USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 18
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With the work of destruction completed at this point, and with most of the cabins burning or in ashes, the Indians joined those already engaged in the assault on the Mill Garrison, the strongest fort in the settlement. Here they were easily repulsed, but were in such force that the garrison could do naught to prevent them from destroying the dam and burning the mill on the opposite
33Ibid.
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bank of the river. When their work of destruction was ended, they disappeared in the forest with their plunder, their scalps, and their captives, as noiselessly as they had swept into the settlement in the early dawn. I freely concede that this account of the destruction of Broad Bay is in greater detail than will be found, I believe, any- where else in written history; and the reader will be misled unless he realizes that to a considerable degree it is based on inference. Its major merit is to be found in the fact that it is consistent with all the data known in reference to this unhappy far-off event.
This catastrophe in the life of the settlement naturally had immediate repercussions. The people were both demoralized and terrified. The available garrison space could no longer take care of them all, and in consequence some took refuge in the fort at Georges, others in Burton's stone blockhouse at Cushing, and still others fled by water to the fort at Pemaquid, or left on coasters for Boston. The more resolute ones remained in the garrison at Broad Bay in order to start anew the building of their houses as soon as conditions of warfare would warrant it. Contrary to the verdict of the earlier historians, the settlement was never aban- doned, even though roving bands of Indians were in and out along the frontier the whole summer, perpetrating an occasional atrocity in the Broad Bay district. To one of these Governor Shirley gave a passing reference in a letter to Pepperell at Louisburg under date of July 29, 1746. "The Indians - have killed one man belonging to Broad Bay and another at Georges Fort, both of them as they were at some distance from our settlements and alone."34
There were other atrocities of this character. Among the Indians were roving bands of the Wewenocs, Arasagunticooks, and Norridgewocks, who, driven from their old coastal homes, had removed to St. Francis. They realized they could not expel the whites and consequently carried on a war of revenge, loosing their vengeance on particular individuals or families, taking cap- tives or scalps for the premium offered by the French in Canada, or raiding and destroying for the sake of plunder. In a spirit of wanton destruction they systematically slew all the cattle, ofttimes taking only the tongues for food.
By midsummer 1746 General Waldo was back in New Eng- land, only to find that a force was being raised in the colonies as far south as Virginia for a midwinter expedition against Crown Point, and that he was slated to command this force. Smallpox among the levies and other obstacles, however, compelled the abandonment of the plan; and in the spring of 1747 one hundred and sixty-eight of the men were detached to relieve the scouts who had had the winter duty in this area. Through the spring and sum-
"Correspondence of Wm. Shirley,
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mer of this year the savages hovered along the borders inflicting damage where possible. In September 1747, John Vass, Jr., son of the John and Elizabeth of the colony of 1736, was killed in a clash with the Indians while in a company of militia under Captain Jabez Bradbury.35 Throughout the summer the Province Sloop ranged along the coast supplying in part the food needs of the settlers. On September 1st sixty Indians and French appeared before Fort Frederick at Pemaquid at daybreak; but as the fort was of stone, they made little headway with gunfire. The same party attacked the fort at St. Georges and sought to mine in under it at a distance of ten rods from the river bank, but rains and a cave-in forced them to abandon their plan.
The following winter was unusually severe. Since work in the fields had been restricted by savage warfare through the sum- mer, food became scarce and prices excessively high. Hardships again returned to Broad Bay, but the settlers were now equipped to supplement their small supply of vegetables and cereals with game from the forest and fish of all kinds from the waters of the bay, on a scale that they had not been able to achieve in their first winter. Thus it was that they got by without acute suffering.
In the spring of 1748 there were only a few scattered burn- ings and killings, some at Brunswick and others along the trails as far as Saco; but with the withdrawal of the Indians, another foe struck no less cruelly. An early and extreme drought greatly heightened the distress that had arisen from the winter scarcity of food. The new crops were destroyed and the fields charred by the dryness and the heat. A cheering break did come, however, when the news reached Falmouth on July 2nd that the preliminaries of peace were being negotiated in Europe. On the 7th of October the definitive treaty was signed at Aix-la-Chapelle, and Europe began a brief peace.
On the Maine frontier, however, wars did not end abruptly. They simply petered out when the last Indian had taken his per- sonal revenge, or himself fallen victim to his own lust for venge- ance. Against such threats, troops to the numbers of three hundred and twenty-three scouted the frontier throughout the winter; but there were no outbreaks. The St. Francis Indians had returned to Canada and the eastern Indians had had enough. The advent of spring found very few of the more local savages lurking in this area. The settlers felt reasonably free to leave the garrisons by day for their own homesites, where the work of building new cabins and preparing the land for seedtime began again.
In this war there are few details of the Indian outrages at Broad Bay that have remained a matter of record. The reason for "Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., Doc. Ser., XXIII, 390.
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this is rather obvious. Elsewhere the white man was articulate; he could tell what he knew and had seen. With the German his lan- guage was a barrier and what he suffered became only in rare cases a part of written history. There was, however, one last un- happy outbreak in this war that is seemingly well authenticated. It may or may not have been a matter of individual savage venge- ance. There was in the colony of 1742 a German by the name of Schmidt who had taken to himself an Irish wife, the widow of Dennis Cannaugh, and along with her, her son Peter, both of the colony of 1736. After Broad Bay was laid waste the family had taken refuge in Colonel Burton's stone blockhouse at Cushing. Against the remonstrances of Burton and others, Schmidt set out with his family, probably in the spring of 1748, for his old habita- tion at Broad Bay. Apparently a few Indians picked up his trail in the forest, followed it, and attacked his cabin. By hurling brands on the roof which was covered with spruce bark, they were able to set it on fire. All such brands as took effect Schmidt was able from the inside to thrust off and thus avert the intended mischief.
Unable to succeed in this manner, the savages had recourse to stratagem. They cowered down in silence, entirely out of sight. Schmidt, finding that the attack had apparently ceased, raised his head through the roof hole to look around, and received a ball in the neck. The Indians then rushed the cabin, burst the door, dis- patched and scalped the man and woman and then disappeared. The boy, Peter, who was lame and had been hiding in the cellar, was not discovered and afterward escaped to safety.36
In the spring of 1749 several Penobscot chiefs visited the fort on the Georges and affirmed to Captain Bradbury that they and their people were tired of war and that, if taken to Boston, they would make peace with the Governor. Accordingly a passage thither was arranged in the Province Sloop and on arrival the chiefs were favorably received. In consequence of this preliminary, a treaty was signed at Falmouth on October 16, 1749, based largely on Dummer's treaty, discussed in an earlier chapter. This brought an end to the Fifth Indian War in New England and the first for the Germans at Broad Bay. In the course of the spring of 1749, most of the surviving settlers were back on their lands; new areas were cleared; the old meadows placed under tillage, and another generation of new and more spacious cabins rose along the river- fronts.
The war had brought disappointment and loss to Samuel Waldo, and its aftermath of grave injustice to him ended in a cool- ing off of the close partnership he long enjoyed with Governor Shirley. After the reduction of Louisburg had been completed
36Colls. Me. Hist. Society, VII, 326-327.
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and the personal services of its leaders had been weighed and rewarded by the Crown, Governor Shirley emerged with the per- manent rank of the colonel of a regiment with its pay and perqui- sites; Commodore Peter Warren received a title and a commission as a rear admiral, and William Pepperell was made a baronet of the realm. In addition, the two latter men received bonuses of one thousand pounds each, "to defray their extraordinary expences during their Residence at Louisburg."37 There was no one who had worked harder for the success of this venture, who had enlisted more men, who had used his own monies more generously, who had played a more meritorious part as a leader in the field, and who had suffered more grievously in the damage done to his "estates" on the eastern frontier, than Samuel Waldo. Yet for his great services Samuel Waldo received less than nothing.
When the rewards were conferred and disbursed Waldo's first reaction was one of shock, of disappointment and repressed anger; for he was a proud man and his ambition was inordinate. He had unquestionably, among other things, hoped for a title. This had long been in his mind as we know from the fact that among the Germans on the continent, his own official papers styled him as "The Hereditary Lord of Broad Bay." He fully expected that the time would come when there would be a titled aristocracy in the American colonies just as there was in England. Indeed, he would not have been the first American to hold such a title, but he would have been pleased to have been the first "Hereditary Lord of Broad Bay." To this end he received some support from Shirley, who in writing in 1745 to Mr. Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle, respectfully urged that Waldo receive the colonelcy of a regiment on half pay and a permanent commission in such, as soon as a vacancy should occur. In this letter there was also the subtle suggestion of a more intangible reward such as was con- ferred on Pepperell. Shirley outlined in detail the character of Waldo's service which he termed as having been "very eminent," and then he added: "He has also impaired his health as well as his private fortune to a great degree, and should he sink himself by his good services without any mark of His Majesty's gracious acceptance of them?"38
This subtle suggestion was known to Waldo as evoking no immediate reaction from the Crown; and when he returned to Boston in June 1746, he was ready to undertake the leadership of an expedition against Crown Point, in the hope, perhaps, that glory won in such an enterprise, which would be his alone, might lead to a certain coveted reward. As we have already seen, this expedi-
37The Case of Samuel Waldo. 38 I bid.
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tion came to naught due to the ravages of smallpox among the levies. Thereafter General Waldo set himself to rectify another great, unnecessary, and unwarranted injustice that had been done him. From the time he had received his commission as captain, colonel and brigadier general in February, 1745, he had received no reimbursement for his personal expenses in raising levies for the expedition, nor for the monies laid out in rewarding soldiers during the siege for services beyond the line of duty. Also compen- sation was due him for costs incurred in providing his men with "refreshment" while in garrison following the siege, for money laid out by him in hiring labor to repair the fort, as guaranteed by Pepperell and Warren and for pay as a commissioned officer for his five hundred and eight days of service in this campaign. Waldo was putting it mildly when he stated that he was "disap- pointed therein by Sir Peter Warren and Sir William Pepperell not drawing on the Paymaster General for that purpose as they intended to do, had they not been prevented by suggestions of the interfering with the Demand of the Massachusetts Bay, which had paid money on account for supporting of ye Place after the Con- quest."39
When Waldo returned to Boston in June 1746, the Province offered limited payments to the officers in his regiment,
which the pressing necessities of most of the officers obliged them to accept [perhaps half pay for inactive duty] and the said Province in this manner closed its account and transmitted it to England as the founda- tion of their claim in an application to Parliament for a reimbursement, wherein they read no charge to Mr. Waldo either for pay during the temporary establishment [4 month period of enlistment] or that he had so dearly earned during the Detention upon the absolute necessity of continuing in garrison for the security of the place.40
This was a sordid episode, which savored not only of fraud but also of malice, for it is difficult to believe that such a procedure could have been followed apart from the intrigue and manipula- tion of Waldo's enemies in the Massachusetts Bay government; and there were such who would have resorted to anything to effect his ruin. In the face of these circumstances and realizing that no redress would be made locally, the General prepared his case in full detail for presentation to the Crown. Therein is evidence of the still lingering hope that he might receive a title, and the sug- gestion is subtly offered in the following words: "Mr. Waldo takes leave to observe that while the principal persons who claimed merit from the reduction of Cape Breton received marks of his Majesty's Royal Favour, particularly Governor Shirley and Wm.
"The Case of Samuel Waldo.
40 I bid.
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Pepperell [created a baronet] - He, Mr. Waldo has received -- no consideration or reward in any manner whatever."41 Apart from this gently hinted hope, the General placed before His Ma- jesty's ministers a statement of the monies due him. These he com- puted as one thousand pounds for "real expenses," seven hundred and sixty-two pounds, his pay as brigadier general for five hundred and eight days, and five hundred and seventy-eight pounds, his pay as "Colonel and Captain" for four hundred and eighty-two days. The amount due him totalled two thousand, three hundred and forty pounds.
As soon as peace had secured his eastern settlement and eased his tenants on these lands into a state of contentment, Mr. Waldo left for Europe to press his claims and to handle other business there. This was probably in the autumn of 1748, for there is a letter from Nath. Sparhawk of Kittery to Samuel Waldo in Lon- don under date of March 8, 1749, expressing hope "for your suc- cess with Mr. Secretary [Duke of Newcastle], and your being rewarded for your public services, which is most just and reason- able."42
In the face of such a gross injustice, it was inevitable that there should have come about a decided cooling in Waldo's part- nership with Governor Shirley; for the latter almost certainly could have averted the piece of trickery and fraud which had deprived the General of the pay due to his rank and commission. From him Waldo could at least have expected justice and fair play; and since it was not forthcoming, the General may in consequence have committed certain financial indiscretions which Shirley in his capacity of Governor could not overlook. This whole episode is obscure. The only light on it is furnished by a letter of Shirley to the Duke of Newcastle under date of January 23, 1749, and it should be read with the thought in mind that the Governor was not above overstatement nor was he any novice at intrigue. Then, too, Waldo, a master of undercover operations, was in London, and Shirley knew, perhaps from a sense of personal guilt, that he had reason to fear him:
I can at present recollect no other person, thro' whom Your Grace may have been lately troubled with any malevolent insinuations against me except Mr. Waldo, whom I had entrusted with the payment of one of the late regiments raised in my government for the expedition against Canada, which I had put under his command; and have with great re- luctance been obliged to prosecute for several breaches of trust, which he appears to me to have committed with respect to the Crown, the soldiers and myself, in an action at law; which is now depending by appeal before the King in Council. Before this troublesome affair, which
41 Ibid.
42Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., XII, 45.
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a just regard for my own character forced me into, this person on whom I had heaped all the obligations in my power, was perfectly attached to my interest, and nothing but a disappointment in his exorbitant views, and forgetfulness of past favors have instigated him to attempt to do me any ill offices.43
The fact that Mr. Waldo's case was before the King and Council would indicate it to have been of a civil and not a criminal character, for otherwise it would have come before the Lord Chief Justice for a decision. Exactly how this case was settled probably only the British Archives could disclose; but we may, with reason- able safety, infer that the decision recognized fully Mr. Waldo's just claims, otherwise the loss of so much money would have had a shattering effect on the somewhat delicate fabric of the Waldo financial setup and would probably have rendered him insolvent. The fact that there was no curtailment or interruption in his ambi- tious colonial schemes may be taken as prima-facie evidence that he got his coin, though he did not get his title.
In this break neither Governor Shirley nor General Waldo were out of line with a pattern common to the gentry of these times, for these colonial tycoons were primarily exploiters, some- what along the cut-throat design, economic buccaneers who had gone off to the New World in search of wealth, and sometimes they were but little less scrupulous than pirates in the manner they acquired it. They were in many cases men of violent passions and their feuds were unbelievably bitter. Some there were who would not hesitate for a moment to knife an enemy even though in so doing they knowingly were knifing themselves. This particular feud is carried over into our history. It altered radically the meth- ods by which Waldo continued to people his estates with Ger- mans and secured the sizable accretions of the years 1748, 1751, and 1752. Since open cooperation with Shirley in colonizing schemes could no longer be the order of things, Waldo went un- derground, an area in which he was much at home; and for the next four years, in his own peculiar undercover fashion, he di- verted shiploads of emigrants chartered for other sections to his own district - pillaged some of the Governor's migrations to Bos- ton and over these years kept up a pretty constant seepage of other people's Germans to his estates. The General was a stubborn man, a determined man; and in a fight, he followed no rules. At no point or time in his life was he successfully balked for long - save in his quest of a title.
43Correspondence of Wm. Shirley, I, 495.
X
BROAD BAY RENEWED
... There is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society ..
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
HE PEACE FOLLOWING THE FIFTH INDIAN WAR was destined to be only an uneasy and fitful lull, preceding the final act in the century- long struggle between the French and British for mastery on the North American continent. Such a fact was, of course, utterly un- foreseeable at this period by plain and simple people; and the set- tlers returned trustfully with new hope to the tasks of rebuilding their cabins, extending their cleared areas, and replenishing their stock.
The river was still the only link binding the scattered settle- ment together, for there was no village and no cluster of cabins at any point. The cabins all stood by the river banks only a little farther back from it than before, and paths through the meadows and bush from cabin to cabin were the only land links connecting them. Cordwood, staves, and lumber, in the main for the Boston market, were the sole surplus that was exportable and convertible into money. The mills at the First Falls, erected and operated by Martin and Ector in 1743,1 had been destroyed by the Indians in 1746, and the fate of these first operators remains unknown; but it is clear that neither returned to rebuild the mills at Broad Bay. They were rebuilt late in 1749, however, for Thomas Henderson from the Georges reports in a letter of December 28, 1749, to General Waldo to the effect that "the Mills in Broad Bay is going and has cut several thousand of boards." From this same letter we learn that "the settlements at St. Georges and Madamock is most partly taken up and the settlers are on the land - so the next settle- ment is to be above St. Georges Falls."2 This reference to the set-
1Mass. Archives, XV A, 45-47.
2Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., Doc. Ser., 2nd ser., XII, 35.
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tlements being "taken up" is a reference, of course, to land already cleared, for at this time the settled area at Broad Bay extended hardly above the First Falls. Potatoes were already an agricultural vogue among the Scotch-Irish on the Georges and were intro- duced at this time to become a staple article of cultivation and diet at Broad Bay.
On the eastern frontiers during these years, activities pro- ceeded at a high rate; and new settlers were coming in small groups and taking up land constantly. Mr. Waldo and Governor Shirley were both in Europe. The Waldo interests at Broad Bay were un- der the promotional charge of Thomas Henderson of Georges, while the General's son-in-law, Isaac Winslow, handled his inter- ests in Boston. In Shirley's long absence the Lieutenant Governor, Spencer Phips, headed the government of the Bay Colony, and the old Shirley policy of populating the exposed frontiers with German Protestants was reactivated and vigorously promoted.
Due to his break with the Governor, General Waldo could have no hand in such a policy or in any way be its beneficiary; but he was not to be denied. In consequence the German migra- tions to Broad Bay from 1748 to 1753 represent the undercover achievements of Samuel Waldo. During these years he remained for the most part in Europe, from which point he met and in- duced or bribed the recruiting Commissioner of the Province to act in part in his interest, while his agents in Boston, in conjunction with the Kennebec Proprietors, manipulated affairs in such a man- ner that substantial groups of those Germans imported by the Province on their arrival in Boston were sluiced off to his eastern estates. Undercover activity in these years makes the continued colonizing of Broad Bay a complicated maze to untangle since most of the agreements reached were verbal and secret. In many cases, the historian can only observe what actually happened and from these facts move back behind them by inference.
The incursions of fresh German immigrants to Broad Bay between the years 1748 and 1753 are so closely connected with the activity of one Joseph Crellius, or Crell, as he was known in Phila- delphia, that we should, in order to understand the growth in the settlement at Broad Bay, bring attention to this man, his activity, and his relationship with Samuel Waldo. Joseph Crell was a Ger- man, a native of the old Duchy of Franconia, who migrated to Pennsylvania in 1740. His correspondence furnishes the evidence that he was a man of some education who had established a retail store on Arch Street in Philadelphia, and who, in the fifth decade of the century, began to concern himself somewhat with the trans- portation of Germans from the Rhine country to Pennsylvania. In 1743 he was publishing the second German newspaper in the
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colonies - Das Hochdeutsche Pennsylvanishe Journal, "at ten shillings a year or two shillings a sixpence for a quarter of a year."
Of his early immigrant business little is known save that from time to time he would make trips to Europe, recruit a migration of Germans in the Rhine country, charter a ship at Rotterdam, and return with them to Pennsylvania. It was in Philadelphia that he met Doctor Jacob Friedrich Kurtz, the same Kurtz who abandoned the Broad Bay settlement in 1743 and whose subsequent deviously dirty trail had led him as far south as Philadelphia. From Kurtz Crell learned of Samuel Waldo, of his interest in augmenting his settlement at Broad Bay, and of the plans of the Massachusetts Bay government for directing German immigration to New England. On the basis of this information, Crell effected contact with Gen- eral Waldo - where or when is not known, but apparently through the medium of an agent. At this time no agreement was reached between the two for a migration direct to Broad Bay, and it is possible that Crell had sailed for Europe before any agreement could be reached. There may have been correspondence directed to Waldo from Europe; for when Crell arrived in the Delaware in August 1748 with a shipload of immigrants, he received word from Waldo relative to the latter's willingness to receive them on terms satisfactory to Crell.3 There is no record that this migration ever landed at Philadelphia, but it seems probable that it must have done so, for Rattermann gives the number reaching Broad Bay as being between twenty and thirty families.4 Since this was a business that was carried on entirely for profit, no ship engaged in the traffic would have crossed the ocean with a cargo so small. Those who desired to land in Philadelphia were probably allowed to do so, and those wishing to come to Broad Bay stayed on board. There would have been, moreover, a compelling inducement for this; for the migrations to Pennsylvania had been going on on a large scale since 1680 and as a consequence the area of eastern Pennsyl- vania was so well populated that land could be secured only by purchase, whereas lots at Broad Bay would be given away.
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