USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 47
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This celebration was a sort of afterglow of the old Democ- racy. There had been a steady decline in the Democratic vote from the days when it could roll one out close to a thousand. In the national election of 1880 the Democrats had polled 666 votes to 257 for the Republicans. In the gubernatorial election of 1894 the Republicans carried the town for the first time in history, Henry B. Cleaves polling 321 votes to 257 for his Democratic opponent, Charles F. Johnson. This however, was their only victory of the century. On the other hand, the normal Republican vote did not show any increase. In the November election of 1896, in which William Jennings Bryan was not a very popular candidate, the Democrats carried the town by only eleven votes. In the election of 1900 the Democrats polled 384 votes to 242 for the Republican candidate, and this latter vote was just about average for the Re- publicans throughout the decade. It is true, however, that the political complexion of the town was undergoing a slow change.
One of the great neighboring institutions of these years was the Nobleboro Camp Meeting. The Camp Ground was located in
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Glendon in a hardwood grove by the side of the Maine Central track, about due north of the former home of Carroll Winchen- bach. The entire area was enclosed by a high board fence, and there was a large colony of cottages on the Camp Ground where the well-to-do families resided during the whole week of Camp Meetings, while the lesser folk made a daily pilgrimage in horse and buggy from the surrounding country, and literally moved in, in floods. This institution was in reality a Methodist project, but everybody was welcome. Here the deeply religious found ample balm for their souls in morning, afternoon, and evening meetings, and the more socially disposed were able to "re-une" with hosts of friends and acquaintances they seldom saw elsewhere. In short, it was a sort of family reunion for the many clans scat- tered over a wide area. The News offers an insight into what the meetings were like in its issue of August 22, 1884, where it ob- serves: "Our streets morning and evenings have been filled with every description of vehicle passing to and from the Nobleboro Camp Meeting," and this we may add was typical of a condition that lasted for many years.
At 9:30 on a morning in October, A. R. Reed launched the largest ship ever built on the Medomak up to that time. This was the George Curtis, with a gross tonnage of 1,837 and a net ton- nage of 1,745. Gorham H. Feyler was the master builder and the ship was commanded by a local captain, Thomas Sproul. The News observed that in this era "the best workmen command $2.00 a day." It is also of interest to note that that perennial institution, the Pound, was still in full operation, for in 1885 the selectmen fixed the cost of keeping a horse in it at "$1.00 per diem."
In 1887 J. M. Whittemore sold his photography studio to Edward N. Wight of Belfast, and so it was that "Eddie," one of the most original and eccentric figures of this era, began his long residence in the town in the house now occupied by Harold Rider. A somewhat more impressive event of this year was that the first Waldoboro citizen, S. S. Marble, became Governor of Maine on the death of Governor Bodwell. Mr. Marble in his career held practically every office, state or federal, in Maine. And to him not least, he managed with great pleasure and pride a model farm on the Friendship Road, an area extending from the northern bounds of Ralph Hoffses to the southern bounds of Richard Cast- ner. The Governor's home on this farm stood opposite the Hiram Brown house and burned about a quarter of a century ago at the time of its occupancy by Fred Scott.
The death of William Fish led the News to reminisce on the various locations of the Post Office as it changed postmasters from time to time. The first office (1795-1820) was in the store of
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John Head on the west side of the river on the site of the old town house. Following this period it was located on the present Patrick homestead. During the incumbency of Isaac Reed it was on the second floor of a large wooden building on Balch's Corner, and Gorham Smouse, stepson of Isaac Reed, performed the duties. In 1846 the office was in a building on the site of Elsa Mank's store. In 1849 Moses Young took the office into his harness shop opposite the Medomak House, and William Fish located it during his postmastership in a brick building on the site of the Forest Eaton Block. From that location he moved it into the new Federal Build- ing on its completion.
In the year 1891 Charles Rowe came to town from Corinna, Maine, and took over the duties of the Maine Central Agent. This post he held for over forty years, and he is still living today as one of the most respected and best beloved citizens in the town .* Another event of this year was a subject of intense interest and endless local talk. On the morning of September 28th, Edward F. Moore, a shoe factory worker, was found dead in the rear of the Exchange Hotel, at that time a brick building adjoining the present Gay Block on the north. The doctors and the coroner were called at once. A jury was impanelled, witnesses were examined, but little evidence was revealed beyond the facts that Moore was in the hotel around 10:00 P.M., and there was a disturbance around 11:00 P.M. Examination by two doctors showed that the man did not fall from the window, but that he had been choked sufficiently to cause death. There were also internal injuries. It was adjudged to be a case of manslaughter, and the town offered $1,000 reward to anyone who would produce incriminating evidence. The mys- tery of the killer remained unsolved and the years passed, but tongues did not cease to wag. Those who knew something of the case became bolder in their talk, and lines of circumstantial evi- dence leaked out into the stream of gossip. The mass of such evi- dence convinced so many people that in 1896 the case was re- opened, and Henry Soule was placed on trial, charged with involve- ment in the crime. Public opinion was pretty definite, but the evidence was not complete enough for a conviction and the de- fendant was acquitted.
In 1892 Waldoboro, true to ancient conservatism, rejected a proposed amendment to the State Constitution requiring that voters possess sufficient literacy to be able to read the constitution of the state. The amendment was not the only casualty of local con- servatism in these decades. Road machines and hydrants likewise were having a slow, uphill battle. The back-district folk was well satisfied with roads as they were, hydrants as a village luxury
*Died, November 17, 1954.
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only were things to vote down. It was the same story with the Knox and Lincoln Railroad. In 1890 the Maine Central proposed taking over the local road as a branch line. The town instructed its selectmen to attend the directors' meeting at Bath and to vote against leasing or selling the road. Since it was the only com- munity taking this position, the branch line became a part of the Maine Central system and the town received for its interest $72,000 of the bonds of the Penobscot and Shore Line Railroad, which it was able to sell at par and accrued interest plus a bonus. This capital was applied largely to the reduction of the town debt.
In this year and in the following the town suffered two devastating fires, the worst since 1854. The first of these broke out on the night of April 23rd. At 11:30 P.M., the mill of McIntyre & Son in the area of the First Falls, was in flames before any help arrived. The fire communicated with Boyd's Foundry and White's blacksmith shop. By this time the Triumph and Medomak were on the scene and the fire was under control at 1:00 P.M. But the loss had been heavy, McIntyre's grist, saw, stave, planing and plaster mill was a complete loss. It was valued at $5,000, and there was no insurance. James P. Boyd's Iron and Brass Foundry rep- resented a $6,000 loss with no insurance coverage. The black- smith shop of W. L. White and E. F. Simmons was completely destroyed, and a brick dwelling adjoining the shop, one half of which was owned by W. L. White, was badly damaged by fire and water. This residence was an old landmark. It had been built in the 1840's as a residence by one of the leading and most pros- perous citizens in the town, Captain Charles Miller. The original Sproul mill, a part of the McIntyre property, had been built one hundred years before, and the Foundry had been in operation since 1855.
This fire was followed in 1893 by one that was even worse and in the same area. At 11:00 P.M., Monday evening, on the 12th of June, Charles A. Jackson, proprietor of the Riverside House, gave the first alarm as he observed fire coming from the roof of a small stable back of Willett's furniture storerooms. The blaze already had good headway and moved rapidly to J. K. Willett's store and Orrin Achorn's tenement house. The stables of the Medo- mak House were soon in flames and the area north of lower Main and west of Jefferson Street was in process of being gutted. The Triumph was placed at the Baptist reservoir and the hose led to the Medomak House. In a half hour the machine gave out and the village seemed at the mercy of the flames. By dint of the greatest effort only was the fire held to the Jefferson Street line.
Apart from the business structures destroyed, eleven families were burned out. The total property loss was $33,500, including
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the Medomak House located on the present-day parking lot. This old building, historic in the town, had been in part built by Charles P. Willett in 1854, and was completed by John Edwin Miller, its later proprietor. For decades it had been the stagecoach exchange. All mail and visitors to the town were deposited there and it was the center of community life. The town to this day bears the scars of these fires. In a way the effect was worse than that of 1854, for in the earlier year the town had the capital, the energy, and an object in rebuilding a better village, but in the 90's the town was at the economic crossroads, and its future was not sufficiently certain to entice capital to the venture of complete replacement of the ruined structures. Hence in our own day there is still ample evidence of the devastating force of these confla- grations.
The year 1898 brought a change in the ownership of the local weekly, the Lincoln County News. Founded as a monthly in 1873 by Samuel L. Miller, it had grown and prospered under his resourceful editorship, and had become a well-established town and county institution, when the property was taken over by George Bliss. The same year witnessed the outbreak of the Span- ish-American War. The village was excited and angered by the dramatic destruction of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in mid-February, but the war which followed in April was of decidedly minor interest in the town. There was no selective serv- ice in those days, and only eight of the younger men volunteered. Considering the scope of the military program in this war, this was a sufficiently generous record. Merrill R. Head, Orchard Side- linger, Ira Oliver, and Frank Larrabee were in the infantry at Chicamauga, and John W. Shuman, William Shuman, William T. Howell, and Clinton Gross were in the Navy. There were no local casualties, and judging by the degree of the country's un- preparedness, the greatest danger arose among those who were in camp on the home front.
This weaving of miscellaneous data into the narrative quite fittingly comes to an end on the usual conservative note. It is a law of nature that water will run in or seep in nearly anywhere, but in its history Waldoboro has contravened many laws of nature and of man, and water proved no exception. In July 1900 the town rejected again the installation of hydrants, but water was insistent, as it usually is, and at a September meeting the water question, again up for action, was postponed and the selectmen were told to call no more special meetings on this matter.
The most important trend in these years was the scramble after new industries to revive the town's economic life. There was a clear realization that the great days of wooden ships had
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passed and that there must be new forms of economic life to provide for the lost prosperity, if the community were not to become an economic backwater. As early as March 28, 1887, a resolution passed by the Town Meeting stressed "the almost ab- solute necessity of some additional manufacturing business." There was a strong preference for some form of the boot and shoe in- dustry, and a committee was appointed to canvass the situation with a view of interesting such a business. Serving on the com- mittee was a group of the town's leading citizens: Samuel Jackson, Lincoln L. Kennedy, Jesse K. Willett, Francis M. Eveleth, John Burnheimer, J. Tyler Gay, "George Albert" Benner, Edward O. Clark, and Samuel O. Waltz. The committee was an active one. It secured the business, but quite innocently it let the town in for a long period of exploitation. This is how it happened as related by Louis P. Hatch in his History of Maine:
During this period - the 1870's to the 1890's - numerous towns had unsatisfactory experiences with a type of person or firm known as "the tramp shoe manufacturer". ... The practice was common for a town, through voluntary subscription on the part of its citizens, to provide factory buildings gratuitously for a given new concern, and to provide for its exemption from local taxation for a period of years, as well as to accord it other favors; followed by the firm's remaining in the town and conducting the boot and shoe manufacturing business only long enough to enable it to procure the special benefits accruing to it in the early years and then dropping out to repeat the cycle elsewhere.4
It was into this type of wildcat enterprise that the committee was drawn. At the April meeting of 1887 it reported, advising that the town provide a building and motive power, and that it grant tax exemption. The town voted to raise $10,000 for the construc- tion of a factory, and the search for interested parties was on in Maine and Massachusetts. In June 1888 the sucking-in process came to a head. Messrs. Henry & Daniels of Boston were interested in a factory in Maine. They considered Gorham, Rockland, and Waldoboro. For reasons best known to themselves - possibly the bait was juicier - they selected Waldoboro. The town agreed to furnish the necessary building, power shafting, etc., for a term of years. On their part, Messrs. Henry & Daniels were to furnish the capital and insure their best effort to build up a successful busi- ness with a minimum payroll of $1,000 per week, and if under $50,000 per year for an average of three years, the town under contract could terminate the lease.
The anxiety that had been hovering for years over the town in the matter of its future may be gauged by its reaction to this
4III, 672 (New York: The American Historical Soc., 1919).
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news. An old-time celebration broke loose when the word came. At 8:00 P.M., Austin Keizer and Elijah Levensaler started a fifty- gun salute on Clark's wharf; church bells rang; a parade was started, headed by Reed's Cornet Band; nearly every residence in the village was illuminated; bonfires blazed in the streets, and fire- works and fire balloons followed. The population turned out en masse, and "for two hours and a half the streets were filled with happy people, old and young."
After a careful survey of possible sites it was decided to build the factory on the land of Walter Matthews on the site of a former shipyard. The contract for the building was awarded to J. A. Greenleaf of Auburn, and it was completed in 1889 at a cost of $31,000. In the previous year the reservoir had been dug in the field of Dr. Eveleth to furnish the factory with its water needs.
At first, the business seemed to proceed smoothly. By 1890 the factory was employing 110 hands; but in 1892 the payroll was $40,000, a figure substantially below the expected level. The project ran true to form. In June of '92, W. H. Daniels & Co., of Boston, closed the factory and notified the selectmen of their withdrawal. In fact, the factory was actually closed and the machinery was being removed before any notice was received by the selectmen. Popular indignation was as general as had been the jubilation of three years before. The Lincoln County News characterized the whole deal as "rather shabby treatment," but it was the customary fate in that generation of those naïve enough to be duped.
In subsequent years the shoe industry operated sporadically in the town. New adventurers took over the business, operated for a brief period under special privilege, and then relinquished the enterprise. The second group of these vagrant operators came in 1894, under the firm name of Evans & Bell. The following year Evans dropped out and was succeeded by Edward O. Clark. Part of the labor in this venture was imported, and it was Italian. A house was built on the river bank south and west of the factory where this colony of Italian laborers was housed. By 1896 the affairs of the factory were causing anxiety, and the creditors were near making an attachment of the property. The rush of these gentlemen to the town led to a careful examination of the busi- ness, which showed assets amounting to $93,044.32, and liabilities totalling $90,774.50. The margin was a narrow one, but it led the creditors to a decision not to press their claims, but to allow the business to continue. At this time there were 225 hands em- ployed. This was in February. In September the factory closed and the property was transferred to J. J. Smith & Co., of Boston. E. O. Clark seems to have been the principal loser.
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In 1898 Mr. T. P. R. Cartland of Portland resumed the game. After a survey of the situation he indicated his willingness to open the factory on condition that the citizens raise sufficient funds to compensate him for moving his machinery to Waldo- boro. Such a suggestion, in itself evidence of the dubious char- acter of the enterprise, found the hopeful citizens ever ready, and $1,000 was raised by voluntary subscription in three days. Cartland leased the factory for a period of ten years and it started opera- tions under the firm name of Jones, Cartland & Co. Like his predecessors Cartland continued operations for two years. Then in December 1900 the machinery in the factory was shipped back to Portland, which two years before had cost the citizens $1,000 to ship from Portland to Waldoboro. With this episode the shoe business in Waldoboro came to its close. Cartland went to Mexico and there set up a $500,000 business financed by New York capital.
Through these years when all efforts to establish a major industry in the town proved abortive, only a thin trickle from minor and seasonal enterprises provided the bread and butter of the local economy. Among these was the "Pants" Factory of M. M. Richards. This was essentially a one-man business, with the personality of Mr. Richards its greatest asset. In his prime and under his direct supervision a considerable business was done in jobbing in foreign and domestic woolens, which were turned into ready-made clothing. At its peak the factory produced from twelve to fifteen thousand pairs of pants, and three thousand suits, ulsters, and overcoats per annum. When Mr. Richard's energies slackened there was no one with his initiative, drive, and per- sonality to carry on, and operations came to a halt.
The Waldoboro Packing Company was more persistent. This company was organized in 1888 with a capital stock of $30,000. The officers were: president, Francis M. Eveleth; directors: L. L. Kennedy, Charles Comery, Gorham H. Feyler, George L. Welt, and E. O. Clark; clerk, S. L. Miller; treasurer, Samuel W. Jackson. The capital was furnished locally and by Portland parties. A start was made by the farmers guaranteeing to provide a minimum of 200 acres of corn, each man signing up for his quota. This was a crop which returned to the grower a gross of from $50 to $110 per acre. Peas, beans, fruit, and blueberries were also canned, and an adequate factory was built near the junction of Mill Street and the Augusta Road. In 1891 Luce and Magune purchased the fac- tory which amid many vicissitudes has continued under one man- agement or another down to the present day. In more recent times the business has been transferred to the Winslow's Mills district and here a thriving though seasonal business is carried on.
It was close to the end of the century that the town experi-
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enced a minor business boom from its granite deposits. This stratum of rock lay on the property of Edgar Day and Christopher Feyler, one and one half miles north of Waldoboro Village on the line of the Maine Central Railroad. This quarry was first opened in 1860, and was operated for a local clientele in a small way by Messrs. Day and Feyler. The deposit is a muscovite-biotite granite of medium gray shade, and of a fine, inclining to medium, even- grained texture. In 1905 the quarry measured 400 feet N. 52° E. to 52° West, by 140 feet across and was sixty to eighty-five feet deep. Its operation at the end of the century by Booth Bros. & Hurricane Island Granite Company brought a very considerable influx of quarrymen and granite cutters to the town. In 1898 the business was employing one hundred workmen, and these together with their families increased substantially the population of the town and led to considerable residential building, including a huge boardinghouse, in the vicinity of the quarry and the area on the west side of upper Jefferson Street between Route 1 and the Maine Central tracks.
At the quarry itself the rock was extracted and then trans- ported by cart a distance of 1,300 feet (and 120 feet down), to the stone-cutting sheds by the railroad tracks. After fabrication it was shipped nineteen miles by rail to the wharf at Rockland and there it was loaded on vessels for its ultimate destination. The products were used for buildings and monuments but not for polished work. The small sheets and waste were used for paving and road ballast. About 250,000 paving blocks were shipped an- nually, mostly to Philadelphia. The cut blocks went into the con- struction of some well-known buildings, including the Buffalo Savings Bank; the Armory, the Boat House and the Midshipmen Dormitory at the United States Naval Academy; the Chemical National Bank; "platforms" for the sidewalk around the Schwab Building on Riverside Drive, New York City.5 But like so many industries in swiftly changing times, this one too was soon dis- sipated by the march of science. Building and paving blocks soon gave way to steel and concrete in the structure of buildings, and to concrete in city streets, just as wood had yielded to steel in the building of ships. With the closing of the quarry in the new century the town settled back into some of its quietest days.
In addition to these larger industries there were a few smaller ones in the town providing occupation for a limited number of hands. Around 1890 Vannah, Chute & Co., were operating three sizable mills - the Medomak Flour Mill (Cohen's Poultry Plant) at Waldoboro, and a grain and lumber mill at Winslow's Mills.
5The Commercial Granite of New England. U. S. Geol. Survey, Bulletin 708, Wash., D. C., 1923.
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The Medomak was a gristmill grinding flour, meal, and feed of all kinds. All grains ground were shipped in from the West. A large wholesale business was thus carried on. Small dealers along the line from Bath to Rockland were supplied with corn, meal, and mill-feed. An annex to the sawmill at Winslow's Mills was the cooper shop where four to eight men were employed constantly in the manufacture of lime casks which were shipped to the Thom- aston and Rockland burners. Nearly 50,000 such casks left this little shop annually. These little industries, too, in their turn soon yielded to the monopoly of the Western grain growers and to the deposits of lime rock located more closely to the great in- dustrial areas.
One by one, the little businesses, developed in the town to reinforce its waning economy, disappeared, and the community touched the nadir of its economic life. In the minds of many the dark question rose whether the coast towns of Maine had a future. The whole business and economic setup in American life must have seemed at this time directed against their destiny. To the most discerning it was clear that there would be no future unless some of the major economic currents in national life were to set again in this direction. Artificial efforts to bolster and boost the economy had failed. There was no clear realization that the town, though tiny, was after all a part of a great living social and eco- nomic organism, and that the day would come when the nourish- ing blood of this organism would pour itself more freely again into the sclerotic veins of these old centers and pressure their economic vitality to new levels. Such events were destined to take place in the next century to a reassuring degree.
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