Little Talks #960, February 11, 1973 One town not far from Waterville has been sadly neglected on this program, and I want to say something about it today. It is the Somerset County town of Starks near Madison, Anson and New Sharon. Since the closing of the corn shop of the Monmouth Canning Company a few years ago, Starks has been without any major industry; hence its population has steadily declined to a few hundred people. In 1850 the town had 1,500 inhabitants, but half a century later in 1900 the number had shrunk to 630. Today it is down to 323. The place was first settled in 1774,the year before the shots at Lexington and Concord opened the American Revolution. The first to come was James Waugh, who took advantage of the offer of the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase for settler’s lots on their lands. In 1772, with little except a few provisions in a knapsack, his gun and his axe, Waugh started up the Kennebec from Clinton, determined to find land suitable for settlement and not already claimed by someone else. When he reached the Sandy River, he found it too swift to cross, so he continued on foot up the south side of that stream. He went only a short distance and staked out his claim. He then returned to Clinton. The next spring he returned with three Fletchers, a widower father and two sons, and built two log cabins and planted rye. All four were then unmarried. In the fall of 1773 they returned to Clinton, all took wives, and in the spring of 1774 those eight men and women began permanent settlement on the Sandy River. In January 1775, was born the first white child in that region, James, son of the first James Waugh. In those years at the outbreak of the Revolution, the few Indians that had remained after the destruction of the Indian Village at Old Point in Norridgewock still presented a threat. In the fall after the permanent settlement, the threat was so feared that the women were sent to spend the winter at Fort Halifax, while the men remained to cut down more trees before spring and get ready to plant more grain when the snow was gone. There was no Indian attack, and the women returned to the cabins in the spring. Arnold’s march up the Kennebec in 1775 was not the last attention given to that ancient route to Canada. In the summer of 1777 James Waugh of Norridgewock received the following letter. liTo James Waugh, Commander of a Scouting Party on the Kennebec River. You are to proceed up the river to the Great Carrying Place, then divide your party equally, sending them to the crotch of the main river, or as far as Moose Pond on the east branch of the river; and sending the other division across the Great Carrying Place to the Dead River, to scout between Dead River and Seven Mile Brook. Keep a faithful account of your proceedings and advise me promptly of any discoveries you make of the enemy. Lt. Col. William Howard. Hallowell, August 2, 1777.” Waugh’s scouting party was no army. It consisted of only four men besides himself. He presumably took Jonas Smith and Samuel Weston with himself to do the harder job on the Dead River. He sent Oliver Witham and Luke Sawyer on the easier route up the Kennebec beyond the Carrying Place. Both parties were under no circumstances to fire a gun except against Indians. Witham and Sawyer had gone only a short distance when Sawyer saw a deer swimming in the river, and shot the animal. He was reprimanded by Witham for disobeying orders. They made their scout to Moose Pond,then returned to the Carrying Place to meet Waugh’s party on their return. They waited in vain, and finally returned to Norridgewock without seeing anything of their companions. At Norridgewock they learned that the sound of Sawyer’s gun had so alarmed the other party that they fled in haste to Norridgewock, when they sent an urgent message to Col. Howard at Hallowell for reinforcements. They were sure the musket shot meant Indians. Waugh’s farm was made a part of Starks when the town was incorporated in 1795. Historian J. W. Hansen says of James Waugh: “He was emphatically the Man of Starks. He was revered by all the people and was worthy of their esteem. Without any pretensions he had at heart the interests of education and morality.” A Waterville man had a part in Starks’ early history. In 1799 Heyward,a man prominent in the early development of Ticonic Village, took a large lot called the “BullIs Bow,” and put on it a man named Chamberlain. When Chamberlain left for Ohio, Heyward put his own son, Thomas, in residence on the lot. But Thomas, too, took off for the richer soil of Ohio, and Heyward sold his Starks holdings into the possession of the Wood family, who held it for many years. Hansen says that by 1790, sixteen years after the first axe disturbed the primeval solitude of the place, there were more than 300 people living in Starks. An old Maine Gazetteer says this about the town: “Starks, the 100th town to be incorporated in Maine, lies on the west side of the Kennebec River at its junction with the Sandy. It is bounded on the north by Anson and Industry, on the east by Madison and Norridgewock, on the south by Mercer, on the west by Industry. It received its name from John Stark. hero of the Revolution at the Battle of Bennington. The town contains about 26,000 acres, of which 17,000 is unimproved land, 2,500 is pasture, and 1,200 tillage.” The account further noted that in 1850 Starks had nearly”$200,000 taxable valuation, with 186 dwelling houses, 230 barns, and 20 shops and stores.” The same old gazeteer described the course of the Sandy River as originating on a spur of Saddleback Mountain in the town of Madrid, then taking a generally southeast course through Phillips, Avon, Strong, Farmington, Chesterville, Industry, New Sharon, Mercer, and Starks to the Kennebec. Some time ago I told you about an attempt to form a new county with Waterville as the county seat. That happened in the midst of the War of 1812, and was to include towns then in parts of Kennebec, Somerset and Oxford. Nothing came of it, and the reason may be that too many of the towns in the proposed inclusion did not like the idea. At least we know how the people of Starks felt, for preserved is their petition to the Legislature – that is, the General Court of Massachusetts – in February 1814. It said: “Whereas at the last session of the Legislature an. order of notice was granted on the petition of Belcher and others, praying that a new county be established from a part of Kennebec, Somerset and Oxford, the inhabitants of Starks in the County of Somerset respectfully remonstrate against granting said petition. Our county buildings are now erected~ partly on credit which must at some future time be paid by the inhabitants of this county. Furthermore a new county would greatly diminish the population of Somerset and grossly increase our taxes. Starks is now only eight miles from the County Seat and the Court House of Somerset. If Starks were in a new county, with Waterville the county seat, Starks would be a frontier town on the edge of a new county.” Unlike Norridgewock, Starks held out for a long time against the separation of Maine from Massachusetts. At the first vote in 1816, the Starks vote was 32 yes, 33 no; in 1817 was 34 yes and 50 no. But when the final vote was taken in 1819, the people of Starks had been won over. The vote then was 35 to 23 in favor of separation. Starks was victim of a swindle, just as were many other Maine towns in the early years of the 19th century. William Young of Starks, John Fowler and Nathan Burrill of Canaan, and Joseph Greeley of Belgrade heard about a mentally defective boy in Massachusetts who had found a stone by the aid of which he could find valuables hidden in the earth. They brought the boy, Michael Eldred, to Starks and put him to work. The boy would place a stone in his hat, put the hat over his face, and say that he could see a bag, or chest, or jar of money. On one dark night a large group of people were told that Eldred could find any metallic substance in a few minutes. The boy was brought to a house in Starks, then a logging chain was sunk in a brook some distance away. Eldred put the stone in his hat, walked directly to the brook and pulled out the chain. That convinced a number of people to pay good money to Eldred’s backers to have the boy find buried treasure. There is no record that any was ever found. Some of the people were pretty angry at the four men who had brought the boy to Starks, but most were eventually convinced that those men were honestly duped by sharpers in Massachusetts, who were somehow scared away from their original plan, which was to place counterfeit money in certain holes in the ground and thus get it into circulation. They meanwhile could collect good money for the boy’s services. The scheme worked for a time along the Merrimac in Massachusetts, but the fraud was revealed before they could really get going in Maine. Starks was not always without industry. Besides the usual sawmill and a grist mill, the town had in 1850, a starch factory and a tannery. Twenty years later the place was canning corn. Preserved is a record of the town’s agricultural production for the year 1840. It is given as 2,500 bushels of corn, 3,500 bushels of wheat, 8,000 of oats, 221 bushels of beans, 83 of barley, 80 of rye, and 32,000 bushels of potatoes. The town also raised 5,000 pounds of wool, 44,000 pounds of pork, 400 of beef and 6,900 tons of hay. They raised 1,000 bushels of apples and made five barrels of cider. Starks then had 165 horses, 175 oxen, 386 cows, 2300 sheep, 350 swine, and Starks housewives made 4,300 pounds of butter and 150 pounds of cheese. In that year 1850 the people of Starks appropriated at town meeting $2,000 for highways, $650 for schools, and $1,000 for all other town expenses. A half century later in 1900, the town’s valuation was only $200,000, very little increase over 1850. By this time it had two churches, Union and Methodist, was contemplating telephone service by the Eastern Telephone Co., and boasted a hotel, the Elmvood, kept by H. M. Waugh. In Starks in 1900 were two general stores; two sheep dealers, two sellers of fertilizer; and two dealers in farm machinery. But by this time Starks had only two listed industries: B. H. Bartlett’s blacksmith shop and carriage repair, and William L. Walker’s shingle and grist mill. So, with that salute to the Somerset County town of Starks, we say goodbye until next week.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 21:59:17 +0000
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