USA > Maine > Maine place names and the peopling of its towns > Part 8
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James Cole had settled at Nequasset and James Smith at the upper end of Long Reach in Woolwich by 1654. After the death of the latter, a trader named Richard Hammond married the widow and lived on her property in a fortified house. The establishment was a considerable one, the land extending from Winslow's Rocks to Merry- meeting Bay and eastward to Nequasset. At the latter point, there were mills and a smith shop. This was entirely destroyed in 1676. Hammond and a stepson, Stephen Smith, were killed and others were captured. Sylvanus Davis was wounded. Captain Thomas Lake was killed. Pat- rick Drummond's early home was at the Chops, doubtless in the Temple colony on the Woolwich shore. Temple's settlement of Scotch- Irish called Cork was on the eastern shore of Merrymeeting Bay in Woolwich. Settlers in other parts of the town were driven away or de- stroyed in the second Indian War. The place was resettled soon after Dummer's Treaty was made with the Indians in 1726.
Reverend Josiah Winship, a graduate of Harvard, was the first settled minister in this place; and when he was ordained in 1765 there were in the town only about twenty families and two frame houses. Mr. Winship continued to perform the pastoral and parochial duties of his trust "about fifty years" until, becoming enfeebled by age, he was persuaded to accept a colleague, the Reverend Jonathan Adams, who was ordained in February, 1817.
The old Neguasset meeting house, built in 1757, the oldest meeting house east of the Kennebec River, is still standing. It is the building in which these two clergymen were ordained.
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CHAPTER IV Names of Maine Towns Derived from English Towns, 1760 - 1800
Pownalborough, 1760
Pownalborough, incorporated in 1760, was the fifteenth town to be established in Maine. This was probably the last legislative charter of a township approved by Governor Thomas Pownall while he was in the governor's chair. Its sonorous name, meaning Pownall's borough or town, was an evident compliment to his character. He had arrived from England about three years previously. He possessed handsome talents and made great pretensions to learning, but according to his biographer, Dr. Allen, his manners were too light and debonair to suit the sober and grave habits of New England, although he was a loyal friend to the colonists.
The plantation name of the town of Pownalborough was Frank- fort; and Fort Shirley, situated within it and opposite the upper end of Swan Island, was sometimes called Fort Frankfort. This was the name of a town in Germany from which some of the settlers had come and was doubtless adopted on their account.
On incorporation, it was at once made the shire town of Lin- coln County and remained so for thirty-four years. Dresden (includ- ing Swan Island, now Perkins, an unorganized township) was set off in 1794, but the name Pownalborough was retained by the remainder of the town until 1802, when it was changed to Wiscasset. The present town of Alna was formerly the north precinct of Pownalborough, from which it was separated in 1794 and incorporated as New Milford. The name was changed in 1811 to Alna.
When the town was incorporated in 1760, the old Pownal- borough Court House, still standing in Dresden, was built and courts were established in 1760. In 1786 a term of the Supreme Court was held at Pownalborough. For forty years people from the eastward went there for court. Until 1796 there was no carriage road east of the Kennebec. Travel was by water and by a spotted line through the forest or on foot. In 1764 the population of Pownalborough was 175 families consisting of 880 white inhabitants. At that time and for many years, it was the most important town on the Kennebec River.
Lawyers of note and many prominent families came to this vi-
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cinity with the coming of the Courts and Courthouse. Here John Adams, riding on horseback, reached his destination by following a blazed trail through the woods. William Cushing, Harvard, 1751, the first lawyer to settle in Maine, came in 1760. Here he started the prac- tice of law as well as the administration of Judge of Probate. Major Samuel Goodwin was the agent of the Plymouth Company.
Willis says: "No place in Maine previous to the Revolution was so distinguished for its able and talented young men as Pownal- borough."
Windham, 1762
By the second quarter of the 18th century, the Governor and Legislature of Massachusetts became more liberal in the terms on which settlers might gain possession of land in the Province of Maine. Ser- vices and claims of officers who had fought in the earlier wars were also requited by land grants. Although these settlers came from Mas- sachusetts, they continued in many cases to use the old English names for the newer towns.
Emboldened by the liberality of the officials, groups of people petitioned the General Court for a grant of land so that they might settle a town in Maine. A township of 25,600 acres on the eastern bank of the Presumpscot River, wherein 63 compact ten-acre lots were laid out to as many settlers and subsequently 120 acres to each settler, was granted in 1734 to Abraham Howard, Joseph Blane and fifty-eight others of Marblehead, Massachusetts.
Consequently, the township took the name of New Marblehead. Growth came slowly and it was not until 1737 that the first trees were felled and the first log houses were built. The planters, though few in number, erected a large blockhouse in the fifth Indian War, and being aided by the proprietors, defended themselves manfully against the re- current hostile visits of the natives. When the town was incorporated as the sixteenth town in 1762, it was not under the plantation name, but as Windham, the name of an old English town.
There is no reliable evidence to show why the name was se- lected. There are two possibilities of its source, if we accept the state- ment that the name came from an English town. Wymonham, pro- nounced as our word, Windham, is a parish located in Leicestershire in the central part of England; and Windham is situated in Norfolk. The historian of Windham, Maine, Thomas Laurens Smith, suggests it was borrowed from this latter parish and transferred to our Maine town.
Captain Thomas Chute felled the first tree; and in 1737 erected the first log house on the banks of the Presumpscot up which he had poled his way to the territory. Wm. Mayberry was the second settler
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in town; he was also from Marblehead and one of the grantees. Another of the early comers was Dr. Caleb Rea, a descendant of Dan- iel Rea of Plymouth. Samuel Webb was the first schoolmaster and blacksmith in Windham. He was the son of Samuel Webb, a native of London, England.
In 1738 the proprietors voted the right on any of the falls of water on the Presumpscot to Ebeneezer Hawkes, Wm. Goodwin, Isaac Turner, and Ebenezer Stacy, with ten acres of land adjoining, if they would build a mill and put it in operation. They built on the falls called "Horse-Beef" and the mill was accepted by the proprietors in 1740, the first mill built within the limits of the town.
Buxton, 1762
In 1733 the survivors or heirs of King Philip's War, or of the Narragansett expedition, as it was called, were offered gratuitously lands in Maine for settlement. The bounties conferred and grants ap- propriated were to be perfected whenever associates to the number of sixty would unite and actually form a township according to the Gen- eral Terms. Narragansett, Number One, as it was called, now the town of Buxton, was granted to and settled by men who originated from the Massachusetts' towns of Ipswich, Rowley, Newbury, Haver- hill and Amesbury.
Although it was granted in 1728 and allotments of land made within four years, no permanent settlers came before the fifth Indian War in 1748. Attempted settlements had been made previous to this date. In 1740 or 1741, Deacon Amos Chase from Newbury, Massa- chusetts, Joseph Simpson, Nathan Whitney, with Messrs. Gage and Bryant, entered the township and began to fell the trees and build log cabins for shelter.
These early people left about 1745, at the beginning of the war. The permanent settlers arrived in 1750. Among the first were William Hancock from Londonderry, Ireland; John Elden from Saco, Maine; Samuel Merrill, Salisbury, Massachusetts; Job Roberts, Saco; John Wilson and Joseph Woodbury.
In 1750 it was voted that there should be preaching in the township. The Reverend Timothy White was the first minister and was paid by the proprietors.
Previously, in 1742, a vote was taken that the committee ap- pointed to build a log meeting house some time past "shall forthwith go on and fully build and complete the same." It was built at Salmon Falls and in 1752 a committee was empowered "to see the meeting house furnished as soon as tho't convenient."
The first settled preacher for this frontier settlement was Dr. Paul Coffin, a graduate of Harvard in 1759, who was ordained in
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1763. He started his labors in 1761, when there were only twenty-one families in the plantation. To him was given the pleasure and the honor of naming the town when it was incorporated in 1762. He, like many other Englishmen, turned his thoughts to his native town in England: Buxton, in Norfolk, a name which the inhabitants were de- lighted to bestow upon the new town which was his home in the Prov- ince of Maine, in the most northeastern portion of York County. Dr. Coffin's pastoral connection with this people was continued for sixty years.
Topsham, 1762
Our present Topsham was first occupied about 1669 by Thomas and James Gyles and James, Thomas and Samuel York, who were later in arriving, probably about 1690. One of these men built a house and resided at Fulton's Point, another at the head of Muddy Bay or river and a third, Thomas Gyles, at Pleasant Point. Nearly all of these early settlers were massacred by the Indians and their homes burned. One settler is supposed to have returned to England. Of the Gyles family, the children were taken into captivity, but all except one son, whose memoirs one may read today, were ransomed by the officers at Fort George in Brunswick.
This is one of the towns carved from the early Pejepscot Pur- chase in 1715. It was marked for early settlement and incorporation by its new owners, if they could secure the aid of the government for its defense. It was located on the easterly side of the Androscoggin River, was six miles square and both adjoined and fronted on Merry- meeting Bay.
Although the government aided in constructing a stone fort on the western side of the river, the town was not speedily settled. Wheeler, the historian of the town, says: "This tract of land was mainly settled by English emigrants, the greater number of whom are supposed to have come from the town of Topsham, England and to have named the place in memory of their former home." The town was incorporated in 1764.
Those known to have been living in Topsham after the fourth, or Lovewell's Indian War, 1722-25, were Lieutenant Eaton, John Vin- cent. Thomas Thorn, James Ross, John Malcolm, James McFarland, William Stinson and James, Isaac and John Hunter, most of whom had garrison homes.
In 1752 additional residents were Gowan Fulton, Samuel Bev- erage, Charles Robinson, William Vincent, William Thomas, Jacob Eaton, Robert Lithgow, William Malcom, William Thomas, Jr., Lieutenant Hunter and Captain Wilson.
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Boothbay, 1764
Boothbay, Maine, received the name it now bears in memory of Old Boothby in Lincolnshire, England, at Welton le Marsh. It per- haps is Old Scandinavian: "By, with-booths."
This is the ancient Newagan settlement supposed to have been occupied about 1630-32 by fishermen. It lies between the Damariscotta and Sheepscot rivers. Henry Curtis purchased of the famous Indian chief, Robinhood, the right to settle here in 1666. A tax of three pounds ten shillings was levied on it in 1674, but in the second Indian War, 1688, the savages destroyed the settlement. It lay waste and al- most desolate for forty subsequent years. In 1730 it was revived by Colonel Dunbar, who gave it the name of Townsend, in honor of Lord Chas. Townshend, second viscount of England and father of Chas. Townshend who later was the chief figure in imposing the stamp and tea taxes on the colonies. While the name was dropped on the incor- poration of the town in 1764, it still clung to the harbor.
Some of the names of the settlers under Dunbar in 1730 have come down to us through the statements they have left. Among them are Wm. Moore, David Bryant, Edmund Brown, Reverend John Mur- ray, Samuel McCobb, John Beath and William Fullerton.
These settlers endured many hardships such as capture by the Indians, who often sold them to the French. Their sloops too were taken. They were also very poor. For some time clams were their only food.
The descendants of these early settlers introduced by Rogers and McCobb under Dunbar form at the present time many of the in- habitants of Boothbay. Later deeds were secured from Dr. Sylvester Gardiner who claimed under the Plymouth Company.
Only one reason was given in the petition for the incorporation of Townshend: "We have a desire for settling the Gospel among us."
The Reverend John Murray was the first settled minister and Paul Reed their first representative to the General Court.
Boothbay Harbor, 1889
Boothbay Harbor was set off as a town in 1889. This is the second largest harbor on the Maine coast. Before the division at the above date, the name was accurately applied to the water harbor in front of the town and locally to the village at the head of the harbor. Since the division, it is the legal name of the town and its principal post office.
Indications point to a section of Boothbay Harbor as being the selected place for the Dunbar colonists. Some of them made deposi- tions which state the location was "contiguous to a fine Harbor, where
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Dunbar said he proposed to found a City and which place he then named Townshend."
Bristol, 1765
This town, which embraces ancient Pemaquid, is more noted in the early history of the State of Maine than any other eastern planta- tion. The settlement was started on the river as early as 1625. The Pemaquid Patent, in which it was included, was granted to Elbridge and Aldsworth on February 20, 1631; and on May 27, 1633, accord- ing to Abraham Shute's testimony, possession was given them to the land "from the head of the river Damariscotta to the head of the river Muscongus and between to the sea."
On the eastern bank of the river was the seat of government under the patentees, and the site of Fort William Henry, built of stone by Sir Wm. Phipps in 1692, prior to which time the settlement had been laid waste by savages. The garrison was taken by the French in 1696 and the country lay unpeopled afterward for more than twenty years. A resettlement was attempted about 1717-18, which was one of the first effected in this eastern country after Queen Anne's War. Dun- bar, in 1729-30, repaired the fortification and called it Fort Frederick and gave to the place the name of Harrington.
The town was incorporated in 1765 under the name of Bristol, in honor of a city in England which was the home of the patentees. As early as the time of Columbus, Bristol had been England's mari- time city, the most noted port in that day of the English-speaking race, where the exploits of the seamen inspired men of adventurous spirit. Likewise in the seventeenth century Bristol was the greatest seaport in southwestern England.
Hakluyt was one of the prebendaries of Bristol cathedral; and Gorges, who lived at Plymouth, had a house near Bristol. Thus Bristol was alive with interest in the Western voyages and Bristol venturers had played a large part in the early voyages to the coast, many of which doubtless touched this place in Maine. Hence it is fitting that this town on the coast of Maine should bear the name of Bristol.
The earliest settlements seem to have been on the western banks of Pemaquid River in 1623 or '24. Abraham Shurte, agent of the pro- prietors who had purchased for them the island of Monhegan, was a magistrate at Pemaquid for more than thirty years. His administration, with a few select assistants, was more of an advisory nature than of an executive command. A man of great prudence and discretion, he was very useful, being in 1686 "town clerk of Pemaquid," when he must have been eighty years of age.
The Reverend Robert Rutherford, who probably came over with Dunbar, preached to them during a four- or five-year period.
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South Bristol, 1915
South Bristol, Maine, was set off in 1915 from Bristol, of which it was a part.
Bath, 1781 (City, 1848)
Bath, the first town to be incorporated in the District of Maine under the new Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, is believed to have received its name in honor of Bath in Somersetshire, England, which was founded by the Romans in the first century B. c. It is still a famous watering place of English Avon, with its mineral springs and bath. In 1781 it was one of the most celebrated of English cities and the resort of the fashion of that realm. The celebrity of the town dates from the time of Beau Nash who completed his reign about 1756. It was only a few miles above Bristol, which had been connected with Maine littoral from the beginning.
When the petition for the incorporation of the Maine town was made in 1781, the name proposed for the new town in the vote of the parish was Reach, an abbreviation of Long Reach, the name by which the locality had been generally known up to this time; but the petition presented by the committee of the town to the General Court and the Act of Incorporation substituted Bath. Perhaps some family associa- tion with the English Bath, or possibly some resemblance in situation or topography, suggested it to Colonel Sewell.
Christopher Lawson, Robert Gutch and Alexander Thwait were prominent in the early settlement of the town. The first obtained a right to the northerly portion and Lynde's Island, at a date probably not earlier than 1640. Thwait and Gutch both obtained their titles from Robinhood, an Indian sagamore, in 1660. Thwait took that por- tion extending from Winnegance at the southern part to the rope walk in the city proper.
The Reverend Robert Gutch, "a preacher to the fishermen," probably settled on the banks of Long Reach above the "Elbow" about 1660. There is well authenticated evidence of a church on the northern point of Arrowsic directly opposite Mr. Gutch's log house on the Bath shore of Long Reach. Between 1667 and 1670, Thos. Stevens purchased of two sagamores their possessory right to a large tract of land including this township. In 1753 it became the northerly, or second, parish of Georgetown.
Those who were living at our present Bath as early as 1738, with the approximate dates of their settlement, follow: Wm. and Margaret Johnson, 1720 (Mrs. Johnson was the granddaughter of the Reverend Mr. Gutch. To them seem to belong the distinction of being the first permanent residents of our present Bath) ; Thomas Williams, 1729 or
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before; John Lemont, 1730; John Tarp, 1731; Captain Donnell, 1734; Bryant Robinson, 1736 and Patrick Drummond, 1738. Of these seven families, five were within the present boundaries of Bath. Lemont, the historian, states that in 1736 Captain Donnell had a store on. "the point near Sewell's mill" seemingly referring to the mill near the foot of Oak Street.
In 1753, when the second parish of Georgetown, now Bath, was incorporated, there were forty families above Winnegance Creek who signed the petition for the act. In addition to the earlier names of Johnson, Lemont, Williams and Tarp, there were among this group the names of Philbrook, Purinton, Brown, Berry, Hinckley, McCobb, Hodgkins and Thompson.
At the first meeting of the parish Humphrey Purinton was chosen moderator and Samuel Brown, clerk; Jonathan Philbrook, Sr., Lieutenant John and Lieutenant James Springer, as Parish Committee. It was voted "to build a meeting house as soon as we can" and a com- mittee was appointed "to set the meeting house." The location was finally decided on, the place now the ancient cemetery on the hill, southwest of Witch Spring, "at the crotch of the road" where the town road intersected the old military, at that time the most convenient lo- cation centrally that could be found. The Reverend Francis Winter's grave is about where the pulpit stood. The church was finally finished in 1762.
In 1759 there were twelve dwelling houses at Long Reach. In 1762 Dummer Sewell, a man of education, high character and indus- try, came from York. At its first town meeting in 1781, John Wood was elected clerk; Wm. Swanton, Jr., Captain Benj. Lemont and Cap- tain John Berry, selectmen; Dummer Sewell, treasurer. The new town was in the main a farming community. There was a lumber mill at Sewell's mill pond, there were lumber and grist mills at Mill Cove and there was some little-shipbuilding begun by Captain Swanton be- fore the Revolution. Long Reach was the site of the Provincial Cus- tom House from 1780, when David Trufant was appointed collector. There was a branch custom house at Abagadasset Point. Luke Lam- bert transported mail on horseback weekly for a short period prior to the Revolution. A post office was established in 1791; Dummer Sewell was the postmaster and kept the office in his home.
West Bath, 1844
This town is separated from Brunswick by a long arm of the New Meadows River, while Winnegance Creek and a shorter one on the south leave, as the only connection, a neck about 200 rods, known as Winnegance Carrying Place, formerly much used by the Kennebec Indians in their trips westward.
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In 1843 the separation of West Bath from the parent town was first the subject of town meeting action. The development of the east- ern side of the town as an urban community, requiring certain expendi- tures in which the rural districts could share only in the matter of ex- pense, had produced a desire in the rural section for a separate town government. The new town of West Bath was incorporated in 1844.
Portland, 1786 (City, 1832)
Moulton, in his Portland by the Sea, makes the following state- ments :
Some diversity of opinion existed in regard to the name to be given the new town. The suggestion was made that it re- ceive the ancient appellation of Casco, and that of Falmouth- port also found favor. It was recalled that the first English name given to the large and prominent island near the en- trance of the harbor now called Cushing's Island, was Port- land Island .... It was upon House Island that Christopher Leavitt built his stone house in 1623. The opposite point on the Cape Elizabeth side was from an early date, 1711, known as Portland Head, where the lighthouse was built in 1791, the first of its kind, and the main channel between them had long been Portland Sound.
Without much discussion or objection therefore the choice of name centered upon Portland. The name doubtless came from Portland in Dorsetshire on the southern coast of England.
The peninsula, or neck, on which the metropolitan area of Portland is situated, is about three miles long and three-fourths of a mile in average width, nearly surrounded by water. This was called Machigonne by the Indians, which the late Mrs. Fannie Hardy Eck- storm has interpreted as a Micmac word meaning "shaped like a great knee."
The site of the first settlement in the city proper of the present Portland is now occupied by the buildings of the Grand Trunk Rail- way. The settlers were George Cleeve and Richard Tucker who built their house, cleared land and planted the first corn in 1633. They were squatters at first, but Cleeve obtained from Sir Ferdinando Gorges, proprietor of the region, a grant or lease. Michael Mitton, a son-in-law of Cleeve, returned from England with Cleeve in 1637, and received from him certain leases, one of which was 100 acres of land at Clark's Point at the Neck "adjoining his dwelling house which he had possessed for ten years."
The first of the original deeds was given by Cleeve in 1660 to Hope Allen, from whom the property came to George Bramhall who lived and carried on a tannery under the hill which bears his name ..
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The original deed of Munjoy Hill is dated Sept. 1659 and was made to John Phillips of Boston, whose only daughter married George Mun- joy about 1652. Munjoy, who came from Boston, was an accomplished man and for many years a most active and useful citizen and a magis- trate of the town. The Brackett title descended from Cleeve, whose only daughter, Elizabeth, married Michael Mitton. Mitton's daughter Anne married Anthony Brackett, and his daughter Mary married An- thony's brother Thomas, whose descendants retained a large portion of the property until after the Revolution. Thomas and Anthony were killed by the Indians.
Thaddeus Clark, from whom Clark's Point derives its name, came from Ireland and married Elizabeth, another daughter of Michael Mitton, and lived near the Point. Clark's eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Captain Edward Tyng, distinguished in the history of Massachusetts. The only son of Michael Mitton was Nathaniel, who was unmarried when killed by the Indians; thus the name became ex- tinct, but the blood of the first settlers flows through innumerable channels, scattered far and wide throughout the country.
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