\nFrom his home in Princeton, N.J., Dr. Marston Morse has sent me an interesting account of the Mayflower Hill area before it became the new site of Colby College. A member of the staff at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Morse was for several years an intimate colleague of the renowned Albert Einstein, and in his own right Morse has won a world-wide reputation as one of the greatest living mathematicians.<\/p>\n
Born in Waterville, the son of Howard Morse, Marston graduated from Colby in 1914, where he was not only a leading scholar, but also tennis champion. His sister, Miss Meroe Morse, was a well known dealer in used books at her home on Waterville’s Park Street until her death only a few years ago. Meroe Morse was a member of my own class of 1913 at Colby.<\/p>\n
In his article Marston Morse states that he was born on Marston Road in 1892. The old Western Avenue crossed the Messalonskee where it does now, near the pumping station of the Water District, and to Cool Street corner, where the three Branch brothers were born. Morse used to accompany on the organ Ted Branch’s rich bass voice. From that corner Western Avenue continued to the First Rangeway, across which was the Chase Mansion, now the site of the Mount Merici school and convent. Morse studied French with the mother superior of that convent. Beyond Mount Merici, Western Avenue descended to a brook on the bank of which lived Eva Vigue who was a first grade classmate of Marston’s in 1897. Western Avenue continued up the slope, bordered by a line of trees still recognizable, passed in front of the present site of the Colby President’s home, and on well in front of Lorimer Chapel. On the right, just before the road descended into a swampy area now flooded by Johnson Pond, was the home of Ralph Stanley, whose daughter was another of Marston’s classmates. On the left, near the south end of the pond, stood a one-room district school. Where Western Avenue joined Second Rangeway, at the junction of Rice’s Rips and Marston roads, was the old Wheeler farm, the foundations of which are still recognizable amid the grown brush.<\/p>\n
From the Wheeler house Marston Road extended north to the County Road that is now our extension of Waterville’s North Street. Of the inhabitants of Marston Road in his boyhood, Dr. Morse wrote: “In 1900 there were three farmhouses on the road. First on the left was the home of an eccentric named Sturtevant, who lost his life when his house was burned, causes mysterious and unknown. The next house was that of a farmer Morrell, who died by his own hand in the deep woods back of his home. His house was bought by a Baptist clergyman named Stetson, whose son Arthur and daughter Grace both attended Colby. Arthur Stetson still lives in that house.”<\/p>\n
Dr. Morse could have added that the Stetson house was one of two almost identical brick houses built in that region by Ephraim Morrell. The other is the present home of Hobart Pierce, market gardener on Rice’s Rips Road.<\/p>\n
Dr. Morse’s article continues: “The fact that this part of the country was honeycombed with cousins in the 19th century was no accident. There was a concerted development of that part of Waterville, as well as the Ten Lots area west of the Messalonskee. Allover the region were Bates, Gow, Snyder and Marston families. From the Bates family came Katherine Lee Bates, who wrote “America the Beautiful”. Thomas Bates of Ten Lots was descended from Thomas Bates, the British composer who induced Handel to come to England.” Another patriotic hymn is associated with Ten Lots. The author of “America”, Samuel Francis Smith, had started the Baptist church at Ten Lots while he was the Baptist pastor in Waterville. At Ten Lots Pastor Smith baptized Dr. Morse’s grandmother.<\/p>\n
In the last farmhouse on Marston Road, near the overhead crossing of the old Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad, lived Dr. Morse’s maternal grandfather, William Marston. His deed came from the famous Gardiner family, and was part of the land acquired in the Kennebec Purchase of 1749. An early owner, by royal grant, had been Tudor Gardiner, an ancestor of the late Tudor Gardiner who became Governor of Maine.<\/p>\n
About 1870 Dr. Morse’s aunt Meroe Marston made an oil painting of the old Marston house. Since then its exterior has been greatly altered. Dr. Morse says: “In that house on Marston Road my mother conducted a Baptist Sunday School. Among her pupils were John and Coleman Gow, William Snyder, and Harvey Eaton. My mother was the first piano teacher of Coleman Gow, who later became head of the Music Department at Vassar College. As an adolescent, Mother had studied music in Worcester with Storey, head of music at Smith College. William Snyder became a teacher in Worcester. His friendship with the family of Massachusetts’ Governor Foss was largely responsible for the gift to Colby of old Foss Hall on Waterville’s College Avenue. Snyder later founded a junior college in Hollywood, California, that included Mary Pickford among its students. Snyder’s son-in-law is now Chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz.”<\/p>\n
Dr. Morse concludes: “Of great personal interest to me is the history of the one-room district school on Western Avenue near the Second Rangeway. Evan Wheeler, my sister Meroe and I, Margaret Rice, Alice Stanley, and Eva Vigue were among the eight or more pupils in that school. May Garland of Ten Lots was the superb teacher. At five I tried everything that everybody in that school was taught, and I certainly learned more in that one year than in any other three years of my student life.”<\/p>\n
We hope soon to see Dr. Morse’s entire article published in some Maine publication. Meanwhile this digest of it is permanently recorded among the preserved scripts of Little Talks’ numerous broadcasts.<\/p>\n
I am frequently asked why it is so difficult to determine the exact sites of old mills and shipyards that stood on the Waterville side of the Kennebec just below Ticonic Falls, 150 years ago. The answer is provided by a story of later 19th century prosperity. What changed Waterville from a trading center for a farming community to an industrial city was the opening of the Lockwood Mills in the 1870’s. But there are usually no gains without some losses.<\/p>\n
Those mills entirely changed the topography of the area below Ticonic Falls. Water Street, which originally ended at Sherwin Street, was extended down along the river bank to the area that became known as the Plains. Homes and boarding houses went up. The old buildings disappeared. The old shipyards and launching ways rotted away. Soon the whole area was covered by the big mills.<\/p>\n
I always like to encounter old newspaper clippings that someone has saved over the years. It is exasperating, however, to find many of those clippings undated. Such is the account of Smithfield’s first fair, recounted in a long clipping on which is written in ink “October 7”, but no year. I want to tell you what the paper said about that first Smithfield fair, in the hope that some listener may be able to tell me the year when it occurred.<\/p>\n
The account says: “Over 500 people attended the Grange Fair held on the lot which the Grange recently purchased in Smithfield. There was a good showing of vegetables and livestock. There was great interest in the horse pulling, Ernest Mosher securing the blue ribbon. There was motor boat racing on the lake, a foot race and a tug of war. Nutting’s orchestra of Skowhegan furnished music for a dance both afternoon and evening, and a scrumptious dinner was served by the ladies of the Smithfield Grange.”<\/p>\n
Perhaps the time can be identified when I tell the names of other prize winners besides Ernest Mosher. In the fancy work exhibit, ribbons were won by Miss Flora Mosher, Mrs. Elsa Stanley, Mrs. Annie Ellis, Mrs. Calvin Dow, Mrs. Clarence Dow, Mrs. Lura Richardson, and Mrs. Myrtle Holmes. Mrs. G. F. Merrow showed a three-cornered, wooden hat box carried by Captain Titcomb in the Revolution. That tricorn hatbox has since been given to the Waterville Historical Society, where it is admired by visitors from allover the country.<\/p>\n
Some of the children who had exhibits at that Smithfield Fair were Blanche Monkloon, Lillian Hartford, Leona Witham, and Eula Stearns.<\/p>\n
A boys’ footrace was won by Charles Hardy, with Clifton Landis second and Lloyd Groves third.<\/p>\n
Vegetable and fruit exhibitors were J. E. Downs, F. D. Stevens, G. A. Groves, A. N. Avery, and D. S. Witham. Two brothers among the boy exhibitors were George and Maynard Tibbetts with their big pumpkins.<\/p>\n
Cattle exhibitors included Charles Merrow, Vernon and Virgil Clement, F. D. Stevens, H. L. Kilgore, and Fred Clark.<\/p>\n
Surely, out of that long list of names there is someone who can tell us when that Smithfield Grange Fair was held.<\/p>\n
Connected with the Wheeler family near the junction of Marston Road and Second Rangeway, mentioned in Dr. Marston Morse’s interesting article, is preserved an old account book kept in the 1850’s by Erastus Wheeler. One large item was a bill for $420 for work putting in a new water wheel at the Sanger and Appleton Paper Mill in 1853. He charged Anson Sturtevant 34 cents for timber for a harrow and Alpheus Bates $3.11 for 311 feet of hemlock boards. He paid Herman Gibbs $1.00 for boarding men who grafted trees on the Burgess farm. He collected $1.00 for a day’s work helping Silas Redington layout a road. He collected 17 cents, or one shilling, for use of his boy to drive a cow to William Marston’s. One day he sold the Burgess farm 9 pounds of butter for $1.50 and 8 pumpkins for 24 cents. William Marston paid him 25 cents for hauling a large log from the dam to the mill pond. One interesting item was Wheeler’s bill for $6.00 to Thomas Crowell of Farmington, to get out timber for a flour mill to be carried to the Sandwich Islands. Wheeler also had a side line. He got two dollars for attending William Tozier’s funeral as sexton. They were enterprising people, those Wheelers of Waterville’s Mayflower Hill.<\/p>\n
Year: 1973<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #986, Broadcast on November 4, 1973<\/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":[35313,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9388"}],"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=9388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}