USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Wayne > Centennial celebration of the town of Wayne, Kennebec County, Maine, August 18, 1898 > Part 1
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
OF THE
TOWN OF WAYNE
KENNEBEC COUNTY
Me. MAINE.
AUGUST 18, 1898.
AUGUSTA: MAINE FARMER JOB PRINT. 1899.
F841945.96
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TOWN OF WAYNE.
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Centennial - Celebration.
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KENNEBEC COUNTY, MAINE.
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Wayne, Me. 41945 .96 Centennial celebration of the town of Wayne, Kennebec County, Maine, August 18, 1898. Augusta, 1899.
HELP CARD
P 7136
NL 31-2545
WAYNE'S
Centennial Celebration.
This occurred at Wayne Village August 18, 1898. The dar was, for the most part, propitious. Large numbers of former residents and people from neighboring towns were present. There were gathered at one time in the day at least four thousand people. It was a grand reunion. The meetings of people who had not seen each other for years were sights worth seeing. It was a pleasure to hear them talk of the old days when they were boys and girls together. People visited Wayne who had been absent from it fifty years, and all found old acquaintances.
A mammoth tent was procured, 100 by 60 feet in size. It was erected a little off the street south of the village, on the grounds of J. H. Millett, Esq.
The committee of arrangements, chosen in town meeting, consisted of G. W. Walton, Chairman, B. F. Bradford, Secretary, Sewall Pet- tingill, C. E. Wing, C. W. Crosby, W. M. Taylor, J. C. Stinchfield, W. Jennings and A. W. Riggs.
A national salute of twenty-one guns was fired at sunrise. Band concert and reception of visitors were held on the Pocasset House lawn at 9 o'clock A. M.
THE PARADE.
This was headed by the Second Regiment Band, Lewiston ; C. E. Wing was Chief Marshal. In line were eighty veterans of the Civil War. Carriages followed containing the Orator, H. B. Lawrence, Capt. H. N. Fairbanks, Hiram S. Maxim, the officers of the town. and aged citizens ; then followed the school children, each carrying a flag. There were also tableaux of scenes of a century ago, repre- senting costumes and customs of the early settlers, and many re-
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WAYNE'S CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
minders of the old times in Wayne, making a most gratifying and inspiring scene.
They paraded the streets, then marched to the grounds where the exercises of the day were held. The tent was packed to the utmost ; the sides were taken off to give the persons outside a chance to see and hear, as well as the air to circulate. The stage was decorated in a most beautiful style with flowers, and the stand in front of the speaker was hidden with a beautiful bank of pond lilies.
G. W. Walton called the meeting to order. His remarks in part were as follows :
Ladies and Gentlemen, Sons and Daughters of Wayne :
At a genial season of the year, with beauty on the earth and splendor in the heavens, we have left our homes and assembled here to com- memorate the one hundredth birthday of the prettiest town in the State of Maine. (A voice in the audience said, "The prettiest town in the world."") I accept the amendment. To-day other towns may be grand, lovely and beautiful, but Wayne, to us, is all of these, and without a rival, therefore I will say that we are here to celebrate the high achievements for the first hundred years of the prettiest town in the wide, wide world. Happy the day, happy the place, and joyous, I hope, will be the occasion.
I am proud of my native town, proud of her magnificent scenery, her towering hills, her fertile valleys, her crystal lakes, her rolling streams, her meandering brooks, her lofty pines, her giant oaks, but more than these, am I proud of her grand history, her noble men and charming women. More wheat may be raised in the prairied West, better oranges in our new possessions, but nowhere on the broad earth can be found pleasanter homes or happier people than in the town whose birthday we are here to celebrate. Ladies and gentlemen, sons and daughters of Wayne, once more I greet you, I am glad to see you. I now have the pleasure to introduce to you C. W. Crosby, the gentleman selected by the committee to preside here to-day.
REMARKS OF MR. CROSBY.
Mr. Chairman, Citizens and Visitors of Wayne:
In assuming the duties of presiding officer here to-day I wish, first, to thank the Centennial Committee, and through them my native
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WAYNE'S CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
town, for the honor conferred upon me in placing me in this position. This is indeed a proud and happy day for Wayne. With bright skies smiling above us, with all nature in her beauty and glory around us, we have met here on this beautiful spot to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of our town organization. Were I able it were not my place to make extended remarks here.
I welcome you here, children, returned to the old fireside. From across the prairies and over the seas you have come to this gather- ing, from near and from far, and you are welcome home. The town's formal welcome to you will be extended by another and abler one than I, and I can only repeat, welcome home.
We feel to-day that we are in the world, and a thrill of pride and loyalty causes our hearts to beat to a quicker time than they are wont. We have a right to this feeling of pride, for the roll of the century past is one any town may be proud of. In the early days a magistrate of a neighboring town banished a poor wretch off the face of the earth, and when the poor man asked where he should go, the magistrate answered, "Go to Wayne." Well, that was long ago. To-day we welcome to this event the distinguished sons of that old town as heartily and cordially as any who are here to-day, and they and we feel that we are on the earth, and on it to some purpose.
It is well for us at this passing of the century, that we pause for a day to do honor to the memory of those hardy pioneers who laid these foundations of which we to-day enjoy the benefits. How prone we are to forget. How often do we think, as we pass the silent resting places of the founders of our towns, that there are sleeping those who laid the corner stone of the mightiest nation of modern times, if not of the world. But they are not forgotten, our presence here to-day tes- tifies to that fact, their memory and their deeds are honored to-day as never before.
But I must not take more. of your time. Again, I wish to return my thanks for the honor done me-an honor unique in its nature, and greater than any the town can confer again for generations. You can make and unmake your Selectmen, and other offices-this office you have created, but it dies with the day, and cannot be called into existence for an hundred years.
A selection was played by the band, after which Rev. L. W. Ray- mond, of Fairport, N. Y., a native of Wayne, offered prayer.
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WAYNE'S CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
Then followed the selection "Rock of Ages" by the Eolian Quar- tet of Lewiston.
C. F. Leadbetter, a native of Wayne, a graduate of Colby, was introduced and gave the Address of Welcome.
ADDRESS OF WELCOME.
BY C. F. LEADBETTER.
Mr. Chairman, fellow citizens, sons and daughters of Wayne, who have gone out from the old home, but come back to-day bringing your sheaves, to lay your offering on the altar of your native town, you do honor alike both to yourselves and to us by your presence here on this occasion.
Your faces recall the truth of the poet's lines :
"Where love unites, wide space divides in vain, And hands may clasp across the spreading main."
Through no merit or fitness of my own that I have been able to discover, but by the indulgence and partiality of my townsmen the duty and the happy privilege have been conferred upon me of bidding you welcome in their behalf to-day to these exercises which mark an important mile-post in our municipal history.
When I received from our committee the invitation to perform this service, I had many misgivings as to my ability to do it justice. It seemed to me that some one of maturer age and riper experience and richer memories would be much more in keeping with the occasion, and far more acceptable to those for whom this address was especially intended.
As my mind turns back to-day over the space of the century that has just closed, I feel myself only as a child paddling among the shells and ripples of the beach, while the great billows of the years roll unheeded and unknown beyond the view.
They tell us, however, that nothing is great or small but by com- parison. A camel is large compared with the eye of a needle, but compared with the massive bulk of Mount Washington, or even with the size of yonder hill, he is but as a grain of mustard seed. A cen- tury is a tremendous extent of time when we measure it by the stand- ard of one day's trials, disappointments and suffering, and look for- ward to the days that must succeed before its close. But the century, like the camel, shrinks to less terrifying proportions beside a larger
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WAYNE'S CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
standard, and in the calendar of the world's history the century itself becomes but as a day.
So perhaps after all, the matter of a few years more or less in age makes little difference in the qualifications of one who speaks on such a day as this. On Memorial Day it may be desirable to have one who can talk from a knowledge gained amidst the shriek of shells or the sights of a rebel prison. Listening to such a man we seem in closer touch with that great conflict, and his words have the weight of one who, as we say, "has been there" and who speaks from actual memories of the varied scenes. But who has personal experience of the events of a hundred years?
I suppose that in the lives of most men and women there comes sooner or later a day of retrospection-a day when for one reason or another the world with its business and its cares loses for a time its hold and is pushed resolutely aside-a day when the individual pauses to take his bearings-when he stands, as it were, in a niche apart from time-past, present and to come, a spectator of himself and of the causes that have made him what he is. It is only then that he hears the still, small voices which at other times are drowned in the noisy clamor of the bustling work-a-day world. It is a hopeful period in the life of any person, from which one cannot emerge without a deeper sense of his obligations to the past and a fuller realization of his responsibilities for the future.
I apprehend that towns are in this respect much like individuals, and that this is a day of reckoning for Wayne. She pauses to-day at the end of the first hundred years of her voyage. She computes her distance from the port of clearance and verifies her chart and com- pass. She notes the shallows that are passed, the breakers still before. and enjoys a brief respite for congratulations and God-speeds. To- morrow she weighs anchor and with confidence born of past success turns her prow to the untried seas in which lie the second century of her course.
Wayne cannot to-day point the finger of pride to so long or perhaps so rich a history as some of her sister towns, many of which in Massa- chusetts have already celebrated their quarter millennial. She has no Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill. She has neither the rock on which our Pilgrim Fathers first stepped, the churches where they worshipped, or the relics which tell of their mode of life, their rigid self denial, their steady industry, their God-fearing and independent character. These were all old, as we reckon time, while Wayne was
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WAYNE'S CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
yet New Sandwich. But thanks to our early Puritan ancestors; with all their narrowness of view and intolerance of opinion. they be- queathed to us something better than renowned sites and historic bat- tlefields ; They handed down to our fathers in this past century those rugged qualities of heart and head which made true men and women in this town of Wayne. And these, after all are the best monuments that any town can boast.
. It is to these little municipalities like ours that every nation looks for her supply of brawn and brain. It has been ever thus. Not in the crowds and dust and din of cities but in the open fields of the God-made country, where the air comes pure from the sun-kissed hills, and tempered by the waters of the lakes and streams, where loyalty and purity and patriotism have something more than "a local habita- tion and a name"-there it is that are recruited the defenders of a nation's honor, the redeemers of her promise, the leaven of her man- made towns.
You need only to read her history to learn that Wayne has done her duty in this line. In obedience to their country's call her sons sleep on many a battlefield and have fallen with faces to the front in the no less laborious and honorable callings of peace.
"For well she keeps her ancient stock The stubborn strength of Plymouth Rock And'well maintains with milder laws And clearer light the good old cause."
The past and the future meet to-day in us. We are the connecting link between our ancestors and our posterity. To the one we pay our homage, remembering what they have done for us. To the other we look forward to hand down to them the treasures which are ours only in trust. It is our duty to inspire the young here present with such a sense of the sacredness of that trust that it shall never be betrayed or neglected.
What a subject for contemplation is the march of American civil- ization and progress in the years to come in this western world! If only the sons shall be true to their trust what may we not expect ? As one has fitly said, "The American spirit, product of German brain and Celtic heart and Norseman's restlessness and English con- stancy, which brought across the sea the love of liberty and reverence for law shall be theirs, enlarged, strengthened, invigorated, purified by centuries of life and growth in a congenial air."
And so it is altogether proper that we observe this day. It is in
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some respects a most solemn occasion, but that is no reason why it should not at the same time be a most gladsome one. Perhaps it is proper also that the joyousness of the time should outweigh its serious- ness. Birthdays should be happy days, and this is the birthday of a town. Birthdays of youth are perhaps the most happy of all, and we trust that Wayne is not yet past her youthful stage. We expect that she will go on to a ripe old age and that at all her birthdays she will be ever young in heart and know no lasting sorrow.
I am to bid you especially welcome to the old home on this occa- sion who have wandered away from it. We are glad to look again into your faces. You come from places widely scattered in the great world. You come, many of you, loaded with honors from the varied fields of business, from law, from medicine, from teaching and preach- ing. You come from the halls of legislation, from the triumphs of inventive skill, from the plaudits of the multitudes whom you have enthralled by the sweet notes of your song or thrilled by your master- ly touch upon the strings of harmony. In your triumphs we have all shared and in your praises we have ourselves felt much reflected honor. We prefer to-day, however, to leave off your titles and to meet you on the common footing of familiarity as in days ago
"When you were Bill and I was Joe."
We might call this the Centennial Thanksgiving. Perhaps it comes nearer to that good New England festival than to anything else-that day when we meet around the parental board and, free from corroding care, imagine ourselves back once more in childhood's days. But it is not the words of formal welcome on Thanksgiving Day that fill our hearts with joy. It is the association with the old familiar scenes, the warm hand clasp, the loving look, the kindly sympathy-to all of which we have been a stranger since last we left them in their sacred haunts-it is these that hallow that blessed day and send us out from the old homestead nobler and braver and truer and better after each return.
Better welcome than I or any one else can convey to you to-day is that which the old town of Wayne gives you herself as you look over the well-remembered scenes of earlier years. The ponds where you fished, the old tree beneath which was your swing, the hills which caught the earliest sunrise and reflected back the twilight rays. the school house, somewhat changed and yet the same, the cemeteries where sleep your people and some of your earliest and dearest friends
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WAYNE'S CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
-these all speak to you, and in the presence of their welcome I would stand with uncovered head and silent tongue.
Would that some words of cheer might come to us all to-day from those noble men and women of the past to whom we owe so much. But that may not be.
"Each in his narrow cot forever laid The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."
On the shores overlooking our beautiful lakes and beneath the whispering pines they are at rest.
"Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre."
Let us honor their memories by emulating their virtues, and carrying on as best we may the work which they began.
Although she is a hundred to-day, Wayne has put on her gala-day attire and bids you to her feast. You will do the old lady honor, and make us all glad if you join light-heartedly in her innocent revels and make her last birthday the best birthday she has ever known.
Once again, in the name of the citizens of the town, I bid you each a most hearty welcome to all the good things that this day has for you in store.
Hon. A. P. Lovejoy of Janesville, Wis., who was to respond to the Address of Welcome, sent the following telegram, which was read :
To Hon. G. W. Walton, Chairman of Wayne Centennial Com- mittee :
Dear Sir: I very much regret my inability to attend the Wayne Centennial Celebration. I love my native town, and would be glad to be with you. A thousand times I wish you prosperity in the highest sense. Wayne's loyal son,
A. P. LOVEJOY.
In place of Mr. Lovejoy, Rev. Erwin Dennett of Brooklyn, N. Y., was introduced. Mr. Dennett said in part :
I was pressed into the service not fifteen minutes ago, and I wish I, . too, was in Wisconsin, or anywhere rather than here speaking just this minute. There is one thing certain, if I am to speak at the next
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centennial I wish to be notified before. We all knew we would be welcomed to the town. All, we sons and daughters, I suppose I am a son, I surely am not a daughter, are glad to get back to the old place. True, I was not born here, but to me it is the dearest spot on earth. If Wayne's name was to be changed I would accept no other than Paradise. The only thing that mars the happiness of the day for me ' . is the missing of many faces whom I used to know, and who have gone on before us.
He also paid Hiram Maxim a compliment by saying a son of Wayne was heard around the world recently, and that was when Dewey captured the Spanish fleet in Manilla harbor amid the crack- ing of the Maxim guns.
The following letters from Senator Frye, Congressman Burleigh and Gov. Powers were read :
SQUIRREL ISLAND, MAINE, August 15, 1898.
Mr. G. W. Walton, Wayne, Maine :
Dear Sir: Please accept my thanks for your invitation to be present at the Centennial of the town of Wayne, and my regrets that engagements already made prevent my acceptance. These centennial anniversaries are exceedingly interesting. They bring home to the familiar scenes and haunts of childhood the scattered sons and daughters; revive memories, some sad to be sure, but the most pleasant ; recall the names of good fathers and mothers who laid the foundation stone of the town solidly by training the children to fear God and love man. Banish for one day, at least, strife, jealousy, envy, religious and political contentions, and unite all into one supremely happy family, each member of it emulating the other only in doing honor to his town.
Maine has reason to be proud of the record made by her sons all over this Republic, and her country towns have been the nurseries from which they were bidden God-speed. Our town schools and our town meeting have been the most successful educators the world has ever known. That the day may be all the most sanguine can ask. and the occasion in every regard an eminent success, is the wish of
Yours sincerely, WILLIAM P. FRYE.
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AUGUSTA, Aug. 11, 1898.
Hon. George W. Wulton, Chairman Wayne Centennial Committee :
Dear Sir: I thank you sincerely for your very kind invitation to be present at the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of your town. It would certainly give me great pleasure to be present on that occasion, but I regret to say that an engagement made some weeks ago in another part of the State will render it impossible.
It is a wise thing for a community to pause, now and then, from its customary activities, and appropriately mark the milestones of its progress. It gives the present generation a clearer conception of local history, keeps green the memories of those who have gone before, and stimulates anew that spirit of home pride and enterprise which has always been a pre-eminent characteristic of Maine towns.
Occasions of this character, also, never fail to bring back to a com- munity many of its sons and daughters who have found homes in other and perhaps distant places. They constitute large family re- unions, at which the past may be lived over again, old friendships re- newed, and a stronger and deeper unity of interest cultivated and en. couraged.
The people of Wayne deserve great credit for the enterprise they have shown in arranging for a celebration of such deep historic inter- est and significance. My best wishes will go with you on that oc- casion, that it may be all and more than it promises-a veritable red letter day in the life of your good town which all, who are so fortunate as to enjoy its exercises, may ever remember with affection and pride. Again thanking you for the courtesy of your invitation, I remain
Sincerely yours, EDWIN C. BURLEIGHI.
HOULTON, MAINE, August 12, 1898.
G. W. Wulton, Esq., Wayne, Maine.
My Dear Sir : I have your invitation to be present at the Centennial of the town of Wayne. I should gladly accept if I did not find my- self so busily engaged. Trusting that you will have a fitting celebra- tion and that the good old town of Wayne be far more prosperous in the next century than she has in the past, I am,
Very truly yours, LLEWELLYN POWERS.
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Hiram B. Lawrence of Holyoke, Mass., a native of Wayne, a grad- uate of Bowdoin College and a teacher by profession, was introduced as orator of the day.
WAYNE'S CENTENNIAL.
Mr. President, Sons and Daughters of Wayne, and Fellow Citizens :
I esteem myself highly honored that, through the invitation of your committee, I am permitted to be present on this festive and memora- ble occasion. Five score years ago to-day and two and twenty years after that immortal Declaration of Independence, a new town was born, this beautiful town of Wayne. And now glancing across the century already completed, and pausing here amid the glorious mem- ories of the past and upon the threshold of the bright future, our hearts are too full for utterance. As dutiful children we come home to our honored and beloved mother. Well may we be proud and exultant over Wayne's completion of a hundred years of self-govern- ment-a century of civil and religious liberty. All studied phrases and flowers of rhetoric lack strength and inspiration in presence of the simple announcement of the grand consummation of the event which we this day commemorate.
This large concourse of men and women, the happy and intelligent expression of these upturned faces, the scenes of our childhood. all speak feelingly, all speak eloquently. The occasion is one which bears an interest of great importance and joyousness. We have as- sembled to revere the memory of our fathers; to study their lives and examine their characters; and render thanks to Heaven that we are the descendants of a most worthy ancestry.
Thrice happy were our forefathers in founding this town, for it is a land of health, of fertility and of great beauty. Some of us may have traversed this country from ocean to ocean, or roamed perchance be- neath the Italian sky, or over the vine clad hills of sunny France. but whenever we have approached this town, whether from Beech Hill, or Gott's Mountain, or from the East, our eyes have beheld a landscape of transcendent beauty unsurpassed at home or abroad. Who can ever forget this beautiful village set like a gem between two crystal lakes studded with emerald isles? Our forefathers, the first white settlers of this region, came largely from Massachusetts. They belonged to the typical people of New England. Frugal and indu -- trious, intelligent and possessed of much religious zeal, they sought
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