USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 25
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This day again all the Cattle comes a flying out of the Woods, and no person capable to drive them back again, which is a certain Sign of the Ennemies being near at hand. There are Six Coasters a Loading in the Place, and desire guard. I have sent them one and Two men each ac- cording to the danger of the Place, but they seem displeased and threadne to Complain; the Generall Court has been pleased to allow eighteen men for this Place which is settled about nine Mile in the length. The number of the inhabitants about 140, and sometimes about ten and twelve Coast- ers aloading. It is therefore an impossibility with 18 men to protect the Coasters; inhabitants and to take care of the garrisons, this being the only Place which provid's the Western Towns with fire Wood, and no more being hawled at the present, the 18 men not Capable to Guard every- where. Consequently the Coasters must lay up their Vessells, the settle- ment is ruined, and such a vast number of poor people will come to destruction.
The inhabitants, therefore, Humbly implore your Honr and His Majesty's Honrble Councill to consider their Deplorable Situation, and onely to allowe to 18 men more provision, which 18 men will do Duty as well as the 18 already in the Service, and will divide the pay with them, so that onely 18 men will be paid, and 36 be Victualt, and the Place then Sufficient protected that Coasters can be provided [with guards] and safely Load.
I remain in Duty bound Your Honrs Most Submissful Servant. C. C. Leissner29
At the time of Lash's death, perhaps on the same day, and a little farther down the river, about sunset, occurred the murder of Loring Sides, Sr. He was of the first major German migration, that of 1742, and was a veteran of the Louisburg campaign in the preceding war. His farm, one of the earlier grants on the river, was that owned for so many years by Albion F. Stahl. On this farm and just below the ledges near its northern boundary stood a cone- shaped boulder about five feet high. At that time this was in the
2Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., Doc. Ser., 2nd ser., XIII, 70-72.
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Side's pasture. The savages had killed the cow, taken her bell, and concealed themselves behind the boulder. Just before sunset Sides and his son went out in search of the cow and were drawn to the rock by the sound of the bell. As they approached, the Indians emerged and the elder man was tomahawked, scalped, and the body mutilated. The son got away, crossed the two intervening pastures without the Indians being able to overtake him, and took refuge in the "Middle Garrison."30 The tomahawk later came into the possession of Asa R. Reed and eventually found its way into the collections of the Maine Historical Society in Portland. The boulder was blasted and removed by Captain Stahl while clearing land on his farm in the early part of the present century.
These attacks seemed to have been made by a band of In- dians which had split up into small sections to make simultaneous attacks at various points. Some of the people in the neighborhood below the Sides farm learned of the attack and fearing they were cut off from the "Middle Garrison," hurried by boat across to the stockade on the Dutch Neck for greater security. But even here attacks occurred shortly thereafter. A Mr. Burns, possibly Joseph, Jacob Sechrist, and others were attacked while at work in the woods. Sechrist was killed, but Burns and the others reached their boat and escaped from the five Indians pursuing them.31
Farther up the river on the west side, Friedrich Kuentzel (Kinsell) definitely outwitted the savages who were on his trail. Kuentzel owned the present Mark Smith farm on Kaler's Hill. His cabin was near the shore. In answer to the alarm gun, all the Kuentzels had hastily repaired to the Mill Garrison. At the farm, along with other things hastily left, was a hen with a brood of young chicks. After finding herself in a place of safety Mrs. Kuentzel became concerned for her hen and chicks.
The next morning as there were no Indians to be seen, she desired her husband to go down and see to the chicks. So taking his trusty dog and gun he passed down by the usual path [which led from cabin to cabin, along the river] and attended to the chickens and some other matters about the house without observing anything unusual. But as he was about to return, the dog began to show signs of alarm, and he was well assured there were Indians near, for the dog by long experience and training understood the subject as well as his master. What now was to be done? To go back by the usual path would be especially dangerous, for the scoundrels would probably be secretly waiting for him near the path, and to go further into the woods so as to avoid any ambush prepared for him would also be dangerous. But no time must be lost; so looking again to his gun to see that it was in order and motioning to his dog to take his position behind him, he walked cautiously to the shore, and the tide being out, waded out in the mud so as to be more than a gun shot
30 Joseph Ludwig, cited by Eaton, op. cit., pp. 102-103. 31Ibid.
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from the shore, and then made his way upward in the middle of the channel, and finally reached the block house in safety.32
The episodes and tragedies here narrated are by no means all-inclusive. There were other deaths and captivities concerning which history is in the main silent. In this war the local Indians did not exhibit their usual consistent ferocity. The Penobscots especially battled in a half-hearted manner. They had not desired the war. It had, in fact, been declared against them, and they fought in the realization that they were upholding a lost cause. Captives and scalps could be sold to the French in Canada; food and sup- plies could in some measure be had by plundering the homes of their victims, but of torture there was a bare minimum, and little wasting by fire. The savages seemed to feel that the white men were in the Maine settlements to stay and their warfare was as humane as they could conceive of war. In short, they fought as though desirous of averting the vengeance that would be visited upon them in the event that their foe became fully aroused by atrocities, and they fought the war with an eye to a possible peace.
During these war years the women labored with the men, and in those cases where the men were in more distant parts in military service, the wives did the husband's work and provided as they could for the families. There was one woman at Broad Bay, later a legendary figure, commonly known as "die grosse Maria" (Big Mary) who cut two shiploads of cordwood in one winter and hauled it on a hand sled to the shore for spring export.
In reference to the conditions at Broad Bay, the following petition of some of the settlers as they surveyed their own wretched state in the summer of 1757 is revealing:
BROAD BAY PETITION
August, 1757
May it please Your Houners To receive in these few lines an Account of the Griefances of the most part of the Settlers at Broad Bay.
The Continuation of Warre, and the cruelty of the Indian enemy Used here, has been a terror to us and been a Great Hindrance to our Labour; Tho we bare all that with patience as long as we were Capable to mentain in some measure of large Familys, but now with tears in our Eyes must Acquaint Your Honrs that our harvest is so miserable, as ever been Known by mankind, so that the most of us will not be able to reap the Seed which we have sowed with hard Labour and in danger of our lives, owing to the deep Snow which lasted till the middle of May, and then the Great drought which followed: We sce no way to Keep us and Large Famelys from starving (as the Respective Towns in the Western parts refuse to receive any of Us) we therefore hope Your Honrs will be pleased to take our deplorable case in to Consideration, what Damage it would accrue to the Eastern parts, in case such a Number of Famelys
32Oral tradition furnished by George Smouse to John Johnston, History of Bristol and Bremen (Albany, 1878), pp. 324-325.
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should be forced to break up, as we are at the borders of the Enemy, certainly the rest of the Settlements betwixt this and North Yarmouth would be Obliged to follow Us, as they then would be exposed and in- capable to Stand their Ground, and such Number of Famelys would cer- tainly become a Great Charge and Trouble to this Provinz: We therefore Humbly implore Your Honrs mercy to allowe onely an Allowance of Provision for three months to each of Us, which with the roots we per- haps may raise, would in some measure make us able to cutt Wood and other Lumber against and during the Winter to provid for us and poor Famelys till a further Harvest; which would prove a Great benefit to the Country in Generall by Keeping the Fronteers Strongly settled, and save a vast Charge and Trouble which would come upon the Provinz by the multitude of so many poor souls, also a benefit to the Westerd by Sup- plying that part with fire wood and other Lumber.
We humbly repose our Self's into Your Honrs Mercy, and shall in Duty bound forever Pray.
This humble and pathetic petition, more revealing of the condition at Broad Bay in the summer of 1757 than any comment by any historian, is signed by fifty-odd heads of families, no signa- ture of which is legible enough to be decipherable, not even those of the better educated leaders in the settlement. Hence there is the following endorsement with legible signatures:
That the Circumstances mentioned in this Petition being the truth we do hereby Certifie.
C. C. Leissner, Comdr Maths R (emilly) Town Capt.33
There were also other aspects of the distressing conditions set forth in this petition, which are not touched on in it. One of these having to do with stock receives further mention here. The cattle especially suffered heavily so they had to be turned loose for pasture, and in their need the Indians used them freely for food. Under such conditions they became wild and Indian-shy and would flee precipitately at the sight of a savage. Under these circumstances, it became necessary for the settlers to shoot their own cattle for food. Some became entirely wild and were found only on the restoration of peace after an absence of years. This was a heartrending experience for the Germans who were from old days proverbially attached to their stock. In fact, it is related of one settler at Broad Bay that after the war he went to the Georges to buy a cow and since he did not have the money to pay for the animal, he indentured his wife in payment, reclaiming her as soon as he could raise the funds.34
No amount of research can reveal the conditions of a pe- riod, especially those covering the daily life of a time and place,
83Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., Doc. Ser., 2nd Ser., XIII, 102.
34Traditional. S. L. Miller, History of Waldoborough (Wiscasset, 1910), p. 47.
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as fully and realistically as the words of one who actually lived them. In such a matter it is particularly fortunate that there has been preserved a day-to-day account of one week of life at Broad Bay in late May or early June of the critical year of 1757. This record, although unsigned, is clearly from the military journal of Captain Matthias Remilly, or Captain Charles C. G. Leissner. In either case, it provides a word picture by one who occupied a position of the highest leadership and responsibility in the settle- ment, as well as one to whose attention all relevant details were reported.
May 31, 1757. Marched with 25 men from the mill garrison about 3 miles E. N. E. across the meadows, and then struck down south betwixt our meadows and St. George's ponds, and returned through the woods in sight of the clear. Met 3 times with Indian tracks, but it being so dry, could make no discovery of their number.
June 1st. A man and a woman on the western side of Madamuck Falls were surprised by something making a noise along the brush of the woods, and the dog going upon it, I went immediately with 12 men in search, but could make no discovery.
3d. Marched with 18 men down the lower part of the bay to look after some cattle for the inhabitants. At return at the lower garrison met with George's and Frankfort companies both bound to Frankfort, they staid that night at the mill garrison and went on their march in the morning.
4th. About 10 o'clock went with 18 men to the middle garrison and left 4 men for a guard to a settler who was making fence close to the woods. At the E. side of the river the watch was surprised by a noise in the woods, hearing the dry sticks break; at 1 o'clock the men received allowance and when they was parted, 3 women and a man went to their lots above the falls joining one another, the first, being about 70 rod off the mill garrison, by the dog making a dirrible [terrible] noise, discov- ered an Indian behind the fence in gunshot of her. She took to her heels, screaming to the other at the next house, which immediately shut her door and crept into the cellar, and, as there was in the cellar an air hole, she saw the Indians, which being 4 in number, running over the brook35 (which runs along her lot to Madomack river) and taking a short round to the common pad [path] and so down to the shoar, where they stood in a heap, expecting the woman went along the pad, but she escaped with another by the help of a man through the water. I heard thereof and run immediately with 15 men to the place, found the woman yet in her cellar amout death [almost dead.] She told that the Indians returned from the shoar and came to her house, she thinking that they knowed of her being in the house and came to kill her, but they took immediately to the woods about 5 minutes before I was at the house to her relieve. I went imme- diately down to the lower garrison, as many people were out at work and, by firing an alarm with the cannons, brought them to garrison and returned along the clear.
5th. The woomans which escaped the Indians, hath [had] left some necessaries at their habitations which they could not do without; I went with 8 men to guard them. When we came to the house we espied some
35The Eagle Hole Brook.
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cattle 5 lots higher up the Madomack river upon the seed,36 which we expected the Indians drove there to trap some people. I sent for more men and arove them out but made no discovery.
June 6th. In the morning a settler hath some necessary work to do, hath a guard of 8 men, but they soon were surprised by a great breaking through the brook coming right upon them, they being too weak returned to garrison. Two men sent on board the sloops out of the upper garrison, and 4 out of the lower. In the afternoon a settler belonging to the next lot of [from] the garrison hath some fence to make, hath 7 men for a guard; 3 of the working men went to a brook about 40 rods distance to get water, they were immediately surprised by something creeping over the brook about 60 yards off them in the woods, which at first they thought to be a dog, but soon espied two Indians, one in a new, the other in an old blanket, a creeping towards them, then the one Indian hawled the other by the blanket, showing him with his finger the tree [three] people. One of our men hath no gun with him, the other being loaded, so they hastened to the guard and returned home, as they were too weak to follow the enemy, as the rest of the men were at the lower garrison and guarding the sloops.37
June 7th. It hath rained, so could not march, but had guards on board the coasters; about one o'clock George's Company returned and brought an account of 30 canoes being landed at the Olds [Owl's] Head, and 2 Indians being killed and scalped by Capt. Cox. About 3 o'clock arrived Capt. Kent with the Province stores which were landed that night.
8th. Marched with 14 men S. E. and took around to the lower gar- rison where I took the rest of the men and stood guard for the people to haul out the wood for Capt. Kent. About one o'clock a gun was fired at N. E. the back of me about 1-2 mile distance, but as I could not leave the people who a hauling, could not go after it. About 4 o'clock the ac- count was brought to me that a wooman were killed at the eastern side of the narrows, and, as it was about 8 mile to walk by land so that I should not have come there before night, took a sloop's boat and some canoes and went with 20 men there, where we found the corpse of the man up at the edge of the woods, and the wooman at the house, shot, scalped, stabbed, and mangelt [mangled] in a cruel and barbarous man- ner; the ax was laying by the man and the Indian hatchet was left in the wooman's skull. There hath been 5 guns in the house, two of them they took, also a cutlass. They hath stripped the man and took the money, clothing, and some meal, the chest they broke up and took what they liked; the rest laid about the floor; they took no ammunition tho' there was a good deal in the house. The accident happened thus. The man and his wife and son went in the morning to their house; the man went in the field, the wife and son (who was sick) were in the house; an Indian came in the house and set his gun to the son's breast which missed fire; the wooman took the Indian and throwed him out of doors and shut the door; the Indian shot through a crack and killed the woman; the son creapt into the cellar, where he laid 3 hours before he got to his neigh- bors. We buried the man and wooman and returned home.
9th. Sent a guard of 14 men to Capt. Kent. All the night before the · enemy has been about the garrison mocking the watch, the dogs making a great noise.38
36Probably grain sown.
87 At Trowbridge's Point.
3% Mass. Archives, XXXVIII A, 254.
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This simple narrative of the daily round at Broad Bay, with its meaning obscure at a few points where the writer is worsted by the English idiom, reveals truly and dramatically the hazardous days of the early fathers, the ceaseless marches around the out- skirts of the settlement, the comings and goings of the rangers in their combing of the forests for the elusive foe, the risks of life by day in cabins and fields, the poor economy carried on under the continual surveillance of the militia, no days without alarms and escapes from lurking death, the faithful role played in the face of danger by the ever-watchful dogs, the stratagems devised by a crafty foe to draw their victims into ambush, the landing of supplies from the coasters and the getting out and loading of wood under guard, death striking wherever attention was relaxed, the unnamed dead being laid away hastily and silently in the soil of their own farms, and the dreaded foe closing in with darkness to mock a watch which they could not catch off guard. This was life at Broad Bay in 1757, the darkest year of the war. With the com- ing of winter, conditions eased. The roving bands of St. Francis Indians returned to their village on the St. Lawrence, and the usual cordon of scouts afforded protection from any stray Pen- obscots. However, even though the darkest hour was past and a better day was actually close at hand, this could not yet be dis- cerned by the sturdy spirits at Broad Bay.
XIII PEACE COMES TO BROAD BAY
Yet, peace be with their ashes, - for by them, If merited, the penalty is paid.
LORD BYRON
I N THE YEAR 1757 a change in the British Cabinet placed William Pitt at the head of the government. Under his dynamic leadership the Crown began throwing its full energies into the prosecution of the war, and expeditions were planned and organized to strike the French at all vital spots and to bring a quick end to their dream of Empire in the western world. The first of these moves of im- mediate interest to the Province of Maine was a second expedition against Louisburg, which had been restored to France in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. This expeditionary force, containing many Maine men, was commanded by Lord Jeffrey Amherst, with whom the colonial troops served under the command of their own offi- cers. In these expeditions the Crown furnished the arms, ammu- nition, tents, provisions, and all necessary equipment, while the colonies provided the uniforms and paid their own men. This cam- paign was entirely successful. Amherst bombarded the fortress un- til it was a mass of ruins and on July 26, 1758, the stronghold sur- rendered its garrison of over five thousand men to the English. The fall of the fortress had two effects on Broad Bay history: it greatly weakened the morale of the eastern Indians, and it drew a thorn from the flank of the Maine settlements.
There were men from Broad Bay in this second expedition against Louisburg, but the evidence revealing this fact is so scanty that it turns up only accidentally. There is a scrap of relevant evi- dence in an affidavit made by Jacob Ludwig, May 5, 1815,1 from which the following sentence is excerpted. "Barnard Kinsley [Bernhard Kuentzel] and I went to the ware together in the year 1758 as Soldiers of England against Kennedy [Canada] or france." This document definitely places these two men in this expedition. Another scrap of evidence from these tragic days comes from
1In possession of Dr. Benjamin Kinsell, Medical Arts Bldg., Dallas, Texas.
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North Carolina. From Peter Kroehn's Memoir, read at his funeral service, we learn that
he took service in the expedition against the French in Canada in the years 1757 and 1758. On the march it was necessary to move their boats across land on rollers, from one body of water to another; and one roller ran over his leg, injuring him so seriously that for quite a while he could neither stand nor walk. . .. As soon as he was able to walk a little he asked for his discharge which was at once granted. He went to his family in Boston,2 only to find that during his absence two children had died of dysentery, and a third passed away on the very evening on which he had rejoined his family.3
However slightly the curtain may be drawn back on the scene in these days one is pretty certain to catch a glimpse of the starkest tragedy. There were others, too, from Broad Bay who unquestionably in these times took the field in military service, but the accidental disclosures of research have not yet revealed the names.
In the earlier half of the year 1758 life at Broad Bay moved along at a quieter and more uneventful tempo but with no relaxa- tion of vigilance. There were still militiamen posted at the garri- sons, and Captains Leissner and Remilly, at the head of their scouts and rangers, combed the adjacent forest areas. The Indians were in and out along the whole frontier; scattered outrages occurred at various points; but Broad Bay enjoyed a relative freedom from attack throughout the spring, and on into the late summer, when unpleasant things began to happen - things about which the his- torians have very little to say. Only one of them, in fact, Franz Löher, records that in this war the settlement was attacked and again wasted (überfallen und verwüstet),4 but he sets the date as 1755, which is clearly an error. It is difficult to know just what happened at Broad Bay, but there were stirring events of which we may be entirely certain, and these are set forth here in their known details.
In mid-August General Monkton, who was stationed in Nova Scotia, got word through to Boston that a considerable body of French, augmented by St. John's and Passamaquoddy Indians, was moving southward to join the Penobscots in an attack on the Eng- lish settlements. The first blow was to be a surprise attack on the fort on the Georges River. With this stronghold destroyed it was planned to lay waste the settlements in the entire district. Broad Bay was only eight miles overland from the Georges, and it could not hope to be spared attack once the fort on the Georges was razed.
2Where they had fled from Broad Bay for refuge.
3 Archives of the Moravian Church (Winston-Salem, N. C.).
4Franz Löher, Geschichte und Zustände der Deutschen in Amerika (Cincinnati and Leipzig, 1847), pp. 71-75.
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Faced with this emergency, Governor Pownal, who had suc- ceeded Shirley, moved with characteristic energy and speed. He immediately collected such forces as were available in Boston, placed them, along with hastily assembled military stores, aboard the frigate King George and the sloop Massachusetts, and set sail for the Georges. There men and supplies were thrown into the fort, with no time to spare. Thirty-six hours after the Governor's departure a force of four hundred French and Indians appeared and assaulted the fort, on August 26th and 27th, in what they believed was a surprise attack.5 They, not the garrison, were sur- prised.
Repulsed completely and disastrously, they shortly desisted and released a captive woman that she might make her way to the fort and there give such an impressive account of their num- bers that the garrison would see the futility of further resistance. This stratagem failed to make the expected impression, and the savages then withdrew, as was so characteristic of their warfare when the element of surprise failed. They vented their wrath, however, on all the cattle they could find, slaughtering about sixty head in the Georges area.
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