USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 46
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Alfred Storer, another of the great shipbuilders, died in the same year. He was of a quiet nature but of a very substantial character, lacking perhaps the versatility of his great contempo- raries. His interests were pretty strictly business, and he was one of the soundest in this field and probably the most prudent. He was a lifelong Democrat and while never active politically him- self, his influence was always a strong one in the more liberal wing of the party.
It was not only the great builders but the sometimes more picturesque men who sailed their ships, whose ranks were becom- ing thinner. In this same year, 1882, Captain Andrew Storer came to the end of his voyage. As a boy he had served his apprentice- ship at sea with Captain Joseph Miller. In his later years he built his stately home on Friendship Road,1 and was through his years of retirement one of the flamboyant figures of the town, noisy, unpredictable, and with a well-developed sense of showmanship. Very old people have told me tales of his trips to his wood lot in the back-district over Thomas' Hill; how, seated on his ox-sled in his tall beaver hat, a red muffler about his neck, his under parts lightly clad, he directed his oxen with strong and lusty words; or of his hand-mowing by the roadside at sunrise in the haying sea- son with small regard for the conventions of clothes.
The death of Colonel Atherton W. Clark in 1882 was a dis- tinct loss to a community in which he was one of the younger leaders. He was not associated with the town in its great period, but he was a resourceful and civic-minded citizen from Civil War days on, and was the town's most distinguished soldier in the long War between the States.
On December 29, 1883, Elzira Ann, the wife of Bela B. Haskell, died at the age of seventy-three years. She was the daugh- ter of William Sproul, who had come to Waldoboro early in the century, acquired the mill privileges at the First Falls, carried on a prosperous and varied milling business, and become one of the
1Later known as the C. H. Lilly place.
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town's wealthiest and most respected citizens. As the wife of Bela B. Haskell, Elzira Sproul was for a half century a leader in the polite society of her time. Her death marked the end of her hus- band's long and prosperous leadership in the town. The following May he sold Sproul's Mills - saw, planing, grist, plaster, and card- ing - to Milton McIntyre & Son, and thereafter made his home most of the time with his gifted daughter, Harriet, principal for forty years of Monticello Seminary, Godfrey, Illinois. It was there in 1887 that Bela B. Haskell came to the end of his days. His re- mains were brought to Waldoboro and laid in the Main Street Cemetery with the fast gathering band of his great contemporaries.
The year 1884 brought a further thinning of the ranks. In January William Fish died at the age of sixty-seven. He was born in Waldoboro on April 3, 1817, in the old family homestead at "Fishes' Corner" on the Warren Road. He engaged in trade and shipbuilding in the village to the end of his life, his shipyard be- ing located on the west bank between the lower bridge and Smouse's wharf. He was appointed postmaster by President Pierce and maintained the office in his store until the present Federal Building was completed, in which he was the first postmaster. His home on Main Street was the house owned and occupied for many years by Will Achorn. He was a man of restless energy, and along with John Tibbetts was the builder of the Fish Block, the most impressive structure in the business district, destroyed by fire in 1900 and replaced by the present Gay Block.
On November 23rd of this year John Bulfinch, known as Squire Bulfinch, came to the close of his long life, dying at the age of ninety-two. He was born in Boston in 1792, a member of a distinguished family, and was the last surviving member of the class of 1812 at Harvard. He was attorney for General Henry Knox in the latter's later years. For the last fifteen years of his life he was inactive and resided quietly at his lovely home built in the 1820's on the upper Medomak. Educated in the classical tradition, he was a master in the field of Greek and Latin litera- ture, and during his quieter years the great classical writers were his constant companions. The Squire's long life in Waldoboro was not without its negative aspects, but despite these he remains one of the town's great traditions.
Of far lesser note, but one of the town's eccentric figures, was "Dr. Wing," the herb collector and vendor who lived for so many years in his log cabin at the head of the lane in the pasture on the Moses Burkett farm. He died September 20, 1884, at the home of his son in Cushing. In this same year the remains of Mary (Kaler) Starman were brought from Rockland and interred be- side those of her husband in the Lutheran Cemetery. Six years
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later a son, Isaac Starman, presented the painting of his preacher- father to the German Protestant Society in the town.
On August 23, 1887, another of the major shipbuilders, Edwin Achorn, died at the age of seventy-eight years. In the town's great industry it is his claim to distinction that he was the least conservative among his contemporaries and was willing to experiment with clipper designs. Two of his major ships fell into this general class, and possibly others approached this type.
Two years later, 1889, Deacon George Allen died. He was born in 1801 and came to Waldoboro as a boy to live with his uncle, Payne Elwell. He was one of the pillars of the Established Church from its beginnings, and for thirty-eight years was the cashier of the Medomak Bank. He was a man who possessed to an almost complete degree the confidence and affection of the public, and was an outstanding example of the close, shrewd, but strictly honest conservative businessman and religionist of the great era.
Captain Harvey H. Lovell, one of the most distinguished of Waldoboro shipmasters, died April 20, 1889. He was born at Barn- stable, Massachusetts, in 1817, took to the sea at the age of fifteen, was an officer at nineteen, and a master in his early twenties. He came to Waldoboro in 1851, and here married Sophronia, the daughter of Squire Bulfinch. His most romantic command was the clipper Wings of the Morning, built by Edwin Achorn. Her name was supposedly derived from his wife who sought the guid- ance of Scripture in this matter, and opened the Bible by chance to the hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm. This ship plied between New York and San Francisco in the gold days, but her most fa- mous trip was from San Francisco to Shanghai in forty days, which with one exception was the fastest trip ever made by sail on this route. At the time of his death Captain Lovell had been living in retirement since 1873.
Another famous Waldoboro skipper, Captain Herman Kop- perholdt, followed Captain Lovell in death two years later. He, too, had started from very humble beginnings, and went up the hard way to a distinguished career at sea. He was born at Aarhus in Denmark, January 22, 1814. He first came to Waldoboro in May 1839 on the schooner Medomak, and from this town shipped for a year with Captain Andrew Storer. This gave him a connec- tion with the town, and he married into one of the old families, taking as his wife Miss Mary Razor (Reiser), who died of yellow fever in New Orleans in 1855. There were no children born to this union and in lieu of such the Captain brought two nephews and two nieces from Denmark. One nephew later moved to Ore- gon, and a niece, Mrs. John J. Hennings, reared a large family in this town.
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In 1853 Kopperholdt took command of the "new clipper ship," Ella A. Clark, and sailed in Joseph Clark's vessels for the rest of his career at sea. In 1859 he took the J. Webster Clark, partly owned in the South, and proved himself a diplomat as well as a sailor. In the early days of the war, with a cargo of New Orleans cotton, he was chased by Yankee cruisers and blockaded at St. Thomas for several months. In 1863 he retired from the sea and bought the Charles Samson farm on Thomas Hill Ridge, where he passed the remainder of his life. This and the "Al Davis place" were one farm. The house now occupied by the Patricks was the second one built by Charles Samson, and is a place of local historical interest. It had originally a flat roof like the Waterman and Farnsworth houses. Captain Kopperholdt replaced this with the present gable roof. The ell was formerly on the east side of the house and ran out to the highway. Opposite this ell across the street was an old shop which was the town's post office in the 1820's. This building was torn down by Captain Kopperholdt and with it disappeared the focal point of a stormy episode in local history.2
In the decade of the 90's the pace of departures slackened somewhat, in large degree because few of the great figures still tarried on earth. On May 17, 1891, Daniel Castner died at his home on Main Street. For many years he was engaged in trade in the village and like so many traders of his day he carried on an active interest in shipbuilding. He occupied positions of trust and responsibility in the affairs of the town, and his two surviving chil- dren Annie (Sanborn) and Ozro Castner will be remembered for their contributions to the cultural life of the village.
On May 13, 1892, the last of the town's great shipbuilders, Augustus Welt, died at his home on Medomak Terrace. As in the case of so many of his able contemporaries, he started life with little more than courage and character. He was the second son of Deacon John Welt and was born September 12, 1809. His be- ginnings were typical of the German tradition. Of himself he once wrote: "When I was 21 my father John W. Welt, gave me my time, a suit of clothes and a yoke of oxen. I swapped the oxen for a horse, and the horse died. My start in life!"3 And so it was that Augustus Welt began work in the shipyards in the days when men worked from daylight to dark, and he rose to a master workman. In 1838 he built his first vessel in company with his brother, Charles, and Solomon Shuman. This group built two ves- sels and then two more in company with Henry Kennedy. In 1843 Mr. Welt went into partnership with Isaac Reed and George
2Narrative of Clara Hennings, granddaughter of Capt. Kopperholdt, San Diego, Calif.
3Narrative of his granddaughter, Rose Welt Davis.
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Smouse to form the major shipbuilding firm of the town, Reed, Welt & Co. This trio continued to build ships until 1876, and in these years constructed more than fifty vessels large and small. After the dissolution of this partnership Mr. Welt continued to build with various of his contemporaries until he was eighty years of age. His last vessel, named after himself, was the four-masted schooner Augustus Welt, built in 1889, and continuously opera- tive until torpedoed by a German submarine in the Mediterranean in the first World War.
Apart from shipbuilding Mr. Welt's community activities were many and varied. He was a director of the Waldoboro Na- tional Bank from its organization till the surrender of its charter. For three years he was a director of the Knox and Lincoln Railroad, served the town repeatedly on the board of selectmen, and for four terms represented it in the State Legislature. His wife was Sedonia Newbert. A contemporary characterized him at the time of his death as "a man of great business energy and sagacity, upright in all his dealings, a just and considerate employer, an excellent citizen and widely known for his many acts of benevo- lence and charity." In brief, Augustus Welt was one of the fine figures of the town in its best days.
In the death of Dr. Francis M. Eveleth, in April 1895, the town lost one of its most active and useful citizens in its hour of greatest need. He was born in Phillips, Maine, on May 30, 1832. He was a Civil War surgeon, a country doctor, supervisor of schools, local pharmacist, and always a backer and promoter of the town's business development. In fact, in the days of business decline there was no aspect of community life which did not re- ceive the support of this quiet and energetic man. He operated his farm, now owned by Clifton Meservey, as an agricultural model of its day. His supervisorship of schools cost him in professional activity far more than the monetary return from the office. He backed every prospect of new enterprises in the town with his time and his money. His life here represented a marked deviation from that of earlier leaders. He was in the fullest sense of the word a community builder, and his death from paralysis at sixty-three represented the loss of a leader at a time when the town's sorest need was men of his character and vision.
Samuel Jackson, whose death occurred on May 25, 1896, was one of the town's prominent men in the second half of the century. He bore a rather close resemblance to an older type, and was in fact the last of the village squires. He was born in Jefferson on May 30, 1812, and came to Waldoboro in 1853 as Deputy Col- lector of Customs. He served in the Legislature as representative and senator, and was a director of the Medomak National Bank
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for many years, and on the side was a good bit of a local invest- ment banker. In fact, by a shrewd use of his capital he became a man of considerable means. His long association with the Baptist Church did not entirely serve to increase the confidence of the common people in one who enjoyed the reputation of being a highly successful man.
At the very end of the century, on October 22, 1900, Deacon Allen Hall died at the home of his son, C. B. Hall, in Belfast. He was the last of the minor shipbuilders. Born in Nobleboro in 1815, he came to Waldoboro in 1840, and purchased the farm now owned by John Burgess on the west side of the river. Due to the golden hue of his hair, he was locally known as "Dandylion Hall." In company with James R. Groton, he built the topsail schooner Martha Hall on the shore of his farm. Later, in company with Henry Kennedy, H. A. Flanders, and A. B. Austin, he built the Fannie L. Kennedy, and another vessel with Charles Vannah. These are but a part of the fleet of vessels in whose construction he was known to have had a hand. For fifty-seven years he was a Baptist and for twenty-seven years a deacon of the First Church. He was a man of simple and consistent piety, and as such a universally respected businessman and citizen.
The necrology of these decades has received an emphasis that is no more than its due because of the importance of these men in the history of their town, and because their passing marked the end of an epoch and the beginning of a period of groping for new leaders and a new economy.
Even though there had been a decided slackening in the eco- nomic life of the town as the century was drawing to its close, the fact should not be overlooked that there was a good deal of wealth in the community. Most of the sizable shipbuilding fortunes were well invested and were producing sizable incomes. There was a century of prosperity behind the town and it had reached down into the artisan class, and even to the back-district folk, who had had steady employment at sea and in the shipyards. The savings of these people accumulating over the decades had been handed on to children and children's children. There was a good bit of this capital that in these decades went into new, more com- modious, and more comfortable homes. In fact, the center of the town underwent a very considerable development through the building of a large number of new residences and even smaller places of business.
As has been said elsewhere, houses are mute but eloquent wit- nesses. They tell a story of their own. They represent in physical form the projection of the personality of the builder into a com- munity; they reveal his sense of form or fitness; his pretense or his
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humility; his affluence or his need; his pride or his indifference; they measure his view of his own importance or lack of it in his world. To those who know the local scene and love it, each house is a source of wonderment, for in each the joys and tragedies of human life have been played through to a finish. Houses, too, have their hours of beauty as well as their years of neglect, and better than anyone or anything else they reveal to the critical eye the kind of community they are in and the kind of people who live in the community.
Irrespective of present-day occupants the thought of men in the present goes back to a builder and a date, as well as to the chronology of the successive generations which have kindled the hearth fires and lived out their allotment of time in a given spot under a given roof. And so there follows a miscellany of names and dates which will reveal something of the story of the rela- tively newer homes in the village area, and throw an additional light on the more distant past of a few old houses.
The present Anne Waltz residence at Kaler's Corner was for many years the home of Dr. Colby, one of the village physicians. In 1883 it was purchased by Horace A. Flanders, a shipbuilder, and remained the Flanders home until the death of the widow, Mary Flanders, when it was purchased and occupied by Captain William A. Keene. On Friendship Road, Mr. Orlando Kuhn, an old ship carpenter, built three houses: one now occupied by Earl Spear, another where Mr. Kuhn himself had lived, now Edward Genthner's, and the third, built in 1882, and for many years the home of Tom Kaler, a Civil War Veteran and the local truckman, now owned by Alfred Pinkham. In January 1883 Captain Albion F. Stahl bought the large residence on Friendship Road built by Captain Isaac Comery. It was purchased of Captain J. T. Carter. Built by a captain, it was occupied by sea captains down to the death of Captain Stahl in 1933. Also in 1883, Willard Eugley bought and moved into the old Woltzgrover place under the high ledge on the Bremen Road. The same year Judson Mink, a ship carpenter, a son of Hezekiah and a brother of Dennis, built the home in the Slaigo district subsequently occupied for so many years by Hiram Black. Thomas Hogue, a mason, Methodist lay- preacher, and a familiar and picturesque figure in the village for many years, acquired the Philbrook place on Jefferson Street next north of Soule's bridge, which was his residence up to the time of his death.
In the year 1884 the Sproul barn, an old landmark standing opposite the Post Office, was torn down. It had been built by William Sproul in the early part of the century as one of his set of farm buildings and was on the east of his house which stood
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on the corner now the site of Clarence Benner's Shoe Store. This old structure, in fact, dated back to the days before the rise of the village at the head of tide. At the time this landmark was disap- pearing, another was taking on a new lease of life. The German Meetinghouse had received little attention since the public funeral of Conrad Heyer in the mid-century. In the summer of 1884 it was thoroughly repaired by popular subscription and was "put in shape to last another century."
Two new houses went up in the village area this year. John Keizer built the house on Friendship Road now occupied by Ronald Ralph, and Jesse Willett built the Dr. Coombs house on the Cook lot on Main Street. He was a local furniture dealer and a grandson of Thomas Willett, who came to the town in the first Puritan migration from Abington, Massachusetts, acquired one of the Matthias Römele lots just above tidewater, and erected for himself a log cabin on the river bank in the field back of the John Overlock house.
In 1885 William H. Gleason sold the Captain Willard Wade house on Friendship Road to Charles O. Dyer of Providence, Rhode Island, a commercial traveller. This home had been erected by Mr. Gleason, and was one of the three houses built in the town by the three Gleason brothers.
In 1886 Samuel L. Miller moved the small house from his lot on Main Street to the Washington Road, the first house on the left of the road north of the Atlantic Highway, and on the old site erected one of the more pretentious houses in the town, owned in recent years by Maude Clark Gay.
In September 1888 Captain Frank Hutchins set off land from the Hutchins farm and laid out Marble Avenue, named in honor of Sebastian S. Marble of Waldoboro, at that time Governor of Maine. Captain Charles Keene was the first to purchase a lot on the new street, and in 1891 erected the home now occupied by his daughters, Jessie and Faye Keene. In the same year Lyndon Keizer built his house next west of Captain Keene's. This year two other houses were erected in the village area, one on the North Waldoboro Road, built by Herbert Leavitt, now owned by Walter Sukeforth, and the other erected on Friendship Road by Mrs. Dana and now used by the Methodists as a parsonage. She had her millinery shop in the front room and occupied the other parts as her residence. It was also in this year that Leavitt Storer acquired from Captain Alden Winchenbach the property known at that time as "Castner's Wharf," earlier known as Razor's Point. The purchase price of this site was $1,500. Subsequently the coal and lumber sheds were erected on the property.
In 1892 Fred Flint broke ground and erected the house on
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Friendship Road now owned by Leland Johnston. The same year "Jud Kuhn" built his home on the northeast lot at Kaler's Corner, and Stephen Jones erected a home on Main Street, now occupied by his daughter, Mrs. Albert Riley.
In June 1893 Adolph Waltz, a local furniture dealer and undertaker, broke ground for the home on Jefferson Street now owned by Samuel Weston. The G. A. R. Hall was completed in June of this year, and Moses Richards completed and started opera- tions in his "Pants Factory" on the hillside opposite the Waldoboro Garage. In 1895 Brown Waltz built the home on Jefferson Street now occupied by his daughter, Mrs. Henry Hilton. In 1896 Susan Ludwig and her sister, Lucy Bliss, by purchase brought back into the Ludwig family the old home just above the Maine Central Sta- tion. This had been built by Jacob Ludwig circa 1790 and had remained in that family until sold by Newell Ludwig, the father of Susan and Lucy, in 1862.
These data on Waldoboro homes have been offered here in the realization that the time will come when they will no longer be available to the occasional fact-seeker except as they are re- corded here. The material in the main is of contemporary origin and is largely drawn from old files of the Lincoln County News.
The miscellaneous items of village life are matters of peren- nial interest but difficult to classify. These are such matters as people gossiped over by their firesides or in the village stores. To the historian they provide a local flavor without which his annals would be lacking in characteristic and needed essence. These decades like all others were rich in little things made big by be- coming foci of interest and of nail-keg or cracker-barrel evalua- tion. A few such topics are reviewed here, humble to be sure, but not without their historical and social significance.
The Lincoln County News, in the March issue of 1883, noted that "quite a number of our young men have contracted the west- ern spirit." This meant, of course, trending toward the prairies. Again in 1891 it commented at some length on the one-time in- habitants and natives of the town as being scattered all over the United States. These were years of visitors returning to old scenes from distant parts, of deaths in distant sections, of earthly remains returning for interment in native soil - burials nearly as numerous as those of the local population. For well over half a century this exodus had been going on, the best of the town being drained off into more active areas of the country, because the local economy could offer so little to its own born and youthfully bred sons and daughters.
At a meeting on January 31, 1884, the directors of the Waldo- boro National Bank voted to dissolve their corporation. This act,
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of course, was strongly symptomatic of economic decline, since local business had diminished to the point where it could support only one bank. Suggestive of the same trend was the retirement in 1884 of Thomas Wade, Captain of the packet Henry A, which he had commanded in local trade for twenty-four years.
Political life in the town, too, was in its ebb. The old Reed machine had fallen asunder these many years, and the town never witnessed its like again. On occasion, however, the old Democratic enthusiasm would mount to spectacular proportions. The presi- dential election of 1884 offered the old political tradition a chance to show its erstwhile spirit. In July the nomination of Grover Cleveland was celebrated by the burning of gunpowder and the ringing of church bells until two o'clock in the morning, and the houses of the leading citizens were all brightly illuminated in this old "Gibraltar of Democracy." In the election the town went 426 votes for Cleveland over Isaac Reed's old enemy, James G. Blaine, who polled 257 votes. The News offers a comment of interest: "Tuesday we noted the following veterans at the polls. William White, aged 91, was born under the administration of George Washington and has voted in every presidential election since 1814. Charles W. Kaler, the hero of Dartmoor Prison, deposited a Republican vote at the age of 89 years." It was all in vain, how- ever, for Cleveland was elected, and once again the lights blazed in the homes, an enumeration of which would look like a local Social Register. The next day, Wednesday, "Mr. Nicholas Orff appeared on the street in full evening dress in honor of the Demo- cratic victory."
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