<\/p>\n
Grievous as is the problem of alcohol in today’s society, the problem is by no means new. Both the official town records of Waterville, and unofficial accounts tell of the way people tried to face the problem for many years.<\/p>\n
In the early part of the 19th century, use of New England and West Indies rum was so common and so taken for granted that when the minister visited a home, courtesy demanded he be treated with a glass of rum. When the pious Baptists who founded Colby College, erected the first building on the old campus in 1819, one of the costs was a charge made by the Mathews and Gilman store to the trustees of the college for 20 gallons of rum furnished for the house raising.<\/p>\n
A national temperance movement had gained such strength, however, by 1840, that a local board, authorized to issue liquor licenses in Waterville voted: “In response to the wishes of our citizens, as expressed through the selectmen, this board deems it consistent with the public good not to license any persons in Waterville to be sellers of wine, brandy, rum, or any other strong drinks by retail, and no license for that purpose shall be granted by this board.”<\/p>\n
Four years later in 1844, the town officials relented and set up Waterville’s first liquor agency. The agent was the only person in town with the right to sell liquors, and he could disperse them only for medicinal and mechanical use. It seems that, despite that restriction, inbibers managed to keep getting their booze. In 1848 the Waterville town meeting voted to raise $500 to procure a house of correction to which to commit drunken persons.<\/p>\n
Then in 1851 came prohibition for the entire State of Maine, the law which made it illegal to sell such beverages in this state for more than 75 years. During that 3\/4ths of a century enforcement varied radically with both time and place. Waterville had the reputation of being a wet town, though there were periods of rigid enforcement, and it became the birthplace of the state’s most powerful dry organization, the Christian Civic League. For many years Waterville churches were ardent foes of the local liquor traffic, and such prominent church laymen as Horace Purinton and Herbert Emery often accompanied officers on liquor raids.<\/p>\n
In 1866 the town passed a vote of thanks to Joshua Nye, Inspector of Police, for his successful efforts in shutting up Waterville rum shops. Much earlier than that, in the very year of Waterville’s first murder, 1847, the society called the Friends of Temperance was so active that they prevailed on the town meeting to set up a committee to furnish evidence to the town agent of all violators of the local ordinance against private liquor sellers. That committee was a sizable and influential group of 45 men, among them such leading citizens as Samuel Redington, Moses Hanscom and John Philbrick.<\/p>\n
In 1853 Waterville took a wet turn. The Maine law had then been in existence for two years. When an article was presented in town meeting to set up a committee to assist in local enforcement of the liquor law, the voters turned it down. In 1858 a statewide attempt was made to repeal the prohibition law and allow restricted licensing. The issue was put to referendum, and Waterville then showed a decided dry preference. The local voters cast only 18 votes in favor of a license law, and 292 votes to retain the state prohibitory law.<\/p>\n
The town liquor agency was continued long after state prohibition became effective. As in the beginning, the agent’s authority was to sell only for medical and mechanical purposes. In 1873, when the western part of Waterville became a separate town, at first named West Waterville and later Oakland, property assigned to the older town of Waterville included $96 in cash in the hands of the liquor agent.<\/p>\n
Before 1840 liquor licenses were common in town. There were as many as 15 holders of licenses in 1821. Among them were such respected citizens as Simeon Mathews, John Burleigh, Nathaniel Gilman and Jediah Morrill. The next year, 1822, the number of licenses increased to 23, and in 1823 it shot up to 32. The license fee was six dollars a year. Before the final restriction to a single liquor agent was voted at Waterville town meeting in 1844, they had restricted licenses to two persons in Ticonic Village and one in the west village (now Oakland). At the same time they voted the restriction that no liquor should be sold to foreigners or unnaturalized persons.<\/p>\n
I have given you this account just to show how persistent has been the liquor problem, and how no solution has ever been found to solve it. Helpful as legislation and its enforcement has often been, over and over again there has seemed no effective way except for individual persons simply to refuse to drink alcoholic beverages. If the past 150 years is any criterion, we can be sure that, as long as alcoholic beverages continue to be made, the problem will always be with us. But that does not mean that we should give up trying to improve conditions. Right now we can all work to do everything possible to keep drinking drivers off the highways.<\/p>\n
Until 1825, no religious denomination in Waterville had a meetinghouse of its own. The first such denominational structure was the Baptist Meetinghouse built at the corner of Elm and Park Street in 1825, and still standing on the same spot. But before that time there were two meetinghouses owned by the town, one where City Hall now stands, the other in what is now Oakland Village. Those buildings were put up to accommodate religious worship, town meetings, and other public assemblies. When the one on Ticonic Village common was built in 1796, the religious services in it were conducted br Rev. Joshua Cushman, a minister employed by the town and paid by taxes. By 1819, the town had dispensed with Cushman’s services, though he still lived in the community and would soon be elected its representative to the legislature.<\/p>\n
The public meetinghouse on the common, as well as the newer one in the west part or Oakland end of the town, were open for the use of various denominations that already had nucleus organizations but no meetinghouses. That explains the following vote at a Waterville town meeting in 1819: “Voted that either of the pulpits in the town of Waterville, for the ensuing year, may be occupied by a preacher of the Universalist order one-fourth of the tine, and that, at such other times as shall be notified, the pulpit in the East Meetinghouse shall be for the use of the Baptist preacher, Rev. Jeremiah Chaplin, located here as Professor of Divinity of the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, provided Mr. Chaplin shall give in each instance one week’s previous notice.”<\/p>\n
Fishing on the Kennebec was always causing trouble in early days. I have told you how Waterville passed an ordinance forbidding the cleaning of fish and leaving offal on the bank between the foot of Temple Street and where is now located the Hathaway factory. In 1820, the very year that Maine became a state, Waterville town meeting petitioned that first legislature for the exclusive rights to take fish from the Kennebec within the limits of the town. That apparently meant out into the middle of the river on the west side from the north line of Sidney to the south line of Fairfield The town of Winslow could petition for the same rights from the middle of the river to the east bank. We wonder how they proposed to control a fisherman who cast line or net right in the middle of the river.<\/p>\n
Keeping some general control of schools in the 1820’s was quite a problem. The district system then prevailed. Under it each town was divided into autonomous school districts. Each district had its own committee that appointed a school agent. The town meeting voted a certain sum of money for schools during the ensuing year. That total was then divided among the districts according to the number of pupils in each district. The system had many loopholes, and that explains the vote of a Waterville town meeting in 1826. “Voted, that in the future the town shall have a superintending school committee, which shall make annual report to the town, describing the condition of each district school, giving the name of each district agent, the condition of each school, the amount of money allotted to each, how much spent for masters and mistresses and how much for wood, the names of instructors, the number of scholars, the kinds of books used, and the separate number of scholars in English grammar, arithmetic and geography; also the appearance and discipline of each school; whether in the committee’s opinion the money has been spent wisely; whether the scholars are sufficiently supplied with books; and such recommendations as the committee shall think proper.”<\/p>\n
The concern about books in that vote was justified. In 1826, no Maine town furnished free textbooks. Parents had to see that their children had books. But there was no state law or local regulation demanding that the pupils all have the same published work for study in any year of subject. So, in 1830, it was recorded that a class of seven pupils in one Waterville school was using five different arithmetics.<\/p>\n
How those old two dollar a week teachers got any sense into their instruction is a mystery. Of one thing we can be sure. They earned their money.<\/p>\n
Year :1974<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1009, Broadcast on April 14, 1974<\/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":[1203,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9451"}],"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=9451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}