Some Knights of the Road (History on Post Road & Maine Highway system etc 1790-1850) Sprague's Journal of Maine History Vol. 6 May, June, July 1918 No. 1 page 10-17 Some Knights of the Road By CHARLES S. WATERMAN. It is a axiom with Boards of Trade and Chambers of Commerce that transportation facilities make a town; and looking back into the past would indicate the slogan is not of recent, origin. A party of pioneers can make a settlement, but it takes years of settlement with the slow accumulation of public utilities to make a town. The original purposes for which towns were incorporated were to support the unfortunate poor, to introduce and 'maintain schools, and to build and maintain roads. The first is necessary in any humane community and the second an investment for good citizenship; but the third is, perhaps, the most valuable of the three, for it presents a social and business opportunity for visiting one's neighbors to observe and absorb advance ideas which mean community progress. That this is true is easily confirmed in any community which has been sidetracked by reason of location from the great arteries of traffic and travel. They become stagnant. The look backward discloses the fact that in what is now the State of Maine there was a time when there were no roads. The first settlers picked their way on foot through forest trails to the land they "took up," and for many years thereafter retraced them on foot or on horseback to older settlements which had become community centers. As more land was cleared, more cattle could be kept. To clear land on any extended scale, the ox became a necessity; so the trails were widened into logging -roads. With these slow animals settlers did such traveling as they were obliged to do. In the earlier days, there were no mails, and consequently little reading. As most of the settlers came from Massachusetts, their theocratic opinions of that commonwealth were made manifest in most households by the presence of a Bible. Without mails there could be no newspapers and letter writing was nearly a lost art among early settlers. On rare occasions letters were exchanged, but they were likely to remain in outpost post offices for days and weeks and many times months before someone from the community to which they were addressed arrived and called for such mail as belonged to himself or neighbors. When the United States set up housekeeping and took her first census in 1790, she found but a single post road within the District of Maine running along the Atlantic shore eastward from Boston, as far as Wiscasset, and but two post offices, one at Portland and the other at Wiscasset. The latter office was established the very year the census was taken, and the first postriders from Portland to Wiscasset were John Smith Foye and Samuel Seavey. The post route between Boston and Portland had been estab- lished in 1775. William Wescott was the first mail carrier. He traveled sometimes on foot and sometimes on horseback at first, but later on horseback altogether. It was intended to be a weekly service but was in fact very irregular. A coach was put on as far as Portland in 1787. It is related in McLellan's History of the Town of Gorham, that the first chaise to travel east of Saco was in 1777 when Stephen Gorham and wife visited relatives in Buxton. As immigrants became more firmly settled in their wilderness homes, and began to exchange their log cabins for frame houses the desire for roads became more pronounced. The newly made plantations and towns confiscated the logging roads running from house to house, dug out the stumps and stones, filled up the mud holes, and made culverts and bridges across watercourses. There was a demand for trunk lines running through strings of towns. connecting them with seaports. That they should be as direct as possible, required they should be laid out by some power not interested in single towns but in the settlements as a whole; so this power was first delegated to the courts. In the western part of the District, all roads centered in Portland, then as now the principal seaport; and in that day people depended more on the sea for transportation and sustenance. than at present. The opening of communication between seaport and interior awakened sleeping memories of settlers to the conventions of older communities. They wanted to hear from relatives in longer settled parts of the colonies, and from the world in general, so they brushed up their handwriting and called for a postal service. The first services in this line were post riders who traveled on horseback (as most of the roads were yet unfit for vehicles) with saddlebags in which to stow away mail for the different post offices. They also maintained a private delivery of newspapers to patrons along the route, for Portland had discovered the new life of her neighbors and established a newspaper (The Falmouth Gazette in 1785). Each rider carried a long tin horn upon which he blew a blast when approaching either a post office or private patron. In 1793 a highway was laid out running from Portland through the towns of Gray, New Gloucester, Greene, Monmouth, Winthrop and Hallowell to Augusta, and from that settlement through Pitts- ton and Pownalboro to Wiscasset. The next year William Blossom went on the route as post rider, making weekly trips. The first coach was put on this line in 1866. In 1799,(?) a route was laid out from Portland to Bridgton. In 1802 this route was extended to Waterford. Jacob Howe was the rider, and he traveled through the following towns: From Port- land to Gorham, Standish, Raymond and Bridgton to Waterford, and returning through Norway, Paris, Hebron, Poland, New Glou- cester. and Gray. The local post office followed the introduction of the post rider, and the extension of routes is recorded quite accurately by the dates of which local offices were established in the various towns. The office in Augusta was established in 1794; Greene in 1796; Lewiston in 1799; Waterford in 1800; Paris, Norway and Poland in 1801. The perfection attained by highways is also shown quite accu- rately by the history of postal routes. The riders generally traveled horseback for a decade or two after the routes were established. In 1812 William Sawin, who was on the Waterford route, adver- tised that he would travel with a light wagon and carry passengers when asked to do so in advance. In 1820 he put on a four-horse coach. The roads by that time had attained a degree of perfec- tion sufficient to accommodate such vehicles; also the people had began to travel to an extent warranting the introduction of a coach. Beside carrying mail and passengers each driver did quite an express business. Mail carriers were advance agents of progress in more ways than one. Not only did they introduce the local postoffice, but the local store as well. The postoffice was the center of a com- munity, and it was but a step from delivering mail to supplying merchandise; so the postoffice became the store as well, goods being received largely via the mail coach. One can readily believe the first merchants were peddlers, travel- ing on horseback with saddlebags. Records of such callings are not numerous but some have come down to us. For instance, Mark Andrews was the first merchant of Turner, going from house to house with saddlebags. In 1793 he had such things in his stock as spelling-books, mouse traps, jewsharps, fish-hooks, jack-knives and tacks. As stores increased in size and number, merchandise became too bulky for transportation on stage coaches and freight services were introduced. There was another reason for the special freight ser- vice. In early days money was not plenty and barter was an im- portant element of trade. There was, therefore, merchandise to transport not only from but to seaports, consequently in about the third decade of the nineteenth century the freight wagon became an established institution. As the pay was unusually large for the times, ambitious young men sought employment in either the coach or freight service. It was the writer's good fortune to know some of these drivers in their later days and 'his early ones, espe- cially freight drivers; and as they have not been immortalized in- song and story to such an extent as coach drivers, some attention will be paid to them here. Many merchants in interior towns maintained their own freight service. The motive power, generally was horse-flesh. The wagon,,; were large and roomy and, when loaded, required from four to eight horses to haul them. Not only did these teams transport merchandise for the firms owning them, but for smaller merchants along the way. From Zadoc Long's diary, of the date of January 7, 1835, one learns that the father of Governor John D. Long, who was a merchant in Buckfield at that time, sent four tons of dried apple to Portland, receiving four and one-half cents a pound for the product. At the time of the opening of roads, manufacturing had begun in a small way, and the products of mills, kilns and shops found way to Portland by these conveyances. Some of the smaller products went by the regular freight wagons, but lumbermen generally maintained teams of their own. 'There is evidence to believe that a large portion of the lumber wagons were hauled by oxen. it seems that the sons of Jacob Stevens, who settled in Turner in 17&), built a saw mill in Auburn, (or what was known at that time as Bakerstown or Poland) still known as Stevens' Mills, and manu- factured lumber for the domestic and export trade. The latter was hauled to Portland with oxen according to the story told the writer in his younger days by John Stevens, then an old man, who had been one of the drivers. The distance was thirty-six miles. Mr. Stevens said this means of transportation was not uncommon before 1850. Another freight driver, better known to the writer than any other, Samuel B. Waterman, of Oxford, took up this occupation before he was twenty years old. First he drove a freight wagon from West Minot to Portland, then from Buckfield to that seaport. At the latter place he was in the employ of Ephraim Atwood, an old time merchant of Buckfield. His wagon was hauled by eight horses. He had unusual skill in training horses, and used no reins in guiding his animals, they obeying his vocal commands much as oxen do. One of Mr. Waterman's fellow drivers, William Stone, was a dashy fellow and a general favorite with the servants around hotels or "tarvans," as they were then called, at which they stopped for meals or lodgings. A brief description of him will show the typical teamster of that day. He was a dandy in dress, wearing "store clothes" in an age when the general dress was homespun. In cold weather he wore a thick overcoat of fancy tailoring, and protected his hands at all times with gloves. Even when caring for his horses he affected style by covering and protecting his clothes with a long frock, gathered in at the waist by a red sash. The driver of that day was a marked man. He was a traveler when most people remained at home. He saw and heard things un- known to rural inhabitants. He almost always developed into a good story-teller and was welcomed at barroom firesides on that account. If he possessed imagination he could rival Munchausen in this art, for people who knew little of the outside world could dispute nothing however improbable, and there was always a temp- tation to see how much they would swallow. In short, the stage and freight driver of that day in Maine occupied the same position in social life his western counterpart did a generation or two later. Mark Twain's description of the latter product in "Roughing It" can well apply to the earlier members of the craft in Maine. He says: The stage driver was a hero-a great shining dignitary-the world's favor- ite son-the envy of the people-the observed of nations. When they speak to him, they receive his insolent silence meekly, as being the proper conduct of so great a man; when he opens his lips they hang on his words with admiration. In the older days, shipmasters became merchants, owning their own vessels, and buying and selling their own cargoes. Such men were Captains Joseph Decker and Samuel Clough, of Wiscasset, and Captain William Ladd, of Minot. In like manner freight drivers became inland merchants, buying the freight they carried and selling to small store keepers in the interior. Mr. Waterman and Mr. Stone entered this business. They even, traveled into Can- ada with lines of goods The golden period of the passenger coach and the freight wagon was between the years 1840 and 1850. In 1846 Grovenor Water- house opened a daily stage line between Paris and Portland. The same year the British mail was carried from Portland to Montreal in twenty-six hours as against a previous record of thirty-two hours. Even before the first date Maine people had begun to dream of different and faster methods of transportation. Those living on waterways had always enjoyed an advantage in this respect, as sailing vessels had been able to work their way some miles into the interior, and in 1807 Robert Fulton, by intro- ducing steam power into their hulls, bad greatly assisted develop- ment along their banks. The first coast steamboat appeared in Portland in 1823 and the next year one was placed in the Kennebec River. The locomotive with its railed tracks was not far behind. The first railroad was opened in England in 1825, the first one in the United States in 1828 and the first one in Maine in 1836. These innovations did not take instant hold of the people for it required capital to build and operate them, and a considerable volume of commerce to maintain them when built. The first railroads were of necessity a long time investment. As water transportation presented fewer difficulties in early days, schemes for their improvement occupied public attention first. Where navigable rivers did not exist canals were advocated. In the western part of Maine, of which I am writing, the earliest dream of improved transportation was to connect its numerous lakes with canals. This idea was considered as early as 1820, and one of the acts of the first legislature of Maine was to charter The Cumberland and Oxford Canal Company. The scheme contem- plated connecting lakes as far north as Waterford. Work was begun on this artificial waterway in 1828, and completed as far as Sebago Lake in 1831. With exception of improvements in the Songo River, that was as far as it ever got, as the railroad fever took full possession of the people about this time. The canal was discontinued in 1875. Local historians of western Maine, occasionally disclose the workings of this new germ. The first mention found is in 1835, when a railroad connecting Portland with Montreal was agitated. Surveys were made that year and committees were appointed in small towns to influence the surveyors, if possible, to lay out the line through their respective towns. In 1837 the Portland, Saco and Portsmouth Railroad was chartered and the road completed in 1842. The Grand Trunk Railway, or Atlantic & St. Lawrence Rail- road as it was then called, was chartered in 1845, as was also the Portland & Kennebec Railroad and the Maine Central. Work was begun on these roads at once. It was then that the old stage coach gave up its life in a blaze of glory. There was competition between Portland and Bos- ton as a terminal for the new railroad, and advocates for each city had rival routes surveyed, and in January, 1846, expresses, carrying mail were started from each city. Orin Hobbs, dressed, as the writer has been informed, in a blue suit, with silver quarter dollars as buttons on the coat and silver dimes as buttons on the waistcoat, took the Portland express as far as Norway, when it was taken by Grovenor Waterhouse as far as Canaan, Vermont, where it was taken by another messenger. The first stage was made in two hours and forty-five minutes, the second in eleven hours, and the whole distance between Portland and Montreal, some more than three hundred miles, in twenty-six hours, shortening, any previous record by six hours. So the building of The Portland & St. Lawrence Railroad was decided. It was begun in 1845 and completed in 1853. The building of railroads sounded the knell of long-distance staging in Maine: and the old ideal coachmen of those times be- came the first conductors on the railroads. The two drivers men- tioned above, Hobbs and Waterhouse, served on the first Atlantic & St. Lawrence trains. The building of railroads was an incentive to manufacturing, and the beginning of modern industry dates from that time. The con- struction of railroads, dams and buildings opened another industry by calling for explosives for cleveing rocks, and powder mills came into existence. They had been in existence in a small way for some time, -but the increased demand for explosives increased the output. This opened a new field for freight drivers, for this ma- terial had to he transported wherever railroads or towns were build- ings, or quarries opened. This gave a romance to the business not there before, because of the danger involved. Mr. Waterman, mentioned above and Benjamin Chandler Rawson, of Paris, were among those who entered this business and many adventures and narrow escapes did they experience, such as traveling through forest fires' etc., oil the roads delivering these explosives. They were employed by Messrs. Marble & Hubbard, of Paris, who owned powder mills situated at North Buckfield. The range of their travels were in northern New Hampshire and Vermont, where railroads ' were building, and in central and south- ern Maine. In the latter state, not only were railroads supplied, but the lime quarries of Rockland and the slate quarries of Brown- ville and 'Monson, then in the beginning of operations. This transportation was far from easy, for many of the roads traveled were little better than wood trails. If one desires an ade- quate description of them, one only has to read Henry D. Thoreau's Maine Woods' " about excursions made at this time. Of the prim- itiveness of the times, Thoreau can be quoted. Of Monson, Mr. Waterman's northern point, he has this to say: "At a fork in the road between Abbott and -Monson, about twenty miles from Moose- head Lake, I saw a guide-post surmounted by a pair of moose- horns, spreading four or five feet, with the word Monson painted on one blade." Considering the ever possible pyrotechnic display, this might be called, perhaps, the brilliant exit of the freight service, for in a few years the long-distance freight wagon had disappeared. (c) 1998 Courtesy of the Androscoggin Historical Society ************************************************* * * * * NOTICE: Printing the files within by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. * * * * The USGenWeb Project makes no claims or estimates of the validity of the information submitted and reminds you that each new piece of information must be researched and proved or disproved by weight of evidence. It is always best to consult the original material for verification.