This article may be of great interest to the newcomers to our area and the local schoolchildren. Everyone takes the telephone or so-called land line for granted as a way of communicating by voice from one place to another. The cellphone is now taking the place of the old-style phone, but that was not always the way of life in Damariscotta.
A young man by the name of Ellis W. Nash, who was a telegraph operator at the Newcastle railroad station, changed the way of communicating by voice over a land line. The year was 1897. Mr. Nash was receiving a wage of $32.50 per month.
History records Mr. Nash had a friend who held a similar position in Rockland’s Maine Central Railroad Station. Nash borrowed a telephone in that city and placed it on the wall of his telegraph office at the Newcastle train station.
He would telegraph his friend and ask if the coast was clear, and if all was well, his friend would reach out of the window and grasp the telephone wires and attach a telephone wire to them, open the telegraph key to interrupt interference, and then the young men would have a friendly visit or chat.
One article we both read stated that one day, the superintendent of the railroad, while walking to the platform at the Newcastle station, spied the telephone on the office wall and walked in to investigate.
The operator was so busy pounding the telegraph keys that he could not talk with him before his train left. The superintendent stopped again on his return trip, but a substitute at the window did not know anything about a telephone. But talking over telegraph wires was at an end.
That was a blow, but it did not kill young Nash’s enthusiasm. He bought a telephone, took it apart, and studied the mechanism, then put it together again. What he had learned by studying pictures and newspaper articles, along with a short correspondence course, completed his formal training, although the Nash telephone company would go on to operate 1,200 telephones and have 18 employees.
The first telephone wire he ever strung in the county connected the railroad station with Mr. Nash’s home nearby. We find that phones consisted of a magneto box and one little round receiver into which one talked, then, with a sleight of hand act, adjusted it to his ear and heard what his party said. Then the townspeople discovered that Nash could talk to his house and one after another wanted service.
We find that the main hotel proprietor wanted to be able to call the station so as not to drive to meet trains and keep his horses standing in all kinds of weather when trains were late. Mr. Nash told him if he would pay $12 a year he would put a phone in for him.
He bought the phone and ran the wires over barn roofs, on trees, and through the Taniscot Engine belfry. We learn that once he fell from a roof while stringing wires. More people became interested and Dr. W.H. Parsons had one installed. There is no record that it reached enough people to increase his practice.
When five telephones had been connected, the question of a switchboard had to be placed, and the young electrician had to build it. The switchboard was made up of a cigar box and corset steel. It was truly a so-called $64 question to be answered, and he consulted Mrs. Nash and together they decided he needed a corset steel, which she provided, and with that and a cigar box, he made his first switchboard and attached it to the kitchen wall of the Nash home.
Mrs. Nash then took up the work of chief operator, between making pies and frosting cakes. We find that Mrs. Nash kept close to her husband’s work much ever since and knew almost as much about it as he did.
We also found that six phones had been installed at Damariscotta Mills, the wires attached to the telegraph poles, and about two years after Superintendent Stanforth saw the phone at the station, he got busy, fearing competition, and ordered the wires removed from the poles.
So Mr. Ellis Nash bought some telephone poles, hired two men, who dug the holes and put in the poles, and then they strung the new wires and often worked at night to get the job done. We find he had always done all his work outside of his hours at the Newcastle station, and soon he bought a storefront located in the Lincoln Hall block.
This is where he installed his switchboard. Mrs. Nash was the switchboard operator, and it became the Nash telephone office. Previous to the change the New England Company had installed a pay station and to meet competition it seemed wise to organize a company, and with E.W. Nash, P.H. Gay, and Thomas E. Gay as silent partners, the Nash Telephone Company was born. In 1947, the Nash Telephone Company celebrated 50 years in business.
Mr. Ellis Nash had the first telephone company in Lincoln County, which included the Twin Villages area and the Damariscotta Mills area. Years passed and the dial system came into use, and Mr. Nash installed the first dial system in commercial use in Maine at South Bristol in 1930.
This was another step forward from that kitchen telephone until 1,200 Nash telephones enabled the residents of Lincoln County and the thousands of summer visitors to talk with their homes and business offices all over the country and across the oceans.
I remember as a young boy in grammar school we had a crank-type telephone on the wall in our den. We were on a so-called party line with five other people. You had to be careful what you said over the phone because some would listen in on everyone’s calls.
The main telephone lines ran in front of our home and there were over 40 lines on the cross bars of the telephone pole. When I went out in the winter to walk to grammar school, one could tell if it was a real cold morning by the hum of the wires on the poles.
Mr. Ellis W. Nash went to the Golden Jubilee of the United States Telephone Association in Chicago in 1947, where he was given a certificate of honorary membership in that organization. Mr. Nash was a member of the Independent Pioneers, which merged with the national association. He received a decoration, a bronze medal in the form of a Greek cross with bars above it. The first bar marks 25 years of service, and the others are for every added five years.
My wife just stated that in 1947 here on Round Top her parents’ phone number was 12-12, and it was also a party line with five people on it.
We have a real nice photo of Ellis W. Nash making a first call over the new dial system to an employee of over 40 years, Mr. Cliff Morey, who went to work for Mr. Nash in 1917 at the telephone company here in Damariscotta.
My father-in-law, Winfield F. Cooper, was a local auctioneer, and he held an auction at the Ellis W. Nash home on Bristol Road in Damariscotta, and I went to the auction with my wife, and we bid on and bought Mr. Ellis Nash’s television set, which was almost new, and it lasted a number of years, and we got real nice reception on it here on Round Top.
