USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 12
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This document should not be construed with entire serious- ness, since it was simply a paper contract which in the actual immigration of the Broad Bay Germans was probably never entirely observed either in substance or spirit. At its best it simply points to some degree of amelioration in the conditions of passage.
11Beer.
12Taken from Wm. S. Pattee, History of Old Braintree, in the Mass. Archives (Quincy, 1878).
VII
THE GERMANS REACH BROAD BAY
Wie wird das Bild der alten Tage Durch eure Träume glänzend weh'n! Gleich einer stillen frommen Sage Wird es euch vor der Seele steh'n
ANON
N THE RESEARCHES OF THOSE who have interested themselves in the early history of Maine and of Lincoln County, the view persists that the colonization of the Waldoborough area by the Germans was started as early as 1739. The grounds for this belief are based on a number of sources, some of which have been long known to historians, while others confirming this conclusion have only recently been brought to light and are being presented in this chapter for the first time.
The older sources for a German settlement as early as 1739 seem to be twofold. The first was a letter written by the Lutheran pastor at Waldoborough, the Reverend John William Starman, to William Willis, the Portland historian. This was published in the Collections of The Maine Historical Society.1 In this letter the Reverend Starman states: "A few German immigrants began the original plantation of Waldoborough; it is supposed that they came over in the summer or autumn of 1739. It was first the abode of only two or three families to which accessions were made in 1740." This same view is represented by William D. Williamson, who adds that they came on a vessel "which brought to New England that year letters of marque and reprisal2 from the King of England against the subjects of Spain."3 The evidence offered by the Rev- erend Starman should unquestionably carry weight, for he resided in the community from 1812 to his death in 1854. The span of his ministry in the town was coextensive with the lives of a goodly number of the older German settlers.
Conrad Heyer, for example, was a member of the Lutheran parish during Starman's entire ministry; and the reverend gentle-
1V, 403.
"Authorizing New England privateers to operate against Spanish shipping.
3Am. Quarterly Register, XIII (1840), 162.
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Germans Reach Broad Bay
man unquestionably knew him intimately. Likewise Jacob Ludwig who died in 1826 was an officer in the Lutheran congregation in the early years of Starman's ministry; and from him, too, the pastor must have become very familiar with the history of the earliest days. But neither Heyer nor Ludwig was among the very earliest German settlers, for Heyer was born at Broad Bay in 1749, and Ludwig came as a boy in his teens in 1753. There were, however, those of the earliest colonists who were still living when Mr. Star- man came to Waldoborough, whose association with him as their pastor was unquestionably a particularly intimate one. In those days of no newspapers and a very limited communication with the outside world, the facts and doings of the past were in the minds of all a part of the living present, and Starman, as well as Heyer and Ludwig, must have been as familiar with the history of the earliest days as though they themselves had lived it. Hence despite the absence of documentary data, it is difficult, indeed, to disregard the testimony offered by the Reverend Starman. Furthermore, the conclusion offered by Judge Williamson receives collateral sup- port from a communication of Governor Shirley to the General Court, reported in the Boston Gazette of September 24, 1739,4 to the effect that a ship arrived in Boston from England in mid- September of that year bearing from the King "the Commissions of Marque and Reprisal" which bore the London date of July 20, 1739. That there were a few German families aboard this ship is strongly within the range of probability, for Samuel Waldo was in Europe at that time primarily in the interests of his projects in "Eastern parts." From the constant flow of German emigrants, all of whom stopped at English ports for clearance, he may well have induced a few families to effect contact with his agents in Boston relative to settling on his lands in the Province of Maine. That this matter was uppermost in his mind is clear from the fol- lowing advertisement which he placed in the Boston Gazette of July 13, 1739.5 "Samuel Waldo of Boston, Merchant, intending to take his departure for Great Britain with Captain Hall, gives notice that all desiring to settle in the Eastern Parts of this Province, should apply in his Absence to his Agents at his House in Queen Street."
The second of the older sources for the belief in a settlement by the Germans at Broad Bay prior to 1742 was Cyrus Eaton of Warren. Eaton was born at Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1784 and came to Warren in 1804. He was self educated, but despite this fact was an extremely careful and reliable scholar. In his life span of ninety years he was an assiduous fact-gatherer from any and all sources. He early came to know some of the first Broad
+Rare Book Collection, Harvard University Library.
& I bid.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
Bayers; and from a period in his life when he was a teacher in Waldoborough, he was able to widen the circle of his friends among the early Germans and to gather data firsthand. He seems to have drawn much of his material from Joseph Ludwig, who came to Broad Bay in 1753. With such sources at his disposal Eaton states: "The same year, 1740, forty German families from Bruns- wick and Saxony, tempted by the imposing offers which the inde- fatigable Waldo had made and caused to be circulated in their language, after first landing at Braintree, Massachusetts, arrived at Broad Bay and laid the foundation of the present town of Waldo- borough."" There is no necessary contradiction involved here with the Starman date of 1739, for it is a verifiable fact that some migra- tions split on reaching Boston, part remaining in the Boston district and others coming to Waldo's grant in eastern parts. It is known that the ship bearing the Commissions of Marque and Reprisal reached Boston in mid-September, 1739; and if it did bring a load of German immigrants, it is entirely probable that a few families came to Broad Bay in the autumn of that year, and that the others wintered in the German settlement at Germantown (Braintree), and then joined their fellow migrants at Broad Bay the following spring, when Waldo's agents could have made more detailed arrangements for their care and settlement. These would have been the "accessions" which the Reverend Starman reported "were made in 1740."
A substantial body of new material, presented here for the first time, supplements and strengthens the hypothesis that 1739- 1740 was the period when Germans first settled in Waldoborough. Waldo, as has become abundantly clear, was a dogged and con- stant worker in the promotion of his projects. That the evidence for the 1739-1740 settlement is not more abundant may well have arisen from the fact that in these years he was disposed to screen his activities. It was while he was in England from 1738 to 1740, working and intriguing for the unseating of Governor Belcher, that Waldo renewed contact with a Swiss by the name of Sebastian Zuberbühler with whom he had had dealings several years before.
Zuberbühler was born at Linden in the Canton of Appen- zell7 which is in the northeast corner of Switzerland, just south of Lake Constance. In 1734 he was sent by his own countrymen to South Carolina to investigate the possibilities of locating a colony of Swiss in that district. Already in 1732 John Peter Purry of Neufchâtel, Switzerland, had founded Purrysburg on the Savan- nah River and had settled one hundred and seventy colonists there. Their report of conditions had been most favorable; and the next
"Cyrus Eaton, Annals of Warren (Hallowell, 1851), pp. 60-61.
"Fridolini Hilti, Reiss-Journal nacher Sud-Carolina (Bern, 1739), p. 9.
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year, 1733, close to two hundred Swiss Germans and Germans were sent out to the Savannah.
It is possible that Zuberbühler came in this transport in order to follow in Purry's footsteps as a land speculator. He had asso- ciated himself with a Herr Simon who had a ship and a ship's chan- dler business in Rotterdam, and with another Swiss, Tschiffeli by name, in order to settle a colony of Appenzeller Swiss on the Santee River close to the border of North Carolina. For this purpose they had acquired from the English proprietors a considerable area of land. In these ventures Sebastian's brother, the Reverend Bartho- lomew Zuberbühler, was also associated. Just how successful this project was is not known, for at this point Zuberbühler disappears from view for a number of years. For the greater part of this period Zuberbühler and Samuel Waldo had had contact with one another, as is made clear by a letter of Governor William Shirley to the Duke of Newcastle, dated at Boston, August 30, 1742. In this communication Shirley made it clear to the Duke that affairs in the settling of eastern parts were at a standstill, "which has pre- vented Mr. Zuberbühler from transporting 100 Protestant families more from the Swiss Cantons, as he had in 1735 contracted with Mr. Waldo to do."8
The meeting in London between Waldo and Zuberbühler was to draw thousands of men living in all parts of the United States into the causal sequence of Broad Bay and American history. To Waldo, Zuberbühler must have seemed the perfect instrument for his purposes. The Swiss knew both America and Europe, he was German, English, and perhaps French speaking, and for several years had had experience in recruiting emigrants on the continent and transporting them to the New World. These facts fitted per- fectly into Waldo's plans; and the two men struck a bargain where- under Samuel Waldo promised and obligated himself to convey to Sebastian Zuberbühler, "or his order at the charge of the said Waldo by good and sufficient Deeds in the Law, 12000 acres of land - to be laid out between Muscongus and Penebscot rivers . .. adjoining to the settlement of the Germans."9 The land here in question was a part of the Muscongus tract; and the instrument promising to make the conveyance of this acreage was drawn up in London and bears the significant date of February 19, 1740. It was not a formal conveyance of title, but merely an agreement under which Waldo obligated himself to convey title to 12,000 acres, probably at a time when both men would be in New Eng- land, where the surveying of bounds could be done which would be essential to making the conveyance a meaningful and binding
8Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., XI, 252. [Italics mine. ]
"York Co. Reg. of Deeds (Alfred, Maine), Bk. 25, pp. 44-45. [ Italics mine. ]
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
legal agreement. It is extremely doubtful if the actual conveyance ever was made, since nowhere is it a matter of record. Zuber- bühler, however, was still sufficiently hopeful of his ultimate title in 1745 that on March 25 of that year, as he was leaving Broad Bay for the Louisburg campaign, he conveyed 6,000 acres of this land to George Tilley of Boston, as part collateral of a loan of £96 made to him by Tilley. It is significant that the only claim Zuberbühler could make at this time to the grant was based solely on the London agreement of 1740.
The main significance of the London agreement is not that it reveals the character of some of Mr. Waldo's deals, but rather that it casts light on the first German settlement at Broad Bay. The 12,000 acres involved in Waldo's promise were to be laid out "ad- joining to the settlement of the Germans." If these words are to be taken in their literal sense, they can only mean that there was already a settlement of Germans on the Medomak by February 19, 1740, probably the few families who had come in 1739 on the ship bringing the letters of Marque and Reprisal from the King of England against the subjects of Spain. Hence it is likely that this "settlement of the Germans" should be construed as including the balance of this migration that passed the winter of 1739-1740 at Braintree, and was scheduled to join the settlement at Broad Bay the following spring, for this seems to have been a certainty that was entering into Waldo's calculations at this time. Further migra- tions to Broad Bay were unquestionably a part of the plans being formulated by Waldo and Zuberbühler in London in the late winter of 1740, for Waldo was not a philanthropist haphazardly scattering his bounty on the waters. When Waldo made a promise, there was usually a quid pro quo involved, which in this situation meant that for 12,000 acres Zuberbühler had to return plenty in value for value received. From this time forward for a number of years, Zuberbühler was Waldo's agent in the program of colo- nizing the lands at Broad Bay with Germans. We know much of his activities in the year 1741, but where he was and what he was doing for the balance of the year 1740 after having completed his agreement with Waldo in February of that year is not known. We may be reasonably certain that as Waldo's agent he did not pass the spring, summer, and autumn of 1740 in idleness. We are venturing the conjecture that in the late winter of 1740 he returned to his home Canton of Appenzell, where his repute was high, and early the following spring recruited a migration of thirty-odd Swiss families which during the summer he transported and settled on Mr. Waldo's grant at Broad Bay.
In Waldoborough history there has been from the early days a persistent, long-lingering tradition or fable of a lost colony - a
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tale of a traveller or hunter who in the 1740's wandered along the banks of the river and found cabin after cabin vacated and not much in them disturbed "as though the occupants had just stepped out for a short while." It is possible that that which has lingered so long as romance or tradition is also history, for it now seems very probable that there was such a colony. In all likelihood they found the winters too severe, or the soil too stony, or the hazards of Indian warfare more than they cared to endure. Whatever their reasons, they disappeared during the War of the Austrian Sucession while General Waldo was with his troops at Louisburg. It is appar- ent that they dispatched on one of the cordwood coasters one or more of their number to Boston, who chartered a ship which re- turned to the Medomak, where the unhappy Swiss colony em- barked for parts unknown.
William Shirley, Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, writing in 1746 to the Duke of Newcastle, His Majesty's Minister for Foreign Affairs, and seeking either recognition or compensation for General Waldo, for the losses sustained by him in his personal affairs by reason of his long absence in the King's service at Louisburg, states:
One instance of which [loss] is that after suffering otherwise in his eastern settlements, no less than thirty-four Swiss families, which he had transported on his lands at a great expense from the protestant Cantons, are now quitting them togeather, to the entire breaking up of one of his settlements occasioned chiefly by his attendance upon His Majesty's Service at Louisburg, which I engaged him to do upon my leaving it, for the sake of keeping the soldiers easy.10
This is weighty evidence indeed, for up until the time when he was appointed governor in June 1741, William Shirley had been Samuel Waldo's personal attorney, had represented Waldo's in- terests in America while the latter was in England, and on becom- ing governor had collaborated with Waldo in a common program of settling the eastern parts with Protestant Germans. Surely there was no one who knew Waldo's business better than Shirley, and no one more thoroughly familiar with conditions on the Maine frontier, the settlement of which was one of his pet policies. Even if Shirley and Waldo had not been close collaborators over the years, this evidence would still carry great weight; for in the sum- mer of 1742 the Governor made a trip to the eastern parts as far as the settlement on the Georges River, and spent some time at Broad Bay.11 In other words, he was on the spot; he saw and he knew, and reported on conditions to the General Court on September 3, 1742.
10The Case of Samuel Waldo, Ms. (Boston, Oct. 31, 1746), Huntington Library, Pasadena, Calif. [Italics mine.]
11Boston Gasette, Sept. 7, 1742, Harvard University Library.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
Where the Swiss families went is a matter of conjecture, but it would seem reasonable to conclude that they joined their Swiss brethren in the Carolinas, where they had migrated before them under the guidance of this same Sebastian Zuberbühler. It cannot be denied that these events, though real, impart to the history of these early days a certain colorful romance of "old, unhappy, far- off things," only dimly seen in retrospect, of which the sharper details will remain shrouded from human ken forever.
History, which Alexis Carrel calls "the conjectural science," offers no certain answer. There are historians who mention two southern areas as the scenes of Broad Bay migrations, Orangeburg and Londonderry, both in South Carolina. A study of the Orange- burg area, made, to be sure, at a considerable distance, reveals no trace of any such migration, whereas Londonderry does offer clues. Professor R. H. Taylor writes: "Regarding the group of German settlers who migrated from Waldoboro, Maine to Londonderry, Abbeville District, S. C., I have found a few references. In Wallace, History of South Carolina, Vol. II, pp. 44-46, this group is men- tioned - In Wittke, We Who Built America, a new book, the Waldoboro group is mentioned, p. 67."12
From this we may infer that there was a migration from Waldo's estates to the "Abbeville District." Whether it was made up of German Palatinates or German Swiss, we do not know. Per- haps some later historian will be able to make this a matter of on- the-spot investigation through contact with the descendants of these families still living in that area.
Waldo's colonizing projects at Broad Bay in these years were wholly in line with a larger policy of the Massachusetts govern- ment; and the aims of the Governor and of himself had much, indeed, in common. It was Waldo's plan to settle the western part of his Patent with Protestant Germans, and it was Shirley's policy to settle western Massachusetts and the more exposed portions of the Province of Maine west of the Penobscot likewise with Prot- estant colonists from Germany. The thought in Shirley's mind was that such settlements would serve as a buffer against the Indians, and that by increasing the number of inhabitants on the frontier, these outposts would be made more defensible and secure against the pressure of the French. It was Waldo, who, with his first colonies of Germans and Swiss-Germans, had taken the first step. Shirley was a close observer and an interested backer, since these first colonies could serve him as an experiment, and if they stuck, as a model for his own plan. So impressed was he by results that in 1742 he laid his own colonizing program before the General
12Letter in my possession, from Prof. R. H. Taylor, Furman University, Green- ville, S. C., dated Feb. 2, 1940.
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Germans Reach Broad Bay
Court, which appointed a committee of its members to investigate, consider ways and means, and report.13 This was as far as the matter went at this time; for the War of the Austrian Succession (1743-1748) blocked further moves in this direction; but on the return of peace, Shirley again moved to set his program in immedi- ate operation.
Before the advent of the war, Waldo had carried his plans, as is already apparent, considerably further than Shirley; and in 1742 they were in full swing. In the case of the migration reaching Broad Bay in this year, we find ourselves on sound historical ground, where the evidence is ample and sufficiently conclusive to offer a rather detailed story of the origin and of the coming of one of the larger of the German migrations. In the day of slow trans- portation in which Waldo lived, he had found that promoting his colonizing schemes both in Europe and New England at the same time was rather a large undertaking for one man. A journey to Europe could take six weeks. Then, too, moving from place to place on the continent by coach was likewise slow; and the journey back to America might require another six weeks, depending on wind and weather. In the mid-eighteenth century one man just could not devote himself to interests in both places. By engaging the services of Sebastian Zuberbühler Waldo hoped to avoid the necessity of further European trips on his own part.
Early in 1741 Zuberbühler was back in Europe and had set up headquarters in Speyer at the Inn of the Golden Lion. Speyer was a strategic spot. It is situated on the south, or French side, of the Rhine below Mannheim and in the eighteenth century was in the Bishopric of Speyer between the Palatinate and Baden-Durlach, with Würtemberg just east. This is the general area from which so many of the Broad Bay founders came. From this point he could operate in all three of these territories, and throughout this region he distributed the first known of "Waldo's circulars" which was printed in Speyer in 1741.
From other sources examined,14 the existence of such a docu- ment had become clear, and in October 1938 it was brought to the light of day. It is here presented for the first time, as a part of our history. It is an interesting and illuminating paper, since it lays down in detail the conditions under which some of the earliest Germans were led to embark on the great enterprise. Its formal and somewhat obsolete legal phraseology balks in spots at transla- tion, and in such passages a freer rendering is necessary. Otherwise the document follows in a literal form:
13Mass. House of Representatives, Journal, 1742, Mass. State Archives (Boston, Mass.). p. 23.
14Court Protocols of Mass. of the year 1784, Mass. State Archives (Boston, Mass.).
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
A short description of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England, especially of the tract of land on Broad Bay belonging to the Imperial British Colonel, Samuel Waldo, Hereditary Lord of Broad Bay, along with the principal conditions under which foreign protestants may settle there. Speyer, printed and available in the Götselchen Printing House, 1741.
The Province of Massachusetts Bay lies on the Atlantic Ocean and extends in general east, northeast and south southwest from the forty- first to the forty-third degree, north latitude, and is situated five hours west of the London meridian. The land consists of great strips or divi- sions, parts of which belong to the government, parts to the first colo- nists, and also to such hereditary lords as dwell in England to whom an hereditary title has been granted by the Crown, as is the case of Penn- · sylvania; hence the economy and the form of government rests on the same basis as in this latter colony; with this exception, that each of these provinces or districts may adopt its own regulations or laws, without having to depend on the General Assembly for them, an advantage which cannot be had elsewhere.
Boston, the Capitol of this Province, has been built upwards of a hundred and fifty years and is owned and occupied by a great number of prosperous English residents. The city lies about half way between Philadelphia and Halifax in Nova Scotia. -- From this latter province it is about five hundred English or approximately one hundred German miles distant and is separated from it by a large bay which is known as the Bay of Fundy. The climate here, as one can well imagine, is very health- ful and the soil extremely fruitful and yields all kinds of produce as in Germany, especially, however, hemp and flax in great perfection. It is the same with the wood which grows here which is for the most part oak, beech, ash and maple. Game also is most plentiful in these forests and the streams abound with fish. Everyone is allowed to fish and to hunt. Since the previously mentioned Imperial British Colonel, Samuel Waldo, Hereditary Lord of Broad Bay, possesses there a large and fruit- ful grant of land yielding to none in its richness and quality, and is minded to set up there plantations and colonies, he invites all such Prot- estants of the Palatinate who are skillful and industrious artisans or farm- ers and who so wish, to emigrate to America and to settle there on his estates, under the following terms or conditions. All those so inclined may present themselves to the accredited Agent or Commissioner of the previously mentioned Colonel and Hereditary Lord, Samuel Waldo, Mr. Sebastian Zuberbühler, who is possessed of plenary power as well as the most gracious approval of his Serene Highness, the Elector. Mr. Zuber- bühler may be found at the Inn of the Golden Lion in Speyer and will be ready to impart all desired data or information.
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