p>\n
Another deed, in October 1852, conveyed property in the business section of Waterville from Samuel Scammon to John Lyford of St. Albans. The description is as follows: “Lying in Ticonic Village in Waterville, beginning on the south line of Temple Street, 49 feet from the northwest corner of the lot owned by D & W Moor, then south at right angles with Temple Street to the north line of land lately owned by Nathaniel Gilman, then west on said line to a point where a line extended north shall strike the south line of Temple Street 36 feet on that street from the point of beginning.”<\/p>\n
It will not be long before no one will be able to identify that locality from such a description because the Temple Street referred to was West Temple Street, from Main to Elm, a street recently eliminated by Urban Renewal. The lot referred to was in the vicinity of Charles Street, also a street now defunct.<\/p>\n
In November 1853, Emiline Thayer Howe, a daughter of Dr. Stephen Thayer, deeded to her brother, Lorenzo Eugene Thayer “all my right, title and interest in the property, real or personal, given and bequeathed to me by my late father, Dr. Stephen Thayer, except my right in the Percival lot in Waterville, which my father bought of Sumner Percival, and except for my claim to household furniture mentioned in my father’s will.”<\/p>\n
In 1857 Sophie Tuttle deeded to Lorenzo Eugene Thayer a double tenement house on Elm Street. Earlier in the same year Thayer had sold to Mrs. Tuttle land on Elm Street, and that deed gives us the information that the Boutelle property in that area was known as the Boutelle homestead. On the Main Street side of it was the house where Timothy Boutelle lived for many years. On that part of this big lot that was on the corner of Elm and Temple streets, Boutelle built a mansion style house for his daughter, on her marriage to Edyin Noyes.<\/p>\n
Real estate was not the only property conveyed by deeds a century ago. In 1858 Timothy Scammon sold to L. E. Thayer for $28, his pew in the Congregational Church. It is described as Pew No. 31, on the east side of the church and the third pew from the pulpit. In that same year, 1858, L. E. Thayer and Stephen Marston, in partnership, acquired from Timothy Boutelle’s son, Dr. Nathaniel Boutelle, a lot of land not in the Waterville business section, but what was then far out in the country. The description says: “bounded on the west by the new county road leading from Waterville Village to Fairfield Meeting House, on the north by land owned by George Goodwin, on the east by land of Clifford Williams, on the south by land of Thayer and Marston, about 20 acres, the land conveyed being lots 3 and 4 on a plan of the Mountain Lot, so called, made by Silas Redington.”<\/p>\n
That description places that property on the east side of Upper Main Street in the vicinity of the Ridge Road.<\/p>\n
A deed in 1860 from Charles Thayer to his brother Eugene reveals much about the ownership of Waterville’s business property at the time of the Civil War. The deed says: “Beginning on Main Street two feet south of the building occupied by the harness shop of Simeon Keith, at the northeast corner of land belonging to the heirs of William Gilman, thence east 50 feet to the land of Charles F.Hathaway, thence North to the southeast corner of land belonging to William Moor, thence west in the center of the passageway between the two buildings as they stand on Main Street to the first mentioned bounds. ”<\/p>\n
Listeners to this program have heard me refer to the long dispute between the heirs of Timothy Boutelle and those of Nathaniel Gilman over the boundary line between their lands near Temple Street, a dispute that went to court several times and on one heated occasion involved shots fired across the fence. It seems that in 1868, another piece of property on Temple Street, near the area of the Boutelle-Gilman dispute, had an absentee owner, Andrew Lang of Waverly, N. Y. In 1869 Lang sold that property to Thayer and Marston for $ 1200. So Eugene Thayer had more than a passing interest in the Boutelle-Gilman controversy.<\/p>\n
In 1873 the Peoples Bank wanted more land, and sought a piece adjoining the bank building on Main Street. Eugene Thayer owned that land, and he sold it to the bank for $1800. The wording of the deed shows that it was a somewhat complicated transaction: “Beginning on the east line of Main Street at a point six inches south of the corner boards on the southwest corner of the bank building, thence east parallel with the south side of the bank to land of Alfred Burleigh, thence south to the west side of land occupied by Aaron Proctor and owned by Edwin Coffin, thence west to Main Street, with all the buildings standing thereon,\u00a0 also, so much of the building which stands on one foot of the Coffin land, lying north of the store occupied by George Robinson, and joining on to said store – with the frontage of said building remaining on the land according to Coffins deed to H. D. Bowker, until Coffin moves said store and Thayer moves said building; and Thayer is to leave the north side of said store on the original condition free of charge to Coffin or to the bank.”<\/p>\n
What does all that jumbled language reveal? That, during the years that business had been developing on Main Street between 1800 and 1860, a cluster of attached buildings had been put up near where was later the Arnold Hardware Store, and those buildings paid too little attention to lot lines, so when Thayer sold his piece to the Peoples Bank, many possibilities covered by older deeds had to be considered. It wasn’t long, anyhow,before the bank moved across to the other side of Main Street.<\/p>\n
In 1877 Eugene Thayer was in business, not only with Marston, but also with another prominent citizen, Dr. N. G. H. Pulsifer. A third well known local man, Reuben Foster, then sold to Thayer and Pulsifer his one-fourth interest in several pieces of Waterville property. It seems that a bit earlier those properties had been owned jointly by four men: Thayer, Pulsifer, Foster and C. E. Gray. They had bought one piece from C. F. Hathaway, and three adjoining lots from other owners. What Foster did in 1877 was to sell his one-fourth interest to Thayer and Pulsifer. Altogether it must have been land of some size, because the 1877 deed exempts considerable acreage they had already sold from it. Those exemptions included eight persons, some of whom became prominent in Waterville affairs: Josiah Hayden, Stephen Savage, Charles Stevens, William Leslie, Martin Hendrickson, Stephen Marston, Samuel Appleton and Charles Hall.<\/p>\n
Another lot now well known was bought by Ann Pulsifer from Mary Coffey in 1876. It was bounded on the west by College Street, on the north by land of Daniel Wing, on the south by Julius Alden’s homestead. That land was just south of the present site of the American Legion building.<\/p>\n
In 1880 Moses Lyford, a professor at Colby, owned property on Main Street, which he then sold to Eugene Thayer. It was near the clothing store then operated by P. S. Heald.<\/p>\n
In 1881, a deed of more land to Thayer and Pulsifer from their former partners, Foster and Gray, casts further light on Main Street property 90 years ago. That description read: “Beginning on the south line of Common Street at the northeast corner of land of M. Gallert, thence south to land of T. B. Page, hence east on the south line of E. Blumenthal, thence north to the west fence of the brick wall of building owned by-Peavey Brothers, reserving however, for the accomodation of the American H ouse and the Williams House <\/em>estates, a right of way from Comon Street around to Front Street. The Williams House Hall is to remain above the first storey of said hall, attached to the Williams House proper, as long as the Williams House remains standing there.”<\/p>\n We are very grateful to Mrs. Rummell for giving us access to this valuable information about old time Waterville.<\/p>\n Year: 1971<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #909, Broadcast on November 28, 1971<\/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":[42946,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9199"}],"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=9199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}