USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 39
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18Bath Sentinel and Times, Sept. 21, 1864.
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were local people, but most of them were secured through brokers wherever they might be picked up in Maine or the eastern states. Such a provision for substitutes would be looked upon in our time with mixed feelings. This was not the case in the sixties of the last century, where convictions about the war were so definite and so divided that this provision in the draft was in part a device to spare men's convictions or a clumsy arrangement to secure an indispensable man in his civilian role. During the entire war twen- ty-five citizens of Waldoboro furnished substitutes and paid for this service $5000, over and above the bounties allowed by the town at the time of enlistments. In 1866 the Committee on Ac- counts recommended that this $5000 be refunded to those citizens providing substitutes, and on June 2nd the town so voted.
The state election of 1864 revealed no change in the pattern of thought of Waldoboro voters. War weariness was everywhere; divisions in convictions had come more and more into the open. What men felt was boldly and freely expressed, and the local machine had come forth from cover and was crushing the oppo- sition exultingly. The issues in the gubernatorial election were the same as in the previous campaign; the Republicans, bearing the Union label of 1863, backing a war of unconditional surrender, and the Democrats supporting a mild Copperhead program of compromise. In the state the Union candidate won by a six to four vote; in Waldoboro he lost by a vote that was nearly four to one. The exact poll for governor was Joseph Howard (Demo- crat), 729; Samuel Cony (Union-Republican), 216. Even in war the town remained true to its tradition of reaction. It is of interest to note that in this election, as in the whole period of Waldoboro's ascendancy, most of the county officers were drawn from the prominent citizens of the town. Such was the power of the Reed machine in the county and the state.
In the national election of this year the vote of the town was no less emphatic. The machine could always be sure of a vote in the 725-750 range, and there was no deviation from this figure whenever it saw fit to call out its full power. The loyal opposition at full strength functioned within a 190-210 vote range. In the national election the Republicans nominated Abraham Lin- coln for a second term on a platform of carrying the war to a winning finish. The Democrats nominated General George B. McClellan, a candidate who would fight rather than give up the Union, but who would make almost any concession to restore the Union through compromise. Their platform was written by Clement L. Vallandigham, the number one American Copper- head; it demanded that "after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war," there be a cessation of hostili- ties with a view to "the restoration of the Union through an ulti-
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mate convention of the States." On this issue the town of Waldo- boro registered its convictions decisively. Mr. Lincoln was over- whelmingly defeated. The vote was Lincoln 210, McClellan 733. The town rejected Mr. Lincoln more emphatically than in 1860.
The war had dragged on through nearly four years. It had been a painful period for the town. As in the Revolution, and again in the War of 1812, the citizens had been sharply divided, and bitterness and hatred were always close to the surface. Yet the loyal leaders, Democrat and Republican alike, had held the blaze to a smoldering state, had spent more lavishly and loyally than any town in the county, and had sent 457 of its men, one- tenth of its population, to the front. The strain of the ordeal had produced weariness and taut nerves. The year 1865 had come, and the end of all this was at hand. There were no more levies and no more drafts. By April all quotas of soldiers had been filled, and there was a surplus of two men on hand.
On April 2nd peace rumors were persistent and pervasive. Weary hearts were flooded with hope. On April 4th came the news of the fall of Petersburg and Richmond. On Sunday, the 9th, the news of Lee's surrender was read in the churches, and the congregations assembled, and awaiting glad tidings as it were, burst into hymns of praise and thanksgiving. At noon on the 10th the bells were pealing and cannon booming in all parts of the town. That night a small group of the younger loyalist merchants repaired in the late hours to the Thomas Hill district and cele- brated the surrender of Lee with a bonfire - the old Waterman Thomas mansion. Since the testimony of those living at the time is rigorously denied by the living descendants of the perpetrators, names are withheld.
On the 15th of the month news reached the town of the tragic death of Mr. Lincoln. Old smoldering animosities were again fanned into flame. Bitter words and blows were exchanged between those who felt that "the rail splitter" had met a well-deserved end, and those who were better able to read in those days the final verdict of history on the martyred President. On the 19th, funeral or memorial services were held in the village churches, and later in the spring, June 1st was observed throughout the North as a fast day, honoring Lincoln's great service and his great spirit.
With the war over an end came to the long crisis in the internal affairs of the town. Bitter personal feuds arising from the struggle continued, but these mattered little now since they were the holdovers of an issue that had been finally settled. There were, however, other scars more sensitive and painful. One of these was the town debt. In March 1860 this had stood at the in- significant figure of $193.34; in April 1865 it totalled $63,127.72, and this figure was over and above the funds raised by direct
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taxation. Beginning in 1867 the state started a program of assuming in part these local war debts incurred in furnishing men for the armies. Through this agency the burden was ultimately lightened, and Waldoboro received $19,291.67, the largest amount disbursed to any town in the county.19 The debt had been funded as early as 1864, and since the town was in the heyday of its wealth, the reduction proceeded rapidly through the normal channels of taxa- tion. The era of conservative finance was over, and from this time forward to the present, the town was to follow uninterruptedly a program of developing itself by the use of its credit.
In the toll of life and injuries which had come with the war the community had not suffered unduly. Some of the regiments in which Waldoboro men had served counted heavy casualties; others had seen light and limited service. The killed, missing, died of wounds or in prison, approximated thirty-seven lives; the wounded in action, twenty-six; of the town's 457 citizens in serv- ice, fourteen were given commissions or earned them on the field. Of those taken prisoner and held in the deadly Rebel camps, six survived the ordeal. One of these, "Colonel" John W. Palmer, survived down to the year 1944, and is readily remembered by nearly everyone in the Waldoboro of the present day. His prison experiences may be taken as typical of all those veterans confined in the same institutions. Mr. Palmer was captured when working on a mine before Petersburg. For seven months he was in prison in Danville, Virginia. Interviewed in 1939 on his experiences in prison, Mr. Palmer offered the following brief comments:
We were given a little corn bread once a day. We would eat that up and go without food until the next morning. When we entered the prison it was pretty hot, and we would take off our clothes and lay them on the hard pine floor. Then we would lie on our clothes to sleep. I had a brick, an old pair of shoes and a rebel cap for a pillow. When it got cold we all slept spoon fashion along the hall, so crowded that when we wanted to turn the man at the head would say "spoon," and we all turned.20
"Colonel" Palmer was the last survivor of the Civil War veterans in the town. More than ninety years have passed since Lee's surrender. The rancor, the divisive strife, have disappeared, and the scars have all been obliterated. This was the last of the nation's wars to find the town itself a battlefield of disunion and local strife. That the discord never became open and strong dur- ing the critical days of war was in a large measure due to the careful and patient leadership provided by men of good will in both parties, such as Bela B. Haskell and General Henry Kennedy.
10 Wiseasset Seaside Oraele, Jan., 1870. 20Waldoboro Press, May 25, 1939.
XLIII ANNALS OF THE 1860's AND 1870's
These are the things of New England, as varied as a patchwork quilt and as unified in tradition and purpose.
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (Jan. 1, 1945)
TH HE PEAK OF THE TOWN'S GROWTH and greatness was reached around 1860. The decades following were years of slow decline, so gradual, perhaps, that only a few were conscious of a significant change. The causes of this decay were not local in nature but rather national and even international in scope. The accelerating transition from sail to steam, steel ships replacing wooden ships, great industries springing up in the larger centers of population, the development of the rich central areas of the continent which were brought into a new economic unity by the steel rail, the iron horse, and the freight car - all these tended to isolate the coastal towns of Maine, and in fact the entire state, and to leave them on the periphery of a new economic setup. Such forces inevitably brought business stagnation and social decay to the town.
This change manifested itself in many ways, very apparent to the historian but far less so even to the most discerning citizens of that period. There was in the first place a decline in population, almost invariably a mark of economic senescence. The census of 1860 gave the town a population of 4,569; by 1870 this number had dropped to 4,174 and ten years later, to 3,758. The same old families still held numerical dominance. The voters' list of 1873 showed well over a third of the 932 voters concentrated in thirteen families - the Creamers leading with fifty voters. Following in numerical order came the Benners, Minks, Shumans, Grosses, Win- chenbachs, Eugleys, Achorns, Genthners, Welts, Simmons, ending with the Millers and Storers with nineteen voters each.
The draining off of population had actually been going on gradually for a hundred years. In the early days Waldoboro's birth rate was a heavy one. As soon as the peace following the French and Indian War had solved the Indian problem in the
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back-country, the spilling of population over the bounds of the town had begun. At first it was into adjacent, unoccupied terri- tory, but with the opening of the West in the next century there was a trickle in that direction and then a tiny rivulet. The opening of the gold fields made many more people western-minded, but through all these decades more remained than had left, and the town's growth continued so long as the sturdy shipbuilding in- dustry could provide labor and security for a heavy birth rate. But the day came in the 1860's when the flagging industry of wooden shipbuilding could no longer provide work for the town's excess of population. Then the Western trek really set in, in earnest. In the 70's the local paper began recording return visits to the old town by former citizens from Ohio, Indiana, and be- yond in Missouri and Wisconsin, and also death notices of those from far-away Illinois and Kansas, who had gone, who had lived, grown old, and died there.
There was also the constant loss to the new industries of Massachusetts, especially "straw-shops." This was seasonal work, and many who went returned, but there were also those who stayed and founded new homes. On December 10, 1875, the Lincoln County News observed: "The exodus of the younger people to the straw-shops has commenced," and again on December 13, 1876, it comments: "One by one they quietly take their departure for the Massachusetts straw-shops." This was a trend which con- tinued into the next century, but one which in more recent times seems to have reversed itself somewhat. In this way the town was definitely weakened not only numerically, but more significantly through the loss of the best in each rising generation, who could not find in the local area an arena offering a reward commensurate with their energies and capacities. This whole movement repre- sented a marked diminution in population, and a loss to the town of many who were potential leaders.
Despite the draining off of so much of the town's young blood, the decline in population was gradual and to some degree was held in check by the small host of those who never died. As late as 1866 there were, deep in the back-districts, many still living who were of another era, whose native tongue was German, and whose little English was badly learned. Such folk knew the history of their community from having heard it from the lips of the first generation of Germans and Puritans - octogenarians, nonagenari- ans, and centenarians, who, only lightly touched by changing manners, had in their back-district isolation retained the thought patterns, customs, and superstitions of the era following the French and Indian War. Mrs. Charles Weaver had already reached the century mark; Asmus and George Light had been born subjects
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of King George; Elizabeth Howard could have drunk tea before ever a tax was levied on it; Henry Orff saw the light of day before the Declaration of Independence was penned by Thomas Jeffer- son, and Uncle Valtin, the seventh son of a seventh son, at the advanced age of eighty-five, with the aid of the Evil One, still made merry in the wooded recesses of his East Waldoboro home, and with his fiddle and his bow and his wily accomplice provided a world of enchantment for his many young friends. Sunset years? Yes, but years made mellow and soft and winsome by the after- glow of a sun that had set long ago behind the horizons of a past now dimly distant.
The 60's and 70's were not only decades of shrinking popu- lation, but also years in which the luster of the town was being dimmed by the deaths of able leaders - years in which the "lights were going out" with increasing frequency. The first to leave the scene was John H. Kennedy, who died March 30, 1863, in his big brick house on Friendship Road. From a common school edu- cation in Jefferson and a law training in the office of Colonel Isaac G. Reed, "John H.," rose to be the leader of the bar in Lincoln County, which included at that time the present areas of Knox, Sagadahoc, and Androscoggin. As first lieutenant of the Reed machine he held such offices as he chose, and for many years he was county attorney, representative in the Legislature and col- lector of customs. Possessed of a genial disposition, a whimsical humor and an affected indifference in dress, he was a village in- stitution. His large law practice was remunerative and he was able to invest heavily in the shipping industry as his wealth increased, but "where a man's treasure is there is his heart also." His eco- nomic interests were closely entwined with those of the cotton growers of the South and the ships which marketed this product in Europe. The war clearly ran counter to his sympathies. The man whom he had entertained only a few years before in Waldo- boro was the first President of the Confederacy, and he could not be indifferent to the fate of his investments. His last years were clouded; the men of Company A, 21st Maine in 1862 had publicly burned the chaise in which Mr. Kennedy had so proudly driven Jefferson Davis about the town; John H. could not sleep and he solicited a sleeping powder from a local physician. It was too potent. John H. never awoke, and shortly thereafter the doc- tor left the town.
The Town Meetings during the early 1860's busied them- selves largely with the concerns of war, but a few facts of human interest do emerge from the almost exclusive preoccupation with strife. An insight into the prevailing wage scales and standards of living is provided by the vote of April 1, 1861, making twelve and
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one half cents per hour the wage of men working on highways in summer, with the same for a yoke of oxen. In winter "one shilling per hour was allowed for oxen on winter road breaking."
This "breaking out" of the roads after a heavy fall of snow or a drifting storm was a sight that a few of the old folks of the town will be able to recall as a picturesque, exciting, and vivid memory of childhood. A huge contraption known as a "triangle" was used, the name being derived from its shape which was like the letter V. It was built of plank with sides about three feet in height and twenty feet in length, re-enforced on the inner side with crosspieces. The apex of the triangle was placed at the center of the road and the two sides fanned out to the gutters. When it was necessary to use the triangle, the district surveyor would call on the ox teams of the neighborhood. Eight, ten, or fifteen yoke would hitch on to the heavy ring in the nose of the triangle. Slowly the huge engine would be drawn along pushing the snow out to the side of the road to a width in which two teams could pass. I can recall a number of such winter scenes. They were exciting and festive occasions for all the children of District No. 6 who were big enough to get out of doors - the cumbrous triangle drawn slowly along by a long string of oxen, red oxen, white oxen, black oxen, and dappled oxen. Little Parker Feyler with his long goad, so small himself as to seem to disappear at times in the deep snow, by the side of his big, wallowing, red oxen; "Uncle" Daniel Castner, soft in word, patient in demeanor, gently urging his big animals to their task; "Win" Ewell, tall, bony and powerful, slowly and silently rolling his ever-present cud of tobacco, guiding his beasts almost by touch of the goad rather than by word of mouth, with his whimsical eye always peeled to note such aspects of humor as the scene might offer, and tall, gaunt Anthony Castner, the noisiest man in the district, whack- ing, prodding, shouting, threatening, and cursing his animals for- ward, his fervent words carrying far on the sharp, clear, winter air, and filling with delight all the children for blocks around. A half century ago such scenes were taking place in every road district in the town, and they had been taking place for a century before that. All this is now no longer the New England of reality, but the New England of folklore, the "back home" of every American whether he be Southerner, Westerner or New Yorker.
This period beginning in the 60's and continuing down into the new century was an era of "tramps" - a peculiar social phe- nomenon. There were many such moving over the countryside, all strangers. Some were broken men, others were lazy and found this the easiest way to a livelihood, others quested for a job, and still others were filled with wanderlust, and their merry, philo-
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sophic souls throve on the constantly changing scene and the curious adventures incident to a day's march. Sad men, surly men, lazy men, and jolly men were among them. When hunger gnawed at their vitals they would stop at a door and would nearly always receive a handout, for they had their own sign language and always made a mark with chalk on a rock or fence post near a house, so that the next member of the fraternity coming along might know what treatment to expect. For this reason people feared somewhat to offend them. There were, indeed, ugly ones among them, but on the whole they were a cheerful and harmless lot. They usually slept where darkness overtook them, by a haystack, in a barn; or when weather was cool or wet they would come to town and apply to private charity or to the town fathers for food and shel- ter. This they were sure to receive. After more than a century without a jail, the town on April 1, 1861, authorized a "lock-up." Here its own unruly citizens were confined, and here the tramps who applied for lodging were invariably locked up and supplied with a ration of pilot biscuit, cheese, and smoked alewives at public charge. They were also entertained privately.
Augustus Welt, a leading shipbuilder and wealthy citizen of the town, relates the following: "Late one night I came home from Boston unexpectedly and found that my wife had three tramps sleeping in the hay in the barn. 'How did you dare do that when you were alone?' I asked. 'I felt perfectly safe,' she said, 'because they left their pipes with me.'"] In the winter the tramps abandoned the countryside and denned up in the cities. From a peak of a dozen or fifteen tramps ranging daily through the town in the 70's and 80's, the stream of vagrants gradually became a trickle over the decades and disappeared completely.
Our present town reports, it is of interest to note, go back to the 1860's, when on April 1, 1861, the town requested the select- men "to publish a specific account of the expenditure of the town's money." In its earliest form this report was a single sheet 9"x 12" folded in the middle and printed on both sides of its two pages.2 The records of these years show that it was in 1862 that the town accepted the road leading north from Main Street to the site of the old Congregational Church.
From the beginning of our local history there had always been small items inserted in the town's warrant, which, in them- selves trivial, became major issues in town affairs and the subject of endless wrangling and bitter controversy. In the early days there was the issue of foot-loose and unrestrained rams. For over half a century these lawless animals, aided and abetted by their lawless owners, defied the law. Then the swine had their era of
1Rose Welt Davis, granddaughter of Augustus Welt.
2Specimen copies in the collection of Dr. Wm. H. Hahn.
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freedom, during which they visited every back yard and garbage pile, and rooted in every front yard and truck patch. In this way through the warm months of the year they could fend for them- selves. This being the issue at stake, no stubborn or tight-fisted "Dutchman" was going to see the rights of his hogs restricted, and so the swine issue dragged on endlessly over the decades through every Town Meeting.
In the 1860's the issue was dogs and the taxing of dogs. An understanding of this problem goes back to the early days of the colony where the dog played an honorable role, and was an important and integral part of the early agricultural economy. He was as suspicious of Indians as was his master, and scenting them from afar, gave warning of their proximity. He hunted and destroyed vermin, guarded the domestic animals by day, pro- tected the fold and hen roost by night, and was a friend ever useful, vigilant, and faithful. There were dogs on all the scattered farms in the days before ever there was a village. They wandered freely over the countryside and freely did they breed. Their num- bers waxing became seemingly legion. They were taken for granted and accepted everywhere, even in church, where they, having picked up the trail of their masters, would show up during the service. In the old Lutheran Church it was one of the duties of the tithingmen to evict any dogs that joined in the singing or failed to show Christian charity to one another during the church service.
As population moved toward the head of tide and the farms at this center were built into a village with houses lining the streets side by side, as the Indians disappeared and predatory beasts receded into the deeper forests, the dog's economic im- portance shrunk while his number was increasing. The country mongrels, accompanying their masters or following them from afar, invaded the village daily whenever their masters came to trade. There they fraternized, fought, or bred with their village cousins, ruined flower beds and evergreens, besmirched the streets and street corners, and raised an endless din. In short, they be- came a standing nuisance, and one long endured before some vil- lage "brightie" suggested a dog tax and inserted the necessary article in the town warrant in March 1862. In April the issue came to a vote in Town Meeting and was flatly rejected.
The majority of the voters had dogs, and some of them had many. In the back-districts the tax was regarded as an impost on a necessity, which the dog still was in the deeper rural areas - and besides one, three, five, or more dollars was more money than most of the "outsiders" had lying loosely around. For more than a decade there was an annual wrangle over this issue. By April 1864 the tax was required by state law, nevertheless it was re-
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