You won’t find many inspectors of vinegar on the payrolls of Lewiston and Auburn these days. There aren’t many fence viewers or cullers of staves or tithingmen, either.

Nevertheless, the duties of those officials are not far removed from current issues.

I didn’t expect to find so many similarities with today’s headlines or home life when I started looking at some 125-year-old copies of Lewiston and Auburn annual reports. That was a period when my great-grandfather, David P. Field, served as an Auburn alderman. I hoped to learn more about our family’s history.

As I thumbed through the annual reports, I found passage after passage that suggested a modern parallel.

W.A. Robinson, Auburn’s inspector of vinegar in 1883, reported that the 13 samples he tested revealed adulteration in three – two with sulfuric acid and one with muriatic acid.

The quality of vinegar had major importance in those days. Laws required that it be of pure apple origin, and attempts to “tone up” the acidity by chemical additions were illegal. In fact, the vinegar inspector had precise rules for measuring and testing, using the latest science of the day. It was a lot more than a sniff test.

It was that annual report entry that brought to mind our present worries about tainted spinach and pet foods, and the effect of all kinds of additives to our foods.

Fence viewers continued a community role that dated back several more centuries. It was an important matter to maintain fences and restrict livestock to their owners’ property. By the late 1800s, the job of fence viewer had changed a lot from colonial times, but Auburn still had three in 1883.

Fence-viewing reminded me of news a few weeks ago about a runaway donkey in a nearby town.

Then there’s the culler of staves. J.W. Chaplin had the title in 1883, but I can’t figure out just what his duties may have been.

Many decades earlier, residents of New England towns cut wood for barrel-making and the pieces (staves) were stacked in a communal pile. A “culler of staves” was appointed to inspect the pieces and throw out unusable wood.

There were also early examples of Twin Cities cooperation along the lines of today’s exploration of joint services. The old annual report talked about cooperation between the fire departments of Lewiston and Auburn. Lewiston’s crews came to Auburn to help test the water pressure capabilities of the city’s equipment.

School consolidation was also an issue, as it has been all through the past century. The Auburn School Committee of 1883 said, “There are, in the opinion of your committee, too many and too small rural ungraded schools.”

And finally, I wondered, is there a modern counterpart to the tithingman? Auburn had two tithingmen in 1883, Freedom Haskell and Daniel Lara. Their duties descended from days when towns set up groups of 10 family units (a tithe) to watch out for common safety and law enforcement. Tithingmen were responsible for the general morals of the community, as well as observance of the Sabbath. They supervised liquor sales, reported on idle or disorderly persons, profane swearers or cursers, and Sabbath breakers. Tithingmen also were empowered to stop unnecessary travel on the Sabbath.

That’s an office that has since disappeared, or its concerns have shifted away from governmental oversight.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and an Auburn native. You can e-mail him at [email protected].