Long-Suffering Early Settlers

March 15, 1990

by Isabel Morse Maresh

The hardships endured by many of our ancestors in their quest for freedoms cannot be imagined by most of us. The History of Old Broad Bay by Jasper J. Stahl documented the early settlement by German immigrants of what is now Waldoboro in the early 1750s.

There have to be numerous reasons for a man to sell all that he has, pack up his wife and family, leave all he has ever known to emigrate to an unknown, unsettled area.

The German settlers were simple peasant people. Agents were cruel, unscrupulous men, lining their own pockets, who used preachers and others to convince the men to sign on for the "New Country." Sometimes a man sobering up found that he had signed up his family for the trip.

Each family was allowed to take a small chest of belongings, and for the most part, the peasants had little value. They traveled many miles over Europe to a shipping point. Often they spent weeks in a strange city waiting for their ship to depart, where much of their savings were spent to survive. This meant that they would be indentured to the ship owners or General Waldo, which took many years to pay off.

They were loaded like animals on an overcrowded boat. Stahl quoted the conditions from an old letter. In Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Holland, they began to pack people in like herring, with several hundred people on an overcrowded ship, with berths less than two feet wide by six feet long.

Once the ship started the eight- to 12-week sail, the misery, which cannot be comprehended, set in. The filth and stench were almost unbearable. Seasickness and disease were caused by salt food, and cooked food was available only occasionally. contaminated water, which was caught in rain barrels, was insect- and worm-infected and black, and lice were in such quantity as to be picked off, especially from the sick and dying. For several days a bad storm caused the ship to roll, and the sick and dying, as well as the others, were tossed about and thought that each moment would be the last.

Husbands blamed wives, neighbor blamed neighbor, and some even cried "Oh, God, if only I could be back home, even in my pigsty." The cries went on day and night, and one person after another was committed to a watery grave.

It was written that the pregnant women suffered terribly. Several mothers with newborn babies were thrown overboard to their graves. During one storm, one poor young mother was having difficulty giving birth and was shoved through an opening into the ocean while she was yet breathing because there was no hope for her and her baby, and there was no one to tend to her. A newspaper article wrote that about 50 children were born on the trip.

The immigrants were promised a common house to live in, a meeting house, and provisions when they arrived at Broad Bay. They landed on the Maine coast in October 1753 to find that the promises were lies and that the provisions were not there.

It was recorded that the winter was not overly vigorous and "the frosts held off wonderfully." January and February were generally moderate and pleasant. It would seem that the God of their faith was watching over them.

Though the winter was reasonably mild, the settlers were suffering. There was not enough food, and except for the abundance of clams and fish, they probably would have perished. Clothing and bedding were not warm enough, and children were indentured out in order to survive.

The Indians were not friendly. They burned houses and killed some of the settlers.

The German settlers were hard workers and every member of the family worked. It was written that the English settlers cleared land, piled brush, and burned it. The Germans chopped trees cut them up for logs, firewood, and split-rail fences, and dug out the stumps. Nothing was wasted, and they hauled rocks and built stone walls. The land was a clear and workable as it would ever be.

One of the descendants of the German ancestors was Jennie M. Levenseller, born June 2, 1877, in Lincolnville, daughter of Francis and Cynthia (Luce) Levenseller.

Jennie and John lived with his parents and several orphaned nieces and nephews in the farmhouse in Belmont, They had three daughters Susie, Hazel, and Bertha, and sons Clarence, Everett, Amon, and Lester. When she was just 30 years old, she, like some of her forebears, had difficulty giving birth. At age 30 in July of 1907, she died giving birth to her eighth child. It was said that the infant son passed away the day that she was buried and was buried in her arms.

Jennie may have not attained old age, nor ever achieved historical status, but she will live in my memories as a hardy descendant of the long-suffering German immigrants of Old Broad Bay.