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Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Social clubs in Kennebec Valley

December 14, 2022/0 Comments/in Local History, Maine History, Up and Down the Kennebec Valley, Windsor, Winslow/by Mary Grow

Phonograph, circa 1890.

by Mary Grow

Last week’s article talked mostly about ways early settlers interacted socially as individuals and families. This week’s piece will describe some of the 19th-century organizations that united residents and kept them busy, and related topics.

Kennebec Valley towns had a variety of organizations, some branches of national groups and others home-grown. Some built headquarters buildings; other groups met wherever they could, in public spaces or private homes.

In her chapter on social life in Edwin Carey Whittemore’s centennial history, Martha Dunn described some of Waterville’s 19th-century organizations. Separate chapters listed others.

The first Waterville literary organization for which Dunn found records was the Shakespearean Club, whose members presented Shakespeare’s plays. Started about 1852, it included men and women. Meetings were held weekly “during the winter season” at members’ houses.

Dunn named two members: Baptist church pastor Rev. N[athaniel] Milton Wood, “a man of strict tenets and naturally lugubrious cast of countenance,” who reportedly “not only excelled but delighted in the representation of comic parts”; and Mrs. Ephraim Maxham (the former Eliza Anna Naylor, according to on-line sources), wife of the Waterville Mail owner-editor, who “was especially skilled in the rendering of tragedy.”

The club disbanded during the Civil War and after the war reformed as the Roundabout and continued another half-dozen years, becoming, Dunn wrote, less intellectual and “more given to feasting and social enjoyments.”

Mrs. James H. Hanson (the former Mary E. Field, of Sidney) wrote a chapter in Whittemore’s history on the Waterville Women’s Association, an organization praised by Dunn and in Henry Kingsbury’s Kennebec County history. Dunn called it the place “where women may work – and enjoy – together, independent of society distinctions or church affiliations.”

A wealthy widow named Sarah Scott Ware (Mrs. John Ware, Sr.) founded the Association in 1897, with working women and girls foremost in her mind. She wanted to provide a “homelike” place for them, with “facilities for literary and womanly culture and usefulness,” beginning with a lending library.

By 1902 the club had well over 100 members. Its rooms provided books, magazines and newspapers; games; and a sewing machine. Women and girls attended late-afternoon programs and evening classes (Kingsbury listed instruction in “needlework, penmanship, music and a variety of useful arts”). The group ran a lunchroom, an employment bureau and a second-hand clothing distribution center.

Funding came from donations and, Hanson wrote, “the successful doll sales and May-basket sales.” For those she credited the enthusiasm and skill of the young members; they “were also indispensable in the work of the schools,” she wrote.

The Women’s Association spun off the Women’s Literary Club in the winter of 1891-1892. Dunn wrote the members met “fortnightly during the winter season” for literary and musical programs, gathering in church vestries, at Waterville Classical Institute (so named in 1865; after 1883, Coburn Classical Institute) or in members’ houses.

A separate club called the Literature Class, with a dozen members, met weekly “during the winter months.”

Augusta, according to Kingsbury, had a Benevolent Society, started about 1842 “by Miss Jane Howard, a maiden lady whose name is still fragrant in this community, by reason of her many deeds of benevolence and charity.” Later renamed the Howard Benevolent Society and in 1883 The Howard Benevolent Union, Kingsbury said its work was primarily “clothing the poor.”

The Fairfield bicentennial history records a Ladies Book Club, started in 1895. As described in the Nov. 11, 2021, The Town Line, one founding member was Addie Lawrence, whose father a few years later donated money to build Fairfield’s Lawrence Library.

Vassalboro historian Alma Pierce Robbins listed – without dates – four clubs, at least three identified as women’s clubs, and said two of them “met at members’ homes year ’round.”

In Palermo, historian Milton Dowe wrote, the Branch Mills Ladies Sewing Circle first met on March 10, 1853, hosted by Mrs. B. Harrington (almost certainly the wife of Barzillai Harrington; he was recognized in the Sept. 23, 2021, issue of The Town Line for starting a high school in China’s side of Branch Mills Village about 1851).

The sewing circle remained active for years; its members were responsible for construction of the Branch Mills Community House in 1922.

Among national/international organizations with local affiliates, the Masons, mostly the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons (A. F. & A. M.), had branches in many Maine towns.

Windsor had Malta Lodge for about five years in the 1880s, according to Leonard Lowden’s town history. Members customarily met “weekly on Saturday nights.” After the lodge shut down, on “Saturday evening, December 12, 1885,” the few Windsor men still interested joined the lodge in Weeks Mills, “on Saturday night, May 29, 1886.”

Kingsbury wrote that Benton’s Lodge was organized Nov. 21, 1891, and as he finished his county history in 1892 was “in a flourishing condition.” Members met every Thursday evening in one of Benton’s schoolhouses.

Masonic lodges were also noted in histories of Augusta (four lodges, the earliest founded in 1821); China (four lodges, the first dating from 1824); Clinton (Sebasticook Lodge, chartered in May 1868); and Fairfield (Siloam Lodge, chartered March 8, 1858, with 13 members).

Sidney’s branch of the A. F. & A. M. was Rural Lodge No. 53, according to Alice Hammond’s town history. A dozen men, some members of a lodge in Waterville, started it on April 25, 1827.

The lodge disbanded in 1836, she wrote, “because of the violent anti-masonic feeling which prevailed at that time.” The China bicentennial history expanded on that theme, quoting from Thomas Burrill’s history of Central Lodge.

Burrill said “Antimasonry” started about 1829 and soon “assumed a most formidable type of persecution, both against Masons and Masonry.” Central Lodge members got rid of their paraphernalia, sending “their beautiful painted flooring” to a Lodge in St. Croix and abandoning their hall. The Lodge reassembled in 1849.

Sidney’s Rural Lodge was revived in 1863, Hammond said. A Masonic Hall was built in 1887 and dedicated Jan. 3, 1888. After the dedication and installation of officers, members went to Sidney Town Hall “where a bountiful repast was served and a social time enjoyed.”

Rural Lodge No. 53 is still active, listed on a Maine Masons website, with a photo of the white wooden lodge hall at 3000 Middle Road. The website also lists Lodges in Augusta, China (China Village), Clinton, Fairfield, Waterville and Weeks Mills (China).

The Order of the Eastern Star, related to the Masons and open to women and men, had branches in China, Fairfield and Waterville, among other towns.

Another widely represented organization was the Independent Order of Good Templars (I. O. G. T.). Founded in New York State in 1852, it soon became an international temperance organization open to men and women. Maine’s Grand Lodge of the I. O. G. T. was created in the summer of 1860.

The Sons of Temperance, founded in 1842, also organized in the area, including, Kingsbury wrote, three local branches in China.

In Vassalboro, historian Robbins saw temperance as an issue from the 1820s. In 1821, eight “innkeepers” got liquor licenses, she wrote; by 1829 Congregational pastor Rev. Thomas Adams was preaching temperance.

In 1834, Robbins wrote, Vassalboro’s Juvenile Temperance Society was organized. The president was Abiel John Getchel; an on-line search found a Vassalboro resident of that name (spelled Getchell) born in Vassalboro in 1815, so 19 years old in 1834. One of three executive committee members was Greenlief Low, born in 1817.

R. B. Hall

Vassalboro had three I. O. G. T. Lodges, Robbins wrote. Each had its own meeting hall: “a nice little hall” at Riverside (demolished in the 1930s): “Golden Cross Hall” in North Vassalboro; and Maccabees Hall “in Center Vassalboro or Cross Hill.”

The buildings were supposed to be only for the organizations’ events, Robbins wrote, but later she said Maccabees Hall was the scene of “many meetings.” The Riverside hall hosted dances, “Christian Endeavor plays” and “demonstrations of ‘fireless cookers'” by the University of Maine Extension Service.

(Wikipedia says The Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavour was founded in 1881 in Portland by Rev. Francis Edward Clark, with the goal of bringing young people to interdenominational Christian belief and work. By 1906 there were more than four million members around the world in “67,000 youth-led…societies.” Causes members supported included temperance.)

Dowe wrote the Good Templars and Christian Endeavor were active in 19th-century Palermo. The East Palermo schoolhouse, he wrote, served as a community center and “church for prayer meetings and the Young People’s Christian Endeavor.”

The schoolhouse also hosted singing, spelling and writing schools, Dowe said. When phonographs first came to Palermo, an unspecified group or person would charge admission to listen to one in the schoolhouse.

In her history of Sidney, Alice Hammond found another reference to phonograph shows: she reproduced a poster advertising PHONOGRAPH!, an exhibition starting at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 5, 1892, at the Grange Hall, in Centre Sidney.

“There will be an exhibition of the marvels of the modern phonograph,” the poster promised. “It Will Talk, Laugh, Sing, Whistle, Play on all sorts Instruments including Full Brass Band.”

Professor R. B. Capen, of Augusta, would explain the device. Admission was 20 cents, half price for children under 12.

The exhibition would be followed by a supper “Furnished at the Hall” and a Grand Ball, with music by Dennis’ Orchestra of Augusta, dance tickets sold at 50 cents for each couple and dancing until 2 a.m.

Another organization Lowden noted was the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), the Civil War veterans’ organization founded in 1866 in Illinois and dissolved in 1956 after its last member died. The Windsor post was organized June 2, 1884, and met in its hall on the second floor of the town house “on each Saturday night” (with at least one Wednesday evening gathering – see the paragraphs on Civil War soldier Marcellus Vining in the March 31, 2022, issue of The Town Line).

Augusta had Masons and Odd Fellows; a lodge of the Knights of Honor (its chief officer’s title was dictator, according to Kingsbury); Dirigo Council No. 790 of the Royal Arcanum (1883); and Tribe No. 12 of the Independent Order of Red Men (1888).

Late 19th-century organizations in Fairfield included local Masons and Odd Fellows; an Eastern Star chapter; and the Past and Present Club, organized by 15 women in 1892 and accepted into the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1899.

Waterville had Masons, Odd Fellows, Good Templars, a Tribe of Red Men and numerous other groups. Whittemore listed Hall’s Military Band, the late-19th-century successor to local brass bands first organized in 1822; a choral group named the Cecilia Club, organized in 1896; and since 1892 the Waterville Bicycle Club and the Waterville Gun Club.

The Bicycle Club, Whittemore wrote, rented an entire floor of the Boutelle Block at Main and Temple streets. The premises hosted meetings and social events; gambling and liquor were banned.

The Gun Club’s five-man team won state championships in 1897, 1898 and 1901. The club produced two individual state champions, Walter E. Reid once and Samuel L. Preble twice (no years given).

Main sources

Dowe, Milton E., History Town of Palermo Incorporated 1884 (1954).
Fairfield Historical Society, Fairfield, Maine 1788-1988 (1988).
Grow, Mary M., China Maine Bicentennial History including 1984 revisions (1984).
Hammond, Alice, History of Sidney Maine 1792-1992 (1992).
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Lowden, Linwood H., good Land & fine Contrey but Poor roads a history of Windsor, Maine (1993).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971).
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902).

Websites, miscellaneous.

LIFE ON THE PLAINS: The nice cozy, backyard ice rink

December 7, 2022/0 Comments/in Life on the Plains, Local History, Waterville/by Roland D. Hallee

by Roland D. Hallee

This week we’ll take a look at another winter activity. This one required work, cold nights, and the help of some adults.

The four of us boys grew up in a family of Canadian descent: my dad and grandfather came to the United States from Canada. Even though my mother and grandmother were born in Winslow and Waterville, respectively, they were of Canadian heritage.

So, naturally, my dad played hockey in school, when he attended a seminary in Sherbrooke, Canada, (the Great Depression forced him to give up the avocation of priesthood and open a store in Waterville – lucky for me) before playing for the Notre Dame team, in Waterville. So, hockey was in our blood.

Growing up, we had an ice skating rink in our backyard. The process would begin in the fall when the grass was cut short, and 10-inch wide wooden boards were installed by driving wooden pegs into the ground, and attaching the boards to them. The area was approximately 40 feet long and 12 feet wide. It was mostly located under our mother’s clothesline, which she would not use in the winter.

When the first substantial snowfall arrived, we would pack it down using an old wooden crate filled with sand. Once the snow was leveled and compacted, we would wait for the perfect, cold night.

Our grandfather would haul the garden hose from his cellar, attach it to the spiget on the house, and drag it to the rink. We then would take turns spraying a light mist of water to form a good base. Once in place, we would apply more water until a smooth ice surface was formed. When we were finished, our grandfather would come back out, and drag the hose back to the cellar so it wouldn’t freeze. We would do this most evenings on days when we used the rink, which was mostly every day.

After school, we would get dressed warm, put on our skates, in the house, which our mother made sure we didn’t walk on her immaculately clean floors, and head for the outdoors. We would skate, shoot pucks, and even have small two-on-two pick-up games. When finished, the process would start all over to “flood” the rink and get a nice, new surface for the next day. Sorry, no Zamboni for us.

Neighborhood kids would often come to enjoy the rink with us – we even had a designated time for “public skating” for the girls. But, for some reason, when it was time to resurface the rink, they all had to go home to “suppah”, or do homework, or some other “lame” excuse. We didn’t like it, but our parents taught us how to share.

It was on that tiny ice surface that we learned to hone our hockey skills for what was to come later in life – youth hockey, high school, and beyond.

Keeping the rink going was work, but we enjoyed every minute of it because of its reward.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Social activities

December 7, 2022/0 Comments/in Local History, Maine History, Up and Down the Kennebec Valley/by Mary Grow

Eighteenth century drawing of a dance social.

by Mary Grow

This year’s Nov. 6 time change, with darkness falling an hour earlier, led your writer to think about how central Kennebec Valley families passed long winter evenings 200 or 250 years ago – a research challenge, as few historians devoted pen and ink to such mundane events.

Readers who have answers to the many questions this article raises are invited to email The Town Line editor Roland Hallee (townline@townline.org) to propose their follow-up paragraphs or pages.

Your writer was amused to find that Waterville novelist Martha Baker Dunn also got frustrated by limited information as she wrote the chapter on Social Life in Waterville for Edwin Carey Whittemore’s centennial history. The example she gave was an early diarist in Winslow (before Waterville became a separate town in 1802) whose daily notes about “weather, crops and traffic” were varied by “August 15th Sarah Johnson went away.”

Dunn complained there was no explanation and no follow-up, leaving her wondering who Sarah Johnson was, where she went and why, why her departure mattered to the diarist and whether she ever came back.

Your writer encountered similar incomplete stories as she reviewed local town histories and other readily available sources, like the diary kept by Hallowell midwife Martha Ballard from 1785 to 1812.

(A series of fortunate events led to the preservation of Ballard’s diary, used by Augusta historian James North, who excerpted sections for his 1870 history, and by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, whose mixture of quotation and commentary was published in 1990 as A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812.)

For this and following articles, two points were established as preliminaries. The first is that before, on and after Dec. 21 in this part of central Maine, there are about 15 hours of darkness and semi-darkness each day. The sun rises a few minutes after 7 a.m. and sets about 4 p.m., by our contemporary clocks.

The second point is that when the central Kennebec Valley was settled, people kept track of time for everyday purposes much as 21st-century residents do. Town meetings and other public events, church services and private gatherings were scheduled for specific times, and people knew how long they stayed and how late they went to bed.

There were public timepieces, in places like church and town hall towers, and private ones in at least wealthier homes. In his thorough research for his history of Windsor, Linwood Lowden found lists of household items; in an 1814 inventory, one family’s “personal items” included a watch (and “a fan and a needlecase”).

Midwife Ballard habitually recorded the time when someone came to request her help (often in the middle of the night) and the time a baby was born.

Woodcut of early modern clockmakers, 1568.

Vassalboro historian Alma Pierce Robbins found in the town records that a Quaker clock maker named James Brackett came to Getchell’s Corner in 1794. She added that as of 1971, St. Marks Home, in Augusta, had one of Brackett’s clocks.

In Albion, historian Ruby Crosby Wiggin found a storekeeper who had, sometime after 1845, 52 clocks of six different kinds in stock, priced between $10 and $20, with a total value of $620. She remarked that he had a lot of clocks for a small store in a small town.

Exchanging visits with neighbors, friends and family members was a popular way to spend time year-round. Ballard constantly had relatives and neighbors in her house, often staying overnight. It is easy to picture the women sitting talking after the sun went down, probably sewing or knitting – the diary often refers to both activities. Were husbands and sons with them, or in another room, or out in the barn?

In Windsor, historian Lowden wrote, even the earliest settlers “naturally sought and found pleasurable and worthwhile social activities,” especially exchanging visits. Such visits often meant “staying for a meal or even overnight.”

Wiggin commented that despite much hard work, Albion’s first settlers “were a sociable lot and many traveled some distance to spend an evening with friends or relatives.”

An example comes from the Fairfield bicentennial history. Elihu Bannerman (mentioned in the April 16, 2020, issue of The Town Line as the first inhabitant of North Fairfield) kept a record of daily occurrences. Bowerman described the log house he built in 1783 as having a bark roof, a bark floor that couldn’t be nailed down and was “very uneven and tottering,” no glass in the windows and apparently no chimney for the first winter.

The compilers of the history found that after six months of isolation with Elihu and his brother Zaccheus, Mrs. Bowerman paid a winter visit to another woman who had emigrated from Massachusetts and lived “over a mile away. She put on snowshoes and went for a six hour visit.”

Ballard’s diary said nothing about organized social activities in the late 1700s and early 1800s in the Hallowell area. Martha’s husband, surveyor Ephraim Ballard, went to town meetings and other public events in which women were not included.

Ulrich cited one series of entries referring to events in the fall of 1790 and the fall of 1791, while the Ballards’ daughter Hannah was engaged to be married. Hannah, her sisters and their friends got together for quilting bees; the women spent the day at their needlework, and in the evening young men joined them for tea and dancing.

One evening after a bee at Ballards’, Martha was pleased that everyone was back home by 11 p.m. Other social events kept her children out later, and she made one reference to a sleighing party that didn’t get home until 12:30 a.m.

Dunn found similar references to late 18th and early 19th century social activities. She mentioned a 1784 sleighing party recorded in a diary, and “spinning bees and wool-breakings,” the two steps in the process of making wool into usable thread. The activities sound like women’s, but there were men around, as at the Ballards’, because Dunn wrote that, “These gatherings not infrequently ended in a dance.”

In Windsor, too, Lowden wrote, “many social activities were organized around work.” He listed, for men, mowing bees and chopping bees, when neighbors helped someone who had fallen behind in haying or putting up a woodpile; and husking bees, a gathering in a barn to husk corn. For women, Lowden mentioned “sewing and quilting parties.”

He quoted a description of a chopping bee written in a North Blue Hill woman’s letter in March 1864, surmising Windsor might have had similar events. The writer and “Nellie” spent three days cooking for 47 people, of both sexes; the men “chopped wood in the afternoon,” and the evening party required “five large loaves of frosted mountain cake” (almost certainly a layer cake, probably three layers, judging from on-line information about White Mountain Cake).

Roger Reeves, a farmer and carpenter from whose diary Lowden often quoted, wrote that on Feb. 1, 1876, he “carried Julia [his wife?]…to a sewing party,” whence he went on to another house where he “blacksmithed” and had dinner.

In the fall of 1878 Reeves attended an “apple bee” (defined on-line as like other agricultural bees, a group assembled to pick or process apples, specifically to prepare them for drying. Milton Dowe described the latter in his 1954 history of Palermo: “apples were peeled, cored and sliced, then strung on twine and hung up to dry.”).

In Waterville, Dunn wrote, two loosely defined, sometimes overlapping social classes developed early in the 19th century: mill workers and storekeepers on one level, and an upper echelon of professional men and their families. The latter included officers and faculty of the Maine Literary and Theological Institute, founded in 1813 (renamed Waterville College in 1821, Colby University in 1867 and Colby College in 1899).

Nineteenth century sewing circle.

It was almost certainly the wives of doctors, lawyers, bankers, professors and building- and land-owners at the “oldfashioned tea parties” that “a venerable relative who participated in them” described to Dunn. These were mostly winter activities. The ladies arrived about 3 p.m. with their sewing and knitting; the gentlemen came for supper and the evening.

There were also card parties and dances in private houses, Dunn wrote. She quoted from an invitation to a Feb. 26, 1819, ball, starting at 5 p.m. (and commented that a majority of the five leading citizens who signed the invitation were middle-aged or older).

One of Dunn’s reports, probably referring to the period before the Civil War though dated only as showing the “superior courtesy of former times,” answered one 21st-century question: “when a young lady was invited to a ball or large party it always meant that a carriage would be provided for her.”

The Fairfield history includes an excerpt from an 1896 memoir by Martha Sturtevant Coolidge (born Jan. 26, 1822, according to an on-line genealogy, and raised in West Waterville, now Oakland). Activities she described in her youth were “berrying in the summer,” “apple parings in the fall” and “occasional sleigh rides and parties in the winter.”

These activities and quilting parties, “singing schools and spelling matches gave us plenty of society,” she wrote.

In Windsor, community picnics, Sunday afternoon buggy rides and croquet were popular warm-weather activities, Lowden wrote. He added, “Many long winter evenings were passed at cards – some of the neighbors having dropped in for just that purpose.”

(By 1892, according to Henry Kingsbury’s Kennebec County history, William Lamb had opened a factory to make croquet sets in Clinton.)

Alice Hammond recorded a significant winter social event in Sidney: a Jan. 3, 1897, gathering of about 150 people at the home of Phoebe (or Phebe, on her gravestone, Hammond said) Sawtelle Ellis to celebrate Ellis’s 100th birthday.

Citing an article by “a Journal [presumably the Kennebec Journal] reporter, who traveled by horseback to Sidney from Augusta,” Hammond wrote that the single-story Pond Road house, built in 1787, had a display of family heirlooms, including “a flax spinning wheel” Ellis’s father gave her as wedding gift and “a churn which had been in use of 102 years.”

Ellis had made brown bread as part of the supper prepared for her guests, who also enjoyed “a short entertainment”; and each got a souvenir birthday card.

Main sources

Dowe, Milton E., History Town of Palermo Incorporated 1884 (1954).
Fairfield Historical Society, Fairfield, Maine 1788-1988 (1988).
Hammond, Alice, History of Sidney Maine 1792-1992 (1992).
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Lowden, Linwood H., good Land & fine Contrey but Poor roads a history of Windsor, Maine (1993).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971).
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife’s Tale The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1990).
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902).
Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Jefferson Medical College grads – Part 2

November 30, 2022/0 Comments/in Augusta, Jefferson, Kennebec County, Local History, Maine History, Up and Down the Kennebec Valley/by Mary Grow

Cover of the 1883 Jefferson Medical College catalog.

by Mary Grow

As promised last week, this week’s article will feature random information about three more central Kennebec Valley doctors with degrees from Jefferson Medical College, in Philadelphia. Their names were Cyrus Kendrick, Class of 1850, who practiced in Litchfield; James E. Tuell, Class of 1884, who practiced in Augusta and who started this topic; and Lewis King Austin, Class of 1894, who practiced, at least briefly, in Waterville.

Kingsbury wrote in his chapter on the medical profession in his Kennebec County history that Cyrus Kendrick (Sept. 26, 1825 – 1904) was born in Gardiner, the third son and fifth child of Cyrus and Sarah (Maxcy) Kendrick.

Dr. Kendrick’s father, the first Cyrus Kendrick (1789-1866), was a Gardiner businessman who was a justice of the peace for many years and served as town selectman in 1837 and as treasurer in 1848 and 1849. He was an active Mason (as was his doctor son), and he and his wife were “prominent members of the Baptist church” in Gardiner until they moved to Litchfield, where they died.

Dr. Kendrick went to local schools, spent two years at the medical school at Bowdoin and – for unknown reasons – transferred to Jefferson, where he was one of a class of 211 new physicians who graduated in March 1850.

Kingsbury wrote that after two years in Gardiner, Dr. Kendrick moved his practice to Litchfield, where he still was when the Kennebec County history was published in 1892. He was among the founders of the Maine Medical Association in 1853, and a member of the American Medical Association; Kingsbury noted that he “participated in” the 1884 AMA annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

In 1880 Dr. Kendrick married a Litchfield Academy teacher named Susan (often listed as Susie) P. Howe (May 13, 1848 – 1928), from Rumford. The couple had two daughters, whose names Kingsbury gave as Daisy May (probably an error) and Kate H., and a son, Cyrus Maxcy Kendrick.

A list of Bates College graduates in the Class of 1904, found on line, includes Susan May Kendrick, born Jan. 29, 1881, in Litchfield, to Dr. Cyrus and Susan (Howe) Kendrick. The entry says she taught high school in Dexter and South Paris and at Monmouth Academy and Mattanawcook Academy (in Lincoln) from 1904 through 1915, with the longest stint, six years, in South Paris.

A similar list for Bates’ Class of 1910 includes Cyrus Maxcy Kendrick, born Jan. 26, 1888, to the same parents, and also an educator who moved from place to place. A January 1908 Bates student publication lists him among sophomores who were “out of college teaching” during the first weeks of the semester.

His posts between 1910 and 1915, in order, were high school principal in Garland; teacher at Ricker Classical Institute, in Houlton; high school principal, in Bowdoinham; and in 1815 back to Litchfield Corners as district superintendent of schools.

Dr. Kendrick is buried in Litchfield Plains Cemetery. His tall gravestone has his name and the dates 1825-1904; his wife Susan’s name and the dates 1848-1928; and daughter Kathryn H., 1882-1926. On one side are the names Susan M. 1881-1927 (she is further identified as Susan May “Sadie” Kendrick); Bruce 1947-1947; and Betty-Jean, 1927-1973.

A footstone in the same cemetery marks the grave of Cyrus M. Kendrick, Jan. 26, 1888 – March 26, 1971, identified as a private in World War I. He is also listed on a more elegant stone along with Beatrice B., his wife, who lived from 1908 to 1989.

Another footstone is for Cyrus and Beatrice’s son (Dr. Kendrick’s grandson), Cyrus M. Kendrick Jr., July 10, 1923, to Feb. 16, 2007), a PFC in the U. S. Army in World War II. A Feb. 21, 2007, Kennebec Journal obituary found on line says he was predeceased by an infant son, Bruce, in 1947, and by his first wife, Betty Jean, in 1973.

He married again, to Erma Jean Hayden; they had several children. The obituary gives details of his military service and lists medals he received, starting with two Bronze Stars. It says he worked for the state highway department for 41 years, most of the time as “foreman of the paint crew.”

James Enoch Tuell (1854 – Feb. 11, 1910), was one of four children of James Leonard Tuell (b. Jan. 2, 1829) and Julia Ann Tuell.

Tuell’s graduation from Jefferson was on March 29, 1884. The graduation program says his thesis topic was “Acute Rheumatism.”

(Tuell was one of three 1884 graduates from Maine; the others were Laurentius Melancthon Nason, whose thesis was on “External Manipulation in Obstetric Practice,” and who received a gold medal for an essay “on a subject pertaining to Obstetrics”; and James H. Shannon, whose thesis was on “Symptoms of Scarlatina.”

(Nason, from Standish, was a Colby University graduate, Class of 1880. The April 27, 1878, issue of the Portland Daily Press reported that he received second prize in the sophomore prize declamation; the 1880 Colby Oracle listed him as a member of the Chi Chapter of Zeta Psi fraternity.

Of the 215 Jefferson graduates in 1884, 109 were from Pennsylvania; there were three Canadians and five other men from five different countries, listed as England, Italy, Mauritius, West Indies and Armenia.)

Dr. Tuell’s first medical work was apparently in East Machias, and started before his graduation from Jefferson. The Maine State Board of Health’s first annual report, found on line, covers the fiscal year that ended Dec. 31, 1885; Dr. Tuell was the “medical correspondent” from East Machias.

His report began: “Our leading diseases are pneumonia, ileo-colitis, cholera infantum, sporadic cases of typhoid fever, an occasional case of diphtheria, and the various exanthemata peculiar to childhood.” (Exanthemata, according to an on-line dictionary, is a plural noun; an exanthema is “a skin rash accompanying a disease or fever.”)

He went on to mention one epidemic each of scarlet fever and diphtheria in the last 20 years; typhoid fever, up to the last two years, sometimes “widespread enough, in certain parts of the town, to be styled a local epidemic”; and three cases of smallpox.

Phthisis (tuberculosis) was common, Dr. Tuell wrote. It was hereditary, he said, and flared up due to “climate, dampness, poor ventilation.”

In August 1883, he wrote, he had treated a young man with all the symptoms of scarlet fever, though the patient’s mother was sure he had not been exposed to anyone with the disease. Dr. Tuell learned that the patient’s sister, working out of town, had scarlet fever in February. In April she sent home some clothes; and two weeks before her brother got sick, “the sister took a garment from the trunk and ripped it apart for the purpose of repairing it.”

Part of the medical report was an evaluation of the local school buildings. In East Machias, Dr. Tuell wrote, “we have imperfect ventilation and unsuitable heating apparatus; consequently, headache is frequent.”

Information about Dr. Tuell’s private life is scant. He apparently married twice, first to Sarah Elizabeth, with whom he had three children, and then to Nellie Sarah Quimby.

He was in Augusta by the 1890s. Records show him as one of 100 charter members of the Abnaki Club, organized in June 1894 (see the article on Augusta’s historic buildings in the Feb. 11, 2021, issue of The Town Line).

The auditor’s report in the Augusta annual report for the year ending March 1, 1896, listed Dr. Tuell as billing $66.50 to the account labeled “support of the poor.” His was one of the three largest bills, suggesting city officials called on him comparatively often.

It was on July 3, 1896, that fire destroyed his office in downtown Granite Hall.

A 1940 census record found on line shows Sarah D. Tuell, born about 1890, living at 71 Winthrop Street, in Augusta, with her mother, Elizabeth B. Tuell, who was then aged 75. The Find a Grave website lists seven Tuells buried in Augusta’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery:

J. E. Tuell, 1854 – 1910, Dr. Tuell
Sarah E. Tuell, 1852 – 1901, presumably Dr. Tuell’s first wife
Orrin A. Tuell, 1859 – Jan. 16, 1895, identified elsewhere as Dr. Tuell’s brother, Orrin Abiather Tuell
Beth Tuell, 1865 – 1952, perhaps Dr. Tuell’s sister?
Josephine Tuell, 1885 – 1978, probably Dr. Tuell’s daughter
Edwin E. Tuell, 1886 – 1915, identified elsewhere as Dr. Tuell’s son
Sarah E. Tuell, 1890 – 1966, Dr. Tuell’s daughter? Misprint for Sarah D., or did the 1940 census have a wrong middle initial?

Lewis King Austin (Aug. 11, 1869 – Oct. 21, 1952) was a Portland native, according to Dr. Thayer’s chapter in Edwin Carey Whittemore’s Waterville history, supplemented by on-line sources. His parents were William King and Sarah Eliza or Elizabeth (Thomes or Thomas) Austin; he had two sisters and two brothers.

Thayer wrote that Dr. King specialized in “diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat.” After his 1894 graduation from Jefferson, he practiced in Portland, Deering and Clinton before moving to Waterville in 1902 and opening his office at 145 Main Street. (Deering was incorporated as a town in 1871; it became part of the City of Portland in 1899.)

Dr. Austin married Mary Elizabeth Libby; they had a daughter, Estelle. The 1940 census showed him back in Portland; he was perhaps in a home for the elderly, as the “household members” section listed 92 people, the oldest aged 86.

He is buried in Portland’s Evergreen Cemetery. Nearby is the grave of Mary L. Austin, who died Nov. 29, 1951.

Dr. Austin was one of two Maine men in Jefferson’s Class of 1894. The other, Joseph Albert Lethiecq, died in 1956 and is buried in Mount Desert’s Brookside Cemetery.

Main sources

Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902).

Websites, miscellaneous.

LIFE ON THE PLAINS: The legend of Ginjine Hill

November 30, 2022/0 Comments/in Life on the Plains, Local History, Waterville/by Roland D. Hallee

Radio Flyer sleds

by Roland D. Hallee

This week we’re going to continue with our look at Life on the Plains during the winter, that we first took a look at two weeks ago.

Besides the hard work of shoveling the driveway following every snowstorm – lots of nor’easters – we had a good time playing in the white stuff. Two weeks ago we talked about the massive snow banks created from moving all that snow, and how we fashioned tunnels through them, usually culminating with a “snow” fort on the end, facing the street. From there we would spend much time making snowballs – conditions permitting – and creating a cache. When the time was right, and unsuspecting kids walking by, we would send a barrage of snowballs their way. Sometimes they couldn’t figure out from where they came. Many laughs, and many snowball fights ensued.

To fortify our fortress, we would take a shoebox, pack it with snow, creating a “brick” and mounted them on top of the snow mound for added protection. Our fort was the “cat’s meow”. On especially cold days, we would squirt some water in the shoebox to freeze the snow, and make a hard brick that would better withstand an onslaught from the other side. Our mother was never impressed when we came home with our mittens soaking wet.

And then there was the sledding. At the end of one of the streets in the neighborhood – Lockwood Alley – was a steep hill that connected with Silver Street, just about across the street from the location of the old Morning Sentinel building. The city would blockade the hill during the winter for the neighborhood kids to sled without the danger of oncoming traffic. The elevation was called the “Ginjine Hill” (pronounced Jin-Jine). I’m only guessing here because no one really knew how to spell the word, nor do we, still to this day, know from where the name came. The hill is no longer there, dismantled during the downtown urban renewal project in the 1960s that produced the Concourse.

There were many adventures there. We would all show up with our Radio Flyers, a sleek sled made of wood, with steel runners. Believe it or not, I still have mine. Before the initial run, we would wax up the runners to make the sleds super fast. We would line up three – sometimes four – wide to see who had the fastest sled. However, there was a hazard at the bottom of the hill where it flattened out. It was a low spot in the road that could launch a sled airborne, along with its rider. We all knew it was there.

Not only did we want to see who had the fastest sled, along with who could glide the farthest, you also had to maintain control of the sled. Many a contestant would go flying off the vehicle when it would encounter that dip in the road, sending the occupant one way, and the sled the other. There were also times when the ejected rider would collide with a steel fence that surrounded the first house at the bottom. Many times we would walk away unscathed, but on a few occasions, the operator had to go home for “repairs,” and not to the sled.

Of course, being 10-12 years old, we had no fear, which didn’t always bode well. Many a crash would bring out roaring laughter from the others, until we discovered some injuries. Of course, the older boys would always look out for the younger.

The Ginjine Hill was at the northern end of The Plains, but many kids knew the legend.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Jefferson Medical College – Part 1

November 23, 2022/0 Comments/in Augusta, Local History, Maine History, Up and Down the Kennebec Valley/by Mary Grow

Augusta House

by Mary Grow

Kennebec Valley graduates

Your writer recognized a question, probably unanswerable, left over from last week’s mention of Dr. James Tuell, of Augusta. Why had he chosen to attend Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, when Maine had a medical school at Bowdoin, founded in 1820, and there was one at Dartmouth, and numerous others closer than Philadelphia?

A review of Henry Kingsbury’s chapter on the medical profession, in his Kennebec County history, found that among area doctors to whom he devoted at least a paragraph (many others were merely listed), half a dozen were identified as Jefferson Medical School graduates. Dr. Frederick Charles Thayer’s chapter on the medical profession in Edwin Carey Whittemore’s Waterville history added two more, plus two who did post-graduate work at Jefferson.

Therefore this week’s article will be the first of two about these doctors (and some of their family members). It is unlikely to explain why any of them chose Jefferson Medical College.

The school, according to on-line sites, was founded in 1824 by a surgeon named George McLellan (Dec. 22, 1796 – May 9, 1847). It is now listed on line as Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

(Kingsbury and other sources also refer to other doctors trained at the [unnamed] “medical school at Philadelphia”; some of the references could be to Jefferson. An on-line source lists six “Extinct Philadelphia Medical Schools” that operated between 1838 and 1881, none of them Jefferson.)

In chronological order, as best your writer can determine, the first Jefferson graduate Kingsbury knew about was Samuel Louis (or Lewis) Clarke (or Clark).

Clark(e) earned a mention in David Thurston’s 1855 history of Winthrop, as well as in Kingsbury’s history. Both described him as a Winthrop native, son of Captain Samuel Clark(e) (and Samuel’s wife Susannah, Thurston added).

Thurston wrote that Dr. Clark “had acquired a very respectable degree of skill in the healing art.” He practiced in Winthrop for a while and then in Bangor.

The only date either historian gave was Thurston’s statement that Clark died in August 1851 at the age of 45. From this information your author deduced that he was born in 1806 or 1807, and estimated that he graduated from Jefferson in the 1830s.

Charles Bunker Cates (Sept. 19, 1820 – Jan. 10, 1888), of Vassalboro, was the next Jefferson graduate Kingsbury listed, a member of the Class of 1845. Kingsbury and on-line sources give this picture of his life.

Dr. Cates was the first of four children of Edmund Cates (1796-1872) and Anna Bunker Cates (1799-1865), who moved to Vassalboro from Gorham. After graduating from Vassalboro Academy, he “studied medicine” (Kingsbury gives no specifics) and then went to Jefferson.

For two years he practiced in Fall River, Massachusetts, where he met and in 1846 married Margaret Buffum Barker (April 9, 1829 – March 17, 1909). They had two sons, David Buffum Cates (1850-1923) and Abraham Barker Cates (1854-1915).

From Fall River, Dr. Cates returned to Vassalboro and, Kingsbury wrote, practiced medicine there until he moved to California in 1886, where he died less than two years later.

The Find a Grave on-line site says Margaret was born in Rhode Island and died and is buried in Whittier, California. She apparently remarried after Dr. Cates’ death, as a photo shows the plaque on her grave identifying her as Margaret B. Dorland.

A Dec. 20, 1952, Waterville Morning Sentinel piece by Fred D. McAlary, copied in the summer 2021 issue of the Vassalboro Historical Society’s newsletter, says Charles Cates was a farmer as well as a doctor; in 1858, McAlary wrote, he built a house in East Vassalboro and ran a farm there.

McAlary’s article is about Charles Cates’ grandson, Samuel C. Cates (David’s son), also a doctor and a farmer, born in 1890 and in practice in Vassalboro since 1925. The Cates house off South Stanley Hill Road was partly a hospital; one room, McAlary said, used to be Dr. Charles Cates’ office.

Charles Cates is buried in Vassalboro’s Friends Cemetery, as are his son David and David’s wife Anabel. Son Abraham died in Minnesota and is buried in Lakewood Cemetery, in Minneapolis.

For the next four Jefferson graduates, your writer found precise dates: Dr. J. F. Noyes, of Waterville, was Class of 1846, Nathaniel R. Boutelle, of Waterville, was Class of 1847, James M. Bates, of Augusta was, Class of 1851, Albert F. Plimpton, of Litchfield, and other Gardiner-area towns was Class of 1859.

Dr. James Fanning Noyes (Aug. 2, 1817 – Feb. 16, 1896), according to Thayer and an 1812 edition of American Medical Biographies (found on line), had an unusually well-traveled life that included brief periods in Waterville. His specialty was ear and eye medicine (otology and ophthalmology), including eye surgery.

He was born in South Kingston, Rhode Island. He attended nearby schools and in 1842, for unexplained reasons, began studying medicine in Waterville with Dr. Joseph F. Potter. He went on to Harvard Medical School and then to Jefferson.

After his 1846 graduation, he did post-graduate work in New York City until he became assistant physician at the United States Marine Hospital, in Massachusetts. He came back to Waterville in 1849 and, the biography says, “soon secured a large practice” – which he abandoned in 1851 (1852, Thayer wrote) to go into partnership with Dr. Potter, in Cincinnati.

The biography says in 1855 he studied in Berlin and in 1859 in Paris, implying he was in Ohio between trips. Thayer, however, wrote that after two years in Europe beginning in 1854, he came back to Waterville “where he entered upon a large practice.” After another year in Europe, mostly in Paris, he practiced successfully in Waterville from 1859 to 1863, doing major surgery and serving as a consultant.

In 1863 he moved to Detroit, Michigan, and had an active practice there. The medical biography includes a long list of papers Noyes wrote for medical publications, with titles like Temporary Blindness from Lead Poisoning, An Improved Iridectomy Forceps, New Operation for Strabismus and The Ophthalmoscope’s Contributions to General Medicine.

Both sources listed medical organizations to which he belonged; and both mentioned his interest in the Oak Grove Insane Asylum in Flint, Michigan, where he donated money to provide an amusement venue for the inmates, which was named Noyes’ Hall.

Thayer added that in his will, Noyes stipulated that his body should be cremated “for sanitary reasons and as an example in the interest of humanity.” His instructions were followed, Thayer wrote; the ashes are in Riverside Cemetery, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Dr. Nathaniel Rogers Boutelle (June 13, 1821 – Nov. 23, 1890), Jefferson 1847, was the sixth child and fourth son of Timothy and Helen (Rogers) Boutelle. Thayer described Timothy Boutelle as one of Maine’s most eminent lawyers in the early 1800s. Dr. Boutelle graduated from Waterville College and then Jefferson, and did a year of post-graduate work in Pennsylvania.

He established his practice and his family in Waterville, marrying Mary Keely (April 6, 1833 – Feb. 14, 1920), daughter of Waterville College professor G. W. Keely, on Oct. 14 or Nov. 8, 1852 (sources differ), and fathering two sons. In the 1890 census, Nathaniel and Mary Boutelle were living on College Avenue, an on-line genealogy says; another source gives the exact address, 33 College Avenue.

Son Timothy was born in 1853 and died in 1864, according to his gravestone. An on-line genealogy gives a birth date in September 1852, before his parents’ wedding, and a death date of Sept. 3, 1864; the pre-marriage birth date seems doubtful in a prominent family. Son George Keely, born March 15, 1857, became a lawyer like his grandfather, was still in practice in Waterville in 1904 and died June 18, 1938.

Thayer wrote that Dr. Boutelle left Waterville at least twice. In 1857, he did unspecified post graduate work in an unspecified country in Europe. In 1864, he volunteered in the Civil War and “performed very efficient service” in a Fredericksburg hospital.

Thayer said Dr. Boutelle was among the founders of the Maine Medical Association and was considered “one of the most skilled and learned physicians of the State.” The on-line genealogy adds that Colby College awarded him an honorary degree in 1860.

His obituary in the Jan. 15, 1891, “Masonic Post” called him one of the earliest Maine residents to breed Jersey cattle, developing a widely recognized high-quality herd. The writer said he was “an earnest and influential mason, although not fond of working offices.”

Nathaniel and Mary Boutelle and their two sons are buried in Waterville’s Pine Grove Cemetery.

James M. Bates (May 31, 1827 – July 9, 1911), Jefferson 1851, was the son of a doctor and father of another doctor (neither of whom attended Jefferson). His father was also James M. Bates ((Sept. 24, 1789 – Feb. 25, 1882); most sources identify both by a middle initial only, but your writer found two that gave the middle name Macomber, one to the father and one to the son.

On-line sites Wikipedia, Find a Grave and American Medical Biographies say the senior James M. Bates was born in Greene. He attended Harvard Medical School; served in the War of 1812 as a surgeon; and after the war was briefly in charge of the Buffalo, New York, “general military hospital.”

Resigning that job, he came back to Maine and practiced medicine in Hallowell from 1815 to 1819 and in Norridgewock until 1830. In March 1831 he was elected to Congress.

From 1845 to 1851 he was “superintendent of the Maine State Hospital for the insane.” He practiced until he died, at age 92, in Yarmouth; he is buried in Old Oak Cemetery, in Norridgewock.

The James M. Bates who graduated from Jefferson, Kingsbury wrote, was born in Norridgewock and started studying medicine in Augusta in 1848 before attending Jefferson. He practiced in South China from May of 1851 to 1854 and in Sidney for another five years before moving to Yarmouth.

(Wikipedia’s story of his life sends him from Jefferson directly to Yarmouth to work with his physician father. But Alice Hammond, in her history of Sidney, confirmed Kingsbury’s account, as she talked about the Rufus Davenport house near Bacon’s Corner, on Middle Road.

(The house “was the home of Sidney’s resident doctors for many years,” Hammond wrote, after Dr. Bates bought it in 1855. He sold it in 1858, to Dr. John Cushing; and Hammond named the other doctors who owned it in succession into the 20th century.)

Dr. Bates enlisted in the 13th Maine Infantry as a surgeon on Dec. 5, 1861, the Find a Grave site says. He was honorably discharged June 6, 1865. Civilian positions included president of the Maine Medical Society and, per Wikipedia, “a trustee of the State Reform School” and of Yarmouth Academy and a member of the Yarmouth school board for over 30 years.

Wikipedia says Dr. Bates and his wife, Hester Ann Sawtelle (March 31, 1829 – July 21, 1913), had at least five children, including a daughter named Hester, who became a physician. An on-line genealogy and the Find a Grave on-line site list four children; the daughters are named Charlotte Maria, who died before her 12th birthday, and Harriette.

One of the sons, George Fred Bates (1860-1944) was the third generation to become a doctor. He trained at Bowdoin and Long Island College Hospital, in Brooklyn, and was described in an obituary as “one of the leading practitioners in the Red River Valley” in Traill County, Minnesota. He returned from Minnesota to the Portland area before the 1940 census.

Dr. James Bates, his wife and four children are buried in Riverside Cemetery, in Yarmouth

Albert Franklin Plimpton (May 5, 1832 – Aug 10, 1892), Jefferson 1859, was the son of Elias and Nancy (Billings) Plimpton, of Litchfield.

Kingsbury said he attended Litchfield Academy and “read medicine in Gardiner and Boston” before going to Jefferson and graduating in 1859. He opened a practice in Pittston and in 1862 moved to Gardiner, where he also ran a drug store from 1867 until he died. On May 26, 1865, he married Carlista Colby.

The author of an 1895 history of Litchfield and account of its centennial, found on line, called him “one of the leading physicians in Gardiner.

Another on-line site says Dr. Plimpton appeared as a Gardiner physician in the 1870 and 1880 census records; in the 1880 census, he is listed as a cripple.

Read other articles in this series here.

Main sources

Hammond, Alice, History of Sidney Maine 1792-1992 (1992).
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902).

Websites, miscellaneous.

LIFE ON THE PLAINS: Winters on the Plains were challenging

November 16, 2022/1 Comment/in Life on the Plains, Local History, Waterville/by Roland D. Hallee

by Roland D. Hallee

Winters on The Plains in the 1950s and ‘60s were a challenge, to say the least. Anyone of my generation will remember winters back then, for some reason, were a lot rougher than they are today. In my opinion, winters now are nothing compared to back then.

We would get blizzard after blizzard of 14 inches or more on a regular basis. And, they didn’t call off school because of a few snowflakes. Most of us, whether it was Notre Dame School, South Grammar, or St. Francis School, walked. Only kids that lived “in the country” were bussed.

My dad would say – and I relayed that to my children later – “In my days, we walked to school in blizzards, and it was uphill both ways.”

Other challenges also presented themselves. Like snow removal. The city had plows to take care of the streets, but there were not a lot of privateers who plowed driveways. Besides, my dad had four strapping boys, and our grandfather lived next door.

We would put on our snow suits, boots, hats and mittens, and out the door we’d go. I remember a few times when we couldn’t even open the door due to the snow drifts against the door, which eventually prompted my dad and grandfather to install panels on the porches to keep the snow from drifting.

Using snow scoops and shovels, we began the process of shoveling, and clearing, the snow from a 100-foot-long driveway.

Of course, there were some “incidences”. One time, while shoveling the front walkway and steps, my younger brother stood on the railing of the porch to knock down some icycles. Well, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity when it presented itself. I gave him a gentle nudge, and he fell head first into a snow bank. With only his legs from the knees down showing, and wiggling, – I laughed – my grandfather was able to pull him out in short order. But, I can tell you right now, that did not go unpunished. But, thinking back, it was worth it.

The snowbanks would get so high, I would estimate probably seven to eight feet, once the work was done, we would take out the shovels, and begin to dig out tunnels, and chambers, where we would stash snowballs for a later assault on neighborhood kids. Oh, how I loved those snowball fights.

Once the activities were complete, we would head indoors where our mother was waiting to handle our wet clothes. She would have the woodstove going, and we would sit in front of it with our feet on the door to get them thawed. Hot chocolate and cookies would usually be included in this ritual.

At school, the boys would go out at recess and head to the towering snowbanks at the end of the church parking lot, where the nuns discouraged us from going. And there, we played “king of the mountain”. Some of the bigger guys would go to the top of the mounds, and others would try to ascend to the summit and displace the “kings”. Sometimes, it turned into a melee, and the nuns so disapproved of such actions.

Winters were tough, but so were we.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Augusta fires, fire departments – Part 4

November 16, 2022/0 Comments/in Augusta, Local History, Maine History, Up and Down the Kennebec Valley/by Mary Grow

Hook and ladder firetruck late 19th century.

by Mary Grow

James North’s history of Augusta ends in the year 1870; 19th-century Augusta fires did not. Your writer has relied for later firefighting information on the University of Maine’s on-line DigitalCommons collection, mentioned last week, and on-line Augusta histories.

* * * * * *

Charles W. Ricker was Augusta’s chief engineer for more than a decade, starting in 1893. In the city’s annual report for the fiscal years that ended March 1, 1894, Mayor Charles A. Milliken wrote: “I think politics should be eliminated from this department. The present chief engineer is a competent man and I think should be retained.”

Ricker, in his first report (March 21, 1893, to March 1, 1894), wrote that, “in the history of the Department we have never answered so many alarms [43, he wrote in the next paragraph] with so little loss of property, and at no time have we been in such a flourishing condition as regards membership and efficiency.”

One of the fires caused a death: early in the morning of Oct. 1, 1893, “matches in bed clothes” started a fire that killed Mary Scanlan, wife of James Scanlan, living in John Welch’s house, on Court Street.

Multiple fires were in Water Street businesses.

On June 12, 1893, crossed electrical wires burned George E. Macomber’s building, containing C. H. O’Brien’s telegraph office, Harry Rand’s music store and Mrs. Whitney’s glove store. Losses totaled $1,625.
On Sept. 30, the Lombard heirs’ building on the west side of Water Street caught fire from “benzine from lighted pipe.” Storekeeper J. C. Little lost $338 worth of stock, and the building damage came to $25.
On Oct. 16, a fire of unknown origin in William Moody’s Water Street livery stable caused $1,000 worth of damage to the building and burned Dr. LeClair’s $75 sleigh.
On Dec. 27, “spontaneous combustion” occurred in Bianchi Bros. fruit store in Vickery and Hill’s Water Street building. Damage to the building came to $200, to “stock and fixtures” $1,500.
On Jan. 13, 1894, a “kerosene lamp in the cellar” started a fire in a multi-tenant building. Ricker listed losses as damage to the North Brothers’ store $501.58; to contents of Hotel North, $222; to A. M. Wight’s jewelry store, $1,400; to Hill and Locke’s groceries, $300; to druggist E. P. Smart, $200; and to L. K. Smith, “plate glass in front,” $75.
On Jan. 23, early in the morning, “an oil mop in stair-way heated” in Macomber and Hill’s Water Street building where Miss Hebert had her millinery store. She lost $120 worth of stock, and the “loss on store” came to $80.
On Jan. 30, a “lamp in cellar” ignited an early-morning fire in Oscar Holway’s store where J. M. Nevens had his boot and shoe business; it did $200 damage to building and stock.

The damage from these seven fires was completely covered by insurance, except Smith’s plate glass.

An article in the March 8, 1894, edition of the Daily Kennebec Journal referred to and expanded on Ricker’s report. It began, “This city has one of the best fire departments in the State. Only a few minutes after the alarm sounds the firemen are always to be found where the fire is.”

The 75 men were divided into six companies, based on Bridge Street (Cushnoc No. 1 engine), Cony Street (Atlantic No. 2), Cushnoc Heights (Volunteer No. 3), Pettingill’s (sometimes spelled Pettengill’s) Corner (Pine Tree No. 4), State Street (Capital No. 5) and “foot of Cony Street” (Hook and Ladder No. 1).

The hook and ladder company had “one Bangor extension ladder, several roof ladders, and others for general climbing.”

Considered volunteers, the 15 hook and ladder men got $20 a year apiece. Everyone else got $25, apparently, except that each company’s officers – foreman, assistant foreman and clerk – were paid from $35 to $45, depending on rank. And, “Any company called from its district is paid 40 cents extra per hour.”

The writer commented that the pay was small for the work and risk involved. He wrote of Ricker that after more than 12 years with the department, he “is not only experienced in fighting fires, but possesses good judgment.”

The department had nine hose carriages with about 6,300 feet of hose. There were 89 fire hydrants in Augusta.

In his second annual report in March 1895, Ricker listed 30 alarms since April 1894, with descriptions and damage estimates. This and future reports listed the department’s equipment, buildings and manpower; the city’s reservoirs; the fire hydrants and fire alarm boxes; and recommended improvements. The 1894-95 report included commendations to firefighters for “the utmost goodwill and harmony” and cooperation among different companies.

The P.O. Vickery Building today.

Augusta had two serious fires in December 1894. On Dec. 2, starting at 10:45 p.m., a fire of unknown origin burned down two frame buildings on Water Street. R. W. Soule’s furniture store was in P.O. Vickery’s building, and Knowlton and Young’s fish market was in Mrs. M. S. Moulton’s building.

Each building was valued at $2,000. Soule lost $2,000 worth of furniture, and for unexplained reasons C. M. Sturgis lost more than $2,800 worth of furniture; Knowlton and Young’s losses were $1,200. They had only $800 worth of insurance; everyone else was fully insured.

The second major fire was reported at 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 11 at “City Farm,” via the fire alarm box at the corner of Bridge and Spring streets. Ricker reported, “Two stables burned with contents,” which included “two cows, one bull, six hogs, fifty tons of hay and straw, farming tools.” The cause was listed as “boy setting fire to hay in the stable.”

The report listed one fire death. On Feb. 2, 1895, a lamp exploded in A. O. Bailey’s house on Patterson Street; the resulting fire killed Mrs. Bailey.

Ricker mentioned his two assistant engineers and “steamer engineer.” The latter, he explained, took care of Cushnoc No. 1, the steam fire engine, and also “repairs all the damaged hose.”

In March 1897 Mayor W. S. Choate’s end-of-fiscal-year report for 1896-1897 included this comment: “Promptness and efficiency have characterized the work of this [fire] department during the past year. The burning of the Opera House on the night of July 3-4 being the only serious fire during the year, and the extent of this cannot in any way be attributed to any lack of good service on the part of this department.”

The Opera House stood at 296 Water Street. It was the second building at that address to burn in the 1890s, according to on-line sites.

James North wrote in his Augusta history that the earlier building, called Granite Block, was built starting in the summer of 1865. Granite Block had stores on the ground floor and offices on the second floor. The third floor was a large auditorium with a stage and galleries, named Granite Hall.

A gala opening was held March 7, 1866. The building burned in the winter of 1890, “leaving only the four granite walls standing.”

An on-line site, referencing the July 4, 1896, issue of the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, says the Honorable J. Manchester Haynes built the first Opera House on the lot in 1891, “at a cost of $40,000.”

According to this source, the July 3, 1896, fire was started by firecrackers, “in the rear of a sub-passageway” in the building. In addition to the “fine Opera House,” the fire destroyed second-floor “city government and city treasurer’s rooms and offices” (with more than $8,000 worth of furniture, insured, the city report added), and on the ground floor “the store of E. W. Church, grocer; Augusta Deposit and Trust Company, café, and Charles K. Partridge, druggist.”

Another source adds damage to Bertha Holmes’ confectionary store, the Conys’ livery stable and “Dr. Tuell’s office, loss, about 8200 [dollars]”. Total loss was estimated at $60,000, partly covered by insurance; Dr. Tuell was not insured.

Volume 16, Issue 4, of the Vermont Medical Monthly includes notice of the death of Dr. James E. Tuell, of Augusta, on Feb. 11, 1910, at the age of 55. The article says he graduated from Jefferson Medical College (now Sidney Kimmel Medical Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia) in 1884 and was a member of “the Kennebec County Medical Society, the Maine State Association and the American Medical Association.”

(The same journal article listed deaths of six other doctors with Vermont connections. Tuell lived the longest; the others died at ages ranging from 35 to 53.)

The second Opera House opened Sept. 7, 1900, “again using the original granite walls.” The building was used intermittently for movies and for live theater, until it closed in 1974. In 1983, the building was torn down –“following a fire.”

Ricker’s annual reports continued into the 20th century. In the year ending March 1, 1900, he said there were 35 alarms, including eight major fires and one false alarm. The earliest major fire was March 12, 1899, at a stable on Sewall Street: it killed three horses and did an estimated $941 worth of damage.

In April 1899 firefighters responded to four events Ricker thought worth mentioning. April 7, at 2:05 p.m., they went to a fire at the dump on Capitol Street; the same day, at 4:55 p.m., “rats and matches” started a fire on Bridge Street.

On April 20, “tramps” allegedly started a fire at the Augusta Driving Park stables. On April 22, at 9:25 p.m., two men were caught “pulling the alarm” at the box numbered 48; they were fined $26.29.

The most costly fire started at 11 p.m. on Aug. 31, at the Broom Handle Manufacturing Company. Damage was estimated at $1,000.

At the beginning of 1900, Ricker wrote, the department had five active engines at five stations, in addition to an old ladder truck and the Cushnoc Steamer. Numbers had replaced names for the engines; city horses pulled Hose and Ladder Combination 1, and L. G. Haskell was charging $1,100 a year for his team that pulled Hose #2.

A January 1904 article in Fire Engineering magazine, found on line, describes a Jan. 7, 1904, fire that destroyed two “large brick blocks” containing stores and a bank. The Whitman and Adams store sustained the largest loss, estimated at $60,000.

The Augusta department was assisted by men and equipment from Waterville, Gardiner and Hallowell; it took five hours to stop the fire. Ricker was “overcome by smoke, and several firemen were hurt by falling glass.”

The writer castigated the City of Augusta for inadequate attention to fire prevention. He described the city’s “fire area” as 1,290 acres, filled with wooden houses and commercial buildings up to seven stories tall.

The volunteer fire department had 69 members; it owned 11 pieces of mobile equipment (including one “hook and ladder truck—not aerial”) and 10 “hand chemical extinguishers.” Of the 9,000 feet of hose, 7,000 were rated “good.”

However, there were only six horses, and no equipment in reserve.

The water source was the Kennebec River, whence water was pumped into reservoirs. The writer pointed out that the fire department was dependent on water pressure being maintained, which he said could not be guaranteed; and he reminded readers that hydrants freeze in cold weather.

“It is obvious, therefore, that for a city of the size of Augusta, with such an extensive fire area to cover and so many wooden buildings to protect, the fire department is very poorly equipped – that it is starved, in fact, and that, however efficient its members, it was out of the question for them to be expected to handle a fire of any magnitude, unless they had apparatus enough to do the work,” he wrote.

Recommendations included additional modern equipment and a few paid firefighters who would be constantly available. Augusta can afford a paid department, he opined, “under such an experienced firefighter as Chief C. W. Ricker, whose continued terms of office prove that he enjoys the confidence of his fellow citizens and the fire committee of the city council.”

Ricker’s 12th (and final) submission was for the annual report for the year that ended March 1, 1905. The city report for the year ending March 1, 1906, included no fire department report, nor did Mayor Frederick W. Plaisted name the chief engineer, by then paid $600. The mayor’s report included this sentence: “We have a loyal and efficient volunteer fire department; let us cordially support it and increase its efficiency.”

Main sources

North, James W., The History of Augusta (1870).

Websites, miscellaneous.

LIFE ON THE PLAINS: Final pictorial walk along Water St.

November 9, 2022/0 Comments/in Life on the Plains, Local History, Waterville/by Website Editor

Picher’s Furniture Store, at 88-90 Water St. The building is no longer there. It was located across from Gold St. intersection.

by Roland D. Hallee

Photos courtesy of E. Roger Hallee

A market at 162 Water St.

Behind the market, at 162-1/2 Water St., is what appears to be a tavern.

At 188 Water St., there appears
to be another tavern.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Augusta fires, fire departments, Part 3

November 9, 2022/0 Comments/in Augusta, China, Local History, Maine History, Up and Down the Kennebec Valley/by Mary Grow

Augusta Great Fire of 1865.

by Mary Grow

Your writer hopes her readers are not tired of fires and firefighting, because there will be one more article on the theme after this one. As usual, the topic has expanded because of more information than expected from easily available sources.

One invaluable source is the University of Maine’s on-line DigitalCommons collection. It includes various City of Augusta reports for many years.

* * * * * *

After the April 12, 1861, southern attack on Fort Sumter started the Civil War, James North’s Augusta history focused on the local contribution to and effects of the war. He did not neglect other events, however, including fires and firefighting. Early on, he combined the two topics, describing the patriotic parade on Thursday, April 18, 1861, that was led by the Augusta Band, with the Pacific Fire Engine Company next in line.

The first fire North mentioned during the Civil War years was the February 1862 destruction of the Phenix Block on Water Street. Daniel Williams built these three connected three-story stores in 1839; North called them “superior in finish to any yet erected.”

The initial tenants included the post office, with Reuel Williams’ law office above it (Daniel and Reuel Williams were brothers; the family was prominent in Augusta’s history); a shoe store; and H. A. Kittredge’s store selling “West India goods and groceries.” The printing shop for The Age newspaper had the whole third floor.

By February 1862, a hardware store had replaced the grocery; the shoe shop had a different owner; and in the basement below the post office were the press rooms for both The Age and the Kennebec Journal, with The Age print shop still filling the top floor.

On the cold Saturday evening of Feb. 22, a fire started in the shoe store, under the stairs. A fire engine responded, hose was run up the stairs and the fire “nearly extinguished” – when the water stopped running.

The problem was a broken joint (in the hose, or on the engine? North did not specify). While it was being replaced, the fire flared up; but renewed water quickly had it “nearly extinguished” – when the water stopped running again.

This time, the hose had been cut. North wrote that the suspects were “some unruly soldiers of the Fifteenth Regiment,” but nothing was proved.

While the hose was being repaired (and placed under guard), a valve on the fire engine froze. By the time the valve was thawed with hot water, the fire was out of control. Residents who had gone home after responding to the initial alarm were called back, and Hallowell sent two additional engines. No other buildings were affected, but the Phenix Block was gone.

Another major fire began Monday evening, March 31, 1862. Starting in a wharf storehouse, it spread to a second storehouse and then inland to burn down four wooden buildings on the river side of Water Street. North identified them as a store, a carpenter’s shop, Pumpkin Tavern (“a dwelling occupied by a number of families”) and the pre-1800 building known as the Titcomb house, after an early settler named Samuel Titcomb.

North commented that the burned buildings were “of little value,” and losing them was a step toward widening Water Street, accomplished in 1867. (The remaining east-side wooden buildings were moved back.)

A third major fire in 1862 started in the Kennebec Hotel’s stable about 10 p.m. Monday, Oct. 13. Flammable hay spread the fire through the stable and to the hotel; both buildings, two adjoining stores and a brick house were destroyed and a brick store damaged. Two horses were lost.

Augusta firefighters got help from Hallowell’s Torrent engine, which arrived about 11:30 “and did good service.” Residents salvaged hotel furnishings. This third substantial fire within a year led “thoughtful men” to recommend city officials buy a steam fire engine, North said.

The next fire North noted was the burning of the South Parish Congregational Church, which he called the South Parish meeting-house, the night of Monday, July 11, 1864. The church, dedicated on Sept. 20, 1809, was a large, two-story building with a steeple that was 125 feet tall, counting the weathervane.

During a bad thunderstorm, lightning struck the steeple and set the building alight “instantaneously, from top to bottom.” It burned completely in an hour; “only the curtains behind the pulpit, the communion service and bible with a few cushions were saved.”

North wrote that the steeple had always had a protective lightning rod. This time, he said, the “volume of the electric fluid was too great for the rod to carry, and it passed into the building.”

He emphasized the sense of loss, using phrases like “time-honored edifice,” “hallowed associations” and “landmark.” And, he wrote, parishioners met the next evening and decided to rebuild. The cornerstone of a new church, built of granite, was laid on May 26, 1865, and the church “was dedicated Thursday evening, July 5, 1866.”

Another fire in 1864 burned down the Portland and Kennebec Railroad’s depot on Christmas Eve. A strong north wind spread the fire quickly from the northeast corner throughout the building, but snow on the ground and on nearby roofs protected the neighborhood.

Lost were a freight train headed for Skowhegan, stopped by snow-covered tracks, and “the dummy engine and car, and six passenger cars.”

Augusta Cushnoc Hose Company.

On Aug. 24, 1865, North reported a celebration in honor of Augusta’s new steam fire engine Cushnoc. It had its first test in the great downtown fire that was reported about 5 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 17, 1865 (and was described in the Feb. 4, 2021, issue of The Town Line).

North wrote that the Cushnoc was placed on a wharf right behind the new block of wooden buildings on Water Street, where the fire started, “in full confidence that, with its powerful aid, the fire would be easily subdued.”

The combination of wooden buildings, wooden sidewalks and a “hot and dry” southeast wind was too much. The Cushnoc was almost lost as the wooden wharf and the lumber piled on it caught fire. Eri Wills, the chief engineer, saved it by cutting the hose and turning the engine’s water on itself.

Another engine on another wharf contained the fire headed south for Winthrop Street. With Augusta’s Pacific, Hallowell’s Tiger, the “United States Arsenal steamer,” the rescued Cushnoc and, North wrote, Wills’ ingenuity, firefighters finally controlled the fire.

What Wills did, North said, was remember a particularly strong wall that might be a firebreak. To protect it, he broke through an attic roof so that a hose could be run from the Cushnoc 60 feet up to drench the fire from above. North gave a dramatic description, apparently as an observer, of the men’s danger, as buildings collapsed around them and the street side of the one they were standing on repeatedly caught fire.

By 11 a.m. the worst seemed over. Around noon “a train despatched for assistance” brought two Gardiner fire engines and one from Pittston, which helped finish the job. North’s history includes a list and map of 81 buildings lost; damage amounted to $500,000. There is no record that any lives were lost.

(A Sept. 14, 2015, Kennebec Journal article announcing the observance of the 150th anniversary of the Great Fire reported that Augusta’s Atlantic and Pacific and Hallowell’s Tiger would be on display. Reporter Craig Crosby wrote that Hallowell still owned the Tiger, the Town of Oakland owned the Atlantic, and the Pacific was privately owned.)

The next major fire North described cost one life. It was at what was in 1868 the Eastern Branch of the National Military Asylum, precursor of today’s Togus VA Medical Center, in Chelsea, about four miles east of Augusta.

The asylum opened in the fall of 1866 on property that included a mineral spring (supposed to promote health) and a hotel and associated buildings. North wrote that the military added a 5,000-square-foot brick hospital.

On Sunday, Jan. 7, 1868, a cold, windy night, a fire that started about 9:30 p.m. in the heating system burned most of the old buildings. The 270 inmates were forced “into the open air of a severe winter’s night”; those too sick to move “were brought out on mattresses and laid, for want of shelter, upon the snow.”

To add to the disaster, North wrote, “the soldiers” – presumably he meant men responsible for the patients – broached a barrel of medicinal whiskey and got drunk. “Disgusting scenes of disorder and violence ensued.”

Augusta firefighters and ordinary citizens brought the patients to safety, the sick in private homes and the rest in municipal buildings. One man, “weak from disease, and suffering from exposure,” did not survive.

North wrote that the fire consumed almost everyone’s personal belongings. The new hospital was damaged; the steam fire engine named General Butler saved it from destruction.

In the aftermath, some patients were transferred to other branch asylums and some accommodated in surviving buildings. After hesitation, the “board of managers” decided to rebuild more appropriately. North wrote that in the spring of 1868, “four large brick buildings were commenced, each one hundred feet long by fifty feet wide [the dimensions of the brick hospital], placed in the form of a square with a courtyard in the center.”

Fire department expenses

The report of Augusta’s 1858 Committee of Finance for the fiscal year that ended March 19, 1859 (a DigitalCommons document), said that Eri Wills was the “chief engineer” (apparently the equivalent of a modern fire chief) in 1858 and was paid $50. The annual appropriation for the fire department was $700; almost $800 was “undrawn” from the prior year.

The committee listed the value of Augusta’s fire apparatus as follows: Atlantic and Pacific fire engines, $2,000 plus $1,500 for “Engine house and lot”; the Deluge engine “and apparatus,” $400 plus $50 for its engine house; and another $50 worth of “[h]ooks, ladders and carriages.”

In 1865, according to the March 17, 1866, end of fiscal year report of the finance committee and the treasurer, Augusta appropriated $8,000 for the fire department. Wills was still paid $50; he had two assistant engineers, paid $25 apiece.

Expenses totaled $10,731.64, including $4,325 for the “new Steam Fire Engine,” $2,700 for 1,500 feet of new hose and $1,457.36 for “sundry bills on account of new Engine House.” Firefighters balanced the budget by selling the Deluge engine for $66, charging (other towns, presumably) $16.50 for “use of Steamer” and taking more than $1,300 for their contingency account.

China man arrested for Augusta fires

A China resident named George W. Jones was arrested, tried and convicted for setting Augusta’s 1865 Great Fire, and was in the state prison when North finished his history in 1870.

As North tells it, Jones had a lobster business in Portland and sold lobsters from a “cart” in Augusta. Over the summer, soldiers had taken lobsters without paying. City police had not responded to Jones’ satisfaction and he had “threatened vengeance upon the city.”

Saturday night Jones was in China, and a barn “belonging to a person he had an antipathy against” burned. Sunday morning he walked to Augusta, arriving before 4 a.m., and stayed during the fire. Monday he took the train to Portland. Tuesday as he sold lobsters there his cart was “run against and damaged” and the offender refused to pay.

That night a woman saw a man setting fire to shavings outside the offender’s house. She called in an alarm, the fire was put out and examination showed the knife that made the shavings had “two gaps in the blade.” Jones was arrested in a neighboring town; the knife in his pocket had matching gaps in its blade.

Main sources

North, James W., The History of Augusta (1870).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Social clubs in Kennebec Valley

by Mary Grow

Main sources

LIFE ON THE PLAINS: The nice cozy, backyard ice rink

by Roland D. Hallee

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Social activities

by Mary Grow

Main sources

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Jefferson Medical College grads – Part 2

by Mary Grow

Main sources

LIFE ON THE PLAINS: The legend of Ginjine Hill

by Roland D. Hallee

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Jefferson Medical College – Part 1

by Mary Grow

Kennebec Valley graduates

Main sources

LIFE ON THE PLAINS: Winters on the Plains were challenging

by Roland D. Hallee

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Augusta fires, fire departments – Part 4

by Mary Grow

Main sources

LIFE ON THE PLAINS: Final pictorial walk along Water St.

by Roland D. Hallee

Photos courtesy of E. Roger Hallee

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Augusta fires, fire departments, Part 3

by Mary Grow

Fire department expenses

China man arrested for Augusta fires

Main sources

Interesting links

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