\nToday I want to tell you a bit about old Cushnoc, the place that later became Augusta, the capital of Maine.<\/p>\n
For at least a century before white man came that far up the Kennebec, the place had been the site of an Indian Village. That village may not have been exactly where Fort Western was later built, but on what was in 1840 called Shirley’s Point, and which in that year was described by Charles Nash in a letter to the Kennebec Journal.<\/p>\n
From that peninsula jutting into the Kennebec there is an unobstructed view for a mile down the river, and an equally clear view as far upstream as Five Mile Island in Vassalboro. Both friend and foe, approaching by canoe, could be seen long before they reached the pioneer village. “The land,” said Mr. Nash, “is a rolling surface, and is now fenced into small portions of three or four farms. There are ridges of sand into which shallow graves could be dug with the crudest of tools. The plateau is bounded on the south by a deep ravine which was the outlet of a brook before its sources were dried up by the white man’s clearing of the land. The brook entered the river at such an angle that it cut the end of the plateau into a sharp-pointed peninsula. This was a fine location for a village suited to Indian life. The ravine like the man-made moats of Europe, was a bulwark against prowling enemies. For livelihood the place was near the best fishing grounds, and the soil was easy to work.”<\/p>\n
To this village came Father Druillettes in 1690 and established a mission station below his older station at Old Point in Norridgewock. It is possible that earlier explorers had sailed up the river as far as the head of tide at Cushnoc, but the first recorded visit was that of Edward Winslow, who came in a shallop from Plymouth in 1625, for the deliberate purpose of selecting a desirable site for the trading post for which the Plymouth Colony had made application to the Crown. Two years later that post was set up and for a quarter of a century was the center of Pilgrim trade for Indian furs.<\/p>\n
In 1654, Thomas Prince was put in charge of Plymouth government on the Kennebec. He was a step-son of the Pilgrim Governor William Bradford, who in 1623 had married Prince’s widowed mother. Prince placed Thomas Southworth in charge of the trading post, and later Prince himself lived there for three years. He was then Deputy Governor at Plymouth until his death in 1669.<\/p>\n
The trading post at Cushnoc was kept open until 1660, when it was abandoned as no longer profitable. Meanwhile a few scattered settlers had built cabins nearby, and the Indians on the peninsula above the post were friendly. The post itself was on the east bank of the river at the present site of Fort Western. There was no systematic attempt to bring in white settlers until a century later, and the few cabins the white men had built housed only unmarried hunters and trappers.<\/p>\n
King Philip’s War, starting in 1675, drove out even those bachelor whites. By 1690 there was not a white resident anywhere on the Kennebec above Georgetown and Woolwich.<\/p>\n
In 1732 a settlement was contemplated by Gov. Belche who, on an eastern tour from Boston, informed the Indians on St. Georges River that one of the missionaries whom he was sending to them would make his home at Cushnoc, where a church and town was about to be built. But nothing came of Belche’s plan. Not until the erection of Fort Western in 1752 was settlement actually begun.<\/p>\n
Fort Western was built as a supply depot for Fort Halifax. Governor Shirley in Boston had become increasingly concerned about reports that the French, with Indian allies, planned a concerted attack to drive the English off the Kennebec, not the sporadic raids that had been going on throughout the Indian wars since 1675. The company of speculators in the eastern lands, popularly called the Plymouth Company, but officially known as the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase, were equally concerned, for their hope of profit lay in the prospect of peaceful settlement. No prospective settler was likely to build a cabin where he was in danger of a vicious French and Indian attack.<\/p>\n
So the Kennebec proprietors proposed that the Massachusetts government erect a fort near Ticonic Falls, and at their own expense the proprietors would build a fort at the head of Kennebec navigation at Cushnoc, the farthest up the river an ocean-going vessel could come. There supplies would be unloaded and stored. Both forts could be garrisoned at government expense.<\/p>\n
Gov. Shirley and his council consented to that plan, and it was the building of the two forts that made settlement safe. In 1754, there was not a white settler above Fort Richmond, an older fort just above the present site of Richmond Village. Above Fort Halifax, the wilderness was unbroken all the way to the French settlements on the Chaudiere in Canada. Below Fort Richmond the nearest point of civilized life was the little settlement on the east bank of the Kennebec at Frankfort, the place that soon afterward became Pownalboro, the county seat of Lincoln County, when that shire was created to cover all of Maine except what was then in the counties of York and Cumberland. Old Pownalboro, with its carefully preserved original courthouse, is now in the town of Dresden.<\/p>\n
The protection of Fort Western brought settlers first to the place that in 1771 was incorporated as Hallowell, the town limits then including the present City of Augusta. It was not long before the southern part of the town, modern Hallowell, became the chief commercial center on the Kennebec above Merrymeeting Bay and not much later when the northern part, modern Augusta, became the Capital of Maine.<\/p>\n
I like occasionally to remind you of population changes in Maine. Let us now take a few minutes to note the size of a few Maine places 94 years ago in 1880. At the turn of the century in 1800, the largest Kennebec community was Hallowell then the thriving trading center for a wide area that included such smaller places as Mt. Vernon, Vienna, Readfield, and New Sharon, as well as the whole Belgrade Lakes region in one direction and the China Lake area in the other. Long before 1880, Hallowell’s decline had begun, so that in that year it had only 3,008 people. Outnumbering it in size already were Skowhegan, Ellsworth, Waldoboro, Belfast and Calais. Augusta, now only a little larger than Waterville, had in 1880 nearly twice Waterville’s population, 7865 compared with 4,859. Winslow, which has grown tremendously in recent years, then had only 1,437 people. Vassalboro, which in 1800 had had considerably more inhabitants than Waterville, was in 1880 little more than half Waterville’s size with 2923. Believe it or not, in 1800 the little coastal town of Friendship had more people than either of the two communities that are now Aroostook cities, Presque Isle and Caribou.<\/p>\n
Even in 1880, Maine’s three largest places were Portland, Bangor and Lewiston, with respective populations of 31,408, 18,289, and 13,600. But Biddeford, in fourth place was not far behind with 10,285. Augusta was fifth, and in sixth place was Rockland with 7,073. Waterville was then not even in the first twelve.<\/p>\n
What were some of Waterville’s industries in 1880? The Lockwood cotton mills had been in operation for four years. There were several sawmills and two grist mills. Batchelder and Joseph turned out chair seats. I. G. Allen was a dyer, Benjamin Wing made excelsior, and Harry Lowe and Sons made furniture. S. A. Wheeler was a gunsmith. The town had five harnessmakers, and three shoemakers. Lumber was still a big industry, with Smith and Meader leading the trade in Waterville, while in neighboring Fairfield there were eight big lumber dealers, including such well remembered firms as V. R. Connor & Co., A. H. and C. E. Dur:~n, C. D. Lawrence, E. Toblan, N. Totman and Son, and Fogg and Wing.<\/p>\n
Here in Waterville, Smith and Meader also turned out stair rails and balusters, Goodell & Co. made stoves, while Henry Ricker ran a tannery and S. C. Marston made trunks. The town upholsterer was Henry Lowe. A. B. Bates turned out woodenware dishes.<\/p>\n
Oakland, then West Waterville, was the center of Maine’s edge tool industry, where not only the Dunns, but other smaller factories also made axes, scythes, hatchets, and sickles. West Waterville also had a small shoe shop, where F. H. Fellows made ladies’ shoes. Down in Vassalboro, Charles Price made shoe pegs, while right here in Waterville Robert Marston made shoe shanks.<\/p>\n
Yes indeed, there has been much change in the Waterville greater community industries since 1880.<\/p>\n
Now, as we close, here is a brief reference to Colby College a hundred years ago. It has long been supposed that until 1920, Colby commencements were always held in the First Baptist Church on Waterville’s Elm Street. A bit of historical reflection shows that such could not have been true, because the first Colby commencement was in 1822 and the Baptist Church was not opened until 1826. Those first commencements were held in what was known as the West Meetinghouse, the building erected on the Common in 1796, to serve both for religious services and for regular meetings. In it, until the present City Hall was built, all Waterville town meetings were held, as well as the functions of the city government from 1888 to 1902. So, actually, that West Meetinghouse served for town and city business, as well as a community center, for exactly 100 years. Then when City Hall was opened, the old building was moved back, turned around to face Front Street, and became the armory for the Waterville unit of the National Guard.<\/p>\n
In the 1820’s every large Waterville gathering met in that building, the only large auditorium in town. So it was only natural that the first Colby commencements were held there.<\/p>\n
What is not so generally known is that commencement was not held in the Baptist Church in a much later year, 1875. The Baptist Church was then undergoing a complete renovation of the building, and all that summer its services were held in the Unitarian Church on Main Street. But the Unitarian pastor had once been president of Colby, and had left under a cloud when he renounced Baptist views to become a Unitarian. So the Colby authorities decided to hold commencement in the Congregational Church on Temple Street. The orator was Charles Francis Adams, great-grandson of the nation’s second president, John Adams. He sounded a call for courageous, independent journalists, whom he considered more influential than impassioned preachers. He insisted that the press was more powerful than the pulpit, because the press often shaped pulpit opinion. Journalists said Adams, should not be picked at random, but be the very elite from the nation’s colleges.<\/p>\n
And with that plea for a free and highly trained press made at a Colby commencement a century ago, we must now say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1974<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1025, Broadcast on November 10, 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\/9488"}],"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=9488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}