Augusta, Maine

“ Maine has never wanted for great men; she had them then, she has them to-day.
In 1854 Mr. Blaine removed with his family to Augusta, the capital city of Maine, where he has since resided.
He purchased, with Joseph Baker, the Kennebec Journal, founded in 1823.
Now, the political field could be reviewed and studied at will; the political arena was entered. The paper had been first started by a meeting of the principal citizens to found a Republican paper, and such it was in real earnest. No longer the secluded life of the student, or the quiet life of the teacher. ”

“ This magnificent summit, the highest in Maine, rises nearly fifty-four hundred feet. All about Moosehead Lake and far to the northward over the Canadian border is a vast forest wilderness, full of lakes and streams, visited chiefly by the timber-cutters and sportsmen, and one of the favorite hunting and angling regions of the country. From the southwestern extremity of the lake the Kennebec River flows out towards the sea, and in a winding course of a hundred miles descends a thousand feet of rapids and cataracts, until it reaches the tidal level at Augusta. ”

“ IDAHO, Twin Falls County, Murtaugh vicinity, Milner Dam and the Twin Falls Main Canal, Twin Falls Main Canal between Murtaugh Lake and Milner Lake (07/10/86)
MAINE, Kennebec County, Augusta, Adams, D. V., Co.—Bussell & Weston (Augusta Central Business District MRA) , 190 Water St. (05/02/86)
MAINE, Kennebec County, Augusta, Doughty Block (Augusta Central Business District MRA) , 265 Water St. (05/02/86)
MAINE, Kennebec County, Augusta, Journal Building (Augusta Central Business District MRA) , 325—331 Water St. ”

“ They are as stars, while her husband is as the great sun shining in the heaven of her joys.
[381] The present Augusta home has been, for years, little more than a summer-resort, to which they have come the first of June. Their great home has been in Washington. This, for twenty years, has been life’s centre to them. Here home-life has reached its zenith; its glories have shone the brightest; it has been at the nation’s capital, and husband and father among the first men of the nation. Wealth has been at their command, to make that home all they desired. ”

“ To use the complimentary and probably truthful remarks of a gentleman long a resident at the capital, Augusta, "No river in the United States, within the same distance, can be found with more pleasant and delightful scenery, more beautiful villages, or a more thriving population." "The principal business places on its banks are, beginning at its mouth, Bath, Richmond, Gardiner, Pittston, Hallowell, Augusta, Waterville, Fairfield, Bloomfield, Millburn, Norridgewock, and Anson. ”

“ The establishment of a steamboat line to Savannah in 1817 aided Augusta’s rapid commercial development. There was a disastrous fire in 1829, an epidemic of yellow fever in 1839, and a flood in 1840, but the growth of the city was not seriously checked; the cotton receipts of 1846 were 212,019 bales, and in 1847 a cotton factory was built. During the Civil War Augusta was the seat of extensive military factories, the tall chimney of the Confederate powder mills still standing as a memorial. The economic development has, since the Civil War, been steady and continuous. ”

“ The anchorage is sheltered from the usual winter winds, but is open to those which blow between south and E.S.E. Its merits cannot be estimated without further experience: if it should not be found objectionable, the qualities of the surrounding country, and the position of Augusta, with reference to the navigation of these seas, will make it a convenient place for vessels to stop at, on their way to the eastern colonies from England, India, and the Cape; and on these terms, there is reason to hope for its considerable commercial prosperity. ”

“ Augusta consists of one very wide street, a couple of miles in length, and composed of a mixed description of building; many of the houses and stores being of wood, and exceedingly humble in appearance; others are built of brick, large, handsome, and well fitted up, in emulation of those in the northern cities; all, however, exhibited evidences of active and successful trade.
This was the high season for the arrival here of cotton from the plantations in the interior, whence it is forwarded by the railroad to Charleston, or down the river to Savannah. ”

“ Letter XLIV. Southern Cotton Mills. Barnwell District, South Carolina, March 31, 1849.
I promised to say something more of Augusta if I had time before departing from Cuba, and I find that I have a few moments to spare for a hasty letter.
The people of Augusta boast of the beauty of their place, and not without some reason. The streets are broad, and in some parts overshadowed with rows of fine trees. The banks of the river on which it stands are high and firm, and slopes half covered with forest, of a pleasant aspect, overlook it from the west and from the Carolina side. ”

“ The principal buildings are the city hall, a masonic hall, an oddfellows hall, the Richmond academy, the Georgia medical college, the opera-house, and an orphan asylum. Besides these, the city possesses an arsenal, water-works, a number of banks, newspaper offices, extensive cotton factories and flour mills, several foundries, two tobacco factories, &c. Water-power is abundantly supplied from the river by the Augusta canal, which was constructed in 1845. Augusta was an important place during the revolutionary war, and continued to flourish amazingly till the opening of the Georgia railway. ”

“ Its principal public buildings are the State house, State insane asylum, and United States arsenal. It has several banks, daily and weekly newspapers, and numerous churches. The population of Augusta, by the census of 1870, was 7808. ”

“ The city of Augusta is very regularly built. The main street is about one hundred feet wide, it contains many brick houses, and good-looking stores. None of the streets are paved, but all have brick foot-paths. A wooden bridge, three hundred and fifty yards long, and thirty feet wide, crosses from the neighbourhood of the city, to the left bank of Savannah river, the city lies on the right bank. Along the bank is erected a quay in the manner of a terrace, which is one of the most suitable that I have seen ”

“ And the Georgia project, which I dared not speak of for fear it should be mere talk and nothing more, is a reality.—Yes! we are actually going! I can hardly believe that such good fortune as getting out of that wretched Clinton really awaits us. Perhaps I shall not like Augusta either; a stranger in a strange city is not usually enchanted with everything one beholds; but still—a change of scene—a new country—new people—it is worth while! Shall we really go? Will some page in this book actually record "Augusta, Georgia"? ”

“ And in order to understand the peculiar fascination of their songs, they should be heard, sung by negroes, with their beaming glances and naïve abandon.
Augusta is a little city of the same style as Savannah, but less great, less beautiful, smaller in every way; but very pretty nevertheless, and situated in a broad bend of the Savannah. Around it are many charming country-houses with their gardens. I visited several such; saw beautiful and earnest family groups; and heard the hundred-tongued birds singing in the oak-woods. Of oaks, such as our Swedish oak, I find none ”

“ The banks of the Blackwood are mostly covered with a dense forest; the soil is occasionally a good sandy loam, but generally of a lighter and inferior quality. There is much beautiful and romantic scenery in the neighbourhood of Augusta. The land even on the shore here is rich; but so thickly wooded, as to render its clearing very expensive, and discouraging to the settlers. Fine crops of wheat, barley, Indian corn, oats, and potatoes, are raised here. Augusta is peculiarly adapted for a whale-fishing establishment, as the whales frequent this part of the coast in great numbers ”

“ We passed the river Savannah three miles from Augusta, in a little ferry-boat. The left bank appeared here and there to be rocky, and pretty high; the right is sandy. When we crossed the river, we left the state of South Carolina, and entered that of Georgia, the most southern of the old thirteen United States, which in fifty years have grown to twenty-four in number. We reached Augusta in the evening at nine o’clock, on a very good road, a scattered built town of four thousand six hundred inhabitants, of both complexions. We took up our quarters in the Globe Hotel, a tolerable inn ”

“ While it has on its list the first families, still it is not130 such an institution as Charleston’s St. Cecilia, and there is constant talk of its being dissolved. It has an exclusive series during the season of dinner dances at its Country Club, which is one of the handsomest in the South.
Far from discouraging tourists’ hotels, Augusta is anxious for them. When the winter emigrants from the ice-swept North come well recommended, they are received into the fashionable life of the place. These people are always dazed at the magnitude and charm of the social life. ”

“ In a very few seconds it was done, and looking astern, Augusta could just make out something black that seemed to float for a second or two upon the water, and then disappear into its depths. It was the shattered hull of the whaler.
Then there arose a faint murmuring sound, that grew first into a hum, then into a roar, and then into a clamour that rent the skies, and up from every hatchway and cabin in the great ship, human beings—men, women, and children—came rushing and tumbling, with faces white with terror—white as their night-gear. ”

“ The first Presbyterian minister settled west of the Blue Ridge was the Rev. John Craig, a native of the north of Ireland. His congregation was that of the church then known as the Stone Meeting House, since Augusta Church, near Staunton, in the County of Augusta. He became pastor there in the year 1740. Augusta was then a wilderness with a handful of Christian settlers in it; the Indians travelling through the country among them in small parties, unless supplied with whatever victuals they called for, became their own purveyors and cooks, and spared nothing that they chose to eat or drink. ”

“ Water-power for factories is secured by a system of “water-power canals” from a large dam across the Savannah, built in 1847 and enlarged in 1871; the principal canal, owned by the city, is so valuable as nearly to pay the interest on the municipal debt. In 1905 the value of the city’s total factory product was $8,829,305, of which $3,832,009, or 43·4%, was the value of the cotton goods. The principal newspaper is the Augusta Chronicle, founded in 1785.
Augusta was established in 1735–1736 by James Edward Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, and was named in honour of the princess of Wales. ”

“ Augusta is not without her fine old past, too, but she is sharply different in her modern standpoint from her sister city across the Savannah. She gives Charleston the same adjective that New York kindly bestows on Philadelphia—the word “slow.”
Augusta is a modern. She eagerly discusses and adopts that which is new. She says of the Huguenot city that she “is joined to her idols, let her alone.” And while she may now and then run after new gods, she valiantly protects herself from any such reputation, and refers to Atlanta, the capital city, as “new, so new.” ”

“ Upshaw said, ‘Many people in Augusta will be gratified to learn that your city recently sent to the metropolis a man who is preaching to the largest crowds of any man in New York, either white or colored. I refer to none other than Charles T. Walker, ‘The Black Spurgeon,’ so long and favorably known in Augusta. I confess that as a Georgian, I felt a great deal of pride and congratulation for my own State, to see with my own eyes the remarkable work he is doing and hear on all sides many expressions of commendation concerning him. I had the pleasure of speaking in his church several times. ”

“ Augusta has a public library of 10,000 volumes; two handsome monuments—one erected in 1849 to the Georgia signers of the Declaration of Independence, the other to the Confederate soldiers; a Masonic Temple, Odd Fellows' Hall, and Cotton Exchange, besides many other notable private and public buildings. The chief educational institutions are the Georgia Medical College, a branch of the State University at Athens, Richmond Academy, Saint Mary's and Sacred Heart academies, Paine's Institute for Colored Students, and high schools for white and colored pupils. ”

“ No man in Augusta has a deeper hold upon the whole community than Dr. Walker. His success as a pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church in this city for the past fourteen years has been phenomenal and humanly speaking it does not appear that a man can be found to take his place at this church. Aside from Tabernacle Church, all the people of Augusta, white and colored, are anxious that Dr. Walker remain in Augusta. Should he decide to accept the call to New York, Dr. Walker will leave behind him thousands of loving hearts whose prayers will follow him wherever his lot may be cast. ”

“ Once again Augusta was the first woman in the camp, and once again the men built her a primitive log cabin. This one had a sod roof, no window, and a dirt floor. She promptly went into business and Horace went 6 prospecting. As the Tabors were the only people in the upper end of the gulch who owned a gold-scales, Augusta added weighing dust to her duties of taking boarders and doing laundry. In a few weeks ten thousand men were crowded in the gulch, and a mail and express office was needed. Augusta was appointed postmistress of Oro City. ”