Radio Script #961

Little Talks on Common Things
February 18, 1973

Maine’s so-called wild lands, this vast uninhabited area in the Northwest part of this state, north of Moosehead Lake and west of Aroostook, are again a subject of bitter controversy and certain to cause debate in this year’s legislature. Whether the dispute be over cutting timber in Baxter State Park or over the taxation of the wild lands now in private hands, there are strong arguments on both sides.

It seems appropriate, therefore, that we devote today’s broadcast to historical information about these lands all of which were once in the public domain. Before 1820 they were, of course, owned by Massachusetts, except for grants that had been made by such owners as the Plymouth Colony or the heirs of Fernando Gorges.

In 1778 the Continential Congress divided Massachusetts into three districts, southern, middle and northern. The northern district was called the District of Maine and so remained until Maine became a separate state in 1820. The act of separation divided the remaining public lands – then still ungranted or unsold – between the two states, giving Maine about two million acres and Massachusetts a similar amount. In 1821, the year immediately following separation, Massachusetts proposed that Maine purchase the remaining Massachusetts lands within the borders of Maine. A joint commission of the two states set the price at 4-2/5 cents an acre, but both legislatures turned down the proposal.

In 1828, in order to get money to build the state house at Augusta, (the legislature had voted to move the capital from Portland) Maine sold ten townships of its land. As Massachusetts had previously done, Maine continued to make grants to academies and colleges. In 1834 the legislature granted 200 acres to every non-com and private still living, who had served at least three years in the American Revolution, and if a widow of a deceased veteran still survived, she was to get the same grant. Between 1820 and 1854 Massachusetts sold or granted many of its tracts.

At last in 1854 Maine bought all the remaining Massachusetts acres within this state, amounting to 1,108,330 acres at 30-1/3 cents an acre, a considerable increase over the proposed price of 4-2/5 cents in 1821. Governor Morrill announced, “This purchase had added more than a million acres to our public domain.”

The largest single grant after Maine became a state occurred in 1868, when by authority of the legislature, Governor Joshua Chamberlain, who had led the 20th Maine at Gettysburg, signed a deed granting a million acres to the European and North American R.R. That was the line built through Maine territory from Bangor to the Canadian border at Vanceboro, thence through Canadian territory to Fredericton and St. John, and finally to Halifax. Since the deed erroneously mentioned 92 townships in which the state owned no land at all, what the railroad got turned out to be 690,000 acres instead of a million. But that was still a big grant to go to a single transportation company, especially when we note that the deed added conveyance to the European and North American of all the timber belonging to the state situated on the waters of the Penobscot and the St. John, to be used in construction of the line. Another railroad grant in the 1860’s was to the Bangor and Piscataquis of 23,000 acres.

Before 1820, there had been several attempts to sell public lands by lottery, but they had not been successful. In 1874 Maine tried to sell public land by auction, a widely advertised sale held in Bangor. When that attempt ended, Maine still held 146,000 acres of public land. It is interesting to note that despite the early troubles of the European and North American R.R., causing bankruptcy and reorganization in 1880, the company finally received $279,000 for the granted land, which it sold at 36 cents an acre. That amounted to $2,416 for every mile of that railroad built within the borders of Maine.

Let us now take a look at some of the grants to private individuals made by Massachusetts before Maine became a separate state. One, made in 1790, was to Peleg Wadsworth, who was granted 7,800 acres in what later became the town of Hiram. He was the maternal grandfather of the Maine poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the poet spent many boyhood summers at that Hiram farm. It was Abijah Buck, granted 20,000 acres in what is now Oxford County, who gave his name to the town of Buckfield. The same was true of John Jones, part of whose 40,000 acres in Washington County became Jonesport. In 1794 two brothers received separate grants. William Phillips got 18,000 acres in Temple, and Samuel Phillips got 3,000 in Hebron. Samuel Parkman, for whom the town of Parkman was named, received 27,000 acres. Cyrus Hamlin, father of Lincoln’s vice-president Hannibal Hamlin, got title to 1,300 acres at Paris Hill.

The largest single sale of Maine lands by Massachusetts was to the Philadelphia financier, William Bingham, on two separate sales: the famous million acre deal conveying land in Kennebec, Somerset, and Piscataquis, and another purchase by Bingham of somewhat more than a million acres in Hancock and Washington counties. I have, on a previous broadcast, told about those Bingham purchases in detail, and also how it took until 1965, only a few years ago, before this huge estate of William Bingham was finally settled.

Before 1820 Massachusetts had also made grants of Maine land to more than 30 institutions, most of them academies or colleges. The earliest were four grants made in 1793, each of a full township of about 23,000 acres. Hallowell Academy got what is now the town of Harmony, Lewiston Academy got the town of Stetson and Washington Academy the town of Cutler. The fourth grant was to a school not located in Maine at all, but in Massachusetts proper, Marblehead Academy. It got what is now the Maine town of Exeter. In 1794 Berwick Academy was granted the township that became the town of Athens and in the following year Fryeburg Academy got a township near the land already granted to the man for whom the town of Fryeburg was named. The first college grant authorized was to Bowdoin in 1796, although Harvard had received numerous reserved lots when other townships were granted for settlement. Bowdoin got a big grant of three townships in the vicinity of Sebec Lake. In 1798 Williams College got the town of Garland. In 1802 Williams got another township in Littleton, and in the same year, Westbrook Seminary was granted the town of Linneus. Portland Academy got Bridgewater in 1803; Hebron Academy got a grant in Oxford County in 1804, and another grant in Monson in 1811. Bowdoin got two more grants before 1820: the township of Etna in 1806, and two townships in Piscataquis County in 1813. The grant to the Maine Literary and Theological Institute, which became Colby College, came in 1815 – in the form of a township on the west side of the Penobscot River above Old Town. Bridgton Academy got land in Medfield, and Warren Academy got half a township at the Kathadin Iron Works. One of the most unusual grants went to Monmouth Academy in 1811, when that school got possession of nine islands in the Androscoggin River.

In the midst of the Civil War, when Abner Coburn of Skowhegan was Governor, his report referred to a grant made to the Aroostook R.R. as the last allotment of the public lands, including the sections left in Penobscot and Aroostook Counties. The grant had been made with the provision that the City of Bangor come through with its promised purchase of the railroad’s stock. Bangor failed to come through, so the state grant was actually never made. That is why there was land still left to make the grant to the European and North American in 1864. For many years critics referred to the grant as the crowning calamity in the long tragedy of Maine wild lands, the deeding of a million acres of public property to a private, profit-making corporation. What was once a huge area of Maine land is now owned by the big paper companies, purchased by those companies chiefly from individuals whose families had obtained it by purchase, in some cases many decades before the companies bought it.

Seventeen years ago, in 1956, according to Philip Cooledge’s book, Maine Woods, 6,618,000 acres were owned by 13 companies. By far the largest was Great Northern Paper with 2,260,000 acres. Scott owned 650,000 acres, International Paper 850,000, St. Regis 700,000, St. Croix Paper 350,000, the Brown Company 400,000 and Oxford Paper 170,000.

There remains to this day substantial wild land owned by individual families. The Pingree heirs, the Coburn heirs, the estate of Moses Giddings of Bangor, the S. F. Hersey estate, the Murchie interests, the Powers family, and the Eatons of Calais.

Cooledge tells us that in 1956, the Putnam family owned several townships near Danforth, and the Passamaquoddy Fuel Co., controlled by Charles P. Hutchins, had half a dozen townships. In his book, Cooledge made a comment that applies equally well to the present controversy over use of the Maine wilderness. He said, “A unique feature of Maine timberland ownership is the great extent of individual interests. The lands of our great-grandfathers were rarely placed under corporate ownership unless sold to some wood-using company. Accordingly, as families multiplied, the undivided ownership was represented by fractions. One owner of a whole undivided interest might sometimes sell a portion, but more often his heirs held it all still undivided. One such example was the huge acreage owned by Abner and Stephen Coburn. Instead of dividing the land among them, the numerous heirs of these men held it all for many years still undivided in the name of the Coburn Heirs. When heirs did divide that kind of inheritance, results sometimes became complicated. In 1863 a certain deed conveyed 31/52 of al/8 interest in a certain township. In 1960 that interest represented a holding of 332/32,280th of that township of land.

Cooledge concludes with this comment, “I think that large ownerships do not represent any threat of monopoly of our Maine resources. Maine people have enough democracy left about them to oppose any encroachment on public interests. With returns per acre as low as they are, efficiency requires that there would be large acres under single management.”

Administration of the public lands was placed under the Land Agent when Maine became a state, and in 1923 under his successor, whose title is the Forest Commissioner. Maine no longer has huge tracts of public lands, but it still owns many of the public lots, set aside under the Mass. Law of 1786, and made effective as townships were granted. Most of those remaining public lots are in the northwestern part of the state. What are now the better known public lands are confined by the system of Maine’s parks, by far the largest of which is the late Governor Baxter’s gift of the Mount Katahdin State Park.

Year: 1973