Radio Script #1272

Little Talks on Common Things
April 19, 1981

When earlier this year, the program gave information on Maine’s first governor William King, I was led to prepare a broadcast on King’s home city of Bath. Here it is.

Long ago I told about the trading firm of Clark, and Lake, located below Bath near the mouth of the Kennebec. That firm set up trading posts along the river as far north as Ticonic Falls, where is now the city of Waterville. Those partners began their operations in 1650 when the English settlement at Boston was only thirty years old, and it was from Boston that the two men came to the Kennebec. Only three years later, in 1653, they placed their agent Christopher Larsen at Ticonic Falls. Their own headquarters were at Georgetown on Arrowsic Island near the mouth of the river, where are now the towns of Georgetown, Arrowsic and Phippsburg. Clark and Lake built several sawmills and shipped lumber to Boston, where the rapidly increasing population caused it to be in sharp demand. At Georgetown they also built and operated sailing vessels.

Meanwhile the two partners gradually acquired large acreage of land on both sides of the Kennebec all the way up beyond Merrymeeting Bay as far as Ticonic Falls. Their holdings were not contiguous, but in separate pieces averaging about 2000 acres and most were sold at good profit after the Indian wars were over.

On Arrowsic Island Clark and Lake built a strong wooden fort mounted with what were called two “great guns.” It became the chief stronghold in the Sagadahoc region. That name needs explanation. The Indians had no one name for the full length of any of Maine’s largest rivers. The name Androscoggin they applied to the present river from Rumford Falls to Brunswick. Above Rumford it had several different names, and below Brunswick it was the Pejepscot. From Moosehead Lake to Merrymeeting Bay the river was called the Kennebec, and from the Bay to the ocean it was the Sagadahoc.

Hence, in colonial times, the area now occupied by Bath and all towns below Merrymeeting Bay was called the Sagadahoc region. Part of the area became the nucleus of Maine’s present Sagadahoc County. One of Clark and Lake’s shipyard employees gained international fame. At the age of 15 William Phips went to work in one of their yards. Years later, his successful raising of a sunken Spanish treasure ship in the West Indies so enriched the British treasury with the sunken cargo of gold and silver that the British King knighted Phips making him one of the earliest colonists entitled to knighthood. Later Sir Wlilliam was made the royal governor of Massachusetts Bay.

In its beginning the Sagadahoc region had no government except that exercised by the traders Clark and Lake. Then in 1668 prospective external government approached from two directions. The government that had been set up under royal charter by Ferdinando Gorges at York sought to extend its jurisdiction to all of Maine. Its agent, Thomas Humphrey, was sent to Georgetown to be Gorges’s clerk of writs for Sagadahoc and Penobscot. The latter was the settled area around Brunswick and Topsham. Gorges obtained from residents oaths of allegiance to himself and his king, Charles II of Britain.

At the same time agents of the Duke of York appeared at Georgetown. When the British captured New Amsterdam from the Dutch, it was awarded to the Duke of York and the name of the place was changed to New York. The King’s charter to the Duke gave him not only all the land along the Hudson, but also the royal lands in Maine. Thus his grant overlapped that of Ferdinando Gorges, not at all unusual because British kings frequently granted the same parts of American land to different persons or companies. The result was such confusion that sellers paid no attention to either Gorges or the Duke of York.

Meanwhile a third party was not idle. The government of Massachusetts Bay gradually secured the allegiance of towns from Piscataqua to Casco Bay, but not until 1678, when it purchased rights from the Gorges heirs, did it gain control of the Kennebec settlements. In 1674, when the Bay Government set up the area as the County of Devon, Clark,. and Lake were named as two of the county commissioners to set up the county seat at Pemaquid. Under that jurisdiction settlements were made on Monhegan Island, all the way up the Pemaquid peninsula, in the Sagadahoc area,. and on Cape Newagen, now the town of Southport. One of those settlements was made at Small Point Neck, now the city of Bath.

After their acquisition of certain Kennebec lands above Merrymeeting Bay in 1629, the Plymouth Colony ran an active trading post at Augusta. Then in 1661 Plymouth sold their grant to four men, all merchants of Boston. The grant was a huge tract, 15 miles on each side of the Kennebec from Gardiner to Skowhegan. Nearly a century later, in 1749, another group of Boston merchants and professional men, led by Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, purchased the tract from the heirs of the four men of 1661, and set up a company officially designated the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase. In time they secured other lands on the east side of the river between their original purchase and the ocean, but the area of Bath itself was never in their possession.

An earlier broadcast on this program about Indian treaties showed clearly that there was great difference in understanding of Englishmen and Indians concerning the ownership and use of land. Differences in language, culture, and customs made for misunderstanding. It came to a head in 1675. Clark and Lake had just made a treaty with some of the Kennebec Indians thanks to generous gifts of rum and tobacco, two commodities that played a large part in the red men’s road to ruin. But 1675 saw the outbreak of the first concerted uprising of all New England Indians, King Philip’s War. Quickly the Kennebec settlements were overcome and demolished. Almost all Maine settlers who were not killed or captured had to flee beyond the Piscataqua into New Hampshire and Massachusetts. By 1690 not a settlement remained on the Kennebec.

After the Treaty of Utrecht between England and France in 1714, the heirs of Clark and Lake were able to regain possession of their Sagadahoc property, and settlement was resumed. A new Indian outbreak in 1722 ended with English victories at Lovewell’s Pond and Norridgewock, and there was after that little trouble from the tribes.

What happened after 1714 is explained in a letter written from London by Sir Byron Lake, British representative of the family’s American interests. He wrote: “After the Treaty of Utrecht I sent over John Watts to resettle the Sagadahoc region. I empowered him to settle 100 families. Watts went over with his own family, and I gave him 2000 pounds.to be expended in making the intended settlements. Watts was very industrious in getting settlers, building mills, and making other improvements, and he set up strong defenses against the Indians.” Watts’ principal settlement was on the south end of Arrowsic Island.

Robert Temple settled at North Bath in 1718. He brought Scotch and Irish settlers from Northern Ireland. They were Presbyterians whose ancestors had sought asylum from persecution in England and Scotland. The first shipload of those immigrants arrived in Boston in July, 1718, where Temple met them and transported them to Bath. A total of 500 such immigrants eventually came to the Kennebec. The northern part of Bath came to be called Ireland.

And that is the story of how Bath got its start early in the 18th century.

Now,in connection with Bath, it is well to say something about William King that was omitted in our earlier broadcast concerning that famous Maine man. What I want now to tell you is about the King family in Scarborough where William King was born in 1768. The first King had come to that region in the late 17th century when the town had already secured incorporation along with its neighbor Falmouth. William King’s grandfather Cyrus became the wealthiest man in town and its most prominent citizen at the time of the American Revolution. People depended upon him for their supplies of foreign goods.

A number of people became so indebted to Cyrus King that they determined to destroy all record of their indebtedness. Disguising themselves as Indians, on a March night in 1766 they broke into his storehouse and wreaked wanton destruction. Then they proceeded to his dwelling, where they scattered his papers and tried to ruin his record of accounts. King himself barely escaped with his life. Soon afterward King found posted on his gate a notice threatening to burn his house and cut him to pieces if he prosecuted anyone who participated in the previous raid. Meanwhile Cyrus King’s son Richard was raising his own family in which William was born in 1768. Both Cyrus and Richard were accused of being Tories when the Revolution broke out. They were specifically accused of using the hated stamps required by the Stamp Act. By the time the courts declared Richard King innocent of British sympathies, Cyrus had died. Richard King was on the way to accumulating an even larger fortune than his father’s when he too died. His son William was only 12 years old, but his eventual share in his father’s property permitted him to enter the business of shipping and ship building with his brother-in-law in Topsham. Then he became the wealthiest citizen of Bath.

Now we close this broadcast with a few words about the town of Scarborough at the time of the Revolution.

As soon as the news of fighting at Lexington and Concord reached Scarborough, every man who could be spared was armed and made ready to proceed to Cambridge. A company of 50 commanded by John Rice of Dunstan, joined the regiment commanded by Col. Phinney of Gorham. After participating in pushing the British out of Boston, it went to Ticonderoga. In 1778 the town of Scarborough raised 200 pounds to buy supplies for the families of soldiers away with the Continental army.

When news of Cornwallis’s surrender arrived in Scarborough there was great rejoicing. Bonfires were lighted allover town, and burning tubs of tar were hoisted to the top of the Liberty Pole. All powder in the town was used up in the celebration. Needless to say, large quantities of rum were also consumed.

And with that, we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1981