USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 43
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This episode in Broad Bay history is too well documented to be ignored. Despite this fact, I am convinced that there is a
13Discussed in Chapter IV, 37-38.
14Jacob Ludwig's testimony, Lincoln Report, pp. 164-165.
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heavy intermixing of folklore in the accounts as transmitted to us. These accounts are based on the findings of Rattermann and Williamson. Rattermann was a German-American historian who came to Waldoboro in the late 1870's or early 1880's to collect material on the history of the settlement. In the case of the episode in question his main sources of information were George Howard, Isaac Reed, and George D. Smouse.15 Two of these at least are known and highly credible witnesses, for Smouse was born in 1799 and Reed ten years later. Hence both men were in a position to receive their accounts from eyewitnesses. The folklore element in this tale is to be found not only in the fact that a story grows with the telling of it, but in the narrative of Rattermann, who in all his writings evinces an uncontrollable penchant for expanding and dramatizing the wrongs suffered in this country by the Ger- man-American settlers.
Judge Williamson in his history, published sixty-six years after this event, offers the following account of this migration:
The German settlers resident on them under Waldo thus perplexed, were left "contrary to every principle of justice and good faith" with- out indemnity or remuneration. Injured and affronted by this ill treat- ment, disappointed in their expectations, displeased with the climate and determined to be rid of law suits, 300 families were persuaded by their German brethren, who had lately purchased lands in the southwestern parts of Carolina, to remove thither. Therefore they sold possessory rights for the most they could obtain, removed to that Province in 1773, and joined a large body of Germans who settled Londonderry. It was with deepest regret that their neighbors and all their remaining breth- ren parted with them. They were mostly husbandmen of excellent moral character and considerable agricultural skill, - distinguished for their industrious and economical habits.16
It is reasonable to accept Williamson's account in the matter of the migration and its causes. His one major error is the size of this migration which he places at three hundred families. There was not in all Broad Bay at this time anything like this number of families. In fact, the census of 1790, which we may assume approximates the facts, listed only one hundred and ninety-one German families in all Lincoln County. Had anything like Wil- liamson's figure vacated their holdings in 1773, the settlement would not have been far from depopulation.
The facts of this exodus seems more nearly to be the fol- lowing. In 1769 a Prussian officer, Stümpel by name, had induced six hundred fellow officers to go with him to London where he had been led to believe that he could obtain for them a grant of Carolina lands. Having thus acted without specific promise from
15 Rattermann, Der Deutsche Pionier, XVI.
10Wm. D. Williamson, History of Maine (Hallowell, 1839), II, 399.
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the British Government he was unable to fulfill his purpose and fled from the wrath of his fellow immigrants, leaving them desti- tute in England. In order to relieve their distress the King headed a subscription which eventually made it possible to charter a ship and send the migration to Charleston where a letter from the King had asked that they be suitably provided for. The Province Coun- cil of South Carolina reacted promptly and set aside for their use the large township of Londonderry in Abbeville County, an agricultural district bordering on the Savannah River in the southwestern part of the state. The township in question was never a compact district but rather a widely dispersed agricultural community containing about twenty-eight thousand acres and with no civil or governmental organization.17 Here the Germans were well settled in 1773 when the Reverend Lucius, the German missionary for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, baptized thirteen German children between Michaelmas 1773 and Michaelmas 1774,18 some of them, perhaps, from Broad Bay. Un- doubtedly friends or acquaintances in this tract had apprised their fellow countrymen settled in other districts of the cheapness and quality of the soil, as well as the delights of the climate.
Under these circumstances a number of families in Broad Bay, balked in their aspirations and facing an uncertain future, decided on a change. The number of such could not have been great. The total migration in all probably was less than fifty men, women, and children. Who made up these families is a matter of the purest inference. It can only be guessed that among them may have been some of those families known to have been at Broad Bay in the early period, who thereafter disappear com- pletely from the record. Among such possibilities are the following families: John Peter Broest, Jacob Deis, Paulus Dochtermann, Peter Grothe, Philip Rinner, Conrad Treupel, and John Schurz. There is also the possibility that individuals from some of the better-known families may have joined this migration. This was the last exodus of early days. Thereafter the draining off of popu- lation was due to the spilling over into areas that were adjoining and empty and the trek of families westward in the nineteenth century, drawn by the lure of the fertile lands of the great plains.
A third reaction to alien land claims on the part of a few families at Broad Bay seems to have been to fight dispossession of their lands in the courts and to see the matter through to its ultimate settlement; for when H. A. Rattermann visited Waldo- borough he garnered such a tradition from representative citi- zens.19 In these suits, petitions, and cooperative actions, the few
17Wilfred H. Schoff, A History of the Descendants of Jacob Schoff with an Ac- count of the German Immigration into Colonial New England (Phila., 1910). 18D. D. Wallace, History of South Carolina, II, 44-45.
19 Rattermann, Der Deutsche Pionier, Jahrgang XVI, pp. 350-352.
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"obstinate Dutch" linked forces with the citizens of Bremen, Bris- tol, Nobleborough, and other towns to the west, where the prob- lem existed in a more acute form than at Broad Bay. The battle was continued for half a century through attempted surveys by the proprietors balked by the pugnacity of the citizens, through serving writs of dispossession, and through long-drawn-out suits in the courts on the part of individual citizens seeking to preserve their homes. A printed circular in our possession reflects the detail and the character of this struggle so completely that it is reproduced here in full:
To the Inhabitants of the District of Maine this Address is respect- fully submitted.
CONSIDERING the alarming situation in which we are placed respecting the lands we possess, and the evils and affecting calamities that have taken place in some parts of our District, in consequence of claimants and pretended proprietors to our lands; the inhabitants of Bristol did on the 26th of October instant, convene and appoint the un- dersigned as a Committee to correspond with, or publish in such a man- ner that our fellow citizens through the District, in similar circumstances, may apphrend the motives of our proceedings, that they may be inducted to cooperate with us in some manner to relieve us from the calamity with which we are threatened, and which we have in some measure, ourselves experienced. In the first place we desclaim the idea of opposition to the Constituted Authorities, or the rights of individuals, but look to them for protection. Claimants are coming on us one after another; and even contending with each other which shall share our lands, and should they recover can give us no title. We therefore request the citizens of Maine to take the matter into consideration and cooperate with us in devising some measure of redress. We propose that a Committee or Agent be appointed by each town, to meet in Convention in some cen- tral and proper place, for the purpose of draughting a petition to the Legislature of this Commonwealth, requesting them to take our situa- tion into consideration, and afford us that relief which they in their wisdom may conceive most proper.
THEREFORE, We the Committee of the Town of Bristol, accord- ing to the directions given us, do appoint Tuesday, the 26th day of December, 1809, the day for the Convention of all the Committees of other towns and plantations that they may please to join us, at the dwel- ling house of Mr. Enoch Dole of New Milford; and we the undersigned Committee, earnestly solicit the cooperation of all other towns and plan- tations with us, at the time, place, and for the purposes above mentioned. William Chamberlain Marcus How James Drummond, Jr.
Dated at Bristol this 30th Day of October, 1809.
This document was sent to the town officers in all areas affected by the Brown, Drowne, Tappan, and Vaughan claims. The citation here given in full is from the copy received by the local officers of Waldoborough, in response to which Jacob Lud- wig and Isaac G. Reed were "appointed to attend the convention to petition the legislature for relief of settlers on lands the owners
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of which have not been known."2º From the action here concerted results ensued. The General Court, weary of facing this perennial problem, resolved on February 27, 1811, to settle it once and for all. It accordingly authorized the Governor and Council to ap- point a committee to proceed to "eastern parts," to survey the entire problem, to hold public hearings, and report their findings and recommendations in full to the Court. Perez Morton, Jona- than Smith, Jr., and Thomas B. Adams were the Commissioners. Previously, feeling in Lincoln County had become so intense that Judge Thatcher on March 6, 1810, had ordered out the militia to support the surveyor appointed by order of the Supreme Judicial Court to run certain lines in the disputed area.
The Commissioners met at the Courthouse in Wiscasset on Wednesday, the first day of May 1811. Eleazer W. Ripley, Esq., was appointed clerk. Samuel W. Flagg and his counsel and at- torney appeared in behalf of the Drowne right, while the attorneys representing the Brown claim were John Holmes, Jeremiah Bailey, and Daniel W. Lincoln. Here the Commissioners heard the rights of the various claimants argued, examined all the deeds and docu- ments adduced, and then at the request of the Agents for the Memorialists adjourned subsequent meetings to the towns of New- castle, Bristol, and Nobleborough.21 The next session convened April 29, 1811, at the dwelling house of Doctor Josiah Myrick in Newcastle. Here and in the other two towns a full volume of testimony was taken. Thither went Jacob Ludwig and Captain William Sproul from Waldoborough to represent the town and to give such testimony as affected its interests.22 With its hear- ings completed the Commission withdrew and prepared its report for the General Court, which was made on May 20th. Along with this report came a proposal executed May 10, 1811, by the agents of the several claims, to submit the whole question to the arbitrament of three referees to be named by the Governor. To this the government agreed and designated three able New Eng- land jurists: Jeremiah Smith of Exeter, New Hampshire, William H. Woodward of Hanover, New Hampshire, and David Howell of Providence, Rhode Island, who were clothed with full powers to decide in law and equity the rights of the nonresident claimants to this section of the country.
On January 26, 1813, the referees made known their decision. Respecting the lands in this district the proprietors under the Drowne right were awarded a half township of eleven thousand five hundred and twenty acres to be selected from the public unlocated lands in Maine; and it was further recommended to the
20 Records of the Town Clerk, Waldoborough, Me.
21 Lincoln Report, 1811, p. 7.
22 / bid., pp. 164-165; Capt. Jacob Ludwig's Testimony.
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Legislature to allow the heirs of William Vaughan a half town- ship in consideration of the services performed and the monies expended, and not in virtue of the Brown right upon which the Vaughan heirs rested their claim. Furthermore it was subjoined that none other had "either in law or equity any title to any lands under their respective claims," within the towns of Bristol, Edgecomb, Newcastle, Nobleborough, Waldoborough, Jefferson, or Boothbay. The proprietary interests, perhaps weary of the struggle, executed deeds of release and delivered them the day before the award was dated, thereby extinguishing all further pre- text of rights within the towns mentioned. In return the state made to them the assignments of new lands conformable to the award.
To complete the settlement of these long and most unhappy con- troversies, and administer peace and rest to the inhabitants, the General Court, February 25, 1813, ordered that the representative of every man who had settled in these towns before January 1, 1789, should be quieted on 200 acres for five dollars; and all others on paying thirty cents an acre, whose lots in no instance were to be larger than those of the former class.23
Benjamin Orr and Jeremiah Bailey were appointed as agents to execute the deeds. This settlement affected very few of the families on the west bank of the Medomak, for way back in 1763 they had for the most part made their peace with the proprietor claimants by paying their tribute with pounds, shillings, and pence, and in consequence had been able to till their acres in reasonable peace. Who these rugged individuals were who never came to terms with the claimants of their soil, but for half a century to- gether with their descendants or successors, kept up the struggle which resulted in 1813 in full vindication is not known. By in- ference they would have to be those holding lands on the west side of the river who are not recorded as having paid tribute to Shem Drowne in 1763. Among such stand the names of Conrad Seiders, David Holzapfel, William Wagner, John Werner, a Hilt on Lot No. 56, the occupant of Lot No. 54, and Henry Seiders. Their battle had been a sheer manifestation of principle, since in the long run it cost less to pay than to fight. The struggle was so long, however, that those who initiated it in many cases did not live to see what they believed to be their basic rights confirmed.
The Broad Bayers owed little to Shem Drowne. Their history, however, in one respect is under obligation to him, namely, the survey of west side lots, from the lower falls to the lower tips of the two Necks, made by Elijah, or Elisha, Packard. This survey for the most part reveals the lots and locations of the original
33Williamson, History of Maine, II, 624.
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west-side German families, since nearly all titles issued by Drowne were made a matter of record in the county office at Wiscasset. Some of these recorded titles were of lands deep in the forests behind the original shore lots, and in some cases they are accom- panied by a rough sketch of a cabin. That of Georg Klein, a shore lot, shows that at this period the cabins were back from the river by perhaps an eighth of a mile.
There is no phase of the history of old Broad Bay that is so baffling and confusing as that of grants, land titles, and title changes. For decades the valley of the Medomak and its hinter- lands were the scene of swiftly switching ownership. There were several reasons for this, the first of which is to be found in the conflicting nature of the original grants, made for the most part by gentlemen beyond the seas who had never seen the lands they were parcelling out, and who had as their only guide in some cases the first crude map of this area made by a man who had spent but one summer on the coast. A second source of confusion was the rather optimistic view of General Samuel Waldo with reference to the bounds of his patent. In the third place, was the mad scramble for eastern lands and speculation in eastern lands follow- ing the French and Indian War, a period in which dubious heirs in remote parts sold and resold lands which they had never seen, without any consideration for the trivial problems of surveys, or of metes and bounds; and lastly, the land madness of the German settlers on the Medomak. Like the peasant today in the more backward sections of interior Europe, his feeling for the good earth was a feeling lost to most of us, who have ceased to be a people directly deriving our life from the soil. It was the strong- est single emotion in his experience, and he was constantly seek- ing the most and the best from the productive earth accessible to him. For these reasons the township was an ever-changing map.
The 1760's was a restless period at Broad Bay. This restless- ness was reflected in Wiscasset title changes or claims. For seven hard years men and women had been shut up in the garrisons to escape the Indian threat, years in which a man explored the lands adjacent to him at his own peril. Now he had become free to live on the soil he loved and to seek out the richest areas in the back-districts along streams or in the basins formed by the ponds. For him isolation and remoteness had no meaning. If he found a spot he liked, he made a cabin, cleared the land and hewed him- self a trail to the nearest road, in some cases a mile away, as witness the lot of John Prior, a mile south of Aunt Lydia's Tavern in the deep woods, or "Uncle Faltin" Mink's cabin at East Waldo- borough, down deep in the woods all by itself a half mile off the road leading through East Waldoborough to Finntown. The back
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sections of the town became a maze of roads, some now so over- grown by brush as to be impassible except on foot, leading through the woods from one highway to another, or terminating in a dead end. Prock Town, Weaver Town, Black Town, Mink Town, Castner Town, the Achorn and Genthner neighborhoods and others are today the half-silent and moldering memorials of this land hunger of our forebears.
For these reasons the map of the plantation and early town was in a state of constant flux. Some of the settlers did not have land enough, notably on Dutch Neck where the original acreage was small. In consequence many of the settlers of this section disposed of their lands and exercised squatter's privilege in more spacious, albeit more remote, districts. Their neighbors bought up the farms relinquished and so increased their own holdings. The extent of this movement on Dutch Neck is made clear by the fact that in 1763 there were twenty-seven landowners, and by 1815 all land on the Neck was in possession of twelve men. Others along the upper river, having improved their lands, sold them at a good profit to the incoming English from the south shore of Massachusetts Bay, and appropriated lands in the outlying districts which they assumed to be free. Still others swapped farms and so secured lands or a location more to their liking. This confusion and juggling greatly increased the difficulty in spotting the orig- inal locations of the first settlers, a difficulty further complicated by the different systems used by the proprietor in numbering lots.
Waldo's plan of enumeration on the east side for his Scotch- Irish settlement in the 1730's started with Number One at the First Falls and ran down the river to Number Thirty just below Farnsworth Point. These lots were forty rods in width and the greater part of them on the upper river were never occupied. Hence, many of them were assigned to the first German arrivals, and at this time a new system of numbering seems to have been put in effect, starting with Number One at Lane's Point and running north to the area around the Falls. On the west side of the river Waldo's numbering is known only from a deed drawn but never issued to Matthias Achorn, who had two lots beginning at the McGuyer brook and running north in the direction of the head of tide. Under this plan the numbering of lots was the same as that followed in the first German settlement on the east side. In the Packard survey made on the west side for Shem Drowne, tin plate maker of Boston, the lots started with Number One in the area of the First Falls and ran to Number Fifty-seven, the lot of Charles Heavener on the very tip end of Dutch Neck.
In this mad scramble after the most desirable lands, locations, and mill sites, the absence of titles on the part of a considerable
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number of the settlers was a factor leading to both frustration and confusion. Samuel Waldo was unquestionably lax in the matter of issuing titles to the Germans. In addition, two of the major migrations to Broad Bay, that of 1742 and 1753, reached the Medomak on the eve of war. This clearly created a condition locally in which an orderly and legal allocation of land had its difficulties. The Germans were not too familiar with all the de- tails of legal procedure, and so far as the records of Lincoln and York counties throw any light on early claims, it can only be inferred that to record a title was the exceptional course. The practice, however, became more common in the 1760's, and many transactions record transfers of lands on the part of individuals who had no recorded claims to the lots conveyed. An amusing illustration of such a transaction is furnished by Matthias Eichorn (Achorn), who was one of the most active, if not the earliest, of the land brokers at Broad Bay, and who was acquiring and selling lots within a brief period of his arrival on the Medomak.
In the first Waldo grant to Achorn, April 11, 1753, he is listed as a farmer. In the Drowne Grant of 1763 he is listed as a tanner, while in 1761 he listed himself as a miller. But he had no mill and he wanted one. Now by a curious quirk of fate Wilhelm Wagner, who was a carpenter, occupied at this time the mill lot on the west side of the river at the First Falls, and Achorn held, as a squatter, a lot a little farther up the stream on quiet water. In order to get Wagner's mill lot he had the following strange deed drawn up, involving an exchange of lots to which neither party held any title:
Matthias Achorn, miller, of Broad Bay, conveys ... to William Wagner, of Broad Bay, carpenter, a lot on the west side of Broad Bay river, a lot formerly improved by Michael Anthony, deceased, fronting on the river and bordered on the north side to the lot of Michael Rom- inger, and on the south side to the lot of Peter Procht, twenty five rods in width, and running back into the country a west course till one hun- dred acres are completed. As the said Matthias has hitherto held the said land as a settler and has no deed for the same from the original Proprietors, said Matthias binds himself to secure a good deed from the original proprietors, as soon as said William shall procure a deed for the farm given in exchange. Said William doth hereby give and dispose unto the said Matthias his farm lying on the west bank of Medomak Falls, bordering north to the lot of John Beiner [possibly Benner], south to the lot of David Holzappel, twenty-five rods in width and running back into the country till 100 acres are completed. William Wagner holds the said land as a settler and has no deed, but binds himself to procure one.24
This procedure was clearly a dubious one, but it got Mat- thias his mill lot. On June 8, 1772, he conveyed for £2 to Matthias
24Lincoln Co. Deeds, Bk. VII, p. 170.
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Achorn, Jr., Georg Klein, and John Achorn a three-quarter part of this mill site containing one half acre on which the sawmill was located, with a right of way from the south end of the lot to the river.25
The subject of early mills at the several falls of the Medomak has been rather inadequately and erroneously treated in the past. In view of the importance of water power in the primitive econ- omy of the settlement, the facts with reference to the grist and sawmills should be set forth with accuracy so far as the records permit. Without mills to grind grain for the food of both men and beasts, and to saw out the lumber which was needed for a hundred different uses in this age of wood, economic progress and well-being would have kept life in the settlement at the lowest level of culture where man fabricated for his needs with his own hands. Mills, even while still primitive, were an immediate neces- sity. R. G. Albion has pointed out that the earliest sawmills had a vertical saw, the progress of which through the logs of oak, pine, hemlock, and spruce was so noisy that the scream of the saw could often be heard two miles away, and so slow that the sawyer could sit on the log and eat his midday meal while the stick was being sawn.26
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