Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Weather events

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by Mary Grow

James North and Ruby Crosby Wiggin, quoted last week, were not the only local historians to mention the Year without a Summer. And 1816 was not the only unusually cold spell – though it was the longest spell of (fairly) consistently cold weather – recorded in the central Kennebec Valley since the settlers’ arrival.

The 1995 history of Maine, edited by Richard W. Judd, Edwin A. Churchill and Joel W. Eastman, reminds us that 1816 was also known as “Eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death.” The authors of the chapter on agriculture (James B. Vickery, Judd, and Sheila McDonald) offered it as an example of what they called Maine’s “fickle” climate.

Part of Alma Pierce Robbins’ history of Vassalboro is a summary of major events by year. 1816 she distinguished as “the year of ‘NO SUMMER,'” when “people planted their gardens with their mittens on!” July was the only month in 1816 when it did not snow in Vassalboro, she wrote.

Her account is contradicted by the authors of the Fairfield bicentennial history. Their chapter titled “Disasters” begins with “the year of no summer.” Spring was late, they wrote, with frost in May; but crops were doing well enough until central Maine got six inches of snow on June 6.

“The same thing happened on July 9 and again on August 21,” they wrote. Like other historians, including those cited last week, they wrote that the weather was one reason Maine people moved west.

They added, “The Ohio Hill road is said to be so named because of the many that left from here.” (Fairfield’s Ohio Hill Road is the section of Route 23 that runs from Route 201 a little south of the Goodwill-Hinckley School to Fairfield Center.)

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Other historians described, in more or less detail, other cold days and weeks before and after 1816.

Linwood Lowden quoted an early sample in his Windsor history, a March 17, 1762, letter from an Alna resident named Job Averill to a man in Massachusetts. (Alna is on the Sheepscot River, less than 20 miles downstream from Windsor.)

Averill described “a most terrible winter the snow has been for seven weeks past and is now near four feet deep and no business could be done and people are like to lose all their cattel….” Cattle were dying and people going hungry, he said.

North wrote in his Augusta history that 1780 was another cold winter, when Kennebec Valley residents were already stressed by the hardships of the Revolution. There was “uncommonly deep” snow that lasted into late April and the Kennebec River was frozen down to the coast.

The spring of 1785 saw the latest ice-out recorded up to the time North finished his work in 1870. He dated it by contemporary records of people crossing the river on the ice on April 22 and April 24, the ice moving on April 25 and ice-cakes from up-river still floating past Fort Western on May 1.

January 1807 saw another cold spell, according to North’s history. He quoted temperature readings for the end of the month: 22 degrees below zero on Jan. 20, minus 18 on Jan. 21, minus 24 on Jan 22, minus 32 on Jan. 23, a warming to minus 16 on Jan. 26 and a low of minus 34 on Jan. 27.

There was a major snowstorm in Augusta on May 6, 1812, with high wind. Snowfall was variously estimated at six to 18 inches. The Augusta Herald quoted a man said to be old enough to have “lived in three centuries” who “did not remember colder or more severe [May] weather.”

Windsor historian Lowden followed his report from 1762 with a quotation from the Thursday, Jan. 29, 1857, Kennebec Journal commenting on the extremely cold weather: “The night of Friday last [Jan. 23] was the coldest ever felt by any living inhabitant of Maine.” On Saturday at dawn, “the thermometer at the Insane Hospital registered 42 degrees below zero,” with readings elsewhere in Augusta from 37 to 40 below.

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Ruby Wiggin mentioned in her history of Albion multiple events related to weather and other natural phenomena – either she was unusually attentive to such events, or the small town was unlucky. For example, she wrote that there were few local records of the Year without a Summer, but people she spoke with in the 1960s remembered tales of the “grasshopper year” that she said was almost 50 years after 1816.

That year grasshoppers ate most of the farmers’ hay, as well as “other leafy crops.” Wiggin told two stories.

One Albion resident had no hay for his oxen. He kept them alive by feeding them hemlock branches and meal, buying the latter with money he earned making and selling ash baskets.

Another man found the grasshoppers had spared the hay on what Wiggin called Poplar Island on Bog Road. After ice-in, this farmer was able to cut two loads – for which someone offered him $100. He refused, because his own animals needed to eat.

(Contemporary Google maps show Bog Road crossing what appears to be a tributary of the Sebasticook River, with an island slightly downstream of the bridge – Poplar Island?)

Wiggin also noted the adventure of Lester Shorey, who lived on Drake Hill, in southeastern Albion. He attended a Grange meeting in 1901, probably on Dec. 7 (the Saturday on which that year’s anniversary meeting was held); and because the day’s hard rain had flooded out bridges over most of the streams between Center Albion and his house, it took him more than eight hours to find a road home, via Palermo.

Two historians noted a spectacular natural event in August 1787, although they disagreed on the exact date.

William D. Williamson, in his 1832 history of Maine, described an incident “too rare to be passed unnoticed.” On Aug. 26, 1787, around 4 p.m., “A ball of fire, apparently as large as that of a nine pounder” was seen in New Gloucester, Portland and elsewhere, “flying through the air in a south-western direction, at an angle of more than 45 [degrees] from the ground, when it suddenly exploded three times in quick succession, like the discharge of as many cannon, with reports resembling thunder-claps.”

There was no earthquake, Williamson wrote, but “buildings were shaken” and smoke seen. The noise was heard “as far east as Frenchman’s bay, and westward at Fryeburgh.”

North wrote that on Thursday, Aug. 30, 1787, around mid-afternoon, Colonel (Joseph, probably) North, Captain (Henry) Sewall and Ebenezer Farwell were exploring possible routes along which to lay out a road from Cobbosseecontee to Bowdoinham. Sewall recorded in his diary an aerial explosion that he compared to “a small cannon”; he and his companions “supposed it to be the bursting of a meteor.”

North pointed out that Sewall’s date differs from Williamson’s.

There was an earthquake in central Maine on Dec. 23, 1857, between 1 and 2 p.m., North wrote; it was felt in Lewiston, Augusta and Waterville, among other places. He wrote that in addition to the earth shaking, “The noise attending it, as heard by those in buildings at Augusta, was as of an immense weight in the air moving from the south and descending diagonally through the roof with a rolling and crashing sound….The noise passed off to the north with a prolonged rumbling.”

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Henry Sewall’s diary, for part of 1787 (mentioned above) and consecutively from 1830 to 1843, is one of three that Charles Nash quoted parts of in his history of Augusta, published in 1904. He also reprinted excerpts from Martha Ballard’s diary (1785-1812) and Daniel Cony’s diary (1808-1810).

(Your writer views with amazed admiration the historians who first turned such documents, hand-written and perhaps time-damaged, full of unexplained references, into sources of information for future generations.)

With varying frequency, all three diarists recorded weather and other natural phenomena, both routine and extraordinary. Examples follow.

Ballard sometimes ignored the weather for days on end; sometimes wrote briefly of blustery wind, snow or rain, cold or warmth, clouds or clear sky; occasionally mentioned a rainbow, or an odd color in the sky. On March 27, 1786, and again on May 1, she wrote that northern lights had appeared.

The summer of 1787 was apparently a chilly one. On Sunday, July 1, Ballard wrote “We had ice an intch [her spelling] thick in our yard south side of the house this morn.” On Aug. 4 (a Saturday) she recorded “A very severe shower of hail with thunder and litning [her spelling], began at half after one, –continued near one hour. I hear it broke 130 pains [her spelling] of glass in Fort Western.”

On March 22, 1792, Ballard wrote: “Cloudy, morn; clear the rest of the day. The sun eclipsed.” Later in the week, her husband and son were sugaring with a neighbor. The ice in the Kennebec was gone on April 3, and a friend sowed peas on May 5.

Daniel Cony was 56 and had lived in Augusta for 30 years when he wrote short diary entries in 1808, 1809 and 1810, Nash said. Often an entry was only a few words about the day’s weather.

For example, July 1808 was hot and wet; Cony recorded temperatures of 90 degrees or higher on July 1, 16, 17 and 23. August he summarized as “Dry, fine season to gather in the grain.”

Oct. 10, 1809, was another hot day, with the thermometer reaching 96 degrees in the shade. November Cony summarized as “extreme cold,” with the Kennebec frozen by Nov. 23; but between Dec. 5 and Dec. 16 mild weather with rain took out most of the ice.

According to Henry Sewall, late December of 1830 was similar to early December of 1809. The Kennebec had frozen over “passable for teams” by Nov. 22; but a “warm rain” on Christmas Day “broke up the ice.”

For Dec. 31, he wrote: “Warm and wet, which took off every vestige of snow, raised the river, expelled the ice, and took the frost out of the ground, so as to render the roads muddy and deep and the travelling bad.”

Sewall noted the May 1832 flood described in the Jan. 12 issue of The Town Line. In 1833 he commented on two phenomena: a meteor shower early the morning of Nov. 12, with “meteors flying in all directions over the horizon, which produced an effect like lightning”; and on Dec. 26 a total lunar eclipse.

There was a “considerable eclipse of the sun” on Nov. 30, 1834, but, Sewall wrote, it was “rendered invisible by the clouds.”

On Dec. 23 of that year, Sewall wrote: “Received a Fahrenheit Thermometer from Boston.” He used it to record the Christmas Day temperature, eight degrees below zero; but the next diary record is not until Sunday, Feb. 18, 1838, when the temperature rose from 15 below to 25 above.

The March 31, 1836, entry is an interestingly oblique reference to the coming of spring: “The stages continue to run eastward on runners, though they begin to use wheels westward.” The Kennebec opened April 12 and closed Dec. 1 that year.

Sewall noted his 91st birthday on Oct. 24, 1843, and apparently discontinued his diary at the end of the year. He died Sept. 5, 1845.

Main sources

Fairfield Historical Society Fairfield, Maine 1788-1988 (1988).
Judd, Richard W., Churchill, Edwin A. and Eastman, Joel W., edd., Maine The Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present (1995).
Lowden, Linwood H., good Land & fine Contrey but Poor roads a history of Windsor, Maine (1993).
Nash, Charles Elventon, The History of Augusta (1904).
North, James W., The History of Augusta (1870).
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971).
Wiggin, Ruby Crosby, Albion on the Narrow Gauge (1964).
Williamson, William D., The History of the State of Maine from its First Discovery, A.D. 1602, to the Separation, A.D. 1820, Inclusive Vol. II (1832).

Real estate group recognizes local state lawmaker

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Sen. Matt Pouliot, R-Kennebec (center), with MEREDA President Craig Young (left) and Executive Director Shelly Clark. (photo courtesy of MEREDA/Brian Peterson)

The Maine Real Estate & Development Association (MEREDA) honored Maine State Senator Matt Pouliot, R-Kennebec, during its 2023 Forecast Conference and Member Showcase. The organization’s annual event was held at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland.

In recognition of his leadership in housing creation policy and for his support of MEREDA’s efforts to advance responsible, practical and predictable policies for real estate development, Pouliot was awarded the 2022 MEREDA Public Policy Award.

“Senator Pouliot has been a steadfast supporter of MEREDA policy priorities, including his help in maintaining the Maine Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit; his support for the establishment of a Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (CPACE); his vote for the 2022 Housing Act; and his sponsorship of two MEREDA priority legislation items for the 131st Legislature,” MEREDA Executive Director Shelly Clark said in a video introducing the award at the event. “Additionally, Senator Pouliot has recently risen as a leader in bipartisan discussions about smart public policy to help curb Maine’s housing crisis.”

Citing his involvement with the Legislature’s recent Commission to Increase Housing Opportunities in Maine by Studying Land Use Regulations and Short-term Rentals, MEREDA said Pouliot was instrumental in establishing the new Joint Select Committee on Housing of which the final report of the Commission will be the starting point for the work of the new committee.

MEREDA also recognized Pouliot’s development efforts in Kennebec County, including the revival of the historic Water Street corridor in Augusta through redevelopment of downtown properties.

“His support for responsible real estate development, approach to policymaking, and service as a leader both in the Legislature and in his hometown of Augusta make Senator Pouliot a clear choice for this year’s 2022 Public Policy Award,” Clark said.

Senator Matt Pouliot is in his third term representing the communities of the newly-reapportioned District #15. He is the Senate Republican Lead for Joint Standing Committee on Labor and Housing and the new Joint Select Committee on Housing.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Kennebec River floods – Part 2

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Hallowell Merchants District, 1896.

by Mary Grow

After the great freshet of 1832, with which last week’s article ended, Augusta business leaders went ahead with their plan to build a dam across the Kennebec River to power mills; and a Fairfield company dammed part of the river there.

The idea of an Augusta dam was by then about 50 years old. An early settler left a record predicting a dam in 1785, according to Augusta historian James North; and around 1818 Ephraim Ballard was quoted as saying he could build one for $25,000.

At the beginning of 1834, an Augusta group petitioned the Maine legislature to form a corporation to build a dam. Despite opponents’ concerns about effects on fishing, river transportation and upriver communities that might be flooded, a legislative majority created the Kennebec Dam Company in March 1834.

Work started in the spring of 1836. Expanded plans and time constraints meant the middle of the dam was left open through the winter of 1836-37; the ends survived freshets in November and December 1836 and April 1837.

In March 1837 the legislature renamed the dam company the Kennebec Locks and Canals Company and doubled the amount of capital stock it could issue, to $600,000. Work resumed in June; the 600-foot-long dam was closed Sept. 27; and the lock that allowed boats to pass opened Oct. 12, in a ceremony that was followed by a celebratory dinner.

In Fairfield, according to the Fairfield Historical Society’s bicentennial history, sometime between 1835 and 1840 the Fairfield Land and Mill Association dammed the west channel of the Kennebec between downtown Fairfield (then Kendall’s Mills) and Mill Island. “This earthen and timber dam had a short life as an [undated] unusual surge of high water washed it away.”

Its (undated) replacement a short distance downriver “was ingeniously unique in having a hinged bulkhead at its downstream end that swung open to release the pressure when the flow of water became excessive at flood stage.”

North described the solidity of the 1837 Augusta dam in detail, with illustrations, talking about ballasted timber cribs, thick planks, granite walls, cement, cast iron and iron strapping and similar substantial materials. The project used 800,000 cubic feet of granite, 2.5 million feet of timber and 25 tons of iron, and cost the full $300,000, he wrote.

The river continued to flow through a canal along each bank. North’s sketch shows the lock on the east end, between the dam and the canal.

A May 1838 freshet brought high water and giant logs that damaged the west bank, and a January 1839 windy rainstorm damaged it again (and covered Hallowell’s Water Street four feet deep in icy water). Nonetheless, Locks and Canals Company directors promptly started seeking proposals to build mills to use the water power, and by late May 1839 ten mills were almost built.

Then came, North wrote, “one of those catastrophes which mock at human foresight and defy human energy to resist.” After several days of rain, about 4 a.m. Friday, May 30, water began to go over the west side canal and through the damaged bank.

People “assembled in great numbers” to try to repair the leaks, but when the canal itself began to give way, they fled. The dam held; the river made a new channel about 500 feet wide around the west end, taking out two houses in the process (one, North said, was about a tenth of a mile from and 100 feet above the former shore).

An effort to blow up the mills to prevent their doing damage downstream failed, and one by one they were lifted off the dam, the last one floating away late Saturday afternoon.

Thus ended the first attempt to use the Kennebec to power Augusta industries. The dam stood blocking the river; the new channel was unnavigable; and during the summer of 1839 merchandise had to be unloaded from one boat and carried to another on the other side of the dam, “which was frequently piled high with various descriptions of goods in the process of transit.”

Businesspeople were annoyed. The company corporators had lost their investment. The legislature in March 1840 repealed the company charter effective Aug. 1, unless by then the corporators promised a rebuilt dam within two years.

North credited General Alfred Redington with saving the situation. Redington said if he were given a mill site, water power, “the materials of the old mills swept away in 1839” and as much money as people could come up with, he would build an improved dam and put a sawmill atop it.

The dam was to be 400 feet long, “upon a ledge, in shallow water, and not so high as the old dam” and Redington thought he could do it for $10,000.

Beginning with an Aug 1, 1840, public meeting, he did it. North wrote that work started Sept. 5, 1840, and was apparently finished promptly. Redington’s mill went up “during the following winter” (1840, or 1841?).

(Although both North and Henry Kingsbury, in his chapter on manufacturing in his Kennebec County history, referred to “rebuilding” the dam, what they described as actually built was a 400-foot addition to the 600-foot dam, extending it across the new channel the river had carved on the west end.)

Another sawmill opened on the east end of the (original?) dam, and a machine shop, in 1842. In 1845 and 1846 there was a burst of expansion: cotton mills, a flour mill and half a dozen sawmills.

Kennebec floods tried the rebuilt dam repeatedly. On April 28, 1843, a “southeasterly storm” raised the river to within four feet of the 1832 level. Four and a half days of rain that began Friday evening, Oct. 31, 1845, brought more than four inches of water. Logs, lumber and remains of upriver buildings were carried on “a magnificent sheet [of water] of great depth” over the dam.

The dam was undamaged both times. North gave credit to the width of the “wasteway,” almost the entire width of the dam, and the way the road bridge just downstream narrowed the waterway to 440 feet, divided by the central bridge pier.

The remains of the Hallowell-Chelsea Crib bridge in 1870.

The result, he explained, was the water level below the dam rose faster than the level above it and the force diminished. Normally, the water below the dam would be about 15 feet lower than in the pond behind it; during the 1845 freshet the difference was reduced to five feet.

This flood damaged two Augusta wharves and swept away the basement framing for a new block of six sawmills.

The river breached the new dam at the end of March 1846, when several days of rain following a normal spring rise as snow melted brought down “floating ice…intermixed with logs.”

The rebuilding had left a stone pier (the west end of the original dam, 400 feet from the west shore) as a connector between old and new sections “rising like a tower unprotected above the top of the dam.” An ice cake knocked it down, and in following days the adjoining area washed away; by Saturday, April 11, 1846, there was a 150-foot opening.

Repair work started Monday, April 13, North wrote, and despite a couple more freshets was finished “in about ten weeks,” for about $13,000.

The next damage was from fire, not water: in September 1853 most of the industrial buildings on top of the dam burned. The dam was quickly “repaired, improved and strengthened.”

In June 1855, part of the 1846 repairs failed. About 100 feet of the dam were swept away; repairs cost about $20,000.

North wrote these repairs were tested by a major flood before the derricks used in the work had been taken away. An estimated five inches of rainfall between Friday evening, Oct. 12, and late Saturday, Oct. 13, raised the river level 21 feet by Sunday afternoon, “within eighteen inches of the highest point of the great freshet of 1832.”

The dam was unscathed.

The next major floods North described occurred in October 1869 and January and February 1870. The southeaster that began pouring rain on the Kennebec Valley Sunday morning, Oct. 3, 1869, was expected to be fairly harmless, because the river was low at the time; but it did major damage from Skowhegan south (and through much of New England).

Logs that lumber companies had harvested over the summer and left floating were carried downriver to create jams, notably one at Hallowell, that raised the water behind them. At Water­ville, the Ticonic toll bridge was torn from the banks and floated downriver.

(This bridge, Edwin Whittemore wrote in his Waterville centennial history, dated from 1835. It had been damaged in the 1855 flood and quickly repaired. After it washed out in October 1869, a new free bridge was built for $32,000, mostly paid by Waterville taxpayers; it opened Dec. 1, 1870.)

North wrote that to prevent the Ticonic bridge taking out Augusta’s railroad bridge, “A locomotive was despatched with ropes and a crew of men, who met it in Vassalborough and fastened it to the shore.” The part that came loose and went over the dam was not solid enough to do damage.

This October 1869 freshet damaged warehouses on Augusta wharves and swept away piles of logs and lumber.

The following months, North wrote, were “generally mild,” but with occasional cold spells that froze the river to a considerable depth. After Christmas came another warm spell “which started the buds on trees in favorable exposures” and was followed by rain on Jan. 3, 1870.

The rain caused a freshet; the freshet broke up the ice over rapids in the Vassalboro area; the ice came down and jammed above unbroken ice in Augusta, Hallowell and Gardiner. In Hallowell and Gardiner, North wrote, water started backing up during the night; town officials had bells rung to notify Water Street business owners to rescue merchandise from their basements.

A cold spell added more ice to the jams. From Feb. 18 through 20, 1870, rain and wind moved more ice downstream, until, North wrote, the river was one continuous thickly-layered jam from near the Kennebec Arsenal (on the east bank a bit downriver from old Fort Western) to Hallowell. In places the ice-layers were 15 feet thick; in places they rested on the river bed.

This barrier made the river rise six feet in 30 minutes, until the water levels were equal above and below the Augusta dam. “The dam was completely flowed out, a slight ripple only marking its place,” North wrote.

He described in detail – probably from personal observation – 175 feet of the wooden railroad bridge (built in 1857, according to Charles Nash’s chapter in Kingsbury’s history) breaking away, turning upside down from the weight of the track on top and floating toward the already damaged road bridge, “a huge battering ram.”

When the upside-down floating bridge crashed into the stationary one, one end dipped under and came up on the downriver side, leaving 20-foot-long “legs” sticking up on either side. The mass wriggled until it bounced out and continued downriver, to the “joyous shouts and cheers of many anxious spectators.”

Nash wrote that 160 feet of the Augusta dam went down the river, and commented this was the fourth major damage since 1837. The dam was rebuilt “in a more elaborate and expensive manner than ever before” by the end of 1870; the road bridge was repaired; and a new iron railroad bridge was built “immediately.”

In Hallowell, North wrote, the bridge was carried away and some stores were moved from the east (river) side of Water Street to the west side. An on-line source estimated damage at more than $1 million, including loss of two bridges (road and railroad) and walls torn off buildings by the ice.

This 1870 freshet, North wrote as he concluded his history of Augusta, was the fiercest yet; the water level was two feet higher than in 1832.

Main sources

Fairfield Historical Society Fairfield, Maine 1788-1988 (1988).
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).
North, James W., The History of Augusta (1870).
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902).

Websites, miscellaneous.

PHOTO: Local scouts clear cemetery markers of snow

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Front row, from left to right, Scarlett Mudie, Bear Cub Scout, Willow Mudie, BSA Scout, “Lizzy” Blais, BSA Scout. Second row, Mrs. Jennifer Fortin, Marleen Lajoie (Col. Ret. ARNG), Tristan Morton, BSA Scout, Trenton Franklin, BSA Scout, Ian Martin, BSA Scout, Carmina Fortin, Jacob Blais, BSA Scout, Becky Blaise, CC Cub Scouts, Jeff Morton, CR (Col. Ret, USA), Anthony Fortin, BSA Scout Third row, Michael Fortin, CC Troop #603, Jon Martin, SM, Brian Franklin, Lynette Mudie, Lonwood Keller, VFW, VFW Post Commander Brian McComb, Phillipe Blais, ASM, Craig Bailey, VFW (MSG ret. USA) Not Pictured: Joshua Demers (Cub Scout Den Leader), Mack Demers (Tiger Cub Scout), and Landon Demers (Lion Cub Scout). (photo courtesy of Chuck Mahaleris)

Each year thousands of service members are remembered in National and State Veterans Cemeteries. This year VFW Post #887 and Troop/Pack #603, of Augusta/Windsor, cleared the markers and stones during a snowstorm to honor over 30 who have not been recognized before.

Local residents earn award from WGU

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The following local residents have earned an Award of Excellence at Western Governors University, in Salt Lake City, Utah. The award is given to students who perform at a superior level in their coursework.

Jen Paradis, of Augusta, has earned an Award of Excellence at Western Governors University College of Business.

Abigayle Laverdiere, of Fairfield, has earned an Award of Excellence at Western Governors University School of Education.

Crystal Perry, of South China, has earned an Award of Excellence at Western Governors University Leavitt School of Health.

Olivia Nicks, of Unity, has earned an Award of Excellence at Western Governors University College of Information Technology.

SNHU announces summer 2022 dean’s list

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Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), in Manchester, New Hampshire, congratulates the following students on being named to the summer 2022 dean’s list. The summer terms run from May to August.

Full-time undergraduate students who have earned a minimum grade-point average of 3.500 to 3.699 for the reporting term are named to the Dean’s List. Full-time status is achieved by earning 12 credits over each 16-week term or paired 8-week terms grouped in fall, winter/spring, and summer.

Elizabeth Kearney, of Augusta; Lizsandra Lopez, of Winslow; Patric Moore, of Waterville; and Sasha Hanscom, of Skowhegan.

EVENTS: Craft fair to benefit Shakespeare group

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Emily and Josh Fournier, of Recycled Shakespeare Company, stroll the Riverwalk, in Waterville, on William Shakespeare’s 456th birthday on April 23, 2020. (photo by Lyn Rowden)

A Craft Fair with white elephant, Luck of the Draw, bake sale and hot lunch. will be held on Saturday, December 17, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the South Parish Congregational Church, 9 Bridge St., in Augusta, to benefit Recycled Shakespeare Company and the South Parish Congregational Church. Accessible to all, free to shop.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.