Waterville’s Penobscot & Kennebec Railroad iron horse will be snorting”

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Bangor residents raided Waterville so quickly in late July 1855 that a local newspaper editor was not really sure what happened — until reminded by a Bangor paper.

Waterville was the focal point for railroad construction that year. The big project involved building the new Penobscot & Kennebec Railroad from Waterville to Bangor. Construction had started at both ends in 1854.

From Bangor came reports in late September 1854 that a steam shovel was digging away at High Head, a landmark since Portuguese explorer

Estevan Gomez (sailing for Spain) sailed up the Penobscot River and anchored off the future Bangor in 1525. The steam shovel’s operator was excavating the headland to make room for “depots and other buildings.”

“The ship-loads of railroad iron had reached Bangor,” and “workmen” had gained sufficient experience to start lay “about a half mile [of track] each day.” Railroad backers hoped the P&K could be finished “in the shortest space of time,” the Bangor Whig reported.

By mid-October 1854, “the dry weather has been very favorable” for railroad construction, and workers completed 15 miles “from Kendall’s Mills [in Fairfield] eastward,” a new bridge carrying the railroad over the Kennebec River, the Whig stated. Having chewed through High Head, the steam shovel was “now dismantled and housed up for the winter,” the paper indicated.

Even as P&K track crews worked toward Bangor, other crews constructed the Somerset & Kennebec Railroad, intended to connect Augusta, Waterville, and Skowhegan. The railroad bed “from Augusta to Winslow Point” and

“from Waterville to Kendall’s Mills” was completed by mid-November, and “the deep cut between Ticonic and Sebasticook Bridges will be finished … this month,” reported The Eastern Mail, published in Waterville.

Workers were “laying the iron from Kendall’s Mills to Waterville,” the paper noted. If the bridges could be completed, too, “the iron horse will be snorting at Kendall’s Mills” by New Year’s Day.

By late December south-bound P&K construction reached Pittsfield, and the section between that town and Bangor was “opened immediately” around Christmas 1854, according to The Eastern Mail. Construction ended for the winter.

Construction resumed in mid-May 1855, with track being laid “as fast as it can be driven,” the Whig reported. The P&K’s owners wanted their railroad to “be the best, as a new road, of any yet constructed in Maine.”

Even as iron rails extended from Waterville toward Augusta, Bangor, and Skowhegan, railroad owners exerted political pressure in Augusta. The 1854 legislature had passed a law banning people from “standing or walking on the track of any railroad in this State,” The Eastern Mail reminded readers.

Waterville-area residents accustomed to walking where they pleased, especially along the mud-free railroad tracks, chafed at the fines “of not less than five or more than twenty dollars” that trespassers incurred per incident.

Multiple no-trespassing signs appeared along the tracks below and above Waterville, and the Mail expressed no sympathy for scofflaws. “Those who have been once run over by a locomotive will be thankful for any security against a recurrence of the accident,” the paper’s editors opined.

But critters could not read the no-trespass statute or signs. On Wednesday, May 27, several horses owned by

Fairfield resident Nathaniel Woodman wandered onto the P&K track “a short distance this side of Kendall’s Mills” and started grazing there, according to the Mail. There was no “suitable fence … [to] restrain them.”

An approaching train hit and killed the horses. The Mail blamed the railroad’s stockholders for not investing in trackside fence, but that pesky no-trespass law enacted a year earlier theoretically protected the P&K against liability for the animals’ deaths.

Huffing and puffing locomotives became so common in Waterville by midsummer 1855 that even The Eastern Mail reported minimally about the P&K. “We knew a few cars had gone over to their city [Bangor]” on Monday, July 30, “but our citizens were really caught napping by the Bangoreans” that day. “Crammed with passengers,” those same cars suddenly came “whizzing back again before dinner could be got ready,” the paper noted. Adventur(cont. on page 16)

(cont. from page 15) ous Bangor residents were testing their brand new railroad to see if they could travel round trip the same day to Waterville!

And “but for the best jumps of the telegraph, the surprise would have been complete!”

“The trip was emphatically a flying one,” the Mail admitted. Bangoreans came, saw, and vamoosed; “briefly, as a sunbeam slips down between the clouds, we saw a galaxy of gentlemen and ladies to whom Waterville seemed to be a greater curiosity than to us — and ‘that’s all we know about it,’” the paper’s editors wrote.

Had not the Bangor Journal’s editor accompanied the excursion to Waterville, “we should [not] dare to report it as a fact,” the Waterville editors said. The Bangor editor complimented Waterville “on the beauty of our village, the excellency of Elmwood Hotel,” whose owners “received only a telegraphic despatch [sic], a short time before the regular dinner hour.” Hungry Bangoreans “repaired to Elmwood, where … Seavey and his prompt assistants put upon the table a dinner that needed no apology’ for quality and taste.

After dinner, many Bangoreans strolled “about the town, admiring the beautiful streets and visiting the college grounds and inspecting the literary curiosities,” the Journal noted. “We were on the plains of one of the most beautiful interior towns in Maine.”

Boarding their P&K passengers cars at 5 p.m., Bangoreans waved out the windows at the “Watervillonians” gathered at the depot. “At the instance of Mr. Barrett,” the hometown crowd “gave us hearty cheers in parting,” the Journal’s editor noted.

by Charles Francis

Maine, like the country as a whole, has seen its share of contested elections for its highest office. Two of the most controversial elections for the office of governor of Maine involved Alonzo Garcelon of Lewiston. Like the controversy involving Bush and Gore in Florida, the controversies involved charges of voter intimidation, ballot tampering, and questions of voter intent. At various times the Maine legislature was forced to take charge, as Republican and Democrat political bosses tried to broker winners. Thrown into the mix was the newly-established Greenback Party, which garnered more support in Maine than anyone thought possible. At various times such respected Maine figures as James G. Blaine and Joshua

Chamberlain had their lives threatened, and Governor Garcelon had to call out the militia to keep order in the capital.

Alonzo Garcelon was one of the most complex figures ever to grace the stage of Maine state politics. He was a wealthy man who had made a small fortune in the cotton industry of Lewiston. He was also a Democrat who favored the workingman. In addition, he was a doctor who was one of the driving forces behind the modernization of the medical profession in Maine. Moreover, he was the first figure from the burgeoning mill towns of central Maine to become a governor as well as the first of French extraction to rise to statewide prominence.

Alonzo Garcelon established himself in the Lewiston cotton industry at the time of Lewiston’s greatest industrial growth spurt during the 1840s. Garcelon, along with another Lewiston businessman by the name of John Frye, founded the Lewiston Falls Cotton Mill. Neither Garcelon nor Frye were interested in devoting themselves to the life of mill owner, however. Nor were they suited to the life. Both had political aspirations, though they were of opposing viewpoints. Frye was a staunch Republican. In fact, his brother John, also a Republican, would be the first Lewiston native to serve in Congress.

Garcelon and Frye sold the Lewiston Falls Cotton Mill to the Lewiston Water Power Company. The mill set the tone and style for Lewiston’s textile industry. The Lewiston Water Power Company went on to purchase several other area industries, including the Androscoggin Falls dam, and was involved in the establishment of the Bates Mill. By the time this happened, however, Alonzo Garcelon was deeply involved in state politics as a doctor and as a Democrat.

One of Alonzo Garcelon’s major concerns as a physician was the lack of standards for the medical profession in Maine. While there had been several attempts to establish self-governing medical societies in Maine in the past, they had died out due to lack of participation. In the 1840s there were still a number of individuals who called themselves doctors but had little or no formal training. Barbers were still looked to for pulling teeth, lancing boils, and even bloodletting, which, for some, was still the cure-all for anything. While the legislature had licensed the Maine Medical School (the name was later changed to Bowdoin Medical School) in 1820, it had done nothing towards establishing a state medical board. Therefore, when Garcelon was invited by Dr. Isaac Lincoln of the Bowdoin Medical School to attend a meeting of physicians who wished to establish a medical society, he jumped at the chance.

The meeting was held in Brunswick early in 1853. The attending physicians drafted a petition to the legislature asking it to charter a new medical association. The legislature granted the petition and the Maine Medical Association was duly founded.

The first official meeting of the Maine Medical Association, attended by eighty-five physicians, was held in Augusta on June 1, 1853. The association elected Isaac Lincoln as president and Alonzo Garcelon as vice president. The state association took over the administration of the already existing county medical societies and proceeded to establish societies in those counties where none existed. The county societies functioned as the focal point for determining medical standards. The association also began lobbying the legislature, and this is where Alonzo Garcelon had his first extended expo(cont. on page 20)

(cont. from page 19) sure to politics in the capital.

The first statute Garcelon lobbied to have passed was the so-called Anatomy Law, which made it legal for medical students to dissect cadavers. Prior to this there had been a thriving business in body snatching, and several medical students had gotten themselves in serious trouble. Another accomplishment was the establishment of the first hospital for the insane in Maine. It was in Augusta and was the forerunner of the Augusta Mental Health Institute. It was followed by the School for the Feeble Minded in Portland. In addition, it was through the efforts of Garcelon and other members of the Maine Medical Association that the initial funding for the Maine General Hospital, Central Maine General Hospital, and Eastern Maine General Hospital was raised.

While Alonzo Garcelon was much involved with the initial work of the Maine Medical Association, he was not immune to the rising tide of political controversy in the state, a controversy which reached a peak in the mid-1870s with the Greenback Party.

Since 1854, with the election of Anson P. Morrill as governor, the Republicans had been in control of Augusta. The Maine Democratic Party, which was essentially the party of the millworker and laborer, had seemingly been powerless to make a dent in the state’s political landscape. That is, until the Greenback Party came along.

The Greenback Party started in Ohio in 1874. It was primarily the party of farmers stricken by the panic of 1873 which had thrown them into debt. The Greenbackers wanted an inflated currency rather than “hard” money so that they could pay off their debts. Greenbacks got their name because they were printed on greenbacked bills which had less value than currency that was totally backed by gold. The Greenback move- ment took hold among Maine farmers with a vengeance.

The Greenback movement first tried to gain a foothold at the National Democratic Convention of 1874, where they hoped to secure the presidential nomination for their candidate, Peter Cooper. The nomination of Samuel Tilden ended their hopes, and they established the Greenback Party with Cooper as its candidate.

In 1875 Maine Greenbackers made an appearance at the State Democratic Convention. Finding themselves rebuffed, they then formed a state Greenback Party and nominated Almon Gage to run for governor. Republican Seldon Connor was elected to a second term by a comfortable majority. The next year Connor was elected again. Then came the election of 1878, when Alonzo Garcelon ran for governor as a Democrat.

The election results for 1878 showed neither of the three candidates having a majority of the votes. Because of this, the election of the governor was put into the hands of the legislature, where the House was controlled by Democrats and Greenbackers and the Senate by Republicans. The House submitted two names to the Senate, Garcelon and Smith. The Senate chose Garcelon, a known quantity.

The election of 1879 was almost a repeat of that of 1878. Garcelon ran again as a Democrat and again came in third. Again, no candidate had a majority and the election was thrown to the legislature. This time there was a problem involving House seats. Republicans claimed they had been defrauded of some thirty seats through ballot tampering. James G. Blaine showed up from Washington at the head of a delegation of Republicans, demanding satisfaction from Governor Garcelon. A Greenbacker threatened to kill Blaine.

When Republicans succeeded in establishing control of the House, Greenbackers and some Democrats rioted in Augusta. Governor Garcelon asked Joshua Chamberlain to take charge of the militia and restore order. Maine’s greatest military hero was actually threatened on the steps of the capitol. But the furor died down and Republican Daniel Davis was chosen governor by the legislature.

Alonzo Garcelon, the only candidate to become governor placing third in an election, never ran for statewide public office again. He did continue to work for standards for Maine physicians and was instrumental in the establishment of state and local health boards.