Radio Script #1080

Little Talks on Common Things
March 7, 1976

Striking changes have occurred in the relative population of Maine communities in the past 125 years. It is interesting to see how some Maine towns compared with others in respect to number of inhabitants in 1850.

At that time there was no Aroostook County, and the area it now comprises was very thinly populated. In 1850, most of those northern Maine places had been inhabited by white people for less than 25 years. But even in 1850, Houlton had achieved some prominence; it already had 1,453 people. Neither Presque Isle nor Caribou, now two of Maine’s 22 cities, had then been incorporated as towns, but were still in unorganized territory. In 1850, neither of the settlements that are
now Presque Isle and Caribou had as many as 200 people.

As one would expect, because of our knowledge of the Aroostook War in 1839, next to Houlton the largest settlements in the region were on the upper St. John River, and indeed we find that Aroostook’s second largest town, in the middle of the
19th century, was Madawaska, which then had a population of 1,278. The now good sized town of Fort Kent then had only 50 inhabitants. Aroostook’s third largest town at that time was Van Buren with 1,050. Larger than either Presque Isle or
Caribou were the now much smaller towns of Smyrna, Masardis, Crystal, and Molunkus. In now substantial Mars Hill, there were in 1850 only 29 people.

Now let us turn to my own birth county of Cumberland, containing in 1850, as it does now, Maine’s largest city, Portland, whose population was than 20,819. Second largest place in the county was Brunswick with 4,976, and third was Westbroo
with 4,852. At that time there was no city of South Portland; it was part of the town of Cape Elizabeth, which had a population of 2,082. When Maine became a state in 1820, Standish was one of Cumberland County’s larger towns, but by 1850 it had been surpassed by Bridgton, Windham, and Freeport.

By 1850, the more remote Franklin County was getting a good start with 17 incorporated towns. As now, its largest town was then Farmington with 2,726 people. Second was Wilton with 1909. When we consider the later development of Phillips,
Strong and Rangeley, especially after they were reached by the Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes narrow-gauge railroad, we note that in 1850 they were greatly exceeded by the now smaller town of New Sharon. In 1850, Temple had more people than Kingfield, and Chesterville had more than Strong.

Over in Hancock County, except for the county seat of Ellsworth, the largest town was Deer Isle, whose inhabitants numbered 3,637. There was then on that island no separate town of Stonington. Bucksport was Hancock’s third largest place with 3,381. Of considerable size, compared with their small populations today, were Brooklin and Sedgwick. There was then no Bar Harbor, but the big island had two separate towns, Mt. Desert with 1,127 people, and Eden with 777. In 1850, 162 persons lived on the faraway island of Matinicus, and 10 on the even more rugged Matinicus Rock.

Now let us consider our own county of Kennebec. In 1850, Augusta, which had then been the state capital for only 15 years, was nearly twice as large as any other Kennebec town, with a population of 8,154. Gardiner was in second place with 5,126, and Waterville was third with 3,965. In 1820, the county’s largest community and principal business center had been Hallowell. By 1880, it had dropped to fourth place, and led the county’s fifth town, Vassalboro, by a count of only one hundred. Winslow, now one of the county’s largest towns, then had fewer people than Albion, China, Monmouth, Pittston, Readfield, or Sidney.

In 1850, there was no Androscoggin County, and most of its present towns were then in Lincoln County. Lewiston, now one of Maine’s three largest cities, then had only 3,500 people,less than half the size of either Bath or Rockland. In 1850 Dresden, had more people than Damariscotta, Jefferson more than Lisbon, Phippsburg more than Newcastle. The very old town of Arrowsic at the mouth of the Kennebec had about the same number of inhabitants as did the island of Monhegan.

Oxford County, which even today has no city, was of course even smaller in 1850. Its largest place then was Paris, with 2,883 people. Only one other town in the whole county had as many as 2,000, that was Bethel. Only 1,500 persons
lived in Fryeburg, 1,600 in Buckfield, and 1,800 in Norway. The now large mill town of Rumford had only 1,375. Brownfield was then three times the size of Andover, now the site of the Telstar satellite complex.

As for Penobscot County, Bangor was in 1850 Maine’s second largest community with a population of 14,432. The county’s second town in size was Hampden with 3,200, barely surpassing Old Town’s 3,020. Orono had 2,700, Brewer 2,600. Penobscot towns in 1850 of some size, that have since lost population, were Charleston, Etna, Garland, Levant, and Orrington.

In 1850, Piscataquis was, as it still is today, a county with small population. Dover and Foxcroft were then separate towns, having each about 1,900 people. Only three other towns in that county had as many as a thousand. They were Parkman,
Sangerville and Sebec. Dexter was then in Penobscot County. Greenville had only 326 inhabitants, only a few more than the adjoining town of Shirley. In what is now the very small town of Parkman, there were in 1850 more people than in Guilford, Monson or Milo.

In Somerset County the largest place in 1850 was not Skowhegan, with its 1,756 people but Fairfield with 2,452. It may surprise you to learn that after Fairfield and Skowhegan, Somerset’s next largest towns were, in order, Norridgewock, St. Albans, Madison, Canaan and Athens. Pittsfield, now a large town, was then not even in the first ten. In 1850, Mercer, whose population has now shrunk below 400, was larger than either Hartland or Harmony, and actually had more people than North Anson. Solon was then twice as large as Bingham.

One of Maine’s very old ports is Belfast, and it led Waldo County’s towns in 1850 with a population of 5,052. Camden and Frankfort each had about 4,000. The only other Waldo towns with more than 2,000 were Lincolnville, Prospect and Searsport. At that time more people lived on Islesboro than in the town of Burnham, and Thorndike had four times the population of Freedom. As one would suppose, the seaport towns were the largest in Washington County. They were led by Calais with 4,750, followed by Eastport with 4,125. Other Washington County towns with more than a thousand people were Columbia, Lubec, Cherryfield, Millbridge, Pembroke, Perry, Robbinston and Steuben.

Maine’s oldest county, formed in the 17th century, is of course York. As the first part of Maine to be permanently settled, we would expect it to be well populated, and indeed, compared with the rest of the state, it was. In 1850, every other county except York – even Cumberland – had some unincorporated territory. But on York’s mainland every acre of land was under incorporation. Only its holdings off shore on the Isles of Shoals were unincorporated. No York County town then had fewer than 1,000 people. Although Alfred had for some time been the county seat, its population was in 1850 surpassed by 22 of York’s 26 towns. The county’s largest community was then Biddeford with 6,095 people. Next was Saco with 5,794, so that those two places on the Saco River had together at that time more people than anywhere else in Maine except Portland or Bangor. Some other York towns, then relatively large, will surprise you, in light of their population today. Parsonsfield then had more people than Sanford, Hollis had more than South Berwick, Buxton more than Wells, but Wells, with its 2,980 people, was ahead of Maine’s oldest town of Kittery, which had 2,706. Even York’s smallest town, Cornish, numbered 1,144.

Maine’s present sixteen counties were only 13 in 1850. Already Cumberland had become the most heavily populated with a census of 80,000. At that time, the large county of Lincoln was second with 72,000, and York came third with 60,000. Only 15,000 people lived in the County of Piscataquis, and a scant 12,000 in what was soon to be named Aroostook. The 1850 census showed the population of the entire State of Maine to be 583,235, a little more than half its count in 1970. It may be interesting to note how Maine had grown in 1850 from the time of its first unofficial census made by the officials of Massachusetts Bay in 1635. Those Boston census takers counted 1,150 people in their whole Province pf Maine. Even in 1700, the 1,150 had grown to only 5,500.

After the Kennebec Purchase in 1749, the Massachusetts government took regularly more careful censuses. In 1765, they found 24,000 Maine residents, but Maine people, especially inland, were then so widely scattered that the announced total may have been short by a couple of thousand. Not until after the Revolution did Maine settlements show rapid increase.
The 24,000 of 1765 grew to 57,000 in 1785, and only five years later in 1790 had swollen to 97,000. The next decade saw such tremendous increase that in 1800 there were 55,000 more people in Maine than there had been ten years earlier – a total of 152,000. When Maine became a separate state in 1820, she had 300,000 people, and in the next thirty years the population nearly doubled to 585,000 in 1850.

Who ran the State of Maine then? The Governor was John Hubbard. Noah Prince of Thomaston was President of the Senate, and George Sewall of Bath was Speaker of the House. The Waterville area was represented in the state senate by David Garland of Winslow. In the House was Joseph Percival of Waterville, Lawton Gould of Sidney, John Homans of Vassalboro, and John Gray of China.

I am sure we all realize that change must be the accepted order of life, and one has only to drive through Maine’s back-country towns and observe the abandoned farms and the rotting stream-side mills to understand what has happened to our rural population in the past 125 years. Whether we like it or not, we have to live with it. We are reminded of what Thomas Carlyle said a hundred years ago when he was told that Harriet Martineau, the feminist maverick of his day, had decided to accept the universe. Carlyle said, “Indeed she’d better!”

Year: 1976