USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 18
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17 Ibid. 18 Maine Gazette, Bath, June 10, 1825.
10 Ibid., Nov. 18, 1825.
20Christian Intelligencer, Wiscasset, June 1830.
21Ibid., Nov. 6, 1829, and July 1829.
22 I bid.
23 Boston Gazette, Aug. 18, 1808.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
of November 1802 at seven dollars per month."24 From these years on until 1820 he followed the sea as apprentice seaman, seaman, and up into the mate's grades.
He accumulated some capital and purchased a farm in the northeast district of the town with a portion of his savings. The remainder apparently he decided to invest in a vessel of his own, the Roxanna. Family tradition records that he was her builder as well as her captain, but whether he built or had her built is not a matter of certainty. It seems reasonable to believe that she was built with his money, which he raised in part by borrowing and by mortgaging his farm. Thus it was that the Roxanna started her career on the high seas with a debt to pay, and the speed with which she was able to do it for some reason fell below the expec- tation of her skipper, for on February 11, 1825, the Maine Gazette of Bath advertised the following sale:
Sheriff's sale on March 12, at the store of Col. Avery Rawson, Waldoboro. All the right and equity which Joseph Miller has in real estate in Waldoboro, bounded etc., etc. ... 144 acres. Mortgaged to John Storer, 1820, $354.00.
Jacob Ludwig, Dep. Sheriff.
The Roxanna's life was a long one and she shortly wiped out the debt of her skipper with her ceaseless ploughing of the sea. From contemporary records glimpses are afforded of the vessel at her steady task of trade in the ports of the old and new world. A few of these references follow:
Nov. 1828. At Havana, Brig Roxanna, Miller of Waldoboro.
March 30, 1829. At Havana, loading, Brig Roxanna, Miller of Waldo- boro.
Feb. 19, 1830. At New Orleans, 16 ult., Brig Roxanna, Miller of Waldoboro loading of Marseille.
March 1830, Spoken Lat. 28° Long. 71. Brig Roxanna, 10 days from New Orleans for Boston.
Sept. 1830. Cleared New Orleans, Brig Roxanna, Miller of Waldo- boro for Liverpool.
Sept. 1831. At St. Thomas, 16 ult., Brig Roxanna, Miller of Waldo- boro, repairing.25
The ultimate fate of this good vessel is not known. By the late 1830's she had placed her owner and master in easy circum- stances, and he retired from the sea after a career of nearly forty years. Back in his native town Captain Miller re-acquired his farm in the very northeastern section of the town under the shadow of Clary Hill close to the Union line. Here he built himself a house26
24Papers of Geo. D. Smouse, in possession of C. T. Cooney, Jr., of Waldoboro. 25Christian Intelligencer, Wiscasset, under dates reported.
26Now owned and occupied by Thomas Winston.
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The Beginnings of the Great Days
and farmed his fertile acres as a gentleman. He was a familiar and favorite figure in the village to which he frequently drove in his tall captain's hat behind his span of fine horses. Here he was active in social life, in masonry, and in shipbuilding. Whether he was the J. Miller of the firm J. and R. Miller is not a matter of entire cer- tainty. If such be the case, then he started in this line of business around 1836. This company built the schooner Surplus, 116 tons, in 1837, the bark Ten Brothers, 304 tons, in 1839, and continued its activity certainly up to 1846. Be this as it may, it is clear that Joseph Miller built the bark E M in 1840. While the name was being painted on the stern, Mr. Miller appeared and inquired as to the cost of adding ily. On being told by the builder, Mr. Wildes, he summarily shortened the name to E M.
Captain Miller remained the country squire to the end of his days. He died in 1865 in his eightieth year and was laid to rest among his ancestors and old associates in the German Protestant Cemetery. His career has been reviewed here in some detail, for to a degree his life, activity, and success may be taken as typical of other builders and masters in these early shipbuilding years.
The extant material covering this period from 1800 to 1830 is all too scanty. It is a pity that the veil is drawn so darkly across the maritime record of these years, and that so much of the chance, the courage, and the adventure of these resolute days are now lost forever from our history, but the facts from the fragmentary rec- ord which has been preserved warrant the certainty that these years of stir, bustle, and growth reached far beyond the meager data preserved. In all ways they seem to have been a fitting prelude to the Great Days when fleets of Waldoboro-built ships swarmed on the seven seas or rode at anchor in all the great ports of the world.
XXXIV
THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH
The clergyman preaches politics, the civilian prates of orthodoxy, and if any man refuses to join the coalition, they endeavor to hunt him down to the tune of "the church is in danger."
ABRAHAM BISHOP
W ITH THE DECLINE OF PURITANISM in New England the Congre- gational Church became the residuary legatee of its moral code. Though the rise of the sects in the more populous centers weak- ened the stranglehold of Congregationalism, this church with its Puritan standards of thought and conduct retained its old-time grip on the religious life of the smaller communities, and perpetuated the somber concepts and theology of Puritanism down to the mid- dle of the nineteenth century.
In its heyday the Congregational Church was the established church of Massachusetts and of the Province of Maine. Its interests and privileges were carefully nurtured by a friendly legislature, and its position secured, so far as this was possible, by legal means. This fact must be taken literally. The new constitution adopted in Massachusetts toward the close of the Revolution in 1780 practi- cally made Congregationalism the state religion, and the third article of the Bill of Rights entrenched this denomination as a state church beyond the reach of ordinary legislation. All men were taxed to support it, including members of dissenting sects, but if they could prove membership in other sects, they were privileged to pay the tax to ministers of their own church. On the other hand, those who had no church in their own town and who were not fortunate enough to find congregations of their own faith in neigh- boring towns were obliged to contribute to the support of the established church. The Congregational clergy was thus accorded a privileged position, and, legally entrenched behind the power to tax, became the natural ally of the rich and influential powers in the dominant Federalist Party. For decades the church used its full power to maintain the supremacy of its political and economic masters, and its own supremacy as well, for the rise of the sects
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The Established Church
after 1780 met all sorts of opposition from the established church, and expensive lawsuits on their part were necessary to secure rec- ognition as sects within the meaning of the constitution.
In Waldoboro, Congregationalism followed the same pattern of thought and action as in other small Massachusetts towns. It was the church of the wealthy and the influential, severe and Puritanic in its theology and its bigotry, positive, outspoken, and energetic in its political bias, and intolerant in its practices and creed. Locally it was the Federalist Party, for the same men who supported and controlled the church supported and controlled the party. Religi- ous intolerance ran just as high as political intolerance. The clergy locally, as elsewhere, were the open and active allies of their Fed- eralist parishioners; they profited from the supremacy of the party in its heyday, and they fought a last-ditch action for it in its decline. Such a course naturally projected the church into the clash of parties, and inevitably made the separation of church and state one of the talking points of the rising Democratic movement.
However wealthy and impressive the established church was in Waldoboro in the days of its might, its beginnings in the town were humble and obscure. Unlike the case in other Massachusetts towns, Congregationalism locally rose in the shadow of an estab- lished church, the Lutheran. In fact, its advent seemed a happy solution of the language problem, stilling in a measure the cry for a minister who would preach in both languages. In 1780 the town levied the first ministerial tax for the support of the gospel, and five years later awarded a portion of this tax to the support of gospel preaching in the English language. Such preaching was con- tinuous during the summer months, and in other seasons depended on the ability of the Reverend Thurston Whiting of Warren to get to his charge on the Sabbath.
Such seasonal preaching continued to meet the spiritual needs of the first Puritans in the community in the period prior to the Revolution, as well as the slow increase of the English in subsequent years. As their number was enlarged the decision was reached to or- ganize a Congregational parish with a settled minister, and the church was organized by an ecclesiastical council convened for the purpose on May 13, 1807. The original membership, however, was in no sense the pronounced social caste of later years, but was just run-of-the-mill Congregationalist. Six persons made up the original membership: Peleg Oldham, Anna Oldham, and Alpheus Delano from the church in Duxbury; Mary Hunt, from the church in Pembroke, Massachusetts; and Payne and Lucy Elwell from the first church in North Yarmouth.1 Of this number only the Elwells
1Reverend Rufus P. Gardner; Congregational Church of Waldoboro, Historical Sketch (Waldoboro, 1887).
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were identified with the later village aristocracy, and even they were not entirely correct in their politics.
This little group, supported in general by the English-speak- ing folk of the town, continued for the next thirteen years to hold meetings in the town house, and in the meantime called a resident preacher. It was in the Town Meeting of May 7, 1807, that it was voted "that there should be two ministers of the gospel in the interests of harmony, the money to be assessed equally on the polls; Mr. Ritz to receive $220.00 per year for the remainder of his life whether he was able to preach the gospel or not." The sum of $430.00 was allowed an English preacher "for such time as he is here, and not in the usual fashion of other towns for life."2 On May 15th, a committee made up of Joseph Farley, John Head, George Demuth, Waterman Thomas, William Sproul, Thomas Waterman, and Joshua Head was authorized to give Mr. John Rug- gles Cutting an invitation to settle in the town and "perform the duties of a minister of the gospel." The contract was signed May 18, 1807, and stipulated that Mr. Cutting was to perform faithfully the duties of a minister of the gospel; to preach every Sabbath except four that were reserved "for the purpose of visiting his friends"; to receive a salary of $430.00 per annum; "if he survives the Reverend Ritz an addition shall be made to the salary provided the German Protestant Society does not hire another German min- ister."3
Mr. Cutting was a Yale man, apparently the first of such alien lineage in a community of Harvard atmosphere and views, and from the first he seems to have experienced difficulties. In the sum- mer of 1808 he was sick a number of Sabbaths; doubt arose in the minds of his parishioners as to the bona fide character of his illness, and a committee was appointed to settle misunderstandings with him. On September 14th, the next Town Meeting, a letter from Mr. Cutting was read in which he explained his illness and the necessity for his doing manual labor.4 In this connection it will be remembered that he had bought land on Jefferson Street and that later he started the construction of the pretentious Reed mansion, known in the community of those days as "Cutting's Folly." In his communication to the town he recognized a division in the con- gregation "whereunder some had absented themselves from wor- ship." He also added that "infamous attempts were being made to destroy his influence in the sacred cause" and asked that his resig- nation be accepted "by vote of the Church and the Town." Al- though the town acceded to his request by a vote of sixty-five to twenty-seven, only English people voting,5 the breach was tempo-
2Records of the Town Clerk.
3Records of the Town Clerk.
+Ibid.
"Ibid.
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The Established Church
rarily closed, but only temporarily, for on April 30, 1809, Samuel Morse and Payne Elwell were named a committee "to secure a minister to preach the gospel in English." Such committees cus- tomarily moved slowly, and decisions were reached only to be revoked. Thus it was on November 5, 1810, a committee was sent to wait on Mr. Cutting "to see if he will take his demission the first of May next," and he "agreed to take a voluntary demission, the salary to run to the 23rd of next May provided that he should preach as usual to that time."
The end of this period was apparently the end of Mr. Cut- ting's ministry.6 The War of 1812 came, and no new minister was hired, but there was much dickering with the German Society to secure a minister who could preach in both languages, and the town authorized a joint committee to write to New York and Philadelphia for such a man. In the meantime the Germans got their own pastor, thus frustrating the plans of the economy-minded citizens. Minister or no minister, the ministerial tax continued to be levied in a rising crescendo. In 1811 it totalled $450.00. In 1812 the Germans proposed $750.00, two-thirds of which would be allotted to their new Mr. Starman. In 1813 a tax of $600.00 was levied and by 1816 it had run to $1000.00, divided equally between the two societies, and levied equally on the devout and the indif- ferent, irrespective of creed, although those of other confessions who attended their own churches in other towns began to exercise their constitutional right to contribute to the support of their own ministers, and such notes as the following began to creep into the town records:
April 15, 1813. This certifies that Mr. Christopher Newbit and John Newbit, Jr., both of Waldoboro attend on the preaching of the Metho- dist Preachers in Union and contribute to their support.
Sept., 19, 1814. John Fitzgerald attested as a Roman Catholic attend- ing worship in Newcastle, also Andrew Fitzgerald, and Christian Schöne- mann.
Signed: J. Kavanaugh Roger Hanley Matthew Cottrell
Meanwhile Colonel I. G. Reed had come to town, and the character of the Congregational parish began to change. The diffi- culties in negotiating with the stubborn German Society were rec- ognized as insuperable and were by-passed. The tax was increased to support two ministers and on February 1, 1816, a bona fide Congregationalist was invited to assume the Waldoboro charge. This was David Meaubec Mitchell, a Dartmouth man, and a recent theological graduate not yet ordained. The ordination was an early
6Rufus R. Gardner in his historical sketch of the parish states that the Rev. Cutting was dismissed Jan. 14, 1815.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
act of the Waldoboro parish. It is interesting that on the motion of Captain Charles Miller it was voted that the German Society "take no part in the ordination of an English minister."
The Reverend Mitchell came to Waldoboro in 1816, and remained with the parish until 1842, thus serving a longer ministry than any other preacher, with the single exception of his Lutheran colleague, Reverend Starman. The year following his arrival he took unto himself a wife, Rebecca, the daughter of Payne and Lucy Elwell, and got himself a home. Unlike "Cutting's Folly" it was the little Cape Cod cottage still standing on the west side of Jeffer- son Street, the first house south of Soule's Bridge. This apparently was the home built and occupied by Isaac Hibbard (Hibbert) the hatter, but it had in some way come into the hands of Deacon Elwell, and he conveyed the house and lot to his son-in-law for $480.00 on February 20, 1817.7
Under the Reverend Mitchell and Colonel Reed the parish in Waldoboro reached the peak of its power, its spiritual intoler- ance, and snobbishness. It became the church, drawing heavily from the Lutherans, admitting the most lowly to membership, but with control always resting in the hands of the village squires. The Rev- erend Mitchell was a typical Congregational clergyman of his day, a village John Calvin, theological rather than spiritual, righteous, somber, soul-hungry, doctrinated, intolerant, energetic, fervent in spirit, serving the letter of the law to a greater degree than the spirit. In all things he was powerfully supported by an inner hier- archy made up of Deacon Morse, Joshua Head, Colonel Reed, Deacon Elwell, and Henry Flagg, ardent Congregationalists, and, with the possible exception of Deacon Elwell, ardent Federalists.
By the second decade of the century the town was growing rapidly in wealth and numbers, and the popular parish under its energetic pastor expanded commensurately. With this development there rose the need of a dignified and adequate place of worship, or, as the records of the church put it: "We were compelled to enlarge our tents." Accordingly a lot embracing one acre and forty square rods was bought of Isaac G. Reed with right of passage, the present School Street, from the county road to the church lot. Here in the early spring of 1820 the construction of the New Meetinghouse was begun. The structure was located a little farther to the west than the present high school building, and its main entrance was in line with the center of the street which led up to it. Its building was in no sense a strictly Congregational under- taking, but rather one to which the whole English-speaking element in the town dedicated itself. Labor, materials, and money came from all the respectable dissidents and pews were bought by them.
7Lincoln Co. Register of Deeds (Wiscasset, Me.), Bk. 93, pp. 96, 120.
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The Established Church
In fact, it was in this manner that the costs of construction were met in their entirety. The church was completed and dedicated in September 1820. There was energy in Waldoboro in those days,
Robert 5-over
THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
and churches were constructed with the same dispatch that ships were built.
The church records give the following description of the new house:
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
Its goodly dimensions, its architectural beauty, its graceful spire tow- ering to the height of 190 feet, and its ponderous bell, inviting the people from the surrounding hills and vales to come up to the House of the Lord and worship, formed a most perfect contrast to the humble sanc- tuary which we left, and made our hearts leap for joy. It was solemnly dedicated to the Triune God, with the express provision that it should not be used for secular purposes.
Instead of involving us in debt as was anticipated or feared by the timid, it was sold at an advance over the cost, and we had the delight of sitting the first Sunday "under our own vine and fig tree" with none to molest or make us afraid.
Consonant with the practice of colonial days, the first citizen of the church, Colonel Isaac G. Reed, was offered the first choice of pews. He selected three, No. 25, in the center toward the front, for the older members of his family and guests, and No. 9 and No. 17, in the gallery, for the little Reeds and Smouses. For these pews he paid a total of $241.50.8
Photographs of the interior of the original church show two side aisles with a double row of pews in the center and a single row on each side beneath the galleries, which ran the entire length of the church. The choir occupied the gallery at the rear. In the front a high velvet drape furnished the background for a tall altar flanked on either side by two white pillars on heavy pedestals. In front of the altar was the pulpit. There were two chimneys at the north end of the building and in the south end were two stoves from which the pipes rose straight up for about twenty feet and were connected by an elbow with two funnels running the entire length of the church, parallel with, and a few feet higher than the galleries, and connecting with the chimneys at the north end. Architectu- rally this was an ugly feature, but it was practical, since these long funnels furnished a tremendous surface for the radiation of heat and made it possible to heat the sanctuary as well in the cold season.
The church was Congregational in confession, and its cove- nant recognized both sprinkling and immersion as valid baptism. The baptism of children was optional with parents. Communion was held six times a year. In the matter of government the standing rules were simple. The church was held subject to no ecclesiastical authority except by its own consent. The governing board was made up of the pastor, two or more deacons, a "standing commit- tee," and a clerk. The first deacons were Payne Elwell, Samuel Morse, and Jesse Page, all three chosen September 1, 1825. Up to the year 1823 the pastor's salary was paid from the ministerial tax assessed on all the polls, but when Maine became a state in 1820 this was no longer obligatory under the constitution, and the tax was discontinued by the town in 1823.
8Deed of July 9, 1822, issued by Sam. Morse, agent.
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The Established Church
The clerk's records of May 5th of this year contain the fol- lowing entry: "Voted within six months to pay Revs. Starman and Mitchell their salaries to the end of the year ... and all con- tracts between them and the town be null and void after October 21, 1823." Mr. Mitchell consented to this arrangement, but Mr. Starman felt injured and pointed out that he had never entered into any contract with the town, but only with the German Prot- estant Society, and that it, and not he, received his portion of the tax. This shift from the old manner of support was not felt by the wealthy Congregational parish, but for the poorer Lutheran con- gregation with its diminishing numbers it created a real problem and accelerated the decline of this old parish in the town.
The first ten years of life in the parish were reasonably peace- ful and happy. The church grew in stature if not in wisdom. It cer- tainly was prosperous, and the certainties and smugness of its pastor and membership increased as the cult of a local class distinc- tion grew more marked. But these years were not entirely placid. Long shadows from distant places, the shadows of heresy, slowly fell athwart the local scene. As early as the turn of the century in Massachusetts, Unitarianism, as a liberal movement within the Con- gregational Church, was making itself felt and was infusing anxiety and horror into the intolerant hearts of the orthodox congregations in the smaller towns. To them it was an ugly heresy raising its head within the church itself, and whereas in the beginning it was apparent only in the larger city parishes, it was the signal for the faithful to be on the alert to strike heresy down wherever it might show itself. By 1826 Congregationalism had fallen on evil days as well as evil ways in Boston. Of the change in these years Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote:
All the literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarian. All the Trus- tees and professors of Harvard College were Unitarian. All the élite of wealth and fashion crowded the Unitarian churches. The judges on the bench were Unitarian, giving decisions by which the peculiar features of church organization so carefully ordained by the Pilgrim fathers, had been nullified.9
In the fourth decade of the century there was heresy on the Medomak, and it appeared in the guise of the First Universalist Society of Waldoboro. This group was limited in numbers, but it was extremely well-equipped in character and brains. In fact, the personal prestige of its members was such as to command the respect of a very considerable part of the community, and to ena- ble it to joust on equal terms with the more orthodox Congrega- tional group. The Universalist faction included Denny McCobb, who came to Waldoboro from Bath and who was the Collector
ªLyman Beecher, Autobiography and Correspondence, ed. by Charles Beecher (1864), II, 110.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
of Customs for a number of years; Dr. Benjamin Brown, friend of Commodor Tucker and President John Adams, and representa- tive of the first district in the House of Representatives from 1815 to 1817; General John T. Castner; Dr. John Manning, a practicing physician, influential in town affairs, who in 1834 became state senator from Lincoln County; Captain Charles Miller, prominent businessman and shipbuilder, who represented Waldoboro at many sessions of the General Court and the State Legislature; James R. Groton, businessman, shipbuilder and first selectman of the town, and Captain Charles Samson, first selectman of the town from 1825 to 1828.
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