USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 15
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Among the first Germans to emerge from the common level were Jacob Ludwig, a tireless jack-of-many trades, John Ulmer, and Charles Leissner. The two latter men had the initial advan- tage of education. Ulmer was a teacher and a scribe, and Leissner had a law education received at the University of Jena. These qualifications carried social weight in the eyes of their fellow set- tlers, but there never arose much thought of class difference. They were a part of the one life, different only in that they were the leaders of it.
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Nor did the first wave of the Puritan migration do much to disturb the calm classlessness of Waldoboro society. In this incursion there were sea captains seeking a snug harbor for their later years, Tories from the Boston area seeking nothing more than social obscurity, farmers who took up and worked land like the Germans, and only in a few cases really superior men such as Squire Thomas, who had the backing of both class and money, Colonel William Farnsworth who began with little, but soon acquired well-being through real-estate dealings, and Thomas Simmons, who brought considerable means with him from Massa- chusetts. While these men occupied a place in the community consonant with their means and abilities, they were hardly numer- ous enough to form a class, and integrated themselves pretty much with life as they found it.
In the decades following the Revolution, however, the scene changed. New men kept filtering in from the Boston district, able men, resourceful men, educated men, and men of means. They all settled in the village and soon had assumed charge of the growing economic life of the town, building up for themselves profitable practices in the fields of law and medicine, engaging in trade and real-estate speculation, and initiating shipbuilding and the support- ing industries which were its necessary complement. These men were differentiated from the main mass of the population by initia- tive, intelligence, enterprise, and education. They were different, superior, familiar with the growing world outside of Waldo- boro, accustomed to and enjoying a more lavish way of life. As opposed to the yeomen and artisans they constituted a new class, aristocratic in background and outlook, and numerous enough to form a society by itself, exclusive in its associations and view- points, and having contact with the masses only in business, politi- cal, and professional matters.
Numbered in this group were Colonel Isaac G. Reed, Joseph Farley, John Bulfinch, Jacob Ludwig, Captain Charles Miller, Deacon Samuel Morse, Doctor Benjamin Brown, Denny McCobb, William Sproul, Deacon George Allen, Horace and Avery Rawson, Joseph Clark, Doctor John G. Brown, James Hovey, General Henry Kennedy, Bela B. Haskell, and John H. Kennedy. The so- cial standing and prestige of these families and this class persisted for over three-quarters of a century and was still recognized in my youth. Later figures of prominence in this group were the Hon. Isaac Reed, A. R. Reed, George Sproul, and Governor Sebastian Marble. These were the great figures of the Great Days, and their influence lasted until the economic decline of the town set in with the passing of sail and the advent of steam, or family lines became extinct, family fortunes were lost or squandered, or descendants
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of lesser clay only were left as poor reminders of great enterprises and great names. In one way or another, their prestige diminished until the last reminders of this fine tradition ended with the passing of Sam Jackson and Redington Reed.
Among the many services of this class was that of bringing to the town a new standard of dignified living, a more polished and finished way of life. They all erected for themselves fine homes, surrounded for the most part by ample acres, and with business or profession they combined all the appurtenances of the traditional landed gentry. These houses were situated in the village or in its immediate outskirts. On Friendship Road almost one-half mile below the business section was the estate of Doctor Benjamin Brown, fronting the highway from the north line of the old Charles H. Lilly farm to the present lot of Richard Castner. The house, later owned and occupied by Governor Marble, was a long story- and-a-half structure much like two or three Cape Cod cottages joined into one, with large barns adjacent, and with the lawn and roadside shaded by stately elms and sturdy oaks. Here lived the Doctor and Congressman with his family and two slaves, and here in 1802 was entertained the Doctor's old friend, President John Adams. The farm was well stocked. The one hundred and thirty acres supported two horses, two yoke of oxen, six cows, one two- year-old, two hogs and one carriage, without mention of the farm produce from its fertile acres.1
Next on Friendship Road just south of the business section was the home of Joseph Farley, fronting the highway on the east and embracing the present Storer and Meservey lots. Here on the site of the present Meservey home, Joseph Farley erected his house, a large, square, flat-roofed structure with an ell on the rear, and on the front a long lawn sloping down to the street. South of the lawn and opposite the old Brick Schoolhouse was an orchard en- closed by a white picket fence. In the rear of the mansion and flanking it on the north and south were two large barns. Just back of these and between the two was the chaise house, and back of that the sheep barn.2 As President Jefferson's Collector of Customs of the District of Waldoboro, Mr. Farley covered it and all the ports eastward to the Penobscot. Furthermore, he was a real- estate speculator, a miller, a shipowner, and a gentleman farmer. The farm was worked by two horses and two yoke of oxen and carried five cows, three heifers, two hogs, and of course, a chaise.3 Mr. Farley, though bearing the hated label of a Democrat, was one in class and education with the other village squires. This elaborate set of buildings was destroyed by fire in 1845.
1Valuation, Town of Waldoboro, 1822. Books in my possession.
2Grand Plan in possession of Alfred Storer.
3Valuation. Town of Waldoboro, op. cit.
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In the heart of the present-day village on the northwest cor- ner of the lot now occupied by the Sproul Block was the mansion of William Sproul with its large barn on the lot west of the Senator Payne residence. As in the case of the other squires Sproul's table was supported by his own livestock and farm produce, but in a more limited way, for his activity was largely absorbed in his saw and gristmills at the First Falls and in his real-estate interests, which with those of the late Ezekiel Barnard embraced the whole village area back well beyond Willett's Hill.4 In 1822 his property in- cluded one hundred and thirty acres of land, one horse, a yoke of oxen, five cows, one heifer, two hogs, a considerable ownership in vessels, one chaise, a clothing mill, a carding mill, a gristmill and a sawmill. The Sproul home was destroyed in the fire of 1845.
In this immediate neighborhood were located a number of the village notables. John H. Kennedy acquiring the lot of the heirs of Payn Elwell, built and resided in the brick house nearly opposite the Storer Lumberyard. Denny McCobb's home was on the site of the residence of Marian Storer. Doctor John G. Brown, who married Bertha Smouse, stepdaughter of Isaac G. Reed, built the present Stahl's Tavern on the corner of Main and School streets, occupied it for a number of years, and on leaving town sold it to James Hovey. Directly across from it on Main Street was the brick house of Bela B. Haskell, now the home of Senator Payne. This house enjoys the distinction of having been the residence of two Maine Governors.
South of the Payne residence on old Dog Lane, Joseph Clark after the great fires built himself a pretentious mansion, the house now occupied by Floyd O. Benner. Clark was probably the town's ablest and most successful businessman, hard-boiled, resolute, ven- turesome, and competent. Born in Jefferson, where he received a common school education, he amassed a little capital by teaching school and came to Waldoboro in 1823 with his worldly pos- sessions stored in a pack on his back. In August 1824 he married Mary Ann King of Whitefield, a kinswoman of Maine's first gov- ernor. He first entered a partnership with his cousin, General Henry Kennedy, and after three years started shipbuilding on the river. Thereafter his rise was rapid and whatever he touched seemed to turn into gold. At the time of his death he was the wealthiest man in the county, leaving an estate of around three quarters of a million dollars.
In these times in Maine this was a large fortune and the fact that it was all made locally affords an index and an insight into the scope of the town's economic activity in the early and mid- century. Mr. Clark's hobby was his farm. He acquired large por-
4Sometimes known as Cole's Hill.
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tions of the meadow areas in the low, flat country east of Willett's Hill and herein he found his relaxation. He had a sizable herd of fine cattle, and in season a portion of the herd was driven each morning up Main Street and over the hill to the Clark meadows and pasture lands beyond, then back to his town barn at night.5 Clark was strictly a businessman. He never essayed politics or sought a public office, nor was his fortune made in any part through the exploitation of the necessities of the poor.
Just north of the business section on Jefferson Street still stands the beautiful Georgian residence of Isaac G. Reed, the most successful piece of architecture in the town, and in these days the very heart of the genteel tradition in the growing community. There was little land immediately connected with the Colonel's mansion, but he erected a huge barn6 just north of his house, and through his wife's inheritance, administered the Smouse real es- tate, the finest piece of meadowland within the village precincts. Colonel Reed's close neighbor was Deacon Samuel Morse, who built the mansion now occupied by the Bear Hill Market. The Deacon owned a tract of land east of the road, and in the rear of his house the lot reached to the river on whose bank was located his tannery. This farm of thirty acres supported two horses, two cows, and a hog.
Nearly opposite the Reed mansion on the west side of Jeffer- son Street, south of the present home of Doctor Franklin Randolph, Captain Charles Miller built for himself a fine brick house, de- stroyed by fire in the 1890's. Charles Miller was a businessman, builder of a fleet of twenty-five vessels, legislator, and the hus- band of Elizabeth Kinsell, sister to the wife of Isaac G. Reed, which identified him with the Colonel's political and social en- tourage. Like the other village squires Miller was a landowner and his sixty acres, with a yoke of oxen, a cow, a heifer and a hog, supplied the needs of his own table.
Farther up Jefferson Street, out at the end of Lovell Road, John Bulfinch built his beautiful home, carriage house, and barn on his level and ample acres on the upper Medomak. This house has recently been extensively renovated and is now the home of John H. Miller. Squire Bulfinch, of the Boston Bulfinch family, was born in that city on September 29, 1791, and graduated from Harvard in 1812. After leaving college he sold the property in Malden which he had inherited from his grandfather, John Bul- finch, and came to "eastern parts." While a teacher in Belfast Academy he read law in the office of B. P. Field, Esq., of that city. He was admitted to the bar in 1819 and started the practice of
"Oral account of Justin Welt, who drove Mr. Clark's cows in his boyhood. "Torn down in 1951-52.
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law in Union. In November 1823 he moved to Waldoboro and opened a law office. Two years later he married Sophronia Pike of Camden. Apart from his extensive practice in Maine Courts the Squire had interests in land surveying, shipbuilding, mortgages, and loans. He was a man of small stature but of ample abilities, with a keen interest in education and well-developed taste in the field of belles-lettres. It is more than a tradition that in his declin- ing years he found the main solace of his leisure in the great docu- ments of antiquity which he read for pleasure in the original Latin and Greek.
Mention should be made of one more home on the east side of the river, that of General Henry Kennedy. This house now owned by Willis Crowell is perhaps the most impressive on Main Street, but its first occupant was different from the run of village squires, different in politics, in business practices, and religion. He was neither Federalist, Congregationalist, nor mortgagee and loan specialist, and while a man of great energy, wealth, and widely respected, he never quite fitted the pattern of the local genteel tradition.
On the west side of the river on the northwest segment of Kaler's Corner, stood the large imposing residence of the Honor- able Joshua Head, gentleman farmer, trader, capitalist, real-estate speculator, ardent Federalist and Congregationalist, representative and senator in the General Court, and several times candidate for the Federal House of Representatives but always on the wrong side of the political fence. His ample acres extended on the north side of the Kaler Corner Road from the river westward to the Kaler Pond. This farm of one hundred and thirty acres "more or less" was stocked with one horse, a yoke of oxen, three cows, sheep, and a chaise, as well as extensive farm tools and equipment.
These men, along with a few other lesser figures, constituted the financial, social, and political hierarchy of the town. They were clearly outstanding, enterprising, and capable personalities, in fact, the most distinguished group of citizens that ever resided in the town. They provided the creative force of the Great Days. In their number was included a governor, senators, representa- tives, Federal congressmen, great shipbuilders, leaders at the bar, and men influential in party, state, and national affairs. It was they who formed the pattern of the new era in the life of the town.
The great influence which these men exercised was too mul- tifarious and too pervasive to describe. It could only be felt and experienced. In fact, it constituted a revolution. Under their drive the town grew from a simple, staid agricultural community to one of the busiest centers of economic activity in the state. From them it received political prestige, Congregationalism, the genteel tra-
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dition, and a class-conscious society, divided into an aristocracy, a middle class, and the poor. Some of these squires were large- souled, Christian benefactors of the less privileged in their midst; while others were scheming, close-fisted, penny-pinching, usurious exploiters of the poor, who added to their own fortunes by getting a clutch on the poor man's holdings in his hour of need.
Of the many-faceted influence of these village squires there is one that merits some elaboration, and that was the development of the genteel tradition of American culture which these gentle- men brought to the town. This pattern was not original with all of them, by any means, for such as William Sproul, Joseph Clark, Henry Kennedy, and Charles Miller began life with little in the way of education or wealth. But these were superior men and once on their way to affluence they were quick to take their cue from their more educated and more polished colleagues of equal wealth and influence, such as Squire Farley, Isaac G. Reed, Denny McCobb, Deacon Morse, Doctor Brown, and Squire Bulfinch, for these were the purveyors of the genteel tradition in Waldoboro life. In most cases they had brought family prestige and good breeding to the growing town. Doctor Brown in his time had hobnobbed with the high and the great and had moved in the halls of Congress; Denny McCobb was from an old and always prominent family in the Province of Maine; others were from Boston, entirely familiar with the stately pattern of life in its higher social circles, while Squires Bulfinch and Reed were Harvard men and bore the indelible stamp of its cultured, social tradition. To the old Germans whose memories reached back to counts, princes and a courtly feudal life, and to their children who had inherited such memories, these new figures with their fine homes, urbane manners, and aristocratic way of life were a fresh and welcome version of the Obrigkeit which they still almost instinctively venerated.
Up until late in the eighteenth century social life in Waldo- boro had been on one niveau. The log cabin and the wilder- ness were mighty social levellers. Lack of communication in their isolated settlement had cut the community off from those elements of cultured living in the colonies which came into being as the frontier receded, and evolved into one of the stateliest and most charming patterns of living in American history. This genteel tra- dition had been a matter of slow but steady development. Origin- ally, differences in native ability facilitated the acquisition of wealth and land. With wealth came leisure, education, learning, breeding, and the accumulation of power and influence which in time marked the yeomen off as a class distinct from the gentry.
As the frontier moved from the coastal area inland, a new aristocracy came into being in the seaport cities of the North and
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the plantation areas of the South, a development which was fos- tered by the strong sense of social stratification, a heritage which the settlers had brought with them from the Old World. This was the era of the lovely, great houses in the New England coastal towns, in many cases furnished by the cabinetmakers of London from whose shops a stream of beautiful pieces flowed into them. Pewter gave way to fine china, and in dress London fashions were said to reach the colonies even before they did the outlying coun- ties in England. Manners were dignified and courtly. Great em- phasis was attached to precedence. In public places seating followed social rank. In church the front seats were reserved for the deacons and the gentry; at the rear and sides were those of lesser degree, and in the galleries the children. When the seats in the old Congre- gational Church in Waldoboro were originally assigned this prin- ciple was observed and the Number One citizen of the town was given the first choice of pews.
As the colonies grew in age this pattern of life expanded to the small towns and in some of them assumed an even more extrava- gant form than in the larger centers. "Snobbishness," observes James Truslow Adams, "has perhaps never been more rampant anywhere than it was in the small Puritan villages of New England"7 . . . This trend to elegance and fine living reached its climax in the period just before the Revolution, but as a vogue it was slow in dying and receded from the local scene only before the advance of indus- trialism in the nineteenth century.
This art of life was an unknown pattern in Waldoboro before the two last decades of the century. Only with the coming of those whose mode of life it was, and only with the rise of ship- building and foreign trade which created the wealth for fine and leisurely living, did the German and the Puritan yeomen of the town experience, vicariously even though it were, a new view and standard of life. The aristocratic tradition arose in the town, but more especially in the village where wealth was being amassed. Colonel Reed was a lover of the genteel life, and when he gradu- ated from the lowly Smouse house into his beautiful and stately Georgian mansion he was in a position to set the social pattern in the town for the next three-quarters of a century.
The building of his home was followed by that of the Farley, the Head, the Morse, and the Bulfinch homes; and slowly the town was rebuilt. The shipbuilding industry produced so many carpen- ters; the wages from shipbuilding increased so many family in- comes; the wages of so many sailors, mates, and captains brought such an increase of wealth, that architecturally the village was changed and began to emerge in a form recognizable in our own
"Provincial Society (New York, 1934), p. 85.
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day. As Waldoboro shipmasters cruised the seven seas touching at the major ports of the world, the beauty and the wealth of the craftsmanship of these distant places began to accumulate in the homes of the shipowners and the ship captains. Paintings from Italy, furniture from England and France, and antiques from the Orient found their way into these roomy mansions, and beautiful chinaware from the best patterns of Europe richly graced the shelves and cupboards of many a local matron.
The elegance of Colonel Reed's ménage, which may be taken as typifying this new standard of living in the town, may be gen- erally inferred from the sketchy account of an eyewitness written many years ago before the furnishings of the mansion were scat- tered:
Colonel Reed, the owner, died in 1847, and the apartment has re- mained unchanged since that time. Some of the furniture was brought over from Germany by the ancestors of the family.8 There is a massive sideboard and writing desk combined, and several tables all of mahog- any, and also mirrors, a rare banjo clock and a candelabrum known to be more than 150 years old, and many other interesting relics. The dishes are a choice assortment, including Staffordshire, Canton, Liver- pool, and much sought silver lustreware. Many of the famous patterns are represented, Wood, Stubbs, Rogers and Ridgeway, and several pieces yet unclassified also in good condition. The subjects are largely historic, Harvard College, Fairmont, and Hoboken, the latter being especially desirable.
During the lifetime of Asa R. Reed, grandson of the Colonel, the house and its furnishings were kept intact. This description unquestionably dates from this period. The account of the writer continues:
Miss Alice Reed recently gave a Colonial tea party to the Moon- light Club. She was dressed in the costume of the olden time, and served tea that had been sealed up more than sixty years. Mr. Reed has in his library a secretary which he inherited from his great-great-grandfather, Isaac Gardner, who was killed in the battle of Lexington. He has also a beautiful silver coffee urn and several pieces of pewter. ... If this col- lection was purchasable it would be a veritable bonanza to people who are making a business of buying up antiques.9
The character of the entertaining in these old homes was rich and dignified. Especial honor was always paid to distinguished guests, and such were not uncommon. Commodore Tucker was a frequent visitor at the home of Doctor Benjamin Brown on Friend- ship Road, and it is said that the happiest moment in the Doctor's life was when he welcomed President John Adams to this same home. The Reeds also were great visitors and hosts, and the Colonel's mansion received and sheltered many of the notables of
8Certainly not in the original migration.
"Account printed in the Boston Transcript, taken from the Rockland Star. Date unknown.
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the day. The famous bow-room (so called on account of its shape) is a monument to one such distinguished visitor. It was in 1820 when the partition of the District of Maine from Massachusetts took place, that the bow-room was added to give additional space for the reception of Governor John Brooks of Massachusetts who was the Colonel's guest at this time.
The homes of other village squires likewise were places of hospitality, of gracious living, and of dignity and beauty in the externals of architecture and in the internals of finish and furnish- ings. They were also scenes of much fun and local gayety dur- ing the "social season." A glimpse into Waldoboro social life in the winter of 1848 is given us in a letter of Jane Ann Reed to her brother Charles in Boston. She writes: "Waldoboro is pretty lively this winter, dancing school, singing school, society meetings, hot suppers, whist parties, etc., etc., but our family cares for none of these things." This detached judgment of Jane Ann reveals the religious austerity of the first generation of Reeds, a tradition that was in no sense a carryover into later generations of the family. Here too her judgment may have been colored by the fact that the family was in mourning for its head who had died less than a year before.
Waldoboro in these years was still a town connected with the outer world only by sail and stagecoach. The coaches carried only mail and passengers, consequently the wares in the shops all came from Boston by water and consisted largely of the basic staples consumed by the commonalty. Such shops were hardly places where the wealthy and discriminating squires and their wives could purchase wares befitting their place and station. Hence there was much shopping done in Boston either directly or by proxy. Individuals making this trip and the captains of the packets were errand boys for their friends in the town. There was scarcely a letter that did not contain a commission for purchases. The following excerpt from a letter is typical. The sender is Jane Ann Reed in Waldoboro and the addressee is Bertha Smouse in Boston. The date is October 2, 1830. Jane Ann reports:
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