USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 1 > Part 55
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In the year 1787, £200 was the sum set to be worked out on highways. The following roads were projected: the laying out of a road in the present "Genthner Neighborhood" was left to the discretion of the selectmen; a vote was carried to have the Old County Road running from West Waldoborough to Noblebor- ough "cleared out on Mr. Light's"; the road authorized the year before leading from the present Four Corners across the first bridge and connecting with the road on the west side was voted "to be established" this year, and also "a road to the Bake [back] Settlers, viz. John Fitzgerald and others." This apparently was the way leading south off the Warren Road down into East Waldoborough. The last road to be laid out this year was the present North Waldoborough route leading "to Jacob Benner's, Charles Filer's, Charles Boardman's and others." At this time there were eight road districts in the town.
The following year, 1788, £120 was voted "to be worked out in menting the Highways and Prived ways," and it was also agreed to accept the road "on Jacob Genthner's Land [Genthner Neigh- borhood] at the tock pottle [duck puddle] so cawled as laid out by the selectmen July 4, 1787." Road work this year was three shillings per day for a man, two shillings per day for oxen, and one shilling for a cart or sled. This apparently was not too attrac- tive a rate since the surveyors were authorized to hire men, and if a man refused to work, the surveyor was to collect from him in money the equivalent of his labor plus the cost of collecting, and in the case of delinquents of the year before, the bill was to be committed to the tax collectors.
The delays that characterized road construction applied equally to the first bridge across the Medomak. The "Dutch"
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wanted this bridge and wanted it badly, only they did not want to pay the costs. Successive Town Meetings blew hot and cold on this issue, until the river was finally spanned. The first move was made March 26, 1778, when it was "voted to build a bridge across the river at Eichorn's mill." This mill was on the west side at the lower falls, hence the bridge as first projected was to be above the site of the present lower bridge, and Captain Hewet, Captain Ulmer, and Peter Cramer were in charge. On May 28th the site was fixed as "between the land of Captain John Ulmer [ east side ] and Captain Solomon Hewet [west side]." In June they voted that "the town will not buy the land of Capt. Hewet or of Capt. Ulmer," and that "the town will not raise money for to build sd. bridge across the river below Eichorn's mill." The location of the bridge turned into a battle between the salt-water folk who preferred the lower site and the fresh-water folk who wanted it farther up the river on the site of the old Lovell Bridge. Lack of agreement and of funds kept the matter in abeyance until March 16, 1783, when it was voted to build the bridge and a committee of nine was named, headed by George Werner who owned and operated the mill at the upper falls. He must have done some smart work, for on March 25th it was voted that the new bridge would not be below Mr. Eichorn's mill but "over a course above Mr. George Werner's mill [Lovell bridge site]."
Here the matter again rested until May. It may be assumed in this interim that the salt-water folk were busy, for in the May meeting it was voted "to postpone raising a sum of money to build a bridge across Medomak river." The question remained a subject of local argument until May 2, 1785, when a vote was passed "to build a bridg across Medomak river att ye Lower falls." Whereupon a determining argument appeared in the person of Captain John Ulmer and "promist to give a way thro his Land from ye Road by his house to ye Bridg, two Rods in width." To clinch this decision Ulmer went further, and at the May 16th meeting it was voted "to receive Capt. John Ulmer's gift of half an Acre of Land for a Landing place by the Lower Falls on the Medomak River." Salt-water strategy had triumphed over fresh- water strategy, and the whole deal was pushed through this meeting.
The problem next in order was the building. As usual, costs were the major consideration and the construction "was awarded to him who would build it most cheaply to be finished by Oct. 1st." Captain Cornelius Turner seems to have been standing ready to take it for £72 10s., and Colonel Farnsworth, Mr. George Demuth, and Captain Vinal, all lower river men, were appointed a committee "to see that the same is weel built." As a parting
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instruction from the voters, Captain Turner was "obliged to re- cive any good man for Labour and find his own provision, the sum of two Shillings for a good day's Labour on said Bridg, and if any man brings a good yoak of oxen and finds fodder for them he [Captain Turner] to give to ye amount of won shilling per day." The money for the bridge was authorized at the meeting of June 20th. At a meeting held February 20, 1786, "at Capt. Cornelius Turner's barn" it was voted "to accept of the Bridg as itt now is made." Thus was laid the first bridge over the river, a wooden structure supported on a pier in midstream from abut- ments raised a few feet above high-water mark - a likely victim for the first major freshet.
The treatment of the poor in the early days of the town is both unique and interesting. At first there was very little pauper- ism among the Germans because it was with them a strongly developed social tradition to respect the dignity of age and to care tenderly for its helplessness. That others should not feel and act likewise was a thing which they failed to understand and against which they reacted intolerantly.
If a newcomer in the town gave evidence of possessing in- sufficient means for self-support, he or she was summarily ejected. An illustration of this attitude is furnished in 1776 by an incident affecting a Boston woman, "Dab Rossel," possibly Daphne Russell by name, who found herself in town without means of livelihood. Her case was quickly and unromantically settled. At the meeting on May 30th, it was voted that "the selectmen is to sent Dab Rossel to Boston in a vessel and from thar to her Home and to endamnify Him that will carry the afore sd. Dab Rossel to Boston and to her Home." The town, of course, was poor and money was scarce and of little value, but even in better days there was no laxness, and sentiment was not wasted on a public charge, and if there was a way of escaping responsibility it was resorted to. It was common practice in the war years to care for those dependents of soldiers who had gone to the war in fulfillment of the town's required quota. Such a case was that of John MacIntosh of Bristol near the Waldoborough line, who had gone to the war for this town under a long enlistment, and whose family had come in conse- quence to acute need. Despite its manifest duty the town "voted [March 26, 1778] not to grant assistance to John MacIntosh's wife and family; he having gone into the Continental Service for this town for three years."
To the few of their own town's folk who became public charges, charity was a little more ample but still grudging. On January 8, 1783, an article was inserted in the warrant "to see if said town will take old father Sechrist's poor sarcomstances into
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consideration." This problem was left to the selectmen "to do the best they can to seporte the said family in the said circumstances." This is the first case of aid to the poor in the history of the town and it is probable that charity would not have been so richly bestowed if Mr. Sechrist had had any working days left in his ageing body. With Mary Elwel it was different. She had some work left in her so it was voted that "the Selectmen shall but [put] Mary Elwel from house to house as the Selectmen shall order to work for maintenance." These were the only cases of town poor from 1773 to 1790. In this time there was poverty everywhere, but pauperism was almost nonexistent.
The situation was somewhat similar in the field of tax abate- ments. Prior to 1790 there were only three cases of such abate- ments. In 1777 it was voted "to excuse Dr. Schaeffer of his taxes while he is employed as a minister in the town." The ministry of this versatile rascal may have ended in 1779, for in July of that year it was voted that "Dr. Schaeffer shall pay rates for the present year." The second abatement was in September 1787 when it was "voted to give John Handel all his taxes in David Vinal's bills." Handel was not an original settler, but seems to have been one of the Hessians who filtered into the settlement after the surrender of Burgoyne, and had squat on land on the eastern border of the town. The last abatement in these early days was in 1789 when it was voted "to excuse Jacob Wade from paying his taxes to the amount of £1 18s. 4d. This is a rather remarkable record con- sidering general fiscal conditions in the war and postwar years, but Waldoborough in its economy was so nearly self-sufficient and its tradition of mutual aid among the Germans was still so strong, that there was no lack of necessities and there was little use for the luxury of money except for taxes.
The early finances of the town are a puzzle to the modern mind which finds it difficult to interpret some of their aspects save in terms of fraud. Treasurers' accounts seldom balanced and collectors were frequently unable to turn in all the taxes they collected. In the earliest times discrepancies were small, but they had their root in a practice which was continued and which in the 1790's led to serious scandals and loss of public funds. Today such practices would be termed graft and theft, but in the eight- eenth century there was a quite different way of looking at a public financial trust, both in England and the colonies. A public official often had large balances of public money in his hands and looked upon these funds as his own for the time being. In England officials often invested their balances, retained the interest on such bonds and sometimes made large fortunes from their rise in value.
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This was also common practice in the colonies, and no less a person than Samuel Adams as collector of taxes used the money of Boston in this way. He was accused by Governor Hutchinson of making defalcation, but the verdict of his fellow citizens ab- solved him from any criminal intent.5 The first fiscal officials of Waldoborough were Puritans from Massachusetts Bay, and they brought the practice to the Germans who may have been a little slow in understanding it, but, once understanding, used it clumsily to their own grief. From the first there were such appropriations of public funds for personal use, and in these years when money values changed overnight, an official in arrears on sums due could scarcely chart his financial course.
The difficulty started in the first year of the town's corporate history. The warrant for July 9, 1776, contained an article "to see if the town will vote that constables6 in the year 1774 shall pay in the town rate [tax] or have an execution levened on them." On July 25th the town voted that "the constables is to pay in the rate from the year 1774." The sum, to be sure, was not large since an audit of Captain David Vinal's treasurer's report listed a shortage of £6 2s. 2d., as still "being in the Constables' hands," namely the tax collectors'. Tradition, however, seemed stronger than mandate, for the practice continued, and in the May meeting of 1789, it was voted that "ye Treasurer to give executions on ye Delinquent Colectors." These petty peculations, however, were growing; but the town remained careless in the handling of its monies until the time came when drastic measures were necessary to protect the public interest.
In the early days the budgetary procedure of the town was rather simple, it being the custom to raise a stipulated sum for routine expenses, with all other needs covered by special appro- priations. În 1773, £20 were raised for paying necessary charges. The next year this was increased to £30. During the war years the special appropriations were very heavy, and the routine charges, too, increased. By 1779 the town was voting £100 "to pay the town charges." The officers were not paid fixed salaries, but merely during the time they worked on town business, the sums ranging through the 1780's from shillings and pence to seven pounds. Such accounts "were allowed" or "not allowed" by vote in Town Meeting. For example, in 1787 Martin Schaeffer was "allowed £5 10s. for being treasurer for one year."
The town officers in some cases were burdened with a con- siderable chore due to the large area to which they ministered. The distance east and west across the town averaged between seven
5Edward Channing, A History of the United States (New York, 1927), III, 52, 121. "The constables were the first tax collectors.
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and eight miles, and from the northern to the southern bound the stretch was around fourteen miles. The town in this decade was expanding in all directions, and these very considerable dis- tances had to be travelled by the officials afoot or on horseback. In some cases, to get to a single place to handle a single item of business and return was a day's work, especially since over so many of the roads a horse could not proceed much faster than a man on foot.
Against this heavy administrative burden the officers were sometimes disposed to rebel. There was little, however, they could do about it, since if elected they were legally required to serve, penalty for failure so to do being at least a fine. This question first rose in 1776 when Jacob Winchenbach, Jacob Lud- wig, and Nathaniel Simmons had been elected selectmen. For some reason they seemed to have been disposed to lay down their offices, for in the warrant for the July 26 meeting is found the following article: "To see if the town will vote that the officers which the town has chosen last March as town officers, that they shall serve each one in his office or to pay his fine or their fines accorting to law." The article was passed "that the officers chosen last March shall serve in their respective offices or to [do] thar fine." This was hardship but there was some relief in the rapid rotation in the major offices from year to year.
At the March meeting of 1785, the issue of hardship was rather uniquely met by voting "to chose five selectmen" and for a brief period at least the town had such a board made up of Waterman Thomas, Peter Cremer, Joseph Ludwig, Cornelius Turner, and John Martin Schaeffer. The duties were so heavy that on election Squire Thomas and Joseph Ludwig had asked to be excused from acting as selectmen and assessors, and Dr. Schaef- fer from the assessorship, whereupon as a solution the device of five selectmen had been propounded and put into effect until it became clear that the number was scarcely compatible with the legal proprieties. The town, however, did have the legal right to excuse a citizen from serving in an office to which he had been elected, and this principle came into more frequent use with the passing of time. The community remained humorously merciless so far as its hog-reeves were concerned and every man elected thereto served. It was almost automatically incumbent upon new- comers and newlyweds to serve in this capacity and their election never failed. Dignity, personality, and wealth were no bar to becoming a hog-reeve. It was almost a form of initiation to citizen- ship and wedded life in the early town, and the great, such as Joshua Head, Isaac Reed, and Squire Bulfinch, as well as the low- liest, started their local political careers at this lowly rung of the ladder.
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In these days everything that cost money was a matter of much debate, and backing and filling. This was appallingly true of the town sending a delegate to represent it in the General Court. Miller states that the first representative was Mr. Jacob Ludwig, in the year 1779. He is correct in his man, but the date is rather flexible. The travelling expenses, board in Boston and pay of such a delegate involved a rather considerable sum, and from this expense the town shied off for many years. Its vacilla- tions in this regard are faithfully reflected in the minutes of the Town Meetings from which one or two typical entries are ex- cerpted: May 30, 1776: "Voted the town will send no repre- sentative." May 15, 1779: "Voted to send a Representative" etc. July 9, 1779: "Voted not to send a Representative." The town continually affirmed and reversed itself on this question down to May 1788, when Jacob Ludwig was again elected representative to the General Court, and this time a committee was appointed "to instruct him," made up of John M. Schaeffer, Peter Cremer, John Ulmer, Joseph Ludwig, John Benner, Esquire Thomas, and David Vinal. It indeed looked this time as though the town meant business.
It is almost proverbial that sheep cannot be kept fenced in. Rams supposedly are even more difficult to restrain, and the vagrancy of Waldoborough rams seems to have been a source of endless exasperation to the sturdy Teuton farmers who loved a dependable routine, and whose calculations on the spring lambing dates were constantly being upset by rams who had no adequate respect for fences. There was nothing left in such cases but to try the restraining power of legislation, and on May 28, 1778, it was voted that "the Town will not have rams run at large in said town at unseasonable times of the year." But the rams were no respecters of such generalities, perhaps they did not know what an "unseasonable time" was anyway, for the irate citizenry got more specific, and on March 16, 1779, voted that "the rams is not to run at larch till the 2 of November." This ordinance inscribed in Jacob Ludwig's dutchy English seems to have held in the rams for some time, for not until March 12, 1781, were further restraints needed, when it was decided "to build two pounds in the town"; but pounds cost money and a German farmer would stand many annoyances before he would submit to the major one of paying out money. So the rams continued to enjoy occasional freedom which seems to have degenerated finally into license, for on June 20, 1785, it was voted "to build two pounds in the town," one on the west side on land donated by Captain David Vinal from his farm, and the other on the east side "on the land of Deacon Simmons," his son, "Joseph Simmons
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being present promist to give land for the same purpose" (Foster Jameson farm). These were the first pounds in the town, and they were certainly nothing more than simple enclosures.
At the same meeting it was "voted that those men who build the pounds shall be excused from working on the highways as many days as they are building ye pounds." But even pounds did not check the ruthless vagrancy of rams, and on May 4, 1789, other means had to be conceived and a committee was appointed, made up of Peter Gross, Charles Kaler, Susaman Abrahams, and Esquire Thomas, "to prosecute any person that shall let his ram or rams run at large from the first day of September till the 25th of November." Nor was this the end, and the battle with the rams passed merrily over into the last decade of the century.
During this decade Medumcook (Friendship) did not cease to importune for union with Waldoborough. It was a mere waif of a settlement, too small to incorporate, but its citizens were ambitious and eager to secure the advantages that went with being a township. There was a strong group in the southern part of Waldoborough, led by Charles Samson, who favored annexation, and the Medumcookers were united almost to a man on the issue. Repeated overtures were made and always met with a flat refusal by Waldoborough, the last coming in 1789, whereupon the Me- dumcookers appealed to the General Court in order to effect union by compulsion.
This appeal provides us with a brief glimpse of Friendship as it happened at this time to be seeing itself. Their petition al- leges that the incorporation of Waldoborough and Cushing into townships "left them only 40 lots of 100 acres each, and destitute of material advantages as a means of supporting their people." It further alleged that "many families were necessitated to live several months in the year without basic necessities"; that the inhabitants were "miserably housed, lodged and clothed"; that with the incorporation of Cushing one fourth of their taxable property had been detached, and from their fewness of numbers it was inconvenient for them to remain a separate plantation any longer; hence they humbly petitioned for annexation to Waldo- borough.
The General Court promptly served notice on Waldobor- ough "to show cause if any why this petition should not be granted." Without any loss of time the selectmen of the town appointed George Demuth, Cornelius Turner, Jacob Ludwig, Thomas McGuyer, and Joseph Ludwig to handle this issue with the Court, and without delay they filed a vigorous remonstrance. This document in turn gives us a brief glimpse of Waldoborough looking at itself in the year 1789, and may be summarized as follows:
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I. The town of Waldoboro is already so large as to make it very in- convenient for its inhabitants to attend to public business.
2. Already seventeen miles long, to add Medumcook would make the town 26 miles long, which would make it impossible to attend town meetings, especially so as every third meeting would be held in Me- dumcook.
3. Waldoboro wished an entire German settlement and we wish to remain in our present situation.
4. Ever since settling we have remained a hard labouring people living neither in affluence or poverty, so much so that there never has been any of our inhabitants become chargeable to the town. It is feared that this case would become very much altered if Medumcook was added to the town.
5. Union with Cushing is a natural union geographically.
6. The case for Waldoboro has been poorly represented since Waldo- boro had no representatives in the General Court last year, and the very gentleman we chose to represent us this year proved an indus- trious agent for the Plantation of Medumcook.7
In view of the vigor of the opposition the General Court refrained from coercive action. The issue persisted down to 1791, when, on June 11th, the warrant contained an article inserted by Waldoborough parties "to see if according to the request of a number of inhabitants the town will vote to have the Plantation of Madamcooke enexed to this town." This last gesture, too, was rejected with vigor and thereafter Medumcook followed its lonely career until 1807, when it was incorporated as the one hundred and sixty-seventh town in the state. This episode also initiated the feud of the "head-tide" folk with Captain Charles Samson which followed a colorful course for the next quarter of a century.
In Waldoborough's early history there was much litigation involving both the town and its individual citizens. Consequently it had long been a source of annoyance that the legal machinery of the county was centralized at Pownalborough on the Kennebec. It was too distant and it was off the beaten line of travel. As early as 1767 the people of Broad Bay petitioned Governor Bernhard and the General Court for a change in the location of the court, alleging that Pownalborough
is very near the Westren side of said County & quite Remote from by far the Greatest Part of the Inhabitants of said County - that their are but a Very few Houses near said Place in which People who have nec- essary business at Courts can have Lodging and Entertainment so that a Great Part of the People during their necessary attendance on said Courts are much distressed for Necessarys and are Obliged to lodge on a floor or in Barns or set all night by the fire during their whole stay at said Courts.8
This petition brought no relief and the question was not raised again until 1785 when, on June 20th, the town voted that
"Colls. Me. Hist. Soc., Doc. Ser., 2nd Ser., XXII, 217-218. 8 Mass. Archives, Vol. 118, pp. 211-212.
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"the selectmen shall be a committee to transact with the town of Pownalborough on the purpose of the Supreme Court being re- moved to some other place more convenient." This end apparently was not achieved, but beginning March 1786 one term of the lower court was established at Hallowell and one at Waldo- borough.
This decision raised the all-important question of a seat for the Court in the town. To secure a suitable place a committee made up of Esquire Thomas, Captain Cornelius Turner, and Cap- tain Ludwig was appointed "to provide sum Proper House for the Court to meet in when they come to set in this town." At the meeting of June 5th
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