USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 27
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The country north of the White Mountains was very soon an ob- ject of ambition for the German settlers at Broad Bay. Here as in Penn- sylvania they were active in exploring the wilderness, which they fore- saw would yield many fine homesteads, and on their exploration was doubtless based much of the interest that led to the creation of these northern towns. The name of Franconia, chartered first in 1764, shows that they had planned a settlement there, which a conflicting charter, and adverse conditions prevented.16
That there was some exploration of the back-country is doubtless true, otherwise this statement is, in our judgment, decid- edly overdrawn; but the fact remains that if there were back- country treks there were also furs. It was also following the war that sheep were first brought to the Georges from Pemaquid by Samuel Boggs. The introduction of this essential animal took place at about the same time at Broad Bay, and greatly strengthened its economy.
Up to the year 1760 the whole settled area of Maine was embraced in the one county of York. In June of that year two
15 Diary of Georg Soelle, Moravian Archives (Bethlehem, Penna.).
16Wilfred H. Schoff, Descendants of Jacob Schoff (with an account of the German immigrants in Colonial New England) (Phila., 1910).
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
new counties were set off: that of Cumberland, extending to its present limits along the seaboard and thence to the northern bounds of the Province, and beyond it the county of Lincoln which in- cluded all the rest of the territory east of the Cumberland line. The county seat of this latter division was Pownalborough, em- bracing parts of present-day Dresden and Wiscasset. John North, a surveyor, and a figure well known at Broad Bay in this period, was appointed one of the four Judges of the Court of Common Pleas. Broad Bay in these times, however, had small occasion for the arbitrament of justice. The hard years just drawing to a close had made necessary a degree of co-operation that left little room for differences. Captain Leissner, as representative of the proprie- tors, acted as the arbiter in minor disputes. When more violent differences arose, matters were adjudicated before a justice of the peace in Damariscotta. Such an episode was an event in the life of the colony, and half the settlement would repair thither either as witnesses or spectators.
After the destruction of the "Dutch Church" in 1746, no other building was built for about fifteen years. During this time worship was led by the schoolmaster, John Ulmer, and later by Charles Leissner, in the pay of the Waldo family. This worship, while devout, was decidedly informal, being held in the houses, in the fields, and in the garrisons. It is related of John Ulmer that while carrying on an exhortation to a small congregation in his cabin one Sabbath morning, he glanced by chance through the window and saw hogs in his garden. Thereupon he swiftly di- rected the following admonition to his brother Jacob: "Donner und Blitzen, Jacob! Jacob, da sind die verdammten Schweine in dem Kartoffelgarten. Tausend Teufel! Eile doch, treib sie hinaus und repariere."17
Ulmer apparently possessed a rich sense of humor. Joseph Ludwig is responsible for the story of a visit of Ulmer's to Pema- quid in the late days of the war. He arrived there just at nightfall and hailed some people on the opposite shore to come over and set him across the river. In answer to the query of who it was, he gave his name with such a string of German titles that they ex- pected to find a number of people on the bank, and expressed dis- appointment at finding all these honors the possession of a single person.18
After General Waldo's death, his eldest son, Colonel Samuel Waldo, Jr., by right of primogeniture fell heir to two-fifths of his father's interest in the Patent. From time to time he visited Broad Bay to discharge certain proprietary duties, among which was the
17"Great heavens, Jacob! Jacob, there are those damned hogs in the vegetable patch. Thousand devils! Get going, drive them out and repair the fence."
18 As cited by Cyrus Eaton, Annals of Warren, 1st ed. (Hallowell, 1851), p. 115.
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allocation of lands to the colonists of 1753, who, since the outbreak of the war, had spent most of their time in residence in the garri- son. A few of these, among whom was Frank Miller, remained in the area originally assigned by Leissner. The others spread out in all directions, but mostly to the northward up the valley on either side of the river, and along the present North Waldoboro and the old Belscop roads. They were not the only ones, however, participating in this expansion. The sons of the earlier settlers who had come of age during the war took advantage of the peace with its removal of the Indian menace, to acquire legitimately or to squat on unoccupied lands in the outer areas of the town, where they and their young brides might establish homes of their own.
This new generation was essentially one of frontiersmen. Iso- lation and loneliness were something foreign to their experience. To live and to work was their ambition; it mattered not where, so long as security to life was assured. So they filled up the Genth- ner neighborhood, the present-day back roads and crossroads, the pond areas in the northern part of the town, East Waldoborough and Sodom. Whenever there was land available they were to be found working from daylight to dark and rearing huge families. Today old abandoned cellars in out-of-the-way places, crumbling ruins of old farm buildings in secluded spots, and many an ancient grave in a lonely field or in the heart of the forests reveal the extent and power of this homing urge which could not be stayed even by the niggardly hand of Nature.
In the year 1762 the good people of Broad Bay realized for the first time that peace as well as war carried with it obligations, for in this year the first county tax was levied. The total for the county was £132. The assessment in the more immediate district was as follows: on the Georges River, the upper town, now War- ren and a part of Thomaston, paid £4 5s. 8p .; the lower town, made up of a part of Thomaston, Cushing and St. Georges paid £4 10s .; Broad Bay was assessed £4 5s. 8p., and Medumcook, £2 13s. 8p. The next year the amount of £152 was levied on the whole county. While the other near-by settlements paid substan- tially the same as in the previous year, the Broad Bay tax rose to £8, which may be taken as an indication of the rapid rate of the community's growth. The Germans were vigorous breeders and their hunger for land was insatiable. They squatted on land wher- ever they could find it, irrespective of proprietary rights. Once relief had come from the Indian menace and the protective func- tion of the garrison became obsolete, growth and expansion were the order of things at Broad Bay.
On the 10th of February, 1763, the final treaty of peace was signed at Paris between the belligerents. This document simply
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gave legal substance to a condition existing since 1760. What Britain had won she held, and France was obliged to relinquish Canada and all other claims in northern and eastern America. Never again was the specter of Indian warfare to be raised in the Broad Bay area. Before the settlement on the Medomak stretched forth a short interval of fifteen years of peace which was destined to be a troubled time, for the problems brought by the peace were different, but in their way they were to leave a deeper scar than any of the cruelties of war.
The first census came in 1764 and so far as Broad Bay was concerned it was little more than a gesture. The poll was ordered by the Lords of Trade who were determined to know more fully the extent of the ability of the Massachusetts Bay colony to bear taxation. In accord with these orders the General Court directed the selectmen of towns, of which there were none at this time in Lincoln County, to take and to return to the Secretary's office in the course of the year the number of people, families, and dwell- ing houses within the Province. The census was neither an active nor a thorough one.19 There were no instructions for the enumer- ating of persons in plantations, therefore they were all omitted or approximated. According to the poll the County of Lincoln had 4347 inhabitants. Of this number Broad Bay, St. Georges, and Medumcook were most erroneously credited "by estimate" with two hundred souls - a most generous understatement considering the fact that among the Germans on the Medomak childbearing never ceased in peace or war, in quiet or troublous times. Since the census was taken for the purposes of taxation, it is doubtful if the settlers at Broad Bay ever felt moved to protest its inaccuracies.
In the earliest years of the settlement the crops grown on the farms were of a limited variety. There were some potatoes, but the Germans had not been too well acquainted with this vegetable in their homeland and were somewhat slow in expanding its possi- bilities. At first, rye and barley were the only grains grown. Corn first came into use through the supplies brought in on sloops from the west during the recent war. In 1764 the first maize grown in the area was planted by Daniel Filhauer,20 and thereafter it grew rapidly in favor and soon was in general use. Cabbage had been a part of the standard diet of the Germans from time immemorial. It was grown from the first at Broad Bay and from it sauerkraut was made, certainly the first sauerkraut in Maine, if not the first in New England. Flax, too, was grown from the very beginning, and formed, before the advent of wool, the principal source of
19William D. Williamson, History of Maine, II, 372.
20 Joseph Ludwig, cited by Eaton, Annals of Warren, 1st ed., p. 128. The Filhauer farm seems to have been on the west bank of the river, the lot now owned by Willard Fowler. (Robinson Map, Mass. Archives, Nov. 23, 1815).
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domestic clothing. A few years after sheep raising had become general the flax was woven with wool into a mixture known as linsey woolsey.
Limited as they had been in their holdings of land in the old country, the Germans just could not get enough of it. When the end of the war brought release from fear, land was cleared very rapidly, and as a consequence great quantities of cordwood, stave stuff, and lumber were shipped to the Boston market. Wood formed the keystone in the arch of early Broad Bay economy. This fact, unintelligible perhaps to the modern reader, may call for a word of explanation. Boston at this time was the largest town on the Atlantic seaboard, with a population of fifteen thousand inhabitants, not to mention the much larger number in the adjacent settlements. All the homes were heated by open fireplaces ranging from one to a dozen in a home, according to the means of the owner. Furthermore all shops, stores, offices, and factories were heated in the same manner. In the preceding hundred years and more the forests had gradually been cleared in the district. As the source of fuel became more distant each season from the town, the problem of fuel became more and more acute. To transport wood by oxen and sled, from woodlots ranging from ten to thirty miles away, was a slow and expensive method of securing it. On the other hand, in the new settlements in Maine the wood was close to the shore, a few hundred yards away; a quarter or half-mile haul and it was ready for delivery aboard the sloops. From their decks and holds it could be discharged at the woodyards on the Boston waterfront and there prepared for delivery and use at a fraction of the expense possible in any other way. It was this eco- nomic fact that gave Broad Bay its start. With the profits accruing from this trade the settlers in a measure were able to buy what they needed and could not create for themselves. It was also in this way that the thriftier citizens were able to accumulate a bit of reserve capital to be used at a later date in laying the foundation of the town's major historical industry.
XIV
THE MUSTER ROLL OF 1760
Beneath those stately pines, that hemlock's shade Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. Adapted from THOMAS GRAY
W. HEN GEORG SOELLE, THE MORAVIAN PASTOR at Broad Bay, made his first visit here in 1760, he reported to the Mother Church at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that there were one hundred and fifty German families in residence in the settlement.1 Any muster roll of these families prepared at this late date will fall somewhat short of the Soelle approximation. In fact, the evidence from which a complete roster of these first families might be compiled has long been nonexistent, for among them some disappeared early and completely; some have left no more than a name. Of others the record is agreeably full. Even if all the names were available, the roster would not reach Soelle's count, for in many cases there were two or more brothers of the same name and a goodly number of fathers and sons living as separate family units. An instance is the Rominger family with its four brothers, David, Philip, Jacob, and Michael, each of whom, in 1760, had his own farm and his own family at Broad Bay. This same fact would apply to the Ludwigs, the Hilts, Achorns, Burketts, Creamers, Genthners, Waltzes, and other families. The evidence that would enable either the genealo- gist or historian to untangle this mass of threads and to rewind each on its own proper bobbin, concededly, no longer exists; and yet it has seemed that such an attempt should be made and that the evidence still available should be incorporated into a roster of the first families, that some of them, at least, may be assured of such a modest perpetuity.
In essaying this task, my primary interest has been the first generation, or the original immigrant. What was his name? Where in Germany did he come from? In what year did he reach Broad
1Georg Soelle, Diary of 1760, Moravian Archives (Bethlehem, Pa.).
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Muster Roll of 1760
Bay, and in what part of the district did he settle? In the case of some families, the evidence is convincingly clear and final; in the case of others, the data are less clear and point only to a more or less strong probability; while in other cases it can only be said that such and such a person once lived at Broad Bay. Frequently names form an impossible barrier to certainty, for here one must contend with the fickle orthography of the eighteenth century. Among simple folk this was not an age of much reading and writ- ing; and when people spelled and wrote names, as they occasionally had to, their spelling was largely phonetic, and variably so. The first census, that of 1790, furnishes an apt illustration of this fact, and almost any name can be taken as an example. In this census the surname of Reynolds is spelled in thirty-four different ways; and as simple a name as Brown is spelled in seven different ways, while the old stand-by of Smith runs through nine variations.2 Men signed their own names with different spellings on different occa- sions; and clerks, town, and county officials commonly spelled names as they heard them pronounced rather than bother to ask how, knowing in most cases that it would not help materially, if they did.
If such was the practice among the English with their own names, it can be readily imagined that the problem became more markedly acute at such a place as Broad Bay where the people had such unpronounceable names that they defied all efforts on the part of the untutored Englishman in the County Court House and elsewhere, to phoneticize them. In fact, when a clerk attempted to do so, he usually made the name more unrecognizable. An illustra- tion in point is Captain John North's list of Broad Bayers in 1760.8 His Philip Fogilar and Mulican Snyder are probably recognizable as Philip Vogler and Melchior Schneider, but who are his Jacob Wallis and John Leah? Possibly Jacob Walch and John Lehr, but who shall say with certainty? In such matters the settlers them- selves could not be of much help; for some were unable to read, spell, or write; and those who could, never saw their neighbors' names in print and rarely in script. If compelled to spell or write them for somebody else, their best efforts could be little better than a guess. To go further and to say that some of them could not even write their own names legibly, is to keep well within the range of fact. I have in my possession the photostat of a petition submitted by the Broad Bayers to Governor Francis Bernard on January 14th, 1767. Affixed to it are sixty-seven signatures in Ger- man script. Baffled by the problem of deciphering them, I submit-
2Gilbert H. Doane, Searching for Your Ancestors (N. York: Whittlesey House, 1937), p. 16.
3Knox Papers, Library, Mass. Hist. Soc. Data of settlers furnished by Capt. J. North around 1760.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
ted the list of names to a German colleague, Werner A. Mueller, who held a doctorate from the University of Rostock, which es- tablished the fact that there were nine signatures that not even a German, a Doctor of Philosophy at that, could decipher. It might also be mentioned here that there are many of these names, in the files of the Registry of Deeds in Wiscasset, which are totally and eternally meaningless.
This summary of the problems involved does not bring one to the end of the difficulties. The Germans clung tenaciously to their first names and handed them on to successive generations. John Ulmer, John Ulmer, and John Jacob Ulmer would be dif- ficult to identify if ample supplementary evidence did not enable us to divide them into John Ülmer, Sr., John Ulmer, Jr., and John Jacob, brother of John, Sr. Such a situation becomes even more confusing when John Jacob's son, John, appears on the scene. An- other confusing phase of this problem lies in the fact that these Germans all had middle names, and sometimes they are referred to by the first, and sometimes by the middle, name. By way of il- lustration we may take the immigrant Demuth, Johannes Heinrich. Sometimes he is referred to as John and sometimes as Henry Demuth. Such facts make these Germans somewhat elusive per- sonalities. John Henry may have had a brother Henry, or a son Henry, not to mention the possibility of a son John; all of which means that you put your finger on Henry Demuth in some old document and are left wondering whether it is a different Henry or old John Henry himself. The crowning case of confusion is per- haps to be found in the family of John Godfrey Oberloch (Over- lock), among whose sons was a John, a John Joseph, a John Henry, and a John Godfrey. Such are the pitfalls to be dodged and even the foxiest historian cannot command the alertness or the luck to evade them all.
The listings which here follow have inclusiveness as one of their aims. Accordingly, names have been listed wherever it was warranted by reliable, though scanty, evidence. Of some it can be merely said that they were here. In such cases it is regrettable that there can be offered little more. With these notes on the nature and the difficulties inherent in the task, there follows the roll of many of those who came to Broad Bay before 1760 and became the founding fathers of the town.
ACHORN. This is an anglicized form of the German, Eichhorn. The first of this name at Broad Bay was Matthias, a tanner, who came here either in 1742 or 1748, probably from Langensteinbach, Baden Durlach, Germany. This latter inference is based on the fact that Magdalena Eichhorn, the wife of Johan Georg Ried, another Broad
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Muster Roll of 1760
Bay settler, was from Langensteinbach and probably a sister of Matthias. It was the usual practice of kinfolk in the same place to join a migration together. Matthias was allotted land by deed by Samuel Waldo, on April 17, 1753, it being Lot No. 1 on the west bank of the river.4 Assuming that these lots followed the same plan in their numbering as those on the east bank, this lot must have been the present-day home and farm of John Foster. This was a lot twenty-five rods wide, fronting on the river and running far enough back on a "west course" to complete the usual one hun- dred acres. Achorn was compelled in 1763 to repurchase his farm of the Pemaquid heirs for £15 10s.5 By this time, in the 1762 sur- vey of Elijah Packard it was considered Lot No. 23, counting from Medomak Falls down the river. Matthias died in 1777 and left a sizable estate for these times, appraised at £280, to his wife, Mar- garet.6 Four known children survived him (Matthias, Jr., had been killed and scalped by Indians): Daniel (1734-1831); Jacob; John, born in passage across the Atlantic; and a daughter, Phillipine.7
Another Achorn family was that of Jacob, a farmer and a brother of Matthias, who came to Broad Bay in 17538 and was al- lotted seventy-five acres by Waldo on the west side of the river. In 1763 he was compelled to repurchase this land of the Pemaquid heirs for £10, as Lot No. 15 below Medomak Falls.º Known chil- dren of Jacob were George, Michael, and Jacob (1761-1836), who married Margaret Ulmer and, with his five children, moved to Rockland in 1796.10 In the first census, 1790, the following Achorns were listed as heads of families in Waldoborough: Daniel and John, sons of Matthias, and Jacob, with his sons, Georg and Michael. This family has been a very numerous one at Waldoborough and there are many descendants living in the town at the present time.
AIR. This may be an anglicized form of the German, Lehr. He came, perhaps, to Broad Bay in 1752 or 1753. All that is known of this family is recorded in a deed of September 27, 1762, in which Henry Air, laborer, and his wife Elizabeth transferred to George Light, Jr., of Boston, a laborer, for £18 3s., Lot No. 7 on the west side of the river between the lots of "Andrew Weller and John Keiler [Kaler]."11 Both men were in Boston at the time, refugees from the French and Indian War. It is probable that the Air family never returned to Broad Bay.
+Lincoln Co. Register of Deeds (Wiscasset, Me.), Bk. 3, p. 23. "Ibid., Bk. 9, p. 160.
6W. D. Patterson, Lincoln County Probate Records, 1760-1800 (Portland, 1895).
"George T. Little, Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine, IV, 2143, Seiders History.
8Cyrus Eaton: Annals of Thomaston, etc., II, 128.
9Lincoln Co. Deeds, Bk. 4, p. 167.
10 Eaton, II, 128.
11Lincoln Co. Deeds, Bk. 7, p. 49.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
ANTON. Michael of this name probably came to Broad Bay in 1753 from Hoch Wettersbach in Baden, Durlach. His sister Katherine was the wife of Michael Rominger who came to Broad Bay the same year. The name survives only in a deed from Matthias Achorn to William Wagner, of September 21, 1761, conveying an one- hundred-acre lot "on the west side of Broad Bay river" in the general area above the Great Falls, "formerly improved by Michael Anthony."12 Anton was possibly killed in the French and Indian War, or was a refugee from it who never returned to Broad Bay, and whose property reverted to Waldo, from whom Achorn, in the transfer to Wagner, "binds himself to secure a good deed."
BAUZER. Another spelling is Bouzer. This family is little more than a name in Broad Bay history. According to Samuel Miller,13 a man by this name was the first settler killed in the French and Indian War. His death occurred near the Slaigo Brook at the foot of Thomas' Hill while he was in search of his cow. This tradition would seem to connect his farm with this vicinity, which would place him in a later migration, possibly that of 1748 or 1752. His name does not recur in the history of the town.
BECKLER. The immigrant of this name was Daniel, who came to Broad Bay in 1752 or 1753. Little is known of his life in the colony. Of his children, there is a record of one son, John Daniel, born in Germany in 1748, died at Albany, Maine, March 25, 1835. "Daniel Beckler's Plan" of Nov. 4, 1774, showed him owning a lot con- taining one hundred and eighty-one acres in the southwestern part of the town, in "the Genthner neighborhood."14 In June 1775 John Daniel administered the estate of Cornelius Klaus, and in Novem- ber of the next year became the guardian of the latter's minor daughter, Mary.15 In June 1777 he married Elizabeth (1757-1838), the daughter of the immigrant Frank Miller.16 John Daniel served for three years in the American Revolution. On July 9, 1789, he sold his farm to Charles Donnell of Bristol and in 1790 moved to Oxford County, Maine, where he died.17 There were sixteen chil- dren born to this union, many of whom migrated to the Middle West. Daniel Beckler, Sr., was still living in Broad Bay at the time of the census of 1790. There are no known descendants of this family living in the town at this time.
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