Covers towns roughly within 50 miles of Augusta.

Search for wolves in northeast

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Eastern wolf

John M. Glowa, Sr., president of The Maine Wolf Coalition, Inc., (MWC) a 501c(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to wolf recovery in Maine through research, education and protection, is pleased to announce a new collaboration with Princeton University and Michigan Technological University. This collaboration will include the collection, preservation and analysis of wild canid scats, primarily from Maine, and is the latest development in a citizen science project to assess the status of wolves in Maine begun by MWC in 2019.

Wolves were documented to have been killed in Maine in 1993 and 1996. Since then, other than MWC’s efforts, little has been done to assess the status of wolves in Maine and the northeast. Given their similarity of appearance to eastern coyotes, it is likely that additional wolves have been killed in Maine, and in fact, since 1993, no less than nine wolves have been documented killed south of the St. Lawrence River from Massachusetts to New Brunswick.

Canada’s wolf range in Ontario and Québec is just 60 miles from New York and 75 miles from Maine. In fact, an 85-pound probable wolf was killed this past winter in central New York. Wolves have been documented to travel more than 1,000 miles during dispersal, making the northeast U.S. well within range for natural wolf recolonization. Furthermore, the northeast U.S. and maritime Canada contain tens of thousands of square miles of potential wolf habitat and abundant prey, making the region suitable for the natural return of wolves.

In 2019, MWC volunteers found scat from the first live Eastern wolf ever documented in Maine. The Eastern wolf is a smaller wolf found in southern Ontario and Québec, which typically averages approximately 60 pounds. It is similar in appearance and size to the eastern coyote (aka coywolf) with which it can interbreed.

Maine may also be home to larger gray wolves dispersing south from central Canada and the Great Lakes region. To date, MWC has collected more than one hundred wild canid scats, primarily in a 3.3 million acre region of Maine called the North Maine Woods.

The assistance from Princeton and Michigan Technological Universities will help to assess the status of wolves in Maine by analyzing the scats and interpreting the results. Event­ually, our hope is to have one or more graduate students in the woods of northern Maine monitoring radio-collared wolves.

Any wolves in the northeast are currently protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has claimed that their populations have recovered in most of the U.S. They have not recovered in the northeast, despite abundant habitat and prey, and the region’s proximity to wolf range in Ontario and Québec. MWC hopes to gather information to support the continued listing of wolves in the region under the Endangered Species Act and to promote natural wolf recolonization through research, education, and protection.

For more information, contact the following: The Maine Wolf Coalition, Inc.

John Glowa jglowa@roadrunner.com; Eastern Coyote/Coywolf Research
Jon Way, PhD. jon@easterncoyoteresearch.com; Princeton University
Bridgett vonHoldt, PhD. vonholdt@princeton.edu; Michigan Technological University
Kristin E. Brzeski, PhD. kbrzeski@mtu.edu.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Blacks in Maine – Part 4

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by Mary Grow

Waterville, Winslow, Windsor

The Samuel Osbornes discussed in last week’s article were not the only Black family in 19th-century Waterville. Various sources mention several others, though details are often scanty and/or confusing.

Local historians did not consistently state the race or nationality of people they wrote about. For example, the index to Whittemore’s history of Waterville lists Samuel Osborne on three pages; on only one is he described as “colored.” There is no indication of the race of other Osbornes (and Osborns) mentioned in the history.

At the end of his chapter on early settlers in Whittemore’s history of Waterville, Aaron Plaisted wrote that for many years, Waterville’s population was “entirely American.” Your writer assumes he meant British, because he goes on to differentiate French Canadians (who will be discussed in the next article in this series) and Irish (whom your writer combines with the British, and who were numerous in other towns, sometimes specifically mentioned as Irish [in Lowden’s Windsor history, for example]).

Plaisted wrote that there was a colored Seco family in Waterville in the 1820s (see the April 14 issue of The Town Line for China Secos, and below for a few more). And “the first barber in town, George Boardman, was a colored man, very much of a dandy and more elegant in his dress and manners than many of his white fellow citizens.”

Prince Henry lived with his wife Venus on the small farm he owned on the west side of Waterville, on what Isaac Bangs, in his chapter in Whittemore’s history, called the second rangeway. Bangs wrote that Prince Henry must have died before 1825, because Venus was a widow by 1826.

According to Bangs, Venus Henry’s second husband was a free Black Revolutionary War veteran named Sampson Freeman. On-line information about Sampson Freeman is confusing.

Bangs wrote that Freeman lived in Salem, Massachusetts, when he enlisted in the Continental Army from the first Essex County regiment. He is recorded as a private who served from Feb. 1, 1777, to Feb. 5, 1780, including a stint at Valley Forge in 1778.

This information is challenged by an on-line list of early Waterville families, which says Henry (died about 1841) and Venus Freeman were the parents of Sampson Freeman, born about 1765 in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Ipswich and Salem are about 10 miles apart, north of Boston; a man born about 1765 would have been very young to be a soldier before and during the Revolution.

The soldier Sampson Freeman whom Bangs described came to Peru, Maine, and from there to Waterville in 1835, where he married Venus Henry “after a brief acquaintance.” (The on-line Sampson Freeman would have been close to 70 by 1835, and Bangs’ Sampson Freeman likely even older.)

The Freemans lived on the farm Venus had inherited until her death six years later (about 1842?), Bangs continued. Sampson Freeman died in 1843.

The Sampson Freeman listed in the genealogy on line married Catherine “Cata” Coburn on Oct. 6, 1788, in Dracut, Massachusetts.

Sampson and Catherine Freeman had three daughters, Peggy, Jane and Rhody (b. 1806), and one son, Jefferson (born 1809). A search for Jefferson Freeman gave no additional information; but a source cited on-line for him and his sister Rhody was a history of Peru, Maine.

On June 7, 1835, the Sampson Freeman described on line and Mary Foye filed marriage intentions in Waterville.

Mary Foye was “of Augusta” in 1835 and was the widow of Hosea Foye, identified on line as “a black barber in Augusta.” She died before 1843. (Perhaps the marriage intentions were not carried out, and Sampson Freeman married Venus Henry instead?)

One point of agreement between Bangs and the on-line genealogist is that Sampson Freeman died in 1843 – March 28, according to the on-line source – and was buried in Waterville’s Monument Park – near Venus’s grave, according to Bangs.

Kingsbury wrote in his Kennebec County history that the bodies buried in Monument Park were moved south to Pine Grove Cemetery, on Grove Street, after that graveyard was dedicated in May 1850.

The Find a Grave website inventory of Pine Grove Cemetery gives Sampson Freeman’s birth year as 1765, says he was born in Ipswich, was a Revolutionary War veteran and was 77 or 78 years old when he died March 28, 1843. Find a Grave lists no other person whose last name is Freeman known to buried in Pine Grove Cemetery.

• • • • • •

Linwood Lowden said in his 1993 history of Windsor that that town’s early settlers included one Black family, who apparently did not stay long. William Swain, from Pittston, acquired a lot in the south part of town in 1803, although Lowden wrote that he had settled there before the area was surveyed in 1802.

The lot was on Hunts Meadow Road, which runs southwest from the intersection of Routes 17 and 32. Lowden wrote that a hill on the road “where Dan Wilson built his home (and lived until recently) was once known as Swain Hill.”

On Aug. 7, 1799, Swain and Mehitable “Hitty” Griffin filed marriage intentions in Hallowell; Lowden assumed they followed through. Swain sold his lot on Feb. 27, 1804, and “apparently returned to Pittston,” Lowden wrote.

Kingsbury, in his chapter on Windsor, wrote that “the first negro who came into the town” was named George Brown. He worked for James Wingate, who came from the Bath area and established a farm in South Windsor, where in 1892 his grandson, also James Wingate, lived.

Brown evidently died in Windsor, because Kingsbury wrote, “His body lies under the pines on land owned by Mrs. Townsend.”

Unfortunately (and not untypically), Kingsbury gave no dates, though the context suggests Brown came to Windsor before 1820; nor did he say whether Brown came with Wingate or went into Wingate’s service after each arrived separately.

• • • • • •

The Seco family, some of whose members in China were mentioned in the April 14 issue of The Town Line, scattered into many other Maine towns, reportedly including Vassalboro, Windsor, Winslow and Palmyra, and some moved out of state.

Price and Talbot cite Vassalboro librarian and historian Elizabeth “Betty” Taylor’s story with additional information about William and Almira Seco’s son, Charles L. (March 18, 1830 – about July 12, 1916), when he lived in Winslow.

He was a “respected lumberman and river driver,” who helped build a bridge that he predicted would fall down. It did; and “the engineer who had ignored Seco’s warning asked to have Seco fired. The construction boss refused and said, ‘I don’t see how I can; he is one of my best men.'”

Charles L., according to an on-line genealogy, was born in Fairfield. The 1850 census listed him in Kingfield, Maine. His first wife, Eliza Sewall, was born in China about 1829; the genealogy says they were married in Boston, Massachusetts, on Sept, 19, 1852.

Their only child is listed as John T. Seco, born about 1857 in an unspecified Maine town. He apparently spent his adult life in New Haven, Connecticut.

Eliza died Dec. 13, 1863, and on Jan. 14, 1865, Charles L. married his second wife, Olive Williams (born about 1836), in Winslow. Their children were Eliza May (born in Maine in 1867) who had moved to Massachusetts by 1891, and Charles E. (born in Maine about 1871, died Dec. 20, 1919, in Augusta).

Eliza May was in Chelsea, Massachusetts, when she married for the first time, on Nov. 25, 1891, to John Eatman from New Brunswick. On June 27, 1900, she married again, to Edward William Boston from the British West Indies.

On June 26, 1899, Charles E. married a French-Canadian woman from Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, Harriett “Hattie” Huding Luddlen, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. (Did he meet her through his sister’s first husband?) By the 1900 census, the couple were in Winslow; Charles E. was described as a boilermaker.

Hattie Seco died May 20, 1909, in Winslow; her widower died Dec. 20, 1919, in Augusta.

According to a comment historian Taylor made years ago to this writer, there was a Samuel Seco in Vassalboro, known as Sammy. Residents had a saying, “As black as Sammy Seco.”

In Palmyra, the 1820 census lists a widow named Rachel Seco, and the 1870 census lists Eliza Seco. Palmyra is in Somerset County, north and east of Pittsfield, connected to the Kennebec River Valley by Interstate 95 and the Sheepscot River.

More about Samuel Osborne

Samuel Osborne

Since writing about Osborne for the April 21 issue of The Town Line, your writer has found that he was mentioned several times in the Waterville Mail, Waterville’s weekly newspaper from 1863 to 1906.

Three short articles appeared early in 1896. The first, in the Jan. 10 issue, read: “Sam Osborne of Colby University is wearing a Good Templars’ badge, a very pretty affair made of gold and handsomely engraved. Sam is very proud of it but doesn’t know whom he has to thank for it. All that he knows about it is that it came from a member of the class of ’92 at Colby.”

The second, in the Jan. 31 issue, announced that Osborne was about to get a uniform; he had already been measured for it. The writer commented, “This move, while it is a source of pleasure to all interested in the college, is only in keeping with the example set by other institutions of the kind, in this and in other states. Nearly all have their janitors in uniform.”

Two weeks later, Feb. 14, 1896, the Mail announced: “Janitor Sam Osborne of Colby University appeared this morning in his new uniform, and never looked more happy and contented. The uniform is of dark blue cloth trimmed with silver buttons The coat is a straight front sack, similar in style to the Pullman car porter’s coat. The head-gear is a square-topped, low cap with a straight visor, over which are the words ‘Janitor Colby Univ.’ in silver letters. Altogether it is a neat uniform and is admired by the faculty and students as much as by Sam himself.”

An article in the May 30, 1900, issue commemorated his 35 years as the janitor at Colby. The headline called him “Genial Sam Osborne,” and the writer said that, “Thirty-five years is a long time for a man to work for one concern and give entire satisfaction to all, but Sam has done that for Colby and has won besides, the esteem and regard of more Colby students probably than any one man living.”

After Osborne’s death, the July 6, 1904, issue of The Mail ran a two-column obituary prominently on the left side of the front page.

Main sources

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).
Price, H. H., and Talbot, Gerald E. Maine’s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People 2006.
Whittemore, Rev. Edwin Carey, Centennial History of Waterville 1802-1902 (1902).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Virtual auction to benefit residents of Northern Light Continuing Care, Lakewood

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Northern Light Continuing Care, Lakewood’s beloved May Day Auction is back in virtual form for 2022. It’s easy to participate—bidders can check out auction items and place bids from any internet connected device between May 9 and 13.

Auction items include an Acadian supper for ten at the home of Lakewood ambassador Marie Cormier, a handmade quilt, a weekend at an oceanfront cottage on Round Pond, gift certificates, a golf package, and much more!

“The auction is an annual tradition that our community looks forward to each May,” says Kendall Bailey, MLA, administrator, Continuing Care, Lakewood. “Last year was the first time we held the event virtually and, while we miss being in person, we were pleased that loved ones of Lakewood residents near and far were able to join our community in enjoying this five-day Auction.”

This year, auction proceeds will support the renovation of the long-term care residents’ dining area.

“We all recognize the challenges the pandemic has presented over the last two years. It’s more evident than ever what a critical resource Lakewood is for the state and the May Day Auction is a great way for the community to show its support,” notes Marie Cormier, Lakewood ambassador.

Browse auction items and bid between May 9 and 13 by visiting northernlighthealth.org/lakewoodauction.

Chamber names customer service specialist

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Katelyn Hood

Mid-Maine Chamber of Commerce located in Waterville, Maine, welcomes Katelyn Hood as its new customer service specialist. Katelyn has been named to the position, replacing Patricia Michaud, who retired following nearly eight years with the Chamber.

Hood had served in various accounting, payroll, banking, and human resources positions in the area. Her most recent position was payroll administrator for Klein­schmidt Associates, Inc., where she was responsible for payroll functions and tax reporting.

A graduate of Nokomis Regional High School, in Newport, Katelyn graduated from Kennebec Valley Community College, in Fairfield, with an associate degree in business administration, with a concentration in accounting.

Included in her new duties as customer service specialist will be oversight of new member orientation and new member acquisition, website maintenance, member invoicing and customer service assistance. She will also participate in many of the Chamber’s signature events.

Mid-Maine Chamber President and CEO Kimberly Lindlof said of Hood: “I look forward to having Katelyn on our team. She has a wealth of experience that will prove beneficial in this role. Her understanding of financial programs and reporting, as well as her positive attitude will be welcomed by our board and committee members, as well as our membership in general. The Chamber is also hoping to capitalize on Katelyn’s knowledge of the area. Our team is pleased to welcome her aboard.”

Hood resides in Pittsfield with her son, Finn.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Blacks in Maine – Part 2

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by Mary Grow

Black Kennebec Valley residents

The first two Black men recorded in Augusta, according to Anthony Douin, one of the contributors to H. H. Price and Gerald Talbot’s Maine’s Visible Black History, were “York Bunker and Cuff.” They were in the garrison at Fort Western, built in 1754, “listed as servants and paid as privates.”

As the area near the fort was settled, Douin found limited evidence of Black residents, and no evidence of Black slaves.

He wrote that at the 1776 town meeting, voters approved taxing “Negroes and Mulatto servants at the same rate as apprentices and minors.” And he referred to several Black families mentioned in Hallowell midwife Martha Ballard’s diary; she delivered at least two of their babies.

After Augusta separated from Hallowell in February 1797, Douin wrote that small numbers of Black residents (five in the 1800 Augusta census) worked in “the few occupations opened to Blacks in the nineteenth century – laborer, barber, house servant, waiter, and hostler.”

By 1850, 55 of Augusta’s about 8,000 people were identified as Black, Douin wrote. One was a mill worker, originally from Tennessee, who had married a Maine woman; others were sailors.

(Douin said that Black sailors “played a role in the rich maritime history of the Kennebec River.” Price and Talbot added that in the 1850 census, Maine’s “maritime industries were combined under stevedores, fisherman, stewards, and shipwrights, which represented more than 50 percent of the black population.” The examples they gave suggest that most lived along the coast, from Portland to Machias.)

Maine Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Weston, Jr. (1782-1872; see the Dec. 10, 2020, The Town Line article on chief justices from Augusta) had a Black servant named Lucretia Crossman from 1820 on. “When she died in 1859, she was buried in the Weston Family Tomb at Cony Cemetery,” Douin wrote.

Three Black men left public records that Douin drew on for profiles.

John D. Carter was an outspoken opponent of slavery whose views were radical enough to split the Augusta Baptists into two churches in the spring of 1844. First Baptist parishioners considered slavery a sin and a violation of human rights. Carter and the rest of the Second Baptists went farther, holding that slave-holders could not be church members or ministers. Carter died July 17, 1844; the churches did not “reconcile” until 1849.

(In his 1870 history of Augusta, James North recorded the schism; he named the radical as J. T. Carter and did not mention his race.)

John Eason (May 14, 1776 – 1879) was a Free Will Baptist who helped build the Augusta church building and preached there when there was no regular preacher. Douin wrote that though “unlettered,” he had an excellent memory; he was called “Parson Eason” because of his sermons.

Levi Foye (May 29, 1799 – 1870) owned “one of the most popular restaurants in Augusta,” his Water Street oyster bar, opened around 1830.

A Massachusetts native whose father brought the family to Vassalboro, Foye’s first profession was as a sailor; during the War of 1812, he was a British prisoner in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His restaurant was successful enough that he was able to buy his family a Western Avenue house.

Among Augusta residents Foye was “well respected,” Douin said; but some of the troops who mustered in Augusta during the Civil War were so disrespectful that Foye closed the restaurant.

“An embarrassed Augusta community hosted a farewell party and presented Foye and his family with a very nice silver service,” Douin wrote.

After the war, Foye reopened the restaurant and ran it until his death.

Douin names two Black men from Augusta who served in the Civil War. Jackson Phillips (born in 1842; later in the book called Phillip Jackson) was a cook on the USS Tallapoosa, launched Feb. 17, 1863, a wooden steamer equipped with heavy guns and howitzers for stopping blockade runners and bombarding shore installations.

Adarastus Brown was in the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, a Black unit that “did garrison duty in Louisiana late in the war.”

William Lewis

The later list of Black Civil War veterans in Maine adds two more Navy men, William H. Lewis and William H. Manuel.

Lewis, according to an online source, served on two ships in the Union’s North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Through September 1863 he was on the USS Commodore Perry, a former sidewheel ferry. She patrolled the North Carolina and Virginia coasts from January 1862 to the end of the war, helping capture Confederate ships and coastal towns and cities.

From December 31, 1863, through March 31, 1865, Lewis was on the USS Whitehead, a screw steamer built in 1861 that also patrolled off North Carolina.

Manuel first served in 1863, briefly, in USS Sabine, also in the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. The Sabine was an 1855 sailing frigate that had seen service off Paraguay before becoming one of the first ships to serve in the Civil war, watching the Florida coast.

By Nov. 18, 1863, Manuel had transferred to the USS Niagara, where he stayed until April 1, 1864.

USS Sabine

The Civil War Niagara was the second of that name, built for the Navy in 1855. She had already helped lay the first transatlantic cable in 1857 and 1858; returned Africans rescued from a slave ship to Liberia in 1858; and carried the first Japanese diplomatic delegation to Washington back to Japan in 1860 and 1861. In April 1861 she joined the East Gulf Blockading Squadron off Alabama and Florida.

When northern soldiers came home after the war, Douin wrote that freed slaves who had joined the army sometimes came with them. In Augusta, he said, more than a dozen Black families settled in the area that is now Ganneston Drive (running south off Capitol Street, west of the State House complex); the area was called Nigger Hill.

Douin wrote that their dwellings “were described as log cabins. By 1896 the colony had disappeared, leaving old cellar holes and broken stone fences to mark its existence.”

One former slave, Frederick Brown (1835 – 1919), connected with the 15th Maine when Union forces captured New Orleans. Coming to Maine with a captain from Bath, Brown moved to Augusta and got a job with Governor Samuel Cony’s son-in-law, Joseph H. Manley.

Manley was a close friend of James G. Blaine (see the Aug. 20, 2020, issue of The Town Line for a profile of one of Maine’s most famous politicians), and Brown found a new position as Blaine’s coachman, Douin wrote. Through these connections, he became the Augusta post office janitor when Manley was postmaster and later the State House night watchman, serving for 26 years.

Peter Samuel from Virginia was another former slave, who helped guide fellow slaves into Union-held areas before taking himself to safety. Douin wrote that in Augusta, Samuel married a French-Canadian – his first wife had been sold away from him before the war — and converted to Catholicism. He died June 1, 1904, aged 100, “and is buried in a segregated part of Old St. Mary’s Cemetery.”

The website Find a Grave identifies this cemetery as St. Mary of the Assumption Cemetery on the south side of Winthrop Street. Your writer found the “segregated part” is a strip about 12 feet wide on the extreme eastern edge of the cemetery, between the east fence and a one-lane paved road; the Samuels graves are in a north-south line between two large trees.

Many of the inscriptions have become less legible with time. Most of the dates below are from Find a Grave, which lists seven Samuels/Samuells.

The northernmost marker is a small stone for Anna Samuel, 1885-1886 (not listed by Find a Grave). There is a gap; then a twin headstone for Martha (June 14 – Aug. 17, 1893) and Mara (? 1891 – Aug. 16, 1891); a small stone for Rosie Samuell (1887-1896); another gap; a twin stone for Annie (Aug. 18, 1888 – June 1889) and Edie E. (May 20, 1891 – June 22, 1892); and Peter Samuel’s larger stone.

Find a Grave lists a headstone for Henry Samuell (1885-1886) that your writer did not see. South of Peter Samuel’s stone is one marking the grave of Fred, son of Fred? and Sadie Barton, who died July 27, 1911, aged three months and ? days. Find a Grave lists no Bartons in St. Mary’s Cemetery.

* * * * * *

Samuel Osborne

One of Waterville’s best-known Black residents was Samuel Osborne (1833 – July 1, 1904), janitor at Colby College from 1867 until 1903. Known as “Janitor Sam” and as “Professor” because of his appreciation for education and knowledge of the Colby campus, he has been the subject of many articles and a book, Samuel Osborne, Janitor, by Frederick Padelford (Colby 1896).

An on-line People’s History of Colby College says Osborne was born in slavery on a Virginia plantation. He married a fellow slave, Maria Iverson, before the Civil War. In May 1865, Colonel Stephen Fletcher, Colby 1859 and captain of the 7th Maine, helped him come to Waterville, and Colby President James Champlin helped him get a job in the Maine Central Railroad shops.

Two daughters came with Osborne, and in October 1865 Waterville Baptists raised money for him to return to Virginia for his wife, a third daughter and his father, “who had been a slave for seventy-two years.” The father promptly got the janitor’s job at Colby; when he died in 1867, his son quit the railroad and took over at the college.

The Osbornes had one son and seven daughters. Their son Edward “Eddie” Samuel Osborne entered Colby with the class of 1897, but dropped out and went to work for the railroad.

Price and Talbot wrote that Eddie Osborne was a messenger for 56 years for “what became the Railway Express Agency,…logging a million or more miles.” In 1944 he received the Agency’s first “diamond-studded pin” recognizing 50 years of service.

Samuel and Maria’s daughter, Marion Thompson Osborne (later Matheson), born about 1879, was Colby’s first female Black graduate, Class of 1900. (The first male Black graduate was Adam S. Green, Class of 1887.)

In addition to his extensive Colby responsibilities – “everything from keeping fires burning in all fireplaces to delivering the mail” – Osborne was active in the Waterville Baptist Church and in the Waterville Lodge of Good Templars, the national temperance organization.

Marion Matheson’s 1950 tribute to her father, excerpted in Price and Talbot’s book, includes anecdotes from her father’s life. One is a summary of his 1902 trip to Stockholm, Sweden, as a Good Templars delegate to an international convention. On the voyage over and back, he ate at the ship captain’s table; in Stockholm he was granted permission to sit on the royal throne; and he took a side trip to Scotland to visit former Waterville residents.

When he fell ill, Matheson wrote, college President Charles Lincoln White in his 1904 Baccalaureate address called him, “the Head Janitor whom all had learned to love and respect for his faithfulness and devotion to the interest of the college, of his gentle, warm and confiding nature because he cared for the sick, chided and erring and encouraged all by his simple, pure, and unaffected Christian life.”

The day of his death was “an incredibly sorrowful day for Colby,” the People’s History says. President White was at his bedside until the end. The college bell tolled 71 times. Matheson wrote that his funeral was the first one “held in the Chapel in Memorial Hall, as was his wish.”

An article in the 2018 issue of the Colby Echo, found on line, says Osborne was the subject of “vicious and despicable racism” and was not paid enough to support his family. The author is Alison Levitt, identified on line as the college’s Online & Social Media Editor.

The People’s History does not totally contradict Levitt’s portrait. The author wrote that Osborne “tirelessly endured their [students’] pranks and assaults on his intelligence” – and stood up for them when they got in trouble with faculty or administration members and joined Maria in inviting them for Thanksgiving dinners.

The author agreed that Osborne was not paid generously. In 1896, after 29 years on the job, he earned $480. Meanwhile, the college had grown from three buildings in 1867 to (by 1903 when he retired) seven buildings.

(These buildings were on the old campus by the Kennebec River; the college did not begin the move to Mayflower Hill until the 1930s. The People’s History writer said Colby had only one full-time janitor for “several decades” after Osborne’s retirement.)

Samuel and Maria Osborne and some of their children are buried in the family plot in Waterville’s Pine Grove Cemetery.

Main sources

Price, H. H., and Talbot, Gerald E., Maine’s Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People (2006)

Websites, miscellaneous.

Waterville Rotary Club donates money to improve high school challenges

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MSAD #49 (Lawrence) – from left to right, Dan Bowers, Lawrence HS Principal; Patricia Watts, Assistant Superintendent; Jeff Melanson, President, Waterville Rotary Club.

The Waterville Rotary Club recently donated $500 to four local high schools to provide support to youth who are experiencing homelessness or other challenges that impact their learning and/or engagement in school.  Members of the Club’s Community Services Committee delivered checks in person to each of the schools. These donations dovetail with the club’s focus the past two years on providing resources in the community to address food insecurity and/or lack of access to basic necessities, issues which have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

MSAD #49, in Fairfield, plans to use the funds specifically for food, clothing, or transportation. They may also use some of the funds to purchase sports equipment or materials for students that do not have means to purchase these items to participate in a sport or other activity.

Winslow High School – from left to right, Roger Krause, Waterville Rotary Club; Ms. Jones (JMG teacher) and some of the JMG students who help organize and stock the Raider Closet.  (JMG = Jobs for Maine’s graduates)

Winslow High School will use the funds to support their Raiders Closet.  Non-perishable food and clothes will be purchased, as needed.  In some cases, food-specific gift cards will be provided to families to purchase perishable items.

Messalonskee High School, in Oakland, has an initiative that provides food for families for the weekend and snacks during the school day.  They actively seek additional funds to provide for necessities that many of us take for granted in our daily lives, such as personal hygiene items, clothing, school supplies and food that can be prepared with minimal resources for those in temporary housing.

Messalonskee High School, from left to right, Keith Morin, Assistant Superintendent/Chief Academic Officer; Katelyn Pushard, Waterville Rotary Club; Carl Gartley, Superintendent.

Waterville High School will use the funds to support their school’s Food Pantry.  They may also use some funds to purchase other necessary items for students, such as seasonal clothing.

All the representatives from the various schools expressed a deep appreciation for this donation and the show of support for their most vulnerable students.  The committee members truly enjoyed the opportunity to visit the schools, meet with staff and students, and hear about the ways that our local schools are looking out for their students.

For more information about the Rotary, visit the website at watervillerotary.com.

Waterville High School, from left to right, Michele Prince, Waterville Rotary Club and the four class presidents,  Kate Rice, freshman, Emily Campbell, senior, Brianna Bates, junior, and Gabby St. Peter, sophomore. (contributed photo)

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: Wars – Part 14

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The battleship USS Maine.

by Mary Grow

Mexican & Spanish-American

The wars on which this series has provided information so far began with fighting against the European power that once claimed the United States and continued with the 1861-1865 war between two parts of the United States.

Ongoing were a third category, wars the United States’ founders fought to establish and expand its land area. From their first arrival in the 1600s, Europeans pushed aside the Native Americans, from the eastern seaboard first and the rest of the continent later.

(Consequences of those years persist as Natives reclaim parts of their historic home. See, for example, here in Maine the restoration to the Passamaquoddy tribe of 140 acres of the 150-acre Kuwesuwi Monihq, Pine Island [or White’s Island], in Big Lake.)

Starting with 13 states facing the Atlantic Ocean, the country reached to the Pacific with the 1850 admission of California. Adding Utah in 1896 brought the number of states in the continental United States to 45 by the end of the 19th century. Oklahoma was added in 1907, Arizona and New Mexico in 1912.

Alaska went from a territory to state in January 1959. Hawaii became the 50th state in August of the same year.

Two formally declared wars were part of 19th century growth, one with Mexico (April 25, 1846 – February 2, 1848) that added land in the southwest and one with Spain (April 21 – December 10, 1898) that gave the United States its first overseas territories.

(Liberia, in west Africa, was settled beginning in 1820 by former slaves from the United States, under the auspices of the American Colonization Society [ACS]. The historical consensus is that it was never a United States colony or possession; in fact, Wikipedia says, “The United States government declined to act upon requests from the ACS to make Liberia an American colony or to establish a formal protectorate over Liberia, but it did exercise a ‘moral protectorate’ over Liberia, intervening when threats manifested towards Liberian territorial expansion or sovereignty.” Liberia became an independent country on July 26, 1847.)

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Wikipedia explains that the prelude to the war between the United States and Mexico was the declaration of independence by residents of part of northern Mexico in 1836. The Battle of the Alamo in late February and early March 1836 was part of that struggle.

Mexico did not recognize Texas as an independent republic. The United States (and Britain and France) did. Most Texans, Wikipedia says, were willing to join the United States, and after political maneuvering, Texas became a state on Dec. 29, 1845.

In the spring of 1846, President James Polk sent United States military forces into the new state. Mexican forces resisted, leading to battles in April and May followed by a May 13 United States declaration of war.

A series of battles stretching as far west as present-day California led to United States occupation of major Mexican cities, including in September 1847 Mexico City. The war was officially ended by the Feb. 2, 1848, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico gave up the area that, Wikipedia says, became “the present-day states of California, Nevada, and Utah, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming.”

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The proximate case of the Spanish-American War was the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor on Feb. 15, 1898. Built at the navy yard in Brooklyn, at a cost of almost $4.7 million, and commissioned Sept. 17, 1895, she was the first ship named in honor of the State of Maine.

Wikipedia says the Maine had been sent to protect United States interests as Cubans fought for independence from Spain. Later in 1898, a naval inquiry concluded a bomb had been the cause; but, Wikipedia says, some naval officers suggested instead an internal explosion in a coal bunker. A 1974 re-investigation supported their theory. Wikipedia says the cause of the sinking “remains a subject of debate.”

Meanwhile, however, United States opinion had settled immediately on Spain as the villain. With “Remember the Maine!” as its battle cry, Congress approved a declaration of war on April 21, 1898. Fighting in Cuba and in the Spanish possessions of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines was over by August. On Dec. 10, 1898, the Treaty of Paris ended the war and gave the United States the former Spanish territories.

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The effects of the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War in Maine were slight. Exceptions would be the few families with members who served, who had connections with the affected areas or were otherwise involved on a personal level.

In his history of the State of Maine, Louis Hatch didn’t mention the Mexican War. About the Spanish-American War, he wrote that in response to President William McKinley’s call for volunteers, Maine sent “one regiment of infantry, four batteries of heavy artillery and a signal corps, amounting in all to 1,717 non-commissioned officers and men.”

Other Maine men volunteered, and Portland’s and Bath’s “volunteer naval reserve associations” were “mustered into United States service,” Hatch wrote. The troops assembled in Augusta. He said nothing about casualties.

The 1898 Maine Adjutant General’s report, found on line, has long lists of Kennebec Valley volunteers.

Most local historians omit any mention of either war. Two exceptions are Alma Pierce Robbins, in her Vassalboro history, and General Isaac Bangs, in the military history chapter of Edwin Whittemore’s Waterville history.

Robbins wrote that when the “off and on” Mexican border dispute led to the United States declaration of war in 1846, not many people in Vassalboro cared. “Those who had gone west and those who were ‘tired of farming’ did go,” she wrote.

In the 1890s, as tension with Spain mounted preceding the Spanish-American War, Vassalboro was involved in national military exercises.

“Encampments and ‘war games’ were encouraged everywhere,” Robbins wrote. Massachusetts troops came “to compete with Maine men to demonstrate proficiencies in military techniques, with official sanction.”

Some of the encampments were on Horace Sturgis’ River Road farm. Robbins’ history includes a photograph of then-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt’s mounted Rough Riders in front of Sam Mitchell’s house on the River Road at Riverside in 1897, as they recruited area volunteers.

About the actual war Robbins was silent. But, she said, names of Vassal­boro residents who died in the Spanish-American War and World War I share a bronze plaque on the bridge at North Vassalboro.

The plaque has been moved since Robbins’ history was published in 1971 and is now on the larger of the two stones in the memorial on Main Street, in North Vassalboro. The memorial sits in front of the large building that used to be the North Vassalboro schoolhouse, then the town office and later a health clinic.

The names from 1898 are Prince Bessey, John O. Brown, Alton M. Lord, Andrew Peterson, Agra Pooler (state military re­cords list his name as Ogra), Fred Pooler, Bert J. Priest, Charles H. Priest, Charles H. Simpson, David Simpson and William J. Surman.

Prince Manter Bessey

Robbins erred when she wrote that all these men died in the Spanish-American war; your writer has found post-war information about several of them.

On-line sources say Prince M. Bessey was born Sept. 14, 1879, in China, Maine. On May 17, 1898, he enlisted from Augusta as a private in Battery A, Maine Volunteer Artillery Battalion; he was discharged May 31, 1899, in Savannah, Georgia.

After the war Bessey lived in North Vassalboro from 1907 to 1911. He worked as a salesman in several places, including Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he met and married Nora Smith in 1920. After he retired from Gimbel’s Depart­ment Store in 1948, the couple moved to Nora’s home town, Ceredo, West Virginia, where he died.

Charles Henry Priest was born July 12, 1881, in East Vassalboro, and died June 27, 1960. He is buried in Priest Hill Cemetery.

Peterson and Fred Pooler were privates in Battery A; each was 19 when he enlisted. Both Poolers were reportedly born in Waterville. Ogra or Agra Pooler, who enlisted at 21, was a North Vassalboro resident.

David Simpson, a Waterville native, was 24 when he enlisted. Surman was 27; his birthplace is listed as Dover, England.

Most Battery A men were from Lewiston or Auburn. In addition to those from Vassalboro, an on-line list includes First Lieutenant and Assistant Surgeon Robert J. Martin and Privates Harvey J. Libby, Nathan T. Shaw, of Augusta. Bangs’ chapter in Whittemore’s history gives names of a dozen privates from Waterville in Battery A, including Joseph Butler, who enlisted May 17, 1898, and deserted at Fort Popham July 16, and another deserter named Edward Lessor.

Battery C included 21 more Waterville men and smaller numbers from Augusta and Fairfield.

Bangs added a list of a dozen Waterville men who served in the First Maine Infantry in the Spanish-American War. William J. Surman is one of them. In the Maine Adjutant-General’s Report for the year 1901, Ogra Pooler, Charles H. Priest and William J. Surman are listed among Company D men who received $22 each in “Extra Pay of Maine Volunteers.”

The war with Spain continued until 1902 in what some historians call the Philippine-American War, as the United States consolidated its power over those islands. It was an appropriate introduction to the 20th – and 21st – centuries, as one country or ideology after another used – and uses – force against others.

Update from Brown Memorial Library in Clinton

The Dec. 2, 2021, article in this series talked about the Brown Memorial Library in Clinton, named in honor of William Wentworth Brown (April 19, 1821 – Oct. 22, 1911). The article said that Brown gave the library a portrait of himself by Frederic (or Frederick) Porter Vinton (Jan. 29, 1846 – May 19, 1911); in November 2021, the portrait had been sent away for cleaning.

William Wentworth Brown

It is now back on the wall, and assistant library director Cindy Lowell says she and Director Cheryl Dickey-Whitish are very pleased. Mr. Brown is “holding a pair of red gloves you couldn’t even see before,” she said. The head of his cane is visible and his hair and beard have turned from salt-and-pepper to almost pure white.

The following information is copied from the March-April 2022 issue of the Clinton Community Newsletter.

“The Trustees of the Brown Memorial Library recently had Mr. Brown’s very large 100-year-old portrait sent to a professional art restoration company for cleaning. Last week the portrait was returned to its place of honor displaying new details that were previously hidden by layers of coal dust!”

The newsletter has a color picture of the portrait and invites area residents to stop in to see it, an invitation Lowell seconds.

Brown Memorial Library is at 53 Railroad Street, in Clinton, on the east side of the street a block north of Main Street (Route 100).

Main sources

Hatch, Louis Clinton, ed., Maine: A History 1919 ((facsimile, 1974)
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

Northern Light Sebasticook Valley Hospital partners with Healthy Living for ME

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Healthy Living for ME welcomes Northern Light Sebasticook Valley Hospital as a community provider in the statewide network.

As a community healthcare provider, Sebasticook Valley Hospital, in Pittsfield, will be offering workshops in the area of chronic disease self-management education and caregiver support. These evidence-based workshops are free to participants and designed to help them learn and build the skills they need to manage a number of chronic/ongoing health conditions and/or their unique caregiver situation. The workshops may be offered in-person, virtually, or by telephone.

In advance of the workshops’ launch through Sebasticook Valley Hospital, staff from the hospital are participating in leader trainings through Healthy Living for ME this spring.

“Joining the Healthy Living for ME network will help us bring more resources to our community that support Maine caregivers and help Mainers manage chronic conditions and improve their overall health and wellness. As a healthcare provider in the community, we are committed to helping build a healthier future for Maine,” said Sherry Tardy, Director of Community Health for the Pittsfield hospital. “We look forward to launching these workshops soon!”

“We’re glad to have Sebasticook Valley Hospital join us as a partner. This partnership will help to expand access to our workshops in the Sebasticook Valley region of central Maine, giving more Mainers the tools they need to manage their own ongoing health issues or to get the support and skills to help them as caregivers,” said Jen Paquet, Training Manager of Healthy Living for ME.

Healthy Living for ME supports Sebasticook Valley Hospital and other community providers through shared funding streams, including grants through the Administration for Community Living. The funding supports leader trainings, materials for programs, and overall coordination for the effective delivery of workshops in the community.

To learn more about Healthy Living for ME and our resources and programs, visit www.healthylivingforme.org, call 1-800-620-6036, or email info@healthylivingforme.org.

If your organization is interested in collaborating with Healthy Living for ME, or if you are an individual interested in volunteering with Healthy Living for ME, we invite you to contact info@healthylivingforme.org.

Maine DEP awards new round of stream crossing grants

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photo: Maine DEP

Maine DEP’s Municipal Stream Crossing Grant Program provides grants that match local funding for the upgrade of culverts at stream crossings on municipal roads. Projects funded through this program will benefit public infrastructure and safety by replacing failing culverts that are at risk of complete washout or collapse; reduce flooding and increase resiliency with the installation or larger, higher capacity and longer-lived crossings, benefit fish and wildlife by opening and reconnecting stream habitat fragmented by undersized and impassable culverts, and represent a cost-effective and efficient investment based on planning, detail, and local matching funds committed to the project.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) received 44 applications to review with a total over $5.3 million dollars in funding requests. Thirty-four stream crossing projects funded this round will result in new or improved fish passage to nearly 130 miles of streams statewide, and result in less flooding and transportation resilience.

Maine DEP has announced funds for the following central Maine communities:

Burnham – Pond Rd., $125,000; Clinton – True Road, $125,000; Cornville, Molunkus Rd., $125,000; Pittston, Blodgett Rd., $125,000; Skowhegan, Steward Hill Rd., $125,000; and Starks, Locke Hill Rd., $125,000.

For more information including examples of successful applications and the master score sheet for this round please visit Maine DEP’s website: https://www.maine.gov/dep/land/grants/stream-crossing-upgrade.html.

Maine K-12 students invited to submit short films

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The 44th annual Maine Student Film + Video Festival (MSFVF) is currently accepting submissions until June 15. All Maine students grades K-12 are eligible to enter for free. Films will be judged by category: Narrative, Documentary, and Creative (animated, experimental, etc.), and by age group: Grades K-5; Grades 6-8; Grades 9-12.

Students can submit their work at MaineStudentFilm.org/Festival.

A free-to-attend screening and awards ceremony will take place at Railroad Square Cinema on Saturday, July 16, during the Maine International Film Festival. The grand prize for best film of MSFVF is a $500 award, generously sponsored by Maine Public.

“Young filmmakers produce some of the most inspired, genuine work we’ve seen,” says Julia Dunlavey, assistant executive director of the Maine Film Center. “Students who participate in the festival have gone on to become professional filmmakers with their work screened at the Maine International Film Festival.”

About the Maine Film Center

The Maine Film Center (MFC) brings world-class independent film to Central Maine through Railroad Square Cinema, the only Sundance Art House Project cinema in Maine; the annual Maine International Film Festival, a 10-day celebration that attracts filmmakers and film aficionados from around the world.

By delivering impactful, accessible film exhibition and education programs. MFC believes that art and culture have the power to enrich lives, strengthen community bonds, and serve as an economic engine. MFC is a division of Waterville Creates. For more information, visit MaineFilmCenter.org.