USA > Maine > Pioneers on Maine rivers, with lists to 1651 > Part 2
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Pascataqua, to Gorges, Mason and their associates.
Agamenticus (west side), to Ferdinando, son of Sir Ferdi- nando Gorges; (east side) to Ferdinando, son of John and grandson of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and his associates.
25
ENGLISH PROPRIETARY DIVISIONS
Cape Porpoise, to John Stratton.
Winter Harbor, to Oldham and Vines.
Saco, to Bonython and Lewis. Black Point, to Thomas Cammock. Richmond Island, to Walter Bagnall.
Cape Elizabeth, to Trelawney and Goodyear.
Casco, to Christopher Levett.
Brunswick, to Purchase and Way.
Pejepscot, to Richard Bradshaw.
Cushnoc, to Plymouth Colony.
Lygonia, to John Crispe and Company.
February 3, 1633-4, the members of the Council of Plymouth, who with the approbation of the king were preparing to surrender their charter of New England, consented to an entirely new apportionment .*
April 22, 1635, the western division, known as the "Province of Mayne," was confirmed by Charles I to Sir Ferdinando Gorges in severalty. The king also, as a special reason for this royal favor, explained that Gorges had suffered "ye losse of manny of his good friends & servants in mak- ing this first discovery of those Coasts, & taking ye first seizure thereof as of right belonging to us." The district was named "New Somerset County."f
CENTRAL DIVISION.
July 24, 1622, a district extending "as the coast lyeth" twelve miles eastward from the southernmost point of "Pethipps- cott" (Pejepscot), with the islands of "Menehiggan," was granted to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey.} February 19, 1622-3, all rights in the mainland of this division were withdrawn and Arrowsic and Raskegon islands were included in a plan to create a municipality, to be known as "State County," and to provide the site for a city to be named by the king.
February 29, 1631-2, Pemaquid lying on the eastern border, be- tween Damariscotta and Muscongus Rivers, was allotted to Robert Aldworth and Gyles Elbridge, merchants of Bristol who lived within five miles of the estates of Gorges.
* Me. Doc. Hist., 7-121.
+ Am. Ant. Col., 1867-119.
¿ Me. Doc. Hist., 7-61.
26
PIONEERS ON MAINE RIVERS
April 22, 1635, the Council of Plymouth by virtue of its agree- ment of the previous year induced Charles I to confirm 60,000 acres situated on the eastern side of the Sagadahoc River to Lord Edward Gorges, Marquis James Hamilton, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, Captain John Mason and Esme Stewart, Duke of Lennox and Earl of Richmond. This land was never apportioned. In 1665, a royal commission reported that in the case of the Marquis of Hamilton it was unable to "find the 10,000 acres at the head of Sagadahoc in the east, it having two streams but the head unknown," nor could there be discovered "any land Lord Gorges had there, of which the 10,000 acres were to be set out."§
EASTERN DIVISION.
September 10, 1621, James I, of England, with the consent of Gorges, who was then the most influential member of the Council of Plymouth, conferred upon William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, an immense district which included all of the present territory of Maine situated east of Pemaquid and Kennebec rivers. This division was to have been designated "Canada County;" but no settlement was made within it by the grantee.
July 19, 1629, after their principal strongholds had been reduced, the French colonists in Canada ceded all of their territory to the English.
March 13, 1629-30, Muscongus, which was comprised in the dis- trict known as "Canada County," was granted by the Council of Plymouth to John Beauchamp, of London, and Thomas Leverett, of Boston, Lincolnshire, England, who formed a trading partnership with Plymouth Colony and others and established a post on the Penobscot River at Castine.
March 29, 1632, by the treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Charles I restored to the former French settlers all of the Cana- dian territory which had been ceded to the English three years before, but this concession did not include the main- land of Eastern Maine, as at that time it had never been occupied by either Flemings or French.
§ Sainsbury's Col. Pap., 2-334.
27
THE FIRST PLANTATIONS IN NEW ENGLAND
April 22, 1635, the Council of Plymouth apportioned to Sir Wil- liam Alexander all Maine territory to the eastward of the Muscongus and Kennebec as far as Saint Croix River, but August 1, of that year, the French evicted the English tenants of the post at Castine, then known as Machabit- ticus, and sent them home to New Plymouth; the invaders claimed to be acting within rights derived from the treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. November 1, 1638, the Coun- cil made Sagadahoc River the western boundary of the grant to Alexander, intending to enlarge his proportion by the union of Canada and State counties, but the plan failed because it never received royal sanction.
28
PIONEERS ON MAINE RIVERS
THE FIRST PLANTATIONS IN NEW ENGLAND
1607-8 Phippsburg by Popham Colony.
1620 *New Plymouth by Plymouth Colony.
1622-6 Damariscove by employes of Sir Ferdinando Gorges.
1622-3 Weymouth (Wessaguscus) by Thomas Weston's Colony.
1622-8 Braintree (Passonagessit) by Thomas Morton.
1623 *Hull (Natascot) by John and Thomas Gray from Wey- mouth.
1623-6 Monhegan by Plymouth merchants.
1623 *Rye (Pascataqua) by David Thompson and Plymouth merchants.
1623-4 Sanders' Point by Weston's Colony from Weymouth.
1623 *Weymouth, again, by Robert Gorges' Colony.
1624 *Boston Harbor by Blackstone, Maverick and Thompson. (Boston by Blackstone ; Mystic by the others.)
1624-6 Cape Ann by Dorchester merchants and Plymouth Colony.
1624-8 Casco by Christopher Levett.
1626 *Salem by Dorchester colonists from Cape Ann.
1626-8 Saco by John Cousins, John Mills and Thomas Purchase.
1628 *Dover Point by Edward and William Hilton from New Plymouth.
1628-31 Richmond Island by Walter Bagnall from Braintree.
1628 *Pemaquid by Abraham Shurt for Bristol merchants.
1628 *Pejepscot by Thomas Purchase and associates.
1628-35 Penobscot (Machabitticus) by Edward Ashley for Bris- tol merchants; taken by New Plymouth, in 1631, and by the French, in 1635.
* Permanently settled ; all others were abandoned at the end of the period indi- cated ; most of the eastern settlements were deserted during the later Indian wars.
29
CHIEF EXECUTIVES OF MAINE UNDER GORGES
CHIEF EXECUTIVES OF MAINE UNDER GORGES
1. Robert Gorges, Weymouth, Massachusetts, Governor of New England, 1623-1624.
2. Walter Neal, Rye, New Hampshire, Governor, 1630-1633.
3. Richard Vines, Saco, Maine, Steward General, 1634-1636.
4. William Gorges, York, Maine, Deputy Governor, 1636-1637.
5. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Governor of New England, 1637-1639. 6. Thomas Gorges, York, Maine, Deputy Governor, 1640-1643.
7. Richard Vines, Saco, Maine, Deputy Governor, 1643-1646.
8. Henry Jocelyn, Scarborough, Maine, Deputy Governor, 1646- 1649.
9. Edward Godfrey, York, Maine, Governor, 1649-1652, when the province was absorbed by Massachusetts Bay Colony.
30
PIONEERS ON MAINE RIVERS
THE LOCATION, SIZE AND CHARACTER OF THE SETTLEMENTS IN MAINE IN 1630
BASED UPON STATEMENTS OF VISITORS TO NEW ENGLAND SHORES.
Samuel Maverick, in a description of New England in 1626, said : "Wee could not make in all three Hundred men in the whole Countrey, those scattered a hundred and ffiftie Miles assunder," and added, "about those times also there were not within the now Great Government of the Massachusetts above three Shal- lops and a few Cannoes."*
He described the dwellings as of little value, since all of the buildings from New York to Nova Scotia, with exception of three or four at New Plymouth and his own at Winnisimet, were not worth two hundred pounds.
According to representations, made by Edward Winslow and Isaac Allerton and reaffirmed in the Plymouth charter of Janu- ary 13, 1629-30, Plymouth Colony had less than three hundred inhabitants at that date. On the other hand, Massachusetts Bay Colony, upon the arrival of Thomas Dudley upon May 30, 1630, contained but two hundred and twenty, of whom one hundred and eighty were sent the year before.
These figures prove that in 1630 the entire population of the Commonwealth was only 500 persons.t
According to Captain John Smith, Massachusetts was "the paradise of all those parts." Thomas Morton, also, in his New English Canaan published in 1637, asserted that "The Massachu- setts, being the middell part" (of New England) "is a very beau- tifull Land," and that "the rest of the Planters are disperst among the Coasts between 41. and 44. Degrees of Latitude, and as yet have" (made) "very little way into the inland."
* 2 Mass. Hist. Proc., 1-247.
+ Appendix A.
LOCATION, SIZE AND CHARACTER OF SETTLEMENTS IN 1630 31
The anonymous writer, assumed to be Walter Neal, writing of the country in 1635, said : "The English in their severall pat- ents are planted along the sea coast and have their habitations nere adjoyning to Rivers navigable ffor shippinge, or Barkes, the charge and difficultie of transportinge provision by land, ffor want of horses causes the Inland parts to bee yett unpeopled."}
July 14, 1638, John Jocelyn voyaged from Boston to the home of his brother Henry, who had just left the service of Ann, widow of Captain John Mason, at Pascataqua, and settled upon his grant at Scarborough. This writer then remarked: "The Countrey all along as I sailed, being no other than a meer Wilderness, here and there by the Seaside a few scattered plantations, with a few houses."§
A reproduction of the map of 1653, which was found in the British Museum, disclosed only sixty-five English dwellings in the Province of Mayne.
May 17, 1665, Samuel Maverick supplemented his earlier de- scription of the country with the following special reference to Maine: "In this province there are but few Townes, and those much scattered They are rather farmes than townes."*
As late as 1677, according to the historian Hubbard, "The un- certain and fallible Reports of such as have only sailed by the Country, or viewed some of the Rivers and Havens, but never passed through the Heart of the Continent" described Maine as "a barren and rocky Country of little worth, unless it were for the Borders thereof upon the Sea-coast and some *
* desirable Land upon the Banks of some Rivers." In the opinion of the author the whole district was "scarce worth half those Mens Lives that have been lost these two last Years, in hope to save it" from Indian depredation.
Upon the same authority, litigation over Maine real estate had been "enough to have maintained a greater Number of Lawers, than ever were the Inhabitants."+
N. E. Hist. Gen. Reg., 40-72.
3 Mass. Hist. Col., 3-226. Me. Doc. in Eng. Arch., 67.
# Hubbard's Wars, 2-2, 8.
32
Life Harbour
E Dover
Chetere River
Nicawanick River
Pajcatto way
[greatel
0
tamperones lland
A : Rock
* A Rock
I: Sholes
PASCATAQUA, 1653
PIONEERS ON MAINE RIVERS
Jourgenagents
Oyjster River
Chochecho River
33
PISCATAQUA RIVER
PISCATAQUA RIVER
In 1548, the British Government enacted its first legislation for the encouragement of the fishing industry on the Banks of Newfoundland, and many years later the opposition of Sir Ferdi- nando Gorges and Sir John Bowser to the exercise of the right of free fishery in New England was severely criticised in Parliament.
Under the date of May 2, 1621, the following passage occurred in the official record of proceedings: "And theis men which are the northern plantation of New England, have not one man there, in theis 70 years * * theis New England men will neither plant themselfes, nor suffer others." Apparently, it was the almost unanimous opinion of statesmen of that period that all of the colonization which then had been effected had been promoted through private initiative, or at least, like that of New Plymouth, without the united cooperation of the royal proprietors .*
At that juncture Gorges realized the necessity for immediate action in order to save the Northern Charter. Assignments of territory in New England were projected and plans for perma- nent occupation were begun.
March 9, 1621-2, Captain John Mason secured a grant of land at Cape Ann from the Council of Plymouth, and Ambrose Gib- bons, of Plymouth, was designated to take possession of the premises.
Subsequently, it was claimed by Mason's heirs "That in the year 1622 the said John Mason did send over several Servants and passengers to be tennants with store of cattle, provisions and necessaries unto his lands at Cape Ann and did build sundry houses and set up the trade of ffishery upon that Coast and em- ployed for his Steward there Ambrose Gibbons Gentleman."
There is no definite proof that the patentee did anything that year to perfect his title to the concession at Cape Ann, although the grant had been made and Plum Island had acquired already
* Brit. Proc., 1-37.
34
PIONEERS ON MAINE RIVERS
the significant name of Mason's Isle. If possession was taken at that time, it may have been effected by Gibbons in conjunction with other projects. He may have been associated with Thomas Morton, or Phineas Pratt, who in May, 1622, arrived at the Eastward with a small party of colonists in the Sparrow.
That ship had been dispatched from London by Thomas Weston and John Beauchamp, merchants of the English city, with orders to fish and trade at Damariscove Island during the summer.
The colonists had been instructed to locate their plantation in the vicinity of Plymouth Colony, because Weston as an orig- inal subscriber to that venture anticipated substantial assistance from that quarter.
After delay in securing a satisfactory pilot at Damariscove and Monhegan the expedition proceeded westward in an open boat. Landings were made at the Isles of Shoals and Cape Ann and both localities must have presented advantages, but the site selected for the plantation was at Wessaguscus (Weymouth, Massachusetts). If Gibbons were one of the party, he may have taken possession at Cape Ann at that time.
Morton was personally acquainted with Mason and styled him "that Heroick and very good Common wealths man * a true foster Father and lover of vertue."
Although English court records indicate that the former was involved in litigation at home during the period of his first visit to this country, there is nothing in the files which disproves his absence from London after April, 1622 .*
At any rate, he declared that "In the Moneth of June, Anno Salutis 1622, it was my chaunce to arrive in the parts of New England with 30. Servants, and provision of all sorts fit for a plantation : and whiles our howses were building, I did indeavour to take a survey of the Country."f
From this statement it is plain that Morton sailed from Lon- don with Weston's colonists, amounting to about sixty members, in the latter part of April and arrived at New Plymouth about the last of June; that, about the first of August, he removed to Passonagessit (Braintree), where he lived alone. It may be in- ferred that his "servants" were some of the "servants and ten-
* Mass. Hist. Proc., 58-169.
+ N. E. Canaan, 59.
35
PISCATAQUA RIVER
nants" of Mason who were quartered at Weymouth with those of Weston.
Many of the settlers had soon "forsaken the town, and made their rendezvous where they got their victuals." They were de- scribed as "scatered up & downe in ye woods, & by ye water sids, wher they could find ground nuts & clames, hear 6 and ther ten."*
In the "Depth of Winter" Morton, as the solitary pioneer at Passonagessit, left his dwelling and "reposed at Wessaguscus" in order that he might "have the benefit of company." He referred to residents at Wessaguscus as "my neighboures" and to their buildings as "our howses." While he was sojourning abroad the Indians extracted some corn from his house at Passonagessit, across the river, and complaint was made by him to Chicataubut. That sagamore delegated "a Salvage, that had lived 12 moneths in England," to make restitution for the loss. The native chosen was Squanto, also known as Tisquantum, who had lived in Lon- don three years before with Thomas Dermer. He was the last known representative of the Patuxit tribe, which had been lo- cated at New Plymouth, and his death occurred suddenly in De- cember, 1622. Its date was corroborated by Winslow. Hence, the incident happened in the late fall before the death of Squanto and soon after the advent of Morton at Braintree .;
August 10, 1622, Gorges and Mason had secured from the Council of Plymouth a grant of all of the territory situated be- tween Merrimac and Sagadahoc rivers. The concession com- prised all of Coastal New Hampshire as well as Western Maine. It was secured largely through the influence of Gorges himself. It was to be operated in severalty and regulated by a proprietary form of government.
About two months later, specifically upon October 16, David Thompson, a Scotch apothecary of Plymouth, England, obtained from the same council a grant of 6000 acres of land, to be located within the confines of New England. It was unassigned to any particular district, but after a selection had been made the prem- ises were required to be surveyed and registered with the council. Seventeen days later the grantee had procured a license to trans- port ten men and provisions thither .¿
* Mass. Hist. Co., 8-266; Bradford, 2-93.
+ N. E. Canaan, 46, 124; Mass. Hist. Col., 8-250.
¿ Appendix B.
36
PIONEERS ON MAINE RIVERS
In the spring of 1623 he arrived at the mouth of Piscataqua River, the name of which was properly spelled Pascataqua-the form generally adopted in this text.
He seems to have possessed advance information concerning that locality. In a map of 1612 Champlain gave Pascataqua Har- bor the name of "baeu port." Two years later Smith alluded to it as Passataquack. Dutch maps of 1616 and 1621, drawn by Hendricksen and Jacobs respectively, designated the mouth of the river with the legend "schoon haven."
He selected Odiorne's Point in Rye, New Hampshire, as the site for a fortified house and began construction forthwith. His situation was called Little Harbor, to distinguish it from Great Harbor, which lies on the north, or Maine, side of Great Island .;
Samuel Maverick, who came to New England with Robert Gorges later in the year and was associated at Pascataqua and Winnisimet (Chelsea), with Thompson, married the latter's widow and acquired part of his estate. While in error about the date of the patent of Pascataqua, which was executed before his advent in the country, Maverick asserted that Thompson, financed by Abraham Colmer, Leonard Pomery and Nicholas Sherwill, merchants of Plymouth, "went over with a Considerable Com- pany of Servants and built a Strong and Large House, enclosed it with a large and high Palizado and mounted Gunns
* This house and ffort he built on a Point of Land at the very entrance of Pascatoway River * * and for the bounds of this land he went up the River to a point called Bloudy Point."}
By their agreement the Plymouth merchants were obligated to furnish seven men to settle upon the plantation. These colo- nists were to be provided with transportation in the Jonathan and Providence, ships of Plymouth which were bound for Vir- ginia with other passengers.§
From a subsequent petition in which the son of William Hil- ton, of Plymouth Colony, maintained that his father and uncle Edward Hilton "were the first Inglish planters" to settle on the Pascataqua River, it has been assumed by Belknap, Hubbard and early writers, that both Hiltons were members of the original Thompson colony .*
; Bradford, 2-107; Mass. Hist. Col., 8-276.
¿ Mass. Hist. Proc., 21-234.
N. H. Gen. Rec., 2-2.
N. E. Hist. Gen. Reg., 36-41.
37
PISCATAQUA RIVER
But this could not have been possible, because the Hiltons did not remove from New Plymouth to Pascataqua until after the arrival of the petitioner in the country in August, 1623. Hence, they could not have been associated with Thompson in the construction of the first English house in New Hampshire. There is no doubt that they were, as claimed by themselves, the first Englishmen to settle upon the inland banks of Pascataqua River and that their operations were begun in Dover, at the point where that stream flows out of Great Bay, but their plantation was not undertaken until several years after that at Little Harbor.
Proof that the station of Thompson at the latter place was the first established in New Hampshire was furnished in the rem- iniscences of Pratt, one of Weston's colonists.
In February, 1623, when the plantation at Wessaguscus be- came destitute, John Sanders, its director, sailed in an open boat for Eastern Maine, where he expected to obtain supplies from fishing craft about Monhegan Island.
A month later, and before the return of Sanders, all of the members of his colony who had not succumbed to the exigencies of Indian conflict or starvation-except a few who had with- drawn to New Plymouth from preference-embarked in their small vessel, the Swan, for the Eastward, where they hoped to meet Weston himself or find employment on the fishing boats and obtain funds for return passage to England .;
The story told by Pratt, who was sick from exposure when the settlement at Wessaguscus was abandoned and had been left with a few others at New Plymouth, was as follows :
"9 of our men weare ded wth ffamine and on died in the ship before thay Came to the place whear at that Time of yeare ships Came to ffish-it being in March. At this Time ships began to ffish at ye Islands of Sholes and I haveing Recovered a Little of my strength went to my Company near about this Time" (to) "the first plantation att Pascataqua the" (overseer) "thereof was Mr. David Tomson at the time of my arivall att Pascataqua."}
"Sanders' Point" is one of the oldest names in New Hamp- shire. It was given to the promontory which lies between Little Harbor and Sagamore Creek and now forms the southerly ap-
¡ Bradford, 2-94.
± 4 Mass. Hist. Col., 4-486.
38
PIONEERS ON MAINE RIVERS
proach for the bridge to Great Island. It must have marked the second location of the Weston Colony in New England.
At the Isles of Shoals, near this point, the fugitives from Massachusetts had encountered the first fishing vessels of the season and could gain no advantage by going farther east. Here Weston himself, according to accounts of Bradford and Morton, found his disheartened colonists that spring. Disguised as a blacksmith on a fishing sloop, he had just come to Monhegan and transshipped for Massachusetts in a small sailboat, which was wrecked "in ye botome of ye bay between Meremek river and Pascataquack," where he was plundered by the Indians of Aga- wam (Ipswich). From Pascataqua Weston succeeded in reach- ing New Plymouth where he refinanced himself. Later, in a re- taliatory spirit, his colonists conducted an aggressive campaign against the Indians of Dorchester and Agawam, in which they obtained supplies of corn and captured some of the natives.
Many years afterward Samuel Maverick, who claimed to have seen "the first settellment of those pts" by the English, alluded to the strength of the plantations at Monhegan and Pascataqua and asserted that these eastern colonies were chiefly instru- mental in subduing the savages, who were arrogant in their con- duct towards the first weak planters of Massachusetts .*
Pratt also intimated that the station at Pascataqua was well protected against the Indians. He related incidents that happened there late in 1623, when a sagamore gave two of his subjects to Levett and Thompson. One of these natives was Wat Tyler, who had been found destitute, upon an island in 1619, by Thomas Dermer, and the other was Jack Straw, who formerly had been carried to England by Sir Walter Raleigh.i
In the fall of 1623 Robert, son of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who had begun a second colony on the premises abandoned by Weston at Wessaguscus, came to Pascataqua from New Plymouth in the Swan which he had just confiscated from Weston under an order issued by the Council of Plymouth May 31, 1622.
At Little Harbor Gorges proceeded to organize the Council of New England, which then consisted of Admiral Francis West, Governor William Bradford from New Plymouth and Christo- pher Levett.
* N. Y. Hist. Col., 1869, 31, 49 ; Mass. Hist. Proc., 21-234.
¡ Winthrop, 1-52.
39
PISCATAQUA RIVER
Levett was engaged in surveying at Pascataqua and remained there about one month. He made it apparent that there could have been no English settler on the inland reaches of the river at that time, since the only available information relative to con- ditions in the interior was derived from the natives. The state- ment of this visitor was : "But for the ground I can say nothing, but by the relation of the sagamore or king of that place, who told me there was much good ground up in the river about seven or eight leagues."
The prior grant of Maine and New Hampshire territory to Gorges and Mason precluded Thompson from acquiring title to the premises which he had occupied at Pascataqua. He was but a trespasser, and Colmer, Pomery and Sherwill with all of their influence could not prevail against the superior rights of the original patentees, who were insistent in preserving their claims.
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