USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Boothbay Harbor > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 6
USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Southport > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 6
USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Boothbay > History of Boothbay, Southport and Boothbay Harbor, Maine. 1623-1905. With family genealogies > Part 6
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The southern branch of the corporation of 1606 obtained new patents, which were more definite in scope of territory and authority over it, at two different dates, 1609 and 1621.
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Believing such action a necessity at the north, the Plymouth Company, through Gorges, petitioned the crown for a new patent, which was granted November 3, 1620. This last com- pany consisted of forty noblemen and gentlemen, who, in their associate capacity, were termed : "The Council established at Plymouth in the County of Devon, for planting, ruling and governing New England in America." The name, New Eng- land, here appears for the first time in high official form. North Virginia had been discarded as a name, and Captain Smith's appellation of six years before adopted. With this change the prefix was dropped from the Southern Colony, and it became simply New England and Virginia thence forward. The bounds of the new company were set in the patent between the 40th and 48th degrees of northern latitude, which on the coast line commences at the parallel of Philadelphia and extends along the mainland to the head of Bay Chaleur.1 East to west this patent extended "throughout the mainland from sea to sea."
The powers delegated to this company were very full and complete in the matter of succession, filling of vacancies, appointing of governors and the administration of justice. It included also the exclusive trade and fishery interests ; the privilege of importation free of duty from England for seven years ; and the expulsion of intruders. The Council held exclusive powers in granting any of its territory as it saw fit. Its first grant was to John Mason, who subsequently became a patentee of the tract between the Naumkeag and the Merrimac Rivers, under the name of Mariana. This grant was dated March 2, 1621. Encroachments were already made on the New England territory, as defined in the patent, that portended conflict and bloodshed. The Dutch had settled, in 1614, within its southern bounds at Amsterdam (New York) and New Jersey ; while the French, tenacious of the claims of their country, through the efforts of De Monts and Champlain, had rebuilt Port Royal after its destruction by Argall in 1613, and were also settled at Mount Desert. Gorges was much concerned about this northern interference, and was instrumental in pro- curing from the Council a grant of a large part of the northern country, with the St. Croix River as a western bound, to Sir
1. This did not include Newfoundland or Cape Breton.
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William Alexander, Secretary of State from Scotland. The object was to enlist a Scotch interest, and thus crowd out the French. This grant was named New Scotland, but as the patent was in Latin it took the form it has ever held, Nova Scotia.
Both Mason and Gorges were men of broad ideas, and about this time they had extensive plans. They obtained of the Council on August 10, 1622, a grant of all the land lying on the seacoast and extending sixty miles inland, between the Merrimac and Sagadahoc (Kennebec) Rivers, with the adjacent islands. This was named the Province of Laconia.1 On November 7, 1629, Mason alone was granted all of the above- mentioned tract that lay between the Merrimac and Piscataqua Rivers. This he named New Hampshire. This was by agree- ment with Gorges, who took from the Piscataqua to the Sagadahoc for his share, and this became the Province of Maine.
The Mayflower, with her distinguished colony, landed at Plymouth Rock, December 16, 1620. They had with them a charter for territory, but it was from the Virginia Company, and the point reached was out of the jurisdiction of the Virgin- ians, therefore, on the return of the Mayflower, they made application to the Council of New England for a charter. This was granted June 1, 1621, in the name of John Pierce, "citizen and cloth worker of London,"2 and reached Plymouth in November, 1621, in the ship Fortune. This patent always had an element of mystery about it. It is not known that the colonists of New Plymouth ever accepted it. It applied to any place within the entire territory, providing it did not interfere with some other settlement that had been commenced. Pierce and the colony at Plymouth had a falling out regarding it, but compromised by the payment of £500 to Pierce, and he assigned his interests in it to them. It then disappeared, and was not found until 1741, then in the hands of his heirs, who
1. Will. Me. I, 225. Sanborn's New Hampshire, p. 3, reverses the order in which the names Laconia and Maine were applied; stating that the name Maine was given in 1622 to the earlier grant. Williamson is clearly correct.
2. John Pierce never came to America, so Johnson states. Some have thought he lived once at Pemaquid, but this is probably an error. His son and descendants lived at Marblehead, and their residence there, the similarity of family names, with other reasons, makes it strongly presumptive that he was the ancestor of the Pierce family sonnmerons in Boothbay and Southport. The four brothers, Joseph, Samuel, Sylvester and David Pierce, came to Cape Newagen from Marblehead before the Revolution.
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pressed their claims under it against the inhabitants of Bristol. Richard, son of John Pierce, came to Pemaquid about 1623, in company with John Brown, whose daughter he had married, and who became a prominent historical personage on account of his early purchase of lands at Pemaquid, of Samoset, in 1625.1
The beauties of Laconia ; its wooded highlands and fertile valleys; its numerous harbors, swarming with fish of the largest size and finest quality ; its prospective mineral resources, were all flatteringly portrayed in England to induce settlers to the New England shores. All that these portrayals fell short of those of a western real estate agent, of modern times, was the extent to which the science of advertising and the typo- graphical art were inferior. It is clearly evident that a strong and effective effort was made at that time. Settlements were started in 1622 at Piscataqua, now Saco, and Cocheco, now Dover, N. H. From St. George to the Saco, at intervals along the shore, were the rude beginnings of fishermen's huts and trading stages.2 There is a probability that Monhegan had a slight lead over the other places, and that priority belongs to her.
Hubbard tells us that no colony was ever settled in any of these places "till the year 1620"; and it was the eastern coast, not New Plymouth, of which he was writing. In the autumn of 1620 five of Gorges' men had an affray with the Indians near Cape Cod; three were killed, and it is said "the other two barely escaped to Monhegan."3 Why should men at such a distance as that between Cape Cod and Monhegan, in a desperate plight as these survivors were in, try to escape there, unless the object was the safety that a settlement would afford. Prince calls Monhegan a plantation of Sir F. Gorges in Feb- ruary, 1621 ; and the April following mentions it as "a settle- ment of some beginnings." From 1622 to the first Indian war Monhegan was continuously settled with an English speaking population.4
Indications strongly point to John Brown, who purchased
1. An extended explanation of these complications appears in Johnson's Hist. of Pemaquid, pp. 48-59.
2. A landing with conveniences for curing fish and collecting furs of the natives, where the traffic of those days was carried on, was called a trading stage.
3. Prince's Annals, 99.
4. Will. Me. I, 226.
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.
land of Samoset, July 15, 1625, together with his son-in-law, Richard Pierce, and some others less known, as being the first English settlers at Pemaquid. If this is so they probably reached that place in the earlier part of 1623, for very early that year the second ineffectual attempt of John Pierce, to send a colony across was made when his ship, the Paragon, returned to England after having reached the mid-Atlantic. They were probably at Pemaquid when Captain Levett was at Cape Newagen later that year.
Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando, was appointed Governor of New England in 1623. Among his councilors was Capt. Christopher Levett, a man of advanced knowledge in nautical and mathematical matters. He had been Woodward of Somersetshire to James I. His judgment, therefore, was deemed of practical value in selecting localities for planting settlements, as well as judging the value of timber for the King's navy. An entry on the Council's records reads : "May 5, 1623. Christopher Levett to be a principal patentee, and to have a grant of 6,000 acres of land." Again : "June 26, 1623. The King judges well of the undertaking in New England, and more particularly of a design of Christopher Levett, one of the Council for settling that plantation, to build a city and call it York."I Levett made his voyage that year, probably in the antumn. He reached the American shore at Isle of Shoals and found six fishing vessels there from England ; he then sailed to Panaway, which was David Thompson's plantation at the mouth of the Piscataqua. At that place he met Governor Gorges, with whom he was to be associated, and together they went along the coast to the eastward, examining it carefully for a suitable place for a settlement. His next stop was at Cape Porpoise and then at Saco, where he remained five days on account of violent storms. The next point eastward where he touched was Quaek,2 and from there lie sailed to Sagadahoc. Of this place he writes : 3 "For Sagadahoc I need say nothing
1. Sainsbury's State Papers, I. 45.
2. Quack was the name for the locality where Portland and adjoining towns now stand. It is supposed the name was taken from the Indian Macquack, meaning red. The ledges there during winter thaws discolor the snow beneath, on account of mineral deposit which they contain.
3. Captain Levett published in book form a report of his trip in 1628. One copy only of the original edition is known to be owned in America. That belongs to the N. Y. Hist. Society, but the Me. Hist. Society had a reprint in 1847.
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of it, there hath heretofore been enough said by others, and I fear me too much. But the place is good; there fished this year two ships." After leaving Sagadahoc Levett came to our own locality. He writes thus :
"The next place I came to was Capmanwagan, a place where nine ships fished this year. But I like it not for a plantation, for I could see little good timber and less good ground ; there I staid four nights, in which time there came many savages with their wives and children, and some of good account amongst them, as Menawormet, a sagamore, Cogawesco, a sagamore from Casco and Quack, now called York, Somerset, a sagamore, one that hath been found very faithful to the English, and hath saved the lives of many of our nation, some from killing, others from starving. They intended to have gone presently, but hearing of my being there, they desired to see me, which I understood by one of the masters of the ships, who likewise told me that they had some store of beaver coats and skins, and was going to Pemaquid to truck with one Mr. Witheridge, a master of a ship of Bastable, and desired me to use means that they should not carry them out of the harbor. I wished them to bring all their truck to one Mr. Coke's stage, and I would do the best I could to put it away ; some of them did accordingly, and I then sent for the saga- mores, who came, and after some compliments they told me I must be their cousin, and that Captain Gorges was so (which you may imaginge I was not a little proud of, to be adopted cousin to so many great kings at one instant, but did willingly accept it), and so passing away a little time very pleasantly, they desired to be gone, whereupon I told them I understood they had some coats and beaver skins which I desired to truck for ; but they were unwilling, and I seemed careless of it (as men must do if they require anything of them). But at last Samoset swore there should be none carried out of the harbor, but his cousin, Levett, should have all; and they began to offer me some by way of gift, but I would take none but one pair of sleeves of Cogawesco, but told them it was not the fashion of English captains always to be taking, but sometimes to take and give, and continually to truck was very good. But in fine we had all except one coat and two skins, which they reserved to pay an old debt with ; but they staying all that night had them stolen from them. In the morning the sagamores came to me with a grievous complaint. I used the best language I could to give them content, and went with them to some stages which they most suspected, and searched both cabins and chests, but found none. They seeing my willingness to find
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the thief out, gave me thanks, and wished me to forbear, say- ing the rogues had carried them into the woods where I could not find them.
" When they were ready to depart they asked me where I intended to settle my plantation ? I told them I had seen many places to the west, and intended to go farther to the east before I could resolve ; they said there was no good place, and I had heard that Pemaquid and Capmanwagan and Monhiggon were granted to others."
The next day Levett returned to Quack or York,1 as he tells us, "with the king, queen and prince, bow and arrows, dog and kettle in my boat, his noble attendants rowing by us in their canoes."
There is a vast lesson on the early conditions to be learned from the foregoing copious extract. It tells us that Cape Newagen had been granted to others, and mentions particulars of the settlement there, not only giving us the name of Coke, as the proprietor of one of the trading stages, perhaps the principal one, but mentions that there were several, together with cabins, where the stolen furs were searched for. Levett had previously spoken of snowstorms on the way down, so we may judge it was late in the season, but the settlement had accommodations so that he stopped four nights, and evidently stayed ashore. These conditions indicate more than a tempor- ary headquarters for an English fishing fleet. That it had been established long enough to become an important business point is confirmed by two facts, the one, that nine vessels fished from there, and the other, that the Indians, from several directions, were there to truck their furs at the stages. It also confirms the impression, which many have held, that the lower Sheepscot was a real center of Indian population.
Further than this the evidence of Levett is added to that of Prince and Hubbard and others relating to the settlement on Monhegan ; and, being late as it was in the year, Brown and Pierce had had ample time to arrive and be planted at Pemaquid, and these were the parties which we have previously mentioned as, in all probability, commencing there that year.
But what a scene is this first one we are permitted to look
1. Some confusion may occur in the matter of proper names. Levett had designed to found a city and name it York, as we have seen. Quack was the place he selected, and this he named York, But the name did not stick. It was later transferred to ancient Agamenticus, the present town of York.
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upon in the eventual Boothbay territory. The Governor, Gorges, son of one of the closest advisers of James I, and the man of all others considered authority on New World subjects ; Captain Levett, his councilor, and one of the ablest English navigators ; Samoset, the first to grant a deed to the English in American history, and a figure that never has appeared in history in other than a noble light ; Cogawesco and his wife, king and queen of the Sokoki tribe ; with numer- ous fishermen, sailors, fur traders, adventurers, all together for four days at Cape Newagen in November or December of 1623. This little point bordering on Cape Harbor was then one of the few and one of the principal places in America ; but, alas for the ravages of time, it has since lost both distinctions.
Damariscove, like Pemaquid, lacks in the definiteness of early references more than either Monhegan or Cape Newagen ; but that it was contemporary with them in settlement is certain from the many general references one may meet in consulting old authors and records. Thirty fishing vessels are said to have made that island their headquarters during the season of 1622, more than three times the number found about Capc Newagen the following year. There is reason to suppose that a seaman by name of Humphrey Damerill, 'who lived until about 1650, dying in Boston, owned the group of islands made up of Fisherman's Island, the Hypocrites, Damariscove proper, in early times sometimes divided and a part called Wood Island, White Island, Heron Island and Pumpkin Rock. As early as 1614, when Captain Smith mapped this coast these were called Damerill's Isles.1 This idea of grouping them was followed at the time Williamson prepared his history,2 but they were then called the Damariscove Islands. The fish- ermen's headquarters were on the main island, they employing that harbor for the purpose. The harbor or cove first gave the name to the island proper, Damerill's Cove, and in that form the name is met with in the earliest records. In later years it underwent a change of both form and spelling.
The Sheepscot settlement is more indefinite as to date than
1. Humphrey Damerill claimed to own part or all the main island at the time of his death. He probably had originally owned them all, hence the reason of group- ing them in old writings.
2. 1832.
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any of the other places mentioned. It was certainly settled on Mason's Neck, just south of the present Sheepscot Village, as early as 1630, perhaps a few years before. The name of Sheepscot is one of the earliest recorded in our vicinity, and formerly applied to all settlements on the river of that name, as well as to the river itself. Therefore it included settlements on the western side of the present towns of Edgecomb, Booth- bay and Boothbay Harbor, as well as on Jeremisquam, now Westport. The name gradually narrowed in significance to its present neighborhood ; but the reader of old-time matter is often misled by supposing that some recorded happening, which belongs to this immediate locality, refers to the present Sheepscot.
Sometime between 1630 and 1650 six families settled in the vicinity of the present village of Damariscotta. Among these were John Brown, Jr., son of John Brown of New Harbor, and Walter Phillips, the first recorder of deeds and documents in this region, and withal a prominent character in history.
John Parker settled on the southern end of Reskeagan Island, now Georgetown, in 1629; about 1650 the north part was occupied by Thomas Webber, and together they sold to Clark and Lake some territory there. These latter parties held title from the natives to the island of Arrowsic, and in 1658 laid out a town on the southern part, with ten-acre lots and regular streets. In 1639 Edward Buterman and John Brown, who had been living at New Harbor, bought for "a hogshead of corn and thirty sound pumpkins," a tract of land known by the natives as Neguasset, now Woolwich, of Robin Hood. Brown however sold out in 1646 and moved back to Pemaquid.
On October 27, 1661, Robert Gutch bought the site of the present city of Bath of Robin Hood. It is said on what is now known as Arrowsic and Georgetown there were, in 1670, thirty families, and twenty more on the west side of the river below the chops.1 No other point near enough to be termed a neighboring colony, on the eastern coast, was settled as early as the above-mentioned places, except about the St. George River, which was probably contemporary.
1. Me. Hist. Coll. II, 193.
CHAPTER V.
GROWTH AND GOVERNMENT OF THE FIRST SETTLEMENT.
T HE first attempt at government in New England was in 1623, when Robert Gorges was appointed Governor over the Colonies. West, one of his ablest councilors, was commissioned admiral and instructed to restrain all unli- censed vessels from fishing in New England waters. He made a vain effort to carry out his orders, but was unable to do so on account of the stubborn spirit shown by the fishermen and gave up further effort. The English Ecclesiastical Court sent over an Episcopal minister with a commission to superintend the New England churches as fast as formed, but he met with such a reception as caused him to return to England disgusted. Charges against Gorges were preferred in the House of Com- mons, to which he answered, but not in a satisfactory manner. Disappointed and to some extent disheartened, he got an indi- vidual grant of 24,000 acres at Agamenticus, and, through the agency of his grandson and Colonel Norton, settled it in 1624. After this, while still continuing to hold first place in interest and authority regarding the New England settlements, his chief individual interests centered in the new town, which received the first English city charter of any place in America, on April 10, 1641, under the name of Gorgeana.1 The east- ern limits to Gorges' patent, known as the Province of Maine, had been the Sagadahoc River ; and while the jurisdiction of the Plymouth Council extended to Bay Chaleur, but one spe- cific grant northerly and easterly of that of Gorges had been made, which was the one to Sir William Alexander. The country lying between the Sagadahoc and the St. Croix was really an open territory at this period. It was simply within the Plymouth Council's jurisdiction, but not specifically granted like many places to the westward.
1. Gorgeaua was organized in 1652 into a town, the second in Maine, under the name of York.
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At this time occurred the accession of Charles I to the English throne and his marriage to a French princess of the Catholic faith. This worked ill to all western interests, those of the New England Colonies in general, and to Gorges and Alexander in particular. By the marriage treaty, or, as one writer puts it, "a bonus to a marriage intrigue," Acadia was resigned to France. Gorges, however, went before the King and his Council when the French ambassador urged his conn- try's claims. Sir Ferdinando based the English claim entirely on the early voyages mentioned in a preceding chapter, par- ticularly on the great charter of 1606 and the Popham settle- ment immediately following, and claimed continuous occupa- tion thereafter, if not by actual settlement, by continuous effort toward that end, and annnal use as headquarters, without interruption, by the English fishermen. The New Plymouth Colony was not used to base the claim upon in any sense ; simply those places along the coast of Maine, and particularly those points farthest east, like Pemaquid, Monhegan, Damaris- cove, Cape Newagen-and Sagadahoc.
His efforts availed a postponement of this concession to France, but, in 1626, France and England went to war, peace followed three years later, but another three years passed before a treaty, that of St. Germain, was drawn, when Charles I resigned to the French King "all the places occupied by British subjects in New France, Acadia, Canada- espe- cially the command of Port Royal, Fort Quebec and Cape Breton."
There had been up to this point ( 1632 ) at least twelve, probably more, grants made by the Plymouth Council along the shores of Maine ; but three only of these will be presented, and to do so of these is necessary on account of frequent future reference to them.
1. Jannary 13, 1630. A grant to William Bradford and his associates of fifteen miles on each side of the Kennebec River, extending from its mouth to the Cobbossee River, at the present site of Gardiner. This was afterward transferred to Plymouth parties and became known as the Kennebec Purchase.
2. March 2, 1630. A grant to John Beauchamp and
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Thomas Leverett, of England, known as the Muscongus Patent or grant. It extended on the seaboard line from the Penobscot to the Muscongus River, and northerly to an unsurveyed line running east and west far enough, without interfering with any other grant, to be equivalent to a tract thirty miles square. It contained no powers of civil government. Eighty-nine years later it became known as the Waldo Patent, and eventn- ally came into the possession of Gen. Henry Knox. It con- tained about 1,000,000 acres, and when adjusted it was found that the north line canie in the south line of the towns of Hampden, Newburgh and Dixmont.
3. February 29, 1631. The Pcmaquid Patent was made to two merchants from Bristol, England, Robert Aldsworth and Gyles Elbridge. It extended on the coast line from the Muscongus to the Damariscotta River, far north enough to include 12,000 acres, exclusive of settlers' lots, which were to be one hundred acres each for all settlers transported hither by the proprietors within seven years, and who would reside three years thereafter. This grant was made on two consid- erations, for past public services and the present in building a a town. It included Monhegan, Damariscove group and other islands within three leagues of shore.
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