USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 28
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Dow's evaluation of the state condition is a fair and accurate appraisal of conditions in Waldoboro. The ledger9 of Charles Bruce, who kept a general store in the town with a license to sell liquor, shows all too clearly the extent to which rum had estab- lished itself. Of the names of the many town worthies appearing in the ledger those who did not purchase liquor regularly were the exceptions. In many cases such purchases were a daily occur- rence. Typical entries with names omitted follow: "1/2 pint of rum, .20; 1 mug of flip, .10; 1 gill rum, .10; 1/2 mug of flip, .13; 1 cordial, rum, .15; 1 brandy, .10; 1 qt. of wine, .37; 21/2 gals. of rum, $3.12." Sales of rum far outran tea and coffee, while the sales of tobacco were surprisingly occasional.
Dow was also correct on the participation of churchmen in this profitable but demoralizing business. The license lists for the year 1818 show licenses granted to Mary Barnard and Sarah Trow- bridge, innholders, and to the following storekeepers or retailers: Henry Flagg, Payne Elwell, George Demuth, Avery Rawson, Charles Kaler, Thomas Appleton, Horace Rawson, John Hale, and Benjamin Arnold. Many of these men were pillars, and Payne Elwell was the number one deacon of the Established Church. The license list of 1832 is even more revealing. It contains the names of William and J. R. Groton, George D. Smouse, Henry Flagg, Henry Kennedy, Sproul and Haskell, Joseph Clark, Frederic Castner, Thomas Appleton, William R. Webb, Charles K. Miller, William H. Barnard, Demuth and Smouse, Francis S. Sproul, Charles Sampson, Samuel Feyler, and George Kaler. This is an impressive list, recording as it does the town's leading citizens and business- men, many of whom were staunch churchmen, while General Henry Kennedy was shortly to become the number one Baptist of the town. Clearly the large Waldoboro fortunes were supple-
8Louis C. Hatch, A History of Maine, I, 296-297.
"Ledger for years 1816-17, in possession of Mrs. Warren W. Creamer, Waldo- boro, Me.
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mented from sources other than shipbuilding. It is also significant that the name of Reed appears on none of these lists.
With drinking in the town well-nigh universal, with drunk- enness common and with pauperism due thereto becoming an in- creasing public burden, a reaction was inevitable. Public opinion was slowly marshalling itself against the liquor evil; a new morality was becoming resurgent and it was led by some of the very men who had been beneficiaries of the traffic. It started first as a tem- perance movement, its objective being the saner, more moderate, and more restricted use of liquor. When it became clear that such goals were not attainable, the issue was then joined for prohibition, and the century-long battle started that reached its climax in the Volstead Act and National Prohibition in our own times.
In Waldoboro the first faint rumblings of a resurgent moral- ity began in the first decades of the century. It was felt in small but unmistakable ways, a public conscience awakening as it were in protest against godlessness and lawlessness. It was but a feeble gesture in 1809, when a Town Meeting authorized a committee to wait on the Reverend Mr. Cutting and to request him to invoke the guidance of God on the meeting.10 By 1813 the spirit of pro- test had become stronger and those guilty of disturbing the peace by drunken rioting and profanity were indirectly threatened with the displeasure of the law, when "an act to prevent routs, riots, etc., and also an act to prevent cursing and swearing" were read in Town Meeting by the town clerk "as the law directs." Isaac G. Reed was now in town, and the Colonel was a lawyer who knew the Massachusetts statutes. In such moves we may possibly detect his suggestive touch. By 1817 public opinion in the town had crys- tallized in sufficient strength to come to grips with the liquor power, and at a meeting of May 12th, on a motion of Deacon Elwell, the following resolution was passed, by what margin of votes we do not know:
Resolved as the sense of the town of Waldoboro that the vice of Intoxication hath in this town attained to an extent ruinous to morals, destructive to health, and injurious to those addicted to it. Resolved that a speedy and decisive check must be given to this alarming vice to pre- vent exhorbitant expenses and merited disgrace from coming on our town. Resolved that the Selectmen be directed to use all legal means in their power to prevent the vending of rum and other spirtuous liquors in small quantities contrary to law, and endeavor to put a stop to intoxi- cation in any other way that seems to them advisable. Resolved that all magistrates and public officers of every kind be requested to aid and assist the Selectmen in their endeavors to check this great and growing evil.11
10Records of the Town Clerk, Feb. 15, 1809.
11Records of Town Clerk, May 12, 1817.
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This was not a prohibition but a temperance move made on the part of one who had been himself a vendor of liquor. The only legal step that could be taken under Massachusetts law was to apprehend those selling liquor in small quantities without a li- cense, namely, the bootleggers. But this would only divert their business to the licensed operators and mean larger profits for the legal traffic. Did the Deacon offer this resolution with his tongue in his cheek? We shall not presume to say, but there were results. The selectmen did something, not everything, but something. They did not, however, strike the liquor ration from the account of laborers working for the town, for when the fishways were built on the upper falls "one gallon of rum at Boardman's" at $1.34 was allowed to the workmen. They did clamp down on the poor topers, however, whose drinking was heading them and their fami- lies in the direction of the poorhouse. This was done by enjoining all vendors in a formal writ not to serve any liquor to the near pauper. Many such writs were served and the following is typical of the form used:
To all persons who are licensed to sell spirituous liquors in the town of Waldoboro.
Whereas J -- B -- of said town, as it hath been made to appear to us, doth by excessive drinking of spirituous liquors, so misspend, waste or lessen his estate, as thereby to expose himself and family to want or indigent circumstances, or the town to a charge and expense for his maintenance, or the support of his family:
We therefore the Selectmen of said town, agreeably to a law of the Commonwealth in such cases made and provided, do hereby forbid you to sell to him, the said J -- B -- , any wine, beer, ale, cider, brandy, rum or other strong liquors, for the space of one year from the date hereof. Given under our hands this 1st day of May, A.D. 1819.
Charles Miller Henry Flagg Jacob Ludwig, Jr. Selectmen of Waldoboro
Such measures exercised only a slightly deterrent effect. But the anti-liquor crusade was on the march, and on March 20, 1821, the Legislature of the new state passed a license law to regulate further the sale of liquor. The fee for such a license was $6.00, and the penalty for selling without a license was a fine of not over $50.00, for common illegal selling, and not over $10.00, for a single unauthorized sale. The law sought further to limit unlicensed sales by providing that licenses were to be granted to those "of sober life and conversation." The half of all fines under $20.00 was to go to the informers of illegal sales, and sheriffs, their deputies, con- stables, and tithingmen were directed to furnish the selectmen with the names of all those who used liquor to excess, and "all good citi- zens in the state" were exhorted to do the same. Such measures
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only proved themselves ineffective, and further legislative acts were passed in rapid sequence. In 1829 a local option ordinance was made effective forbidding victuallers and retailers to sell liquor to be drunk on the premises, taverners excepted. There was a pro- vision in the law, however, to the effect that any town at its annual meeting might allow its licensing board to authorize the drinking of liquor on the premises on such conditions as might be pre- scribed by the selectmen.
Waldoboro made use of this latter provision. In 1832 it granted licenses to three innholders and fifteen individuals or firms. In the meantime there was a new inn in the town. William and James R. Groton had acquired the northwesterly of the four vil- lage corners and had put up a building on this site which housed their store and inn. In 1833 a new state law made it mandatory for the selectmen to insert an article in the annual warrant which would leave to the voters to settle whether or not licenses should be granted for the sale of liquor to be drunk on the premises. The voters promptly acquiesced and this same year such licenses were granted to four innholders and ten retailers.
Meanwhile a strong temperance movement was developing in the state. In 1818 the first church in the state went on record as holding the use of intoxicating liquors by members a cause of church discipline. In Waldoboro the rising Baptist and Methodist sects early took a militant stand on the liquor issue. The Estab- lished Church, having so many of its most influential members engaged in the traffic, was somewhat slower in falling into line, but on the whole, the churches were strongly backing the struggle against the drink-evil, and were active in calling the first State Conference of Temperance Societies in 1834, which ended in the setting up of a state organization. Colonel Isaac G. Reed was presi- dent of the society in Lincoln County. This included the out-and- out prohibitionists along with those supporting the cause of tem- perance who did not advocate total abstinence. Thomas D. Currier was the secretary for Waldoboro. The second annual report of the Maine Temperance Society furnishes a picture of conditions in Waldoboro, which is interesting, albeit somewhat overdrawn. A condensation of it follows:
Waldoborough. There were two deaths by intemperance in 1833, "each leaving a widow and four destitute children." Several have commenced a reform in 1834, and those who had previously commenced generally persevere. There are two or three who have returned to "their cups." Several vessels were built in 1833 with- out ardent spirits, and it is said with considerable less expense for labor than those where rum was used, and also in a better manner with much more comfort to all concerned. "Three or four profes-
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sors of religion refuse to join the society and one keeps a tippling shop."
This report then offers certain statistics, those on Waldoboro being here excerpted:
"The number of retailers and taverners who have become in- temperate .. . Waldoborough, 23," the largest by far in the county. "In 1833, cases of delirium tremens" ... Waldoborough, 2; deaths, 2; divorces, 1. ... Temperance papers subscribed to in Waldo- borough, 10 Advocates, and 2 Genius of Temperance. .. . Licenses granted to sell spirits to be drunk in shops by vote of the town . . . Waldoborough, yes. Buildings are raised, vessels built, launched and navigated, and highway taxes wrought without ardent spirits generally, Waldoborough, yes. Military officers treat their soldiers with ardent spirits? ... in Waldoborough, yes. Mechanics are not furnished with spirits at 11:00 and 4:00 o'clock as formerly in Waldoborough. Ardent spirits and wine are generally used at social parties? ... in Waldoborough, yes. The consumption of wine, cider and strong beer has increased during the year 1833? . . . in Waldoborough, no."12
It may be noted that the query on the use of liquors omits any reference to rum, Waldoboro's favorite drink. Possibly the report was able to assume a more roseate hue in consequence.
The active and influential members in the temperance move- ment in the town during these years were George Allen, Payne Elwell, James P. Pond, and Isaac G. Reed. Colonel Reed, the leader, was in no sense a total abstainer himself, but he did see the human wastage in the liquor traffic, and he hated it and fought it with something of the same fanaticism that he felt in religion and politics.
The tenor of the Temperance Society reports does not re- ceive the full confirmation of other sources. For instance, on March 6, 1837, the town's budget committee speaks out in the following language:
Your committee views with alarm the rapid increase of Pauperism and are aware that it is unusual for the Committee on Accounts to re- port the expenses incurred for the support of Paupers and the cause of Pauperism, yet your Committee consider it their duty and the duty of every taxpayer to inquire in what way it may be diminished.
The expense incurred this year in the support of paupers was $884.04; the expense for the five-year period from 1832 to 1837, computed with interest, was $4067.04, and then comes the follow- ing significant comment: "Pauperism, your committee after an examination, find in nine cases out of ten to be caused by Intem- perance."13
12Published in Ellsworth, Me., 1834. 13Clerk's Records of March 6, 1837.
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During the 30's the liquor issue was becoming increasingly acute. It was the theme of an annual battle in Town Meeting, and the temperance forces, waxing stronger each year, fell into the practice of using the same lawless means employed by the up- holders of the liquor traffic. For instance, throughout the state it was a common practice in the mid-hours of the night to saw down the trees in orchards where it was known that the fruit was largely diverted to cider. In Waldoboro the exponents of temperance were neither so quiet, secretive or subtle, for here the mob resorted to riot tactics and vented its wrath and disapproval ruthlessly on the community's extreme and unregenerate tipplers. Jane Ann in her correspondence furnishes an account of two such riots taking place in Waldoboro on successive nights. To her sister, Mary, on a visit in Bangor she writes:
Last Tuesday night a mob took Jimmy Adams and his wife out of bed and ducked them in the river, and another Irishman who was in the house, drunk with them. Wednesday evening between 10 and 12 o'clock, a mob of upwards of a hundred persons collected and tore McGarrett's house14 almost to the ground, all the windows are broken out, the roof partly off, one end and the backside torn down. They also gave Adams and his wife a second ducking. McGarretts are trying to get someone to prosecute the rioters, have been to Warren for the purpose. I could hear them strike their fire hooks into the house, (they had them made purposely) and hear them tear off the boards. There was a ter- rible noise. ... I felt glad Gorham was not at home, as he might have been among the rioters if he had. Bela Haskell came near getting his arm broken by a stone thrown by some of the McGarrett's crew.15
In view of such happenings it may be said that the rising morality of the town was truly insurgent, and the crusade against liquor was giving small heed to the niceties of law. The McGarretts sought justice in vain, for the town did nothing more than abate the schoolhouse tax on their property in 1841, and pay the collec- tor his cost on the same.
It can be easily imagined in view of such riotous action how bitterly the battle waged in the Town Meetings between the two opposing forces. The temperance faction won its first signal vic- tory in the meeting of April 15, 1839, when it was voted for "the current year" not to license the "storekeepers to have ardent spirits drunk in their stores or shops." The even balance of power be- tween the opposing factions is revealed in the fact that this article was passed by a margin of only six votes. The mandate of the vot- ers, however, received scant consideration from the retailers, who continued to violate the ordinance. In consequence they were ar- rested in due season, brought to trial, and the town was authorized
14 At Kaler's Corner. A hangout for the tough and foreign element in the town.
15 Letter written at Waldoboro, June 13, 1835. In possession of Dr. Benj. Kin- sell, Dallas, Texas.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
to collect the fines imposed, but in this matter the voters relented and at the meeting of January 30, 1843, it was "voted to remit the fines to the retailers on whom fines were imposed at the last court, by their giving a written pledge that they will sell no more ardent spirits in violation of the law or until they are duly licensed."16 At the March meeting of the same year the town, in view of the restrictions placed on the sale of liquor, authorized the town treas- urer to keep a stock of all kinds of spirituous liquors and wines for "medicinal and mechanical purposes," and "to keep a list of all persons purchasing with respective quantities and prices to each."
The noose was getting tighter all the time both in the town and state. In 1846 a prohibition law was passed by wide margins in both the house and senate, a law which forbade the use of spir- ituous liquors except for "medicinal and mechanical purposes," and for such sales the towns were authorized to appoint a limited number of agents. That such a restriction was on the way had been clearly realized for some time, and the issue became a bitter one in town politics for the election of local officers who would be sympathetic to, and enforce such a law. The very briefest glimpse of conditions in Waldoboro in the year 1845 is furnished by a let- ter of Colonel Reed to his son Charles in Boston. "Old Mr. Groton" provides the text for the Colonel's observations. He apparently had little love for Mr. Groton, James R., to be exact. Mr. Groton was one of those Universalists who had worsted the Colonel's "pulpit guard" in their religious joust fifteen years before, and who subsequently owned and operated the tavern on Gay's Cor- ner, which in the Colonel's judgment was a veritable sink of in- iquity. Colonel Reed himself now at the end of his own life offers the following observation:
Old Mr. Groton appears to be near the close of his life. Even balls and a dancing school in his house probably will not save him from the shafts of the King of terrors many days - nor will the drunken kept by his wife in the same house. Rum and temperance are waging a great strife here for town officers. The battle is to be fought here at the next town meeting. I hope the ghosts of poor Sproul and Kuhn will be as disheartening to the rummies on this occasion as was that of Caesar at the Battle of Pharsalia.17
Here the Colonel slipped a little on his Shakespeare, but only for a moment, for in his letter of March 31, he located the famous battle correctly as having been fought at Phillipi.
The town now had prohibition, but the liquor issue was not solved. The problem had become one not of the passage of laws, but of the enforcement of a law, and such attempts encountered
16Clerk's Record, Jan. 30, 1843.
17Col. Isaac G. Reed to Charles Reed, Mar. 29, 1845.
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sturdy opposition. Out of the clash of these two factions a long period of lawlessness followed in the town. The temperance party endeavored to enforce its will as represented in the law, and those opposed defended by force what they regarded as their individual rights. The existing factionalism and chaos is briefly glimpsed in a letter of Jane Ann to her brother, Gardner K., under the date of April 25, 1849. She observes:
I dare not venture out alone for Waldoboro has become so no- torious that it is not safe. People can be shot down in the streets and the perpetrators or perpetrator walks abroad with perfect liberty. Waldoboro has changed sadly within a year or two. Virtue is put down and vice exalted. . .. I could fill sheets full of the low, depraved state of things here.18
Jane Ann undoubtedly saw through a glass darkly, but in general her thesis was true, for all the evidence available is cor- roborative. The law was resisted by force, and the more aggres- sive the resisters, the tighter the voters made the law. They had the votes to pass local ordinances making of prohibition an "all- out" law, but they did not have the power to enforce it. In 1852 the voters refused to designate and license an agent to "sell spirits and wines for medicinal and mechanical purposes," thus making the town bone dry, but only so in a legal sense.
Through the sixth decade of the century the town did not miss a single chance to support prohibition at the polls. In 1858, when it voted on an option of prohibition or license, it went all out for prohibition, and then came the Civil War, during which period the issue of slavery transcended that of prohibition, and such enforcement as there had been previously lagged. The war projected a new and powerful element of factionalism into the life of the community, for there was a strong and influential group of Copperheads in the town, and the two factions, both outlawed, made for more lawlessness than had been the case with one alone. In 1861 the town provided for its first "lock-up," after having had no need of such an institution in the first hundred and twenty-five years of its history. Even the children, aping the lawless attitudes of some of their elders, had to be brought under the curb of the law, and on April 13, 1863, the town authorized the selectmen to appoint suitable men for police "to prohibit and bring to justice such boys as make unnecessary noise in public buildings and in the streets, as requested by Luther Webb and twenty-four others."
When the war had ended, the slavery issue was decided but not so the liquor issue. The old struggle of enforcement began again with the temperance mantle of Colonel Reed (now dead) falling on the shoulders of General Henry Kennedy. Over the
18In possession of Dr. Benj. Kinsell, Dallas, Texas.
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years Deacon Kennedy had been becoming increasingly sensitive to moral issues. He had already imposed his code of Blue Laws on the Baptist brethren and sisters. The growth of a more flexible and dynamic morality had given this Baptist pope a bad case of spir- itual jitters, with the result that cardplaying, dancing, drinking, walking, or visiting friends on the Sabbath had been banned for members of his church. Having set his own house in order, he turned to the uncontrolled sale of liquor in the town and the law- lessness ensuing therefrom. At the Town Meeting of April 23, 1866, he secured the passage of two resolutions. The first was worded as follows:
Voted on motion of Deacon Kennedy that no persons shall sell spirituous or intoxicating liquors in this town in violation of the laws of the State, and that it shall be the duty of the Selectmen, and that they shall be authorized and directed by the town to prosecute before a trial justice or otherwise, either in person or by their agents appointed there- unto, all and every person who shall offer for sale any liquors as afore- said.
This mandatory legislation of Deacon Kennedy's shows all too clearly to what extent prohibition was faltering in Waldoboro in the 1860's, and it made clear to the selectmen the voters' intentions on the issue.
The Deacon went further and put teeth in his ordinance. His second resolution directed that "the Selectmen be authorized to appoint five policemen to keep order in the streets of the village and that they be sworn, and supported and backed up by the town in their doings." This enlargement of the police force provides a clue to the character and tone of village life after twenty years of prohibition. Conditions did not change as the result of the law. Neither Colonel Reed, nor Neal Dow, nor Henry Kennedy, nor the prohibitory law nor policemen ever made Waldoboro a dry town, but all these were manifestations of a growing public mo- rality. From the individualism of the frontier days with its laissez- faire morality, from the roistering, drinking tavern days of the Puritans, from the unconscionable appetite of the retailers for prof- its, a reaction came, a resurgence of morality that sought to cudgel a strong and growing town into a condition of decency, but the desired end did not come in this way. It came rather as a result of a slowly developing moral awareness which in the fullness of time led men to outlaw voluntarily conditions which were repellent to their own conscience and judgment.
XXXIX
THE GREAT DAYS
They were more than things of wood and hemp - those old ships. They were at once the flower and symbol of all that was true and great and fine in a passing civilization.
CARL C. CUTLER
HE GREAT DAYS IN THE HISTORY of Waldoboro fall between the years 1830 and 1860. In this period the town reached the peak of its development in activity, business, and population, and in the wealth and caliber of its citizens. It was a time of bold and unre- strained action in shipbuilding and supporting industries, a time of able and dynamic leadership, and of the building of beautiful and stately homes which were furnished with the treasures of distant lands, brought back by roving Waldoboro captains from the great trading centers of the world.
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