<\/p>\n
Today we continue last week’s Hems from the old Clinton Advertiser of 1879 and 1880. One of the 1880 issues told about Clinton’s great war scare in 1812. After war broke out that year between the United States and Britain, Maine people became concerned because of reports that Penobscot Indians were siding with the British and were being recruited to attack settlements along the waters near where Penobscot and Kennebec tributaries came close together. One of those settlements was Clinton on the Sebasticook. The town became excited when a strange body of men was sighted in the vicinity.<\/p>\n
Just as had happened in the Revolution, so in 1812 an American ship had been chased up the Penobscot by a British war vessel and had been abandoned by its crew. Just as in the Revolution, when a party of which Paul Revere was a member, had failed in their attack on Castine, had been chased up the Penobscot and abandoned ship, and fled on foot over land to the Kennebec, this 1812 crew did the same. They followed the usual Indian trail from the Penobscot to the Sebasticook, and down that stream to the house of David Hunter near Clinton Village.<\/p>\n
On that particular day, several ladies had gathered at the Hunter home for a quilting party. Two girls coming to the party saw the bateaux with the refugees coming down the Sebasticook. Well aware of the rumors about possible Indian invasion the girls ran to the Hunter house to spread the alarm. The quilting party excitedly broke up and the women hastened to their own homes to rally their menfolk in defense of their lives. Soon the air was filled with shouting: “The Indians are coming.” Carriages had not come to Clinton as early as 1812, but most families owned boats, and they took to them for escape. One settler, Abraham Wallace refused to leave his home, but decided to stay and get a shot at the Indians. He stationed himself on a knoll in a clump of alders, ready for action. As the boat came, in sight, Wallace was taking aim when he notice that at least one person in the boot was a woman. Soon everybody between Clinton and Benton Falls was on the move. David Brown, like Paul Revere in 1775, had gone ahead on horseback to spread the alarm.
\nAt Benton Falls, Asher Hinds urged the people not to get excited until they were sure what was going on. But the Falls residents decided to take no chances, and all went down to Fort Halifax to fortify against the raid they were sure was coming.<\/p>\n
One of the builders of Fort Halifax, Gershom Flagg was then a resident of Clinton. He got his guns, but instead of fleeing down stream, he headed in the opposite direction up the Sebasticook to meet the enemy. Flagg’s two sons had been at work in Hale’s bog, three miles from home. On their way home from work, they met Park Smiley, who told them the news. Grabbing scythes for weapons, as they continued home, they encountered whole families fleeing to Fort Halifax. Arriving home, they found their mother still there. She had refused to leave until her boys got home.<\/p>\n
Among those who started for Fort Halifax was militia captain Trial Hall. Yoking his oxen to a sled, and putting his wife and some supplies on board, he headed for the Fort. But not all the Clinton people fled. Uncle Billy Richardson and his wife, both over 80, decided running away was too much trouble. They just stayed home to face the worst.<\/p>\n
The scene had begun about noon. By three o’clock it had spread as far as Norridgewock up the Kennebec. By the time darkness descended the truth had become known.. The suspected Indians were actually Americans fleeing from British captors on the Penobscot. Slowly the frightened settlers made their way back home from Fort Halifax. However, after the scare, because the war was still on, every man on the Sebasticook who didn’t already own a gun, proceeded to get one.<\/p>\n
Homicides, or at least nearly killings, were as common in 1880 as they are today in proportion to population. One such incident occurred in the town of Troy, just east of Burnham. At a dance in that town one Harry Hollis got into a quarrel with John Myrick. When a third party intervened, Hollis drew a knife, and turning the knife-wielder’ s arm away from Myrick, the intended victim, he succeeded only in getting\u00b7 a bad cut himself. As was often the case in such disgraceful incidents, liquor was at the bottom of the trouble. Both Hollis and Myrick were intoxicated.<\/p>\n
In the previous broadcast based on this volume of the Clinton Advertiser, we referred to one Clinton farmer’s acre of sugar beets. That farmer was not alone in raising beets in Clinton in 1880. On October 30 of that year the Advertiser reported that during the first week, a total of 99,000 pounds of sugar beets had been delivered for shipment at Clinton Depot. Billings had turned in 37,000 pounds; Piper 17,000; Holt 9,000; Roundy 5,800; Weymouth 7,600; Randlet 4,700; and Brackett 4,000. The paper said, “Holt is going to bring five tons more. The total out of Clinton this season will exceed 64 tons.”<\/p>\n
Working with timber caused many accidents a hundred years ago. Such happened to a Canaan man in faraway California. The Advertiser tells us: “Dennis Whitten, 22 years old, son of Mark Whitten of Canaan, while unloading a car of logs at a mill in California, where he had been employed for the past four years, met with his death. Attempting to step over a chain, he failed to get out of ,the way of a rolling log, which caught him at the hips, crushing him to death. He was a young man of solemn and industrious habits. His body was brought to Canaan for burial.”<\/p>\n
The Advertiser pointed out that lumber interests were exceptionally active along the upper Kennebec in 1880. More than 30 million feet were being cut on the Moose River and 16 million on the Dead River. The paper said that Nei-Thall, Gibson and Company of Fairfield were cutting two million feet at Moosehead.<\/p>\n
An inkling as to what people gave for Christmas presents in 1880 is shown by an item that announced the arrival at B. T. Fosters Clinton store of a large lot of Christmas goods consisting of autograph and photograph albums, books, toys and sleds.<\/p>\n
In January, 1880, the Advertiser devoted space to Clinton croquet factory. This is what it said: “Lumber is now being hauled to the croquet factory. William Lamb has several ox teams in the woods, and another large operator is Charles Wentworth. A new company with capital of $10,000 has been organized to run the croquet factory under the firm name of Z. A. Hunter & Co. They will employ 30 hands and use 400,000 feet of lumber a year, turning it all into croquet mallets and balls, or bowling pins. They already have an order for 10, 000 croquet sets.”<\/p>\n
Stinchfield was a prominent Clinton family name. The Advertiser in February, 1880 gave an account of Thomas Stinchfield, Jr. He had been born in Gloucester, Mass. in 1802, and came with his parents to Benton Falls in 1818, where his father ran a small carding mill. In 1827 the younger man built a store near the Benton post office, married and built a home. Then he started a tannery. He also operated a freight boat between Benton Falls and Augusta, going down the Sebasticook to Fort Halifax, then down the Kennebec to Augusta. In time he extended that freight boat business on to Hallowell and all the way to Bath. In 1840 he moved to Clinton, from that place he continued several business interests. One of his prosperous ventures was driving cattle to the Brighton market, traveling on foot the entire distance from Clinton to Boston. That, of course, was before the coming of the railroad and even after that occurred Clinton became the point of assembly for large numbers of cattle to be shipped by rail to Boston.<\/p>\n
The Maine towns that saw the most tramps in the 1880s were those on the railroad lines. Hopping the cars was the favorite method of tramps’ transportation.The Advertiser carried this story concerning rail-transported tramps. “A conductor on the through freight, as it was leaving Danville on Thursday, saw two tramps on a flat car. He left the caboose and made his way forward on top of the cars. Reaching the flat car, he ordered the tramps off. The bigger one refused to leave and threatened the conductor but he had barely got the threat out of his mouth when the conductor planted his fist in the tramp’s face. The other tramp waited for no second invitation. but jumped off the train into a snow drift. The conductor’s fist knocked the bigger tramp right after him. Those two tramps will know better than to threaten a Maine Central conductor again.”<\/p>\n
One fact about Clinton that most people have now forgotten is that nearly a hundred years ago it was a producer of iron, The Advertiser tells us that in 1810 Clinton led all Maine towns in the production of iron ore. When that ore was found in Clinton, enterprising citizens decided to build a forge. Hand-forged nails then cost from 25 to 50 cents a pound. It was right at that time when the notorious Embargo Act was causing a lot of trouble for both exporters and importers in Maine towns. So any industry that could make needed products at home was sure to do well. That Clinton forge turned out not only nails, but also iron bars. The great furnace fire, the huge bellows driven by water power, the melted iron running out into sand, the pig iron going under a hammer with a handle fifteen feet long, and the huge spokes of the driving shaft, were a memorable sight for folks coming into town from the farms. The hammering could be heard for miles.<\/p>\n
What the old forge meant to Clinton is recorded in a ballad of the time, one verse of which went:
\n“When Peavey’s forge was going;
\nFolks had enough to eat;
\nBut now it’s done a-blowing
\nThey n’ever hear of meat.”<\/p>\n
In every issue of the Advertiser there were a few jokes. Today they sound, rather corny, but here are some samples.<\/p>\n
“Definitions: Tired circles – carriage wheels; an important age – sausage; household argument – a family jar.”<\/p>\n
In the 1880s notices like this one in the Clinton Advertiser were common: “My wife Letta Lewis, having left my bed and board, though I always made suitable provision for her, I forbid all persons to trust or harbor her at my expense, as I pay none of her bills from this date.”<\/p>\n
And that ends our account of 26 issues of the old Clinton Advertiser published nearly a hundred years ago.
\nYear: 1978<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1150, Broadcast on January 29, 1978<\/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":[35316,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9776"}],"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=9776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}