USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 49
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The major export commodity of Waldoborough in early days was wood and lumber. Before a ship was loaded with it an official survey was made to determine the number of feet, and this amount was included in the ship's papers at the time of clear- ance. The first incumbent of this office was Abijah Waterman, a shipwright, and therefore a seasoned judge in matters related to lumber. The first haywards were John Vogler, William Kaler, and Andrew Waltz. In England the functions of this office were to look after the hedges and fences protecting the public greens and commons, and to keep cattle from injuring them. In Waldo- borough the principal duty of these officials was to round up and impound stray cattle, horses and sheep. At this time great num- bers of domestic animals were in pasture from early spring to late autumn, and many fences were flimsy affairs of brush and brush- wood trees, consequently estrays were common.
Working in close conjunction with the haywards were the pound keepers, who received the estrays, impounded, fed, watered, and released them to the owner on identification. Bernhard Uekele (Eugley) on the west side and John Newbert on the east side were the first to hold this office. The hog reeves served in a similar capacity in reference to hogs. This office had its humorous and its difficult phases, for to impound a stray hog was not an entirely simple matter. The first hog reeves were Peter Gross and Andrew Storer. In the early history of the town this office assumed such importance that the number of reeves before the turn of the century reached a peak of twenty-four in one year. The eco- nomic importance of the hog, however, never warranted such an impressive array of reeves.
At various seasons of the year fish were in the Medomak in such plenitude that they were an important staple of food. The "Dutch" even fed them wastefully to their hogs. Paul Lash was the first to hold the office of Culler of Fish, an almost meaningless function in the township, since the culler's duties were to cull fish on the basis of their variety and condition for sale. Waldoborough had no fish market and each man was his own fisherman, hence in early days this office was not unduly onerous. Far more im-
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portant was the work of Nathan Soule, the first fish warden, whose duty it was, as recorded by Jacob Ludwig, "to tack kear that the fish have a free Bass." In other words, Soule sponsored the fish against the mills which at this time clustered about each fall and rapid on the river and brook. The battle for a free pas- sage to the spawning ground encountered so much indifference on the part of the millmen that the town at its annual meeting was compelled to act to insure to the fish a runway and thus conserve this important asset to the town.
It has heretofore passed unnoticed that there was also the office of assayer. In the old England parishes this was the officer who tasted food and drink of distinguished guests who might be paying an official visit to the parish, presumably to furnish as- surance that the food or drink was neither doped nor poisoned. The first to hold this office at Waldoborough was Charles Samson, one of whose many activities was that of tavern keeper at Water- man's Ferry. The local function of this dignitary is hard to imag- ine if it were not to see that the standard of the spirits served in the many taverns was kept at a specified strength and purity. This post was probably as unpopular as that of deer reeve, and it, too, early became a matter of history, while that of hayward soon shifted its name to that of field driver, whose sole function was the impounding of estrays.
The old Broad Bayers were early faced with the realization that a town could not be organized and run without money - to them an especially bitter realization as they were called on immediately to grapple with the tax problem. Grapple they would, but it would be in their own peculiar and amusingly characteristic way. Hence the summons for a second meeting followed shortly to convene on October 19th, at "the easterly church." This was the church structure recently built on the east side on the shore of the farm now owned by Merle Castner. The warrant for this meeting was issued in "His Majesty's Name," and its purpose was almost entirely fiscal. An interesting article in the warrant was "To see what Sum of money the Town will agree to raise for the Support of a School in the sd. Town." Money raising was never a popular diversion with the poor but thrifty "Dutch." In the first place many did not have it, and in the second place those who did had no intention of spending it in that way. Their first move in this meeting was one that remained highly characteristic of them for two centuries. They authorized the sending of a petition "to the General Court to get relief of our Province rate [tax]." The petition held that in view of the great expense inci- dental to the founding of a town, the Province should for a period abate its regular tax on the inhabitants. They next voted that the fourth article in the warrant concerning an appropriation for a
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school "be not acted upon." They voted to John Martin, Jr., for surveying the bounds of the town the sum of £5 15s. 10d. Twenty pounds "lawful money," was raised at the meeting "for paying necessary charges," that is, the expenses incidental to running the town. The selectmen functioned as assessors, and the two con- stables, John Hunt and Philip Shuman, were authorized to collect the tax, "they to have £2 for their labour." On this slim budget, less than seventy dollars in our money, the selectmen got by to the following spring.
On March 15, 1774, the second annual meeting was held. Some new names appear on the slate of officers, among whom were Matthias Hoffses and Bernhard Schuman, wardens; Philip Shu- man, Peter Miller and Peter Procht (Prock), surveyors of high- ways; Nicholas Orff, leather sealer, and Gottfried Feiler (Feyler) and Stoffel Woltzgruber, hog reeves. At this meeting it was again voted "there shall be no money raised for Preaching and Schooling." In the matter of the protection of their dearly beloved livestock, however, the "Dutch" were not at all parsimonious and voted to allow £10 "old tenor for Wolfs Calpes killed in the town," which was nearly double what they allowed a surveyor for running their bounds. The sum of £30, about one hundred dollars, was appropriated "for the support of the town."
This was the period in which some of the first roads were laid out. Laying out a road was not building a road by any means, for it frequently involved only a survey and where necessary a passage slashed through the brush. If this line of travel remained the road it was gradually improved over the years. At this meeting a road was authorized on the west side "from the Bristol line" (north bound of the present town of Bremen) "to Peter Procht's Prich." Peter Prock lived on the west side at this time, just above the first falls of the Medomak. The river bed shallowed on his shore and here he erected a foot bridge across the river. It is presumed that his labor represented an investment and that he levied a small toll just as was the case at the two ferries farther down the river. In the same year a road was authorized to be laid out "from Georg Hiebner's [Heavener] to the rote above the Meeting House." Hiebner lived on the very tip end of Dutchmen's Neck and the road ran from his farm along the Neck until the upper end was reached and then a westerly course was followed until it joined the Bristol Road west of Meetinghouse Cove.
On the east side of the river the story of the first roads is not quite so simple, in fact it is rather peculiar. The main highway on the east side from the village to Mr. Foster Jameson's farm is in part at least if not in its entirety still private property, the town having no more claim than a right of way from gutter to gutter. This strange state of affairs probably came about in this manner.
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This was the area occupied by the first German colony (1739- 1742), and farm was connected with farm along the river by nothing more than a path. As the cabins were erected farther and farther back from the shore, the line of connecting travel shifted with them until the present highway was reached. It was first trail, then bridle path, and then widened for the passage of ox teams. In this way it became the main line of traffic across the farms, but still a right of way established through use. This all happened in the time before Waldoborough was incorporated into a township. The town does not own nor can it point to a single scrap of paper that would establish any title to the land over which the road runs, whereas the deeds of the property holders, or at least some of them, show a clear title to this land used as a roadway for upwards of two centuries. Thus on the east side the first recorded road surveys were in the southern section of the town beyond the Jameson farm. The first extension of this road was probably in 1774, when a committee was appointed "to lay out a road betwixt Slacke Falls4 and Nathaniel Simmons." This stretch was probably laid out in accordance with the wishes of Squire Thomas by reason of the expanding businesses which he was building up at the foot of Thomas' Hill.
These were Waldoborough's first roads, and they were naturally laid out in the most populous sections of the town, in- cluding Dutch Neck which was at this time the seat of about twenty-five families, with a population of nearly two hundred people. Following the year 1774 a break unfortunately occurs in the town records; those for the year 1775 being omitted, it may be assumed that they are lost. It was in this year that Captain David Vinal acted as clerk and what happened to the minutes of the meetings is not known. This is a most regrettable lack as it comes in the year when the struggle for American independence was beginning, and its loss leaves the initial reaction of the town to the impending conflict somewhat blank.
Even as the new township was still feeling the early pangs of its birth, its new life was complicated by the dark clouds gathering on the horizon and the distant though audible rumblings of the oncoming storm. While John Hunt and Philip Shuman were collecting the first taxes on the east and west banks of the Medomak, and Jacob Ludwig was scrupulously recording the minutes of the first Town Meetings in his minuscular script in the book by candlelight, the stocks of tea, a beverage now under boy- cott in the colony, were accumulating in British ports or crossing the Atlantic in ships in the expectation that once landed and the
4Slaigo, spelled variously as Slaco, Slacke, Slico. This name was given the brook by some of the Irish of the old Town of Leverett, and in honor of the home county of Sligo in Ireland.
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duties paid, they would find their way into the interior and there meet purchasers far removed from the fierce zeal of the flaming patriots in Boston. In fact, while Waldoborough was deliberating on its newly acquired problems, three cargoes of tea arrived in Boston. Pressure aplenty had been put on the consignees not to receive it. This failing, a Town Meeting had been called to frame a united front policy on tea. Even as it was prolonging its delibera- tions to a late hour on the night of December 16th, men thinly dis- guised as Indians boarded the ships and emptied three hundred and forty-two chests of tea into the water of the harbor.
According to local tradition there was in this gang of hot- heads a man from Lincoln County in Maine. His name was Benja- min Burton and he was a son of "stone-house Burton" of Cushing, of French and Indian War days. At the time he was in Boston by chance, having recently arrived on a coaster, and hearing of the plot he promptly joined and was stationed in the hold to fasten the slings on the tea chests.5 Waldoborough, too, may have had its Tea Party representative, if we are to believe the Wiscasset Christian Intelligencer, which one hundred and twenty-odd years ago carried the following news item: "March, 1830, died at Waldo- boro Mr. William Hendley, formerly of Roxbury, a Revo- lutionary pensioner, aet. 82, who was present at the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor." Whatever the local folk may have believed in such a matter, the stern voice of authority registers its doubts. Edward Channing in his big History of the United States records that "no one of the Tea Party's members are known by satisfactory proof."6
The reply of the Crown to the Tea Party was the Boston Port Act, whereunder the town was placed under blockade until it should indemnify the East Indian Company £15,000 for the destruction of its tea. This act became operative June 1, 1774, on which day Governor Hutchinson turned over the government of the province to General Thomas Gage and sailed for England. He had been unable to quell the rising storm and left his native land forever in disgust at the irrational opposition of the extrem- ists.
General Gage, his successor, was an amiable and well-inten- tioned gentleman with an American wife, and was in no sense eager to prescribe the halter treatment for the Sons of Liberty. His alternate use of civil and military arms and vacillation between leniency and severity in handling situations further intensified the growing feeling of hostility to the Crown, and defined the issue more clearly to the colonists along the entire seaboard. Four regiments and a supporting fleet, with which he had led the King
5Cyrus Eaton, Annals of Warren, 2nd ed. (Hallowell, 1877), p. 16. "III, 182.
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to believe he could overawe the Bostonians, were to prove totally inadequate for the task either of conciliation or control.
The rapidly developing conflict came to a head on June 17th when Gage, learning that the House had by a nearly unani- mous vote decided to choose five delegates to represent Massa- chusetts at the Congress in Philadelphia, sent the Secretary of the Province to dissolve the assembly. This official was none other than Thomas Flucker, son-in-law of the Proprietor of Old Broad Bay. The House, however, had foreseen such an eventuality and the Secretary found the door locked. While the Court was dis- cussing the choice of delegates the proclamation dissolving it was read by the Secretary on the stairs, and the Governor and the Legislature never met thereafter. This defiance of royal authority in reality placed the resolving of the conflict beyond the control of human forces. It meant in our local history that Waldoborough would soon be feeling the economic effect of the coercive meas- ures imposed by the Crown on Boston, and in consequence would be compelled to become clear with itself in reference to its own loyalties.
At Waldoborough political conditions in Boston did not produce any strong or immediate reaction. Some of the Puritans and a few of the more alert and flexible Germans, such as Jacob Ludwig and Andrew Schenck, were wholly devoted to the colonial cause. On the other hand, there was a Tory group made up of both Germans and English, but by and large at this time the term neutral was applicable to the great mass of Germans. They un- derstood too little of the basic character of the forces which were shaping up for the struggle, and their primary preoccupation was the furtherance of their own economic well-being. Apart from these considerations they were still strongly bound by a tradition of subservience to the political status quo, and the monarchical forms were those with which they were familiar and to which they uncritically cleaved. The awakening of a strong partisan feeling on their part either for King or colony had to await a still sharper division of the issue.
In the March election of 1774, Captain David Vinal had not been re-elected as selectman. Whether or not this was due to Tory leanings is impossible to determine. It is clear, however, that the new board of selectmen which carried over into the Revolution, Solomon Hewett, Michael Heisler, and Andrew Schenck, were not loyalists. Hewett and Schenck were known as staunch advocates of the party in Boston which was opposing the Crown, and Heisler was a soldier in the Revolution. Hence there can be no question of how those who guided the destinies of the town, from March 1774 to March 1775, stood on the issue of the hour.
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FAMILY DIFFERENCES
The temper and character which prevail in our colonies are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates.
EDMUND BURKE
T. HE DECADE FOLLOWING the French and Indian War in Massa- chusetts had been one in which one grave emergency followed another in the relations between colony and Crown. These were largely induced by conflicts or fancied conflicts in economic interests, which in turn were consistently exploited by a group of radicals in Boston who made use of every difference to maneuver public opinion in the direction of separating the colonies from the mother country. In Boston alone, riots arising out of the enforce- ment of the Stamp Act had resulted in a property damage of more than £4000. The possibilities of friction and misunderstanding seemed to offer themselves in rich array. Crisis followed crisis. The Townshend Acts levying an import duty in the colonies on glass, lead, tea, painters' colors and paper; the assignment of troops to Boston - these and other points of friction gave to Sam Adams, the arch-agitator, ample opportunity, and he was tireless in his efforts to stir the people to a sense of grievance.
Events worked with him. The troops quartered in Boston, while in reality a necessity for the protection of the more con- servative and propertied elements in the population, provided the Sons of Liberty unlimited occasions for soldier baiting. John Adams, viewing the situation at close hand, commented on it toward the end of 1770 as follows: "Endeavors had been sys- tematically pursued for many months by certain busy characters to excite quarrels, encounters and combats ... between the in- habitants of the lower class and the soldiers, and at all risks to enkindle an immortal hatred between them."1
1John Adams, Works, II, 229-30.
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It is better than a possibility that Broad Bay unwittingly played a part in one of these episodes, in itself minor, but major in its effects. It was on February 22, 1770, that a petty customs official in Boston, while being driven into his house by a mob, turned in self-defense and fired into the crowd, killing an eleven- year-old German boy by the name of Seider(s). To one familiar with the German migrations to New England, and the frequency with which Broad Bayers visited Boston on business or to work for long periods, and their very common practice of apprenticing their children in the city, it is difficult to avoid the conviction that this first young martyr of the Revolution was one of the Seider (or Seiders) family of Broad Bay. This unhappy episode immediately became public property to inflame the emotion of the masses, and the lad was given an impressive funeral as a martyr to the cause of liberty, when, as has been observed, if he was a martyr at all "it was to the lawlessness of the mob and the recklessness of the agitators."
The following month came the "Boston massacre," and there- after the heavy ground swell seemed to be subsiding when in 1772 the storm flared in Rhode Island. The British revenue schooner Gaspée ran aground on a sand spit seven miles from Providence. At midnight a mob of one hundred men boarded and burned the vessel and then disappeared in their small boats in the darkness. This was clearly an act of high treason, and such it was declared in England by as firm a friend of the colonists as the just and mild Lord Dartmouth. Step by step the control of the Crown was loosening, and General Gage reported to the Home Office that civil government was near its end. In actuality this was not so much the case as it was that social control was passing out of the hands of the duly constituted authorities into those of the revolutionists. When Gage cancelled the writs for the autumn election of the General Court, the towns reacted by electing their delegates to a provincial congress, an organization which took over the administration of provincial control, backed by no other right than that of majority representation.
This battle of a decade had split New England. Those good men and women who had prospered and whose well-being was not limited by the bounds of town and farm were the ones to suffer most at the prospect of severing their ancient ties with the mother country. The glories of her past were a part of their heritage, and many had a deep sense of belonging to her even though they had never set foot upon her shores. Then, too, their hard-won prosperity and their privileged social position were closely integrated parts of the solid social and political order which she represented. The lawlessness of the radical mobs, drawn from
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the lower social strata, inspired in their hearts grave misgivings of what their life would be like if control were to come from the bottom rather than from the top. This whole trend toward such an uncertain future seemed to mock their most basic values and to obscure their dearest objectives. Hence their hearts quailed at the thought of a fratricidal struggle which would shatter the very foundations of their cultural and economic security. In con- trast with this group there were the artisan and farmer class, the little men in the small shop or industry or fishing hamlet, or in the tiny clearing hewed out of the forested hillsides, who were fighting their own way toward position and well-being, and who more and more with passionate intensity were resenting the control of a power beyond the sea, bent on gearing its own well- being into their free destiny and adjusting their activities to its own economic interests.
So it was that the people of Massachusetts Bay and the Province of Maine became Tories or Whigs in the decade when the issues dividing them were becoming ever more sharply de- fined. It was basically the age-old category of conservative and radical, or in the nomenclature of that day, loyalist and patriot. Nor were the loyalists an inconsiderable minority. John Adams held that, in the colonies as a whole, at least one third of the population was openly opposed to independence, and his position is borne out by later researches. The fairest estimates of a later day place the Tories at one third, the Whigs at one third and the indifferent, who were willing to go over to the winning cause, at the same figure. But it was the radicals who were vocal, and the coercive measures now in full swing compelled many who were loyalists at heart to give lip service to the cause of inde- pendence.
On the outer periphery of the Province the people in the towns were less affected by the economic policies of the Crown which had so vigorously fanned the flames of radical ire in the large centers. Nevertheless, in many of the smaller communities the zeal of the Boston "patriots" was ably matched. The settlement on the Georges was fired early by the heat of Boston propaganda. On the Medomak the stolid "Dutch" were far less deeply moved. Democratic processes were still something of a mystery to many of them, who were disposed from tradition to accept the mon- archical concept uncritically. Furthermore the sufferings of earlier days were now past. They had struck root, were living in security, had achieved some degree of economic well-being, and preferred to let well-enough alone. Among them were some ardent patriots, both German and Puritan. There were likewise staunch loyalists,
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but the great majority at this point were neutral. Only as the war brought on annoyances and inconveniences, both Whig and Tory feeling was to rise and events force a taking of sides.
As a consequence of fast-moving events, the first Continental Congress had met at Philadelphia on September 5, 1774. From the hectic deliberations of this body emanated the Declaration of Rights of October 14, 1774. The Congress also attacked the mother country on the economic side by its nonimportation, non- exportation and nonconsumption agreement. To enforce this meas- ure, committees were to be chosen in every county and town to publish the names of all those not cooperating in enforcing the embargo. In Massachusetts (including Maine) a form known as the "Solemn League and Covenant" was signed by all those agree- ing to support the measure, and all nonconformists were slated to suffer complete boycott at the hands of their fellow citizens.
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