USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 19
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The captain of this migration was an Irishman, Patrick Ouchterlong by name, and the ship may have been the Forest, for such was the name of the vessel of which he held command in 1752 in the Pennsylvania traffic.5 On landing in Philadelphia to release part of its human cargo, the vessel no doubt took on some addi- tional food and water, then sailed northward. Seemingly she touched at Boston to receive explicit instructions from Waldo and perhaps to take on a pilot familiar with Maine coastal waters. The
3Mass. Records, XV A, 45-47.
4H. A. Rattermann, Der Deutsche Pionier, XIV, 141 (Cincinnati, 1884-85).
"Daniel Rupp, Thirty Thousand Names, etc. (Philadelphia: Leary, Stuart Co., 1927), p. 286.
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Forest reached Broad Bay sometime in early September, and the colony was placed ashore on the lower river. Tradition assigns Schenck's Point as the spot and in this case tradition is not greatly in error.
There were undoubtedly those in this migration who, on reaching Broad Bay, would have sold or bound themselves out as indentured servants to settlers already on the river as a means of paying their passage money. This was the practice commonly fol- lowed in this traffic to Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, where the local residents would pay the passage of the poorer immigrants in debt to the ship, and the latter would indenture or bind them- selves to the purchaser to work for a period of years until the pas- sage money had been worked up in labor. Such procedure, of course, could not obtain at Broad Bay where nobody had any money. This fact was noted by the Captain, and a comment of his made at a later date (1752), apart from its significance at that time, throws a bit of light on the settlement in 1748. The Captain is quoted by Crell as follows: "Oughterlong, the Captain of the Broad Bay Ship, himself told the people [at Rotterdam, 1752] that he knew the place [Broad Bay] very well, that the land was very good, but in need of population, that they [the people living there] were not in a position to pay the transportation costs [Fracht- gelder ]."6 There can be little question but that the costs of trans- portation and full miscellaneous expenses of this migration to the Medomak were met by Samuel Waldo.
Judge Groton of Waldoborough and Bath, writing a cen- tury later, placed the number in this migration at about fifty peo- ple. This does not necessarily contradict Rattermann's twenty to thirty families, for these people were young, some unmarried; and there were few children among them. As indicated they could not have reached Broad Bay later than September, and not in Novem- ber, as stated by Samuel L. Miller.7 There is little known of the family names represented in this migration, and only a few stand out with historical certainty: the Martin Heyers, the Wilhelm Schnaudels (Snowdeal) and Christoph Neubert.8 The conditions faced by this group on landing were not comparable to those fac- ing the colony of 1742. Their arrival in September afforded ample time for assignment to their lands, the location of which is some- what obscure. Apparently they were scattered through the settle- ment on lots left vacant by those families which had been wiped out during the late Indian war or had abandoned life on the Me- domak for more hospitable zones. Furthermore, there was time for these new settlers to secure the provisions, the livestock, and the
"Joseph Crell: Letter to Hofrath Luther, Mass. Records, XV A, 143-145.
"History of Waldoborough (Wiscasset, 1910).
8Newbert Genealogy, in preparation by Mrs. Ida Mallett of Warren, Maine.
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usual tools provided by the proprietor. Another great advantage was to have at hand the experience of a settled community to rely upon. Models for use in constructing their cabins were there for the copying, and ways for securing fish and game could be learned from experienced neighbors. The river did not close up with ice until January 3rd, hence there was communication with Boston and other coastal points. The cordwood, stave, and lumber mar- ket in Boston and at Louisburg was ample to absorb the wood as the land was cleared for agricultural purposes. Good Parson Smith of Falmouth, our Maine weather gauge, reported conditions as mild and lovely up to the end of December. From this point his record is not so pleasant:
Dec. 30th Severe snow storm. Dec. 31st cold and the year ends stingingly. Jan 3rd, a very cold month, and the river froze over on the 3rd day and was so on the 19th. Feb. a cold month. March 11th. An un- common spring-like day, but most of the month very cold. March 30th. Snow gone. April 3rd. The ground is fit for plowing. April 21st. Planted Potatoes.9
From the Parson's report it is clear that the newcomers on the Medomak were favored with mild weather in which to effect their first toehold, but that after the turn of the year the rigors of a severe winter broke upon them. Unquestionably there was dis- comfort, but there is no record of undue suffering or widespread deaths. Tradition has it that Martin Heyer died of exposure. If such be the case, it is the only known death; and if it arose from exposure, that could mean that he might have been caught in a storm, or working in the woods contracted chills and died of a respiratory trouble. From this one circumstance it is hardly pos- sible to infer a prevalent condition as has been so generally done. Life, to be sure, was not easy, but it was not nearly as difficult as the older settlers had found it in their first winter. With spring, a brief interlude of happier times began. It was an early and an open one which rendered it possible to resume the preparation of the soil for crops and by export to dispose of the accumulated surplus of wood for money. Ahead of them there seemed to be a full sea- son for striking a firm root in their new home.
On April 10th of this first spring Conrad Heyer was born, reputedly in a log cabin somewhere on Schenck's Point. In some respects he was one of the most remarkable men of these early days. An ardent Lutheran, he was a cantor in the church from its be- ginning and through the years of its decline until its end. He served as a soldier throughout the American Revolution, and at the end of the war settled in the northern part of the town on the Kenneth
9Extracts from the Journals of the Rev. Thomas Smith, 1720-1778 (Portland, Me .: Thomas Todd & Co., 1821).
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Teague place, where he died at the age of one hundred and seven. He possessed a physical constitution like that of seasoned oak, was able to read without glasses beyond the century mark, and could hear remarkably well to the end. His life spanned the colonial be- ginnings of the town, the Revolution and the War of 1812. He lived through the great days of shipbuilding, through the admin- istrations of fifteen presidents down to the rumblings that pre- saged the division of the Union. I have known people who could remember him. Today his descendants are legion; his blood binds a quarter of the town in ties of kinship; and he remains to this hour the most vivid of the town's personalities, a part of its folklore, the Patriarch of Waldoborough.
The year 1749 proved one of blighted promise for the old as well as the newcomers at Broad Bay. Troubles seldom come singly but rather in battalions, and the first to strike at the colonists was a scourge of grasshoppers that really hit in force, threatening the hopeful young crops of the settlers with annihilation. This proved to be a long and desperate struggle against fearful odds, for poison and insecticides as instruments of combat were, of course, at this time unknown; the only allies of the Germans were the birds of the air and their own poultry; and the only weapons were their own hands and those of the ofttimes numerous progeny. The me- thodical Parson Smith of Falmouth made a few notes on this epic struggle between man and insects. "June 24th. The grasshoppers do more spoil than the drought. June 29. They have eaten up en- tirely an acre of potatoes. July 3. I reckon my poultry (about 100) eat 10,000 grasshoppers every day. July 13. As many grasshoppers as ever, but they are a new growth. July 24. The ground begins to look green, but there are many grasshoppers yet." This plague had hit in the very middle of the growing season, literally a de- struction that "wasted at noonday," and it proved to be a body blow to the precarious Broad Bay economy, the effects of which were to be felt in gnawing hunger the following winter.
The second stroke of fell circumstance was financial in na- ture. The war which had just ended had been a burdensome ex- perience for the peoples of Massachusetts Bay. The colony had borne one half of the cost of carrying on the war, and this had effected a ruinous depreciation in the currency. Active steps had to be taken to check the progress of inflation which had reached a point where one ounce of silver would purchase fifty shillings of the old and twelve shillings six pence of the new tenor bills. The Government decided to redeem the entire outstanding currency and substitute a specie currency. To effect such an end the Gen- eral Court imposed a direct tax upon the Province of £75,000 ster- ling, allowing it to be paid in current bills at the rate of forty-five
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shillings old tenor, or eleven shillings three pence new tenor for every Spanish milled dollar, thereafter to be called six shillings law- ful money, or four shillings six pence sterling. Down to the Revo- lution, accounts were kept in both the old tenor and lawful money.
-
--
CONRAD HEYER · Born April 10, 1749 . From a pencil sketch taken in 1850.
This inflation and the accompanying tax levy reduced or wiped out the little stocks of money held by the Broad Bayers and added acutely to the problems of their living. A repercussion of the untoward events is found in a letter of Isaac Winslow to Samuel Waldo in England under date of December 7, 1749. "I hear from Georges that the Mill at Madamock is going but that ye Millmen refuse supplying the Inhabitants at Broad Bay with lumber which
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they are in great want of - I have wrote to Capt. Fairfield and Mr. Henderson [at Georges] to supply them with what may be necessary to defend them from the cold."10 In this same letter in- quiry was made as to what had happened to the boards which were sawed from "the logs left by Capt. Martyn."11 Mr. Winslow also makes mention of Mr. Zuberbühler as being at Louisburg and as having sold lumber there for Mr. Waldo, and voices the suspicion that the General's affairs there in Mr. Zuberbühler's hands "are subject to bad management." From the foregoing we may infer the tightness of the financial situation in the colony. Their money was gone or worthless and even their credit so far overdrawn that they were unable to secure needed lumber from the local mill.
The year 1750 brought new troubles and a new terror to the Germans on the Medomak. The Indians again became threatening and this time it stemmed from an outrage committed by white men at Wiscasset where one savage was killed and two others badly wounded. The Indians were deeply stirred by this violation of the peace, and acts of retaliation followed on the part of the western and St. Francis Indians, in which luckily the Penobscots, Broad Bay's nearest savage neighbors, took no part. The Government was quick to avert general trouble by arresting three white men and placing them on trial in Boston; but even there, far from the frontier, a verdict of guilt could not be secured. The feeling of distrust and hatred of the Indians was so deep rooted that no jury could be empanelled that would do them justice.
As an outcome of this episode, about one hundred Indians attacked Fort Richmond on the Kennebec on September 11, 1750. A man by the name of Pomeroy was shot at Frankfort (Dresden), and scattered outrages followed at Swan's Island and on the lower Kennebec.12 All this filled Broad Bay and other settlements with alarm, since following the peace the frontier had been stripped of its garrisons, and only fifteen men were left in the fort at Georges and six at Pemaquid. At this juncture the acting governor, Phips, on September 29th ordered Colonel Cushing to station ten men in the Mill Garrison at Broad Bay and forty more "to cover the Inhabitants while getting in their crops and preparing their habitations against the winter."13 Once again Broad Bay housed its meager store of roots and cereals under the protective guns of the militia.
In the spring of 1751 small roving bands of the dreaded St. Francis Indians appeared on the frontier, satisfying themselves here and there with a few acts of private vengeance. They ap-
10Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., Doc. Ser. 2nd ser., XII, 27-29.
11The first mill operator at Broad Bay, 1743-1746.
12H. M. Sylvester, Indian Wars in New England (Boston, 1910).
13Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., Doc. Ser., 2nd Ser., XII, 96.
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peared at Georges and created a big scare, eliciting from Thomas Henderson a letter to Governor Phips under date of April 11, 1751, for which we should be grateful since it furnishes us with the only insight we have into conditions in the settlement in the early spring of this year. Henderson writes:
I am now going to Broad Bay and to all the inhabitants [there] to give the necessary warning. The case is very shocking [at Broad Bay], there is about one hundred families in this settlement that with much Difickualty for want of provisions was endeavoring to plant for a fatter? season, which no doubt (were they not Interrupted) would turn to good account. But if they are forced to garrison as I believe will be the case by to-morrow noon, they have nothing to live upon, not one day, having cheerfully lived on clambs this month Past.14
The letter ends with an urgent plea for aid. The Indians, how- ever, did not molest Broad Bay and in the late spring returned to Canada. The sagamores of the nearer tribes on the Penobscot and St. Johns met with government officials at St. Georges on August 3, 1751, and gave every assurance of pacific intentions. The Gov- ernor on his part took every measure to satisfy the Indians and thus maintain the peace. Two trading houses were opened, one at Fort Richmond and the other at St. Georges; and both were gen- erously stocked with the goods which the Indians desired in trade. Through such measures confidence was restored in the settlements and some degree of faith in a lasting peace returned.
The scene of our history now shifts from Broad Bay to Bos- ton, where the plan for settling the Bay Colony's frontiers with Protestant Germans had again been raised by the acting governor, in a speech to the Assembly on November 23, 1748. This had given to Mr. Joseph Crellius, then in Philadelphia, the opening for which he had been waiting. He transmitted to Lieutenant Governor Phips a letter in which he set forth his experience and qualifications for executing such a policy, stressing strongly the fact that in Penn- sylvania land could now only be secured by purchase, and in con- sequence it would be easier "to direct them from Holland to the Northern Colonies if so be any Encouragement given." He con- cluded with a proffer of his services:
If therefore ye Goverment should incline to send a person with the needful Instructions abroad for the purpose aforesaid, and I was made so happy as to be deyned with the Honour of serving yr. Colony in the premises I will endeavor faithfully to discharge my commission.
I beg leave to subscribe myself, Sir your Hon'rs most obedient hum- ble servant.
Joseph Crellius
From Arch Street, Philadelphia, Dec. 19, 1748
14Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., Doc. Ser., 2nd Ser., XXI, 137. [Italics mine. ]
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This application of Crell received the endorsement of none other than Benjamin Franklin15 and was highly acceptable to the Provincial Government. Work was started at once on the prelim- inaries which involved the details of the project, the revision of existing laws relative to the treatment of Germans while in passage across the Atlantic, and the setting aside of four townships - two in northwestern Massachusetts, and two in Maine. Each township contained a one hundred and eighty-five acre lot for each of its one hundred and twenty prospective settlers, a school lot, two church lots, and a two-hundred acre lot to be allotted to Mr. Crell for his services. It was stipulated that the townships must be settled in three years from the conclusion of the contract, and that each settler was to occupy the land himself or through a tenant for a period of seven years. It was at this time that Crell also bent all effort to, and succeeded in obtaining, the passage of the already mentioned law designed to regulate and relieve the intolerable con- ditions under which Germans were transported across the At- lantic .*
Though the law provided for humane control of conditions from the time of embarking to the time of landing, it did not pre- sume to extend this control to recruiting in the field, nor to the transporting of emigrants from Germany to the port of departure, nor to the treatment or disposition of emigrants after being landed in Boston.
In the late summer of 1750 Crell sailed for Europe as Com- missioner for New England, bearing with him a letter of intro- duction from the Governor to Heinrich Ehrenfried Luther in Frankfort am Main, one of the most esteemed and trusted Ger- mans in the Rhine country. At Frankfort, Luther had a large print- ing house and a foundry for the manufacture of type and printing machinery. His connections were excellent; his character unim- peachable; he was a thorough-going humanitarian and had been for a number of years Aulic Counsellor to His Serene Highness, the Duke of Würtemberg. He assisted in all the migrations to Broad Bay after the year 1748. For years he had worked to correct the intolerable abuses existing in the emigrant traffic from the Palatinate to Pennsylvania and other points in the American colo- nies. In the New England program, under strict legal control, he thought he saw the possibility of dissipating misrepresentation, of curbing fraud and cruelty - in short, of dealing a death blow to the system as carried on by procurers in the field and by the great shipping houses at Rotterdam.
15H. Luther to Benjamin Franklin, Frankfort, May 24, 1765, Mass. Records, XV A, 273-276.
*Sce pages 90-91.
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Luther received Crell in his own home and set up an office for him there. All the time the latter was in Frankfort, in the years 1750-1752, he lived in Luther's house, ate at his table, and used his home as his headquarters without charge.16 Without delay the Counsellor placed behind the Commissioner the weight of his great influence throughout the Rhine country. He printed the necessary circulars, pamphlets, and announcements, and appointed trusted agents in various German cities to set up bureaus and to start recruiting emigrants. These agents were in all respects men of character and repute. Included among them was Johannes C. Leucht, a printer of Heilbronn, and associated with him was the innkeeper of the same town, Johann Ludwig Martin. At Speyer was the printer, Goethel, editor of the Speyerische Zeitung; at Mannheim the printer and councillor Boyer, editor of the Mann- heim Neuigkeits-Blatt, and the merchant, Johann Horst, worked in support of the New England project. At Kitzingen, Professor Jacob Hobbholn gave his services, while at Anspach and Erlangen the book and newspaper printer, Martin Gross (a son of John Martin, ancestor of the Gross family in Waldoboro) worked for the same cause along with Maschenbauer in Augsburg, who was the editor of the Augsburger Zeitung.17
Despite such honest and reputable support, Crell soon found himself in difficulties; for the whole nature of the Province project aroused the opposition of those procurers in the field who in most cases were agents of the great shipping houses in Rotterdam. A commission such as Crell's, backed by Luther, based on a program of reforms and prosecuted along allegedly humanitarian lines, threatened, by eliminating the abuses, to reduce the profits. It be- came, in short, a question of selfish and vested interests fighting to maintain their life and profits, and Crell was particularly suscep- tible to attack, for he had been in this same field before as a re- cruiter, and as such had resorted to unsavory practices all too well known to his competitors. These they freely advertised and pub- licized in an effort to discredit him and to destroy his influence among the people. A particularly troublesome and resourceful competitor was John Dick, a rich merchant and shipowner of Rot- terdam, who was commissioner for Nova Scotia. Dick, however, did not stand alone in this conflict, for the recruiters of Pennsyl- vania and the Carolinas also made Crell the object of their open and undercover intrigue and defamation. So strong, bitter, and vocal was this opposition that it is doubtful if Crell would have made any headway with his commission had he not been ably and
16Letter, Luther to Phips, Sept. 14, 1752, Mass. Records, XV A, 92, 148-196.
17Letters of these agents to Luther in Frankfort am Main, scattered through Mass. Records, XV A, 67-80.
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generously supported by Luther's influence and reputation, and by those sterling men appointed by the latter at numerous centers throughout the district.
In the spring (May) of 1751, Crell and his aides had recruited a shipload of immigrants which he brought from the mouth of the Ruhr down the Rhine to Rotterdam in two transports. Here his troubles began all over again, for the big shipping houses in Rot- terdam were all hostile to the New England project. Hence Crell was unable to charter a ship and was on the point of taking a se- lected group to England18 and securing a ship there when he fell in with the ubiquitous rogue, Dr. Friedrich Kurtz, now established as a ship broker in Rotterdam. Through the mediation of Kurtz, Crell was able to charter a ship from the well-known firm of John Sted- man and Company which had been long active in the Pennsylvania trade. Much valuable time was lost in Rotterdam, and it was not until the end of June 1751 that the emigrants sailed in the ship Priscilla commanded by Captain Brown. The Priscilla was a siz- able vessel, close to three hundred tons burden. On an earlier trip to Philadelphia, where she arrived September 11, 1749, she had carried two hundred and ninety-nine passengers.19 There was noth- ing like that number in this migration, however, since conditions were strictly controlled by law and the amount of space allowed each emigrant was definitely specified.
The Priscilla first touched at Cowes, England, where Crell had business with Samuel Waldo, who had been in Europe since 1749. It is highly probable that in this meeting the main lines of strategy were laid out for handling a part of this migration after it landed in Boston. The Commissioner also sought to secure cer- tain rulings from the Lords of Trade relative to Mr. Dick's activi- ties in the Palatinate. Here he was assisted by General Waldo with the end in view of facilitating Crell's recruiting work in Germany the following year. In this they seemed to gain their end, but the events of 1752 were soon to prove that their success was not a very enduring one.
These negotiations were long drawn out and the delay was costly. The Priscilla did not sail for New England until the end of July. The long interim period had reduced the provisions taken aboard at Rotterdam. According to Milford H. Schoff, after the Priscilla was well out to sea, the passengers' meals were stopped.20 The concurrent evidence strongly supports this fact, which, we may add, was a practice very common indeed in this traffic. Since food was an item covered by the passage money, immediate pro- test was made to Captain Brown. He explained that the provisions
18 Letter, Luther to Gov. Phips, May 30, 1751, Mass. Records, XV A.
1ªRupp, Thirty Thousand Names, etc., p. 196.
"An Account of German Immigration into Colonial New England (Phila., 1910).
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placed aboard by Crell were depleted, and there was nothing avail- able except the ship's stores which they could purchase of the Captain or do without. In the face of this situation Crell pleaded illness, remained in his cabin, and refused to see anyone. Accord- ingly those who had money were compelled to purchase food of the Captain, and those without resources were forced to go into debt to the ship - a debt that could be discharged to the ship only by their agreeing that the Captain might auction them off as in- dentured servants on their arrival at port. All this causes one to pause and wonder. Was it a part of the Crell-Waldo strategy, and did it stop with them, or did it also embrace certain other "Gentle- men Proprietors of Land within the Province"?
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