USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 25
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I, George Allen, was born at North Yarmouth, October 29, 1801. My father died at sea when I was an infant. My mother with her fa- ther's family moved from North Yarmouth to Gloucester, probably in the year 180-two or three. Year 1812 I left home to live with my grand-
4Assessors' books of 1822.
5Lincoln County News, July 23, 1875.
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father Elwell in the town of Bradford and remained with him three years. In year 1815, October I came to Waldoboro to live with my uncle, Payn Elwell, and rem'd with him until year 1823 June.
On June 16, 1820, Avery Rawson "in consideration of the sum of $500 sold to William Haskell of Greenwich, Massachu- setts the Barnard family rights by the dam on the river ... to work clothing works and a carding machine."6 Haskell shortly became a partner of William Sproul in his milling enterprises and in this way there began a relationship between the two families which was to last for upwards of half a century. Hither in 1821 came Haskell's young nephew, Bela B., destined to become one of the town's leaders in its great period. Young Haskell was born at Hard- wich, Massachusetts, October 27, 1805. At the age of sixteen he walked to Boston and took a packet for Waldoboro where he started his apprenticeship in his uncle's carding mill. Shortly there- after he went to Windsor for three years of practical study in a carding and cloth mill. Returning to Waldoboro young Bela fur- ther cemented the Sproul-Haskell partnership by marrying Elzira, daughter of William Sproul and one of the town's most eligible and desirable young women.
Thereafter his rise was rapid. He went into trade with his brother-in-law, George Sproul, and in 1837 formed a partnership with Isaac Reed which lasted ten years. His interests continued to expand, embracing shipbuilding and the collectorship during the administrations of Taylor and Fillmore. He was the first superin- tendent of schools and the first and only cashier of the Waldoboro Bank. The fine brick residence, now the home of Senator Frederick Payne, was built by William Sproul for his daughter, Mrs. Haskell. Death came to Bela B. on April 24, 1887, while he was on a visit with his daughter, Harriet, at Godfrey, Illinois.
The founder of the Hovey family in the town, Alfred Hovey, was in Waldoboro as early as 1827, for in that year he was ap- pointed as an auctioneer by the selectmen. On April 25, 1822, John and George Achorn sold to Robert C. Webb of Newcastle, tanner, for $85, one acre and twenty square rods on the west side of the river above the Great Falls.7 Young Mr. Webb had already taught school in Waldoboro and beginning in 1822, established a tannery on the river on the property purchased. Subsequently he enlarged his holdings and built the home occupied for many years by his son, Avery Webb, and now the residence of James Harkins.
By the spring of 1823 Squire John Bulfinch, of Boston, Bel- fast, and Union, a Harvard graduate, was in Waldoboro. On March 1st he acquired a toe hold to the property on which he built his
6Lincoln County Register of Deeds (Wiscasset, Me.), Bk. 110, p. 86. "Ibid., Bk. 117, p. 101.
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lovely home. Mr. Bulfinch was a shrewd and thrifty squire, and his interests in the town expanded rapidly and came to include the law, shipping, milling, surveying, and real estate. In August of the following year he extended his holding down to the river by pur- chasing of Hugh Coleman for $130 "one half of a grist or corn mill owned with John Freeman, on the east side of Medomak River at Medomak Falls8 near the dwelling house of Hugh Coleman."9 Squire Bulfinch's rise to wealth and prominence is closely inte- grated with the history of the town.
In 1834 came John Balch from Haverhill where he had been born in 1800. He established a drug business in the town, served as a Democrat in the Legislature from 1857 to 1859, and as postmaster from 1839 to 1849. His name still clings to the southwestern cor- ner in the village square. Mrs. Delia Hastings is the last of his descendants still living in the town. In the 1830's Ezra B. French opened a law office in Sproul's new block, and two new doctors settled in the town, Dr. Elijah A. Daggett and Dr. Hiram Bliss. Dr. Daggett, a descendant of Thomas Daggett and Ruth Athearn of Martha's Vineyard, Warren, and Union, was born in 1803. He received his medical degree from Bowdoin College in 1833, and came to Waldoboro to establish a practice. He married Ruth Ann Waters of Jefferson. Two children, Ann and Athearn, were born of this union. For a century and a quarter this family, the de- scendants of Dr. Elijah, have maintained their local connections. The Doctor's great grandson, Athern Park Daggett, is the present William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Constitutional and Inter- national Law and Government at Bowdoin College.
Dr. Bliss was a Dartmouth graduate. Coming from Bradford, Vermont, he made his appearance and established himself in prac- tice at Waldoboro in 1833, where he continued his work until his death in 1874. In 1843 Dr. Bliss rode in his old gig from Waldo- boro to Boston for the express purpose of hearing Daniel Webster deliver his oration at the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument on June 17, 1843.10
Parker McCobb, Jr., came to the town in the mid 1830's. He was of the McCobb family of Phippsburg, a son of the Parker who in 1825, when Lafayette visited Portland, was adjudged to have the only carriage in the state suitable for the great guest to ride in. In 1845 he held for a short time a temporary appointment as Col- lector of Customs. The young man was the betrothed of Mary Katherine Samson (b. 1812) but the marriage never came about, since young Parker was drowned from a packet while on a trip from Waldoboro to Boston.
8Lincoln County Deeds, Bk. 126, p. 203.
"The site of the present Lovell Mansion.
10S. L. Boardman, Private Libraries of Bangor (Bangor, 1900).
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In 1839 Alexander Young moved into the town from Pleasant Point, Cushing. With him came a son George, two years old and a daughter Ann, four. He built a brick home on Dog Lane which was burned in the fire of 1854, with only the north wall left stand- ing. Within a year he rebuilt the house occupied in recent years by his granddaughter, Edna M. Young. Alexander was a carpenter and master builder. With Edwin Achorn and Justin Kennedy he built the clipper ship Edwin Achorn which was burned at Mus- congus in 1855. This was a terrific loss to Mr. Young, but with the vitality characteristic of the times he promptly mortgaged his home to help in meeting bills due on her construction. Death came in a fall from the barn on the Ritz farm, where he was generously giving a day of labor to the shingling of the building.
The 1820's and 30's were the heyday of the military muster, a day or days set aside for all the militia units of a district to as- semble at a rendezvous for maneuver and muster. Waldoboro was a community interested and active in this now outmoded method of military readiness, and it furnished to the state organization some of its highest ranking and most competent officers, including Colo- nel Isaac G. Reed, and Brigadier Generals Henry H. Kennedy and William S. Cochran. This movement had received great impetus from the War of 1812, and at the close of the struggle Waldoboro had become the mobilization center for the "3rd Reg., 2nd Brigade and 11th Division of the Massachusetts militia." The officers were elected by the men, and Waldoboro being the largest Third Regi- ment town, furnished a majority of the privates and thus was able to elect all the officers from its own numbers. Such dominance was deeply resented in the smaller associated towns, and led first to friction and later to the utter breakdown of regimental morale and the disbandment of some of the companies.
Before proceeding to the bizarre account of the last muster of the associated towns, we should seek a glimpse of such a military gathering over a century ago, that gala day for the countryside, similar to the later ship launchings or agricultural fairs. Since we are over a century removed from the last muster, there is no re- course left other than the account of one familiar with them in his boyhood years. Such an eyewitness narrative follows:
The days on which they took place were among the few holidays of New England. ... Eagerness was manifested in securing modes of con- veyance to the muster-field. Persons who had relatives or intimate ac- quaintances in the vicinity went the day before. Others travelled in the night .... Along the roads were men, women and boys, on foot, hasten- ing forward with as much ardor as if the existence of the nation de- pended on their being there at the earliest practicable moment. Upon their coming together from various places, the pulse was quickened and more energy aroused by the rapid driving, the loud talking, the trooping
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of the boys, the beating of drums, and the marching and countermarch- ing of companies, before going upon the field. Then there were the offi- cers' loud tones of command, the crowding of people, the occasional cry- ing of children and barking and yelping of dogs, the glittering of guns and bayonets, the nodding of plumes, and the indescribable feeling ex- perienced on seeing the machine-like movements of a large mass of liv- ing beings when marching and drilling. From towns far and near was poured in a great tide of life. Temporary tents, wheelbarrows, stands, handcarts, and horse wagons with produce, lined the muster-field and places of congregating. Rum and brandy and gins; gingerbread, cake and molasses; honey, new cider and apples; ham and bread and sausages; cheese and oysters and crackers; doughnuts and pies and peppermints; clothes, hats and tin-ware; in short, almost all things which could be bought or be sold were brought together and exposed in great profu- sion. .. . Fiddlers played, the lads and lassies danced; and on planks and slabs temporarily laid down, clowns exercised themselves with the dou- ble shuffle. Old topers got drunk and swore, and others became tip- plers. The irritable would become angry and strip off their coats, and then a cry would be raised, "a fight, a fight!" and a crowd, unless the constables interfered, would run and gather around in a ring, to give the combatants room and see that they had fair play. Everybody seemed to be trying to be happy in his own way; and, amid the vast variety of character, habits and tastes which were brought together, there were, of course, many queer manifestations of enjoyment. So great has been the change within thirty years, particularly where the temperance movement has had control, that the young have no adequate idea of the old musters of New England which were substantially the same on Boston Common and in the town of Waldoborough.11
Thus writes John L. Sibley, a native of the town of Union and onetime Librarian of Harvard University.
Until the militia faded from the picture with its last muster, the regimental unit from this district was dominated by the es- quirearchy of Waldoboro Village. The local dons held the major commands, ordered all musters held in Waldoboro, and assigned difficult and unpleasant duties to the lesser officers from other towns. These high-handed practices stirred the resentment of the companies and the populace from the adjoining towns, and finally flared into an open rebellion led by the company from Union. Sibley devoted four chapters in his History of Union to this epi- sode which led to "the entire overthrow of all military organiza- tion" in that town.
The bill of grievances leading to the revolt, some trivial and some weighty, was a long one. A few of these follow, though not necessarily in logical sequence. A high-ranking Waldoboro officer invited the officers from the adjoining towns to a dinner in his "marquee" at the time of a muster. This was assumed to have been an act of courtesy on the part of the local squire, and no end of surprise was engendered when the officer on dispersal observed "in a manner not to be misunderstood, that he trusted no one would
11John L. Sibley, History of the Town of Union (Boston, 1851), pp. 384-386.
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go away without leaving a dollar." (The spirit of thrift so char- acteristic of early Waldoboro folk was indeed slow in giving way to the finer graces.) Elections were apparently manipulated too frequently in the interest of local aspirants; positions of precedence on the muster-fields were usually assigned to Waldoboro com- panies irrespective of the dates of the commissions of the captains in command; musters were always held in Waldoboro; the charges for refreshments and in stores smacked of profiteering and led the companies and people from adjacent towns to bring their supplies with them; and it was alleged that Waldoboro influence reached even into the legislature and secured the passage of military meas- ures favoring the local junta.
Long suppressed feelings broke into the open in the muster of 1824. The Union Rifle Company commanded by Captain Lewis Bachelder and the Union Infantry Company commanded by Cap- tain John P. Robbins had marched a good part of the night and reached Waldoboro in a rainstorm on the morning of September 8th, cold, wet, and cross. The latter assembled near the Old North Church, and the former on the open space now occupied by the Baptist Church, directly across from the house12 of the Colonel, Avery Rawson. Curt messages were exchanged between colonel and captain. Finally a positive order came to quarter the Union men in some barns and sheds. The Captain replied that he would not "put his company into a barn or shed in Waldoborough," and as to hiring quarters he would not do it. He then proceeded to shelter his men in the lee of the Congregational Church where Captain Robbins' men were assembled.
Soon the two companies fell in and started parading the streets to the music of a funeral dirge, "Pleyels German Hymn," as an insult to the Teutonic origin of the local citizens. The word was passed around among the soldiers that the Colonel was dead, for otherwise he would not permit soldiers to stand around in the rain. "He must be dead!" So with arms reversed and to the music of muffled drums, they marched by the Colonel's house and up Main Street. By some it is alleged they went as far as the gate at the head of the lane leading to the Central Cemetery. What happened there is not known, but a little later John C. Robbins came forward and announced to the companies that the Colonel was dead and that he had just been buried under arms.
During the march the next day to Smouse's Field,13 the Union companies lagged awkwardly and conspicuously in the face of repeated orders "to lengthen step." On the field conditions wor- sened. One of the Warren men procured a fife and took his sta- tion outside the muster-field near the gate. When Colonel Rawson
12The present Waltz Funeral Home.
13The present farm of Millard Winchenbach.
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marched through the gate the fifer struck up the "Rogue's March." As the Colonel passed along the musicians of the Rifle Company struck up the same march. Orders to cease the music were at first put off, and on insistence the bearer of the Colonel's message was told by the Captain of the Union Company that he could not be accommodated. In the subsequent maneuvering on the field the execution of the Union men was markedly ragged. In wheeling the men would scatter. When in line some would fall in the rear and others advance. "In ordering arms some guns would be put on the ground and others raised. In carrying arms they were in all posi- tions from the erect to the horizontal." As the time approached for firing and the order was issued: "Make ready!", a Union man from the ranks shouted: "Fire!" All in his vicinity fired. Again on the order: "Take aim!", the word "Fire" would be given from another quarter of the ranks and there would follow another discharge of guns. This soon broke into an incessant, irregular, scattering fire along the Union line. Thus did the muster end in chaos. The Union troops stole off to the rear, two or three together, and before the time for dismissal came, every member of the Union Infantry ex- cept the captain and one private was gone. "The regiment at last left in confusion. The soldiers and spectators swung their hats and sent up loud shouts and hurrahs, and thus amid uproar, storm and drenching rain, ended the day."14
The aftermath of this black muster came in the form of charges and counter charges. Those against Colonel Rawson were suppressed, supposedly by the Brigadier General. On the other hand, the recalcitrant Union officers were court-martialled and convicted on some of the accounts preferred. This episode prac- tically brought to a finish militia activity in Union, but there is no evidence to show that the Waldoboro grip on affairs of the Third Regiment was shaken to the slightest degree.
The Germans of Old Broad Bay and their Puritan neighbors of Waldoboro were almost from the beginning hair-trigger liti- gants. Particularly marked was this disposition in these years of rapid growth. The town was a lawyers' paradise. The economic expansion that was under way led to all sorts of new ventures co- operative and competitive. Everybody was feverishly engaged in making money every way that it could be made, and some as al- ways were engaged in ways in which it should not be made. There was much loaning and borrowing of capital, and some inability to pay it back; there were also many competing for the same chance. All this stir led to constant clashes, and clashes led to the arbitra- ment of the law. Hearings were held in lawyers' offices and the records show that they were affairs of surprising frequency.
14Based on Sibley, History of Union, Chaps. 39, 40.
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The scenes were usually staged in the offices of Reed, Bul- finch, French and Parks, and the cases covered land disputes, boun- dary disputes, failure on loans, complaints of bastardy, stealing of hay, threats, assaults, in short, every difference common to clash- ing humans in a growing society.15 In the 1820's in a period of five years there were no less than sixty-six such actions at village hear- ings, not to mention the cases tried in the regular sessions of the Court at Wiscasset and Warren. Libel was a frequent charge and a typical case was that of the State vs. Jacob Kaler, "libel charge of publishing Charles Welt as having boar service for sows." This action indicated some sense of humor on the part of Mr. Kaler, but one that caused Mr. Welt some degree of annoyance and em- barrassment, and so it became the subject of a suit.
In the course of these two decades there were events that came to pass which do not admit of historical integration, but which because of their human interest merit passing mention. They follow as miscellaneous items:
On July 24, 1821, Avery and Harriet (Barnard) Rawson sold to William Groton of Waldoboro the northwestern corner lot in the Four Corners in the village for $2500.16 Mr. Groton erected a building on this lot which was used for many years as a store and residence. This site was later occupied by the Matthews Block and in our time by Gay's Store.
"Uncle Valtin" kept bobbing to the surface from time to time in his lifetime, in the third decade as a squatter overtaken by re- tributive justice. When he settled on a plot of land in the woody recesses of East Waldoboro, he did so without purchase or authori- zation from the proprietor, General Henry Knox. Nor was the General ever able to dispossess the old magician, buttressed as he doubtless was by the Power of Darkness. On the General's death many of his claims against squatters on his lands were sold to a real-estate manipulator, Benjamin Joy of Boston. In 1823 by means not known Mr. Joy forced Uncle Valtin to redeem his ninety-one acres in East Waldoboro for $91.00. Whether these dollars changed overnight in Mr. Joy's strongbox into ninety-one wooden chips is not a matter of record.
In 1827 the towns were exempted by the state from keep- ing military stores, and the powder house on Prock's ledge was abandoned.
On August 7, 1823, a meteor exploded in the northwestern district of the town and quantities of stone fell on the border of Waldoboro, Nobleboro, and Jefferson.
15 Docket of the Clerk, Wm. Manning, Nov. 27, 1823, in my possession; also private papers of Col. I. G. Reed.
16Lincoln Co. Deeds, Bk. 115, p. 20.
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In these decades a few of the wealthier began bricking up the old fireplaces for the first cook stoves which came in after 1820. Parlor stoves followed a little later. In 1839 George D. Smouse and Isaac Reed purchased parlor stoves for their "front rooms." Fric- tion matches displaced the old tinderbox and steel; windlasses and pumps appeared in place of the old well sweep. Threshing ma- chines came in around 1837, and the horse rake a little earlier.
In 1829 a miracle occurred in Waldoboro. Colonel Isaac G. Reed, appointed in the Adams administration, became postmaster in that of the most Democrat of all Democrats, Andrew Jackson. All efforts to find ground for his holding the appointment have been in vain. For ten years the Waldoboro Democrats were res- tive, but all attempts to displace the Colonel, even those of some of his own political stripe, failed, until 1838 during the Van Buren administration.
In 1824 a bridge was erected in place of the old boom at Bulfinch's. This was administered as a toll bridge until some years later when it was taken over by the town.
"Commodore Samuel Tucker, born in Marblehead, 1747, died at Bremen 1833. He was buried there a bleak, stormy day in March. His friend, Denny McCobb, of the Port of Waldoboro was with him at death."
Around 1835 George Sproul, the son of William, moved the old Sproul residence back from the northwest corner, the site of the present Benner Shoe Store, and erected a brick block extending southward part of the way to Dog Lane. Although this block was subsequently destroyed in "the great fire," it did set the fashion in future architecture, a village of brick in the place of a village of wood.
The following notice is of interest bearing as it does on the mode and cost of travel in this period. "Stages leave Bath, 9:00 A.M., and 3:00 P.M., for Wiscasset, Newcastle, Waldoboro, Rockland, Belfast." The fare from Wiscasset to Waldoboro was $1.50, and also $1.50 from the latter place to Camden.17
A note on the medical practices of the period, especially in the treatment of tuberculosis is contained in a letter of Colonel Isaac G. Reed to his son Charles in Boston. Commenting in detail on the last illness of Sarah Webb and Bertha Farrington, the Colo- nel adds: "She, Sarah, has had no physician and has relied on the efficacy of Wistar's Cherry Balsam and her mother's prescriptions."
The Reed family correspondence furnishes many an inter- esting sidelight on a wide variety of the details of local life. For example, in a letter of Isaac Reed's, October 27, 1832, we learn a bit of the speed of travel. He tells his half-brother, Gorham Smouse,
17Letter in possession of Mrs. Jason Westerfield of Camden, Me.
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that a trip from Waldoboro to the office of Mr. Joseph Ballister, a friend of the Reed family in Boston, "consumes exactly 48 hours." The costs of education, too, are illuminating. Edward, the young son of Colonel Reed, while attending Union College in Schenec- tady, New York, was required to furnish to his father his expense account figured down to the last fraction of a penny. The young man's "total expense for a term of eighteen weeks in 1833, including travel to the New York town, was $60.73 3/4." He also gives us some idea of Squire Bulfinch's physical stature when he observed that his "Professor Jackson in Trig., was very small, about the size of Mr. Bulfinch."
The salvation of souls was an obsession of Waldoboro folk until comparatively late in the nineteenth century. Bearing on this strange concern, the following furnishes an insight too rich to be by-passed. The time is November in the 1830's. Sally in Waldoboro is writing to her sister, Hannah Shepard, at Appleton Ridge Plan- tation, about a revival going on in the town. These are her com- ments:
The Reformation is still going on. They are more encouraged than ever. Five or six obtain hope every week. Harriet Blanchard and George Allen have a hope. There are some in almost every house under concern of mind in this neighborhood, not any in our house serious. It seems as if the Lord had passed by us. I am as bad as ever I was. Mr. Tappen [revivalist from Augusta] was at our house today. He says he can't say more to me than he has said. He says I am in a lamentable condition. Jacob Lape is converted and Betsy Lash and Augustus. It would take
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