USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Boothbay Harbor > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 5
USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Southport > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 5
USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Boothbay > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 5
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1. Hakluyt, p. 691.
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HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
sailed along the coast and mentions Norumbegua. As this name actually applied to the Maine coast, and sometimes in a broader sense to all New England, this is the first recorded instance where Englishmen put their feet on Maine soil. Nowhere else on either continent has the fishing business been carried on so extensively and successfully, over a long term of years, as along the northern Atlantic coast, from Maine to Newfoundland. In 1577 there were reported one hundred fishing vessels about the Newfoundland waters. By 1600 England was sending annually about one hundred vessels there.1 It was but a few years after this before the English fleet of fishermen was num- erous along the Maine coast.
Bartholomew Gosnold sailed from Falmouth, England, March 26, 1602, with thirty-two men, and made land May 4th, somewhere north of the Isle of Shoals. He skirted the coast along to Cape Cod, where, on June 18th, he re-embarked for England. The next year merchants from Bristol, England, fitted up a ship of fifty tons, giving the command to Martin Pring. They sailed from Milford Haven, April 10, 1603, shortly after the death of Queen Elizabeth. They sighted the Azores and fell in with the American coast at Fox Islands, in Penobscot Bay, on June 7th. The cod and haddock which they took were esteemed better than those taken farther north. Pring examined our coast line more carefully than any one who had preceded him, and carried back a careful draft and an account of it. They sailed for England in August.
No other English navigator is mentioned until the voyage of George Weymouth, in 1605. He sailed from the Downs, March 31st, and on May 11th came in sight of the American coast near Cape Cod. He ran northwardly three days, from the 14th to the 17th of the month, and anchored about noon of the lat- ter day on the north side of a prominent island, which he named St. George, but which is now known by its aboriginal name, Monhegan. On the 19th he sailed northward two or three leagues, among the islands, toward the mountains he viewed in the distance, and anchored in an excellent harbor, which he named Pentecost Harbor. It has been a broadly discussed question, and much has been written upon it, where this Pen-
1. Sabine's Rep. on Fisheries, pp. 209-216.
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EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS.
tecost Harbor was, and what river Weymouth ascended after he left his anchorage. There seemed to be a settled impression that it was St. George's Harbor for many years, but the river he ascended was thought to have been the Penobscot. To this view Belknap, Williams, Eaton and Williamson inclined. The writings of these authors being among the earliest published, and practically on the ground, other historical works, that only mentioned the matter incidentally, accepted their views, with- out a knowledge of the locality. The report of Captain Wil- liams and the publications of Belknap are principally respon- sible for this view, however.
At a later date McKeen, Sewall and others, seeing that this was untenable as a theory, when compared with Rosier's narra- tive, the chronicler of the voyage, launched the Kennebec River theory, with Boothbay Harbor as the Pentecost of Weymouth. The historians, Bancroft, Abbott and Palfrey, accepted the Kennebec and Boothbay idea, and for some years this voyage became the largest subject for discussion in all Maine's early history. When carefully examined the Kenne- bec view was more inconsistent with Rosier's chronicle than the Penobscot had been. In 1859 Captain George Prince, of Bath, drew public attention to the matter in a careful and exhaustive paper before the Maine Historical Society, in which he set forth that all inconsistencies might be eliminated if the earliest view of the harbor, St. George's, be taken, and the St. George River substituted for the Kennebec or the Penobscot, in either case. The direction of the mountains, being those of Camden ; the description of the islands forming the harbor ; and the coves along the St. George, on either side; the river, "trending westward into the main"; all tallied with Rosier. It is probable that the matter would have been settled at a much earlier date had not Rosier described the river as a " large river." With that impression uppermost, Captain Wil- liams, who looked the ground over in the interest of Belknap, reported the Penobscot was the only "large river" that could be considered. Had he only thought that in the country from which Weymouth and Rosier came the Thames and the Severn are considered large rivers ; and had he critically examined that part of the narrative where the author estimates this
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HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
"large river" as extending only forty miles into the main, then Captain Williams, as well as Captain Prince, might have recon- ciled the St. George as fitting the description. Members of the Maine Historical Society, it is believed, as a unit, accept the Prince theory, as do students of the subject everywhere.1
One act of Weymouth's voyage, which will always cause it to stand out prominent in history, was the capture of five Wawenock Indians, by treachery, and taking them to England. The names of the captured were Nahanada, Skidwares, Asse- comet, Dehamida and Tisquantum. For this act Weymouth is to the present day held up to the execration of mankind ; while Lord Popham and Sir Ferdinando Gorges are viewed as Christian gentlemen of unblemished character. The exten-
uating facts that may be urged in behalf of Weymouth's mem- ory are, that he caused the kidnapping of these natives for no monetary gain. They were not sold into slavery or ill-treated, further than such punishment as would naturally be incidental to capture and transportation away from home and friends. He was on a voyage in the interest of Gorges and Popham, and when he returned to England these stolen Indians were divided between his employers, Gorges taking three into his house- hold, and Popham the other two. Gorges says, in his brief narration :
" They were all of one nation, but of several parts and sev- eral families. This accident must be acknowledged the means under God of putting on foot and giving life to all our planta- tions."
The real use to which the Indians were put in England was to teach them English, and then to obtain from them a descrip- tion of their country and its natural resources. They were all returned later and, unquestionably, were well cared for while in England. Captain Weymouth has been held before the public by many writers with all the odium of a slave-stealer, and his memory is blotted by this act; but he was only the agent of principals on the other side of the Atlantic. The agent's purpose was secondary to that of the principals, but the nature of the act forced the first move on him. That accon- plished, the principals accepted the result of his work for the
1. Me. Hist. Coll., Vol. V, pp. 307-338; Vol. IX, p. 302; Vol. VI, pp. 291-307. Same, 2d Series, Vol. II, p. 225.
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EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS.
carrying out of their object ; and Gorges, Christian gentleman that he was, only termed it an "accident."
When the treatment of the captured, and the fact that they were sent back to be landed on the shores of their nativity, is all considered, the act does not take so dark a hue as it has many times been given. The intent was the essence of the crime then, as always ; and the intent was not bad. It worked, however, to the disadvantage of the English. The forcible, treacherous act of kidnapping was started in the minds of the natives, and, while nearly three-quarters of a century was to intervene before they should wage a disastrous war upon the white population, there was ever after a feeling of suspicion and distrust of the English on the part of the Indians.
By act of King James I, who was now the English ruler, two patents were granted on April 10, 1606, with a view to colonization. This was the most vital action in this direction thus far taken by the English Government. They were known as the First and Second Colonies of Virginia.1 The first con- sisted of London gentlemen, Gates, Somers, Hakluyt, Wing- field and their associates; and the other was composed of Gorges, Hanham, Gilbert, Popham, Parker and their associ- ates, from Plymouth and elsewhere. The country granted was from 34° to 45° north latitude, or from about the point of Cape Fear to the central part of Maine. The First Colony was permitted to begin a settlement anywhere below 41° north, and the Second Colony could commence anywhere above 38° north ; but one having commenced, the other should not begin a settlement within one hundred miles of the first planting. It will be only with the Second Colony of Virginia, sometimes called the Plymouth Company, that we shall have to do as we proceed.
In August, 1606, the Second Colony sent out to their terri- tory, for the purposes of colonization, Capt. Henry Chalons. He had thirty-one men, and took along Dehamida and Asse- comet, intending to return them to their native shores. This is strongly presumptive that the locality that Weymouth had visited, and Rosier had described, was the intended destination. A little later one of the patentees, Capt. Thomas Hanham,
1. Will. Me., Vol. I, p. 196.
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HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
with more men and supplies, and the Indian Nahanada, fol- lowed Chalons. The latter, however, was not to be found by Hanham, so after some search he returned to England, accom- plishing nothing further than giving the country and the oppor- tunities for colonization a favorable word painting. Chalons, meantime, on November 10th, had been captured by the Span- iards, taken to Spain and his vessel condemned.
While disappointment came to the North Virginia Com- pany, the Southern Company was making some progress. In April, 1607, with three ships and one hundred men, the settle- ment of Jamestown was effected, which was never entirely broken up. The spirit of rivalry at about this time is in evi- dence between the two companies in the matter of colonization. On May 31, 1607, George Popham, brother to the Chief Jus- tice, and Raleigh Gilbert, nephew of Sir Walter Raleigh, sailed from Plymouth with two ships, the Gift of God and the Mary and John, with one hundred and twenty men, and provisions, utensils and other necessities adapted to planting in a wilder- ness. With them was Skidwares, another of Weymouth's captives, returned to his home and friends. Early in August they made land, evidently in the vicinity of Mount Desert, and sailed westerly to an anchorage under Monhegan. They were among the islands in that vicinity for a few days, one of Strachey's descriptions being as follows : 1
"From twelve of the clock noon they kept their course due west and came neere unto three islands, lying low and flat by the water, shewing white to the water as if it were sand ; but yt is white rock, making shew afar off almost like Dover Cliffes. There lyeth so-west from the easter-most of the three islands a white rocky island, and those other three islands lye one of the other east and west."
It is generally accepted that in the above the islands Dam- ariscove, Outer Heron and Fisherman's are described, and the white rocky one is Pumpkin Rock. The text preceding and following the above supports this view. On August 9th, it being Sunday, they went ashore at some island, presumably
1. William Strachey was not connected with this expedition. He was not even on this coast; but he was Secretary of the South Virginia Company from 1609 to 1612, at about which time he returned to England. About 1618 he prepared his " Historie of Travaile into Virginia," some chapters of which were devoted to the Northern Col- ony. The data was probably from interviews with or journals of some of the members of that voyage.
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EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS.
Monhegan, perhaps another, and held divine worship. At whatever island it may have been, it was evidently the first Protestant church service ever held north of Jamestown, Va. While in the vicinity of the three islands referred to they were becalmed, but during the night a furious southern storm broke upon them. This they rode out till daybreak when Strachey tells us further :
"Soe soone as the day gave light, they perceaved that they were hard abourd the shore, in the bay that they were in the daie before, which made them look out for some place to thrust in the shipp to save their lives; for towing the long boat, yt laye suncke at the stern two howers and more, yett would they not cutt her off, lyving in hope to save her; So bearing up helme, they stood in right with the shoare, when anon they perceaved two little islands, to which they made, and there they found (God be thancked) good anchoring, where they road untill the storme broak, which was the next daie after. Here they freed their boat, and had ashore to repaire her, being much torn and spoiled. These are two leagues to the westward of Sagadehoc. Upon one of them they went ashoare, and found four salvadges and one woman. The islands all rockye and full of pine trees."
They selected the point of the peninsula, known by the Indians as Sabino, on the western side of the Kennebec River, then called the Sagadahoc. This point is now well known to all as Popham Beach. It is well for the reader to consider for a moment the early distinction which that place received. The two great companies, chartered under James I, had each made its selection of a locality, in the same year, 1607, upon which to build a city, which should in future times be the cen- ter or nucleus of a New World's population. Popham went down early, and is now, for its natural beauty, used as one of the many summer homes along the Maine coast, with but few inhabitants ; while of Jamestown Fiske justly says: "Of that sacred spot, the first abiding place of Englishmen in America, nothing now is left but the ivy-mantled ruins of the church tower and a few cracked and crumbling tombstones."
While Popham superintended the building of the fort and houses, Captain Gilbert explored, with a few of his men, as far west as Cape Elizabeth and about Casco Bay, also up the Kennebec to a point thought to be between Augusta and
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HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
Waterville, and during the month of September went to Pem- aquid, by arrangement with Nahanada and Skidwares, to go with them and visit the Bashaba ; but on arriving there, being belated, those Indians had gone before them, and they returned to the settlement. While the others were getting ready for winter, Capt. Robert Davies was dispatched back to England in the Mary and John for supplies, expecting to return in the spring. After his departure they finished the fort, built fifty houses, a church and storehouse, and "a pretty Pynnace of about some thirty tonne, which they called the Virginia." Captain Davies arrived the following season, "with a shipp laden full of vitualls, armes, instruments and tooles," but he found President Popham dead, besides many others. It had been a rigorous winter in both America and Europe, far beyond the average in severity, still a good quantity of sassa- fras had been gathered, a large stock of furs had been obtained in trade with the Indians, and matters were not necessarily in the discouraging state that they have been depicted, had it not been that their leadership was gone. The ship brought over letters to Gilbert announcing the death of his brother, to a part of whose property he was heir. This influenced Gilbert to return to England, and the result of this western effort may be summed up in Strachey's closing :
"Therefore they all ymbarqued in this new arrived ship, and in the new pinnace, the Virginia, and sett saile for Eng- land. And this was the end of that northerne colony uppon the river Sachadehoc."
No official voyages to this locality are recorded until 1614, when Capt. John Smith, of South Virginia fame, appears giv- ing some attention to the Virginia of the north. He set sail from England, March 3, 1614, with a ship and a bark and for- ty-five men, and reached Monhegan, where he anchored in its harbor, the last of April. He built several boats at Monhegan to range the coast with, leaving his vessel in that harbor. He took eight men with him on his excursions, and with his usual energy explored and surveyed the coast, which he mapped two years later, producing the best map of this coast that had appeared up to that date.1 Again the two faithful Indians,
1. Captain Smith's map included the coast from the mouth of the Penobscot to Cape Cod.
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EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS.
Nahanada and Skidwares, appear to advantage as friends to the English. Captain Smith says :
" The main assistance, next God, I had to this small num- ber, was my acquaintance among the Salvadges, especially with Nahanada, one of their greatest lords, who had lived long in England. By the means of this proud Salvadge, I did not doubt but quickly to have got that credit with the rest of his friends and alliants, to have had as many of them as I desired in any design."
While Smith lay at Monhegan he reports "right against him in the main was a ship of Sir Francis Popham," also to the westward, some leagues away, were two French vessels well laden with furs and ready for a homeward voyage. On July 18th Smith sailed for England in his bark, leaving Captain Hunt in his ship to finish the fare of fish. No sooner had Smith departed than Hunt sailed westward to the Massachusetts shore, kidnapped twenty-seven Indians, and sailed to Spain, where a part of them were sold for about one hundred dollars apiece. This act of Hunt's was one of the most injurious to the English, who were trying to colonize the country, that ever occurred.
Captain Smith dedicated his map and " Description of New England" to Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I, requesting him to change the barbarous names of the locality for such English that posterity would pronounce him their godfather.1
New England first appears as a name at this point, as also does Charles River, Cape Ann and Cape Elizabeth. Pemaquid was named St. John's town, and Monhegan called Barty Island. The last two names did not stick, though the others have.
Sir Ferdinando Gorges, in 1616, sent Richard Vines to this coast with the express stipulation that he should winter here. This he did during the winter of 1616-17 with the Indians at the mouth of the Saco River.2 Next we learn of Captain Rocroft in 1618, who came to these shores in the interest of the Plymouth Company. In a quarrel with some of his crew he put three of them ashore near where Vines had wintered. They worked east along the coast and reached Monhegan, where they spent the winter of 1618-19, in a suffering condition. Rocroft,
1. Mass. Hist. Coll., 3d, Vol. VI, p. 05.
2. From Vines, more than any one else, has been learned the severity of the epidemic among the Indians. That winter. while they were dying in hundreds all about him, not one of his crew was affected by the scourge.
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HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
without orders, sailed for Virginia, where in a quarrel he was killed by one of his own countrymen. Captain Dermer was sent out in the spring of 1619 to meet Rocroft, and largely for the purpose of conciliating the natives, who had, under the bad treatment they had received from the English, been growing very hostile. He failed to find Rocroft but touched at Monhe- gan and took off the three men who had passed the winter there. Dermer made Monhegan his headquarters, loaded with furs and sent his vessel back to England to market them, while he, in an open boat of five tons, with six or seven men, started for Virginia, going by way of Long Island Sound, the East River, New York Harbor and Sandy Hook. This was prob- ably the first time this route had been taken.
At this point we have reached about the date when it is believed that several settlements were formed along the coast in our vicinity. The principal voyages on the North Atlantic coast have been mentioned ; but, like Capt. John Smith in his "Historie," we have no doubt we have failed to mention " divers others that have ranged these parts whose true descrip- tions were concealed or died with their authors." We believe that enough has been presented, however, to convince the reader that the earliest movement along our immediate coast was not from that country to the south and west of us, along the Atlantic coast, which has become more populous than we have ; but that the early visitation of these waters commenced far to the eastward of us, as far in fact as Newfoundland, and worked this way. The fact that Monhegan, in several instances, was made a headquarters for prominent action, nota- bly so in the case of Capt. John Smith, leads us to believe that that island, in the earliest days, was viewed in Europe, among navigators, as one of the principal landmarks on the Ameri- can coast. We shall not again meet with Nahanada or Skid- wares. Those noble and faithful natives, who have so often appeared, and with such prominence, were last mentioned by Captain Smith. When we think that just after his voyage, came first, to the Indians of our coast, a destructive war, followed by a blighting pestilence, we are licensed in the presumption that these two were among the fallen.
CHAPTER IV. EARLY SETTLEMENTS.
T' HE exact date at which the first settlements were made, either in our immediate vicinity or in neighboring locali- ties, is unfixed. What may justly be termed a settlement certainly did not exist before 1620. Between that date and 1623 there were several commenced, including Monhegan, Damaris- cove, Pemaquid and Cape Newagen. These four places varied but little in their dates of birth as colonies. By ingenious inter- pretations of the recorded return to England of the Popham colonists, in the spring of 1608, many have come to believe that a part of these recolonized at Pemaquid, or elsewhere east of the Kennebec. Both documents and reason disprove this. "They all returned," is told us by the documents of the times. Reason adds that these leaderless, homesick men went back to England, and the passage was none too quick to please them. Popham, the head and life of the colony, was dead. Gilbert had learned by the vessel just arrived from England that he was heir to an estate, and, lacking positive characteristics, preferred the case that goes with an inheritance to the honor that attaches to a successful pioneer. It must be remembered that the previous summer these colonists had ranged these parts for a feasible location, and decided in favor of the advantages of the place which they selected. They had built houses, fort and storehouse, besides making other improve- ments. They had passed the first winter, always the most severe ; a vessel laden with provisions, clothing, implements and all the necessary supplies for their support had come to them in the spring. They had already commenced a lucrative trade with the natives. Their sufferings were mostly behind them, not ahead. But they returned and defeated, by lack of resolution, all the efforts made by themselves and all that had been made by the company that sent them. Can it be supposed that men in this frame of mind left what was estab-
5
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HISTORY OF BOOTHBAY.
lished and commenced anew on Damariscove or Monhegan, or at Pemaquid ?
During the summer of 1614, when Captain Smith made Monhegan and its little harbor his headquarters, while he boated alongshore from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod, entering every river of consequence, sounding some twenty-five harbors and visiting about forty Indian villages, had he not a perfect opportunity to ascertain as to settlements? But he tells us : " When I first went there the Northern Colony was dissolved and there was not one Christian in all the land." This should be final up to 1614. After this, for some years, Smith and others made vain attempts to raise a colonizing company in England to settle in America. It had been reported that the severity of the winters in this country made wintering here a practical impossibility. It was to test this very point that caused Gorges and Popham to send Richard Vines, with a crew, as we have seen, in 1617, with the express stipulation that they should pass the winter here. If a settlement had existed anywhere along the New England coast would this effort have been made? Again we noted where Rocroft put three of his seamen ashore, near the mouth of the Saco River, and that they wandered back, easterly, along the coast, and passed the winter alone at Monhegan, being taken off in the spring of 1619 by Captain Dermer, who was looking for Rocroft. These men were on the very place that had been made for years the most prominent landmark on the coast, and where, if anywhere, a settlement would naturally have been found. In coming from the westward they had passed Damariscove and Cape Newagen, and they were within sight of the smokes that would have arisen from the settlers' cabins at Pemaquid, had there been such there. But there was evidently nothing in the way of habitations of settlers along the shore, and, therefore, they betook themselves to the safest place in their knowledge, and where, at the opening of the ensuing spring, they would be most likely to be visited by the fishermen, who annually came across, and by that means get back to England.
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