USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 9
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Doctor John Manning was one of the early physicians in the town. He came to Waldoboro from Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he was born October 12, 1789. As a Harvard graduate he took up the profession of medicine. In 1810 his father equipped him with a horse, saddle, and saddlebags filled with an assortment of drugs and medicines. Following the paternal injunction to "shift for himself," and with a letter of introduction to Payne Elwell, he headed for Waldoboro, and was on the road ten days, each of which brought rain for some portion of the day. In Waldo- boro he lived in the house occupied for many years by Eliza- beth Genthner and more recently by Delia Hastings. This house was built by a Brown, the father of William Brown. Following Dr. Manning it was the home of Dr. Daggett, who resided there until after the great fire of 1854.
Payne Elwell was the first of this name in Waldoboro and was a leader in local affairs during the third and fourth decade of the century. He came from North Yarmouth to Waldoboro in 1803 to live with his uncle, Deacon Allen. He was descended from excellent stock. His father, Payne Elwell, Sr., "one of those old-time men of infinite resources and sagacity," came to North Yarmouth about 1782. There he served as a postmaster and was a leading shipbuilder. In his later years he wrote his autobiography,
"Ibid., Bk. 91, p. 273. 8Ibid., Bk. 106, p. 142.
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published some years ago in Gloucester by Land and by Sea. The son entered trade in the new village and became one of the leading early merchants. He was active in town affairs, was a Deacon in the Congregational Church and a leader in early reform move- ments in the town, especially the antiliquor crusade. His home was on the site of the old John H. Kennedy brick house in the village and was destroyed in the fire of 1846. A daughter, Rebecca, married her pastor, the Reverend David R. Mitchell. Payne Elwell died August 21, 1840, and lies buried in the Central Cemetery.
The lots at the corner of Main Street and Washington Road bear to this day the name of Farrington's Corner, that of a family once prominent but now extinct in the town. The Farringtons in these parts were descendants of Abner, born in Dedham, Massa- chusetts, in 1752, who moved to North Warren. A son of Abner, Benjamin, married a Weaver, moved to Waldoboro early in the new century, founded the Farrington family in the town, and built the house now owned by the Reverend William Muir. The last of this family, Henry and Judge Everett, were prominent in the town in the latter half of the century.
The Gays in Waldoboro are descendants of John Gay who came to New England in 1630, on the Mary and John. They first settled in Watertown and then moved to Dedham, from whence came Jonah of the third generation who settled in Friend- ship in 1743. A grandson of Jonah, Thomas by name, came to Waldoboro in 1818 as a boy nineteen years of age. In 1827 he married Eliza Dana Davis of Warren. His first business venture was a tannery and a gristmill on the brook at the foot of Thomas' Hill. Later he built several small vessels and founded the grocery business in the village which still operates under the original family name. His first home in the town was the old Waterman Thomas mansion which stood on the right of the road approaching Thomas' Hill. After moving to the village the Gay homes were burned in the great fires of 1846 and 1854. The name will become extinct in the town with the passing of the present generation.
The Gleasons are another family once prominent in the town but now extinct. Colonel John H. Gleason was born July 22, 1746, in Framingham where he was one of the selectmen. He moved to Union in May 1805, where he died September 20, 1827. A son, John, came to Thomaston in the 1790's, where he served as the secretary of General Henry Knox. He married Mrs. Sarah Mitchell, a sister of Commodore Samuel Tucker, and was active in Waldo- boro as a surveyor. It was he who surveyed and laid out the Central Cemetery in 1813. His son, George W., married Catherine Kuhn on December 20, 1827, and took up his residence in this town. Five children were born of this union, three daughters and two sons. The house now the residence of Marian Storer was one
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of the Gleason homes and was probably built by George K. The house on Friendship Road, long the residence of Captain Willard Wade, was probably built by the brother, John K. Gleason, the second son of George W.
The Standish family is one of the best known in New Eng- land. Captain Miles of the Mayflower and 1620 had six children by his second wife. His grandson, James, came to Warren from Duxbury or Hanover, Massachusetts, and married Elizabeth McCarter of the Lower Town. Of their nine children, a son, James 2nd, married Sarah Ludwig of Waldoboro in 1813, and took up his residence in this town. He was drowned in the West Indies in 1826. Another son of James, John M., married as his third wife, a Mrs. Turner of Waldoboro and thereafter made his residence in this town. A descendant, Miles Standish, was a familiar figure in the town in my boyhood, and his descendants bearing the Standish name are still in residence in Waldoboro.
"Doctor" Wing was one of the eccentric characters of the town. The title of Doctor was a local sobriquet and not one de- rived from any formal medical education. By the very old people,9 who were able to recall him from childhood days, he was de- scribed as a tall angular figure with an admixture of Indian blood, who came from "up country" early in the century. He lived dur- ing his lifetime in a log cabin standing on the hill at the head of the cow-lane on the old Moses Burkett farm. This cabin was most probably built and occupied by Henry Burkett in the late eight- eenth century. It stood on an acre of cleared land and was almost completely surrounded by a stonewall.
Dr. Wing was an herb doctor. He ranged the forests and swamps on the east side of the river collecting roots and herbs which he used to supplement those growing in his own herb gar- den. From these he mixed brews and made salves and ointments which he himself peddled out from a sack on his back as he trudged through the town and county. When at home and not busy at his herb cauldron, he wiled away his hours and entertained his neigh- bors by clever renditions of melodies on his flute. His wife was a Thomaston woman. Some of his five children settled in Cushing and became the ancestors of the Wings in that town. There are none of his descendants living in Waldoboro at the present time. Mrs. Henrietta Grey, the grandmother of Frank and Mabel Ewell, was the daughter of Doctor Wing's wife by an earlier marriage.
The cabin of the old herb vendor was standing in my boy- hood and I used to rummage in awe and amazement among the hundreds of bottles which Doctor Wing had collected and stored
"Parker and Cassie Feyler, Dec. 1938.
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in his loft as containers for his mixtures. The Wing cabin was burned nearly a half century ago by Moses Burkett, but the old apple trees and even the rhubarb in Doctor Wing's clearing have carried bravely on into the present day.
Among the marriages of better-known citizens in these years was that of George Heyer to Polly Hahn in 1801. In 1816 Avery Rawson was married to Harriet, daughter of Ezekiel and Mary Barnard. From land of the Barnard estate he built the square-roof house on the north crest of Cole's Hill. This was occupied in more recent times by the village blacksmith, Everett Simmons. Rawson later sold it to Deacon William Cole and then built for himself the house now occupied by Grace Yorke. In 1817 the Reverend David Mitchell was married to Rebecca, the daughter of Payne Elwell. He built and lived in the house on the west side of Jefferson Street on the corner of Mill Street, now the residence of Clarence Hilt. Horace Rawson, the brother of Avery, was married in 1821 to Mary, a second daughter of Ezekiel Barnard. He built and resided in the house on the corner of Main and School streets now the home of James Waltz.
In the years 1804 and 1805, the shipbuilding interest, then and future, sustained a heavy blow due primarily to the destruc- tion of spruce and hemlock trees from the larva of a worm which preyed on the buds and spills for two or three years and then dis- appeared. These worms were less than an inch in length, and sus- pending themselves by threads from the branches would literally cover the bodies of men engaged in the felling of trees.1º In addi- tion to this pest these decades endured their share of freaky weather. "On the 15th of April," wrote Captain Watson of Thom- aston, "the Great Snow came on a Friday and lasted thirty-six hours," and again, "May 9th a snow storm, very cold, came on Sunday evening."11 There was also an unusual display of northern lights on the evening of October 22, 1804,
which was first observed in the E. and N. E., and soon after extended to the N., N. W., W., and S. W., shooting up from near the horizon in vertical streaks to the zenith, where a luminous cloud was formed, curl- ing and rolling like smoke, and soon thereafter dissipated in quick and repeated coruscations. The emanations continued with more or less brilliance from 7 o'clock till 10 and more faintly till midnight.
On June 16, 1806, occurred a remarkable eclipse of the sun which was total in Boston and points south. "As darkness over- spread the landscape fowls took to their roosts, the birds caroled forth their evening songs, the cows returned to their lanes from the pastures, and the dew fell from a cloudless sky." The old Ger-
10From an old Fryeburg Diary, Portland Press Herald, April 1, 1940.
11Cyrus Eaton, Annals of Warren, 2nd ed. (Hallowell, 1877), p. 327.
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mans, in line with an ancient superstition of the Fatherland, cov- ered their wells lest the waters be poisoned with the dew falling during the eclipse, and were said to have tied up their cattle until this poison dew had dried from the grass.
The climax of all evil in the line of eccentric weather came in the summerless year 1816, which was known as the coldest year ever experienced throughout the United States and Europe. Janu- ary was so mild that people generally allowed their fires to go out and did not burn wood except for cooking. Mildness continued through February and March. April, too came in warm, but as the days lengthened the cold strengthened. On the 30th of April the wild pigeons forsook the district. Flocks of more than a mile in length succeeded each other for hours as they directed their flight westward. By the last of May there was a temperature like that of winter with snow and ice. The young buds were frozen dead, and half an inch of ice formed on the ponds and rivers. Everything was killed by the cold. Ice and frost were common throughout June which brought a ten-inch fall of snow in Ver- mont and seven inches in Maine. July came in with ice and snow and on the Fourth, ice as thick as a windowpane formed through- out New England. In some respects August was the worst of all. There was, however, an abundance of moisture which produced a fair hay crop, which was not harvested until October. The scanty crops of this year occasioned great distress, and once again the people in Waldoboro were compelled to revert to the practices of an earlier day and to depend on fish and game for a substantial part of their living.
In these years the use of tobacco had become a general vogue in the town. The women smoked their pipes of clay or corncob. The Northern Border, a Bangor paper, in its issue of May 10, 1813, records that "Mrs. Solomon Prock of Waldoboro was burned last week by the communication of fire to her clothing from her tobacco pipe." Barn raisings, wood choppings, quilting parties, and hog butcherings were from early days a part of the social life of this community. To these must be added in the new century the singing school. Especially for the young people this was a form of social life sanctioned by their elders, and to the younger genera- tion an outlet for the expression of social interests other than mu- sic. In the papers of Colonel Isaac G. Reed is a form of contract governing the holding of such a school, drawn apparently in the correct and moral English of Colonel Reed. Since it offers con- siderable insight into the organization and raison d'être of such a school, as well as the cultural life of the community in this period, it follows here in full:
Being impressed with the idea that singing is an ornamental part of the forming of society, and a part generally performed in the publick
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worship of God. We the young people of Waldoboro wishing for a singing school severally agree to the following rules, viz., That we choose a committee of three to regulate said school and select such tunes as are useful to be sung in publick worship, with the assistance of the Master; that we hire a Master to keep a school three months three eve- nings in a week; that each scholar find his own light; that we promise to pay unto Mr. Joseph Kidder our proportionable part for tuition and firewood not to exceed nine shillings; one half to be paid after the school has kept six weeks, the other half when the school expires.12
This document bears the signatures of the following young beaux and belles of the village: Saml. Morse, George Clouse, Basheba Clouse, T. Farley, Payn Elwell (for his son), Wm. H. Thompson, (a signature in illegible German script), Abigail Sprague, Nancy Sproul, Eunice Willett, Sally Sprague, Elizabeth Brock (Prock?), George Kaler, George Kuhn, Jr., John Lash, (an illegible name), Joseph Achorn, Joseph Ludwig, (a name in illegible German script), Christian Walter, Samuel D. Thomas, Matthias Seidensperger, Levi Soule, Phillip Feyler, Jacob Burkett, Stephen Simmons, John Storer, James Simmons, John Brown, and John Kinsell, Jr.
There is a similar document in the Reed papers drawn up for the town of Jefferson, and both bear the date of January 5, 1808. The equal mixture of German and Puritan names on this roster suggests the degree of social amalgamation existing at this time between the two races, at least within the confines of the village district.
In religious life the two races, especially so far as the older Germans were concerned, held themselves apart. The Lutherans had their own church under the complete spiritual leadership of the Reverends Ritz and Starman, and their adjoining cemetery was rather exclusively reserved to their own use. Here rests the older generation of the village Germans, lying all with their faces to the east in order that they in accordance with the old German belief, might be ready on the Resurrection Morn to rise up facing the rising sun.
The Puritans now had their own religious organization, the Congregational Society. Under the promptings of Isaac G. Reed, John Gleason on October 16, 1813, drew up the plan for the Cen- tral Cemetery sometimes known as "the Main Street Yard." This too, was a rather exclusive Puritan burying site, and few of the village Germans were privileged in these days to lay down here their earthly remains, notable exceptions being the religious turn- coat, Jacob Ludwig, and old John Martin and his son, Charles Razor. Apart from these this yard conserves the mouldering re- mains of those who made Waldoboro great in her Great Days:
12Document now in the possession of Mrs. Warren Weston Creamer.
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Dr. Benjamin Brown, Joseph Farley, the Barnards, the Sprouls, the Reeds, the Clarks, Deacon Morse, the Rawsons, the Hoveys, the Kennedys, the Heads, the Haskells, and many others whose names now graven in granite and marble recall the glory of an older day.
Taxes are ever a matter of perennial interest in a democratic society. The tax on a small farmhouse in present-day Waldo- boro (in the year 1950) is between two and three times greater than that of the heaviest taxpayer in the town in 1816, and yet the taxes of this earlier day were as much an imagined burden as are the more strenuous levies in our time. From the contemporary point of view these earlier valuations must appear trifling and far more widely out of proportion to the salable value of land than is the case today. The valuation placed by assessors on property in 1813 shows, for instance, the one-hundred acre farm of Loring Sides, in recent years the homestead of Captain Albion F. Stahl, assessed at $55.00 and the owner's personal property at $12.00. This example is in all respects typical, barring the small discriminatory factor always present in the practice of assessing values. The heaviest val- uations for the year 1813, including real estate and personal prop- erty, follow in order: John and Joshua Head, $317.00; Charles Benner, $233.00; Charles Miller, $220.00; William Sproul, $207.00; Charles Samson, $196.00; Ezekiel Barnard, $159.00; Charles Kaler, $158.00; Joseph Farley, $156.00; Isaac G. Reed, $152.00; Henry Burkett, $140.00; John Weaver, $139.00; Jacob Schwartz, $134.00.
The assessors of this day apparently had not brought their economic views up to date, and were still acting in the long estab- lished belief that land was the only thing of value. They were unmindful that they were now dealing with an established econ- omy where it was not merely a question of land but of land plus its suitability for industry and other productive purposes. This is why Charles Benner with heavy but unproductive land holdings in the northeastern part of the town had a heavier valuation than William Sproul with his smaller but more productive mill sites in the village area. Thus it was that taxation fell most burdensomely on the poor who were the owners of most of the most unproduc- tive lands. A matter of further interest to be noted here was the fact that under this valuation there were eighty-eight citizens in the town owning an interest in mills and vessels, and of this num- ber only a small part represented an interest in mills.13
The east side of the river has ever been since earliest days the richer part of the town, a fact clearly revealed in all tax sched- ules. In the year 1816, for instance, the west side paid a total tax of $641.28, while the east side paid nearly double this amount, or a total of $1229.34. These figures, it should be added, include only the school and town tax, the state and county levies being covered
13Original schedules in my possession.
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in other schedules. From the present-day viewpoint these taxes seem ridiculously small. For example, the heaviest taxpayer on Dutch Neck was Captain John Stahl, on whom was levied a tax of $8.70. The six heaviest taxpayers in the town follow in the order of the amounts levied against them: Joseph Farley, $36.12; the Head brothers, $25.64; William Sproul, $23.00; Charles Sam- son, $18.68; Charles Benner, $18.36; Charles Miller, $16.08. On the Smouse farm and other interests, Isaac G. Reed paid a tax of $8.46; the widow Barnard paid on her village holdings a tax of $12.84, and Deacon Samuel Morse, on his village real estate and tannery, a tax of $10.76.
The inequalities existing in the tax levies served to widen continuously the breach between village and back-country folk. In the one area men were becoming richer all the time, while in the other area they were becoming poorer. Hatred was deepening and the rumblings of discontent were constant and from time to time led to vigorous protest on the part of some individuals who were vocal and intelligent enough to express their views. The out- cry of the villager, Payne Elwell, in 1816 follows here in full not only for the light it throws on the problem of taxation, but be- cause of the index it affords to the viewpoint and modes of life in these years:
Waldoboro July 25th. 1816
To the Selectmen of Waldoboro
GentImm.
My confinement prevents me Personally calling on you - Let that be my apology for writing. I mentioned to Elijah Davis, Esq., one of your Body, that I felt aggrieved in the Road Tax on my Real Estate, $7.20 - it may Slip his memory - I therefore by this make application for abatement.
I have no doubt you must have made an Error in the figure -
It certainly need not argument to convince you that such must be the Case -
Look at Mrs. Barnard's estate about 90 acres of Land14 a part of which is Wharf and Landing, etc. (mine only about 2 acres) 15 her Buildings - house much Larger than mine, Barn Larger, a Stable, the Store occupied by Mr. Ayres, half the shop occupied by Mr. Hale - She taxed $9.00 - hers on the County Road - my house not.
I do not rest particularly on her Estate, - take my neighbour Kuhn,16 100 or more acres of Land, a good house and Barn, Tax $4.80, J. Feylor's the same, Martin Demuth the same. I ask, would any man in his senses say that Either of them would exchange real Estate with me. What the difference in the income.
Look at the Hon.1 Benje Brown,17 $5.76 - these estates severally produce ten times the income of mine.
My house rather makes a show than other ways - it is not finished - only one Room is finished.
14Village property north of Lower and Upper Main Street.
16The site of the John H. Kennedy house.
16 House of the Gay sisters.
17Old Gov. Marble farm.
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HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
I trust Gentlemen that you will relieve from so unequal a Taxa- tion - I with due consideration, Gentlemen, your very hum1 serv. Payne Elwell
My chaise, which is old and Decriped, you have taxed the same as others that
are worth Double the money.18
Payne Elwell was a villager. The back-country folk were vocal in a different way, which will be duly recorded in a later chapter.
During these decades the innate urge of the human animal to live only in the present and to waste and destroy its inheritance derived from nature made it necessary for the town to continue its legal protection of its already decreasing resources of fish. Consequently on May 15, 1807, the voters decreed "that each per- son that shall take any of the fish called salmon, shad or alewives above Medomak Falls shall pay a fine of $1.00 for each fish so taken." Considering the financial status of those commonly given to a profligate use of nature's bounty, this was protection with a vengeance. As the supply of fish lessened, the town, mindful of its own experience in 1816 when this resource had proved a god- send, took more positive measures to conserve its fish supply.
A committee reporting from the March meeting to the meet- ing of April 5, 1819, gave as its findings that "fish ways may be built on Kinsell's Falls [Great Falls ], from an eddy at the foot of the falls on the east side to Weaver and Freeman dams, a distance of 150 feet at an outlay of $219.25 ... the ways to be ten feet wide and three feet high on the inside." It was recommended that the way should "be built of pine planks and ranging lumber." This report was accepted and Francis Simmons, Benjamin Arnold, and John Freeman were appointed as a committee to do the work. It is interesting that at the meeting of May 8, 1820, when the town ap- proved the expense account of this committee, it allowed $1.34 for "one gallon of Rum at Boardman's," an ancient New England tra- dition that a laboring man rates his grog. On June 28th of this year the town gave further attention to its fish and named a committee "to survey the situation for permanent sluice ways on all dams along the river," thus ending the old practice of compelling the millmen to open their dams for a stated period each year in order to enable the fish to run.
The treatment of the poor by New England towns has al- ways been an interesting phase of policy and especially does it reveal in this older day the severe frugality with which they were handled. In this matter Waldoboro was not unique in the fact that it protected itself most ably against bastardy and pauperism, never in the former case allowing the perpetrator to escape the
18Original document in my possession.
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fiscal consequences of his act, and in the latter case handling the poor in such a manner as to make pauperism unpopular.
From earliest times in New England the Puritans had had no conscience respecting a child born without the sanction of the law and the church. The "Dutch" while not oversensitive in mat- ters respecting sex relations, were, by reason of their traditional thrift, averse to paying taxes for the support of illegitimate chil- dren, and hence were always ready to join the Puritans in seeing to it that the father of such a child was compelled to underwrite the consequences of his own fun, fiscally at least. In these days a woman pregnant out of wedlock invariably sought to fend off the unbear- able social stigma and to protect herself and child in their outcast state by revealing to her family or the authorities the name of the child's father. Then the town acted. A marriage followed, or repu- table persons, most often the father's parents, deposited monies or filed a bond insuring the means necessary to support the child or else, the unwilling father went to prison. A few concrete sam- ples of the manner of handling such a problem follow here as they have been excerpted from town records:
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