USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 39
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65
At this same August meeting, the Puritans after long and oft repeated demands were for the first time accorded their minority rights in the religious sphere. These were recognized and approved in a long and somewhat obscure motion which is cited here in full:
Voted to raise £120 to pay for preaching ye Gospel in said town of Waldoborough, if above sum is seposed to be paid two thirds by Germans, and ye other third by the English to be paid to sum English Gospel Minister to preach in sd. town. If the Germans should hire a
21Spelled in the local records as Croner and Kroner, originally Grüner.
345
Religious Life
minister to administer the sacraments of ye Lord's super he is to be paid out of the above sum of money.
As difficult of interpretation as this motion may be in detail, the inference is clear that it provided for an English as well as a German ministry in the town, an inference wholly confirmed by the Town Meeting of February 1786 held in Captain Cornelius Turner's barn "to see what method the inhabitants of the town will pursue to make a division of ye money assessed for Preaching the Gospel and to ye continuance of the Rev. Messrs Croner and Whiting." This entry clearly establishes the fact that the first regu- lar English preaching minister in the town was the Reverend Thurston Whiting, and that his preaching was begun in 1785. The Reverend Whiting was a native of Franklin, Massachusetts, where he was born in 1753. He entered Harvard College and later trans- ferred to Brown where he completed his education. In May 1785 he was called to Warren from Edgecomb as the Congregational minister to that parish, from whence he rode his weekly circuit to Waldoborough. Greenleaf in his Ecclesiastical Sketches describes him as a man possessed of a literary taste, a classical style, and an address that seldom failed to interest and move his audience. The town warrant of May 3, 1786, makes it clear that his ministry in Waldoborough began on the first day of September 1785, and that he was hired for the period of one year.
While the religious current of the Puritan parish was moving clearly and placidly, that of the Lutheran suddenly assumed a muddy hue which became generally apparent to the public from an article in the town warrant of March 20, 1786, to wit:
To see whether the town will indemnife Waterman Thomas Esq., from Recognizing the Reverend Frederich Croner to Apere before the Justices of ye Quarter Sessions next to be holden at Pownalborough on the first Tuesday of June next, who stands charged of being the father of a child by him Begoten on the body of M- U- of Waldoborough, single woman, and said child is likely to be born a bastard and be charged to said town.
To the modern mind such conduct on the part of a clergy- man is, to say the least, decidedly unclerical and would warrant immediate dismissal from his church post. To the eighteenth-cen- tury German it appeared somewhat different. The European peas- ant then, as now, has ever been primitive, natural, and uncritical in his sex conceptions and has never surrounded them with the sophistries of the Puritan. In this case, the Germans were true to tradition and more interested in the economic than in the moral effects of bastardy. The latter aspect of the problem was solved by the marriage of the wayward pastor and the maid. The scandal
346
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
subsided, but of course was not forgotten, and the errant brother was continued in his pastoral duties, although he seems either to have been moved or compelled to lower the prices of his services. For the year 1786 he agreed "to preach ye Gospel in said town for £92 8s.," which was acceptable to the town. In the year 1787 he went on the same basis as Mr. Whiting and preached for twenty- four shillings a week.
Mr. Croner's first false step in the parish was a true index of the unpriestly character of the man. Either he could not or would not mend his ways. He apparently felt himself superior to his par- ishioners and found their way of life sober and dull. His manner of living became more and more unrestrained, and on weekdays he was a frequenter of the tavern where cards and social drinking grew upon him. Horse racing was his favorite amusement. He found it impossible to live within his income and contracted debts, at this time a heinous offense in the eyes of his parishioners. In fact, his deportment became a source of continual shock to them, and finally in 1788 matters came to a head in the April Town Meet- ing when it was voted "to choose a Committee of Five to traw artickels that the Reverend Mr. Gruner is to goe by and behave himself accortingly, and by breaking said artickels to be dismissed from his office." On this committee were four sturdy Lutherans, Mr. Neubert, Mr. Gross, Mr. Winchenbach and Mr. Jacob Lud- wig, and, for the lack of a saving humor on the part of the Ger- mans, a fifth member somewhat less sturdy, Doctor Schaeffer, who undoubtedly appreciated the role and played his part well. These gentlemen "were to traw said artickels and to acquaint Mr. Gruner of the same."
Mr. Gruner, however, did not possess a nature that could be strait-jacketed, and shortly thereafter on a certain April Sabbath, with befitting humor, and unknown to anyone save himself, he preached his farewell sermon. The text selected was highly ap- propriate, and was drawn from the seventh chapter of Saint John, verse thirty-four: "Ye shall seek me and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come." Their pastor's subtle humor, however, was not apparent to the stolid laity. Not until the next day was the real meaning of the sermon sensed. By that time Mr. Kroner on his beloved horse was well on his way to distant parts, abandoning his wife, Mary, daughter of John Ulmer, Jr., and his children, Katherine, Friedrich, and Hannah. The pastor also left behind his debts, which were promptly liquidated in order to meet the outcry of the creditors. At the Town Meeting of May 10th it was voted "to chuse a committee to settle Mr. Gruner's afairs concerning his selery." Selected were Stoffel Neubert, Georg Heabner, Jacob Ludwig, Joseph Ludwig, and Frank Miller, who were instructed "to call on the Cratidors of Mr. Gruners and to
347
Religious Life
allow each Cratidor his present sellery for the present year. Said cratidors is to bring in there accounts under oth." Naught was ever heard again of the pastor or of his whereabouts, and once more the flock at Waldoborough was shepherdless. From this unsavory ministry there comes but one pleasant thought to the student of the history of this old and unique parish, and that is that Gruner was the last of the line of priestly quacks to exploit the need of God that lay so deep in the heart and tradition of this simple folk.
This Gruner episode, while not a knockout blow, left the parish dispirited and groggy and the voters skeptical. Town ap- propriations for ministerial purposes ceased for a few years. It was as though the Germans had had their fill, and wanting nothing more themselves, denied to the Puritans likewise the consolation of religion. In 1791 the question of town support of the Gospel was again raised, only to be repeated at two successive meetings. In December of that year some of the inhabitants inserted an ar- ticle in the warrant which again posed the question of a minister "that can preach English and German." The response was to ap- point a committee "to send to Mr. Theobald22 to see and to desire him to come and preach a day to us one sermon in German and one in the English tounge." This move apparently met with no success, since a few months later it was voted to let the "matter drop to some futur day."
In November of this year came the first smallpox epidemic in the town, which seems to have sidetracked all other interests until its subsidence the following spring. In April 1793 the question of securing the services of a minister was again seriously agitated; sixty pounds was raised "for preaching the Gospel," and "Esquire Ludwig, Mr. Winkepaw," and Captain Simmons were named a committee to provide a minister. In all this activity the language factor was a stumbling block, the Germans holding out for preach- ing in the German tongue, and to that end they controlled the vote in Town Meetings as well as holding majority membership on all committees empowered to hire preachers. In July 1793 a meeting was "called to see if the Germans would joyn the English in hiring a minister." This overture on the part of the Puritans was voted down, but since the Town Meeting brought out only a part of the vote of the town it was agreed to circularize the entire town- ship on the issue of a minister who could preach in both languages. To this end eighteen men were appointed, two in each of the town's nine districts, in order to ascertain the position of every household on this vexing question. On this committee there were twelve Germans and six Englishmen, a disparity which proved too heavy a handicap for the cause of bilingual preaching.
22Then residing in Dresden.
-
348
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
The next move of the Puritans came in April 1794, when they sought to have the town "build a Meeting House or Church in said town." This article in the warrant was voted down, but at the same meeting, as though the Germans had been frightened by this proposal, it was voted "to get a minister that can Pridge Eng- lish and German." This vote, however, was promptly reconsidered and a decision taken "not to raise money for a minister." Amid all this backing and filling chaos seems to have been the order of things. Finally, in May of this year, 1794, it was voted "to chuse a com- mittee to procure a minister or ministers to pridge the gospel in town," the words "minister or ministers" revealing the still unset- tled state of the controversy. The committee was made up of Jacob Winchenbach, Jacob Ludwig, Thomas F. Miller,23 and Cap- tain Andrew, and was increased in June by the addition of Doctor John Wallizer and Captain Turner. This group of four Germans and two Englishmen hired the next community preacher, and in a meeting the following November it was "voted to raise £100 to seport the Gospel in said town for the present year."
While the problem of the word of God being preached in German or English was dividing "the Dutch" and the Puritans, all was not placid in the Lutheran parish itself. Time had been ef- fecting changes so gradually that few realized what was happen- ing until the picture appeared radically changed. By the year 1794 population areas and economic patterns had diverged completely from those of 1772 when the new church had been built by the river. As the cleared land extended its depth ever back from the shore front, new houses and barns sprang up at the junctions of fields and pastures, and on highways being laid out along their pres- ent lines. Now travel was by horseback overland, rather than by boat; business for some time had been centering in the Slaigo brook area and around the head of tide, where, below the lower falls the first bridge spanning the river had been built in 1786, making the old ferry at Castner's Rock no longer the main artery of traffic.
All these changes had left the church by the ferry in an in- convenient and out-of-the-way location, in consequence of which strong agitation set in for moving it to a new site. The opposition against any change was powerful, for the location had its dear memories for the old east-siders. There many of them had been married, had seen their children baptized and heard the last words spoken over the bodies of their dead. All in all, for many it was a hallowed spot. Close by lay the earthly remains of their dear ones, whom they could be near, and whose presence they could feel on the successive Sabbaths as they gathered for worship. Such ties were not easily broken. But a church is an institution to serve the
23Captain "Frank" Miller.
349
Religious Life
living, not the dead, and the facts of economics and geography are not readily alterable. Opposition slowly waned until at length old Major Reiser alone held out against the move. He was one of the original settlers and the leader of the dissident movement of twenty-three years before. Over his protest the church by the ferry was taken down in the late autumn of 1794 and made ready for moving. Tradition has it that the intransigence of the old Major was such that in order to balk the move he hauled away by night some of the essential timbers and hid them in the woods. This proved of no avail, and in the winter of 1794-1795 the frame and accessories were moved across the river on the ice to the present location, and set up in the spring of 1795.
The new site was one of the two old school lots originally promised as such by General Waldo and confirmed to "the Dutch" by Shem Drowne in 1764. At this time it was a lot fronting twenty- five rods on the river and extending back in a generally westerly direction far enough to include forty-one acres. On September 15, 1794, a Town Meeting had been held in "the easterly meeting house," while a survey map of the town made by Nathan Meserve in 179524 shows the church in its present location on the west side. Thus the period within which the church was moved is established.
All this activity, as well as the appointment of a committee to secure a minister and the appropriation of £100 for his salary, presaged big things for the parish, and while it was all going on, the committee previously appointed engaged a pastor, this time a genuine one, though a German who knew no English, or at least was not qualified to preach in that language. This gentleman, and such he was, was the Reverend Friedrich Augustus Rodolphus Benedictus Ritz, who was born in Germany in 1752, and had re- ceived his education at the University of Helmstadt. Of all Ger- man universities this was the one most closely connected with the American scene in colonial times since its theological faculty was for many years active in propagating Lutheranism in those colo- nies where Germans had settled in any numbers. Mr. Ritz had come to America in 1784 and had been ordained in Pennsylvania in 1793. The following year, probably through the New York Synod, he had received his call to Waldoborough, which was to be his first and only pastorate, for he remained here until his death, February 21, 1811. During these years his preaching was entirely in German, which was, of course, no solution of the religious problems of the Puritans, and naturally drove them in the fullness of time to churches and ministers of their own.
At long last the Lutheran parish in Waldoborough had at its head a real shepherd of the flock, but this was by no means the
24This map is in the Mass. State Archives, State House, Boston.
350
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
end of its troubles, for by placing so strict a ban on English in their religious services the old Germans were unwittingly diverting from the church their own English-speaking grandchildren, the only stream that could supply the fresh waters of life to their already aging parish.
Shortly after Mr. Ritz had taken up his pastoral duties he married, in 1796, Margaret Hahn, the granddaughter of the old Moravian war horse, Hans Georg, and the couple settled on the farm adjoining the church lot. As a part of the agreement in ac- cepting the pastorate he had been given a farm of seventy-seven acres25 on the west side of the county road between the lots of Georg Klaus and Charles Kaler. His lines ran back from a frontage of twenty-five rods to the House Place Pond. This gift was fur- ther increased by "two acres to be taken off the School House lot on the side adjacent to George Clouse's on the county road," and enough land on Clouse's line to give him access to Broad Bay River. He was also allowed that part of the school lot not pre-empted by the church and cemetery "during the time he shall remain and offi- ciate as a minister of the Gospel unto said German Society."26 The pastor's house stood on this lot just north of the present cemetery and not far from the church. The remains of his cellar were still visible a few years ago, and some of the pastor's apple trees were still standing within the memory of some of the present inhabi- tants of the town.27
The Reverend Ritz was a kindly, able, and dignified gentle- man, and a fervent Christian who was well equipped in all ways to satisfy the soul hunger so deeply felt by his parish. He was also most friendly to the English and was truly popular among them. His vision of the future of his parish was such that he was led to advise his parishioners unreservedly not to try to perpetuate the German language in their schools, clearly seeing as he did that his church would ultimately have to depend on English-speaking Ger- mans, both for support and membership. Despite this openminded- ness, the good man did not live long enough to master the English tongue with sufficient skill to use it in public address. Tradition has it that when on occasion he was visited by some of his col- leagues of the cloth, Latin had to be used as a medium of exchange of thoughts. If this were ever true, it was certainly true only of the earlier years of his pastorate. The Reverend Paul Coffin, D.D., of Buxton, Maine, a Congregational clergyman, in making a tour through the wilderness of the Province in 1796, called upon Mr. Ritz and said of him: "He could not pronounce th. 'The' and 'with'
25 Lincoln Co. Deeds, Bk. 35, p. 173.
20On May 22, 1809, Mrs. Ritz certified that he had received the farm on which he was living in lieu of the 100 acres of ministerial land held by the Society. 27Oral narrative of Mr. Lewis Kaler.
351
Religious Life
could not sound from his Dutch mouth." And he adds modestly, "He knew something of five languages, as did I. We both knew something of the Latin, Greek, French and English. He knew Dutch to which I opposed my Hebrew. He appears sociable, be- nevolent and pious, and is something of a divine."28
Despite the fact that the Puritans for the most part under- stood German badly, Mr. Ritz enjoyed the support of many both as listeners and as financial backers. To be sure, on many Sabbaths there was nowhere else to go, and it was such a sociable day. The people gathered early from all parts of this and neighboring towns and made a long day of it. This sociable phase had its appeal for the Puritans as well as for the Germans, for both were well able to get along pleasantly in broken English or broken German.
Underneath the conventional dignity of Mr. Ritz, there seems to have been a caustic wit and a love of punning. This apti- tude is reflected in a story which the Germans long remembered and which was related from generation to generation with un- diminished relish. Georg Demuth, a leading citizen of the town and parish, seemed to have found in his pastor some cause for of- fense, and one day in passing failed to respond to the Ritz greet- ing, whereupon a friend remarked: "There goes Mr. Demuth." "Nein, nein," said the minister, "nicht Meister Demuth, sondern Meister Hochmuth." To modern sophisticates such an anecdote is not so humorous and is interesting only as it reflects the level and quality of humor relished by these still primitive "Dutch" peasants.
From the advent of Mr. Ritz to the end of the century, har- mony and peace seem to have been the prevalent tone in the re- ligious life of the town. The Reverend John J. Bulfinch, writing of the old parish in 188929 states that the pastorate of the Reverend Ritz was very successful and that large numbers were added to the church during his ministry. Each year promptly and without op- position, $312.00 was appropriated by the town "for the support of the Gospel." Since this sum was somewhat in excess of the sal- ary paid to Mr. Ritz, it seems probable that a smaller portion of this fund was allotted to the Puritans to support preaching in the Eng- lish language at the Courthouse. Such services could only have been provided by ministers from the neighboring towns who sup- plied the pulpit with such regularity as the seasons and other cir- cumstances would permit. By the turn of the century, it may be said that Lutheranism in Waldoborough had reached its peak. It remained, nevertheless, true that the process of decay even at this time had started its work.
28 Genealogy of the Ludwig Family, pp. 55-57.
20The Lutheran Observer, Phila., April 12, 1889.
XVII THE MORAVIANS AT BROAD BAY
Wouldst thou be good, then first believe that thou art evil.
EPICTETUS
IN WESTERN EUROPE THE PROTESTANT Reformation in the sixteenth century had brought some measure of religious freedom. But free- dom is not always an unmitigated boon, and one of its earliest effects was the rise of a considerable number of religious leaders claiming the authentic word, preaching strange doctrines, and or- ganizing bodies of believers who differed in the patterns of their faiths from anything before known in Europe. Schisms arose in all quarters and fostered differences so sharp that persecutions be- came their inevitable concomitant. These sects were for the most part splinters that had chiselled themselves loose from the Lutheran block, which underwent a more severe split when a large group broke free and organized the Reformed Church, forsaking Luther and espousing the teachings of the German Swiss, Zwingli. In this same Switzerland Calvin shortly rose to a position of influential leadership and founded his own church. His doctrines, however, never became popular in Germany, and the Reformed immigrants in America remained disinterested.
The Reformed movement, militant for a period at Broad Bay, differed sharply from the Lutheran in being more metaphysical and more severe in its forms of worship, eschewing the Lutheran sanction of images, altars, tapers, the confessional, and the princi- ple of the real presence in the Host. In Old Broad Bay this inter- pretation of the communion constituted the main line of cleavage between Lutheran and Reformed, a difference that held the two groups asunder until the ministry of the good Mr. Starman in the early nineteenth century.
Apart from this major split in the Lutheran church, a whole host of minor sects sprouted rapidly and struck root in Central Europe, some of which antedated the Reformation and had en- dured under the rigors of Catholic persecution. These sects soon found that the fellowship of Lutheran and Reformed was no more
353
The Moravians
congenial and in consequence they sought, in large numbers, free- dom in the New World. In Pennsylvania independent commu- nities of Mennonites, Amish, Dunkards, and Schwenkfelders sprang up under the liberal and tolerant guarantees of William Penn. Broad Bay was not afflicted with any such imposing array of Old World religious differences, for only Lutherans, Reformed, and Moravians were represented in the colony on the Medomak. Here the Moravians were the smallest of the groups and also the most per- sistent and unassimilable. This fact alone was sufficient to establish in the Maine wilderness and on a smaller scale the old distrust, disapproval, and persecution which had been visited on the Mora- vians in Central Europe since the year 1400.
The Moravian sect in its origins was not German. The real name of the movement was Unitas Fratrum; it rose in Bohemia and in the neighboring province of Moravia around the year 1400 as an outgrowth of the more primitive Christian teachings of John Huss, the great Bohemian mystic. This sect sought religious guid- ance direct from the Scriptures; held that the merit of the sacra- ments depended on the purity of the hands administering them. Its extreme position brought it into conflict not only with the es- tablished church but with the state as well; for it refused oaths, banned war, military service, and the filling of civic offices, and rejected all forms of economic life except the sale of basic neces- sities. Naturally such a sweeping anti-attitude stirred the opposi- tion of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities and led to a bitter and devastating persecution.
By the beginning of the seventeenth century the sect was eradicated in Bohemia, its churches razed or diverted to Catholic use, its property confiscated, its clergy banned, and its communi- cants compelled to recant or be banished. Laws provided for the destruction of all heretical books and accorded the privileges of citizenship and the right to marry only to Catholics. One Jesuit alone claimed the glory of having personally buried sixty thousand volumes. Few Moravians recanted and in consequence they were scattered throughout Prussia, Silesia, Poland, and Hungary. The only thing left to the sect, as it seemed to be reaching the point of extinction, was the succession of its bishops.
It was ordained, however, that the fate of this faith should be otherwise. In its darkest hour what seemed to be a Providential intervention came, around 1720, in the person of Graf Ludwig von Zinzendorf, a Saxon nobleman and a man of a deeply mystical re- ligious experience. To about three hundred of these scattered re- ligious outlaws, he offered a refuge on his estate in Saxony. From this tiny center the sect was renewed, and on its Slavic foundation there developed an overgrowth of German pietism, which in-
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.