CITIZEN TELEPHONE COMPANY
Have you ever been annoyed by your cell phone being out of power or not finding a tower? Think of your great grandmother who had no phone at all. The late 1800s invention that allowed voice communication over a wire was an amazing technological marvel, one of several advances that made dramatic changes to the lives of all Americans at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Here in Waterville telephone service arrived with the new century. Delmar Farnsworth, a brother of W.W. and W.G. Farnsworth, the orchard Farnsworths, had become fascinated with the telephone since his childhood days of tin can and string. He started his own telephone company in 1900 in the hardware store building on Third Street that he owned since 1893. (The building was in the same location that now houses Waterville Hardware. The original hardware building burned down February 1, 1955) His labor force consisted of Fred Murray and Floyd Bennett who set poles, strung the wire and installed the telephone. They also were switch board operators. This business operated 24 hours of the day, so by 1901 Lilly Fredericks Lederer was hired as the day operator. This was a 12 hour shift. In 1901 there were all of 25 telephones in the village. Two years later there were 300 telephones and growing. The list of operators manning the switch board also grew, relieving the work crew to try to keep up with this rapidly expanding system. These ladies were Emma Eastwood, Leah Murray, Leah Conrad and Ruth Bennett. The monthly rate for a telephone was $1.00. Just for comparison a 1900 dollar would equal about $32 today. A toll call to Toledo was 10 cents for three minutes.
The home or business telephone was a box on the wall and a turn of the crank would signal the central operator who would talk with you and perhaps exchange some choice gossip then connect you to the person you wanted to call. When the operator would ring a particular phone all phones on that line would ring so others could choose to “listen in” or even join the conversation. Of course telephone technology advanced rapidly and “central” eventually became automated. The telephone company soon moved to a new building around the corner on Mechanic Street with the Post Office downstairs and the Telephone Company and “Central” upstairs. This was probably in 1903 since that year William Witte, who now owned the hardware store, expanded his building by using steel from a washed out section of the 1881 bridge to add a second story. This became Witte’s Hall, which is another story. In 1907 Mr. Farnsworth took his growing company public. He sold stock shares to farmers, expanding phone service to rural areas. The newly formed company was called Citizens Telephone Company, which it would remain for many years as the Waterville and area telephone company. The cost for a 12 party line in the country was $2.50 per month to offset the cost of placing and maintaining miles of posts and wire and yet the miracle of voice communication was worth the expense to village and rural residents alike. As always, technological advances improved telephone systems. In 1941 the Citizens Telephone Co. built a new building on the west side of Second Street between Mechanic and North to house new automated switching equipment and updated its lines and all telephone equipment. Operators were only needed for long distance assistance. “Central” was replaced by rotary dial phones (anybody remember those?)
Delmar Farnsworth died in 1925 at age 51 but the company he founded lived on for many years. In 1960 a new telephone office to serve the public was built at 207 N. Second St., just a block north of the old Citizens Telephone automated switching building. The new office even had a drive-up window. Eleanor Wittes, according to the 1964-1965 AW Directory was a cashier there. Many other local people worked for Citizen Telephone over the years. Eventually like many corporations, mergers and buyouts swallowed up the small local company and became part of a multistate operation. The building on 2nd Street is still there but is no longer a public building. It still houses switching equipment and maintenance for Century Link, which became Lumen Technologies, a local wired telephone service just last year.
Today, in the digital age, all of this is obsolete. Your phone is in your pocket, wireless and does far more than allow you to talk to someone not at your location. However for you folks who wish to rebel against all technology, the tin can and string telephone still works.