USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 7
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It is a great tribute to the character of Waterman Thomas that this blow crushed him only in an economic sense. He had been too great a benefactor, too influential a leader, and too be- loved and admired a figure to lose caste and confidence among his fellow citizens. They promptly elected him as their repre- sentative to the General Court in 1803. Thereafter he continued to live among them, more quietly, to be sure, and on a scale less grandiose. From this time on, his name appears less frequently in town annals, for he was an ageing man and in his time he had borne his full share of civic cares and responsibilities as the town's first squire and foremost citizen. For a few years his name ap- pears as a surveyor of land until around 1810 when further men- tion of him is lacking in the records, and it may be that his death occurred about this time. The place of his burial is not known, but there is a strong likelihood that it was with his old friends in the private cemetery on the Farnsworth estate.
Apart from the reverses of Squire Thomas and the decline of his influence, the formation of a village at the head of tide had been inevitably implicit in the beginnings of the plantation. The facts of geography as well as those of circumstance were in its favor, for here was situated the greatest single source of water power in the valley. The saw and gristmills at the three falls, in an area less than half a mile in length, made it a center of essen- tial services for the most densely populated areas of the town. At the head of tide the river channel touched the banks, making possible the erection of wharves where vessels could moor and discharge their cargoes directly on land. At this point the roads east and west now met and were joined in the 1780's by a bridge across the river, which made this a point of convergence for all traffic moving east and west. At Head's store on the west side on the post road was the first post office.
All these factors drew men to this point in ever increasing numbers, and as they gathered or passed they would stop to trade, which led to the establishment of stores and to the rise of a trad- ing center. Here before the turn of the century Captain George D. Smouse established his store on the east side of the road across from the old town house, and here was Smouse's wharf and ware- house, the center of his West Indian business. On the east side, just west of the present Gay block, was the store of Payne Ewell, and on the site of Miss Eugenia Keene's home was the general
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
store of William Thompson. In short, it was not plan or design that led to the rise of the village at this point, but the inescapable facts of economic geography.
Present-day Waldoboro Village was carved out of the lands or farms held in early days by William Wagner, David Holzapfel, Matthias Römele, John Ulmer, and John Martin Reiser. These lots were located as follows: William Wagner, a carpenter of the migration of 1753 held the farm on the west side of the river adjoining the lower falls of the Medomak. He was probably not the first to hold it, for such an important lot was most desirable due to its mill privileges, but it is clear that Wagner was settled here during the French and Indian War. The lot, however, was coveted by the more enterprising Matthias Achorn, a miller, and on September 21, 1761, he induced Wagner to exchange it for one a little farther up the river. The deed of this conveyance reads: . . said William doth hereby give and dispose unto the said Matthias his farm lying on the west side of the Medomak Falls, bordering north to the lot of John Beiner, south to the lot of David Holtapple, twenty-five rods wide and running back till one hundred acres are complete."4 This lot extended south to a point near the present highway leading across the bridge, and here for many years Matthias Achorn had his sawmill. In 1772 he conveyed three-quarters of the mill right to his sons, Matthias and John, and to George Kline, a probable son-in-law. In 1774 a deed of conveyance among the owners mentions "two grist mills, houses and barns."5 In 1795 this lot was in possession of Jacob Achorn and on May 18th of the same year he conveyed it to John Head.6
In this manner this one-hundred acre tract came into the possession of the Head brothers, John and Joshua, and so far as this section of the present town is involved, they were among the village makers, for, apart from the mills, they set up a large gen- eral store north of the road on the top of the hill near the residence of Alfred Storer. In this same year, 1795, John Head, the first postmaster, located the first post office in his store, thus greatly facilitating a trade which laid the basis of the Head family for- tune in the town. In the years around the turn of the century Town Meetings, in an increasing measure, had convened in this central location, namely, in the homes of William Sproul and Ezekiel Barnard, and in John Head's store. In view of this fact the two brothers were shrewd enough to make a small lot available next door as the location of a town house, and to this point in 1803 the courthouse was moved from "Kinsell's Hill." Years later, when Joshua had become rich and influential, he built himself the man-
4Lincoln County Registry of Deeds (Wiscasset, Me.), Bk. 7, p. 170. "Ibid., Bk. 11, p. 41.
"Ibid., Bk. 34, p. 161.
51
The Making of the Village
sion, now the home of Joseph Brooks, on the northwest square of Kaler's Corner.
South of the highway leading over the hill from the bridge lay the two lots originally allotted to David Holzapfel which ran south along the river beyond the present Smouse's Wharf, and sufficiently far back in the hinterland to embrace two hundred acres, being lots Nos. 2 and 3 below Medomak Falls. In 1772 when Holzapfel migrated to North Carolina he sold these two lots for £135 to Captain Solomon Hewett of Scituate, Massa- chusetts. After a few years of residence and development the Cap- tain had died in 1778, and in 1796 his heirs, Philip and Deborah Chandler, of New Hampshire, sold substantial portions of these two lots for $1300.00 to Captain George D. Smouse, "mariner." These lands acquired by Smouse became the center of his West Indian activities and in this way contributed in a marked sense to the centralizing of business in the village area.
Captain Smouse's house is still standing on its original site, albeit in a sad state of disrepair. Near by on the roadside at the top of the hill across from the Heads was his store, managed by his uncle, George Demuth. The wharf and the warehouses of Smouse on the waterfront probably came a year or two later. At this time Captain Hewett's house was still standing on Lot No. 2 nearer the river. This was the full extent of the village development on the west side around the year 1800, although the one church in the town was located a little farther down the river on the Bremen road.
The main part of the village, as is known, grew up on the east side of the river. The reason for this is to be found mainly in the fact that the large landholders on the west side, Captain Smouse and the Heads, held their acres intact, while the land- holders on the east side deliberately cut up their holdings into small lots and sold them for business and residential purposes.
The earliest holders of the village lands on the east side are unknown. William Burns was located in 1736 on a ninety-acre lot lying between the present bridge and lower falls, but he was com- pelled to abandon his holdings during the Fifth Indian War, and thereafter his lot seems to have reverted to the proprietor. Some- time later, when and how is not known, a two hundred and sixty- five acre tract in the very heart of the present-day village came into the hands of Captain John Ulmer, Sr. By the 1790's the Ul- mers were disposing of their real estate in Waldoborough and moving to the eastward, namely to Thomaston and Rockland.
In consequence, on April 7, 1794, John Ulmer sold his lands at head of tide to David Doane of Barnstable, Massachusetts, in- cluding the saw and gristmills on the lower falls, excepting the
52
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
one half acre below the county road "granted to the town for a public landing." Doane engaged for a short time in the milling business in the town and served for one year as first selectman, and then on October 31, 1796, disposed of his holdings to Ezekiel Barnard and William Sproul of Bristol, and returned to Massa- chusetts.
On May 9, 1804, these two partners effected a partial division of their land holdings. Barnard took roughly the land to the north of the road running east and west through the village, and Sproul the land south of the road, albeit this division does not seem to apply to the mills or mill lots, nor to the land between Jefferson Street and the river.7 Sproul tended to hold his portion intact, while Barnard was more active in selling his land off in small lots. In 1805 he sold a small lot to Daniel Howard on the site of the present sail loft for a blacksmith shop. Two-thirds of the way up the hill to Gay's Corner on the lot now used for parking pur- poses was the village tavern kept by Barnard and his wife, Mary. To the east of the tavern on the road front a lot was sold to Payne Elwell for a general store - different from all other stores in the village in that "Deacon" Elwell never sold rum, flip, or intoxicating liquor in any form. At a little later date on Gay's Corner was Mr. Groton's store.
In 1809 on the opposite corner, occupied for so many years by "Ed Randall Benner's drug store," Henry Flagg purchased a small lot for a store, and two years later Charles Miller entered into partnership with him. Just north of this store was Abner Keene's blacksmith shop, and on the same side of Jefferson Street, farther north, Barnard sold in 1809 the "Reed house" lot to John Ruggles Cutting, the first Congregational minister in town, who started to erect the present Reed mansion, known at that time as "Cutting's Folly," as indeed it proved to be for a man on a preacher's salary. He never finished his project. In 1811 Colonel Isaac G. Reed acquired the property and by 1816 had completed "the folly," and it had become the magnificent Reed mansion of the present day. On the west side of Jefferson Street, right across from the Reed lot, Barnard and Sproul sold the tract extending from the road to the river to Sam Hale, who drove the mail and whose home stood on the river bank. The lot next north of Hale was sold for $580.00 in 1805 to Samuel Morse, schoolmaster, who soon turned to the more lucrative channels of business and erected a tannery on the river bank on the west end of his lot. At a later date he built for himself the residence on the west side of the highway now occupied by the Bear Hill Market.
7Lincoln Co. Deeds, Bk. 55, p. 45.
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The Making of the Village
North of the land of Deacon Morse lay the one-hundred- acre farm of Matthias Seitenberger owned by this family since early days. In the first decade of the century he, too, was selling small lots to people now settling in the growing village area. One acre from this farm was sold on the east side of the road to William Smith, blacksmith, for his brother, Thomas, of Litch- field, together with a dwelling house, the whole sale totalling $200.00. The west end of this lot had been sold earlier to Robert Chase of Newcastle, who operated the mill known as Chase's mill on the site of the old Soule mill. Next north of the Seiten- berger farm was that of John Gross, the shoemaker, who, on his marriage to the daughter of John Martin Schaeffer, had assumed the name of Shepherd, the English equivalent of the name Schaef- fer. Adjoining Shepherd on the north was the old Orff home- stead farm owned at this time by Henry Orff, and on it at the foot of the Great Falls, extending along the river to the mouth of "Orff's brook," was the "tan yard" of Philip Hilt. On the Great Falls itself was located the saw and gristmill owned and operated by Kinsell and Achorn. This was roughly the develop- ment of the immediate village area north of the County Road.
On the south side of the County Road the immediate area was owned by William Sproul, and immediately south of his holdings were the two lots, the original homestead farm of John Martin Reiser (Razor). They extended from the southern line of the old Mary Hutchins lot to the southern bounds of the farm now owned by Clifton Meservy. Around the turn of the century this tract running through to the river was owned by John Mar- tin's son Charles, and formed a part of the present village area. Like others in these years, Charles Reiser sold off small sections of this farm at a good profit. On January 28, 1795, he sold to William Thompson, "merchant," two acres extending from Wil- liam Sproul's south line on the river, "round a certain point of land called Razor's point," to the head of a cove known as Razor's Cove.
This point was the present site of Alfred Storer's lumberyard and the cove in question was the area on the river back of Jesse Benner's stable. From these two points the lot ran easterly to the main road. Here on the present site of Eugenia Keene's home William Thompson erected his store. On the opposite side of the street he purchased an additional acre and forty rods of Reiser, which "extended eight rods south from William Sproul's line." Here he built himself a house which must have been completed by the spring of 1796 since a Town Meeting was held on April 4th of that year at "William Thompson's new house."8 This house
8Waldoborough Clerk's Record, under date of April 4, 1796.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
of Thompson's was later secured by Payne Elwell through a mort- gage and occupied by him in his lifetime. Destroyed in the fire of 1846 the lot was then acquired by John H. Kennedy for $1000.00, and he erected the brick house now standing on it and owned by Maynard Genthner.
At this time the only other house in the immediate village area south of Main Street was the "mansion house" of William Sproul, located on the site now covered by the northern end of the Sproul
THE TOWN LANDING Circa 1785
block. Close by on present Main Street and to the east of the mansion house was the town pound. This enclosure for the care of estrays came as the result of Mr. Sproul's offer of land and a road leading to the pound "for so long as the town would use it for this purpose." This offer was accepted on May 2, 1802, at which time it was voted "to erect a pound near William Sproul's dwell- ing house ... of good pine and juniper." The enclosure was built by Jacob Benner for $54.00.9 Also located on Sproul's waterfront was the town landing in the form of a stone wharf immediately adjoining on the north the wooden-piered wharf of the Clark shipyard. A road led into this landing from the County Road just east of the bridge. This landing together with the Smouse house are the only surviving monuments of the original village.
Charles Reiser made further disposition of his land in 1795 when he sold to John Matthews of Warren the major portion of
ºClerk's Record, May 6, 1802.
55
The Making of the Village
his farm west of the highway, having as its north bound a point at the head of Razor Cove, and as its south bound the south line of the present Brick Schoolhouse lot. Here he built his home, the smaller of the two houses owned in recent years by a descendant, Mrs. Jane Brummit. This was one of the few houses situated at this time on the west side of the Friendship road. A second one so located was that of Doctor John C. Wallizer, who in 1793 had bought of Paul Lash for £30 the west end of the old Lash home- stead farm including all the land between the highway and the river. This lot had as its northern bound an extension across the road of the northern line of the land of Raymond Jones, and as its south bound an extension beyond the highway of the northern line of Harold Levensaler. Somewhere along the road between these two bounds Doctor Wallizer built his house. In the mid- nineteenth century this house was owned and occupied by Hiram Brown, who eventually sold it, and it was modernized and moved onto the lot next north of the Methodist parsonage. It is today owned and occupied by Dick Benner.10
Beginning in the year 1800 one of the foremost citizens of the town, Doctor Benjamin Brown, began acquiring bit by bit all the lots on the west side of the highway between the northern line of Ralph Hoffses and the southern line of the lot now owned by Richard Castner. This tract was known in later years as the Marble farm, and for many years Governor Marble lived in the house built by Doctor Benjamin Brown as a residence for himself. This home and fine set of buildings was burned about twenty-five years ago during the occupancy of Fred Scott.
Around the year 1802 Joseph Farley came to Waldoboro as Collector of Customs, and soon thereafter began buying up the available sections of the Reiser farms. Ultimately he came into possession of all the land east of the highway between the southern lines of the old Mary Hutchins farm and that of Clifton Meservy. The buying up of these lands was completed by Mr. Farley in April 1815, when Charles Razor, who had removed to Putnam (Razorville), conveyed to him the major part of Lot No. 22, the old Alfred Storer place, "being the same lot of land on which I formerly lived."11
All the houses on the Friendship road, apart from the three on the west side of the road, were located on the top of the high ridge running south along the Medomak River. The first of these was that of Charles Reiser on the level at the top of the hill back of the house now occupied by Leavitt Storer, the vague outlines of the cellar being still visible. South of him on the ridge was the
10Oral tradition of Mrs. Jessie Achorn, daughter of Hiram Brown. 11Lincoln Co. Deeds, Bk. 88, p. 206.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
house of Georg Kuhn on the farm now owned in part by the Gay sisters. Next south on the Captain Pollard place but back on the top of the ridge was the home of Georg Werner. Beyond Pol- lard's south line was the house of Friedrich Schwarz, then Georg Demuth's house now occupied by Henry Hilton, and in order, proceeding south, the house of Paul Lash on the Raymond Jones place; the widow Chapman's home on the Harold Levensaler farm; Caleb Howard's house in the old "Asa Reed field"; Isaiah Cole's home, now occupied by Jasper J. Stahl, and west of the highway on this farm the house of Jabez Cole and his son-in-law, George Leissner. South of the Cole farm was the home of Michael Eisley, now occupied by Mrs. Velma Scott; next south the house of Ludwig Castner, the residence of the late Walter Boggs; this line took in the cabin of "Dr. Wing" at the head of the cow lane on the old Moses Burkett farm, and came out close to the highway on the Godfrey Feyler place, in recent years the home of Mrs. Carrie Feyler Hart.
The later development of the village to its present form consisted in the sale of smaller lots from the farms of the Heads, Smouse, Reiser, Barnard, and Sproul. The residential section of Main Street, Church Street, Shady Avenue and Dog Lane came gradually into being as Barnard and Sproul disposed of their hold- ings in the form of house lots, mill lots, shipyards and factory sites.
In the decade of village making from 1800 to 1810 the in- crease of the Puritans, in both numbers and influence, was a rapid one. Whereas in 1800 about one out of every four inhabitants bore an English name, by 1810 the ratio had become better than one to three. Both English and German were village languages, but in the back-districts German had receded little and was still al- most exclusively the language of the fireside.
The census of 1810 was taken by Thurston Whiting, the Congregational minister of Warren and its form follows strictly that of 1800. It gave the town a population of 2160 divided among 327 families, of whom 207 bore German names, and 120 English ones. These families, broken up into their individual component members, reveal 1381 German names and 779 Puritan. The division into males and females follows:12
FREE WHITE MALES
Under ten years of age 383
Of ten and under sixteen years of age 194
Of sixteen and under twenty-six years
including heads of families 222
Of twenty-six and under forty-five including heads of families 175
12Schedules on file in the Bureau of the Census, Washington, D. C.
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The Making of the Village
Of forty-five years and upwards
including heads of families
142
FREE WHITE FEMALES
Under ten years of age
339
Of ten and under sixteen years of age
191
Of sixteen and under twenty-six years
including heads of families 214
Of twenty-six and under forty-five
including heads of families 166
Of forty-five years and upwards including heads of families 130
The wide divergence in numbers between the first and sec- ond classifications, for example the 383 free white males under ten, and the drop to 194 between the ages of ten and sixteen, reveals the heavy mortality among children so common and in- evitable in early days.
There were still large families in 1810. There was one family of fourteen members; there were five of thirteen members, nine of twelve members, twenty-one of eleven members, and thirty of ten members. The largest German families were those of Christian Hoffses, Anthony Hoffses, Jacob Ludwig and Friedrich Schwarz, with thirteen members each. The Puritans were not far behind. There were fourteen people in the household of Joshua Head, thirteen in that of Abner Pitcher, eleven each in the homes of Benjamin Brown, Nathaniel Brown, John Clark, Robert McClin- tock, Edward Manning and William H. Thompson; and ten mem- bers in the household of Robert Farnsworth.
The prolific breeders included the same old familiar names of 1800 and other bygone decades. There were a few changes. The Kalers had increased their lead widely over the Creamers, and the Benners led the latter family by the thin margin of one. The nineteen most productive German families had given the town more than a third of its population by 1810, despite the losses undergone through migration of many of their members to other parts. The count of noses in this census showed in the town: thirty-three Achorns, sixty Benners, thirty-six Bornheimers, fifty- nine Creamers, nineteen Eugleys, twenty-seven Feylers, twenty- two Genthners, forty-six Hoffses, seventy-six Kalers, twenty-four Kuhns, forty-nine Ludwigs, fifty-three Millers, forty-eight Minks, thirty-two Schwarzes, eighteen Seitenbergers, twenty-five Seit- lingers, thirty-nine Storers, fifty-four Walks, and twenty-seven Winchenbachs. Today only two of these family names have be- come extinct in the town, while many of the others have been successful in maintaining their numerical prominence.
XXIX
ANNALS OF THE EARLY CENTURY
Ne perdons rien du passé. Ce n'est qu'avec le passé qu'on fait l'avenir.
ANATOLE FRANCE
A T THE OPENING OF THE NEW CENTURY the community was griev- ously troubled for the second time within a decade by that dread visitant of early days, the smallpox. Against this scourge there was no known defense. The disease was usually brought to the New England coastal town by some seafarer home for a visit with his people. This time it was first contracted by William, the young son of John and Sophia Schenck Fitzgerald. The homestead of this family is still standing at East Waldoboro and is the first house beyond the old Charles Fogler farm now occupied by Ivan Scott. The case was well developed before its nature had become apparent to anyone, and the neighbors as well as friends of the family in near-by Warren had already been exposed. On March 19, 1800, when the selectmen were first notified of the calamity, the disease had already broken out in four houses in the East Waldo- boro district. On receipt of the news John Currier, the town crier, equipped with his bell went from house to house carrying the evil tidings and warning the citizens of a Town Meeting to be held the next day.
This disease was so dreaded that its presence was sufficient to alert the entire town. A whole community rising up to meet such an invader, with such primitive means as were in its power, provides an interesting insight into New England cultural history. On March 20th the town convened in a general meeting to devise ways for meeting the emergency. The first move was to close the roads at the house of William Fish, standing at what is now known as Fish's Corner. This was the northern limit of the quarantine, and on the south the road was blocked off just beyond the home of Edward Manning, the last house on the East Waldoboro road leading south. The committee to enforce this and other measures was made up of Edward Manning, Charles Samson, Jr., Peter Mink, Joshua Paine, and Charles Razor.
59
Annals of the Early Century
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