USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 41
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transportation enabled the farmers to get their produce to the large city markets. Poultry seems to have been an early specialty. During the year ending April 1, 1874, there were shipped from the K. & L. R. R. Station 1,600 boxes of eggs. These boxes contained an average of 125 dozen each, making a total of 200,000 eggs. . . . Total receipts from this source were $50,000, plus 200 boxes shipped by the steamer Charles Houghton and the Boston packets, amounting to $6,500 more.11 This phase of local economy seems at least to have been characterized by permanency, for down to the present day poultry has remained the mainstay of local agri- culture.
One should not pass over in silence the little home industries where young and old toiled long and patiently at those useful arts and crafts which would add a few dollars to personal and family income. It is recorded that during the year 1873 the three little daughters of Moses T. Hoch, aged ten, twelve, and fourteen, knit 180 pairs of sole stockings and thirty-six pairs of double mittens.12 From this it is clear that while Waldoboro was getting into the backwash economically, it was not missing out on the education of its children in the basic discipline of work. The time was not yet at hand when their lives would be shaped up for an elegant and useless leisure.
Nearly a half century had elapsed since the Lincoln Patriot suspended publication in the 1830's. In the interim Waldoboro had had no newspaper down to 1873, when Samuel L. Miller began his publication of the Monthly News. For one year the paper continued as a monthly and the reception was so friendly that the next year the paper became a weekly bearing the title of The Lincoln County News, under the joint editorship of Miller and Atwood. The first number appeared on Friday, January 2, 1874, with a subscription rate of $1.75 per year. In those days there was no "boiler plate copy" that could be bought by the inch, and from the modern standpoint the composition would seem rather unique. It was decidedly literary in tone and included poetry, essays, and numerous informative articles on such subjects as "Life on a Monitor" and "How the Indians Climb Trees in South America." The paper was well received and by October of its first year the weekly issue had risen to 1,300 copies.
The saddest aspect of these years was the gradual dropping out of those bold spirits who had made the life and business of the town so eminent in its Great Days. One by one through the years they were taking their departure, leaving their wealth and in some cases their restless tasks in less capable hands. In October 1871 the tanner and the pillar of Congregationalism died at his
11 Lincoln County News, May 22, 1874. 12 Ibid., May 8, 1874.
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home on the upper Medomak. In late January 1874 Dr. Hiram Bliss laid aside his earthly practice at the age of sixty-eight. He was the son of Dr. Ezra Bliss of Vershire, Vermont, and had graduated from Dartmouth in 1825. He came to Waldoboro in 1833, and for well over forty years he had carried on as a country doctor, a dearly beloved counsellor and helper in trouble. His intrepid spirit balked at nothing, and he was long remembered for his ride in his gig to Boston in order to hear the address of Daniel Webster at the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument.
It will be recalled that Gardner Kinsell Reed, son of Colonel Isaac Gardner, had been one of those who sought his fortune in California in the Gold Rush days, and had never realized his in- tention of returning to his old home. In February 1874 his brother Isaac received news in Waldoboro of Gardner's death by drown- ing at Rocky Creek near Wheatland, Yuba County, on January 28th. The Marysville California Daily reported Mr. Reed as being in search of a stolen horse, and as having been swept into the swift current while fording Rocky Creek. He was buried from the Methodist Church in Wheatland. Amid the varying vicissitudes of his life in California, Gardner Reed had accumulated a con- siderable fortune in the gold fields, but being somewhat naïve by nature, he had, by endorsing papers for friends, lost upwards of $240,000. In his more affluent days he had owned three ships op- erating out of San Francisco. At the time of his death he was engaged in carrying the mail between Wheatland and Spencerville. On April 9th his remains were received in Waldoboro and interred in the family lot in the Main Street Cemetery.13
In September of the same year is recorded the death of Andrew Sides, a descendant of Lorenz Seitz of the Colony of 1742. Mr. Sides was an artisan, a blacksmith by trade, and a land- mark in the shipbuilding industry in the Great Days. For over thirty years he had done, or had supervised, the iron work on the great fleet of ships built in the Reed & Welt yard.
In October an odd and long-familiar figure departed from the local scene in the person of Frederick Augustus Ritz, son of the old eighteenth-century Lutheran pastor, the Reverend Fred- erick Augustus Rodolphus Benedictus Ritz. "Freddie," as he was known, was an oddity and lived in a shack on the farm14 of his brother on the top of Benner Hill. For the last fourteen years of his life he lived as a recluse. For upwards of forty years he had kept a journal of local events, which was destroyed by fire in 1872. This loss nearly drove him insane, but he began all over again and made his last entry the day before his death.
Another old landmark was Deacon Jacob Shuman whose
13Lincoln County News, Feb. 13, and April 10, 1864.
14The George Duswald place.
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house was the Edith Cuthbertson place on the east side of the river above Winslow's Mills. He died June 25, 1875, at the age of ninety. Born back in 1785, his early education had been in the German language. He is remembered today mainly as one of the incorporators of the Village Baptist Church and the last survivor of its original founders.
A little less than a month later the town experienced its greatest possible loss in the person of Joseph Clark, who died on July 23rd, of a heart attack at his home on Dog Lane. At the time of his death it was observed of him "that he towered far above any in the county." Less than three months later the com- munity sustained the loss of Mr. Clark's cousin, General Henry Kennedy. The two had started out together over half a century before as penniless young men in the town. Business partners for a few years, their paths then diverged and each attained wealth, eminence, and influence in the district. General Kennedy's death occurred on October 15th. He was superintending some repairs to the roof of one of his buildings on Water, now Friendship, Street. Mr. Kennedy broke through a rotten portion of the roof and fell to the floor below, a distance of fifteen feet, breaking his collar bone and several ribs and receiving severe bruises. He lingered in great suffering and died on a Wednesday morning. Services were suspended the following Sunday in the local churches, and the congregations gathered in the Baptist Church to hear the Reverend L. D. Hill's memorial sermon on General Kennedy. The Reverends McLeod and Simonton assisted in the service. It was reported that the church was crowded.15
On September 28, 1876, another really old landmark, Fred- erick Castner, forsook the local scene at the age of ninety-six. Born back in 1780, he had, as merchant and shipbuilder, been an influential participant and witness of nearly a century of the town's development - its insignificant beginnings, its great era, and the days of its decline.
The following month, Alden Jackson, a younger man and one whose influence reached out into the state, died at his home on Main Street, the present Stahl's Tavern. He had come to the town in his early manhood and married Caroline, eldest daughter of Joseph Clark. Several years were passed in Augusta where he served as Deputy Secretary and Secretary of State from 1850 to 1853, 1855 and 1857. He was also Secretary of the Electoral Col- lege of Maine in 1856 and 1872. In the interim periods he was active and influential in town affairs and in business. In a word, he was one of those rare men who gave himself without stint to every good cause.
15 Lincoln County News, Oct. 22, 1875.
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It will be recalled that in the first decades of the century Gorham Parks, an able young attorney, had come to Waldoboro, and there, due to his superior endowments, had become highly in- fluential in a rather short time. He finally discovered that there was not room for two Caesars in a Gallic village, himself and Colonel Reed, so he withdrew to Bangor and there in due season became the candidate for governor on the Democratic ticket. Defeated in this ambition by an accident, he went to Congress from the Fourth District. In November 1876 he died at his home on Long Island, New York, at an advanced age.
The death toll in these decades was a heavy one, and even those old leaders in the Great Days who still survived had laid aside the cares of active life and were living in a peaceful retire- ment. The future of the town was in younger hands and these were making little headway against a strong tide running out.
The old animus between village and back-district was a potent factor in the life of the town in these decades. In an earlier chapter it was pointed out how the village moneylenders had mercilessly exploited the needs of the humble folk, and had aroused a resentment which the years had been unable to allay. This condition had been exacerbated by other factors. Certain family groups had ganged up, as it were, in the back-districts, which in many cases had come to bear their names. With an educational system in the town that functioned at its best only lamely in the village, and at its worst only perfunctorily in the back areas, ignorance and illiteracy were rampant in these dis- tricts. This, together with the biological hazards arising from interbreeding, had resulted in a low-grade human product, primi- tive, irrational, and savage. These people had the votes and un- questionably derived a low satisfaction in thwarting every forward move undertaken by the village people, having as its aim the progress and improvement of the town.
In an effort to escape this tyranny, the villagers again brought to the fore the question, raised in the 1850's, of incorporating the Waldoboro Village Corporation. This involved a special act by the Legislature, which then had to be accepted by a majority of the legal voters residing in the limits defined by the Charter. This Corporation would have had the right to raise money by taxation just as a town, in order to defray the expenses of a night watch and police, to provide funds for the purchase of engines and other apparatus to combat fires, to construct reservoirs and aqueducts, to erect an engine house for maintaining a Fire Department, and to improve the schools, none of which advantages could be se- cured by the village folk against the opposition of the back-district people. Its aim was to make the village and its needs independent
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of rural control.16 This solution was very generally discussed. In the April meeting of 1874, an article providing for the purchase of an engine was defeated by the rural vote "with a consistency that can only be characterized as spite, since it also defeated the very reasonable request of the Hon. Henry Kennedy to have five fire wardens chosen."17 This shortsighted act was typical of the jealous and vengeful spirit of the back-district people, and the feud continued to smoulder, flaring intermittently into flame.
In the meantime the village folk sought other means of relief. Back in 1855, after the great fire of '54, a Reservoir Society had been formed to provide the protection against fire denied by the rural vote. Jane Ann Reed was the treasurer, and in the interven- ing twenty years a sum of more than $500 had been built up. This group now decided on a reservoir to be located at the Bap- tist Church, and a committee made up of George Caldwell, Daniel Castner, and William Fish was authorized to start operations. Work was begun June 18th and on November 5th the reservoir was reported as completed, and Dog Lane was again opened to traffic. This huge cistern was thirteen feet deep, eighteen feet and four inches in diameter and when filled to the ten-foot mark held 313 hogsheads of water. This reserve of water has amply justified the wisdom of its builders in many subsequent village fires.
The reservoir, however, was never able to put out the flame in the hearts of the back-district folk, whose tyranny was so continuous that in 1875 there was serious talk of a division of the town in order to secure once and for all a normal civic progress "retarded by the continual and increasing strife between the vil- lage and the out-back people."18 This talk led to nothing. The out-back people clearly held the reins, and they were shrewd enough to know it even in the face of the threatened Village Charter, for whereas the villagers under its provisions could tax themselves for village purposes, the out-back folk could still levy taxes on them for town purposes, and this included the back-dis- tricts so long as they were a part of the town. The question then was a division of the town or subjection of the village to the back- woods element, which meant that the latter must be endured. Accordingly in July 1876 the Charter was finally laid to rest by a decisive majority of the villagers themselves, and the feud be- tween village and back-district folk was left to die of old age in the fullness of time.
In the summer of 1873 the town, as an incorporated political unit, rounded out its first hundred years of history, and the event
16Monthly News, Feb. 1873.
17 Lincoln County News, April 17, 1874.
18Ibid., April 13, 1875.
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was commemorated by a celebration without parallel in our an- nals. Since the incorporation date of June 29th fell on a Sunday in the year 1873, the centennial was deferred to the following Fourth of July. For a community of this size the organization and labor was stupendous, and the committees were large, including practically everybody of note within the village limits. The vari- ous committees included forty-six persons in their membership, and it is of interest to note that not a single "out-backer" held a post on any committee. The Committee of General Management was made up of the Reverend A. J. McLeod, Henry A. Kennedy, Henry Farrington, E. R. Benner, Samuel L. Miller, Lowell P. Haskell, and George Bliss. Henry Farrington headed the Com- mittee on Finance; S. L. Miller that on Subscriptions; George Bliss was chairman of the Committee on Correspondence, Invitations and Address; Mrs. Benjamin Roberts was the head of a large com- mittee of ladies having charge of the dinner; the parade was placed under the chairmanship of John Richards, Sr .; decorations and mottoes were in charge of a group headed by Mrs. Alden Jackson; the Grove Committee was headed by Henry A. Kennedy, and L. P. Haskell had charge of the fireworks.
Smouse's Grove on Main Street near the residence of John A. Benner was selected as the place for the public services. There a large stand was erected for the speaker and spacious tables were built for the dinner. Special invitations were sent to all citizens over seventy and to all absentees. The Waldoboro Cornet Band and the Goshen Band were engaged for the occasion, and the Knox and Lincoln Railroad granted reduced fares which enabled thou- sands living along the line to attend the Centennial.
On June 29th, the Reverend A. J. McLeod opened the Anni- versary with a service in the German Lutheran Church, taking as his text, Zachariah 1:5. "Your fathers, where are they?" In his sermon he reviewed the past of the town, beginning with the hardships of the founding fathers, for which he, according to the prevailing tradition, held General Waldo responsible, citing him as an illustrator of the truth of "the doctrine of total depravity." He then sketched the history of the town largely in terms of ecclesiastical developments, from which we learn that the first Congregational pastor, John R. Cutting, was ordained and in- stalled on August 19, 1807, from a platform erected on the ground now occupied by the former residence of Augustus Welt; that the Reverend D. W. Mitchell, the second pastor of the church, was ordained in the Lutheran Meetinghouse; that in 1829 the Rev- erend John Starman succeeded in uniting the Lutheran and the Reformed elements in his congregation, and that on June 29th the parish partook of the sacrament together for the first time. It is
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also a matter of interest to note a sentence from Mr. McLeod's address which furnishes confirmation of a viewpoint frequently stressed in this history: "In the '40's this place had become the grand center this side of the Kennebec; so much so that the whole district had taken the name of the Waldoboro District."
The Fourth of July, 1873, was ushered in by a national salute of thirty-seven guns at sunrise, by the ringing of the bells and "the shouts of a thousand youthful voices." By midmorning a crowd of four thousand from out of town, plus the town's own thousands, filled the streets. The details of this anniversary are so fully set forth by an eyewitness, Samuel L. Miller, in his history of the town, that there is in reality no need for repetition here, save for a few of the highlights not emphasized in Miller's account.
Promptly at noon the parade moved down Main Street to the music of three bands and with the cannon booming a national salute from Prock's Ledge. When Chief Marshal John Richards headed the procession up Jefferson Street at the Four Corners, the rear of the parade had not left Farrington's Corner. Around 2:00 P.M., a dinner was served in Smouse's Grove to nearly six hundred invited guests and citizens. Shortly after this banquet the main exercises followed, with Henry Farrington presiding. The original Act of Incorporation was read from the record book of the first town clerk, Jacob Ludwig. Then the three bands, merged in one, started the air of "Old Hundredth," and thousands of voices were raised in the Centennial Hymn:
"Father of Love! a hundred years
Are as a day before thy sight."19
This had been written by Ella A. Oakes, and it is a poem of no mean merit.
The president then introduced the speaker chosen for the centennial address, Colonel A. W. Bradbury of Portland, a famous Maine orator of his day. The address was eloquent and most per- tinent even for the present generation. Mr. Bradbury's point of departure was the question whether the masses are capable of governing themselves competently. He made it clear that his faith in what was known as pure democracy was a limited one. He reviewed the past of the town in outline, commending General Waldo and declaring that the success of the community as a Ger- man colony was "undoubtedly due to a great extent to the energy, perseverance and persuasiveness of General Waldo." He then ac- claimed the virtue of the early settlers in words that could well carry meaning to the ears of their present-day descendants.
You may well be proud of the stock from which you spring; and you may well be prouder still if you have kept alive within yourselves the 19 Printed in Miller's History, p. 184.
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virtues of your ancestors and held firm to the noble example they set you. ... You are reaping the good seed sown by your fathers. ... Look well around you on every hand and assure yourselves that you are trans- mitting the like to your descendants.20
The procession then re-formed and marched to Water Street where it disbanded. On the platform with the speakers had been fifteen of the town's oldest citizens, including Frederick Castner, John Bulfinch, and John Light of Nobleboro, aged 101, the only person present who was living when the town was incorporated. At this time Mr. Light was extremely feeble, and he died in the following September. This and the burial of Conrad Heyer had been the two largest public celebrations in the history of the town.
Social life in these decades lacked the eagerness and vitality of that of an earlier day. Local society had become more mellow; social life was easier and more natural. Wealth had engendered the leisure to enjoy the fruits of earlier enterprise; the circle of ac- cepted families had widened, and there was social cooperation on a larger scale. "Levee" was the term applied to the larger coopera- tive functions, where today the term "fair" or "sale" would be used. These levees were very common and not infrequently were money-raising affairs. For example, on December 24, 1874, the Baptist ladies held such a levee in Union Hall. There were cantatas, plays, and music, which netted the ladies the sum of $268. In January it was reported that the ladies of the Congregational So- ciety had been giving some very pleasant entertainments at their rooms over Clark's Saloon. The latter term did not at that time have its modern connotation, but was simply a place equipped with pool tables, and vending light drinks, cigars, and candies.
The press notices of these days carry references to marriages of figures familiar into recent times, a few of which are noted here. "June 27, 1874, by S. W. Jackson, Esq., Captain Isaac W. Comery and Miss Melvina Castner, both of Waldoboro." "May 19, 1876, Capt. F. A. Hutchins of Biddeford and Mrs. Mary A. Clark of Waldoboro." "May 20, in Bremen by the Rev. J. R. Baker, Capt. Albion F. Stahl of Waldoboro and Miss Lucy M. Keene of Bremen."
These years and a more leisurely life brought a deepening interest in, and an understanding of, affairs in the larger world. Reading had been on the increase and to meet the demand for books, George Bliss opened a circulating library in his store in June 1874, with two hundred books for a starter. The following year was the first centenary of American independence, and there was a veritable exodus from the town. Through the late spring, summer, and early autumn practically everyone of note in Waldo-
20 George Bliss, The Centennial Celebration, Bangor, 1873.
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boro who had the means made the pilgrimage to the Centennial in Philadelphia. This anniversary was even more fittingly observed in the town by a major tree-planting program. There was a com- mittee made up of Isaac Reed, Lincoln L. Kennedy, Moses Bur- kett, and Parker Feyler, who organized the movement in the vil- lage. Within a radius of one and one-half miles of the Four Corners hundreds of trees were set out. It is interesting and significant to recall that that which today is the greatest single source of the town's beauty dates from the year 1875.
In these decades the old religious bigotry of an earlier day was losing some of its fire, and the social smugness once associated with "the established church" had to some degree waned. These were years of lesser religious certainty and greater religious co- operation; they were also years in which the churches were put- ting on their finishing touches. In October 1873, due largely to the generosity of Captain Charles Comery, the bell was placed in the steeple loft of the Methodist Church. In the spring of 1874 the Congregationalists renovated the interior of their church, and the last service in the old sanctuary was held on May 3rd. The same autumn the Baptists built the addition on the rear of their church to house a pipe organ and to provide room for a choir behind the pulpit. Formerly the choir had occupied the gallery at the north end of the building. Shortly thereafter came the first pipe organ in the town. It was built by E. L. Holbrook of East Medway, Massachusetts, and contained 453 pipes. It cost, when completed, the sum of $1,000, and this money was raised largely by Mary D. Clark, assisted by other ladies in the Society. The instrument was dedicated on New Year's Eve, 1875, with an organ concert. Mr. Holbrook was at the console. The church was packed to the degree that it was necessary to place settees in the aisles.
The Congregationalists were never to be outdone, even in these later days. They had already raised $875. The prestige of the Baptist organ loosened Congregational purse strings, and by the end of January their choir had purchased a Hook and Hast- ings organ, an $1,800 instrument, for $1,620. It had 525 pipes, seventy-two more than the Baptists, as was quite in line with local social standards. By early spring the instrument was housed and on April 23rd it was dedicated with a public concert, the Misses Ida and Martha Currier presiding at the console. Thus it was that new landmarks appeared even while old ones were disappearing, for in January 1877 "Sam" Jackson resigned his position as chor- ister at the Baptist Church, where he had furnished music every Sabbath for eighteen years.
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