USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 36
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For more than thirty years following the arrival of the first Germans at Broad Bay, the plantation was without any form of organized political and social control. These decades may be re- garded as the feudal period, and as such they provided a unique social situation in New England. To be sure, the Germany of the early eighteenth century, from which their forefathers came, had evolved out of the economic frame of feudalism, but its political and social traditions and its mentality were still medieval. At no other point in western Europe was this cultural lag so clearly in evidence, and this was more especially true in respect to the peas- antry. Consequently the Germans at Broad Bay brought with them from the Rhine the age old social forms and attitudes which had been theirs and those of their fathers before them. Thus in the iso- lation of this wilderness-girdled settlement an alien culture was planted and developed. In Germany they had known no other law than the will of their petty prince, and his edicts. Disciplined by oppression, they were in the fullest meaning of the word conform- ists. In their mind, their rights were definitely limited by tradition; their class was fixed; their economic status predetermined; their obedience to the word of the ruler complete; their attitude to au- thority one of obsequious respect. They might petition for favors but not demand them. They were inured to a tradition of receiving little and expecting little.
On coming to New England they had simply transferred allegiance from their petty prince to a new lord, in this case Colo- nel Samuel Waldo. To them he was in the fullest degree the Her- editary Lord of Broad Bay. Following the feudal principle of the delegation of authority from the higher to the lower, above Waldo was the Governor in Boston, and above the Governor, the King in England. From Waldo they received their land, in many cases as tenants, and to him they paid the land rent of a shilling or a peppercorn. If the conditions of tenancy were not fulfilled, the land reverted to the proprietor. In a measure it was thus held in fief. Their attitude to authority is most clearly revealed in the Petition to Governor Shirley of May 13, 1754. To them he was the "most noble born, most noble grave, most honored Governor," who is begged to "excuse the liberty" taken in addressing "our most hum- ble petition" to him. They would "never dare to prescribe to his Excellency, what to do or in what manner he should save them." His wisdom will suggest by what means they must be supported.
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They are in the utmost subjection, His Excellency's most humble and most obedient subjects.34 The servility expressed in this phrase- ology plainly indicates an Old World conception of the state as an unquestioned Absolute in human affairs.
At Broad Bay, this feudal tradition provided the only re- straints existing in early social and economic life. So deep seated was respect for authority that it rendered exercise of authority superfluous. There was no bürgermeister, no selectmen, no offi- cers of the law, in short, no form of political organization. The only symbol of authority was Waldo's representative, Charles Christopher Godfrey Leissner, in his lifetime, and thereafter the representative of the next in succession, Colonel Samuel Waldo, the General's son. Georg Soelle described Leissner as "a kind of magistrate among these people."35 So far as the exercise of any law was necessary, that law was the word of Charles Leissner. In case questions arose that required in settlement the official stamp or sanction of the law of the land, the parties would repair to a jus- tice of the peace in Damariscotta, and half the colony would flock thither to hear the difference argued out.36 In the main, however, the Germans at first under the impetus of an inherited tradition carried on in civil matters quietly and cooperatively, a record marred only by a period of bitter religious persecution, in which the persecutors unfortunately were supported by the local re- gent, Captain Leissner. This fragment of an ancient tradition was carried on in its New World setting until the invasion of the Puri- tans around 1770 started Broad Bay in its evolution along lines of the more democratic English tradition.
The colony on the Medomak was not only stabilized in its early days by its religious and political traditions, but its Old World superstitions, folkways, and beliefs exercised strong regulative con- trol on social life, not to mention the color which they imparted to it. The overlay of English culture in present-day Waldoboro is so complete that it is not a simple task to resurrect the great body of beliefs and superstitions which once held sway in the minds and created strange behavior patterns in the lives of our founding fa- thers. But our own folklore can, in a considerable part, be recon- structed by having recourse to the Pennsylvania Germans. They came from the same districts of Germany, at the same time, were of the same class and of the same level of education as the people of Broad Bay, and with them they brought the same beliefs and superstitions. They came in far greater numbers, however, and covered whole counties in Pennsylvania to an extent that their an- cient culture to this day has resisted all assimilation. Today their
34 Mass. Archives, XXV II, 240-242.
35 Stahl, "Diary of a Moravian Missionary," N. E. Quarterly, Dec., 1939.
36 Eaton, Annals of Warren, 1st ed.
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folkways and beliefs are still as clearly defined and as intact as the hex symbols painted on their red barns.37 Here among these people we can find in their primitive form the superstitions, folk beliefs, and folk medicines of the Broad Bay Germans of the 1760's.
The beliefs and superstitions of these "Pennsylvania Dutch" have been collected and classified by Edwin M. Fogel who in 1915 published the results of his research in this field in a doctoral dis- sertation containing two thousand and eighty-five superstitions still extant among Pennsylvania Germans.38 There are, in this state, twenty-eight counties with distinctively Pennsylvania German settlements. The dialect in which their superstitions are phrased is strikingly similar to that spoken in the Rhenish Palatinate at the present time. Doctor Fogel went further into the question of their German origin and checked with German sources to see if these folk beliefs were still extant in contemporary Germany, thus es- tablishing their German origin and source.
The two thousand and eighty-five folk sayings were col- lected from fourteen of the most densely populated German coun- ties of Pennsylvania with a German population of more than 1,250,000, where the Germans still cling to the customs and be- liefs their ancestors brought from the Fatherland in the eighteenth century. In Fogler's collection less than one hundred sayings are of purely British origin and only two hundred and sixty-nine are common to both Great Britain and Germany. There can be no doubt that most of these superstitions were once current in Broad Bay.
From the great number of folk beliefs it would not of neces- sity follow that our German ancestors were an excessively super- stitious people, but rather that they lived in a period of human his- tory when there was no other explanation of the multifarious phe- nomena in their daily lives except that provided by folk beliefs. These provided an answer to many things and experiences that otherwise would have remained unanswerable. In our own time science provides so many exact answers to perplexing phenomena that superstitions are fast disappearing.
In my younger years, science as we know it was in its youth; and many of the old beliefs were still rife. The following super- stitions have their counterpart among the Pennsylvania Germans; however, only those have been included which have been collected from old folks in this locality, and with which I was familiar in the Waldoboro of a half century and longer ago. These came to me down the ancestral line of the Hilts, the Stahls, Winchen-
37The red barn was once common to Waldoborough, also, and was numerous within the last century.
38Edwin M. Fogel, Beliefs and Superstitions of the Penn. Germans (Phila .: Am. Germanica Press, 1915).
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bachs, Heaveners, Heyers, and Hahns and were still current in my boyhood home. Especially was the mind of my uncle, George A. Keene (born 1842), richly stored with such ancestral lore. Natu- rally, many here mentioned are no longer current in Waldo- boro.
FOLKLORE HAVING TO DO WITH CHILDREN
A child born with two cowlicks will be smart.
A child born with a double crown on his head will eat bread in two kingdoms.
Permitting a child to sleep with an old person saps its vitality and short- ens its life.
The stork brings the children (English and German).
A child born posthumously possesses the power to cure diseases simply by looking at the patient.
A seventh son will be a famous man.
COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE
A four-leafed clover is a potent attraction of the opposite sex.
Take home a piece of wedding cake. Before retiring put it under your
pillow and the person you dream of will become your future hus- ɓand.
When you pare an apple, throw the whole paring on the floor over your left shoulder, and the letter formed will be a lover's initial. If it breaks in pieces, you will die an old maid.
Postponing a wedding brings bad luck.
LUCK, DREAMS, OMENS, AND WISHES
Relate a dream before breakfast and it will come true.
What you dream the first night you sleep in a strange house will come true.
Making a sharp or pointed gift will create trouble with the recipient, unless a penny is given in return.
Bubbles on a cup of coffee signify riches.
A wish made during the fall of a shooting star will come true.
When you pass a load of hay, make a wish without looking at the hay again, and the wish will come true.
If two persons wash their hands at the same time in the same basin, they will quarrel before night.
When your ears burn someone is thinking of you.
Killing a spider brings bad luck.
Looking over another person's shoulder into a mirror brings bad luck. It is unlucky to pass under a ladder.
Opening an umbrella indoors will bring bad luck.
It is better to turn back if a black cat crosses your path.
A cricket in the house brings good luck.
Picking up a pin from the floor when the head is toward you brings good luck.
A five-leaf clover brings much luck.
Grief will follow the breaking of a mirror.
When you see the new moon for the first time over your left shoulder, wish and your wish will come true; or if you have money in your hand, you will get more money.
DEATII If a dog howls near the house of someone sick the person will die.
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If the clock stops suddenly there will be an accident or death.
A green Christmas means a full churchyard.
A bird flying into the house is an omen of bad luck or death.
If thirteen sit down together to a meal one will die within the year.
Immediately after a death open the window of the chamber to give the soul its release.
A corpse should be laid on grass sod to check decomposition.
WEATHER
The weather of the last Friday in the month will determine that of the following month.
Pain in a scar or the joints is an indication of bad weather.
Thunder in the morning means unsettled weather all day.
When the robin cries, rain is coming.
Rising smoke is a sign of clear weather. Falling smoke means rain.
Thunder showers cause milk to sour.
Thick husks on the corn foretell a severe winter.
A new moon with the horns downward is a wet moon.
When the cat lying on its side turns the head upward, rain will come.
A circle around the moon indicates rain, and the number of stars within the circle denotes the number of days before rain will fall.
MEDICAL LORE
Drink a concoction of water and sheep dung to bring out the rash in measles and scarlet fever.
Cobwebs will staunch the flow of blood.
A coin pressed on the back of the neck will stop nosebleed.
A bag containing camphor worn about the neck during the winter will ward off disease.
A woolen string tied around the finger will stop nosebleed.
A key hung down the back on a string will stop nosebleed.
Touching a toad will cause warts to grow on the hands.
Three potatoes carried in the trouser pockets will cure rheumatism.
MISCELLANEOUS
A Saturday move means a short stay.
It brings good luck to throw a lucky egg over a building.
Trees felled on the increase of the moon will sprout again.
A snake's tail will not die until sunset.
If bushes are cut down on the full moon in August, when the sign is at the heart, they will not grow again.
It is lucky to pick up a horseshoe.
If you play with fire, you will wet the bed.
Speak of the devil and you will hear the flapping of his wings.
Cold hands betoken a warm heart.
If you spill salt throw some over the left shoulder to ward off harm. In leaving a house go out by the door in which you entered.
The pow-wowing will lose its effect if not handed on to a person of the opposite sex.
If the breastbone of the roast fowl shows dark on the whole, the winter will be severe throughout; if mottled or variable, the lighter aspects betoken snow and the darker, frosts.
If the bone is transparent there will be an open winter, the front part showing what the season will be before Christmas and the inner part the weather after Christmas,
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
The folk beliefs and practices here listed are limited, as has been indicated, to those extant and identifiable at Waldoborough in the past half century. They are simply vestigial elements that remain of a folklore once as rich and colorful at Broad Bay as in Pennsylvania. Many of the older readers of this chapter will be conscious of shadowy memories, welling up from the source from whence come things long forgotten, and will perhaps recall the times in childhood when they threw the lucky egg over the ell or shed and then dashed around to the other side to see what had be- fallen their luck. To the younger reader these beliefs and practices will tell only a quaint and simple story of a life he has never known.
From the many folk tales springing from these old ways of believing and behaving, only a few will be recorded here. The first has to do with the belief that vigor and vitality could be sapped by a too-close and constant contact with an old person, or by witchcraft. The first of these is drawn from the northwestern sec- tion of the town.
About a hundred or more years ago Jane Anne Hoch lived in the northern section of the town. She died in the full bloom of youth and according to the common custom of those days was buried in the family lot on her father's farm. Sometime thereafter her younger brother suffered a decline in health and pined along for years, with no one able to diagnose his trouble. After about twenty years the family purchased a lot in the common burying ground, and it was decided to remove the remains of Jane Anne to the new resting place. Exhumation showed that the process of decay had followed its natural course, with the exception of "the liver and lights," the tissue of which was fresh and living. The whole situation immediately became clear. These tissues were drawing the source of their life from the ailing brother. They were burned on the spot, and the brother, with this drain on his vitality removed, effected a quick recovery.39 Among those to witness this strange phenomenon was Mary Light, the grandmother of Miss Ada Winchenbaugh.
The second illustration of this character is drawn from the village area. Witchcraft and the possession of special gifts of heal- ing were potent agents in the folk medicine of Old Broad Bay. A person posthumously born was gifted with the power of healing many ailments by looking on, or by the laying on of hands. Such a person was my great-great-grandfather, Conrad Heyer, the post- humously born son of Martin Heyer, who had died of exposure at Broad Bay during the winter of 1749-1750. Such a power was greatly sought after, and Mr. Heyer exercised it from time to time.
39Oral narrative of Maria Prock Dermott, past the age of ninety years on Aug. 29, 1939, when this episode was related to me and Miss Ada Winchenbaugh.
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Tradition tells of a wonderful cure thus effected on the daughter of a rich Bostonian. The girl's family would have rewarded Mr. Heyer generously; but according to formula, he rejected the re- ward, for to have accepted it would have involved the loss of this special gift.40
Most of the magic and the secret trysts of these days, how- ever, occurred in East Waldoborough, an area sparsely populated, densely wooded, and studded with ledges and boulders, a sort of Walpurgis milieu, where solitude and somber forested recesses suggested spooky communion of the human with the darker and capricious forces of the Hidden and the Unseen. This district was also the home of the Minks, or, more exactly, the home of the Paul Minks. This branch of the family was poor, peppery, pic- turesque, and psychic. Old Paul was looked upon with humorous liking. An annual event were his expectant calls on Christmas morn- ing to his more prosperous neighbors to offer his greetings:
"Wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, A pocket full of money and a belly full of cheer - Rum, whisky and pranty41 enough to last all the year!"42
- and to receive his Christmas handout. His consort, "ole Miss Paul," was a more vigorous spirit and versed in the lore of the oc- cult. One of her charms by which she prepared herself to receive the emissaries of the Unseen has come down to us in the following form:
"I takes my broom and goes into my front [front hall or room], And I raps three times and then sez I - My soul and my body come together."43
It is not known whether "ole Miss Paul" was disposed to use her power more beneficently or maleficently. Perhaps it was both, but it has been only the good that has lived after her in one recorded case of healing. A Mrs. Maney who lived many years ago in Thomaston used to relate that her son had some malady for which he got no help until she took him to Mrs. Mink, who told her that she could do nothing for him for a week as court was in session. The next week, however, she would be sick herself with chills
40Eaton, Annals of Warren, 2nd ed., p. 85.
41 Possibly the attempt of a German tongue to pronounce the English word brandy. 42Data furnished by Mrs. Agnes Boynton of Thomaston, whose ancestors of the Fitzgerald family were contemporaries and neighbors of the Minks. 43 Ibid.
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and fever, after which time her son would have no more trouble; and thus it proved.44
The prince of all Broad Bay wizards, and one who, to a large degree and over many years, stood in an especially intimate rela- tionship to the Evil One, was a member of this same Mink family. It is to this congenial camaraderie between man and Devil that we owe the richest single item in our local folklore, which for rather obvious reasons I have entitled:
THE FAUST SAGA OF OLD BROAD BAY
The Faust legend is one of the favorite themes of old Ger- man folklore. During the seventeenth century, the strange and unaccountable doings of Doctor Faustus were the subject of many folk tales and a favorite theme in the folk books of the period. In the eighteenth century Goethe made use of the theme in his Faust, one of the major creations in world literature. In its simplest form this legend is the tale of a man who made a pact with the Devil, whereunder the Evil One agreed to provide the man during his lifetime with everything that his heart desired, and the man agreed on his part at the end of his life to forfeit his soul to the Devil. Broad Bay, too, had its Faust, though not a Faust who was a great spiritual leader to whom the Evil One showed and offered all the kingdoms of this world provided the man would fall down and worship him; nor a Faust who was a great scholar, the range and magnitude of whose wishes were such as even to tax the ingenuity of Satan to fulfill. This Broad Bay Faust was "Uncle Faltin45 Mink" (1778-1832), a lazy, whimsical individual with a keen appreciation of the funny. He was much like the Doctor Faustus of the folk books, whose fun in living was largely derived from the jokes and pranks he could play on friends and acquaintances, and on the suc- cess he might achieve in constantly outwitting those whose intent it was to thwart him in his easy and lazy modes of living.
Uncle Faltin had a double claim to fame, for he was the sev- enth son of a seventh son. He was of the third generation of Minks and lived deep in the wooded recesses of East Waldoborough, about one and one half miles in on the old road leading by the farm of Clyde Sukeforth. Uncle Faltin made his pact with the Devil as did Faust, but in so doing he did not seek the kingdoms of this world, rather the power to enable him to get along easily and pleasantly, to play weird pranks on his friends, and to bewilder and confound those who for any reason sought to circumvent him. As the sev- enth son of a seventh son, Uncle Faltin possessed considerable of the black art in his own right. To this the Devil freely added such
44Data furnished by Mrs. Agnes Boynton of Thomaston.
4%The German proper name Valentin, shortened to Valtin, and then anglicized to Faltin.
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power as was needed to enable his apostle to gratify his simple wishes, and in return Uncle Faltin agreed on death to surrender his soul to the Evil One.
Many tales connect themselves with Uncle Faltin's doings. Some of these have been related to me by one who received them direct from an acquaintance and eyewitnesses.46 The directness of such evidence lends a weird realism to the activities of this local Faust. These eyewitnesses were present at scenes where Uncle Faltin's occult powers were much in evidence. These were often brought into play at country dances where Uncle Faltin's violin47 furnished the tunes. His power was such that by altering the mood of his music, he could convert a merry dance into an ugly brawl and thus create a spectacle highly amusing to himself.
The power of his music was especially felt in his own "break- downs." These were parties or dances held at his home in East Waldoborough. The old gentleman loved company and frequently invited groups of the younger generation to his home. On these occasions the Evil One would lend his full power and charm to the sounds emanating from Uncle Faltin's strings. The old fellow would play the instrument with complete abandon, and the mad- ness of his music would enter the very blood of the dancers and cause them to sway and whirl in passionate ecstasy, until they col- lapsed from dizziness and exhaustion. When, in the late hours, the swains would repair to the barn to hitch the horses in the pungs for the journey home, to their amazement they would find the barn and barnyard in a state of dire chaos and confusion - horses wild eyed, lathered with sweat and quivering; horses with tails braided together; horses harnessed to the wrong sleds; horses hitched in with their heads at the whiffletree ends and their tails at the thill ends. While Uncle Faltin's inspired music had been working strange miracles in the house, his accomplice had been working comic effects in the barn. Thus the "breakdowns" would break up amid scenes of mirth and wild confusion.
Uncle Faltin was an exponent of the easy life. He was also a good neighbor who believed in helping those who were confronted by situations involving labor and strain, which he so detested. The story is told how he moved Jack Russell's barn with a rooster and a piece of string. Jack was one of Uncle Faltin's neighbors. In ar- ranging to change the location of his barn, he had dug a cellar, rocked it up, and prepared everything for the major task of mov- ing the structure. To this end he had set the day and invited all his neighbors to a "moving bee." Uncle Faltin chafed at all these labo- rious preparations and humorously observed that he could move
46Oral narrative, Mrs. Susan Castner, daughter of Anne Mink Smith (1847-1930). 47Uncle Faltin's violin is in the present possession of his great-grandnephew, Merle Castner.
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Jack's barn with a piece of string and his rooster. But why with a rooster? Ever since the cock crew nearly two thousand years ago marking the Christ's betrayal by Peter, this bird has been con- nected with the powers of darkness and has stood in ill repute. True to his word, and on a day when the Russells had all gone to town to insure adequate refreshments for "the bee" on the next day, Uncle Faltin was seen sneaking down the road, in the direc- tion of the Russell farm, with his rooster under his arm and a piece of twine dangling from his pocket. When Jack returned from town, he found to his amazement the barn on its new foundation with all its timbers true and in plumb. What happened in Jack Russell's absence has never been determined with entire exactitude, but the barn was moved.
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