Radio Script #798

Little Talks on Common Things

March 9, 1969

One of the oldest vacation spots in Maine is Monhegan Island. Even before the aristocratic colony developed at Bar Harbor, visitors from New York, Philadelphia and Boston were already building cottages on Monhegan. Much has appeared in the press about the stalwart fishermen and lobstermen who have been natives of that island for many years. Especially well known are the special laws the Monhegan lobstermen have been able to enforce upon themselves and any wandering fishermen. To protect the breeding and growth of lobsters. for instance, the Monhegan fishermen have long banned lobstering off the island during July and August, the very months when prices are highest. Some of our most ardent conservationists are those fishermen and lobstermen of Monhegan.

Today I want to tell you about the part that Monhegan Island played in the early history of the American continent. When ships took the North Atlantic route from Europe, the first land they sighted on the Maine coast was likely to be Monhegan. All through colonial times that island was an important port of call.

According to Rossier’s Relation, there in 1605 George Weymouth anchored his ship Archangel. From there Weymouth sailed along the coast to the mouth of the St. Georges River. and there also the Popham ships that followed Weymouth in 1607 stopped on their way to the mouth of the Kennebec. Nor was Weymouth by any means the first Englishman to see the island. John and Sebastian Cabot, though not themselves Englishmen, made an English financed voyage in 1497 and had some English sailors aboard. Monhegan was one of the islands they described as they made their way along the coast toward Newfoundland.

Nor were the French ignorant of Monhegan. In 1603 the Sieur de Mont was there. His patent from Henry IV of France included not only Mt. Desert. but also other islands, among them Monhegan. When Henry Hudson sailed into Monhegan Harbor in 1609 he found fishing boats of several European countries already there. When John Smith of the Virginia Colony came in 1614, he found there several fishing vessels that belonged to Sir Francis Popham. who had been sending his fishermen to Monhegan regularly for several years. What Smith wrote about the place is interesting: “In the month of April with two ships from London I arrived in New England, a part of America, at the Isle of Monhegan in 43tO N. Lat. Our plan was to take whales and search for mines of gold and copper. If that failed, we were then to seek fish and furs. We saw many whales, but could kill none; nor did we find any gold. We then turned to fish and furs. We dried about 4,000 fish of a total catch of some 7,000. While our sailors fished, I with seven or eight men, ranged the coast in a small boat, securing from the natives 1,100 beaver skins, 100 marten and near as many otter. We got most of them within a distance of 20 leagues. We encountered ships of Sir Francis Popham’s that for many years had used the port at Monhegan. They gave us valuable information about the coast.”

In 1618 a party of Englishmen. sent by Sir Ferdinando Gorges. spent the winter at Monhegan and to this day traces of their occupation may still be seen. It is thus clear that not only white men, but actually Englishmen were in Maine, certainly on a Maine island before any Pilgrim set foot on Plymouth Rock.

Monhegan Island’s rocky cliffs have many caves. Attached to them are numerous legends. Old islanders say that on stormy nights the ghost of a pirate who killed his commander, Captain Kidd paces before the entrance to a cave where pirate treasure is supposed to have been buried.

During King Philip’s War in the last quarter of the 17th century Monhegan was laid waste by Indian raids, and all the inhabitants who escaped massacre were forced to flee to some of the larger well-garrisoned coastal towns.

Markings on rocks at Monhegan have long excited conjecture of much earlier visitors to the island. At one time some of the markings were thought to be inscriptions in a crude kind of cuneiform, and therefore perhaps made by Semitic people who made their way across the Atlantic in Old Testament times. Such a source of the markings is now completely discredited. No ship was capable of any such voyage before the discovery of calking.

Attracting a large number of adherents is the theory that the markings are runic inscriptions made by Norsemen about the year 1000. But to this day no one can give assurance that the marks are anything except result of weathering on the sea-exposed rocks.

Do we have any evidence, therefore. that Europeans ever saw Monhegan Island before Columbus discovered this continent in 1492? Indeed we do. About 1380 Nicolo leno. a Venetian, fitted out a ship for England. Driven by storms farther north, he arrived at the Faroe Islands, which had been for several centuries in the possession of Norsemen. There the Norse ruler welcomed leno, who decided to stay, and soon brought his brother Antonio on from Venice. Together they made several voyages out of the Faroes until Nicolo died in 1395.

Antonio leno wrote a long account of their voyages and sent it to a third brother, Carlo, in Venice. It remained in his family for 150 years. Then in 1558. when the new invention of printing had become well established, a member of the family had the manuscript printed. In that printed volume is Antonio’s report of a voyage made in 1390, when his fishing vessel was driven westward to a region called Estituland or Markland.

One of the most famous early books concerning the New World was Ortellius’ “Theatrum Orbum”. published in 1570. Taking very seriously leno’s account. which he had seen in the printed volume of 1558, Ortellius wrote: “Although it was Christopher Columbus who communicated to the Christian World discovery of lands across the western ocean, our first knowledge of the New World. in 1492, I find that the north part of that world called Estiotoland was long ago found by fishermen from the Faroe Islands and discovered anew by one Antonio leno of Venice in 1390. This account. with description of the country, is preserved in a book in the leno family.”

Ortellius concluded: “In the 14th century our European pilots sailed those seas with the help of the loadstone. Concerning the use thereof in navigation there is probably no more early testimony.”

What Ortellius called the loadstone was a kind of mineral called magnetite, possessing sufficient magnetic polarity to attract iron. It was indeed used as early as the 13th century to assist rather crudely, but somewhat effectively, navigation by observation of the stars.

At any rate, after those earliest voyages, we now have historical evidence that innumerable fishermen — Basque, Spanish, Portuguese, Breton — must have been coming regularly to Monhegan Island, even before Columbus was born. When John Cabot called at the island in 1497, he found the natives called the fish barcaloa. Now that is a Basque word, which as early as 1200 the Spanish and Portuguese were using to designate the codfish. To have such a word easily used by the Indians of Monhegan is pretty good evidence that Europeans had been seeking the codfish near that island centuries before those Englishmen of the 16th century — Weymouth and Popham and John Smith — ever saw Monhegan’s rugged rocks.

Most of my listeners know that I delight in going through old account books, and I have mentioned many of them on this program. Now I want to tell you about another, kept in the middle of the 19th century by the great-grandfather of Waterville dentist Dr. Albert Piper. The old books were long retained by Dr. Piper’s mother, Mrs. John Piper, widow of one of Waterville’s most respected physicians who for many years was my own family doctor. Recently Mrs. John Piper placed the old books in my hands for deposit in the Waterville Historical Society.

The keeper of the accounts was Joseph Clark of Caratunk. In 1848 Clark recorded wages paid by him on a winter’s lumbering operation in Spauldingtown, the old name for Solon. A relative, Don Clark, got highest pay for his whole winter’s labor, $70. No one else in the 20 man crew got more than $60, and the average was about $40. In fact John Baker and Benjamin Wiggins got only $25 each. It is interesting to see how a river drive was supplied more than a century ago.

Clark thus recorded supplies for a drive in 1848: 2 bbls. flour, 1 bbl. pork. 1 bushel beans, 18 gal. molasses, 4 lbs. tea. 5 lbs. saleratus, 6 handspikes. 2 cant dogs. 6 pickpole picks. For some of these supplies Clark paid 12¢ a pound for the salt pork, 28¢ for the tea. and 9 cents for the saleratus.

On the way to start that 1848 drive Clark and three of his men had dinner at a tavern run by a man named Greenleaf. Here is the way Clark recorded it: “Paid Greenleaf for four dinners 80 cents.”

On another occasion in 1849 Clark recorded as delivering for a drive five axes, three augers, a square and kitchen articles consisting of a tin baker, 6 knives and forks, 6 plates, 6 cups and saucers, and two spoons. For such interpretation as you care to make is this item: “1 spread worth $3”.

The Coburns were already on their way to creating their great Somerset lumber dynasty. In 1850 Clark wrote: “Worked on the Sandy Stream 18 days for Coburn.”

An interesting item in 1848 is this one: “Lowellolo owes me for cooking 118 meals at 5¢ – $5.90; potatoes furnished.”

After 1850 Joseph Clark also kept a general store and I will tell you something about that in a later broadcast.

Year: 1969