USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 42
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Houses unquestionably possess a personality of their own, as do human beings. They are beautiful or ugly; they are clean
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
and spruce or forlorn and dejected; they attract or repel; they are noble or inconspicuous and humble; they express wealth and beauty, or mourn in a weather-stained and faded grandeur, or reflect dirt, degradation, and despair; they stand as monuments to a glory that is, or to a greatness that has gone. Their history in- trigues us, and we are curious as to the love, the happiness, the sorrow, pain, and tragedy which they have witnessed and to the hands which have laid their foundations. Before the origins of some of these Waldoboro homes fall a prey to oblivion, a bit of their history will here be placed on record.
In May 1873 Ezekiel Vergil Philbrook moved his stock of shoes from his old store, pulled it down, and built the present building with its frontage of twenty-four and its depth of fifty feet, where his granddaughter until recently carried on the busi- ness which he founded. In November of the same year the house on Friendship Road built by Captain William G. Jones21 was sold by his widow to Captain John B. Stahl, Jr.
Prior to January 1874 the house now occupied by Dick Benner, on Friendship Road, had stood on the west side of the road, just north of the Lester Wellman place. It is probable that this was one of the older houses of the town, having been built as a residence for himself by Dr. John C. Wallizer. The latter purchased this ten-acre lot of Paul Lash, son of Kazimir, on May 20, 1793, and apparently built the house and occupied it until dispossessed for debt. It later became the home of Hiram Brown, who sold it to Tolman Matthews. In January 1873 it was moved to its present site, and extensively repaired and improved. The moving was effected over the winter snow by twenty-six yoke of oxen.
In the days when packets plied busily and continuously be- tween Waldoboro and the outside world, Captain Lewis Winchen- bach was one of the most popular of the packet skippers, and since the village was his home port, he had built himself a house in the center of the town, the residence next east of the Waltz Funeral Home. After Captain Winchenbach's death the place became the home of George Bliss. On the death of his father, Dr. Hiram Bliss, George moved in April 1874 to the Bliss home on Church Street, now owned by Nicholas De Patsy, and the Winchenbach place was sold to "Dr." Thomas F. Turner, the druggist, who made it his residence for upwards of sixty years.
In March 1875 The Lincoln County News reported that Joseph Clark & Son were about to commence work on their new hall. This work progressed through the spring under the direc- tion of William Brown, until the present Clark's Hall, a center of
21 Now occupied by Moses McNally.
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social life in the town for over half a century, was completed. In November of the same year Vergil Benner purchased his livery stable of Moses Burkett and installed his Fairbanks Scales. This business has remained in the Benner family down to the present day. In April 1876 it was reported that Mrs. Joseph Clark had acquired the lot between the residence of Captain Benjamin Roberts and the Baptist Church. On May 11th ground was broken and work begun on this new home, which is said to have cost $60,000 - the most pretentious private dwelling in the town, and with a few exceptions including the Reed Mansion, the most im- pressive.
The Daniel Webster Castner house on lower Friendship Road was projected in the early spring of 1876 and completed in the late autumn. In recent years it was occupied by his son and daughter, James and Mary Castner, but has now passed out of family hands. In May of the same year Charles H. Lilly acquired the farm of J. D. Trowbridge on Friendship Road, in recent years the home of Walter Boggs; while in October, Dr. F. M. Eveleth purchased the William F. Storer place where he resided upwards of twenty-five years, and carried on extensive farming as one of his many interests. In October 1877 Fred K. Trowbridge acquired the Joseph A. Davis farm and there for many years maintained a small hotel resort in the era of "summer boarders." In recent years this farm has become the property of the Cooney family, and the Trowbridge home has become the site of Mrs. Russell Cooney's lovely "October Farm," built in refined Cape Cod style.
These years witnessed some diminution of the old partisan politics that had blazed so fiercely since the advent of Colonel Isaac G. Reed in the town. The war between the village and back- district served as a virulent substitute and diluted the old partisan differences. Strife became social, and politics were simply the means by which the suburbs maintained a stranglehold on the vil- lage. Isaac Reed could unquestionably have curbed his rural hench- men to some degree, but he made no move. Politically they still did his bidding. He was keenly conscious of their earlier exploitation at the hands of the village dons, had had no part in it, and without question discerned a considerable element of ironic justice in the tyranny of the back-districts. These people recognized the com- petence of the village citizenry and on Mr. Reed's nod gave them the town offices, but they applied the brakes consistently on ex- penditures involving village needs and improvements, and did justice in their crude way to their own, as when, in the April meeting of 1878, they permitted Mrs. Edward Hahn to work out her highway tax on her own private road.
The Democrats of the town still maintained their old as- cendancy in state and national elections. The gubernatorial elec-
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
tion of 1877 may be taken as typical of the prevailing partisan divisions. In it the Republican candidate polled 183 votes and the Democrat 558, but the vote had swelled when Mr. Reed was a candidate for office. In 1876 he took a last fling as a candidate for Congress. In the town a diminishing population gave him 698 votes to 250 for his Republican opponent. In the years of the Greenback movement, there were five very active greenbackers in the town. Their leader was Thomas Willett, a village eccentric and the son or grandson of Thomas, the first Willett in the town. Thomas the Second had two hobbies: he was much given to mili- tary matters, and in season and out he preached the greenback doctrine, even stumping the state in one of the elections.22
In these days, as always in a small town, there were many little things, funny things, unusual things, and unexpected things which furnished the village with its small talk. What were these things? Surely the mention of a few will bring out the real savor of small-town life three quarters of a century ago. Then as now they constituted an unrelated miscellany. A few follow in mean- ingless order. The town clock in the old Baptist spire was near the end of its vigil and was beginning "to act up." One wag ob- served that it was "on the strike." It continued to act arbitrarily, and by 1875 the local paper observed that "the town clock has been refusing duty." Further it is interesting to note that in May 1873 the Monthly News regretted that Memorial Day was not observed in the town. In the same month there was a good deal of speculation over the fact that Mr. Webster Kaler picked up in the road near the Lutheran Church a Spanish silver coin bear- ing the date of 1721. In August 1873 "President Grant and other distinguished gentlemen" passed through the town during the morning "by special train en route for Dix Island."
"The Nobleboro Camp Ground," where camp meetings and Sunday School conventions were held during the next thirty years, was purchased of Daniel A. Benner for the sum of $1,000. In July 1874 it was reported that the potato bug in its pilgrimage across the United States had reached" Western New York. On May 21, 1875, we learn that "tramps are increasing in numbers," and that "Prock's Ledge is infested by tomcats," and still worse, that in August "skunks were infesting Main Street." In October of this year the Lincoln County Fair for some reason was held in Waldo- boro. A most unusual event occurred in May 1876, when two of a school of porpoises were killed above Storer's Wharf, the larger being nine feet long. In June a band of Indians "encamped in Paine's pasture," this being the level on the top of the hill back of the former James H. Walter residence.
22Oral narrative of Dr. George H. Coombs.
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Annals of the 60's and 70's
The little details of local gossip then as now trickled out to the public from many sources, including, apparently, the U. S. Post Office. Anent this source the Lincoln County News observed humorously (July 20, 1876): "One of our merchants deprives postmasters and mail agents of the pleasure of reading his postal cards by writing them in Hebrew." This could have been none other than Ed Randall Benner. There is some doubt whether any of the present-day merchants could bewilder any gossip-eager postal clerks by obscuring their correspondence in any foreign language. On June 14, 1877, the local paper announced the final arrival in the town of the potato bug. "Several have been cap- tured on Nicholas Orff's farm."23 Some idea of the extent of town traffic in these old "horse and buggy days" can be gleaned from the fact that on September 5, 1877, between 4:20 and 6:20 P.M., 165 teams passed Kaler's Corner.
On this note of little things, of the intimate and trifling de- tails of small-town life, this chapter is concluded. An entry in the Lincoln County News in a December issue of the late 1870's may be taken as a portentous epitaph of what these years had brought, and of what lay ahead: "One by one they quietly take their departure for the Massachusetts straw-shops.
23Now owned by Harold Rider of the American Express.
XLIV SUNSET YEARS
How still they lie - the dead captains who were so alive - on their quiet New England hillsides, over- looking the white flecked waters for which they held a love passing the love of woman.
CARL C. CUTLER
TH HE FIRST STEAMSHIP to reach America from England, The City of Kingston, docked at Baltimore in 1838. For the builders of sailing ships this was a portentous event, and yet it was looked upon largely as a crazy experiment and awakened little concern. Over the years, however, steam kept creeping up, and in a couple of decades its competition with sail had become very real. It first came on a major scale with the packet lines - Cunard, Collins, Havre, Bremen, and Vanderbilt. At first these lines ran only wooden side-wheel steamers. These were easily outsailed by the sleek clipper, which would sight one in midocean, bear down and sweep past, close enough to jeer.
The Inman Line, founded in 1850, began a regular passage between Philadelphia and Liverpool with iron, screw-driven steamers. These early packets carried nearly as much sail as a sailing vessel, sail supplementing steam. Side by side the two con- tinued to grow. In 1861 sail reached its peak in ocean-going ton- nage with 4,662,609 tons; at this time there were 877,204 tons moving under steam. In 1889 the White Star Line brought out its Majestic and Teutonic with twin screws. Thereafter the passage across the Atlantic was pretty largely left to ships propelled entirely by steam, a transition that had covered nearly half a century. By 1893 sail had shrunk to 2,118,197 tons and steam had risen to 2,183,248 tons, surpassing sail for the first time in its long upward climb. Thereafter the rise of the one was as steady as the decline of the other. In 1928 steam showed a total in this now unequal struggle of 13,614,071 tons, while sail had dwindled to 915,149 tons, which just about equalled the tonnage of steam in 1861.1
1Merchant Marine Statistics, No. 5, Dept. of Commerce, 1928.
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Sunset Years
This trend was the cause of misgivings, sorrow, bitterness, and fear to generations of men whose tradition had been the sail- ing of ships since time out of mind. It can hardly be under- stood in our own time, but to them its import was clear. It meant the slow death of wooden ship building and the decline of those New England towns whose life had been in this industry. Other factors were also currently operative. The Northeastern States had reached their peak in ship construction in 1855, when they placed a total of 326,431 tons of sailing vessels in the water. Then came the great prewar depression, with its slump in new construction. It caught several million tons in operation and left them idle. The demand for new tonnage ceased; there was nothing for the great fleet already in commission to do. In 1859 there were only 79,316 tons of new shipping placed in the water. This year only four vessels were built in Waldoboro.
Then came the Civil War with the Confederate commerce raiders adding a new hazard to the shipbuilding industry. In the year 1861 only two schooners were built in the town. Depression, war, and the rise of steam had all combined to deal a blow to Waldoboro's great industry, from which it was destined never to recover. In the course of time the smaller yards shut down forever. The occasional builders became more occasional, and only the larger builders with adequate financial resources continued their work - Joseph Clark, the Storer Brothers, Reed, Welt & Co., William Fish, and Henry Kennedy carried on. During the years of decline there were periods of activity and inactivity. The close of the Civil War saw some abandonment of caution, and in 1865 eleven vessels were built in the town; in 1866, twelve vessels; in 1867, nine; in 1873 and 1874, nine each; in 1875 and 1876, two and one respectively. Through the eighties the number kept dwindling, and the year 1887 marked the first year in a century in which no ship was built in the town.
The Lincoln County News noted the ups and downs of this once constant and flourishing industry in comments that alternately reflect hope and sadness. In its issue of May 15, 1874, it gives a brief picture of a year in which nine vessels were launched:
Since '54 our river, wharves and shipyards have not presented the brisk, business-like appearance that they do now. No less than eleven cargoes of lumber have been received, some of the vessls having to wait several days for a berth at the wharf to discharge. The coves are lined with rafts of hard pine, and the yards are filled with other materials to be used in the construction of ships.
Its further comments on this industry, though of a miscel- laneous character, are interesting and worthy of note. A ten-hour workday was the order of things in all yards, and toward the
I
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
end of May 1874 William G. Waltz - all yards agreeing - placed a bell upon the Blacksmith Shop in the yard of Joseph Clark & Son, to signal the beginning and end of the work periods - 6:30 to 11:30 A.M., and 12: 30 to 5:30 P.M. On July 10th the News noted that $300,000 capital was going into shipbuilding; that the indus- try supported two hundred mechanics, an iron and brass foundry, an oakum mill, a plug mill, and a saw and planing mill. Prophetic of the industry's fate is another comment: "On Monday [June 1874] Edwin Achorn & Son, launched the skow-schooner, Achorn. This is a center board craft of 101 tons old measurement, and it is to be commanded by Capt. Isaac W. Comery." The fact should not be forgotten that Edwin Achorn once built clipper ships, the proudest and most magnificent of the family of sail; that the first Achorn was such a ship, and that Captain Comery was an old deep-water skipper, who at one time commanded some of the finest of the Waldoboro fleet.
In October the News noted that more than 100 men were being employed in the yard of Joseph Clark & Son. In this year Mr. Clark completed the barkentine Josephine, of 598 tons, and the ship Carrie Clark, of 1326 tons. In January 1875 the local paper was able to record that "the Waldoboro Custom House papers more vessels every year than any other district in New England excepting Boston." On July 2, 1875, it could proudly comment: "Four vessels have recently discharged lumber for W. F. Storer, A. R. Reed & Co., and Joseph Clark & Son. More are expected in a few days." At the beginning of October it mourn- fully noted that "there is but little prospect that any shipbuilding will be done here this winter." Even in those days of decline the old hands never lost their skill, for in the same issue the paper recorded that "the new three masted schooner, Theresa A. Keene, built by William F. Storer and commanded by Captain William A. Keene, recently made the passage from Muscongus Harbor to Brunswick, Georgia in the unprecedented time of 120 hours. It is said to be the shortest passage on record."
By April 1876 the News lamented that "so far as it could learn only two vessels were to be built here this season." In 1883 eight vessels were built on the river. The News observed:
The river presents a lively and businesslike appearance. Work has been begun in five shipyards, where as many large three-masted schooners are growing into shape. Messrs. H. Kennedy & Co. have a schooner all completed but the rigging, and the launch will probably occur sometime next week. A schooner is discharging material for another upon which operations will begin at once. E. O. Clark has a keel stretched and stern up. William Fish's workmen are getting out a keel. Augustus Welt & Co. have their frames up. A. Storer & Co. have part of their frames raised. This work together with several large vessels discharging ship timber give the Medomak an unusual appearance of busy life.
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Sunset Years
In 1884 the News noted that the best workmen in the ship- yards command a wage of $2.00 a day. On October 31, 1884, the paper recorded that "on Monday morning at 9:30, A. R. Reed launched the largest ship ever built on the Medomak River, the George Curtis, gross tonnage 1837, net tonnage 1745." Gorham H. Feyler was the master builder, and the ship was commanded by Thomas Sproul. The maiden voyage of the Curtis was to England, and the captain was accompanied by his wife, Mary Trowbridge Sproul.
In these years of a dying industry the Waldoboro builders seem to have exhibited more than their wonted originality and pioneering zeal in the construction of new types. In 1865 Joseph Clark built his American Eagle, the first three-masted schooner of the modern type, that is, with no square sails on yards. This was a craft of 386 tons burden. She was commanded by Michael Singer,2 and the boss carpenters were Enoch Benner and J. H. Whitaker. From the beginning an evil destiny seems to have dogged her course. At the time of launching she refused to move and was not gotten into the water until the evening of the day set for the launch. It is said that Eugene Wade of Waldoboro, who had shipped as steward, left the ship in Boston when he saw the rats leaving the vessel. George Singer, the son of the Eagle's skip- per, alleges that she was badly designed and was an almost un- manageable craft. Her maiden voyage was to Havre. From this port she sailed for New Orleans and was lost in a hurricane with all on board at Cat Island.
There were on the schooner a considerable number of French immigrants. Some fifty bodies drifted ashore and were buried on the island. In his lifetime Willard Eugley of West Waldoboro told Mr. Singer that in 1874 he was one of the crew of the John H. Kennedy, another Waldoboro vessel, when she was at Cat Island for a load of pineapples. A negro, whom Eugley called the King of the island, told him of a vessel inland and near by and guided him to it. It was the Eagle, dismasted and upside down. The negro related that she was washed inland during a hurricane. There were two lines of reefs outside and the surmise was that the vessel hit the first and was capsized and then, hitting the second, was dismasted. The natives cut into her with axes and saws and found thirty corpses in one compartment.3 The predictions of the superstitious among the local folk, rife at the time of the launching, were verified sooner than many had expected.
It was during the years of decline that the largest ships and the largest schooners were being built on the Medomak. Between 1867 and 1884 ten full-rigged ships were constructed, ranging
2The father of George W. Singer of Newcastle, Me.
8Letter of George W. Singer to me, July 23, 1943.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
from 1100 to 1800 tons. They were primarily cargo vessels carry- ing heavier loads than the clippers, but, of course, somewhat less speedy. These ships were the following: Gold Hunter, built by Joseph Clark in 1867, 1258 tons; Annie Fish, built by Reed, Welt & Co., in 1868, 1496 tons; Alexander McNeil, built by Reed Cald- well & Co., in 1869, 1122 tons; Rosie Welt, built by Reed, Welt & Co., in 1874, 1435 tons; Carrie Clark, built by Joseph Clark & Son in 1874, 1326 tons; the Isaac Reed, built by A. R. Reed & Co., in 1875, 1550 tons; the Willie Reed, built by the same firm in 1875, 1449 tons; the Mabel Clark, built by E. O. Clark in 1877, 1661 tons; the Emily Reed, built by A. R. Reed & Co., in 1880, 1564 tons; and the George Curtis, by the same builder in 1884, 1745 tons.
The construction of these ships were acts of pride on the part of the town's major builders, and they vied with one another in such matters as size, speed, and structural beauty. The Mabel Clark, the largest ship ever constructed by this family, was ex- ceptional in the luxury of her quarters. She was launched at 11:00 A.M., on October 11, 1877. On the 13th she was towed to Hollis Point to be fitted for sea. The after cabin was fifty feet in length, and the poop deck extended to the main hatch. These after quarters were furnished in mahogany, black walnut, Cali- fornia laurel, birdseye maple, black walnut burl, mountain ash, California cottonwood, and satinwood. The crew's quarters were finished in ash, birdseye maple, and black walnut. The ship was commanded by O. D. Sheldon of Philadelphia. While lying at Hollis Point she was the scene of a gay social life of the village folk, as guests of the builder and captain. By the end of October the fitting was completed and she was towed to sea by the tug Knickerbocker of Bath. She proceeded to Norfolk where she loaded cotton for Liverpool.4
Once having left their native port these big ships never re- turned. They were deep-sea sailors, globe wanderers. They sailed long voyages to strange places. Some had long lives, others short and tragic ones, ofttimes leaving their bones on the shores of lands thousands of miles removed from the port of their birth. In a few cases the wanderings, the adventures, the history, and the ultimate fate of these white-winged creatures of the great deeps will be briefly sketched here.
The career of the Mabel Clark was a short one. After her first trip across the Atlantic, she left Liverpool in March 1878 and in May went ashore on the Island of Tristan d'Acunha,5 a total loss.
4 Lincoln County News, issues of October 14th and November 1, 1877.
5Fred C. Matthews, American Merchant Ships, 1850-1900 (Marine Research Soc., Salem, Mass., 1930), II, 102-105.
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Sunset Years
Joseph Clark's Gold Hunter was a fine ship, built for J. Henry Sears & Co., of Boston, her managing owners during her thirteen years of sea life. She made four voyages between Atlantic ports and San Francisco, and during the remainder of her career carried coal or case oil to China. She made good passages and on the whole was a lucky ship. She achieved some notoriety in November 1878, when, while in port at Shanghai, the crew mu- tinied and engaged in a shooting affray with the ship's officers and the shore police. Several men on both sides were wounded. In February 1878 the Gold Hunter had sailed from New York for Shanghai, thence crossing to Puget Sound and from there taking lumber to Callao. On returning to the Sound, she loaded coal for San Francisco, and then wheat for Falmouth. After dis- charging this cargo at Dunkirk, she took on coal at Cardiff for Hong Kong and was lost in passage by striking a coral reef in the South China Sea. All hands made shore in the ship's boats, although with great difficulty, and subsequently reached Manila.6
The ship Alexander McNeil was built in 1869 by Reed, Caldwell & Co. Her hailing port was New Orleans, and her main operations were between San Francisco and Honolulu in the sugar trade and in Oriental transportation. In 1902 under Captain W. Jorgenson she took a cargo of lumber from the Pacific Coast to the Philippines. From Manila she sailed in December for Puget Sound, and on this trip went ashore and became a total loss on the Pratas Reefs. All hands made land except her chief officer, Mr. Evans, and four men, who were never heard from.7
Clark & Son were the builders of the ship, Carrie Clark, launched at Waldoboro in November 1874. She hailed from Boston and was owned and operated by her builders and others. In 1883, after arriving at Dunkirk from San Francisco via Valparaiso, where she had put in to have repairs made to her rudder, she was sold to go under the German flag and was renamed Anna. She had operated in the transatlantic trade nearly twenty years when she was purchased by Lewis Luckenbach of New York and converted into a barge. Her original name was restored, and she carried coal along the Atlantic coast until November 28, 1921, when, being in the same tow with the barge, Governor Robie, both vessels foundered off Highland Light, New Jersey, taking down with them their crews of three men each. While under the American flag the Clark was employed as a general trader. In 1878 she crossed from Shanghai to Puget Sound, and thereafter for a time carried coal from British Columbia to San Francisco. Her sub- sequent operations, prior to her sale, were between Great Britain
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