USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 11
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Through the 1790's party interest in the town grew slowly. The vote in county and state elections was heavier than in na- tional contests. In April 1790 the popular John Hancock received sixty-three votes for Governor, while in the autumn election of that year the town voted for the first time for a representative to Congress. The Honorable George Thatcher, a Federalist and a Biddeford attorney, received a total of twenty-five votes with not a single dissenting ballot cast. This solid vote was probably cast by the Federalist village group, the dissenters obviously remaining away from the polls. More revealing of local party division was a second election in 1792 on the question of the separation of Maine from Massachusetts. This had become a strictly party issue, with the Federalists dead set against separation. The vote of twenty- one votes for and fifty-four against probably provides a good in- dex of the active conservative and radical temper of the town at this time. By contrast the vote in the entire District of Maine was very close, 2084 votes having been cast for, and 2438 votes against separation. While the Waldoborough vote revealed a group in ac-
4F. S. Drake, Life and Correspondence of Henry Knox (Boston, 1873), p. 92.
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tive opposition to Federalism, it showed also the extent of the Federalist grip on the convictions of the towns, and how much more conservative was Waldoborough than the rest of the District.
On November 2, 1792, the town probably participated in its first Presidential election. There is no evidence known of its hav- ing had part in the elections of 1788. In this, its first Presidential election, its showing was not an impressive one, fourteen votes being the largest number cast for any Federalist elector, but des- pite the apathy the town's vote by default or otherwise went to George Washington for his second term.
It was in the years after the arrivals of the Heads, Doctor Brown, and other Federalists that a disfranchisement of many vot- ers in the town took place. In 1773 when the town was incorpo- rated, which was in the period when the pre-Revolutionary doc- trine of human rights was being stressed by the Massachusetts patriots, the theory at least was that "all the then Present Male Înhabitants arrived to twenty-one years of age shall be admitted to vote." On the face of it, this was the franchise unlimited which Waldoborough citizens exercised in the first days of the township. But when the state constitution of Massachusetts was drafted in March 1780, the conservatives were in the saddle and the new document provided that the property qualification for those vot- ing for state officials should be doubled as compared with that under the old charter.
This limiting of the franchise brought about much opposition to ratification, but Tories everywhere have always proved them- selves versatile in disposing of opposition, and when returns were canvassed at least two clauses not receiving the required two- thirds vote were by a process of juggling adopted along with the rest of the constitution.5 Thus it came about that a substantial per- centage of Waldoborough voters were deprived of their voting rights. But the town folk in these days were not sticklers for con- stitutional details, and they proceeded as of yore, ignoring the new legal niceties. The new Puritan migrations of these years, however, included men of the real Federalist pattern from Boston proper, who understood thoroughly the subtleness of the new order, and due probably to their intervention Waldoborough folk were in due season brought to act in a constitutional fashion, espe- cially at the polls on election days.
In the town warrant of April 15, 1793, the new property qualification for voters was laid down as follows: "inhabitants of twenty-one years of age, residing in the town one year, having a freehold or estate in said town with an annual income of three pounds or any other estate to the vallue of sixty pounds." This
5Samuel E. Morison, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (1917), p. 396.
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qualification applied only to state elections and resulted in the double Town Meetings. At such meetings the voters assembled as usual at the town house. The propertied group would convene within, vote for the state candidate and then adjourn the meeting. Immediately thereafter all the voters would assemble in the town house for deliberation on town or county affairs. It is doubtful if this qualification was ever strictly enforced until the era of Colonel Isaac G. Reed, when the town was really organized in the interests of a conservative regime.
Throughout this period European developments were an ex- tremely disturbing force in American political life both nationally and locally. In 1793 a coalition of monarchical states had been formed in Europe against the new revolutionary government in France. Its effect in New England was to define party lines even more sharply. The Democrats backed the new government of France and the Federalists of course supported the monarchies. Shipping, the pride of New England as well as her bread and meat, became directly involved. France from economic necessity opened her West Indian ports to neutral commerce, and England, as we have seen, in order to effect the conquest of these islands, issued orders to seize all neutral vessels, including American. In retalia- tion the French proceeded to seize all neutrals engaged in trade with the British Islands. Thus New England shipping became the prey of the navies of both powers. Such an impasse struck savagely at Waldoborough vessels as well as those of all New England, and Federalists and Democrats waxed wroth at one another over the issue thus raised. The former supported war against the French and the latter against the British. All this was laying the ground- work leading up to the War of 1812, and making for a state of mind in the town which was little short of treasonable when that war came.
This violent partisanship was essentially a matter of basic eco- nomic well-being, the Democrats sympathizing with the French because of the emphasis which their Revolution laid on the rights of the common man, and the Federalists reviling it for the same reason. Since there was no navy for the protection of American shipping, diplomacy became the only recourse and in 1794 John Jay was sent to England to see what could be effected through negotiations. The outcome was Jay's Treaty which contained a few minor concessions but brought no amelioration of the basic differences. This document was highly unpopular throughout New England, but by the Federalists it was hailed as conclusive evidence of the reasonableness of the British, and this was the party line of the local leaders in the town. Consequently at the call of the Fed- eralist leaders the Waldoborough voters assembled at the West
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Meetinghouse on May 9, 1796, and "voted unanimously that the earnest wish of this Meeting be that the Treaty of Amity, Com- merce and Navigation lately concluded between the United States and Great Britain be carried into effect." This vote in the form of a memorial was sent to the Congress. This was a strange reaction on the part of a shipping center whose ships were as ruthlessly preyed on by the British as by the French, and the unanimity of the vote can only be interpreted as revealing the grip of the local Federalists on the electorate of the town in a matter representing a fundamental difference between the two parties.
The campaign of 1800 marked the beginning of the ebb in Federalist fortunes. Thomas Jefferson, the radical, was contesting the Presidency with the Federalist incumbent, John Adams, and the struggle was one of intense bitterness, for the conservatives of this day did not view the Democrats differently than they regard the communists in our own time. Hence Jefferson's election was a staggering blow, which roused a great fear in conservative hearts and resulted in an outpouring of low abuse which has never been exceeded in our political history. Everything that was high and holy seemed threatened. The established church of Massachusetts (Congregational) knowing Jefferson's views on a state religion saw its supremacy destroyed and felt that it was actually entering the reign of Anti-Christ. The good Doctor Dwight of Connecti- cut voiced the prevailing feelings and fears in a typical utterance:
We have reached the consummation of democratic blessedness. We have a country governed by blockheads and knaves; the ties of marriage with all its felicities are severed and destroyed; our wives and daughters are thrown into the stews; our children are cast into the world from the breast and forgotten. . . . Can the imagination paint anything more dreadful on this side of hell?
This was the way the Federalists in New England felt and it was the way the Federalist leaders in Waldoborough felt, although it is doubtful if such fears seeped down very deeply into the rank and file of the town's common folk.
Defeated in the nation the Federalists of Massachusetts be- lieved that there was only one avenue left to safety, and that was to retain control of local government. Fisher Ames, the leading ideologist of the party, declared that "the Federalists must entrench themselves in the state governments and endeavor to make state justice and state power a shelter for the wise, the good and the rich, from the wild destroying rage of southern Jacobins."6 This is about what they proceeded to do, and organized New England through local committees reaching down into every town. Thus
6Works, I, 310.
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entrenched in power they saw to it that the laws governing a restricted franchise were enforced in every community, and the users of banks were even told that if they expected their notes to be honored they must be Federalists.7
During all this turmoil the Federalist junto in Waldoborough was busy arousing the stolid "Dutch" to a political consciousness, and moulding their beliefs according to a strict party credo. In so far as "the Dutch" could be roused at all they proved themselves tractable material, in fact, so much so that while all the rest of New England was becoming more democratic, Waldoborough was becoming more conservative. But the abrupt shift in political events did affect the town internally. Joshua Head, the Federalist Collector of Customs, was turned out of office, and it is of interest to note that there was no local democrat of sufficient capacity to replace him. Consequently in 1802 Joseph Farley, Jr., of Newcastle was appointed Collector and came to Waldoboro to make his home. Farley became a leader in the town in its most brilliant era. He was educated, able, an aristocrat by nature and a democrat by profession. Actually he was able to supply a needed element of leadership in a situation where Federalist opposition was leader- less, and to initiate the beginnings of a real opposition party in the town.
By the turn of the century Federalist power in the nation was already crumbling. In 1804 Jefferson was elected for a second term, carrying all the New England states with the exception of Connecticut; but as conservatism waned in the nation, in Massa- chusetts, and in the District of Maine, it continued to wax in Waldoboro, for the local junto was capable, resourceful, and wealthy. It had the power and the social prestige to impress "the Dutch," and it satisfied their feudal need for overlords. In the election of 1804 in which Jefferson carried the District, Waldo- boro went Federalist by a vote of more than three to one. This trend held in the town through the elections of 1805, 1806, 1807, and in the election of 1808 the Democrats elected the governor and a majority in both branches of the legislature, while Waldo- boro cast one hundred and eighty-five votes for the Federalist candidates to seventy-five for their Democratic opponents. The increase in this decade of the whole number of votes cast mounted steadily. The town was awakening from its long years of political apathy only to be drugged into political insensibility by the phi- losophy of "the wise, the good and the rich."
With the year 1808 we shall pause briefly in the analysis of the town's political growth and turn to chronicle an event which was to have a profound effect on the life of the community for
"Independent Chronicle, April 9, 1804.
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the next forty years. It was in this year that Isaac Gardner Reed came to Waldoboro and began his dominating role in the po- litical, social, and religious life of the town. It was on his shoulders that the mantle of Squire Thomas fell, and it was he who was to perpetuate the seignorial tradition so precious to the hearts of the subservient Germans.
Colonel Reed was in all respects a man of quality and distinc- tion. He was striking in appearance, mentally keen, deeply religious in the conventional fashion of the established church, aristocratic, a lover of the genteel tradition, and a typical New England Federal- ist of the post-revolutionary period. For four decades he main- tained the position of the first citizen of the town, moulding its religious and political life to the pattern of his own convictions and faith, and imparting to Waldoboro social life the cultural tone of Boston and Harvard.
The Colonel was born in Littleton, Massachusetts, Novem- ber 16, 1783, the son of Isaac Reed, a lawyer, and Mary Gardner, a daughter of Isaac Gardner, who fell in the battle of Lexington. Isaac, Jr., graduated from Harvard in the class of 1803 and imme- diately thereafter studied law in the office of the Honorable John Locke of Billerica. After passing the examinations of the Massa- chusetts bar in 1807, he came to Jefferson. This was clearly too limited a field for a man of his capacities and in March of the fol- lowing year he moved to the rapidly expanding town to the south. It is possible that he may have been drawn hither by Jane Kinsell Smouse, the attractive wife of Captain George D. Smouse, a widow since 1806, for on coming to town he took up his residence in the home of the widow Smouse and lived there for a number of years.8
Isaac Reed set up a law office and immediately became closely associated with Squire Jacob Ludwig. This seems to have been something of a lion-jackal relationship, but it was profitable to both men. Squire Ludwig knew every Puritan and every German in the town and enjoyed to the fullest degree the confidence of the latter. As a justice of the peace he had for years transacted as much of their business as was permitted by law or by the limits of his knowledge. Consequently he was able to introduce the Colonel at once to a well-established law practice, yearly becoming more intricate and lucrative. As was fitting from his training, the Colo- nel took the lion's share, and the Squire, the jackal's portion, such as the writing of deeds, taking affidavits, and the drawing up of wills.9 Jacob Ludwig retained until his death an intense admira- tion for Colonel Reed, and the latter seems to have aided him where needed in the minor legal matters which he handled. Ludwig not
*Oral narrative of Mary Reed Elkins, granddaughter of Col. Reed, August, 1941. "Jacob Ludwig's Notebook, and legal papers of Col. Reed in my possession.
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only sponsored the Colonel's law practice, but through his asso- ciation with the attorney established him immediately in the con- fidence of "the Dutch," so that almost from the moment of his arrival the Colonel had a law practice and a strong political back- ing. The wealth and prestige of the widow Smouse, who shortly became Mrs. Reed, was also a material factor in the Colonel's rapid rise in the town.
On April 14, 1808, Ezekiel Barnard had sold to John Ruggles Cutting, "clerk," the settled Congregational minister in the town, a lot of land on Jefferson Street (never so called in Colonel Reed's lifetime), overlooking the freshwater Medomak. Here the minister laid the foundations of the residence which came to be known in the town as "Cutting's Folly." Financially unable to carry his proj- ect very far and having fallen into disfavor with his congregation, he sold the property to Colonel Reed on May 21, 1811. The latter immediately increased the size of the lot and in 1814 began the erection of the lovely Georgian mansion, the finest piece of archi- tecture in the town. While the plaster was still wet in the cellar and stairway, the Colonel, using a sharp-pointed instrument, in- scribed in the soft masonry to himself and his heirs-to-be the fol- lowing legend: "I. G. Reed built this house, 1814, 1815, 1816 - inhabited it April 1816. He wishes health, prosperity and contented minds to all his successors."
In the spring of 1816 the family moved in. There were Colo- nel Reed and his bride, Jane Kinsell (Smouse) Reed, with her first brood, Gorham, the drifter and victim of consumption, George D., the success of the Smouse family, and the daughter, Bertha, later the wife of Doctor John G. Brown, a medical rolling stone. Here grew up the Reed children, the Honorable Isaac, shipbuilder and congressman, d. 1882; Mary, the loveliest of the daughters, who died at twenty-one, the bride of John L. Whipple of Boston; Jane Ann, the spinster and homebody, 1811-1881; Edward A., 1815-1881, the most volatile and the best educated of the children; Charles and Gardner K., 1821-1874, the Boston representatives of the family interests, and William G., 1817-1905, the farmer and political black sheep of the family.
In his lifetime Colonel Reed held nearly every office in the town from hog reeve to first selectman. In fact, so closely inte- grated was his career with the history of the town that the details of its development in the following decades will furnish a rather ample outline of the Colonel's life.
Colonel Reed in his Harvard years had drawn his political milk straight from the very udders of Federalism, and was thor- oughly indoctrinated in the political precept that it was the right of "the good, the wise and the rich to govern." In such a matter
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Waldoboro suited him. "The Dutch" were docile and disci- plined. Joshua Head, Benjamin Brown, and their associates had prepared the groundwork well; the set was all in the right direc- tion when Isaac G. Reed took over the local reins and the whip.
In 1811 he took over control of local government as first selectman. Associated with him on the board were conservatives, William Sproul and Benjamin Brown. One of the early acts of this group was to prepare a list of voters. This was handling the matter in the legal way, for to vote in a state election there was a property qualification, and who could qualify for the vote and who could not would in some cases be difficult to determine unless such a list was available. Furthermore such a list would disfranchise many voters who would not be disposed to vote the way they should. Moreover, by coincidence perhaps, with the advent of Isaac G. Reed the march of representatives to the General Court became a regular and an annual affair. Furthermore, they all seem to have been men who held correct views: Benjamin Brown, the Ludwigs, Joshua Head, Henry Flagg and, with increasing frequency, Colo- nel Reed himself. The last representatives to the General Court in 1819 were Benjamin Brown and Jacob Ludwig. In the case of the latter this was an appropriate honor. Since he had been the first representative of the town in the Court there was a gratifying fit- ness in his being also the last.
The degree to which Waldoboro was out of line with the political sentiment in adjoining towns is clearly and typically revealed in the vote of 1811, which is presented in the following tabulation: 10
Gerry (Democrat)
Gore (Federalist)
Bristol
120
5
Warren
62
18
Jefferson
76
20
Nobleboro
103
13
Union
81
51
Newcastle
72
39
Waldoboro
73
171
Throughout the second decade of the century when the tide of Democratic control was rising in the nation, it was reaching its lowest ebb in Waldoboro. Especially was the tightening grip of the conservative faction on the town's vote graphically illus- trated in the Presidential election of 1812. In November of that year the Federalists made a desperate effort to throw the whole weight of the state behind their national candidate. Waldoboro responded beautifully and cast two hundred and thirty-two votes
10The Sun, Pittsfield, Mass., April 20, 1811.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
for the Federalist electors and not a single vote for the Democratic candidate. In other words, the vote of the town was unanimous for the conservative, De Witt Clinton, but this did not prevent the election of his Democratic opponent James Madison, nor did it alter the resolution or the political philosophy of the local Fed- eralist leaders. Like Napoleon's Old Guard, they might die but they never surrendered, and the docile "Dutch" continued to serve in the local élite guard with unbroken faith.
Right down to 1820 Waldoboro presented a solid phalanx of conservative voters. In 1816 the Federalist Party put forward its last Presidential candidate, Rufus King, a native of Maine, and the brother of the state's first Governor, William King. He was hopelessly defeated by James Monroe. Herewith the party crum- bled and disappeared in the nation, but in the state and especially in the town under the determined and resourceful dominance of the local junto it continued to grow in strength. In the last state election in the District, the conservative candidate, Governor Brooks, swept the town by a vote of two hundred six to twenty- nine, a very safe margin of about seven to one.
Joseph Farley as Collector of Customs had apparently been able to do little in the way of infusing life into the tiny corpse of the Democratic Party in the town. For this or for some other un- known reason a new collector was appointed in 1816. This was Denny McCobb of Bath, member of an old and distinguished family in that town, which had achieved wealth, social standing, and the prestige that goes with public service. Samuel McCobb, possibly the father of Denny, had been a member of the Provin- cial Congress, one of Arnold's captains in the Quebec expedition and later a brigadier general in the Revolution. Denny himself had fought with distinction in the War of 1812, and was a man of culture and education as well as a proven leader.
He held the collectorship through the long period of Demo- cratic ascendancy in the nation, in all for nearly a quarter of a century.
His home in Waldoboro was a house that stood on the site of the residence now occupied by Marian Storer. Of his chil- dren a daughter, Hulda Marie, married General John T. Castner; a son, Denny, married Sarah A. Groton and died August 9, 1834, at the age of twenty-seven. He lies buried in the old Groton Cem- etery. A second son, Parker, resided on the site of the present Roscoe Benner home on Main Street, and in 1845 filled the office of Collector of Customs for one year. Denny McCobb, hated by Colonel Reed, seems to have been the man around whom the anti- conservative sentiment in the town was to form, which was to provide the growing opposition to Colonel Reed and his well-
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disciplined following until such time as this faction shed its outer garb of Federalism.
The attempt of the District of Maine to separate itself from Massachusetts and to secure the status of statehood, a movement which began as early as 1784, was from the beginning a major issue between the two parties. Separation was favored by the common people and opposed by the Tories with their typical vehemence. On successive occasions when the issue had been submitted to popular vote, Waldoboro under the leadership of her Tory junto had overwhelmingly opposed it, and the town vote had consistently reflected a sentiment out of line with the rest of the District.
The local Tories disapproved the movement on several grounds. In the first place it was not consonant with the wishes of the ruling class in Boston. Since all the thought-patterns of the local conservatives came from this source, their cue on this issue was a clear one, and they played their parts with characteristic strenuousness. In the second place, Waldoboro was a shipping town and the effect of separation on the coasting trade was feared. In this trade vessels passing between the ports of adjacent states were not obligated to enter and clear at customhouses, but in trade with noncontiguous states this formality was a legal requirement. In the event of separation it was argued that the many Maine ves- sels engaged in trade with Boston would have to submit to this procedure. In the third place, leading the opposition to separation were the state officeholders who feared for reappointment under the new status of statehood.
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