Martha Benjamin Washburn Stephenson

All Martha’s life Cadwallader was her favorite brother. As soon as she could walk she became his shadow. She grieved when he succumbed to the lure of the West and a steady flow of her letters followed him. A few of these letters still exist and are the only window through which we may view Martha’s life.

The Washburn children received their earliest education in the one room school near the family farm and Martha was no exception. She was a bright girl and continued her studies at Waterville Liberal Institute. With her better-than-average education, she had no difficulty finding employment as a teacher for the short summer term in various district schools. It was the practice then to hire male teachers for the longer winter term when the schools were often double their summer size. During the winter when farm work was slack the older boys attended school and the firm hand of a strict school master was needed.

Martha liked teaching but she complained about the low wages and the brevity of the summer term in her letters to Cadwallader: “I was applied to, to teach the school here, and as I liked it so well, having kept it twice before, that I could not make up a mouth to refuse, and as yet I have not regretted it.”

“Tis true my task is a hard one, but I have the satisfaction to know that my labors are duly appreciated which helps me along considerable in what might otherwise seem a thankless task. My school averages about thirty- five scholars and they are what I call forward and bright. This is my eighth week, and I have not encountered the least thing to mar my pleasure in school. I think I enjoy teaching this summer better than ever before, though I could never do it again were it not really necessary, and for aught I know I might about as well do nothing the compensation is so meager.”

On another occasion, she writes, “Teaching three or four months in a year amounts to but little. Unless I can get longer and more profitable schools I don’t know but I shall have to go to the factory.” During the period (1843-48) when Martha was teaching the average pay “for female teachers in Maine was $5.50 per month exclusive of board,” and “for male teachers $16.05 per month exclusive of board.”

In between terms of teaching Martha spent much time visiting brother Israel who in 1834 had established a law practice in Orono and was at the time of her visits in the State Legislature. She described her visits in a letter to Cadwallader. “I was at Orono the last two visits where I spent eight months quite pleasantly. ‘Tis a place where they visit and call continually. Assemblies, parties, and jams have been the order of the day… Israel is delightfully situated, apparently has everything for comfort and happiness.” Returning home after one of her visits she wrote, “At home last week it really seemed lonesome; Willie and Callie being all that are there this summer of our once numerous and jolly band.”

Martha at 25 despaired of ever finding a husband. She wrote about all the neighbor girls marrying and leaving the old neighborhood and tried to make light of her spinsterhood. “So you see they are ‘passing away’ and we (herself and sister Mary) yet remain, but after the chaff has all blown away the wheat can be seen more clearly and then for an explosion in the elevator!” In 1845 she expressed it thus, “Every season of my life I enjoy better She was basically a happy person, philosophically accepting life as it and better, having come to the conclusion that ‘Tis the better way, to make the best of, and to enjoy everything that is at all enjoyable.”

Frequently in her letters Martha made reference to the church which played an important role in the life of the Washburn family. The year 1829 lived in her memory not as the year the store failed (she was only nine at the time), but as the year the First Universalist Church was built adjacent to the family farm on land given, in part, by her father. She recalled the raising bee for which he had provided the rum, one of his last generous acts before bankruptcy. She even remembered the Baptist deacon’s joke that the beautiful, slender Universalist spire “would make a fine place for the devil to roost when he flies from Buckfield to Farmington.”

Interspersed with newsy tidbits in Martha’s letters are items such as these which reveal the importance of the church and its teachings to her:

“We have with us for a minister a Mr. Blacker, a devoted faithful preacher. I think under his teachings the society will flourish.” “Sylvanus H., your old friend, has been up to see us. He has experienced religion and is, I have no doubt, a true and faithful disciple of Jesus. He is a strong Universalist and does honor to the denomination.” The nostalgic letter written to her “dearest brother” on Thanksgiving Day, Dec. 7, 1843, closes with “take good care of your health, read your Bible, and may the Lord prosper you.”

Often Cadwallader invited Martha to go to Wisconsin. As the years passed he continued repeatedly to press the matter, until, finally, she did go to Mineral Point. There she met Captain Charles L. Stephenson a friend of Cadwalladers from Gorham, Maine. Martha and Charles were married in 1849.

Living in Mineral Point the first five years of her marriage Martha was able to give loving support to her favorite brother during the difficult period when his young wife suffered an incurable mental illness. Later Martha and Charles moved to Galena, Ill., where brother Elihu, an influential Illinois congressman, had secured an appointment for Charles as “supervising inspector for the district.” Martha became the mother of two daughters and three sons, one of whom died in infancy. After Charles’ death in 1880, Martha remained a widow for 29 years, and spent her final days with her daughter, Martha Eugenia (Mrs. D. Jonas Lucas), in Mandan, North Dakota, where she died in 1909, at the age of 89.