USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 18
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83
129
THE MARTYR AND THE GENERAL
Ben Butler was devoted to the task of building up the Erosophian library. He persuaded the society to employ an agent to solicit donations in the Kennebec towns and as far away as Wiscasset. Lest the rival society, the Literary Fra- ternity, beat them in implementing the same idea, it was voted "to keep the above vote a profound secret."
On April 28, 1838, Butler was elected president of the Erosophian Adelphi. The big event of every year was the society's anniversary celebration, at which some prominent man was always the orator. When the time drew near for that occasion at the Commencement in 1838, for some reason Mr. Curtis, the orator, declined to deliver his address. Guptill, chairman of the society's anniversary committee, resigned in wrath. At the last moment Ben Butler took over, suc- ceeded in pacifying Curtis, arranged for the event to be postponed from Tuesday to Wednesday evening of commencement week, and got Curtis down from Boston to deliver what the local press called "a brilliant oration."
When the lock on the door of the library was broken and certain depreda- tions were committed, the chairman of the committee to "ferret out the per- petrators of this outrage" was Ben Butler. Soon afterward the society decided they needed better quarters for their library, and whom did they select to go before the faculty with their plea for use of a larger and better room? The student who represented them, ably and successfully, was the one whom tradition tells us was a constant violator of college rules and one whom the faculty was glad to see go. If that was the kind of reputation this pleader for a favor had in faculty circles, we can only say that faculties have changed a lot since 1838.
Anyhow, there is the official record. In Waterville College one of the best behaved and most respected students was the little fellow from Lowell, Massa- chusetts, who could scarcely tip the scales at a hundred pounds and who in later years became the most controversial of all the Civil War generals.
Quite different men were Elijah Parish Lovejoy and Benjamin Franklin But- ler. Both were ardent, energetic workers, able to carry on several tasks at the same time. Both had the stubborn determination of a bulldog. Both became controversial figures on the American political scene. But there was one tre- mendous difference between them. Ben Butler's vaulting ambition led him into equivocal statements and dubious actions, while Elijah Lovejoy, ambitious only for his cause, forgot himself into immortality.
CHAPTER XIV
The College Lands
HEN our early American colleges were founded, the colonial and state legislatures found it difficult to make grants of money. Often such grants were indeed made, to the extent of a few thousand dollars annually for a period of years, to assist with meeting current expenses. But the states had no funds with which to make substantial cash endowments. What they did have in vast quan- tity was land, and with land grants they gave their academies and colleges a start.
It was natural, therefore, that the Trustees of the Maine Literary and Theo- logical Institution should give a great deal of attention to their grant of land from the Massachusetts Legislature, made in 1813. That charter, in which was incor- porated that "there be and hereby is granted a township of land six miles square," did not specify the location of the grant, and it was not until 1815 that it was fixed as a tract in the wilderness of Eastern Maine on the Penobscot River.
Even before the location of the grant, the Trustees had made definite plans for its use and sale. Part of its use was to be the placing of an institution on the tract, and sale was to be made of the area not needed for the educational plant. An important factor in the development of any such tract of land was the building of adequate roads. Hence, in May 1813, two years before they knew where their land was to be, the Trustees passed a vote concerning roads. Running north and south through the center of the tract, with three miles of it on each side, was to be a road five rods wide. On each side of that center road were to be two more roads, 400 rods distant from each other, and four rods wide. That made a total of five roads running the length of the tract. The roads from east to west, crossing the width of the area, were to be three in number, one through the center, and the other two 480 rods north and south respectively of the center road.
The Board had not yet selected a surveyor, but they laid down regulations to guide one when the land should be located and a surveyor named. He was to lay out the township into 24 long squares, sixteen of which would be equal, each containing 1200 acres. Each of eight other squares would have 480 acres. That plan would divide the entire 23,040 acres of the township. The Trustees decreed that "no person shall have liberty to purchase more than two hundred acres within a mile and a half of the Institution, nor more than five hundred acres in the whole township." That was to assure an adequate number of set- tlers.
Knowing that they could sell little of the land for cash, the Board, even before they had any actual land to sell, made plans for sale on credit:
132
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
The committee is directed to sell lands in said town and to give deeds to persons wishing to buy on credit, said purchasers giving back to the committee a mortgage on the land sold, with as much advance pay or such other security as the committee shall deem necessary.
Knowing also that any grant located by the Land Agent was sure to be in an unsettled area, the Trustees took precautions to assure the early presence of neigh- bors.
Voted, that all persons who shall purchase land in the township, within one and one-half miles of the Institution, shall be holden to begin a settlement on the premises within three years after such purchase has been made.
By agreement with the Trustee Committee on Lands, a specific grant was designated on June 12, 1815, by William Smith, Agent for the Eastern Lands of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Because of its importance in the history of the college, the complete text is inserted here.
Whereas by a resolve of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, passed February 15, 1813, the Agent for the Sale of the Eastern Lands was authorized to give a deed of a township of land, now therefor I do, in behalf of the said Commonwealth, assign, re- linquish and quit claim to the Trustees of the Maine Literary and Theo- logical Institution all right, title and interest of said Commonwealth in a township of land Number Three on the west side of the Penobscot river, being one of the townships purchased from the Penobscot tribe of In- dians, containing 29,164 acres, as the same was surveyed by Park Hol- land, Jonathan Maynard and John Chamberlain, by direction of Salem Town in the year of 1797, bounded as follows: on the east by the Penobscot river; on the south by Township No. 4; on the west by Township No. 1 of the fourth and fifth ranges of townships north of the Waldo Patent; on the north by Township No. 1 in the first and second ranges of township purchased from the Indians.
There are reserved, however, 2600 acres to be laid out in lots of one hundred acres each, on a road to be made through said township agreeable to a contract entered into by the undersigned agent with John Bennock, which lots are reserved for defraying the expenses of said road.
It is further conditioned that the said trustees shall lay out and convey to each settler who settled said tract before January 1, 1784, or bis heirs or assigns, one hundred acres each, to be held in fee simple, and so laid out as to best include the settlers' improvements and to be least injurious to the adjoining lands. And the trustees shall also lay out four lots of 320 acres each for the following uses: one lot for the use of the ministry; one for the use of the schools; one for the first settled minister, to be his property; and one for the future disposition of the General Court; and they shall also settle in said township twenty families within six years from the date hereof, including those now settled thereon.
Under the above conditions the Trustees of the Maine Literary and Theological Institution shall have and hold the aforegranted premises
133
THE COLLEGE LANDS
forever, for the use, benefit and purpose of supporting said Institution, and to be by them holden in their corporate capacity in full considera- tion for the grant made by an act passed February 27, 1813.
On August 9, 1815, only two months after the designation by the Agent, the Trustees voted to send a committee of three members to the township, to ascertain its quality and situation and the expediency of erecting buildings of the Institution upon it. That committee, composed of John Neal, David Nelson, and Elder Thomas Francis, duly reported, at a special meeting called on Sep- tember 27, that the township was not suitable as a site for the Institution. As we have noted in an earlier chapter, the Board then successfully petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for permission to locate the college elsewhere.
The text of Agent Smith's particular grant gives the surprising information that, deep in the wilderness as the location was, it was not completely unin- habited. In fact settlers had established some sort of foothold upon it earlier than 1784. Hence the college trustees were required to recognize those settlers by individual deeds, as ordered in the document. This explains also a vote passed on February 25, 1818:
John Neal is hereby empowered to proceed to our land on the Penobscot and take care of the timber now cut or cutting by persons without authority, to settle with them or commence prosecution, as he shall deem best for the Institution.
Thus, like many another owner of Maine lands, the college trustees had trouble with squatters as well as with previous legitimate settlers. "Taking off timber" was for a long time a kind of expected sport in Maine, something like cattle rustling in the West of a later day. To protect its timber from such depredations was a harder task for the Trustees than to deal with resident squatters.
In 1819 Otis Briggs was made agent of the committee in charge of the lands and he proceeded to negotiate sales. The college took numerous notes that became increasingly hard to collect. By 1825, when little money had been realized and only notes of dubious value could show for their efforts, the com- mittee was authorized to inform all purchasers of land whose bonds had ex- pired that no further leniency would be shown after August 14, 1829, if the full interest then due on their notes had not been paid. It thus appears that there had been trouble in collecting even the interest on the notes, to say noth- ing of the principal.
The previous votes to spend a total of fifteen percent on roads actually meant that allowance to purchasers. A buyer could work off fifteen percent of his note by labor at road building. It turned out that some of the settlers wouldn't even do that, for in 1830, after Briggs had been the agent for eleven years, the Board voted:
The Treasurer shall commence action against such settlers on the Pe- nobscot Township as shall have failed on or before October 15, 1830, to have worked out the fifteen percent on the roads, heretofore al- lowed on the amount of their purchases. If any settler shall fail to work out, during this season, the fifteen percent required on the river road, the agent shall allow all other settlers to work out to an amount equal to such deficiency.
134
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
Some of the settlers had been on the tract for a long time, holding their original claims directly from Massachusetts under conditions which demanded their work on roads. Agent Briggs explained to the Trustees in 1830 that he had urged the settlers to make the river road on the same terms. Nine years had elapsed and that road had not yet been built. The settlers were supposed to fell the trees for a width of four rods, clear out stumps and stones, and for the width of one rod level the ground sufficiently for the passage of wheeled vehicles. Briggs said the road would cost one hundred dollars per mile. (Com- pare that with the modern cost of the national expressways.) There would be four bridges, one of which had already been built, but the agent would not ac- cept it because it was not high enough. Concerning another bridge, the agent said,
I contracted for it with Mr. Eldridge for $62.50, to get a debt which he owed to the Trustees for stumpage of timber which he cut on his back lot, and which he calculated at the time Mr. Stephen Kimball would pay for, but he did not.
Running north and south through the township, about two miles from its western edge was an old road built by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts be- fore the College had received the grant. In honor of the man who had done most to open up the region, it was called the Bennock road. Over this road, in 1830, passed the weekly mail. The post rider complained bitterly at the neglect of that old road. While the new owners were putting their attention on addi- tional roads, the existing road was going to ruin. Agent Briggs insisted that repairs must be made on the Bennock road. "Roads are important to the Col- lege. They facilitate settlement, and without them we cannot profitably sell the lots."
The Penobscot Lands had not been entirely profitless after fifteen years in the possession of the College. Briggs reported that he had collected on notes $2400, and had received for stumpage about $3000. In 1831 he was able to state that timber on the unsold lots had been auctioned for $4312, and the pur- chasers given five years to remove it. But this money was not in cash, for the College took notes, payable in five annual installments.
The summer of 1831 saw, at last, the completion of the river road. Briggs reported:
I personally attended to the opening of the river road. Working with the men, I made a good turnpike road through woodland. The cost, receipted to the settlers on the fifteen percent provision, was $452.50, exclusive of the agent's time. The spring freshet had caused us to lose bridges and causeways, necessitating their rebuilding at an added expense of three hundred dollars.
Evidently the College didn't make the needed repairs on the Bennock road, for Agent Briggs said:
The Bennock road, as you know, is a mail route, and complaints have been made to the court, which would have attached our land had not a respectable citizen assured the court he would be responsible for the College doing all that should be done in the public interest. Your agent therefore asked the Chief Justice what, in his judgment it would
135
THE COLLEGE LANDS
be necessary to expend on the road, and he has recommended $300. This should be done immediately.
A good deal of sub-letting and sub-contracting went on. A man named Swett agreed to get fifteen settlers to purchase lots if the College would give him a double lot of two hundred acres on which he himself would settle. The Trus- tees agreed, provided he would get the fifteen settlers to purchase hundred acre lots at one dollar an acre. Swett never secured his fifteen settlers, and there fol- lowed years of litigation for his own two hundred acres.
Agent Briggs rightly insisted that the inhabitants ought, for the sake of the community, to give work on the roads, in addition to the work for which they re- ceived credit on their purchases. The settlers protested that, since their bonds had expired, the College had the power to drive them out at any time. So why should they give labor that would not benefit themselves? Briggs therefore pro- posed, and the Trustees agreed, to renew the old bonds and take notes for the amount due on them, giving the settlers an additional period of five years to make payment.
The year 1831 added $1368 to cash receipts from the lands. Timber sold amounted to $850, a trespass action brought $200, and $312 was collected from settlers.
In 1832 the township was organized into the Plantation of Argyle, and seven years later was incorporated as a town. In 1844, the southern part was taken from Argyle to form the town of Alton. The obligation of the College for roads was somewhat relieved when Argyle Plantation voted to raise a thousand dollars for highways. But complications regarding the purchase of lands only multiplied. When payment became too slow or a settler moved away, the agent proceeded to resell the lot.
I sold Isaac Mansell's lot to Foster Delano for $250, and Amiel Rand's lot to his son Jack for $220, also the Judkins' lot to James Morrison for $200, and he paid me by work on the road $25.
First evidence of interest in the college lands by the lumber companies is contained in the agent's report for 1832, when he stated that 200 acres of land had been sold for $700 to the Sugar Island Side Boom Company, to be paid in five annual installments.
In 1835 a land speculator entered the scene in the person of Cyrus Moore of Dover, who made a deal with one Silas Barnard to take over a bond which the latter held to purchase 10,000 acres of the college lands west of the Bennock road for $1.50 an acre. Barnard agreed to divide with Moore all profit above the price specified in the bond. Trying to sell lots to prospective buyers in Bos- ton, Moore found he could not complete sales before the expiration of the bond; so he purchased the land outright by making himself responsible to the College for Barnard's bond. Subsequent attempts by Moore to sell lots proving unsuc- cessful, he made the following plea to the college trustees in 1842:
Do you not think justice requires you to make some remuneration, either in money or in land, as you certainly have plenty of the latter if not of the former? I have paid to the College something like $15,000 and have never received one cent therefor. All I ask of the College is to put themselves in my situation and see if they would think it right
136
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
and just to receive something in return for $15,000, especially if they had lost their all and had become poor.
Moore and two associates, Robinson and Plummer, had given the college a note for $3831 in 1835. No bank would discount that note without a re- sponsible personal endorsement. After holding the note for two years, and being badly in need of funds, the Trustees persuaded their fellow member, Timothy Boutelle, to endorse the note, so that the Ticonic Bank would accept it. In 1838, when the note fell due, all of the three signers, including Moore, were insolvent, so that Boutelle was obliged to pay the note at the bank. The Trustees then agreed that, if Moore did not recompense Boutelle within ninety days, the College would convey to Boutelle the 10,000 acres of land involved, provided he take up another note of Moore's amounting also to $3731. When Moore de- faulted, the lands became Boutelle's property for his total payment of $7662. Such was the situation when, in 1842, Boutelle appealed to his fellow trus- tees as follows:
When I agreed to take the land in payment of the two notes, I was constrained to do so rather from the utter inability of the College to refund to me the money thus advanced than from any expectation of making a profitable investment. The financial affairs of the College having now somewhat improved, I would propose to give up this con- tract for the land and have the College pay me the sums I have paid toward it, and I will waive the five years of interest on my money. I agree further to discount the entire amount by $1000 and give the College five or six years to pay the balance.
Generous as was Boutelle's offer, his fellow trustees turned it down. The committee appointed to consider the matter reported:
Although Mr. Boutelle's proposition is highly liberal, we do not con- ceive it to be for the best interests of the College to repurchase the land. Great credit is justly due him for the timely and necessary aid which the College realized when Mr. Boutelle took over the notes. But, as the transaction did not take the character of a loan of money upon a pledge of the property, and as the College entered into no stipulation under any circumstances to receive it back, we do not consider the College under any obligation, moral or equitable, to take it again. We trust that Mr. Boutelle will not be a loser by the efforts he has made, in the most disinterested manner for relief of the College.
At the same meeting the Trustees dealt with the petition of Moore, asking that he be granted additional lands to relieve his losses.
We are not aware that Moore has any claim, either in law or in equity. As the funds of the College are held in trust, the Trustees cannot con- sistently appropriate to his use any part of their available means. They regret his losses. It was doubtless a speculation into which he entered with the hope of gain. If he has been disappointed, he suffers in com- mon with many others who have failed to realize their expectations.
The matter dragged along until 1847, Moore continuing to press his claim. He had originally paid one-fifth of the purchase price, or $3000, in cash. He
137
THE COLLEGE LANDS
later paid $831 and, together with Robinson and Plummer, gave four notes of $3831 each. Two of the notes were paid as they fell due, and it was the re- maining two for which Boutelle became responsible. Since the College had actually received $11,493 and Boutelle had possession of the whole 10,000 acres, Moore felt it only fair that he get some relief. This time the Trustees felt more lenient toward him than they had in 1842, for they agreed to give him three hundred acres of land.
Trouble with timber robbers seemed never to end, but the Trustees were quite willing to leave that warfare to Timothy Boutelle. In 1848 they voted,
In our opinion, Mr. Boutelle became beneficially interested in said timber after 1839, and if any timber has been taken off by trespassers since that time, the right of reclamation belongs to Mr. Boutelle, and he is hereby authorized to proceed in the name of the Trustees of Waterville College, but without any expense to them.
After 1850 the records of the Trustees contain no further reference to the Argyle lands. So confusing are the financial reports, it is impossible to tell how much money the College finally received from the sale of lands and timber. It is clear, however, that by the mid-century all had been sold, though a few dubious mortgage notes were still held by the treasurer. Net proceeds to the College could hardly have exceeded $25,000, after deducting the cost of surveys, agent's fees, and building of roads, as well as cost of some unsuccessful litigation. The College had held part of the land for thirty-five years, so that it may safely be assumed that the total return averaged much less than a thousand dollars a year.
In 1861 the State of Maine granted to Waterville College an additional tract of land. The grant was of two half townships to be selected by the Land Agent and was to be bestowed only if the College should raise before April 1, 1863, a subscription of $20,000. This grant lay almost due north of Moosehead Lake. The two half townships were not contiguous. One was in Township 11, Range 16, in the northwestern part of the state, three miles due west of Long and Umsaskis lakes, and nine townships north of the northernmost arm of Moosehead. Through it ran the main stream of the St. John River after its north and south branches joined near the township's southwest corner. The other tract was in Township 6, Range 17, five townships south and one west of the first tract. It was three townships due west of Caucomagomac Lake.
Isaac Love was selected as agent to raise the necessary $20,000. At the annual meeting of the Trustees in 1862, he was able to report that he had se- cured subscriptions of $23,210, of which $14,033 had already been paid; so the land now irrevocably belonged to the College. Concerning those two half town- ships, Agent Love said:
It is impossible to ascertain the value of this land grant until the prop- erty has been converted into money. Land in Maine is worth from nothing to $300 an acre, and public lands are valuable in proportion to the amount of white pine timber they will yield, the quantity of it when converted into lumber, the proximity of the lands to floating water leading to the seaboard, and the infelicities in the surroundings for thieves to steal. There are still in Maine ninety townships of public land containing about two million acres or more than three thousand square miles, which is equivalent to one-tenth of the area of the whole
138
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
state and is three times the area of the entire state of Rhode Island. I have seen many a lot which would yield a hundred thousand feet of first quality pine lumber per acre, worth for stumpage from two to five dollars per thousand feet. If the College grant proves to be located in some marsh without timber, its 23,040 acres would be worth exactly 23,040 times nothing. If it should be located where half is well wooded with white pine, it would be worth at least five times as much as all the property Waterville College has ever owned.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.