USA > Maine > Maine place names and the peopling of its towns > Part 2
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Aroostook County, 1839
Aroostook County came into being in 1839 from the union of parts of Penobscot and Washington counties. In 1843 further additions were made from Penobscot, and in 1844 Piscataquis and Somerset counties contributed a large area to Aroostook County. The county em- braces the northeastern portion of the state. The first settlements here were made by the Acadian French, refugees from the Basin of Minas, Nova Scotia. The honor of initiating the movements which have led to the development and prosperity of the county belongs, however, to the settlers of Houlton, emigrés from Massachusetts. The entire northern part of Aroostook County might be denominated the valley of the St. John in Maine. The name of the county is Indian, borrowed from one of the branches of the St. John, and the word is interpreted as "beauti- ful river."
Androscoggin County, 1854
Not until 1854 was another county whose name is of Indian origin incorporated in Maine: Androscoggin, organized on March 18th
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of that year. The territory of this new county was formed from parts of Cumberland, Oxford, Kennebec and Lincoln counties. The Andro- scoggin River passes through it latitudinally, dividing it into two nearly equal parts. Like the other Maine counties which bear Indian names, the name of the river was transferred to the county unit. The word in- dicates "the presence of migratory fish, with alewives in greatest abund- ance but also salmon, shad and bass."
Sagadahoc County, 1854
Less than a month later, on April 4, 1854, Sagadahoc County was incorporated from lands formerly embraced in Lincoln County. It is situated upon the lower portion of the Kennebec River, which was earlier known to explorers and settlers as the Sagadahoc. This river was the eastern boundary of the Province of Maine in 1622. It was the site of Popham's Colony in 1607. The name of the county is, of course, taken from the Indian, Sagadahoc, early applied to the lower section of the present Kennebec River. Its meaning is literally "the mouth of the river." Captain John Gyles, an interpreter in 1753, said: "I also understand by the Indians that the word Sagadaroc in their language (and is the same with the word Sagadahoc the English make use of) means no more than the mouth or entrance into a river."
Knox County, 1860
The last county to be incorporated in Maine was formed from sections of Lincoln and Waldo and was named for General Henry Knox, "the friend of Washington" and our first Secretary of War. His residence was at Thomaston, where he had built a beautiful mansion of which a replica stands there today. Here he dispensed the most bountiful hospitality and entered upon the development of his estate with energy. He started the manufacture of lime, erected mills, intro- duced new varieties of fruits and vegetables and improved breeds of cattle and sheep.
The extensive lands upon which General Knox settled had come into his possession largely through his father-in-law, Thomas Flucker, the heir of General Waldo.
One writer has said of General Henry Knox: "Many have been as courageous in the field, many as wise and patriotic in council; but few have united to these the rarer virtues, a spotless integrity and a noble outspoken manliness of character, in a higher degree than the subject of this brief memoir."
A glance at the map of Maine shows that the counties have not grown up systematically or chronologically. Each has been incorpor- ated when the need for a new county seat, more advantageously situ- ated, seemed to arise.
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CHAPTER II Maine Towns and Cities Whose Names Are Indian Words
Although many Indian place names persist in the State of Maine, they remain for the most part on its natural features, such as rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, hills and mountains. Barely a score of them are left among the names of our more than four hundred towns. One survives as the name of one of our twenty-one cities, and six may be found in the names of our sixteen counties. Small post offices, how- ever, and local sections retain many of these descriptive and pictur- esque words.
As far as we know, these words were not borrowed from other places, but grew out of necessity, an effort on the part of the Indian to explain in his own language and to his own people some of the out- standing characteristics of a place. They supplied an everyday need and were meant for continual use. Indian names are descriptive or interpretive of localities where the Indian lived, hunted and fished. They furnished necessary information known by one red man to an- other, sometimes concerning the set of the current of a stream, as an aid or deterrent in traveling, sometimes regarding the place as a source of food and the means of obtaining it.
When a village, temporary or permanent, was established by the Indians on or near one of these natural features, it most often took the name of the river, lake or mountain; and, in a similar fashion, the per- manent habitation of the white man of that location still continued the use of the Indian name by transference from the Indian town or the natural feature of the landscape.
We are indebted to many of the intelligent Indians themselves, to our woodsmen and explorers, as well as to our Indian scholars, for the interpretation of these words which we use today.
Saco, 1653* (City, 1867)
Only one of Maine's twenty-one cities, Saco, is known by an In- dian name. The word is descriptive of the river, or rather the lower part of the river upon which the city is located, and is most often in-
*Date of incorporation.
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terpreted as meaning "the outlet of the river." The Indians dwelling here were of the Sokokis tribe. The early settlements made here by the white men on both sides of the river were doubtless the first permanent settlements in Maine. They were at first known as Winter Harbor, the name given to the basin now called Biddeford Pool, in consequence of the wintering of Vines and his companions here in 1616. It was a noted place from that time forward.
It was here in 1635-36 that William Gorges, nephew of Sir Fer- dinando Gorges, a man of sense and intelligence, came to organize and establish an administration of justice. Here a court was opened which held sessions for two or three years. It was the first organized govern- ment established within the present State of Maine.
This was the most flourishing and probably the oldest settle- ment in the Province. For several years it had enjoyed a form of government which might originally have been a social compact or voluntary combination for mutual safety and convenience. Richard Vines had officiated as governor and Richard Bonython as assistant.
Thirty pounds were raised in 1635 by way of a tax for the sup- port of public worship; and the inhabitants assessed to pay it were twenty-one. From these circumstances we may conclude that there were one hundred and fifty or more people in the settlement.
John Josselyn, in An Account of Two Voyages to New England, notes on his first journey here in 1638 that "the Country all along as I sailed, being no other than a meer Wilderness, here and there by the Sea-side a few scattered plantations with as few houses." During his second and longer visit at the plantation of his brother at Black Point, from 1663 to 1671, he gives us something in detail of these scattered plantations. Of Saco, he wrote: "About eight or nine mile to the east- ward of Cape Porpus is Winter Harbor, a noted place for Fishers, here they have many stages. Saco adjoins to this and both make one scatter- ing Town of large extent, well stored with cattle, arable land and marshes and a saw mill."
In 1653 the settlements at this place on both sides of the river were organized as the town of Saco, and the town commissioners (who were also the selectmen) appointed at this date, when it submitted to Massachusetts, were Thomas Williams, Robert Boothe, and John West. William Scadlock was clerk of the writs and Ralph Tristram, constable.
In 1718 the name was changed to Biddeford in honor of an English city, Bideford. In 1762 the town was divided, the eastern sec- tion taking the name of Pepperellborough, as a compliment to Sir William Pepperell, one of its foremost citizens, the hero of Louisburg and the first baronet to be knighted in this country. In 1805 this eastern area returned to its original Indian name of Saco by which it was so
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extensively known abroad. The city charter of Saco was adopted on February 18, 1867.
The first patent on the east side of the Saco River was a tract four miles in width on the sea and eight miles inland. It was granted to Thos. Lewis and Captain Richard Bonython on February 12, 1629, old style, or February 1, 1630, new style. The first on the west side was conveyed on the same date to John Oldham and Richard Vines and was of the same size as the grant to the east. The colonists of these two areas acted together in the prudential and municipal affairs of the set- tlement.
As to who were some of the earliest settlers on the east side of the river, the records of the book of rates for the minister in 1636 gives the following names: Thos. Lewis, Capt. Richard Bonython, Henry Warwick, Clement Greenway, Henry Watts and Richard Foxwell. The last two were located at Blue Point, and when the commissioners estab- lished the town line in 1659, they were left in Scarborough. For many years the inhabitants were located near the sea at Old Orchard Beach and toward the mouth of the river and were chiefly descendants of the old families: the Scammons, Edgecombs, Townsends, Youngs, Sharps, Banks, Sands and Googins.
Machias, 1784
The forty-second town to be incorporated in what is now the State of Maine is Machias in Washington County. Three towns: Ma- chias, East Machias and Machiasport, all were a part of the one town Machias, the first municipal corporation to be established between the rivers Penobscot and St. Croix, in the far eastern section of Maine. This organization took place in 1784. The meaning of the word is "a bad run of water" or "bad little falls," first applied to West Falls, on the (Mechises) Machias River.
The Indian Mechises, ancient Machias Bay and River, seems to have attracted the attention of explorers and traders at a very early date. John Rutt, an Englishman, master of the schooner "Mary of Guilford" in 1527, penned with his own hand a map of the "Island just West of West Quoddie" and also "erected a cross thereon." These maps are available in the Historical Rooms at Paris. Before the Pil- grims landed at Plymouth, there were French and English trading posts on Cross Island as well as on Birch Point, now Clarke's Point in Machiasport, five miles below Machias. Cross Island was preferable as a trading post, since no organized attempts could be made by the Indians to capture the storehouse, and traders left here were secure from attacks because the island could only be approached by canoe.
Here, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, in the days of feudal Acadia, was located one of the seigneuries established by the
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French at strategic points to secure the valuable fur trade of the In- dians, as well as to arouse the red men against the English. Mechises, the terminus of many amazing canoe routes from the Penobscot Valley on the west and the St. Croix on the east, was an ideal spot for such a rendezvous, and was not neglected by the understanding and far- sighted French.
Indisputable evidence in the heaps of clam shells, arrows, pipes and tomahawks along Holmes Bay at the mouth of the Machias River and toward the mouth of Chandler's River in Jonesborough attest the gathering by hundreds of Indian tribes from the north and south each autumn. The early history of our Machias River is not yet well known.
In 1633 the Plymouth colonists established a trading house here under Richard Vines. This was destroyed by LaTour. The French at- tempted to settle here in 1644; Governor Andros said that in 1688 there were three families here.
It was not until 1763, after this eastern section had become safe for English occupancy, that permanent settlements were made. During the years 1761-62 an extraordinary drought and extensive fires had resulted in the visits of residents of western Maine to the marshes of the rivers east of the Penobscot in search of hay for their cattle. En- couraged by their findings, sixteen men from the settlement of Black Point, Scarborough, embarked in a large whaleboat on a cruise east- ward for hay. They also were looking for a place to set up an establish- ment for timber. At length they arrived at Machias where they found extensive tracts of salt marsh lands covered with invaluable grass. Here was also a pine wilderness and untouched forests of timber, with water power of a most unlimited capacity. They made a clearing and then a double log house was built, for the Berry and Larrabee families who had come along. Then they built their mill. The women and children who had remained in Scarborough came in August. The names of these early comers to West Falls in 1763, in addition to Berry and Larrabee, were Scott, Libby, Stone, Hill, Fogg, Foster, Buck, Carleton and Jones.
During the year 1764 the inhabitants sawed nearly 1,600,000 feet of lumber, an extraordinary season's work. The colony increased in 1765. The names of those coming at this time were: Elliot, Holmes, Libby, Foster, Seavey, Munson, Balch, Getchell and Foss, all from Scar- borough; John Underwood who came from Kittery and was the first trader or storekeeper; and Jonathan Longfellow who came from Con- wallis, Nova Scotia.
In 1765 Morris O'Brien and his sons built a double saw mill on West Falls. The winter and spring of 1767 was one of widespread fam- ine. Some called it "Clam Year." Jonathan Longfellow was this year appointed Justice of the Peace, the first civil officer commissioned east
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of the Penobscot River. After a number of petitions had been made to the General Court, the tract of land was granted, on April 26, 1770. By this time the petitioners had become proprietors. They were especially warned not to cut any of his Majesty's timber on this town- ship.
The first proprietary meeting was held in September, 1770. Stephen Jones was chosen clerk, Jonathan Longfellow, moderator; Benj. Foster, Samuel Scott and Sylvanus Scott were made a commit- tee to call future meetings; Ephraim Andrews, collector; Sylvanus Scott, treasurer.
By 1770 a larger, more business-like and central village had grown up around "West Falls." Three double saw mills had been built. One statement of the surveyors shows that bricks were made in Machias before 1773. Tradition tells us that "no salt was imported to Machias for four years, the factory distilling salt from sea water, the place of operation being a small island, two miles below Machiasport, known by the residents of today, as well as on the charts, as Salt Island."
The first meeting houses were built in 1774; they had no pews, but ranges of seats on each side of a narrow aisle with a pulpit at the head. The Reverend James Lyon, a man of more than ordinary ability, of deep piety and an earnest patriot, a graduate of Princeton, came in 1771 and continued in service in both the east and west villages until his death in 1795.
Machias people initiated the Revolutionary struggle on the sea, as the people of Lexington and Concord had done upon the land. The "Margaretta" was the first British vessel captured by the Ameri- cans. Foster and Jeremiah O'Brien were commissioned as privateers and were very successful. In 1777 the British under Sir George Collier came to subdue the rebellious town. When they arrived they burned a tide mill, two dwellings, two barns and a guardhouse below the vil- lage, but in the end, beset by both Americans and Indians, the British were glad to reach the bay again. "To the firmness and intrepidity of their fathers we owe the preservation of this extreme outpost of the colonies throughout the Revolutionary War, though so little has been said about it, that the fact is hardly known outside of the locality it- self."
East Machias, 1826
Some of the original settlers at West Falls were the founders of what is now East Machias. Samuel Scott was the first settler, followed in 1768 by Col. Benj. Foster, W. Foster, J. Seavy, D. Fogg, J. Mansur and others. Benj. Foster and his neighbors, assisted by Captain Ichabod Jones, erected a double saw mill against the west shore of the east
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branch or river about one hundred rods above the head of the tide, where the foundations of the eastern village were laid.
Machiasport, 1826
As the name connotes, Machiasport is the name of the port for the adjoining towns. It has an excellent harbor open all the year, and the mouth of the Machias River divides the town into two portions.
The petition signed in 1784 by the settlers who had improved the land and asked that their claims might be examined by the General Court had as its first signer Mainwaring Beal, who stated that John Manchester, from whom he bought the land about 1770, had settled there about eighteen years before (1766). There were seventeen other signers, including John Coffin Jones, Jonas Farnsworth, William Al- bee, Joseph Lebbee, Nathan Lebbee, Peter Coolbroth, Stephen Fogg, Abner and David Leatherby, Benj. Pettigrew, Stephen Jones, John Sanborn, John O'Brien, Henry Griffiths, Wm. Kelly and Widow Lar- rabee.
About 1800 the Port village comprised the families of Mr. Matthias Tobey and Mr. Nathaniel Phinney, Benj. Berry and John and Wm. Sanborn. The Larrabees and Pettigroves were at Larrabees' Cove and the Colbaths and Libbys at Buck's Harbor, the Bryants and Mill- ers at Little Kennebec.
Buck's Harbor, now in Machiasport, was probably named for Capt. Thomas Buck of Plymouth, Mass., who carried the first settlers to Machias in 1763.
Penobscot, 1787
The name of this town, the only one in Hancock County which has Indian origin, is taken from that of the river and bay upon which it is located. Originally used for that section of the river between Treat's Falls at Bangor and the Great Falls at Old Town, the word is best translated as "the rocky part" or "the descending ledge place."
The town of Penobscot was the first town to be organized on the eastern bank of the Penobscot waters in 1787. At that time it em- braced the celebrated peninsula of Castine and the eastern part of Brooksville. It was township No. 3 in the conditional grant to David Marsh and others given by the General Court in 1762, an effectual settlement having been started two years before by eight or ten families migrating across the bay from the neighborhood of Fort Pownal.
The names of those coming in 1761 have been given as Joseph Basteen, Paul and Caleb Bowdoin, John Connor, John Grindle, Archi- bald Haney, who later went to Brooksville, Thomas Wescott and Israel Veazie. In the confirmation of titles, the Jarvis brothers, who were large landholders, had a prominent agency.
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The first survey of the town was made by John Peters; the first settlers within the present limits of Penobscot were Duncan and Find- ley Malcolm, Daniel and Niel Brown. They were Scotsmen and being Loyalists, left for St. Andrews when the English evacuated Castine at the close of the Revolutionary War.
The first permanent settler was Chas. Hutchings, in 1765. In that same year came Isaac and Jacob Sparks, Daniel Perkins, Samuel Averill and Solomon Littlefield. Others of the early period were Giles Johnson, Elijah Winslow, Pelatiah Leach, Jonathan Wardwell and Elipalet Lowell, nearly all of whom came from towns in Maine. The plantation name for Penobscot was Major-bigwaduce, which, accord- ing to the late Mrs. Eckstorm, is an Abenaki word meaning "a big tidal salt bay" referring to the whole so-called Bagaduce River, not merely to Castine Harbor.
The soldiers from Fort Pownal who came to our present town of Penobscot at an early date and often did not remain permanently, sent petitions from time to time to the General Court for land where they wanted to be settlers.
In 1779 Aaron Banks, after his home was burned at the siege of Bagaduce, moved to the head of Northern Bay and settled in what is now Penobscot. He was born in York, Maine, enlisted in the French and Indian war under Captain James Cargill and was ordered to as- sist in building Fort Pownal. He then went to Castine (Bagaduce), and was transferred for service under General Amherst to Montreal in 1760. He was discharged in 1764 and walked to York, Maine. He then married and returned to Bagaduce, and became a successful farmer, sometimes engaged in navigation. He became a permanent settler in our present Penobscot. Andrew Herrick, Nathaniel Veazie and Andrew Wescott arrived at an early date, as well as Timothy Blake, Joseph Lowell, Nathaniel, Jonathan, Jeremiah and Abraham Stover, Benj. Curtis, Benjamin and Edward Howard and Andrew Webster: all of this latter group about 1762.
Norridgewock, 1788
This is an old Indian town made famous in early Maine history by the Jesuit Father Rasle. It is located on the Kennebec River, the name Norridgewock meaning "little falls and smooth waters above and below." Here, at the confluence of the Sandy River with the Ken- nebec on a beautiful prairie, was located the Indian village called Nau- rantsouak in the early part of the eighteenth century, now in the town of Madison. Here were the rude huts of the Norridgewogs and two chapels, one at the lower end of the village near the Bombazeen Falls, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the other at the upper end of the village at Old Point. Here Father Rasle fell in an attack upon the
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village by the English in 1724, and here today stands a granite obelisk marking the spot where stood the church which he ministered.
Norridgewock was settled by the English in 1773 and incorporated in 1788. In the year 1769 the Plymouth Company advertised to give away all the land in the bend of the Kennebec River, beginning at Skowhegan Falls and running up to Old Point on the north side, to any or all persons who would immediately settle on the same. The rule adopted by the company was to give away two lots and to reserve two alternately, in the belief that the lots given away would encourage settlers to flock in and buy the remaining lots. This was the general rule adopted down the river, but as Canaan and Norridgewock were re- garded as being in the backwoods, the rule was so far departed from that all the river lots in Norridgewock and those in that part of Ca- naan which later became Bloomfield were given away.
In 1773 William Warren, the first actual settler in Norridge- wock, came from Pepperell, Massachusetts. He, with Obadiah Wether- ell, Eleazer Spaulding and Wm. Fletcher, had come down two years previously to explore the land, but did not feel it expedient to migrate since the area available was not sufficient for a town and contained no mill privilege. With additional land and a site voted by the company whose members were very anxious for settlers, the prospect was made encouraging. Warren, a lieutenant in the French war, came, bringing his wife, and built a log hut. With him came James McDaniels, a man by the name of Lamson and Wm. Fletcher, son of the earlier William. It was this younger Fletcher who aided in building the first saw mill; he alone was saved when, the following spring, the four above-men- tioned settlers were drowned. Others who came were Sylvanus Sawyer, Obadiah Wetherell and Nathan Parlin. Walker, the first man to settle on the south side, came in 1773 as did John Clark, who was absent for some time during the Revolutionary War. He built the first frame house in the village of Norridgewock, which was completed in 1788. He was noted for his piety and respectability and held many promi- nent town offices. He gave the land where the church and the village burial ground are located.
Oliver and Silas Wood were early settlers. Young men by the name of Keith came, men of experience in earlier warfare; then Oliver Heywood and John Heald soon followed.
Oliver Wood's life was one of adventure. At the age of twenty- eight he entered the British Army and went to Lake George. His jour- nal of the different engagements with the French and the occurrences of the campaign, from July 17, 1758, to his arrival home in November of that year, attest his ability to endure the hardships of war. Later, after coming to Norridgewock and building a log house, he entered the American Army of the Revolution and remained several months.
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Other settlers, becoming alarmed concerning their safety at this time, left the frontier. Fairbrother, Sawyer and Fletcher remained after they came, and did not go to war.
The passage of Arnold's army up the river in 1775 was a great event in these lonesome times.
The settlement was resumed by 1778 by the Spauldings, the Tarbells, who came in 1780, the Chamberlains, in 1781, and the Longleys, in 1783. In 1781 the first saw and grist mills were built.
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