USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 20
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The Reverend D. M. Mitchell left the pastorate of the church January 14, 1842. Following him pastors came and went at an increase in tempo. The succession follows: John Dodge, 1843-1853; H. M. Stone, 1854-1857; Mr. Lightbody, 1857-1858; T. S. Robie, 1859-1863; supplied 1863-1867 by the Reverends F. B. Knowlton, E. G. Carpenter, and Nathan W. Sheldon; Charles Packard, 1867- 1872; A. J. McLeod, 1872-1880; E. C. Crane, 1881-1883; Wilbur
14Written Mar. 14, 1859. In possession of Dr. Benj. Kinsell, Dallas, Texas. 15Letter of Mar. 30, 1836.
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Rand, 1884-1885; Rufus P. Gardner, 1886-1888; Herbert I. Senior, 1890-1895; Hugh McCallum, 1897-1899; William F. Slade, 1900- 1902.
Repairs and improvements were made on the church from time to time. Around 1840 the tall spire which rose one hundred and ninety feet above the ground was removed and the steeple of our own time added to house a fine Revere bell. In 1874 repairs totalling $4000.00 were made. The galleries were removed, the floor raised, stained glass windows were put in, and a pipe organ installed. These changes and additions gave to the church within and without the appearance familiar to those living in our time.
Among the early deacons were many familiar names. Some of these with the dates of their elections were the following: Payne Elwell, Samuel Morse, and Jesse Page, September 1, 1825; Robert C. Webb and William Cole, December 9, 1836; George Allen, Febru- ary 15, 1841; Newell Winslow, April 10, 1870; Avery T. Webb, August 10, 1872; Jackson Russell, March 10, 1879; Everett Trow- bridge, December 3, 1886.
For three quarters of a century the church maintained its position as the denomination of the social élite and the wealthy. In the 1840's death began to thin the ranks of the old orthodox group. The first citizen of the church, Colonel Isaac G. Reed, passed on in 1847 and his wife, Jane, in 1856. The following list indicates the time of departure of a few of the old village dons: Payne Elwell, August 21, 1840; Samuel Morse, December 1864; Thomas Kennedy, 1838; John Bulfinch, November 23, 1884; Hiram Bliss, January 16, 1874; Thomas D. Currier, April 30, 1878; Elizabeth Farley, May 21, 1849; Mary Barnard, December 6, 1852; John Willet, June 1, 1852; and James Hovey, September 1, 1855. Such losses in wealth and social prestige were irreparable, even though the descendants continued to fill the old family pews. The Great Days came and went; the great industry entered its decline, and in the sunset years from 1875 on, the church was visibly weaker.
It may be said of this church that it held to a strict orthodoxy to the end of its days. It had combated heresy in its youth, and one of the last dramatic acts of its senility was a heresy trial against its own pastor, the Reverend Herbert I. Senior, a learned English divine. Mr. Senior had been called to the charge in Waldoboro from his church in Goold, England, in 1890. He first came to America alone and was later joined by his family, a wife and two sons and three daughters. For a time all went well in the parish, but gradually doubts of his orthodoxy arose in the minds of his pious deacons, who held firmly to a literal interpretation of "the Word," while Mr. Senior's emphasis was on the spirit.
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One major point of difference was the story of Joshua who arranged with Yahweh to have the sun stand still for a whole day at Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, that the Hebrews might complete the slaughter of their enemies, the Amorites. The deacons held that on this day the sun "hasted not," while Mr. Senior correctly assumed that this incident was an old war legend from the Book of Jasher, incorporated by an unknown scribe in the Book of Joshua, probably as a morale booster for the Hebrews engaged in the desperate struggle for the conquest of Canaan. By such trivial differences the breach was widened, and the pastor found himself without a Sunday School class until Mrs. Farring- ton invited him to teach her class in which she remained as a pupil. It was clearly a situation where a scholar by some ironic twist of destiny had fallen into a Philistine milieu. Undoubtedly the Rev- erend Senior's sermons were over the heads of the deacons and some of their orthodox brethren, and when he would end his talks by urgently and naïvely advising them to take up their Greek Testaments and compare passages with their sources in the Hebrew of the Jewish Canon, it annoyed them no end.
The parish as a whole liked Mr. Senior, and since he had not been installed, a date was arranged for the ceremony. "I16 remem- ber as though it were yesterday when he announced at the close of the morning service that the usual examination would take place on a certain date to be followed in the evening by the rites of instal- lation." But the orthodox had been busy and had secretly laid their case before the consistory which was to examine Mr. Senior's theology. The session was a long and stormy one. The congrega- tion was split on the issue. Hence the decision was a compromise designed to please everybody but actually satisfying nobody. The consistory reported that while it could find no fault with Mr. Senior's orthodoxy, it held, in view of the existing bitterness, that it would be unwise to install him.
This decision left Mr. Senior stranded since he found himself neither fowl nor fish. He stayed on because there was nothing else he could do. Bitterness increased and degenerated into sheer vin- dictiveness and petty persecution. Supported by a faction and damned by a faction, the pastor in the end found himself being supported in part by the benefactions of charitably minded citizens whose humanity transcended creeds.
The old church never recovered from the fracas. Quite ironi- cally its orthodoxy proved its undoing. In 1903 the Reverend Wil- liam C. Curtis began the last pastorate of this once venerated parish, now a mere handful of aged worshippers. He ended his pastorate
10The "I" here speaking was Jane Matthews Brummitt, to whom I am in a major part indebted for the details of this episode.
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in 1908 and the doors of the "old North Church" were closed for- ever. For more than a quarter of a century thereafter it stood, a ghost church, a symbol of a sterner faith and greater days.
The end came in 1935. There were few members left, de- scendants of the Blisses, the Reeds, the Storers, and the Trow- bridges. This mere handful comprising the remnant of the original society was not even able to maintain the edifice in a state of repair, and it was decided to transfer the property to the town to be used as a site for a new high school building. Therefore in 1935 a Bill in Equity was placed before the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine for the purpose of having trustees named to make the conveyance of the property. By virtue of a decree in the above-named Bill in Equity, which was signed "April 15th., A.D. 1935," a deed of the premises was made to the inhabitants of the Town of Waldoboro by Emma Trowbridge Potter, Louise Bliss Miller, Josephine Storer, Mary I. Boothby, and Mary E. Elkins, as Trustees. The Revere bell was given to the high school and the fine Hook and Hastings organ to the Baptist Church. On June 19, 1935, the contractor for the new school, with a crew of men, began wrecking the church building. As work progressed it became necessary to dynamite the structure on account of unsafe working conditions.
Just one hundred and fifteen years after the start of the work of building the church, the structure was demolished. Sic transit gloria mundi!
XXXV AMID THE ENCIRCLING GLOOM
Ignorance, which in the matter of morals extenu- ates the crime, is itself, in intellectual matters, a crime of the first order.
JOUBERT
F DUCATION IN WALDOBORO under the dominance of the "Dutch" had been of a very casual character. They had managed to get along, violating freely the school laws of the state and escaping penalties. They had been fined by the General Court for not send- ing a representative to it; they had been warned on the score of not maintaining a "settled minister," and they had faced frequent actions brought against them in the County Court arising from the condition of their roads. But always somewhere in some district at some time in the course of a year a school was being held, and in consequence they had been able to escape the penalties of their slack conformity to the state educational laws. Around the turn of the century control of schools was in some measure passing from their hands and coming under the influence of the growing Puritan element in the town. These men had a more immediate interest in the education of their children; they knew the require- ments of the state laws, and they had become strong enough to make a little headway against "the Dutch," traditionally conserva- tive in educational matters.
When the year 1800 was reached, one hundred and sixty-one towns had been incorporated within the present bounds of the State of Maine. Common schools as required by law had been established in all of them and "grammar schools" in seven of them. At this time the school laws of Massachusetts divided the responsi- bility for supporting and managing the schools between the town and the district. In this fact lay for upwards of a century the root of all educational evils in Waldoboro. On the one hand, the town at its annual meeting was required to elect a committee of not less than three nor more than seven men, whose duty it was "to exam- ine and certificate the teachers," visit and inspect the schools, inquire into the discipline and proficiency of the pupils, choose
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the textbooks, dismiss incapable teachers, and handle extreme cases of discipline. On the other hand was the district. By law the select- men issued annually a warrant to some citizen in the district author- izing him to call a district meeting which elected its own modera- tor, clerk, and school agent. Each family in a district turned in to the selectmen or the town clerk the names and ages of its children between four and twenty-one years.
The number of pupils in a district determined the amount of school money the agent could draw from the selectmen. It was the responsibility of the district to locate and build its own school- house, to determine the length of the school year, and the age at which children should be admitted to the school. Through its agent it hired the teachers, provided equipment, cared for the building, and drew and disbursed its allotment of the school funds. It was a system of divided authority, and from this fact there followed for a hundred years a long series of abuses and absurdities which all but nullified any improvement in the town in the field of edu- cation.
It was within the framework of this law that the Puritans and Germans laid the foundation of our common schools. For the next half century progress was small. Existing school laws, so far as they were an aid to education, were not even in force in Waldo- boro, and the primary aim of those seeking improvement in the schools was to bring the town, where possible, to a point of con- formity with existing legal requirements. On the whole, the system was such as to make progress possible only in those districts where there was a desire for education and where this desire was imple- mented by an interested and conscientious agent. Naturally such a desire was strongest in the central or village district, and here for many years the pace was set for such educational improvement as there was, but in a district where indifference prevailed, and such was the case in many of the outlying sections, little could be accom- plished.
The first decade of the century was a period in which a con- siderable number of new schoolhouses were built in the town.1 This was not due to any renascence of interest in education but rather to the fact that the old log schoolhouses were rotting down. Just how they went about having a new school in those days is shown from the records of a northeasterly district. Since each dis- trict was compelled by law to erect its own schoolhouse the normal course was to lay a tax on the real estate of the district. In the one here in question no taxes were levied, but rather at a district meet- ing it was voted "that the following persons give towards building said schoolhouse as follows: Robert Lermond 1/4 acre of land for
1Records of the Town Clerk, Vol. II.
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location. John Weaver 1000 feet of boards. Days work: John Nu- bert four; Michael Nubert four; Francis Miller five; Christian Storer two; Jabish Upham two; Elijah Nash two; James Cushman two; Joseph Burns two; William Lermond two; Robert Lermond four." In this case the building seems to have been constructed by a dozen people, possibly all that lived in the district, or perhaps only those having children of school age.
There is also a record2 of an early district meeting in the village section which shows that in this area direction was pretty much in the hands of the English element. This meeting was held August 5, 1802, at Isaiah Cole's house.3 Dr. Benjamin Brown was chosen moderator and George Demuth district clerk. A new schoolhouse had just been completed in the district, under con- tract as usual to the lowest bidder. It was voted to accept the schoolhouse for $103.49, and then in a burst of generosity, or an attack of conscience, an additional $30.00 was raised, making the total cost of the central school building $133.49. The state law required a Superintending School Committee in every town, one of whose duties was the inspection of schools, but since Waldo- boro had not yet reached that point of conformity to law, this district conformed by voting Dr. Benjamin Brown, William Thompson, and Willam Sproul "a committee to visit the schools in this district." George Demuth, Ludwig Castner, and George Kuhn were voted "a committee to draw the school money due to this district." Provision was also made against chisellers from surrounding districts, in that it was voted "not to admit any schol- lars to this school, but those belonging to this district." A further luxury was provided when it was agreed
that the building of a necessary for the use of the school house be put at vendue to the lowest bidder. John Borkhart [Burkett] agreed to build the same and make it sufficantly light for six dollars. Said Borkhart like- wise purchased some boards that remained from finishing said school house for one dollar.
George Demuth, Dist. Clerk
The location of this school building is unknown. It may have been in the field to the rear of the little house on Friendship Road now owned by Ralph Dean and occupied by Mary Î. Boothby, for this was one of the earliest school sites in the central district. It was definitely not the site of the old Brick School House, for it was not until August 13, 1822, that Friedrich Castner and Dr. John Manning sold to the Central School District the one- quarter acre of land on which the Brick School House was later
2Records of the Town Clerk, Vol. II.
3Now my residence.
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built.4 For more than one hundred and twenty-five years now this lot has been devoted to educational purposes.
At the end of the period around 1800 the curriculum was limited to simple fundamentals. Its scope may be inferred by the early textbooks used. These were Webster's Spelling Book, The American Preceptor (a reader), Perry's Dictionary, Pike's Arith- metic, or its abridgment. A bit of grammar came in this decade and a bit of geography a little later, but both were slow in making headway. Since Waldoboro was slow in giving any recognition to state educational laws, teachers continued to be employed by the district agents without examination and with little respect for qualifications. The main merit in doing things in this way was that such teachers could be secured for little money.
Consequently the town was slow in electing a School Com- mittee that would ipso facto be empowered to change existing arrangements. It did not act in this matter until the meeting of May 7, 1807, when it was voted that "a Committee be appointed to visit the schools in this town and that no schoolmaster shall teach a school in this town without approbation of this Committee." Such action could never have been taken at the March meeting, but in the mud season of April or the planting season of May the villagers were sometimes able to circumvent the back-district folk. This first school committee of Waldoboro was made up of Joshua Head, Joseph Farley, Benjamin Brown, and the Reverends Augus- tus Ritz and John Cutting. The latter provision in this resolution seems to have remained a dead letter for a great many years, and the agents in the respective districts continued to hire the teachers they wished irrespective of qualifications.
During the period of German administration of education, appropriations for the support of schools had been low. The starting figure in 1800 was $333.30. This amount had to suffice to pay for the schooling of approximately seven hundred children. The following year the sum was pushed up to $500.00, with the provision that "every district shall draw their money as it becomes due for their school district." By 1803 it had become necessary to define rather accurately the bounds of each district, since the real estate of each district was subject to a tax levy for the erection of new schoolhouses. This was done, but despite such arrangements districts existed in a fluid state for many decades. Scarcely a year passed that the town was not faced by petitions of a group "to be set off in a new school district," or petitions on the part of citizens to be annexed to a different district, although few went so far as Henry Ewell, who at the meeting of April 4, 1803, was allowed
4Lincoln Co. Register of Deeds (Wiscasset, Me.), Bk. 118, p. 238.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
"to be a school district by himself." For a short time in 1804 provi- sion was made for "evening schools for scholars upwards of 21." This arrangement probably arose from the desire of parents to have the older children free for farm work during daylight hours.
By the year 1805 things began to move a little more rapidly under Puritan pressure, and the sum of $1000 was raised for schools. In 1809 it was again voted "to inspect the schools" and the Rever- ends Ritz and Cutting, and I. G. Reed, Joseph Farley, and Samuel Morse were empowered with this thankless function, although they were not a school committee. Just what educational conditions were in the back-districts may be inferred from the fact that in 1810 no orders were drawn for $291.64 of the school money, nearly a third of the one-thousand-dollar appropriation. From this it would follow that this year at least no schools were "kept" in nearly a third of the districts of the town. The battle for some educational progress was discouraging and intermittent. The war- rant for the March meeting of 1812 contained an article "to choose a general school committee," and a second article, "to make proper regulations for establishing a uniform system of education through- out the town."
Such articles could have been inserted in a town warrant in Timbuktu with the same results. There is no further record of them. They were probably snowed under by the antischool faction which under the general paralysis of the shipping business was able to put through at the May 3rd meeting, 1813, a vote to the effect that "no money be raised for the support of schools the com- ing year." The following year the town renewed its appropriation of $1000, and in 1815 tabled a petition of "Benjamin Arnold and others to determine if the town will suspend the collection of the school and ministerial taxes to some future period." Verily it must have seemed at times that this little world of Waldoboro "was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep." But there were those few who were always seeking to extricate themselves from this chaos. From such absurdities and uncertain- ties the central district (No. 6) sought to protect itself, and in December 1812 got a motion through a small Town Meeting to the effect "that the village district be a school district by itself." This caused the heathen to rage, and the action was rescinded at the larger March meeting the following year. It seemed an almost warranted conclusion that the majority of the people in the town wanted no education, nor did it want anyone else to have any.
At the close of the War of 1812 interest in education seems to have quickened, and the battle for it was resumed with greater vigor. Many influential Puritans had sizable families coming into school age and the full weight of their prestige was thrown to the
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support of education, although the struggle remained a slow, uphill affair, not now against German schools, but against indifference, ignorance, and to some degree vested power in the person of the inefficient and parsimonious district agent with his penchant for the cheapest teachers in the market. In the March meeting of 1815 a motion was passed directing the school committee "to report to the selectmen such schoolmasters as have kept or may keep any school in this town without having obtained legal certificates, and that the Selectmen be directed to present them to the Grand Jury." This was a move tackling an effect, not a cause, for the real causa- tive factor of evil was the agent representing the district.
Another step ahead was taken in the March meeting of 1816 when it was voted that "the settled clergymen and the selectmen be the committee to examine Schoolmasters and to visit all schools in the town." The trouble with these forward steps was that too few of them were implemented by vigorous action, and even this latest gesture seems to show that the voters were still dodging the legal requirement of electing a superintending school committee. Some years they would have one and some years they would not, although such an organization came the next year at a meeting of February 28, 1817, and it had a resolute membership, Colonel Isaac G. Reed, Henry Flagg, Dr. John Manning, and the Reverends Starman and Mitchell. At this same meeting there was a backward step, however, for a report of the selectmen on the designating and numbering of the school districts in the town was rejected. Such a plan apparently assigned too many of the voters to districts they did not wish to be in.
The village people acted. Despairing of securing a district organization for the schools, they petitioned the town in 1818 and at the March meeting secured favorable action for the formation of their own district "around and near the town bridge." This district was strictly defined by an enumeration of the families living in it. The following year at a small May meeting the district secured a recognition of its geographical limits and voted "to build at their own expense a good School House and to keep a Grammar School throughout the year." This vote was carried by the narrow margin of sixty-three ayes to fifty-seven nays. This was a new advance in Waldoboro education, for it meant a school whose curriculum carried some of the higher subjects, such as grammar, geography, Latin and mathematics beyond arithmetic, and from which students as they were "judged ripe" might be received into college. This lift to education widened the rift between town and country, for while the village was becoming better educated the back-districts were at the same time becoming more ignorant and illiterate. It was an oil and water relationship. There was no inte- gration.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
Toward the end of the second decade of the century the school committee was made up of energetic and competent citizens and on March 6, 1820, it moved for some simple reforms. Its brief report, the first such of a school committee in the history of the town, follows:
The Committee on Schools beg leave to report that it is necessary that some regular system should be adopted by the Town for the better organization and government of the schools. To aid in effecting this ob- ject they would recommend the following rules for adoption.
1st. That the Selectmen be directed to issue no town orders for school money to any district School Committee, unless said committee shall produce a certificate from the General School Committee that the instructor employed by them, was legally qualified for the task.
2nd. That it shall be the duty of the committee for each School dis- trict to inform the Chairman of the General School Committee when their school will commence and when it will close; and when so in- formed, it shall be the duty of said General School Committee, or of a part of them, to visit said schools, to observe their development and the improvement of the Scholars.
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