USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 34
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In 1854 steam made its first appearance on the river. A new company, The Waldoboro-Thomaston Steam Navigation Com- pany, had a two hundred, fifty-nine ton steamer, the General Knox, built in Philadelphia. In August 1854 she started on a regular run from Boston to Waldoboro and Thomaston alternately. She was commanded by an old Waldoboro sail packet skipper, Lewis Winchenbach. For some reason the Knox was shifted to a Penob- scot route the following year and continued on this run for only a few months. She was then sold to Boston interests and finally came to her end in the Crimean War. This advent of steam on Medomak waters was an ominous portent for Waldoboro ship- builders, but so strong was their conservatism that few if any sensed its ultimate significance for the town.
In September 1856 the last of the military musters was held on Prock's field. A considerable display of color was made by the Rockland City Grays, the Rockland Guards, the Conrad Guards and an artillery company from Damariscotta Mills. Uni- forms were showy and with each unit in its own individual dress the muster proved a most colorful spectacle. The battalion was commanded by Colonel Burns of Rockland. The division com- mander, General William S. Cochran of Waldoboro, along with his staff was escorted to the field where he reviewed the troops. On the last day and as if presaging the end of this ancient prac- tice, a company of old-time militiamen arrayed in the uniform of former times marched upon the field under the command of Major Thurston Vinal and in reality stole the show.
In the 1850's the volume of business in the town had become so large that there seemed to be ample room for two banks. Fur- thermore the Reed-Welt interests had become so extensive that
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
to have their own bank to handle their own financing would be smart business. Accordingly the Waldoboro Bank was organized in 1853 with the following officers and board of directors: Presi- dent, Isaac Reed; Cashier, Bela B. Haskell; Directors: Isaac Reed, John Sides, L. L. Kennedy, George Farrington, and Augustus Welt. The bank prospered for a period, but when the decline of the town set in with the rising ascendancy of steam over sail, this second bank became superfluous, and it closed its business in September 1884, with the same officers and directors.
A fair idea of the growth and prosperity of Waldoboro in these decades, the range of its business activities, and its rating with other towns in the state and county is furnished by the Maine Register. The data follow: Damariscotta, polls 277, valua- tion $377,242; Lewiston, polls 495, valuation $580,420; Rockland, polls 982, valuation $1,039,599; Thomaston, polls 495, valuation $737,511; Warren, polls 494, valuation $707,730; Wiscasset, polls 448, valuation $605,096; Waldoboro, polls 837, valuation $941,- 088.18
Further data provided by the Register furnish interesting comparative statistics with other towns. In the year 1860 when Waldoboro reached its population peak of 4569, Boothbay showed a population of 2857, Damariscotta 1336, and Wiscasset 2318. The state valuation in 1860 for Waldoboro was $1,010,447. The town in the county closest to this figure was Wiscasset, with a valuation of $806,749. For 1854 the ship tonnage built in the near- by towns was as follows: Wiscasset, 4000 tons; Boothbay, 2237 tons; Warren, 1651 tons; Thomaston, 6067 tons; Damariscotta, 2530 tons; Waldoboro, 8284 tons. These data from the Register reveal the ascendancy of the town throughout the middle area between the Kennebec and the Penobscot rivers, as well as a community producing from its own fields, ships, and forests most of what was needed to make it a self-contained economic unit.
This chapter is being concluded with an offering of mis- cellaneous data which provide us with glimpses of the life, prac- tices, outlooks, viewpoints, and beliefs of our forebears a century ago. Some of these facts appear trivial and insignificant, when actually they furnish insight into modes of living now vanished forever, which, could they be recaptured in their entirety would provide for our hungry curiosity the most precious and savory essence of history. Actually there is in history no fact that is insignificant, for here if anywhere it is often the little that reveals the most.
The time when the ice leaves the river is a date which still grips our imagination, for it is a harbinger of the advent of spring.
18 Maine Register, Hallowell, 1852.
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Annals of the Great Days
To the forebears it was this and more, for it marked the time when the little community became again a part of the larger world. For thirty years, 1815 to 1845, Colonel Isaac G. Reed kept records of the dates when the ice packs went out with the tide. The earliest date was February 14, 1842, and the latest April 17, 1816.19
Tuberculosis and poor teeth were the major and most acute sources of suffering visited on the mid-century town folk. The good people knew nothing of dental hygiene, and there were few dentists short of Boston. The results are easily imaginable and a toothless middle and old age was a common prospect. George Smouse told the whole story when on January 11, 1849, he wrote to his half-brother in Boston as follows:
Charles - I wish you to get for me of some Dentist some gold leaf. I have two teeth in trouble and we have no dentist here. Doct. Daggett says he will do it if I get the gold. You can send it in a letter. Uncle Demuth is quite sick and can live a short time only. Our family all well. Your Brother George [Smouse]
Medically the people were still in a superstitious state, the poorer folk believing strongly in the efficacy of their old nostrums and folk ways of healing, and the more enlightened and wealthier, in the relatively new patent remedies of the quacks. This attitude is revealed in the following note of George Smouse to his half- brother in Boston under date of November 27, 1843:
Dear Brother - Enclosed, I send you Five dollars which was sub- scribed for James Comery. He wishes you to purchase for him the amount in Schenck's Syrup, the bottles hold near a pint and are worth 5 to 6 shillings each.
You will find it in Washington Street, No. 300 or something. He is sick, I think in consumption, and poor. Get it as cheap as you can.
In these years the good church folk were morbidly con- scious of the problems of salvation, eternal damnation, and all the other human alternatives of medieval theology so sedulously propa- gated by the local churches. The Reverend D. W. Mitchell had recently left for other fields after a pastorate of twenty-six years in the Established Church, but his influence was to hover for decades over the religious thought of the town, like a funeral pall. His stern, rigid Calvinism made no halfway stops between eternal bliss and brimstone, and at every death of a nonchurch member a flutter of concerned curiosity ran through the village as to whether or not the individual had died redeemed or unredeemed. The two main village skeptics were John H. Kennedy and George Smouse.
19Col. Reed's letter to Gardner K. in Boston, March 29, 1845. In possession of Mrs. Warren W. Creamer.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
For two such prominent men to continue living in such a pre- carious state was a matter of standing concern. The following ex- cerpts from Reed letters furnish a quick glimpse of the prevailing village psychology on such matters:
Joseph Rawson was buried yesterday. Died of consumption. If he experienced religion or not I am unable to say; some think he did, oth- ers are doubtful. He found it very difficult to fix his mind on the con- cern of the soul, and warned all he saw not to defer a preparation for death until a sick bed.20 [And in an earlier letter] Helen Dutton died this morning, . . . said she had a strong desire for the conversion of John H. Kennedy and George Smouse. Her desire for Mr. Kennedy was so great that she sent for him and conversed with him.21
The Waldoboro folk of the mid-century went to extremes in their affections, and as we shall see later, also in their feuds. Mutual aid was the established social practice due in part to the strong German tradition surviving from earlier days of hardship. In poverty and sickness none were left unhelped or alone, that is not in the village, which was in reality one big single neighbor- hood. This spirit is reflected in the following epistolary excerpts:
Her mother [Jane Ann's] and she have been much engaged, some- times by night as well as by day, at Mr. Miller's [Capt. Charles]. Your aunt died on the 23 ult., aged 66 years. You may, if you please procure it to be inserted in some paper, wife of Charles Miller, Esq., etc., John M. Kinsell died Nov. 5, aged 21 yrs. This you might put in the paper too .... Your Uncle Miller is very low. It is supposed he cannot con- tinue much longer. He may linger along sometime, but I should not be surprised to hear of his death any moment.22
Mr. Starman was now old, sick, and needy. It was only the voluntary charity of the village folk that kept him from becoming a town charge. This was accomplished in a variety of ways, one of which is suggested in a letter of Jane Ann to Gardner K. in Boston under date of February 3, 1848: "I shall have time to write only a few lines, as there is to be a 'donation party' at Rev. Mr. Starman's this afternoon and evening. I of course must be on hand."
Mr. Starman's last years were years of defeat, labor, and suffering. He had married late and had two sons in his old age. The elder, Francis, had died in early boyhood; the second, Isaac, was a spoiled child, and was what was known as a typical min- ister's son without reverence for his father. A little story greatly relished in those days is still told by some of the very old people. The boy had never known his father other than as one who moved only with great difficulty. Once when threatened with punish-
"Jane Ann to her sister, Mary, Waldoboro, April 19, 1843.
21Jane Ann to Gardner K. in Boston, June 1840.
22Isaac Reed to Gardner K. in Boston, June 1840.
The Honorable ISAAC REED, Died Sept. 19th. 1882 Act. 78 pts.
Augustus Welt 1809-1892
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Annals of the Great Days
ment by his senior for his misdeeds, he rejoined: "To catch me you'll have to move a G -- D -- sight faster than I have ever seen you move." After Mr. Starman's death, his widow sold her house to Otis Waltz and moved to Rockland with her son. As a man he was a ne'er-do-well and ended his days as a city charge.23
In September of the year 1845 the local bank paid a dividend of $10.15 per share.
On March 5, 1847, Gardner Reed wrote to his mother in Waldoboro describing his first trip on a train. The journey from Portland to Boston, covering one hundred and fifteen miles, took five hours.
The roistering lawless rays of the 40's in the town seem to have led to some sort of a curfew and restrictions on late lights, as may be inferred from a letter of Jane Ann to Gardner in June, 1845. Writing late she adds: "The watch will hail me if my light is not put out soon."
In a letter to his brother, Gardner, in Boston under date of July 1, 1848, Isaac Reed complains of the hard times. This was a favorite theme of Isaac's and seems to have been so in this case since the real depression struck six years later. Isaac's words, how- ever, do throw an interesting light on the local business situation. He writes: "Times are very hard and appear to be growing harder. We never have known anything like it before. There will be failures here. I cannot see how they are to be avoided. The business of the place is overdone. ... Money can be loaned on good security for 12 per cent, which is not usual for this place."
A brief but sharply drawn picture of the social life of the men of the town is given by Jane Ann in a letter to her brother, Gardner, of April 25, 1849. Apparently in a bored humor she writes:
I long to get away from here. Why is it that I must live in a place and manner so uncongenial to my tastes and feelings? My brothers [Isaac, William, Edward, and George Smouse] only have something good to eat, a warm room, a spitton, and a good light, that is all they care for except a good, well-made bed to sleep in, for society, that they find enough at the stores, such as can sit on the counters and nail casks, tell a long yarn, or talk politics.
To which we might add, that the time of such has not died out even to this day.
The slow drift of population from the town to the westward had in reality begun with the gold rush of 1849-1850. After the great depression of 1854 and the opening of the West and rise of industrialism in the more populous sections of southern New England, the trend became more marked. In reality the advent
23 As related to me by a cousin, Mr. Archibald Kaler.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
of the straw hat was a very considerable factor in this exodus. There were so many who went to Framingham that one section of that city bore for a time the name of Waldoboro, and another section, the name of Dutch Neck. Sarah Ramsey went in 1857 to work in "the straw shops," and she was followed by the families of Benjamin Harriman, William Gleason, the Ritzs, some Soules, Ewells, and many others. In this migration also was Justin Kennedy, a brother of General Henry H., and a Waldoboro shipbuilder. He first built a house in Framingham and later went to Laramie, Wyoming, where he had a sheep ranch. Ultimately he returned to Framingham where he died.
In history it has always been that when the peak is reached the decline sets in, but in so quiet and gradual a manner that it is only visible in retrospect. Verily the children had come into pos- session of the land and had prospered on its fatness, but in taking its rich heritage for granted, they lost it.
XLI
THE CLIMAX OF PARTISANSHIP
The pure conservative is fighting against the es- sence of the Universe.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
T HE POLITICAL HISTORY of Waldoboro is a tale of extreme and incurable conservatism. The facts clarifying this condition in its beginnings have already been sketched. In the main they were to be found in the docility of the early Germans, inured in their homeland to long centuries of feudal discipline and control. Such traditions fitted perfectly, so far as was possible in a democratic society, into the dominant Federalist concept of government by "the rich, the wise and the good." The longing of these Germans for an overlord who would regulate their living and order their ways sub specie aeternitatis, had been perfectly met by Colonel Isaac G. Reed and his Federalist lieutenants. In the hands of these astute political leaders "the Dutch," and indeed many of the English, had been welded into a cohesive political unit which without raising any questions, received and executed orders with the precision of a well-drilled militia battalion, and as such it func- tioned during the brief ascendancy of Federalism, and continued so to function on into the period of grass-roots Democracy led by Jefferson.
With time the town became a political anachronism in the state through its long-continued support of a movement which was dead. This condition has considerably dimmed the luster of our local history, for the espousal by local leaders of archaic political concepts pre-empted them from securing political pre- ferment and playing more important roles on the larger stage of state and nation, for which they were qualified both by their integrity and their personal power.
In the year 1816, the Federalists nominated a candidate for the Presidency for the last time - Mr. Rufus King, a native of Maine. Thereafter the party maintained no national organization. In fact it was, as Woodrow Wilson described it, "a wreck, and it had left the title, Federalist, a name of ill repute which few any
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
longer chose to bear, but the Federalist spirit and the Federalist conception of politics were not dead."1 This certainly was the condition of affairs in Waldoboro. Colonel Reed's following was now a machine with no candidates to support and in consequence there followed a period of political quiescence. The machine re- mained intact. Only when some ex-Federalist who had turned Democrat was running for some office, would it reveal flashes of its old power in his support; otherwise it indicated its contempt for the men and measures of the Jeffersonian period by abstaining from all activity at the polls, but it continued to exercise its power in local elections as occasion demanded.
Through the administration of Monroe (1816-1824) the Democratic Party was so completely in the ascendant that all other parties virtually ceased to exist. Not until the administra- tion of the second Adams did "the era of good feeling" come to a close, and factions or groups begin to assume a vague outline that in some cases ultimately crystallized into political parties. The administration of the second Adams, schooled in the Federalist tradition, furnished a brief afterglow of hope to the old conserva- tives and landed some of them in minor offices. Among these was Colonel Isaac G. Reed, appointed to the postmastership at Waldo- boro, June 9, 1828, at the very close of the Adams administration. This was something of a boon to Colonel Reed, for while still a man of some wealth he had lost sizably in land speculations, and the new office added materially to his income. There were but eight mails a week, and the position enabled him to continue his law practice on its usual scale.
There was, however, one marked consequence of this ap- pointment. It took Colonel Reed out of politics, or at least com- pelled him to continue them, if at all, in an underground fashion, for nine months after his appointment, Andrew Jackson became President of the United States. Jackson was a Democrat with a vengeance, the man who introduced the spoils system into Amer- ican politics, and certainly no President ever applied it more ruth- lessly. Jackson, moreover, in every sense was the antithesis of every plank in the Colonel's political credo. His two terms must have been an eight-year nightmare for Mr. Reed. How the latter held the postmastership through these years of political storm is one of the mysteries of local history. It can only be explained by the fact that the Colonel must have had the backing of some Democrat in the Maine Congressional Delegation, possibly Senator Sprague of Hallowell, who in turn had Jackson's ear. But certainly the price which the Colonel paid for holding his job was political quiescence. The old machine might still function in local elections,
1Division and Reunion (N.Y .: Longmans Green & Co., 1907), p. 16.
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The Climax of Partisanship
but in those of state and nation the Colonel's leadership was blocked.
Colonel Reed held the postmastership until well into the administration of Van Buren in 1838. During these ten years the Democratic Party was in power continuously, and it became clearer and clearer that the Colonel's period of political activity was at an end, for when he laid down his postmaster's duties he was with- in eight years of the end of his life. This forced abdication created a situation which unquestionably intrigued his eldest son, Isaac Reed. When the elder Reed took over the Post Office young Isaac was twenty years old and by far the ablest of the second generation of Reeds in the town. He was tall, handsome, courtly in manner with his peers, hard and abrupt when occasion demanded it, but ingratiating and winning with his inferiors when it served its pur- pose. Possessed of fine mental powers, he had fitted for college at Bloomfield Academy, but was impatient of the slow academic processes and longed for a life of action, for which he was super- latively equipped. Hence he by-passed a college education and entered the shipbuilding industry of his native town, forming around 1839, at the age of twenty-six, a partnership with Bela B. Haskell. He became one of Waldoboro's great builders and in this business achieved wealth and power.
In these early years Isaac Reed was building something other than ships. He was slowly fabricating one of the most completely subservient and closely organized political machines in the state. Down to the time of the Civil War it comprised a large part of the voting strength of the town, acted as a unit on Isaac Reed's instructions and exercised power of no mean proportions in state and national elections. From the beginning of his career young Isaac was politically ambitious and prone to take a long-range view of his future prospects. He had been reared in the Federalist creed of his father, was incurably conservative, and never re- linquished the view that that people is most happily governed which is governed by "the good, the wise and the rich." He saw early the possibilities in a growing town of the machine of which his father was compelled to lay down the leadership when he became postmaster.
Young Isaac had grown up with these people. As a boy and young man he had observed them at close range in his father's law office, and now with the intent of becoming their leader he cultivated them, flattered them, befriended, advised, and gave them employment in his shipyard, and helped them to secure work in the shops of the smaller industries, subsidiary to ship- building. In short, in every way possible he placed them under obligation to himself and slowly became their leader and trusted friend. He was on the Board of Selectmen eight years and through
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
the medium of this office he was able to build up a considerable system of patronage. In line with their long feudal tradition "the Dutch" rallied to Isaac Reed and accepted him as their overlord in a completer sense than they had accepted anyone since the days of the proprietor. On election days they would throng into town from the back-districts. Among the villagers this was a standing joke and the latter would stop them and ask: "How are you going to vote today?" The answer would always be the same: "We don't know, we haven't seen Isaac Reed yet." Then would come another stock question: "He isn't running for office, is he?" And there would always be the same answer: "Oh yes, he is."2
Isaac Reed was not always running for office but he fre- quently did so. For nearly forty years he presided over Town Meetings and was a perennial selectman. He served three terms in the Maine House of Representatives and five terms in the Maine Senate; he was State Treasurer, member of the House of Repre- sentatives in the Fifty-second Congress, and in 1854 and 1855 was the Whig candidate for Governor of Maine.
For decades Isaac Reed was master in his own township, but like his father he conceived of human society as a static and not as an evolving organism. To them conservative principles alone were enduring. The face of American life changed; new tides set in carrying men along in the grip of their irresistible surge while the Reeds drifted in the back eddies. And so it was that in the larger life of the state and nation Isaac Reed through- out his lifetime gave his full energies to causes that in each case were to falter and die as he was reaching the peak of his political power. As a Whig he followed the party to its grave and even served it after death; as a conservative or Hunker Democrat he witnessed the destruction of that party in the cataclysm of Civil War. Thus twice in his political life he was left stranded by the ebbing tide instead of being carried onward to the larger roles which his ambition sought and for which he was highly qualified.
During the administration of the second Adams the coalesc- ing of new groups went rapidly forward. Emerging from these years of discord came the new democracy of Andrew Jackson, a movement so positive and to the minds of many so radical as to induce a strong reaction. The conservative groups of the country countered by making common cause, and the Whig party came into being - a rather loose confederation of factions more or less conservatively minded. This was the first organization of conserva- tives in American political life since the defunct Federalist Party drew its last sigh in 1816. To the old politically foot-loose dons in Waldoboro it was like manna raining from Heaven. Once
2Local tradition from Miss Edna Young and others.
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The Climax of Partisanship
more Providence had vouchsafed an opportunity for a return to reason and provided the local leaders with a political creed that they could serve with hopeful hearts. To young Isaac Reed it furnished an added incentive to get voters of the town organized in large numbers and to have them vote correctly on all important issues and candidates. Thus it was that his following grew in cohesiveness and numbers with a new arena in which it could exercise and test its strength.
The conservative faction in the town's political life, how- ever, was more than Isaac Reed and his henchmen. Apart from his machine there was a body of independent conservatives com- prising practically the major part of the town's business and moneyed men. They took no instructions from young Isaac nor did they manage his machine. They were just by nature conserva- tive, but too important to take their cue politically from a young- ster. They were, in fact, like Isaac himself, survivals from the old era of Federalism and unlike his feudal following, supported the same conservative principles as he from conviction or self-interest. This fact always placed them in the same political tent with the young boss. They were blind, intolerant partisans, lacking in sportsmanship and human consideration, and not above prostituting chivalry, gentlemanliness, and decency to political expediency.
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