USA > Maine > Knox County > South Thomaston > History of Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston, Maine, from their first exploration, A. D. 1605; with family genealogies, Vol. I > Part 4
USA > Maine > Knox County > Rockland > History of Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston, Maine, from their first exploration, A. D. 1605; with family genealogies, Vol. I > Part 4
USA > Maine > Knox County > South Thomaston > History of Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston, Maine, from their first exploration, A. D. 1605; with family genealogies, Vol. I > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49
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HISTORY OF THOMASTON,
knowing his determination and resolution, not so suddenly else to make return;" and as she neared the ship, in token of her good news and success she came " shooting volleys of shot," and when within musket range, the ship and shallop mutually saluted and hailed in great joy at the happy dis- covery. For "our captain had in this small time discovered up a great river, trending alongst into the main forty miles ; and by the length, breadth, depth, and strong flood, imagining . it to run far up into the land, he with speed returned, in- tending to flank his light horseman or gig, against Indian arrows, should the river become narrow enough to bring it in reach of them."
Spending the two next days in mutual visits and exchange of presents, the Indians, pointing to one part of the main eastward, signified that their Bashabes or king, there, had great plenty of furs and much tobacco; and on Monday, June 3d, by their earnest desire, Weymouth manned his light- horseman and went with them along to the main for traffic. But suspecting by appearances that the Indians were attempt- ing treachery, and finding about 283 armed savages assembled at no great distance with their dogs and tamed wolves, after an ineffectual attempt to obtain hostages for security, he re- turned without landing. Weymouth was extremely desirous of obtaining, according to the wishes of his patrons, some of these natives to be carried to England and taught the language in order to act as interpreters in a colonial enterprise hither, then in contemplation. The Indians seem to have suspected this, and thus far frustrated the design ; but the next day six men in two canoes approached the ship, of whom three, by means of bread and peas of which they were very fond, were enticed on board and secured. The other three, being too wary to enter the ship, were induced to accept presents on their island, and, while seated by the fire eating from the platter of peas given them, were seized, with the exception of one who had fled to the woods, and, not without the ut- most exertion of five or six men, carried on board.
The 8th of June was spent in thoroughly exploring the harbor; which was found to be safe, deep, and to be entered in water enough by four several passages. In the afternoon two canoes came from the eastward, containing "him that refused to stay with us for a pawn, and with him six other savages not seen before," all beautified very gallantly, one wearing a peculiar kind of coronet made of stiff hair colored red, whom "we understood to be sent from the bashabes, and that his desire was that we would bring up our ship to
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ROCKLAND AND SOUTH THOMASTON.
his house, being, as they pointed, upon the main toward the east ;" -- probably up the Penobscot. This, Weymouth pru- dently declined, sending them off without any knowledge of their kidnapped countrymen stowed below, and devoted the remainder of his stay to the exploration of the river whose mouth he had discovered.
"Tuesday the 11th of June," says the narrator, " we passed up into the river with our ship, about six and twenty miles," a distance which, if applied to the St. George's River, (and it can have been no other) must be taken as an over-estimate, such as would naturally be made, without actual measure- ment, in a new, strange, and highly diversified region. It probably did not exceed eighteen miles; about to the site of the small fort built in 1809 in the town of St. George. The advantages of the river are described in glowing terms, as being " of a bold shore; most free from sands or dangerous rocks in a continual good depth, with a most excellent land fall." " For the river itself, as it runneth up into the main very nigh forty miles toward the great mountains, beareth in breadth a mile, sometimes three-quarters, and half a mile is the narrowest, where you shall never have under four and five fathoms water hard by the shore, but six, seven, nine, and ten fathoms all along; and on both sides every half mile very gallant coves, some able to contain almost a hundred sail, where the ground is excellent soft ooze with a tough clay un- der for anchor hold and where ships may lie without either cable or anchor only moored to the shore with a hawser. It Howeth, by their judgment, 18 or 20 feet at high water," -- certainly another error in judgment, since no tide nearer to Monhegan than the Bay of Fundy flows that height. " Here are made by nature most excellent places, as docks to grave or careen ships of all burthens secured from all winds; the land bordering the river on both sides is neither mountainous nor rocky, but verged with a green border of grass;" the wood " not shrubbish but goodly tall fir, spruce, birch, beech, oak, which, in many places, is not so thick but may with sinall labor be made feeding grounds. As we passed with a gentle wind up with our ship in this river, any man may con- ceive with what admiration we all consented in joy;" many of the company comparing it with the most famous rivers, and the narrator remarking, " I will not prefer it before our river of Thames, because it is England's richest treasure."
" Wednesday, the 12th of June, (22d, N. S.,) our captain manned his light-horseman with 17 men, and run up from the ship, riding in the river up to the codde thereof" (an old
2*
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HISTORY OF THOMASTON,
Saxon word now obsolete, variously spelled, used sometimes to designate a narrow bay or indentation into the land, and was probably that at the turn of the river opposite the Gen. Knox mansion in Thomaston) " where we landed, leaving six to keep the light-horseman till our return. Ten of us, will our shot, and some armed, with a boy to carry powder and match, marched up into the country towards the mountains which we descried at our first falling in with the land" and which were constantly in view." " Unto some of them the river brought us so near, as we judged ourselves when we landed to have been within a league of them,"-probably Madambettox Mt., distant about three miles ; " but we marched up about four miles in the main, and passed over three hills ; and because the weather was parching hot, and our men in their armour not able to travel far and return that night to our ship, we resolved not to pass any further, being all very . weary of so tedious and laborsome a travel. In this march we passed over very good ground, pleasant and fertile, fit for pasture for the space of some three miles," (probably the Meadows of Thomaston and Rockland,) "having but little wood, and that oak, like stands left in our pastures in England, good and great, fit timber for any use, some small birch, hazle, and brake, which might in small time with few men be cleansed and made good arable land, but, as it now is, will feed cattle of all kinds with fodder enough for summer and winter. The soil is black, bearing sundry herbs, grass, straw- berries, bigger than ours in England. In many places are low thicks like our copses of small young wood. And surely it did all resemble a stately park, wherein appear some old trees with high withered tops and others flourishing with living green boughs. Upon the hills grow notable timber trees, masts for ships of 400 tons ; and at the bottom of every hill. a little run of fresh water ; but the farthest and last we passed ran with a great stream able to drive a mill." This descrip- tion answers well to the locality; and, if the mountain aimed at were Madambettox, the last-named stream must have been Mill River; or, if their route lay toward Mt. Pleasant, also in sight, it might have been Oyster River or one of its branches.
"We were no sooner aboard our light-horseman," con- tinnes the narrative, "returning towards our ship, but we espied a canoe coming from the farther part of the cod of the river eastward; which hasted to us, wherein with two others
* Purchas's Pilgrims.
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ROCKLAND AND SOUTH THOMASTON.
was he who refused to stay for a pawn." His errand, which proved fruitless, seemed to be to inveigle one of the men to spend the night on shore with them, in order to be kept as a hostage for the release of one of those kidnapped, supposed to be his kinsman. If this Indian's residence was on the Penobscot, he must have come from that river or bay, and crossed over by one of the two principal carrying-places used by his tribe in early as well as later times; - one of which was between Wessaweskeag River and the place in question, the other between what is now Rockland Harbor and Mill River, which has been used by the remnant of their tribe within the last thirty years, and perhaps at times even now.
"Thursday, the 13th of June," continues Mr. Rosier, "by two o'clock in the morning, (because our captain would take the help and advantage of the tide) in the light-horseman, with our company well provided and furnished with armour and shot both to defend and offend, we went from our ship up in that part of the river which trended westward into the main to search that. And we carried with us a cross to erect at that point," since known as Watson's Point, "which be- cause it was not daylight, we left on the shore until our re- turn back when we set it in manner as the former. For this (by the way) we diligently observed, that in no place, either about the islands, or up in the main, or alongst the river, we could discern any token or sigr that any christian had been before; of which, either by cutting wood, digging for water, or setting up crosses (a thing never omitted by any christian travellers) we should have perceived some mention left."
After this they proceeded farther on up the river, increasing in admiration at its beauty and advantages; "its great. store of fish, some great, leaping above water, judged to be salmon ;" its "divers branching streams," or creeks; its " many plain plots of meadow," as the writer calls the salt marshes, " some of 3 or 4 acres, some of 8 or 9, so as we judged in the whole to be between 30 and 40 acres of good grass; and where the arins ran out into the main, there likewise went a space of clear grass, how far we know not." Thus, continually re- freshed by the loveliness of this primeval solitude, they went on up into fresh water, of which they all drank, probably near the present bridge and village in Warren, to a distance estimated at 20 miles. This, like the other distances, though in a larger proportion, was an over-estimate; and may be accounted for by the superior attraction of the scenery, to- gether with their fatigue and hunger, as the men " had with great labor rowed long and cat nothing, for we carried with
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HISTORY OF THOMASTON,
us no victual, but a little cheese and bread." The tide not suffering them to make any longer stay, the exploring party returned with it, setting up the cross on Watson's Point on their way down; and, the next morning at 4 o'clock, by aid Esof the tide, their two boats, and a little help of the wind, got their ship down to the river's mouth; the soundings to the entrance of which the captain spent the rest of the day in searching. Saturday, they sailed with a land breeze to their watering-place at the George's Islands, filling all their empty casks; and their "captain, upon the rock in the midst of the harbor, observed the height, latitude, and variation, exactly, upon his instruments." These observations, which " our cap- tain intendeth hereafter to set forth," are not given by Rosier, purposely, he says, for fear of foreign intrusion on their dis- covery; but Samuel Purchas, who wrote his Pilgrims about 1620, and who probably had access to this private account of Weymouth or his log-book, says " the latitude he found to be 43º 20';" and the variation 11º 15', viz. :- one point of the compass westward." "Sunday, the 16th June," continues Rosier, " the wind being fair, and because we had set out of England upon a Sunday, made the islands upon a Sunday, and as we doubt not (by God's appointment) happily fell into our harbor upon a Sunday, so now we weighed anchor and quit the land upon a Sunday." They arrived home safely in Dartmouth, making soundings in the channel, also, on a Sunday, July 14th ; and with them were the five hapless red-men of our shores, Tahanado, Amoret, Skicowares, Maneddo, and Saffacomoit, three of whom lived three years with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and most of whom ultimately re- turned to their country, as interpreters, with different espedi- tions, and, it would seem, with no unfriendly feelings toward their captors.
Thus it appears that the territory afterwards incorporated as the town of Thomaston was the spot first trodden by Euro- pean feet on any part of the main land of our State. The coast may have been seen and the islands visited before; as those in Penobscot Bay certainly were the preceding year, 1604, by Martin Pring, and named the Fox Islands from the silver grey foxes seen there. This claim of Thomaston and the St. George's River as the scene of Weymouth's explora-
* The true latitude is about 43 deg. 50 min. : this error of 30 min. may have been made either in copying Weymouth's notes, or by the printer, or by the navigator himself, and it is a remarkable coincidence that B. Gosnold, 3 years earlier, marked the latitude of sundry places along the coast half a degree below the truth.
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ROCKLAND AND SOUTH THOMASTON.
tion is somewhat novel, and was first discovered by one of her talented sons, Capt. George Prince, now a resident of Bath, but familiar from childhood with all the features of our river, who first made known his convictions on the subject in an article addressed to the writer and published in the Lincoln Advertiser in August, 1858. Prior to this time, it had been claimed, alternately, but never satisfactorily, in behalf of the Kennebec and Penobscot. The settlement of Popham and Gilbert, in 1607, was intended and instructed to be made on the islands or main land discovered by Weymouth; but as in consequence of farther information derived perhaps from Pring in his second voyage in 1606, or from Weymouth's captured Indians, two * of whom came over with the colonists, they preferred a situation at the mouth of the Kennebec, and gave the name of St. George to the fort they erected there, Strachey and later writers supposed that river must be the forty-mile stream Weymouth had explored. But when it is remembered that this colony came over and without difficulty found Pentecost Harbor and the cross erected there, giving the name of St. George's to the surrounding islands, and then in their boats sailed " to the westward to the river of Pema- quid, which they found to be four leagues distant from the ship where she rode," every one will perceive that Wey- mouth's Pentecost Harbor is fixed beyond all cavil among the George's or St. George's Islands; and, as the passage from those islands to the Kennebec, ir the courses, distances, want of mountains in full view, and all the characteristics of the river, flatly contradicts the description of Weymouth's river, it is no wonder that the claims of the Kennebec were ques- tioned by Dr. Belknap in 1796, and that, when he requested Capt. Williams of the revenue service to repair to the spot and, in view of the mountains visible, decide whether the Kennebec or the Penobscot was the true river, the latter was preferred. This decision was acquiesced in by subsequent historians, among them Williamson in the History of Maine, and the compiler of this work in the Annals of Warren ; although it involved the inconsistency of taking Penobscot Bay ten miles wide at its entrance for the river described by Weymouth as from one mile to one-half mile in width, to say nothing of leaving the mountains behind in going up to its " codde" (Belfast Bay) instead of going directly toward them.t These inconsistencies led Capt. Prince to investiga-
* Viz. :- Skicowares, and probably Tahanado, though then written Dehamida.
t Mr. J. L. Locke, in his interesting History of Camden, acquiescing in
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HISTORY OF THOMASTON,
tion, made with the sagacity and keen eye of a practical man and observing mariner, and to the final conclusion that the river in question could be none other than the St. George's, which somehow or other got its name with the islands at its mouth, from that of the discoverer or the patron saint of his country, and from that time down has uniformly retained it. This view of his was further illustrated in an article commu- nicated by him to the sixth volume of the Maine Historical Society, and more fully, satisfactorily, and, we think, incon- trovertibly, demonstrated, in a pamphlet containing Rosier's narrative in full, with remarks of his own, published in 1860 ; insomuch that the only wonder now is that two and a half centuries should have elapsed before any one arrived at the perception of so palpable a truth.
This river so early discovered and named, though much frequented by the native Indians, was never, that we are aware of, the permanent, though it may have been a tempo- rary, residence of any particular tribe. It was situated in the neutral or contested hunting ground of two hostile tribes, - the Wawenocks, whose principal chief kept his court at Damariscotta, and the Tarratines, who held possession of the Penobscot waters and claimed dominion westward as far as the power of their rivals would permit. The Camden moun- tains were at one time considered the boundary ; but the des- olating wars of 1615 and pestilence of 1617-18 so weakened the Wawenocks and their western allies, that their rivals ex- tended claims in that direction to an indefinite extent, and by occupancy established their right to St. George's, which they ever afterwards maintained till relinquished to the whites. As the Indians designated localities by descriptions rather than proper names, and the languages of these two tribes differed, it is not strange that places in this contested ground should be known by different names. In Strachey's account
the claims of the Penobscot, endeavors to make out Goose River to be its "codde;" but has since, in a letter dated. April 21, 1863, informed me with his usual candor, that, on reviewing the grounds, (for which he had well qualified himself by visiting the spot where the "Archangel" anchored) he has changed his opinion and fully coincides with Capt. Prince. This opinion being further advocated by Rev. D. Cushman be- fore the Historical Society and favored by such learned antiquarians as Hon. Jos. Williamson, of Belfast, and, I believe, Hon. Wm. Willis, of Portland, the long mooted controversy may be considered as settled. - unless the recent attenipt in the Memorial Volume of the Popham Cole- bration to revive the Kennebec theory should receive more consideration than it seems to merit. seeing it is little more than a repetition of the ar- gunnents of the late J. McKeen, Esq., of Brunswick, to whom the public was much indebted for being the first to question the Penobscot theory so long acquiesced in.
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ROCKLAND AND SOUTH THOMASTON.
of the Popham colony, which after coming to three islands with a ledge of rocks to the southward (Matinicus Rock), thence stopping at George's Islands, and on Sunday, Aug. 9th, 1607, going ashore where Weymouth had planted his cross, and hearing from Mr. Seymour their chaplain the first chris- tian sermon ever preached in this region," passed on to the Sagadahoc, mention is made of three mountains " in on the land, the land called Segohquet, near about the river of Pe- nobscot," which land, if Mt. Pleasant be one of the moun- tains, must have been Thomaston, Warren, and vicinity. Capt. John Smith of heroic and romantic memory, who in 1614 made a voyage hitherward, and, after building seven boats at Monbegan for whaling and fishing, with eight of his men ranged the coast in his ship from Penobscot to Cape. Cod, also speaks of the places along the shore, and, after describing Penobscot Bay and mountains, says "Segocket is the next; then Nuscongus, Pemaquid," &c .; and, in a map which he prepared, marked our river as the site of an Indian village, to which Prince Charles of England gave the name of Norwich at the same time that he changed the name of what had been known as North Virginia to New England. Later authorities and traditions, confining the name Segocket to the river rather than the country, as perhaps Smith in- tended, have made it Segochet; which name in either of its forms evidently belonged to the Wawenock dialect, as the present Penobscots, the remnant of the ancient Tarratines, do not use it nor understand its meaning. Of other Wawenock names, though understood, the Penobscots express the same sense in words of their own, --- calling Matinicus, Menas- quesicook or a collection of grassy islands, and Monhegan, Kinagook or grand island. For George's River they seem to have no other name than Joiges; and some have conjec- tured that this name was borrowed by the English and by a slight change of sound converted into George's or St. George's. Instead of this, however, I am inclined to suspect that the name George's may have been adopted by the Tarratines from the name left to the river and islands by Weymouth, and from their pronunciation, Joiges, associated with the word joy, suggesting the kindred definition which when questioned they attach to it, viz .:- joyful, delightsome. It is not always easy to ascertain to which language a word originally be-
The earliest in any part of the State, except perhaps one at a religious service held in a chapel built on Neutral Island in the St. Croix or Schoo- die River by French Huguenots in 1604. Will. Hist. of Maine, &e.
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HISTORY OF THOMASTON,
longed; as we find abannock " is given as the Indian name for bread, and acowanabool as the Feejee of neat cattle, - each of which was probably bequeathed them by the Euro- pean donors of the first specimens of those articles. The great resort of the tribe to the place in later times, after a patent was granted and a trading-house established here. might naturally cause the English name to come into use among them and supplant any other ancient one of their own, as well as the "Segochet" of their Indian foes. The river having thus got the name of Joiges, the land, at least that part of it between Mill River and Oyster River, of course re- ceived that of Joigeekeag, or Georgeekeag, - the termination keag being their usual term to signify land, or a point of land formed by the junction of two rivers. So that with them the name of the western portion of our territory, or the present town of Thomaston, was nearly equivalent to pleasant point ; that of the southern portion, now South Thomaston, particularly at the junction of the two branches of its river, the Wessa- weskeag, signified land of sights, visions, - wizard point ;t and the eastern portion adjoining Owl's Head Bay, or the present Rockland Harbor, was called Catawamteak or Kata- wamteag, signifying great-landing-place, from which they took the trail across to Mill River. Of these Indian trails, three principal ones in the territory of Old Thomaston were much used and frequently spolen of in early times. That above named, was used in passing to St. George's River for the purpose of fishing at the falls or proceeding to the ocean on their way westward. Another was that from the head of Owl's Head Bay directly across to the bay in George's River, the high intervening land of which they early called Quis- quamego, and, in later times, Quisquitcumegek, or high- carrying-place. A third was that from the same Head of the Bay to the head waters of the Wessaweskeag, by which they avoided the tedious and exposed passage around Owl's Head. These were well known to the early settlers and hunters, as the Upper, Middle, and Lower trails.
The country having thus, by the discoveries of Weymouth, Pring, Smith, and others, become well known, was annually visited by private adventurers for fishing, hunting, and trading ; some of whom erected temporary huts on shore, but none except the Sagadahoc colony had as yet intended to
* Me. Ilist. Coll. Vol. V. - bannock, we believe. is a Scottish word.
+ Mansfield, in his History and Description of New England, says the Indian name Wessaweskeag signifies river of many points ; but does. not state his authority.
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ROCKLAND AND SOUTH THOMASTON.
become permanent residents. Monhegan was the principal landmark, and was at times thronged with these adventurers. Smith found there in 1614 a ship belonging to " Sir Francis Popham which for many years had visited the waters of St. George's River only."" Conflicts between the natives and treacherous Europeans, as well as between the Europeans themselves, frequently took place at Monhegan; in one of which several of Smith's men were killed in the neighboring waters, and in others, cases of mutiny of ship crews, and cruel kidnapping of natives occurred. Abraham Jennins, a fish merchant of Plymouth, concerned in trade with Abner Jennins of London, employing a large tonnage in the cod-fisheries and trade on the coast, acquired the original ownership of this island. The French, Spaniards, and Dutch also came to this region for traffic and fishing, and may have attempted more permanent establishments on the islands or coast. Domestic utensils and the foundations of chimneys now many feet un- der ground have been discovered on Monhegan as well as on Carver's Island in George's River, where, it is matter of his- tory, there were formerly found the remains of a stone house. No doubt these islands, that form the threshold of our river, were the scene of many a wild foray or romantic adventure. which for want of a contemporary historian must be allowed to slumber in the dim haze of the unrecorded past.
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