Radio Script #1256

Little Talks on Common Things
December 28, 1980

An historical spot on the Kennebec, of some importance before white man saw that river, is Swan Island, located between Dresden and Richmond. At the turn into the 20th century is was known as Perkins Island, but is now more often referred to by the name that the original settlers gave it – assumed to be because among its numerous birds that clustered there in spring and fall were many white swans.

Readers of “Arundel,” Kenneth Roberts’ thrilling novel of Arnold’s expedition to Quebec in 1775, came to know Swan Island as the place where some of Arnold’s army rendezvoused while their bateaux were being built at the Colburn shipyard in Pittston. It was at Swan Island, according to Roberts, that Arnold’s young officer Aaron Burr met the Indian maiden Jacataqua, and persuaded her to accompany him on Arnold’s famous and harrowing march.

The long, narrow island divides the river at Richmond into two channels. It is four miles long and from one-half to a full mile wide. The place contains 1,600 acres. The island was of strategic military importance. It guarded the entrance to a long stretch of the Kennebec from Merrymeeting Bay to Moosehead Lake. For centuries preceding its settlement by white man it had been a prominent seat of the Canibas or Kennebec branch of the Abnaki nation – the red men who inhabited Central Maine. That group of the Abnaki that had settled spots along the river from Richmond to Solon, had two large villages, where cornfields were planted and the houses were more substantial than the typical animal skin tepees of fiction. Two villages were at Old Point between Norridgewock and Madison and the one at Swan Island.

The area at and above the island became so important in colonial times that, on the west bank just above the island, the Massachusetts Bay government built the first fort on the river above Merrymeeting Bay. That was, in 1721, more than a quarter of a century before Sylvester Gardiner and his associates in the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase acquired possession of the whole tract all the way up to the falls at Solon, and 15 miles on each side of the river, which the Pilgrims at Plymouth had secured by grant from the King of England in 1629. The fort was named Fort Richmond, and the town
that was later incorporated there took the same name.

It was the exploration of George Weymouth in 1607 in connection with his first, short-lived settlement at the mouth of the Kennebec, that first encountered Chief Basheba and his native Indian settlers on Swan Island. Why the place was called by the first white men to visit it Swan Island is not definitely known. As I have already said, the tradition is that it was once a migration stop, spring and fall, for large flocks of wild swans. In fact, a Richmond man claimed to have seen a wild swan there as late as 1965, only fifteen years ago. Another explanation is that the Indians called the place Swamamys, which the white men abbreviated to Swan. Records of the Plymouth Colony show that by the time they were building their trading
post at Augusta in 1630, they called the big island just above the bay Garden Island because of its fertility. Today Swan Island is uninhabited and is a protected game preserve. It is, however, near the region open for hunting of waterfowl every autumn, and is especially well known for its Canadian geese, and several species of ducks.

Of course, settlements were made near the mouth of the Kennebec long before any adventurer built his cabin above Merrymeeting Bay. It is therefore to a letter written by Edward Hutchinson of Georgetown to Gov. Shute in Boston that we owe early information about Swan Island. This is what the Georgetown settler wrote: “Last Saturday, Col. Winslow and I, on our way up the river, met an Indian who said he was the son of a chief. He handed us a letter addressed to you, which I now enclose.

“There was no one with us who could speak Indian, so we understood little of what he said. We did comprehend that the letter had been written by the English minister at Norridgewock, and the Indian understood its contents. They have, with increasing vigor, been protesting further white settlements. Lately they have threatened a tenant of Col. Winthrop on
Swan Island that they will kill his family if he does not leave. A week ago, ten Indians whom he had employed to bring some goods up the river did deliver the goods, but then drove off his oxen and killed them. Your Excellency already had a company of men under Captain Bean near Fort Popham at the mouth of the river. If you would send them to Swan Island, we assure you there is no better place to keep the Indians in awe.”

In 1750 there were white families on the island, led by Lazarus Noble, James Whidden and Jonathan Clark. Before that year ended, a band of Indians led by a few Frenchmen, had carried the entire Noble family into captivity in Canada. Whidden was away,and his wife and children escaped by hiding in the cellar and fortunately the raiders did not set fire to their cabin.

The most controversial legend about Swan Island concerns the Indian girl Jacataqua. There is no question that Aaron Burr was a member of Arnold’s army, and many accounts of his spectacular life tell us that he was a notorious womanizer. But there seems to be no reliable record of Arnold having the Indian girl on that historic march. Yet Kenneth Roberts certainly did not invent the story. It was a part of Kennebec tradition long before Roberts was born. Whether it had any basis in fact we shall never know.. In her definitive history of Skowhegan, Miss Louise Coburn wrote: “A volunteer in Arnold’s army was Aaron Burr, then a lad of 19, and afterwards Vice President of the U. S. ” Miss Coburn makes no mention of Jacataqua.
John Francis Sprague, editor of Sprague’s Journal of Maine History, did say that an Indian maid accompanied Burr, and he attributed the story to a book, “The Trail of the Maine Pioneer” written by Mrs C. C. Carll. In that book Mrs. Carll had stated as fact what was only a legendary story about Burr, Jacataqua and a bear. The story was that when provisions were giving out for that part of the army to which Burr was attached, as they made laborious way through the swamps near the Height of Land, Burr and Jacataqua left camp and went into the woods where they killed a bear that nourished the starving troops. Unfortunately, Mrs. Carll did not state the source for which she got that story. However the stories about Burr and the Indian girl got started, it was Kenneth Roberts who gave them currency in our time, so that many people have come to believe them. Roberts was so highly respected for the careful research that went into “Arundel” that his reputation for accuracy gave even more credence to the Burr-Jacataqua legend. Anyhow, whether fact or fiction, accounts about the future Vice President and the Indian girl make a good yarn.

All his life Burr was anything but reticent regarding his association with women, but in all his many recqrded writings about the Arnold Expedition there is no mention of Jacataqua. Robert Coffin, in his “Kennebec, Cradle of America”, said what we may regard as a final status about this story. He says, “Jacataqua, Queen of the Kennebec, may not be in the official history of the Arnold Expedition, but she shines like a star in oral tradition of the Kennebec.”

Yet, Allen, the historian of Old Pownalborough, insisted that Jacataqua had at least as solid a foundation as did the account of pilgrims stepping foot on Plymouth Rock. Allen said that Col. Dearborn of the Expedition was reported to
have said that, when his own dog had been killed and eaten by the hungry troops, Jacataqua’s bloodhound was spared. Allen also said that Jacataqua was smuggled into Quebec with the army, and was there delivered of Burr’s child by the Sisters of Charity.

Now let us get back to Swan Island itself. The great landowner and industrial developer of the region was Sylvester Gardiner, head of the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase. His daughter, Rebecca, became a resident of Swan Island.
When Rebecca married a distinguished Boston man of French descent, Philip Demeresque, Dr. Gardiner built them a comfortable frame house on Swan Island.

After the deaths of Rebecca and her husband, the property passed through several hands until in 1900 it was acquired by Ellery Kilborn, a nationally known physician and scientist. He restored the house to its original excellence. It was
extensively damaged by the big flood of 1936. It was the last of what had been a number of residences on Swan Island. The place once had a dozen spacious homes and numerous out-buildings. One was the home of Jonathan Tallman, who came to Maine by covered wagon from New York. Another settler was Paul Hatch, who had participated in the Boston Tea Party.

Having some dispute with the government of Dresden on the mainland, the people of Swan Island in 1847 secured separate incorporation as the town of Perkins. To celebrate the event they held a big festival with plenty of rum,
and ran up a big flag on a 50-foot Liberty Pole. The town was named for Col. Thomas Perkins, who had married the granddaughter of Sylvester Gardiner, the daughter of Philip and Rebecca Demeresque.

Perkins had built on the island a fine house near that of his father-in-law Demeresque. The town of Perkins was always small, its total population never quite reaching one hundred. Yet it sent four men to the Union Army in the Civil War,
every one of whom was killed in battle. Within a few years the number of residents became so few that the town reverted to the status of unorganized territory. In 1946 it was designated the Swan Island Game Management Area.

One of Swan Island’s most prominent residents was Robert Barker, who brought to Swan Island his bride Sarah Folger, member of the wealthy family into which Henry Knox, developer of Maine’s famous Waldo grant also married. On the
southern end of the island, in 1773, Barker built a spacious frame house. When he died four years later, his wife with their children moved back to Nantucket, Massachusetts. But later their son John, who became a successful merchant, placed family relatives on Swan Island, so that Barker heirs lived in the old house for several generations. John himself had been born on the island.

Allen’s History of Dresden adds some interesting information to what I have already said about the Demeresque family. Let us hear it in Allen’s own words: “The name Demeresque is famous in the annals of Boston. Originating on the Channel Island of Jersey, the family first appeared in Boston about 1700. After Philip Demeresque’s death, his son James married Sarah Farwell of Vassalboro, and the two went to live in the house on Swan Island that. Sylvester Gardiner had built for James’ father and mother at the time of Philip’s marriage to Gardiner’s daughter. James’ son, also named Philip, was a sea
captain, commanding merchant ships owned by the Perkins family of Boston. Philip’s many profitable voyages to China gave him the designation “Prince of Sea Captains”. He established a record by sailing from Boston to San Francisco around Cape Horn in 96 days, then across the Pacific to Hong Kong in 45 days.

“James Demeresque’s daughter Frances married Col. Thomas Perkins of Boston and took up residence on Swan Island. Thus the family for which the island was named when it became an incorporated town, was linked with the Gardiner and Demeresque families of the First settlement.”

Allen ends his account with the following statement: “Dr. E.C.Hubbard of Boston purchased the Demeresque place on the island in 1900., and occupied it as a summer residence, calling it ‘Swango’, which may have been the Indian name of
the island.”

And that ends this broadcast, devoted to the large historic island near the entrance of the Kennebec River with Merrymeeting Bay.

Year: 1980