ANDROSCOGGIN HISTORY

In this sesquicentennial year of Androscoggin County, we take note of the first election of county officers. When the county was created in 1854, Governor William G. Crosby, a Whig, appointed the following:

Treasurer James Goff Jr.

Judge of Probate Nahum Morrill

Sheriff Charles Clark

County Attorney Charles W. Goddard

Clerk of Courts Cyrus Knapp

County Commissioners Stephen H. Read

Job Chase

Emery S. Warren

Although popular election of Judge and Register of Probate, Sheriff, and Register of Deeds was yet to come in Maine, the other offices were to be filled in the election of September 1854.

Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 regarding the potential expansion of slavery was widely condemned in the North and stimulated party realignment that ultimately led to the emergence of the Republican Party. This ferment was reflected in the nominating process in this county.

Party leaders made nominations in conventions, for this was before the adoption of the primary. The local Whig Party held its nominating convention at Union Hall in Lewiston in mid-August. A nominating committee recommended the following slate (“Whig Convention,” Lew. Falls J., 19 Aug. 1854):

County Attorney Charles W. Goddard

Clerk of Courts J. W. Perkins

Treasurer William Kilbourne

County Commissioners Stephen H. Read

Job Chase

Isaac S. Small

A conference committee then was appointed to report this slate to the Free Soil Party convention that was being held concurrently. However, that convention voted not to accept the report and voted to notify the Whig convention accordingly. After the Free Soil conference committee reported this to the Whigs, the latter nominated “the present board of county officers with the exception of the Treasurer.” For that position, they named Free Soiler Jacob Herrick.

The Free Soil convention then nominated two Whigs and four Free Soilers (“Free Soil Convention,” Lew. Falls J., 19 Aug. 1854):

County Attorney Charles W. Goddard (W)

Clerk of Courts Cyrus Knapp (FS)

Treasurer Jacob Herrick (FS)

County Commissioners Isaac S. Small (W)

______ Cousens (FS)

James H. Eveleth (FS)

The party conventions adjourned to meet at a later time to finalize their slates. When the Whigs reconvened, they substituted Emery S. Warren for Small as a county commissioner candidate. This left Small only on the Free Soil slate. In addition, they nominated Josiah Pulsifer in place of Perkins for Clerk of Courts and Jesse Hayes in place of Herrick (who had earlier replaced Kilbourne) for Treasurer. It is probable that these substitutions were the results of informal negotiations with Free Soil leaders.

Finally, a conference of Free Soil and Whig leaders endorsed a “union ticket” of “anti-Nebraska” candidates that both sides could support. These were Small, Read, and Chase for County Commission; and Goddard, Pulsifer, and Hayes for Attorney, Clerk, and Treasurer, respectively (“A Conference,“ Lew. Falls J., 9 Sept. 1854). All except Small were the official Whig nominees, but several presumably received their nominations after consultation with the Free Soilers.

Meanwhile the Democratic Party held its convention on August 30, also at Union Hall, and nominated the following (“Democratic County Con[v]ention,” Lew. Falls J., 2 Sept. 1854):

County Attorney Calvin Record

Clerk of Courts George H. Merrill

Treasurer James Goff Jr.

County Commissioners Benjamin Waterhouse

Ajalon Dillingham

John Lombard

The following are the unofficial returns of the election as reported in the Lewiston Falls Journal of 23 September 1854:

Whig Democrat Free Soil

County Attorney Goddard 2794 Record 1781

Clerk of Courts Pulsifer 2442 Merrill 1627 Knapp 428

Treasurer Hayes 2381 Goff 1960 Herrick 157

County Com. Reed 2022 Waterhouse 2069 Small 2237

Chase 2542 Dillingham 1985 Cousens 73

Warren 336 Lombard 1763 Eveleth 351

The winners were the union slate except that Democrat Waterhouse edged incumbent chairman Stephen Reed for the third seat on the Commission. The only incumbents to win election were County Attorney Goddard and Commissioner Chase. Although the Whigs had the most to celebrate, all three parties each claimed a seat on the first popularly elected County Commission of Androscoggin County. Moreover, the Whigs had relied on a coalition with the Free Soil Party. By the next year, the two parties would merge as the new Republican Party.

THE FIRST PARTY COUNTY COMMITTEES

The county committees are important organizations for the operation of the political parties. Although today these committees are relatively large and represent each of the towns, in 1854 travel was more difficult, so the committees were more like today’s executive committees that can meet expeditiously to make decisions. In 1854 county conventions were the representative bodies to set major policy and to nominate candidates for county office. The members of the first Androscoggin County party committees chosen at the first Androscoggin County conventions are listed below:

Whig Party (towns not given)

G. Lane, S. W. Shaw, James Bryant, S. B. Holt

Democratic Party

William R. Frye of Lewiston

(not to be confused with William P. Frye)

Isaac Strickland of Livermore

S. L. Howard of Leeds

Free Soil Party

F. B. Leonard of Leeds

Moses Hanscom of Durham

Nathaniel Norcross of Livermore

J. M. Frye of Lewiston

William B. Merrill of Auburn

Source: Lewiston Falls Journal, 19 Aug. 1854 and 2 Sept. 1854.

HISTORY BOOKS

Our books are available! Alnôbak: A Story of Indigenous People in Androscoggin County, by Canyon Wolf, aka Nancy Lecompte, and Androscoggin County, Maine: A Pictorial Sesquicentennial History, 1854 – 2004, edited by Michael C. Lord & W. Dennis Stires. $45 the set, or $20 & $30 each, respectively, plus Sales Tax of $2.25, 1.00, or 1.50. Please add $5 S&H for mail order. Available at the Society, the Book Burrow, Mr. Paperback, Rÿsen, Republic Jewelry, and many town offices. Please browse these two web pages for the books:

http://www.avcnet.org/ne-do-ba/ad_book1.html

http://www.avcnet.org/ne-do-ba/ad_book2.html

ELECTION OF OFFICERS

At the annual meeting held 25 May 2004, we elected the following officers:

President - David C. Young

Vice President - Barbara V. Randall

Executive Secretary - Michael C. Lord

Recording Secretary - Paul F. Martz

Membership Secretary - Bruce A. Hall

Treasurer - Michael G. Spaulding

Newsletter Editor - Douglas I. Hodgkin

Attorney - Richard L. Trafton

Directors - Mary H. Bussell, Franklin H. Goss, Bernice Y. Hodgkin, Edward C. Hodgkin, Douglas I. Hodgkin, Paul F. Martz, Mary M. Riley, Lois F. Rousseau, Michael G. Spaulding, W. Dennis Stires, Susan F. Sturgis, Gordon V. Windle, Elizabeth K. Young.

BRIDGE NEWS, 24 AUGUST 1861

The following are copied from Lewiston Daily Evening Journal, 24 August 1861, p. 3:

The R. R. Extension.

The bridge over the Gully Brook [near Androscoggin Mill], which was injured a week or two since, has been undergoing repairs, and as we understand, will be finished to-night. The embankment has been removed from the shore side, and another abutment constructed below, the bridge being extended over it, so that it is more than twice its original length. Trains of freight have been drawn over the road to this place within the past week. An engine and platform cars are grading at present just below the gully. An engine house is in construction below the Gully Bridge. Its dimensions are 51 feet by 101, hight [sic], 20 feet. It will be a substantially built structure. [This is part of the construction of a railroad track from Brunswick to Main Street, Lewiston.]

In the Canal.

A man who was a little too much “on the beer” to walk straight, undertook to get himself across the R. R. bridge over the cross canal about six o’clock Friday night. He had not got far before he discovered that the road was too narrow, and being unable to keep his position, pitched head foremost into the water below. – No injury was done the fellow except giving him a good ducking.

SOCIETY STATISTICS

Fiscal Year 2003-04 (June 1^st to May 31^st) business totals are as follows: Telephone calls – 871; Museum visits – 256; Library visits – 402; Correspondence – 909; Programs sent – 180; Meeting attendance – 153; Meeting Notices sent – 753; Board & Committee Meeting attendance – 63; Newsletters sent – 513+-; Great Falls Balloon Festival attendance – 14; Annual Dinner attendance – 32; Androscoggin Round Table Mtg. attendance – 70 (This includes book and sales committee meetings); 150^th Books Publicity – 488; Emails – 2,413.

GOINGS-ON AT THE SOCIETY

by Michael Lord, Executive Secretary

On June 4, 2004, we were visited by a production team from Maine PBS. They used our large museum to interview Dr. Alan Taylor, author of Liberty Men and Great Proprietors. He will be seen on one or more episodes of Home: The Story of Maine in May 2005.

We are always looking for volunteers at the AHS! If you would like to organize, clean, or do other things here at the Society, then please contact your Executive Secretary at the Society. Thank you.

ACQUISITIONS. We have acquired the following items during the past few months:

Donations

• Miscellaneous personal papers of Helen Morrison, deceased member.

• Decades (ca. 1930s to 1950s) of newspaper clippings from Mabel Rush of Livermore, deceased, via Dennis Stires.

• Paper ephemera, ca. 1900, from Stan DeOrsey.

• Roger & Pepin family photographs of Lewiston, ca. 1900, by Mary Begin.

• Elm House Register, 1901-1906, by Douglas I. Hodgkin.

• Sheet music, Le Montagnard LTE”E, Lewiston, 1925, by John White of Kennebunk.

• Flowers in Footsteps, Court Street Baptist Church sermons by the Rev. Fred M. Preble, D.D., 1916, printed by Lewiston Journal, donated by Douglas I. Hodgkin.

• George Hall and His Descendants, 1603-1669, by Robert Leo Hall, 1998, donated by Douglas A. Hall of Durham.

• Eight local postcards, ca. early 20^th Century, by Nancy Lecompte of Lewiston.

• Hill Crest Hospital, Auburn, postcard, ca. 1920, by Brick Store Museum, Kennebunk.

• Two Ralph Skinner radio transcripts on churches from 1964, by anonymous.

• Androscoggin County Annual Report, 1933, by the county.

• P. T. Barnum newspaper clipping, no date, by Robert Allen of Lewiston.

• Two small photographs of Lewiston City Hall, ca. 1900, by the Muskie Archives.

• 11^th Census of the U.S., partly used as a scrapbook, ca. 1890, by Eric Edmunds of Auburn.

• Stinson family photos, by Frances Stinson of Woolwich.

• Paper ephemera from Turner, ca. 1790 – 1901, by Dorothy Kay of Sudbury, MA.

• Pine Tree (Gray – New Gloucester) Telephone book, 1996, by Michael Lord of Auburn.

• Bernard family photographs, by Diane Bernard.

• Auburn Spring Hotel booklet of 1891 & Haskell Implement billhead, by Norman Rose of Auburn.

• Two books of poetry by Pearl Tibbetts Sawyer, Driftwood Chips, 2002, and Don’t Look Back, 2003.

• Two files – Dingley House & W.F. White Miniatures, by Dennis Stires of Livermore.

• The Grange at Crowley’s Junction, 2003, by author Douglas I. Hodgkin of Lewiston. It is part of the Historic Lewiston series published by the Lewiston Historic Commission.

• First National Bank of Auburn calendar, 1905, by Michael Babin.

• Oak Hill Cemetery deed to lot #539, w/o tax stamp, dated 1870, by the Gray Historical Society.

• Newspaper clippings of the 1953 Flood, Elm Hotel Christmas menu of 1949, and a Bates Manufacturing Centennial booklet of 1950.

• Calvary United Methodist Church Centennial booklet, 2003, by David Rand.

• The War of the Nations Portfolio, (World War I) pub. by the New York Times, 1919, by Jediah L. Keene.

• Unfinished manuscript copy of Three for All – When “Interfaith” Became More Than a Word, written 1943 – 52, by Rev. Albert C. Niles of the First Universalist Church of Auburn. Given by his daughter Ann N. Mack of Dolgeville, NY.

• Slides of the interior and exterior of the Libbey Mill and the windows of St. Joseph’s church, ca. 1980s, both in Lewiston, given by Bruce Covington of same.

• Two bags of unknown family photos of Lewiston, bought at a yard sale, and given by Christine Grey of South Portland.

• Yearbooks of Mid-State College and its predecessors, 1940s to 2000s, (over two boxes) given by Sally Holt on behalf of the Auburn Public Library.

• Three boxes of photographs and ephemera of Mid-State College of Auburn, given by the receivers of same.

• Scrapbooks and partial uniform of Auburn Police Chief Alton E. Savage, and similar items, and Polister’s store autograph book, given by his daughter Joyce Savage Snay of Bath, MI.

• Scan of photograph of horse & buggy of L.L. Bean Pant Store, 74 Main St., Auburn, ca. 1905, given by Ruth Porter, Corporate Art & Archives, L.L. Bean, Freeport. (We cannot copy this to anyone else, as per their request.)

• 15 boxes of real estate appraisals from this area, by Bertrand Berube of Lewiston. This we plan to have sorted by our Bates College intern this summer. Things from other areas will be de-accessioned to relevant historical societies.

• One Maine State quarter, dated 2003-P, in a plastic holder, by Michael Lord.

Purchases

• Androscoggin Resource Guide, 2004, by the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce of Lewiston. A benefit of our membership.

• Mollyockett, by Pat Stewart, pub. by Twin Lights Publishers, Rockport, MA, 2003.

“FIRST CAR TO SABATIS” [sic]

The Sabatis line of the Lewiston, Bath and Brunswick electric road is sufficiently completed that a car passed over the road to within two miles of Sabatis Friday forenoon.

At eleven o’clock a gravel car left the head of Lisbon street with the following men on board, Supt. Farr acting as motorman and E. P. Totman, son of Director Totman of Fairfield, handling the trolley line: General Manager A. G. Gerald of Fairfield; Contractor B. M. Dix- [line missing from article] Sawyer, E. A. Mitchell, Frank Stairbird [sic] and a Journal reporter.

When the car left the old track and struck the new rails hardly any difference could be seen in the two roadbeds, so smoothly do the new rails carry a car. Everything was going smoothly and Supt. Farr said, “Boys, do you want a fast ride?” All on board allowed they did, and the superintendent let out another link of manufactured lightning.

The car fairly flew down some of those long declines. People rushed to the windows to see the first car over the course. At the cross road which leads to Wales an old gentleman who was riding in Lewiston caught sight of the newly constructed gravel car with its large black feed pipe, which resembles the smokestack of a Spanish cruiser, coming toward him like the wind. The old gentleman gave one glance at the odd-looking object with its crew, and quickly turned his horse and ran him for life toward the Wales Road. He crossed the track, and after driving about 100 yards out on top of a hill, stopped, stood bolt upright and watched the car out of sight.

Whether he was himself alarmed or was afraid that his horse would be is not for the writer to say but it certainly was a queer sight.

[Reproduced from Lewiston Evening Journal, 15 July 1898, 8.]

FIRST CAR TO BATH

The electric road got there Sunday!

At half-past nine o’clock one of the long cars from Lewiston sailed down Lisbon Street carrying General Manager Amos F. Gerald, Treasurer I. C. Libby and Director S. A. Nye of Fairfield.

When the car left the steel of the New Auburn loop, and swung clear and free along the level stretch of lower Lisbon street, people appreciated that the first car was on its way to Bath, and ran out of the houses to wave a cheery welcome to it.

There was a momentary stop at the new power house and transformer on the corner of Willow and Lisbon street near the Bleachery office, and the car was on its way up the hill to the top of the Ham farm [near South Avenue], where in the distance could be seen the White Mountains, the Oxford Hills, and nearer the terraced sides of Auburn heights, and the cities at our feet waking from their Sunday morning nap and getting ready for meetin’. The trolley hit the rails handsomely, and the car shot along ahead of the wind, with the exhilarating speed of an express train, or what seemed like it. Everywhere people came out in their yards, and on their lawns to cheer the first car. Mr. Libby always gallant and enthusiastic, and Mr. Gerald, handsome and smiling, were kept busy answering the salutes of the farmers along the way. Off on the Garcelon Ferry road a farmer came out in the orchard overlooking the valley and fired a salute with a rusty shot gun that hadn’t smelt powder for sixty years or more. [How did the reporter know this?]

The trolley answered with its clanging gong. A comfortable looking matron on a side hill farm came out from her dish washing in the kitchen and snatching a white petticoat from the clothesline, waved it vigorously above her head.

At the first Maine Central crossing below the city the bridge rises sharply, goes up over the track at a steep grade turns to an “S” and down again. The bridge is of the finest steel, is wide at the bottom, and as strong as the rock-ribbed hills. The railroad commissioners pronounced it “the finest trestle in the country,” said Mr. Libby, “and they will so give it in their report.”

We went up over it with the swing and dash of the merry-go-round, and toboggan coasting isn’t in it for a second with this chute, when the car sweeps down the ‘tother slope and spins along through the sweet-scented woods in the edge of Crowleys.

[Reproduced from “Imperial Lewiston!” Lewiston Evening Journal, 5 September 1898, 12.]