<\/p>\n
Through the courtesy of Mrs. Arnold Foresbey of Oakland, I have recently seen a scrap book of peculiar interest. Unlike most such items, this scrapbook contains almost exclusively photographs clipped from newspapers between 1885 and 1910. Inscribed inside the front cover is a name, apparently that of the book’s owner: Harry W. Webber, Downers Grove, Illinois. Except for a few Massachusetts scenes and a few pictures of prominent early American statesmen, the photos are all concerned with Maine. In a few instances there are short articles connected with the pictures.<\/p>\n
The first picture in the book is of an unusual sampler stitched by a girl in Auburn early in the 19th century. The sampler is a family record of births and deaths, apparently taken from the big family Bible, in which people used to keep such records. The work was not completed, because under “Deaths” it gives six names, but death dates for only the first two. The sampler is the family record of Philip and Deborah Chandler and their eleven children.<\/p>\n
Philip had been born in 1767, his wife in 1773. They were married in 1790. Of their eleven children, six died in infancy. Growing to adulthood the other five were born respectively in 1790, 1793, 1795, 1797, and 1809. The Chandlers followed a common practice of the time. When Catherine, born in 1808, died when only a few weeks old, they gave the next child, a daughter born in 1809, the same name, Catherine. Evidence that such was a common practice is supplied by Maine’s famous singer, Nordica, born in Farmington in 1857. Not long before her birth her sister Lillian had died. So the parents gave the new daughter the same name, Lillian Norton.<\/p>\n
This old Auburn sampler looked much like an old-fashioned tombstone. The statesmen depicted in the scattered pictures include George Washington, as painted by Peale at Valley Forge; a picture of Washington’s first Cabinet; Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury; Henry Knox, Secretary of War; and John Randolph, Attorney General.<\/p>\n
We are all familiar with pictures of Martha Washington, as she was painted in portraits while her husband was President. But in this old scrapbook we have a more unusual picture, showing Martha as a handsome young woman. No wonder George married her.<\/p>\n
But it is the Maine pictures in the book that intrigue us. There are only two that depict Maine persons. One is of our first Governor, William King. The other shows General Joshua Chamberlain sitting in a rocking chair on his back porch, with his dog Caesar Tiberius at his feet. Chamberlain had led the 20th Maine valiantly at Gettysburg, had served as the state’s governor and as President of Bowdoin College, and, called in an emergency to head the state militia in 1879, he had brought peace out of threatened violence at the State House in the notorious count-out election.<\/p>\n
The Waterville area is not neglected in these clipped photos. The picture of Fort Halifax is not the more often printed picture of the remaining block house, but a drawing of the entire fort. A large print of that scene is among the treasures held at the Redington Musuem of the Waterville Historical Society.<\/p>\n
Very rare are pictures of the famous freshet oak in Winslow. It stood not on the bank, but after the bay became widened, it was in the water several feet from the shore. On it, as early as 1790, members of the Paine family marked the high point of every freshet on the Kennebec. That is how we knew that, previous to 1936, the river’s biggest flood came in 1832. The picture in this old scrapbook shows very clearly that ancient tree. Other historic points in our general area shown in this book are the Father Rasle Monument at Old Point in Norridgewock, and the birthplace of Elijah Parish Lovejoy in Albion.<\/p>\n
Personally I was enchanted by scenes in my own boyhood part of Maine. One shows the old Perley house at South Bridgton, built in 1776, only eight years after the first settlers had come to that region known as Pondicherry.<\/p>\n
There are two scenes of Naples Village, one taken from the Bay of Naples Inn, a famous summer hotel at the turn of the century; the other from the east end of the drawbridge that still has to be raised to let larger boats go between Long Lake and Brandy Pond, more glamorously called the Bay of Naples.<\/p>\n
Even more fascinating is a picture of the Steamer Longfellow, that carried mail, express, and passengers between Harrison at the north end of Long Lake, through Brandy Pond, to the Songo River, and down that extremely crooked stream into Sebago Lake and its terminus at the Sebago Lake Station of the Portland and Ogdensburg R.R., later the Mountain Division of the Maine Central. The Longfellow’s companion steamer was the Hawthorne. I have many times ridden on both.<\/p>\n
Not far from Bridgton is Lovewell’s Pond in East Fryeburg. This old scrapbook has a picture of the monument placed there to commemorate the Battle of Lovewell’s Pond in 1724. The fighting with Indians there and the attack on the Norridgewock Indians at Old Point that resulted in the death of Father Rasle, occurred in the same year. Never again were the various Abnaki tribes in Maine strong enough to give serious trouble to the white settlers.<\/p>\n
Within 25 miles of Bridgton is Paris Hill, birthplace of Maine’s only national vice president, Hannibal Hamlin. The scrapbook has a picture of the stately colonial mansion in which Hamlin was born, and of his own room in the house. Also depicted is a familiar scene, the old colonial jail on Paris Hill.<\/p>\n
Pictures of stage coaches are common, but not so are pictures of a six-horse stage. Here we have a stage with six horses drawn up before the Grand Trunk RR Station at Bryants Pond.<\/p>\n
Several scenes are of special interest because of a Maine celebration coming next summer. Then the Arnold Expedition Historical Society will put on a duplication of Arnold’s march to Quebec in 1775. Men dressed in Revolutionary uniforms and using replicas of the famous bateaux will go up the Kennebec to the Carrying Place at Solon, across the pond to the Dead River and over the Height of Land to Lake Megantic and the Chaudiere.<\/p>\n
In this old book is a picture of the Carrying Place, where Arnold’s army left the Kennebec, and another picture labeled simply “Benedict Arnold’s Cellar”. The latter is probably the remains of an old building, possibly the hospital Arnold put up to care for his sick soldiers.<\/p>\n
Falls, erected in 1824, moved thirty years later to the location of the present church. The original structure was torn down in 1870 and on the site was built the present fine edifice, where for four generations here worshiped the well-known Sturtevant family.<\/p>\n
It is difficult to date these pictures but the short article that accompanies one of them makes it clear that it appeared in some newspaper in 1902, the year of the Waterville Centennial.<\/p>\n
Accompanying the picture of Fort Halifax is this account: “Visitors to Waterville during this year’s centennial will be interested in the oldest building in town, which is the blockhouse built in 1754 for defense of the settlers during the French and Indian Wars. The old fort, which was christened Fort Halifax, stands on the spot of land at the junction of the Sebasticook with the Kennebec, and except for a few necessary repairs looks much the same as it did in those days when men took their lives in their hands every time they went into field or woods. The building was ordered by Governor Shirley and the construction was supervised by General John Winslow. The massive, hewn timbers and ponderous rafters show to this day how thoroughly the work was done.”<\/p>\n
We wonder what Winslow people thought of that newspaper account. Fort Halifax was always in Winslow, never in Waterville. The story that accompanies one picture tells about a phenomeno caused by nature’s adjustment to the works of man. The story says: “In Skowhegan, on the old road to Canaan, on the Hill Farm, is the remains of an old-time fence which has been swallowed by two giant trees, an oak and a maple. At least 80 years ago, the father of John Hill, who is the present owner of the farm, built a rail fence along the edge of the farm near the road. The two trees, then little saplings, were so placed that Hill decided to use them for fence posts just as they stood. So he bored holes in the trees and placed cedar rails in the holes, the rails extending from tree to tree. Today the trees have grown to three feet in diameter. The fence beyond either tree has long since disappeared. But the rails placed between the trees are still there, and the trees have so surrounded the rails that they seem like part of the trees themselves as they protrude from the trunks.”<\/p>\n
Another story accompanying a picture was about a trotting bull. Here is the story:<\/p>\n
“Philander Hussey of Knox, Maine, and his famous trotting bull, Bosco, have been getting ready for the county fairs. Philander has been putting the animal through some new gaits, and consequently Bosco will show this year’s fairs some fancy steps. The bull’s natural gait is a square trot, but hus owner has fitted him with hobbles, enabling the bull to keep up a fast pacing gait. He can do a quarter of a mile in three minutes without even getting up a sweat.<\/p>\n
“Early this spring Hussey tried to convert his steed to a saddle animal, but Bosco would have none of it. The first time Hussey got on the bull’ s back, Bosco ran away and scraped the rider off by ducking under the low limbs of an apple tree.<\/p>\n
“When Bosco was a calf and Philander was a small boy the boy’s father, disappointed that the calf was male instead of a prospective milker, doomed Bosco to the slaughter house. But Philander pleaded so hard that the father let the boy keep the bull calf. The father never dreamed Philander would train the bull to trot at the county fairs. Now Bosco jogs off as stead as a horse. He is not afraid of automobiles and will stand without hitching. He also wears a red blanket, showing that here at least is one bull who doesn’t go berserk when he sees red.”<\/p>\n
And with that story that is all bull we must say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1974<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1019, Broadcast on September 29, 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\/9474"}],"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=9474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}