USA > Maine > York County > Buxton > One hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Buxton, Maine : held at Buxton lower corner, August 16, 1922 : with additional history > Part 6
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"If you were in charge of the deck, when the ship was riding out a sixty-mile gale, on a dark stormy night, in mid-ocean, and you suddenly heard the cry 'Man overboard!' what would you do?"
"Well," said the candidate, after a moment's hesitation, "I might give orders to let go the starboard anchor."
"What good would that do?" asked the examiner.
"It wouldn't do any good," answered the other, "but the crew would expect me to do something."
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We three are evidently in worse case than the puzzled candi- date - we haven't any starboard anchor -and yet, like the crew, you expect us to do something. I can appreciate the difficulty. However, I cannot join my two associates in their disparagement of the claims of ancestry. I may not be a son of Buxton, but I am a grandson and several times a great-grandson. I am sixth in de- scent from Joseph Woodman, the first settler -he was my pa- ternal grandmother's great-grandfather -and though you may smile, I am proud of that connection. On the maternal side I am fifth in descent from Nathaniel Lord and from Nathaniel Milli- ken, who were early settlers in the southern part of this town. Just over there in the old graveyard beyond the church rest five or six generations of my family on both sides, most of them natives, or long residents of Buxton. My ancestral relations with this town have always meant a great deal to me.
And if one may venture to urge it I have another connection 5. with Buxton -that of long association. Fifty years ago on August 14, 1872, as a small child, with my parents and grandparents and many other relatives, I attended the Buxton Centennial; and since that distant day, not a year has passed of which I have not spent a considerable portion in this town. All the real estate that I own is in Buxton. Sometimes, when I look at my tax bill, I am glad that I don't own any more. Fate has made me a schoolmaster for more than thirty years; and when I was a sophomore at Bowdoin College, I began my professional career, if I may so call it, by teaching a thirteen-week term in the old brick schoolhouse at Salmon Falls, where my mother taught before me. I am under no illusions as to the value of my services to the thirty-odd boys and girls who were my pupils in that winter of 1888 and '89. That value is pretty accurately guaged, I fancy, by the size of my compensation which was, I remember, six dollars and a half a week-and I boarded myself. While I probably taught little, I certainly learned a great deal; and I want thus publicly to express to all this company, and especially to my former students- some
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of whom are here present -my everlasting gratitude for what they taught me. If I have had any success in my life-work, it is in great measure due to the excellence of my preliminary training at their hands.
One more claim I have to affiliation with Buxton. Twenty-five years ago it was my surpassing good fortune to win for my wife the great-granddaughter of the Reverend Paul Coffin, the first settled minister in this town; and she is also the great-granddaugh- ter of Captain Joseph Woodman, the settler's son, who built the first dam at Bar Mills and began the development of the water power there; and at the same time she is the great-granddaughter of Colonel Isaac Lane, a Buxton Revolutionary soldier and a regimental commander in the War of 1812. Thus I am bound to Buxton by the ties not only of ancestry and of long association, but of most happy alliance as well.
Some such ties as these have brought us all together here today; and we ought, I think, to be asking ourselves just what is the deep- er significance of such an anniversary celebration as this. It had occurred to me to illustrate my own conception of the meaning of this day, by reference to a familiar passage from a well-known Latin author; but my friend and neighbor, Judge Emery, has just drawn a comparison between a knowledge of pigs and of Latin, to the decided disadvantage of Latin; and that makes me hesitate. However, I recall that Virgil, to whom I was about to refer, has more than one important passage on pigs, and so, perhaps, after he has been thus certificated, the reference to a well known story of his may not be objectionable.
You all remember how Virgil's hero, Aeneas, after his native city had been captured and set on fire by the enemy, set forth on his long journey to find a new land for his people, carrying on his shoulders his aged father and the images of his country's gods, leading by the hand his little son, and guarding the footsteps of his wife who followed close behind. These burdens which the legendary founder of the great Roman nation took with him are
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symbolic of the three fundamental ideals of good citizenship just as surely in this year of grace, 1922, and of the incorporation of this town, the one hundred and fiftieth, as they were in the year 1000 B.C. For those fundamental ideals, I take it, are expressed in utter loyalty to family, to country, and to God. The records show that the early settlers of this locality were animated by these ideals. To clear the fields, to build houses and forts for protect- ing their families, to found schools for their children, to establish a church where they could worship their God, to fight and die when necessary in defense of the country whose borders they were pushing into the wilderness-such was their burden and their care. And such has been the burden and the care of their loyal successors.
We, their later descendants, gather here today to show our reverence and our admiration for their devotion to these great ideals of citizenship, which nothing has shaken or destroyed in all the hundred and fifty years that we commemorate. These are the ideals of American citizenship everywhere, not only for the town, but also for the state and the nation. We must be true to those ideals, else we cannot be true to those brave men and devoted women who founded this town and gave us life. We must be true to these ideals if our country is to live. Amid all the entangle- ments of modern. social theories, in all the welter of political cross-purposes, through all the attacks from enemies of our cher- ished forms of government -these ideals must be with us forever inviolate. Therefore, in closing, I propose this toast: "To the good town of Buxton-may her people still, in cherishing the memory of her honorable history, devote their lives in triple loy- alty to family, to country, and to God; and may we all in spirit if not in flesh, be here fifty years from today, to join in the cele- bration of her two hundredth anniversary."
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Town of Buxton, Maine BUXTON'S ONE HUNDRED FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY ODE BY MRS. ANDREW L. BERRY (SUSAN A. CAME) (Tune, "Battle Hymn of the Republic") I
A half a century has passed, with all its hopes and fears, Since Buxton's children gathered here to celebrate her years. Time has wrought full many changes - happy smiles and bitter tears - In our dear old native town.
II We have wandered from our birthplace; we have scattered far and wide; But our hearts were ever tender for the dear old country side; So, we gladly come to meet again and greet with joy and pride Old friends of our home town.
III
They have felt the joys of living; they have tasted Fortune's frown; Now, their steps are getting slower and each wears a silver crown. Through their force of sturdy character, they've honors and renown Won for our quiet town.
CHORUS (To be sung only after third and sixth verses) To her our thoughts are ever turning, For her our hearts are ever yearning, To her our thoughts are ever turning, God bless our native town. IV
She has sent her sons to battle when our country called for aid, And the thanks for peace and safety from our hearts will never fade. Mid those anxious days her busy hands a worthy record made For our loyal native town. V
These wooded hills and pleasant vales, our people loved of old. Of their steadfast faith and trust in right, we often have been told. O, they've left to us a heritage, more precious far than gold - God bless our native land !
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VI
May the coming generations prize the blessings they will reap. And the love of home and kindred ever strong and glowing keep, Until life has ceased its labors and they sleep their final sleep
In our peaceful native town.
ORATION
BY REV. GEORGE CROSWELL CRESSEY, D.D., PH.D. PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER, NEW BRIGHTON, NEW YORK CITY
Mr. President, Fellow Natives, Citizens and Friends of Buxton:
We are here today to signalize the One Hundred Fiftieth An- niversary of the Incorporation of the Town. In some ways the semi-centennial is more impressive than the centennial. Some of you were present here fifty years ago; many more though young remember the occasion; all look back over part or all of the half century and realize the magnitude of its events. It was my for- tune some years ago to live five years on the Pacific coast; then I leaped as it were 6,000 miles to the east and spent seven years in the city of London. During these twelve years and a residence of about the same period in our mother state of Massachusetts, my thought reverted often to the Pine Tree State, to Bangor, in which was my first parish, to Buxton, the place of my nativity. Literally and figuratively a man has but one birth place. Here my father for fifteen years preached the word of God as he understood it. Here was the home of many of the Wentworth family with which by my father's re-marriage I was so intimately connected, among them Aunt Deborah and Aunt Jane, the town's aunts. Here, if a personal reminiscence be permitted, I first attended church at the age of three and a half years. The pew I found too con- tracted, I passed into the aisle, Deacon Samuel A. Hill strove to catch me, I eluded his grasp. Capt. Gerry Rounds, Jr., made the same effort without success; in tone of solemnity and reproof my
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father paused in his sermon and uttered my name, I answered, "What?" Finally I returned voluntarily to my place, and within one hour received the chastisement which rigid Calvinism sug- gested. Fifty years ago, Mark H. Dunnell, then in the prime of his congressional career, delivered the address, Charles G. Came read the poem, Cyrus Woodman, the friend of Bowdoin College and of Buxton, was the historian. Gerry Rounds, Jr., whom with his good wife, Sophronia, a matron of old time vigor and common sense, I hold in affectionate memory, was chief marshal; he was mounted on the somewhat fiery steed brought home from the Civil War by Major John D. Hill. These and many others well known and loved have passed into the invisible. "One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abid- eth forever."
What a half century it has been! I know not whether there was a gathering here one hundred years ago, at the first semi- centennial, but the greater events of the past century have been for the most part in the latter half, perhaps even in the last quarter. Ships today sail through the air even as they traverse the surface of the sea and rush beneath its waters. At this mo- ment perchance in the air above messages are passing to other continents. We talk with Chicago and San Francisco. The horse has become as rare on the streets of a large city as oxen fifty years ago on the roads of Buxton. It has been said that mobility is one great test of civilization. If this be true the United States must be far in advance of all the world. Statisticians tell us of the 12,588,949 motor vehicles in the world, the United States has 10,505,660; Russia, 35,000; China, 150; Liberia, 3. We may wonder if the woful daily loss of life in New York City and elsewhere is a sign of marked progress! The flash from the key of Benjamin Franklin through the genius of man has become the light and power of the world, the master and servant of humanity. Geography has likewise changed; history has added its most sig- nificant chapters. Who fifty years ago ever dreamed that Poland
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would be restored? Yet she is today again a nation with her ancient boundaries, while the three empires which partitioned her territory suffer the chastisement of Providence. The Austrian empire has literally disappeared, Russia is the object at once of disgust and of charitable effort on the part of the world; Germany is a victim of the attempt, always futile, permanently to dominate the world. Fifty-one years ago Clemenceau, the French "tiger," signed with others a memorial insisting that Alsace-Lorraine was French in character and sympathy and could not be transferred to another country. In the armistice of November 11, 1918, one ar- ticle demanded that Germany withdraw from all occupied terri- tory. In this class was included Alsace-Lorraine, no return, no retrocession, simply the evacuation of what had been unlawfully occupied. What a vindication of patriotic sentiment, and of na- tional justice! But these and other events are the results of the development of principles in the world's life of wide significance and application. When many years ago I matriculated in the University of Leipzig, Germany, I gave as my place of residence Buxton, York County, State of Maine, U. S. A. To my surprise it appeared in the bulletin of the university, "Buxton, Nord Amer- ika." For some reason the authorities seemed to recognize no divisions in the Western Hemisphere except North and South America. Oddly enough this is a symbol, type or precursor, as one may express it, of an idea in the minds of many today; the recognition of no national units or boundaries, but humanity as the sole reality, the sole object of love and effort, extreme inter- nationalism. Love of humanity is, indeed, the most inclusive of all emotions, second only to the love of God. But obliteration of the boundaries of nations, the literal union of all men in one great commonwealth, if ever possible, can be anticipated only at a date but slightly in advance of the millennium. It is true we have now a new, higher, less narrow conception of patriotism, but love of country, with the exception of personal afan!
ing, is still the most powerful emotion of the human heart. The
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nation is the instrument, the means in our work for humanity. The nation as a unity, individuals through the nation, must work for the welfare of mankind.
What a country we have! A world power sharing only with the British Empire, if with any people, the hegemony of nations. Many of our domestic problems approach solution. We still talk of corruption in politics; in our party platforms we still "point with pride," and "view with alarm"; we place in them planks to be seen rather than to be tested by the weight of action. But com- pare political life with that of half a century ago. Some of us are old enough to remember the cabinet scandals in Grant's second administration, although the general himself was incorruptible, the "Credit Mobilier," which drove many into private life, and other episodes at least unfortunate. Many of you, no doubt, have read adverse criticisms of the administration of the mayor of New York City. But with all his short-comings he is a paragon of po- litical probity in comparison with Boss Tweed and his satellites of nearly fifty years ago. In political life we stand upon a higher plane. There is a much more wholesome and delicate conception of the proprieties of public office. The late Senator Frye is re- ported to have said when he was approached with perfectly legiti- mate offers to add to his personal fortune that he must avoid ap- pearing to anyone to have profited by public position. This ex- pressed the ideal and to some extent the standard of political life today. But with the new era come new duties and fresh problems. Two of the greatest of these are our obligations as a world power, and the Americanization of our heterogeneous citizenship. Con- cerning the former it is evident that no nation liveth unto itself alone. We cannot attempt or enjoy splendid isolation. We realize that no people profits in the end by the misfortunes of others. Our welfare is bound up with that of the world. There may be and there are different views of how we may best fulfil our duties as a member of the commonwealth of nations, but that there are such duties and we must meet them is beyond question. Americaniza-
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in effect and said decisively, we prefer the gradual development of freedom by evolution, by our own methods to extremism, revo- lution and chaos. But who averted the military danger? We all know how youth, vigor, patriotism, love of freedom blended in a glorious enthusiasm which carried troops over the rifle pits and machine gun thickets of the German through the Meuse Argonne to the historic fields of Sedan. We are not all aware perhaps of the American achievement, without which the campaign of 1918 would not have been. In the spring of 1917 the British authori- ties, it is said, told Admiral Sims and representatives of their al- lies that should the destruction of mercantile shipping by sub- marine continue in the same ratio Great Britain would be com- pelled to surrender in November. The British adopted as a last resort the convoy system. This was made possible only by the presence of a large number of American destroyers in European waters. The plan gradually succeeded and the peril passed. To our seamen belongs the high honor of turning the scales against the modern sea pirates.
But in speaking of democracy what shall we say of the Bol- sheviki who claim to be its most advanced type? Were it de- mocracy we should feel that rather "than make the world safe for democracy," as President Wilson said, we should make de- mocracy safe for the world. But Bolshevism is not democracy. It is not socialism, for socialism seeks to control commerce and industry by the state, by the authority of all the people, and Bolshevism is the rule of only a small minority excluding the professional, educated and mercantile classes. Bolshevism is hard- ly communism except of a perverted sort. It is rank syndicalism, an inverted despotism, we may say, a tyranny of not a man or monarch, but of a fraction of the proletariat inspired alike by de- votion to extreme theories, by hatred of all existing institutions, by ambition and by greed. Democracy seeks freedom with justice, and liberty with law. The most remarkable occurrence in its moral as well as political significance in the sphere of democracy is the
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manner in which the colonies of England rallied to the defence and aims of the mother country, sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers over the seas from four continents, not through coercion, not through the power of tradition, but through love of the mother land, of her principles and her liberty. The most extra- ordinary development of the democratic spirit has been the in- franchisement of woman. Twelve years ago I saw several women carried out of Queens Hall in London struggling and shrieking because they had interrupted Winston Churchill in his address. Their methods were foolish, yet they achieved their purpose, call- ing attention of the world to their cause. On the other hand one of the finest addresses to which I ever listened was that of Lady Balfour in behalf of equal suffrage. Today, in part, through the devotion and self sacrifice of women, including the suffragettes, in the great war, most of the enlightened nations have placed women in political life on an equality with men, a condition not only equitable in itself but justified by the increased industrial necessi- ties of women everywhere. The destinies of the world are at last largely in the hands of its people.
Here beneath the shadow, or better the sunshine, of this an- cient house of worship with its succession of pastors from the al- most incredibly long pastorate so interwoven in the history of the town to the present minister, who so well sustains the traditions of the past and meets the standards of the present in service of the community, we think naturally of democracy in religion. What the. town meeting is to civil life, Congregationalism is to the church. Far be it from me to sound a denominational note. It is manifest, however, that in the dawning day of Christian unity the churches controlled directly by the people grow more easily into harmony and are on the foundation on which Christian unity if ever achieved in a general way must rest. Projects of union pre- sented by churches like the Church of England, whatever the con- cessions, invariably insist in some form, however camouflaged, upon ordination by some ecclesiastical authority. In the First
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Church of Salem, of which I was minister six years, one minister was ordained by laymen. Thus practically was it in the earliest churches in Palestine which chose one of their number to minister to them. Democracy in religion finds no special divine authority delegated to any body of men. Democracy in religion, too - the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers-demands absolute separation of church and state. Whatever one's view of evolution, or any kin- dred doctrine, the recent attempt in Kentucky to prohibit its teach- ing in all schools is a violation of the spirit of our institutions. So also is the recent effort at Chattanooga to have religion taught in the public schools, the nature of the teaching, the teachers and the textbooks, if any, to be under the control of certain religious organizations. Broad religious principles may well be taught in schools, perhaps indirectly better than formally, but the instruc- tion must always be under the control of the civil authority. In- fringement of church on state, or state on church, and excessive paternalism are tendencies we must resist in the beginning.
And now what of the future, fifty or one hundred years hence? I see in that day airship stations surpassing in area the Pennsyl- vania Station in New York City as the latter surpasses the station in Gorham; by principles of the existence of which we know, ex- panded by genius, addresses and sermons, music and concerts will be heard by thousands at their own firesides; motor tractors with- in reach of all and equal to many horsepower will plow the soil and reap the harvest ; grains and other products of the earth will be prepared for the table without so-called refinement, without elimination of the elements needful to increase the strength and the resisting power of the human organism; medicine will be largely preventive.
The golden rule in business and politics will not be as the late Senator Ingalls said, "an irridescent dream," but an ideal recog- nized and sought if not fully attained; labor and capital will be one in action as they are in interests. There will be more nearly equality of opportunity. Artificial distinctions in society will have
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vanished. In brief mankind will have approached a genuine fel- lowship of communities and nations. This and more-but I should be untrue to my own convictions, did I not make all this conditional, dependent upon preservation of world peace. If swords are not beaten into plowshares but rather agricultural ma- chines are transformed into modern war chariots - tanks as in the late war - if genius is to be expended in discovering more and more fatal gases and destructive enginery which shall paralyze armies and devastate towns and cities from earth and sea and sky, if armaments are not to be reduced to police necessities but ever in- creasing, are matters of rivalry between jealous nations, if, in short, in a decade or two another world struggle is to come inevit- ably tenfold more prolific in horror, suffering, destruction and death than the recent war of the nations, then not only will prog- ress be impossible, but we may question whether civilization can endure. How will it be? I confess the present outlook is not very hopeful. But I believe, as the most cheering fact now is that the world still goes on in at least some measure of prosperity after the fearful holocaust of the recent past, so during the period of exhaustion when war will be impossible, the common sense of men will so concentrate and express itself in action that the world will not court destruction. Yet we thought this before 1914. The is- sue rests, I say it not merely as a minister of religion but also as a student of history, upon the world's ability to connect the ethics of the New Testament with its own life and action, not doctrines, nor creeds-though these may have their place-but the ap- plied principles of Jesus' teaching, for conflicts into which people enter in the patriotic spirit but often with narrow vision are more deadly than the ancient wars of kings. Democracies must take a firm hand in the affairs of the world and determine the policy of their governments. To do this rightly they must be leavened and pervaded by a spirit of love and justice.
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