USA > Maine > Penobscot County > Orono > Historical sketch of Orono > Part 3
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As to population, the number of people in Orono increased from 1,521 in 1840 to 2,785 in 1850 and then declined to 2,554 in 1860. In fact only once before 1900 did the population on a census year exceed that of 1850. Perhaps the principal reason for the failure of Orono to grow in numbers was because the town sat in the shadow of Bangor and yet was too far away in those days to become a residence for people employed in that city. Bangor was the great distribution center for Eastern and Northern Maine while Orono village did not even have a rail- road until 1868. Bangor was the center of the lumber business in the Penobscot Valley, Orono could only claim to be a sawmill town. Bangor was one of the greatest lumber shipping centers in the United States; Orono shipped all her product through Bangor. For these and perhaps other reasons Orono had become mature by 1860 and firmly fixed in the course it was to follow for many years.
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CHAPTER IV The Town Serves The People
Orono's municipal record is similar to that of other Maine towns. The voters assembled at their March town meetings, elected officers for the ensuing year, voted money for various public purposes, and acted on other articles included in the town warrant. For a great many years the business of the town was confined almost entirely to the support of schools, construction and maintenance of highways, care of the poor, fire protection, and minor matters commonly classed as incidentals.
Then gradually the number of municipal services began to increase. How much they have increased is vividly shown by comparing the items for which money was appropriated at the town meeting in March 1881 with what was raised seventy years later. In 1881 money was voted for highways, common schools, free high school, incidentals, support of the poor, fire depart- ment, ringing the bell, bridge over Mac's Brook, town debt, and interest. Total appropriation was $8,640. In 1951 the voters appropriated money for town officers, schools, incidentals, police, fire protection, hydrant rental, health nurse, repairs on sewers, rubbish and garbage disposal, ways and bridges, street lights, re- pairs on municipal buildings, poor relief, aid to dependent chil- dren, public library, Memorial Day, cemeteries, social security payments for town employees, Maine Publicity Bureau, state aid road, to revalue taxable property, tarring roads, to pay school bonds, interest on town debt, Maine Municipal Association, school equipment bonds, equipment for new high school build- ing, community house, school lunch program, and dental hygiene. The total amount appropriated was $179,861.
Orono town reports show that the town has usually been in debt, since the Civil War at least. During part of that struggle Orono's first citizen was also the first citizen of the State of Maine. Israel Washburn was War Governor from 1861 to 1863. The town did its patriotic duty by sending some two hundred of
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its young men into the armed services. It also expended $11,083 in bounties to encourage men to enlist and to encourage veterans to re-enlist after their first term of service had expired. That was a large sum for those days but the money borrowed for that purpose was fully repaid within ten years of the close of the war.
Orono's next venture into what one might call extra-curricular activities was taken shortly after the war ended. Members of the recently appointed board of trustees of the Maine State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts were about to select a loca- tion for the new institution. Several towns wished the honor and offered various inducements. The town of Orono, aided by some of the leading citizens in this area, offered to give two ad- joining farms on Marsh Island, known as the Frost and White farms, for that purpose. The trustees living in the western part of the state favored locating the college at Topsham; those in the eastern part, at Orono. The final decision was in favor of Orono by a vote of eight for to seven against, one trustee not present. The farms were deeded by the "Inhabitants of Orono," to the trustees of the college, and a little later by the trustees to the State of Maine. As narrowly as that did Orono obtain the distinction of being a college town.
Most of Orono's bonded debt and other borrowings, except in anticipation of receipts from the collection of taxes, however, have been for municipal buildings, for the town-owned sewer system, and once for a concrete road.
Orono has had three town halls, all on the same spot. The original hall was built in 1873-4 and was dedicated March 3, 1874. The townspeople improved the occasion to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the first settlement. Former Governor Washburn gave the historical address, and the Reverend Henry C. Leonard, former pastor of the Universalist church, read a poem written for the occasion. Nathaniel Wilson was president of the day. Members of the building committee were Andrew G. Wing, chairman, Eben Webster, James Webster, Richard Lord, and Charles H. Colburn. The building was two stories high with a basement. The fire engine house and the town offices were lo- cated on the first floor and the hall was on the second. The building also had a kitchen and a room where the firemen held
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meetings. It was heated by furnaces and lighted with gas.
The first town hall was burned in 1890 and was promptly re- placed by the second. This building was also burned in January 1904 and the present hall was erected the same year. In each instance the town incurred a debt that it took some years to repay.
The people of Orono have been progressive in matters re- lating to education. We have already seen how, about 1850, Orono was one of the first of the smaller towns in Maine to abolish the old district school system, with its local school agents, and place all schools under one administration. It was also one of the first of the smaller towns to grade its schools and to establish a high school. Later, in the eighties, it was one of the first to teach music in the common schools.
Orono was also one of the pioneers in providing free text books for its scholars. In 1876, after having done so for some years, and due perhaps to "hard times," an attempt was made to sell books at cost to those who were able to pay for them and still give them free to those who were not. This plan pre- sented its problems and seems soon to have been discarded. It was not until 1889 that the law of the State required towns to furnish free text books.
For a great many years prior to the erection of the school building on Birch Street there were usually ten primary schools in operation. They were commonly known by their old district names as the Main Street, Depot, Page, Basin Mills, Bennoch Road, Marsh Point, College Road, Old Railroad, Kelly, and Temple schools. In the early eighties, for example, these schools were open for two terms a year, spring and fall. The teachers were almost always women who were for a long time paid $6 a week.
Then there were the intermediate schools, the select school, and the high school. The three or four intermediate schools were open in the winter only. Still it would seem that some of the pupils who attended the primary schools in the summer and fall also went to the intermediate schools. In 1882, at least, scholars were admitted to the intermediate schools who were able to read in the Second Reader or who were at least ten years of age.
The principal select school was located in the high school
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building and much of the time was headed by the high school principal. For years teachers in the select school received $8 a week in summer and $9 in winter. About 1900 the intermediate and select schools were combined. The new school was called a grammar school and included the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.
For thirty years, from 1870 to 1900, Stephen H. Powell was principal of the Orono High School and much of the time of the select school as well. He had usually one and sometimes two assistants in the high school. His salary seems to have been quite uniformly $1,000 a year. It was not until 1884 that the school offered a course of study that prepared students for graduation. There were two members in the first class to graduate, that of 1885, Miss Foss and Miss Denico. Thirteen students graduated in the class of 1889 which was one of the larger classes before the end of the century. In 1899 studies were rearranged so that three courses were offered, English, Latin Scientific and Modern Lan- guages Scientific. One notes with interest that Mrs. Wiggins' Lessons in Manners was introduced as a text book the year that the first class graduated.
Gradually the Orono schools became overcrowded, and as early as 1892 the school committee recommended that the town erect a large central school building. Nothing was done about that but attempts were made to relieve the congestion. First, in 1897, a new intermediate school was opened in the dining room in the town hall. Next, in 1900, a new grade school building was erected on Birch Street and the Bennoch Street grade school was closed. Then, in 1903, the town erected a new high school building on Main Street and the grammar school occupied the whole of the old building on Bennoch Street. The town was now about $40,000 in debt. That amount was increased the following year when the present town hall was built to replace the second one that burned. The next step in improving school facilities was the erection of the Webster School building in 1909.
These buildings gave good satisfaction for a number of years but as the town grew the need for more room again became press- ing, especially for the high school. To meet the need the Orono School District was formed in 1933 because the cost of the high-
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school building that was contemplated would exceed the borrow- ing capacity of the town. Members of the Orono School Board, Arthur J. Stevens, Mrs. Emma L. Fitch, and Ferdinand H. Parady, became trustees of the school district. They secured from Fed- eral sources the offer of an outright grant in aid of thirty percent of the cost of labor and materials and a long-time loan at four percent interest to cover most of the remainder of the expense. A committee, Weston S. Evans, G. Harold Hamlin, and Franklin W. Johnson, then president of Colby College, selected a desirable site for the proposed building. The whole matter was then re- ferred to the voters of the town for action. They turned thumbs down.
Later new arrangements were made and the main section of the present high-school building was erected in 1939. About half the cost was met by a grant from the United States Public Works Administration. The original plans called for a combined audi- torium and gymnasium but they were not then erected. For that reason and because of Federal Aid, expenses were kept within the legal borrowing capacity of the town and it was not necessary to use that of the high-school district.
In 1940 more than a hundred pupils were transferred from the seventh and eighth grades in the lower schools to the high school, which then adopted the six-year plan. This transfer re- lieved much of the congestion in the Birch Street, Bennoch, and Webster elementary schools.
There matters rested until after World War II and after the last of the town's sewer and highway bonds (soon to be men- tioned) had been redeemed in 1946. The selectmen then appoint- ed a citizens' committee of twenty-five members, with Dr. Roswell P. Bates as chairman, to study the situation and make recom- mendations for improving the educational facilities of the town. They recommended an addition to the high school building large enough to contain the combined auditorium and gymnasium, rooms for home economics and vocational training, and other facili- ties. Their recommendations were accepted and a new high school district was established by the Maine Legislature and ap- proved by the voters of the town.
Bonds were issued, architect's plans were prepared, and the
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addition was built in 1950-51. Dr. Asa C. Adams, Howard C. Nichols, and Richard S. Bradford were the original trustees of the Orono High School District. Members of the building commit- tee were: Dr. Asa C. Adams, chairman, Allen F. Spruce, Parker G. Cushman, John H. Needham, Clarence M. Page, Mark R. Shibles, and Mrs. Iva S. Waring.
Orono's next issue of bonds for school facilities was ap- proved by the voters in the spring of 1955. This was for the pur- pose of erecting a building to contain sixteen classrooms for the use of the elementary schools. The amount of the issue was $375,000. This sum, together with the outstanding bonds of the Orono High School District amounting to $207,000, and $30,000 in other bonds gave the people of Orono in February 1956 a bonded indebtedness of $612,000, all or nearly all of which has been or will be used for the development and modernization of the town's educational plant. Members of the building com- mittee for the new school building, approved when the bonds were voted, are Dr. Asa C. Adams, chairman, Mary L. Giddings, Stephen R. Macpherson, Parker G. Cushman, Douglas A. Glan- ville, Spofford H. Kimball, Stacy R. Miller, John H. Needham, LeRoy S. Nickerson, Kathryn Richards, Edward E. Ross, and Mark R. Shibles.
In 1923 the town issued bonds to the amount of $53,000 the proceeds of which were expended in building a concrete road on Main Street. It is said that this was the first section of concrete road in this area and was somewhat in the nature of an experi- ment. It was resurfaced just before the Second World War and part of it again in 1955.
The increase in the use of automobiles brought a demand for better roads both in summer and in winter. And in the spring of 1927 the road commissioner, Bert Read, stated that the senti- ment of the people was in favor of keeping the roads open for autos in winter. The voters agreed with him and appropriated money for snow removal, as they have done ever since.
Orono's largest bond issue except for the concrete road and high and grade school buildings was one of $50,000 voted at the spring town meeting in 1921. These bonds were to be expended for the construction of a sewer system for the town. Town of-
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ficials soon learned that bonds could not be issued legally until the expense had been incurred. Accordingly they negotiated short-term notes as the work progressed and issued the bonds when it was completed. Perley B. Palmer, George H. Hamlin, and William E. Barrows were the members of the committee that represented the town. Weston & Sampson, of Boston, made the survey; and Dennis F. Crowley, also of Boston, was the con- tractor. He began work July 11, 1921. Incidentally, the mayor of Bangor warned Orono officials not to permit the discharge of sewage into the Penobscot River. The warning was disregarded. Most of the work on the sewer system was completed within the next two years, although additions have been made from time to time as the village has grown.
Besides the maintenance of roads and schools, three of the major functions of the town have been the care of the needy, fire protection, and the protection of persons and property. The care of the poor and unfortunate has always been one of the duties of the New England town. Orono, however, seems to have had little to do in this regard during its first quarter century after in- corporation. The first vote taken in this respect was in 1812 when it was: "Voted to raise $25 to be assessed with other taxes and to be made a present to Eliza Burton (or perhaps Barton) for taking care of her grandmother." The first time that money was definitely raised for the care of the indigent was in 1821 when the town raised $400 "for the support of the poor and other town charges." Similar votes were taken thereafter until the town was divided in 1840. The Orono town-meeting records from 1840 to 1904 were burned and so there is a great gap in our source of in- formation.
However the custom of bidding off the care of the poor at "vendue," or auction, which was practiced in some towns in the early part of the nineteenth century, seems not to have prevailed in Orono. Once, in 1834, the care of the poor was put up at auc- tion in town meeting and assigned to the person who agreed to do so for the least money; but the usual method seems to have been that employed in 1829, when the selectmen agreed with Charles Tucker to board James P. Evans for ten shillings six-
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pence a week, and with Elisha Lyshons to board John Lyshons for three shillings a week.
In 1824 the town voted not to build a "work house." But at some date after 1840 the town purchased the Orono Town Farm which it maintained as a poor farm for seventy-five years more or less. Between the Civil War and the First World War ten or twelve people were usually being cared for there, most of them either elderly persons or children. In recent years other methods of assistance, such as old age pensions, mothers' aid, the care of dependent children, and the policy of assisting needy persons in their own homes have made the poor house obsolete. The one in Orono was closed some twenty years ago. Incidentally, it was once customary to print the names of the inmates in the annual town reports. One year two children were listed whose names were given as Ino and Uno.
Persons who wish to know how Orono cares for her unfortu- nate citizens at the present time should consult Mrs. Annie Sullivan and Mrs. Marian Gannett who have done highly efficient work in this department for many years.
The story of Orono's fire department would fill a chapter by itself if space permitted. The destruction of the town records by fire leaves us in the dark as to the origin and early history of the department. The Orono Village Corporation, which was active be- tween 1837 and 1840, had fire protection as its chief purpose, and doubtless there was then a volunteer fire department. For fifty or sixty years the town had three fire engines that were op- erated by hand. At first these hand engines were also drawn to the fires by hand, but afterward horses were used for that pur- pose. When the engines were purchased does not appear. But one town report says that the Tiger was made in 1837, the Moni- tor in 1854, and the Eagle in 1858. It is said that the Tiger was the first one purchased. They were used until the Monitor was sold for $25 in 1907 and the Eagle and the Tiger were replaced by a new hose and chemical auto truck in 1921. The Eagle and the Tiger were later sold as museum pieces.
In earlier years these hand engines seem to have been kept in convenient barns or sheds. Perhaps the first engine house was Monitor Hall built around Civil War times, repaired in 1874, and
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superseded by a new one built about 1892. The original hall has been remodeled and is now in use as an apartment house and the second hall is now the headquarters of the Boy Scouts of Orono. Both were used by the people of Webster as community and recreational centers.
The Eagle, it is said, was once kept in the basement of the original Catholic church which was built in 1869 on Mill Street. From 1874 until 1908 or 1909 it was stored in the engine room in the successive town halls. It was then transferred to the present engine house and police station on Bennoch Street, which was then newly built. Apparently the Tiger was usually kept in pri- vate storage at the Basin, at least after the Eagle was purchased.
Equally important was the water supply. Fires near the Penobscot or the Stillwater could be quenched with water from the river. Fires farther away presented a problem because of the limited distance that water could be pumped by hand. This problem was solved by constructing twenty or more cisterns at convenient locations. One was located, for example, under the town hall, another on the lawn of the present home of Freeman M. Sampson, and a third on that of Clarence Day, all on Main Street. Most of the cisterns were abandoned when the town be- gan to rent hydrants in 1906, but a few in West Orono are still used in case of fire there.
For nearly a century the fire-fighting activities of the town came under the supervision of the fire wardens, of whom there were commonly three. It was not until 1906 that the department was organized much as it is at present, with Walter E. Hogan as the first chief. The successive chiefs have been: Walter E. Hogan, 1906 to 1909; William H. King, 1909 to 1914; Walter E. Hogan, 1914 to 1940; Edward L. Peters, 1940 to 1942; Walter Baker, 1942 to 1945; Eugene H. Littlefield, 1945 to 1946; and Ed- ward L. Peters, 1946 to the present writing. The department now has three fulltime members and twenty-three others who are on call.
The town of Orono made no separate appropriation for po- lice protection of life and property until 1941. This does not mean that the town did not provide this type of service for its citizens before that date. It only means that such services were
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paid for out of the appropriation labeled "incidentals." However, up to about 1890 services rendered may well be described as in- cidental. They were performed principally by a long line of con- stables of whom Ard Godfrey, chosen when the town was or- ganized, was the first. Here again we are handicapped by the lack of town records, but it would seem that Orono's first full- time policeman may have been William H. Clancy, who served for some months in 1891, beginning in April. Before that, spe- cial police were sometimes appointed for special occasions such as the Fourth of July.
Said the selectmen in their annual report: "Mr. Clancy, dur- ing his term, kept good order on the streets. We would advise the raising of a sum of money for police services. The property interest in the town is large and the danger of fire, either acci- dental or intentional, is not to be ignored." Their recommenda- tion was not accepted.
One notes that the selectmen just quoted had fire protec- tion as well as police protection in mind. Indeed as late as 1933 men on the police force were listed in the town reports, when they were listed at all, as night watchmen. Not until auto traf- fic became heavy was there a serious need for a full-time police- man in the daytime. No regular policy was followed in the em- ployment of the police until well into the present century. Some- times they served only on special occasions, sometimes on a part- time basis, sometimes for the full year.
The present police department was organized in 1942 with Augustine L. Dall as chief. Serving with him was Harry L. King, who had been long on the force. It was in wartime and cooper- ating with them were twenty-three men who served without pay as an auxiliary police force. They gave the town police protec- tion eight hours every day during the year. The auxiliary force was reorganized in 1955 with Lawrence A. Chatto as chief. Augustine Dall has been chief of police since his first appoint- ment except for a single year when John Reardon was acting chief.
Some other municipal activities merit mention. Street lamps were installed in 1884 in several places as an experiment. "The lights," wrote the selectmen, "add much to the safety and con-
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venience of the citizens." The lamps burned kerosene. In 1888 the town paid $230 for oil, chimneys, and care. In November 1890 the town contracted with the Old Town Electric Company to maintain electric lights on the streets and on Stillwater bridge for a period of years. Sixty-three lights were burning in 1893. The number has since increased many fold as new streets have been built. The town's bill for electricity was $945 in 1892. It was $5,197 in 1955.
There was an epidemic of smallpox in 1903, and the Board of Health resorted to wholesale vaccination. There were 16 cases of the disease and 128 persons were quarantined. The Lunt house was used as a pest house and 11 cases were cared for there. The next year there were 42 cases of diphtheria in Orono and three deaths.
For a number of years the town maintained a footwalk on the side of the Maine Central Railroad bridge across the Still- water River. When a new railroad bridge was built about 1885, the railroad company agreed to maintain the walk in return for the right of way on "James Street." This agreement served for several years, and then the town found itself again keeping the foot bridge in repair.
Also in 1885 a bandstand was erected in "The Square," the gift of Henry Rolf. Five years later the town cooperated in the erection of a monument to the soldiers of the Civil War. It stood for fifty years in the square in front of the local bank and is now located on the much trampled lawn of the town hall.
Not until well within the present century did the town be- come much interested in the public health. We have already noted how the Board of Health functioned in the case of an epi- demic. The town also arranged with local physicians to attend inmates at the poor farm and other needy persons when they were ill. Later it provided funds for maintaining a health officer who also became in time the school physician. Dr. Howard L. Jackson long served in this position which has now for some years been filled by Dr. Walter C. Hall.
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