<\/p>\n
Because of its prominence in early Maine history, we must not neglect in this Bicentennial year, to call attention again to a subject we have discussed several times on this program – Ancient Pemaquid. I like to remind you frequently that, as a place in America known to Europeans, Pemaquid was older than Plymouth. You have heard me tell this incident before, but it will bear repeating. After the Pilgrims suffered badly through their first winter at Plymouth, Gov. Bradford sent the colony’s shallop to Pemaquid. That boat was available in the winter and spring, but it was June before Bradford sent it down the Maine coast.<\/p>\n
In his account of the early years at Plymouth, Bradford says he sent the shallop to get badly needed supplies from the English fishing fleet that he knew dried their catch there every summer. He knew very well that fleet made only summer visits to the Maine coast, and had done so for many years. Although the colony was in sore need of supplies during that winter and spring, it would have been no use to send the boat to Pemaquid, for the fishermen would not be there until summer.<\/p>\n
Now the mere fact that Gov. Bradford was well aware of this situation shows that he must have had the information before the Mayflower left England. Indeed, among the merchants and seamen who proposed the Pilgrim voyage, it was well known when and where the British fishing fleet spent the summer.<\/p>\n
In the early 17th century, but later than Plymouth, a permanent settlement was established at Pemaquid, and a crude, wooden fort was built. King Philip’s War, starting in 1675, wrought destruction among most of the Maine settlements. One casualty was Fort William Henry, as the Pemaquid fortification was named. This loss of the fort in 1696 put an end for many years to English influence in the whole region. Every settlement east of the Kennebec was abandoned. In 1720, there was not a house between Georgetown and Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n
In 1700, the Lords of Trade in England had issued a report on the conditions of forts in “His Majesty’s Plantations” of Pemaquid the report said: “About five leagues west of St. Georges lies Pemaquid, a spacious river of great consequence as covering three other rivers – Damariscotta, Sheepscot and Kennebec. It therefore deserves to be well guarded. Here formerly stood a fort, which was approached by two Men of War with 100 French guns and was captured and demolished in August 1696. A good fort ought to be built at the same place, a battery raised on the next point of land, and a redoubt or round tower set up on Johns Island.”<\/p>\n
In 1702, the Mass. governor urged acceptance of the report and rebuilding the fortification, but the legislature turned him down. Four years later, Gov. Shute suffered the same frustration. In 1710, British fortunes in North America got a boost by the capture from the French of Port Royal in Nova Scotia. Three years later, England secured control of all Acadia through the Treaty of Utrecht.<\/p>\n
In 1719, the fort on the St. Georges River, below the present town of Thomaston, was rebuilt on the site where General Henry Knox later built his mansion, Montpelier. But the Indian troubles were not over until the British attack on the Indian Village at Norridgewock and the Battle of Lovewell’s Pond in Fryeburg dispersed the tribes of Central and Western Maine to Canada. In 1725, the chiefs of the eastern tribes went to Boston to sue for peace, asking in return the abandonment of the Forts Richmond and St. Georges. The Mass. government refused.<\/p>\n
An uneasy treaty was signed at Falmouth in 1726. Three years later in 1729, David Dunbar arrived at Pemaquid with a commission appointing him Royal Governor of Sagadahoc, and authorizing him to rebuild the fort at Pemaquid. Finding the stone walls of the old fort in tolerable condition, he repaired them, added new features, and named the place Fort Frederick, for the son of George II, heir to the British throne.<\/p>\n
The fort had scarcely been reopened when there arrived a garrison to take it over, sent by the Governor of Nova Scotia as result of a royal commission authorizing him to take possession of all land between the Kennebec and the St. Croix and to set aside 300,000 acres of good mast timber for the British Navy. That event, 45 years before the engagement at Lexington and Concord, was one of many seeds that grew into the American Revolution. That situation left the settlers at Pemaquid without title to their lands. It was gross injustice, but there was no remedy. Mass., for the time at least, had to bow to superior authority in London.<\/p>\n
Waterville had an interest in Fort Frederick. To Pemaquid in 1731 had come John North, a native of Ireland, who twelve years earlier had settled at Falmouth, now the City of Portland. His son, John became commander of Fort Frederick and shortly after the Revolution he took on his staff a young man named John McKechnie, a fellow Ulsterman from Northern Ireland. McKechnie learned surveying from Capt. North and married North’s daughter. After conducting Kennebec surveys for the Plymouth Company, McKechnie became a resident of the new town of Winslow, first living near Fort Halifax, then taking residence on the west side of the river and building Waterville’s first mill, situated on the Messalonskee near the present Western Avenue bridge.<\/p>\n
The great curse of Indian-White relations was liquor. It is a mistake to assume that all Indians were eager to get it and all whites to sell it. In fact, some of the chiefs made vigorous protests to the Mass. government. When Maine’s own treasure hunter, William Phips was governor, a Penobscot chief sent him the following complaint: “We don’t like a great deal of rum. It hinders our hunts and hurts our souls. One bottle is enough for any man. The women must have none. We ask the governor and council not to allow selling to the women. They buy it and then sell it to the men, who are debauched by it. I believe you will think I speak well. Rum is the cause of all quarrels between us.”<\/p>\n
There is an interesting reference to Pemaquid in W. I. Spencer’s “Pioneer of Maine Rivers” published in 1930. It says, “Greater antiquity has been accorded Pemaquid than any other English plantation in Maine, chiefly because of the statement of Capt. John Smith in 1614, who wrote that he found a ship belonging to Sir Francis Popham near the mainland opposite Monhegan, that had used the same port for many years.” This does not even suggest a colony. Although that haven for the Popham ship was indeed the river harbor at Pemaquid, the vessels had only dried their fish and traded there. No attempt was made for a settlement. But in 1622, two years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Monhegan and the nearby mainland were granted by the Council of Plymouth to the Earl of Arundel, but there seems to have been no permanent settlement before 1630. In fact, the Patent of Pemaquid, dated February 29, 1631, clearly shows that the Plymouth Council in England when they made the grant, did not know that the mainland had already been occupied by a few adventurous traders.<\/p>\n
Monhegan and Pemaquid were regarded as parts of the same plantation. Settlers soon came and were so successful that one of the promoters, Samuel Maverick, declared that, if it had not been for help received from Monhegan and Pemaquid, the colony at Plymouth would have failed.<\/p>\n
The great 17th century leader at Pemaquid was Abraham Shurte. He had come there as a servant of one of the patentees, Robert Aldsworthwhose will probated in 1634, said: “I give to Abraham Shurte, my servant, the sum of 200 pounds.” That gave Shurte the financial backing that enabled him to take over the colony.<\/p>\n
It was he who made several treaties with the Indians, including one at Ticonic Falls in Waterville.<\/p>\n
Just before the outbreak of King Philip’s War in 1675, Shurte wrote: “There have been for a long time eight considerable dwellings about Pemaquid, which is well supplied with pasture land for feeding cattle, and some fields also for tillage.”<\/p>\n
Another tenant of Aldsworths was John Brmm,whose purchase of land from the Indians is commemorated by a marker, at New Harbor.<\/p>\n
When London ordered a check of settlements in Maine in 1678, the only plantation recorded east of the Kennebec were Sagadahoc, Sheepscot, and Pemaquid. A later report in 1682 said that Pemaquid had twenty houses.<\/p>\n
The ruins at Pemaquid which Mrs. Camp has uncovered in her “diggings” during the past six years date mostly from the early 18th century after Fort Frederick was built. The museum which Mrs. Camp operates on the spot, not far from the present fort restoration, is filled with objects taken from sites occupied by store, jail, and residences of 250 years ago. One of her finds was that of the grave of an Indian woman and child, the objects with them showing they were of a family of some importance, perhaps of a chief. Surely the grave must have been even older than the later white man’s buildings.<\/p>\n
Earlier references in this and other broadcasts to St. Georges calls for an explanation of this area.<\/p>\n
When the explorer, Weymouth came to Monhegan Island in 1605, just preceding the establishment of the short-lived Popham colony at the mouth of the Kennebec, he sailed toward the mainland, having in view directly ahead the Camden hills. He came to the mouth of a stream so deep that he sent a pinnace up as far as the present site of Thomaston. An English map of 1616 named the river ~ahamook, obviously an Indian designation. The more accurate Briggs map of 1675 shows it as the first river west of the Penobscot and labels it St. Georges. The region was first settled by people from Salem, about 1630, who obtained a royal patent for trading to the westward. In 1634, a ship came to St. Georges to cut masts to carry to England.<\/p>\n
Bordering the east side of the Pemaquid peninsula is a large body of water known as Muscongus Bay. At it are the villages of Bremen and Round Pond, and at its head is Waldoboro. Near its merger with the ocean is New Harbor. The first farm on the bay above New Harbor was cleared in 1641. In 1669, Thomas Eldridge, son of one of the original Pemaquid grantees, leased 400 acres on the bay to John Dillon for 99 years, payment being three gallons of spirits.<\/p>\n
It is amazing how often the old records refer to rum and spirits, not only as the curse of the Indians, but as legal tender for business transactions.<\/p>\n
Year: 1975<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1065, Broadcast on November 16, 1975<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42942,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}