Pemaquid Peninsula: A Midcoast Maine History

By Josh Hanna

Offshore fishermen and skillful shipbuilders transformed the quiet shores of the Pemaquid Peninsula beginning in 1815. The maritime economy drove local commerce until enterprising locals turned to ice harvesting, granite quarrying, brick making, lobster canning and pogy oil processing before summer tourism grew and thrived. The descendants of revolutionaries became the faces of a more prosperous generation--men like Albert Thorpe, who ran a popular summer hotel on the grounds where his grandfather had salted and dried his catch decades earlier. Today, summer rusticators discover the enduring natural beauty at the heart of the Pemaquid Peninsula. Journey to the past with Pemaquid native and historian Josh Hanna as he discovers these timeless shores.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jul 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781625855817

Josh Hanna

Josh Hanna is a Pemaquid native who was born in Damariscotta, lived in Round Pond, went to school in Pemaquid Falls, played baseball in New Harbor and always had a sense of the rich history surrounding him as a boy. His family was the last to live in the keeper's house at Pemaquid Point Lighthouse before the building became today's Fishermen's Museum. He graduated magna cum laude with high honors in history from Dartmouth College and received his MBA at Harvard Business School before serving as a longtime executive at Ancestry.com. He has a real passion for all things local and family history. He lives in Mill Valley, California, with his wife and two daughters.

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PREFACE

I grew up in the relative quiet of midcoast Maine’s Pemaquid Peninsula. It was, and remains, a place of beauty that photographers and artists—my father among them—are drawn to. But it is also a place where lobstermen in the towns of Bristol, South Bristol and Bremen continue a centuries-old practice of earning a living from the sea. Although the rush of welcomed and dreaded summer visitors to Chamberlain, Pemaquid Point and Christmas Cove by land and by sea temporarily quickens the pace of life each year, Pemaquid has managed to escape the commercialism that clutters much of coastal Maine’s Vacationland. The peninsula’s historic seventeenth-century cemeteries, eighteenth-century meetinghouses, nineteenth-century inns and other scattered remnants of a bygone era, combined with its sheltered harbors, thick forests and tranquil seaside villages, make Pemaquid quintessential Maine.

But Pemaquid has not always been a quiet place. As a young boy growing up in Round Pond, I remember hearing stories about the old days in my village. One memorable summer afternoon, my parents took me to the site of Pemaquid’s early seventeenth-century settlement, where I first discovered the lure of history and pretended to do battle against my brother on the grounds of the restored Fort William Henry. As I grew older and more inquisitive about the region’s rich history, I learned that colonial Pemaquid had been a remarkable settlement, but details about the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were less clear. Town elders often romanticized how local villages had once been bustling centers of industry and commerce, but when pressed for details, few people could offer much beyond anecdote and legend. It was my boyhood curiosity that first provided the inspiration for this book.

Eight years after moving away, I returned to Pemaquid in the summer of 1993 as a Dartmouth College senior to begin research on what would become my honors thesis. I quickly realized that others had extensively researched and written about the early European settlements and colonial Pemaquid, but the story of nineteenth-century growth, prosperity, decline and renewal, when told, has been piecemeal at best. I aim to tell that story.

The more I have researched, the more I have realized that the stories I had been told as a boy were merely the tip of an iceberg. I soon discovered that after the War of 1812, the Pemaquid Peninsula entered a period of sustained growth that brought the region to its peak in population, industry and commerce just before the Civil War. But fortunes quickly changed, as the faltering fishing and shipbuilding industries and factors beyond local control brought about a sharp decline in commercial activity and a sustained drop in population. Like other midcoast Maine towns whose destiny was tied to the maritime economy, Pemaquid lived and died by the sea. For a brief period, locals turned to pogy oil processing, granite quarrying, brick making, lobster canning and ice harvesting as a means of survival, but by 1915, local industry had dried up, making the peninsula a summer playground for wealthy urbanites. While war and hardship characterized life in 1815, lawn tennis and club socials of folks from away were common in 1915. Given this glaring dichotomy in the span of one hundred years—and all that came between it—the century between 1815 and 1915 makes for an interesting history.

More than twenty years passed between completing my thesis and making the decision to revisit my original work. Through the encouragement of my wife, family members and trusted advisors, a year ago I began delving into new research, reviewing old sources and making much-needed additions and corrections. The final inspiration to publish this book came when I learned that Bristol would be celebrating its 250th anniversary this summer and South Bristol its own 100th anniversary. I only hope that I have made this the history that Pemaquid and its people so deserve.

PROLOGUE

Few places along the coast of Maine can boast as rich a history as the Pemaquid Peninsula. From the ancient shell middens created over thousands of years by Native Americans to the seventeenth-century archaeological site at colonial Pemaquid, the peninsula offers timeless reminders of a place etched firmly in American history.

English and French explorers visited the waters around Pemaquid as early as the sixteenth century, and fishing stations were set up along the coast by the 1620s. In 1625, John Brown purportedly purchased most of the peninsula from the Native American sagamore named Samoset for fifty beaver skins, thus completing what may have been the earliest American land transaction between natives and Europeans.

Pemaquid was very much a frontier settlement in the seventeenth century, separating the English and French dominions. Named Jamestown after the Duke of York and future King James II of England, the settlement included as many as thirty houses by 1665. But a series of devastating wars, including King Philip’s War in the 1670s, led to abandonment by 1689.

A generation later, the peninsula was resettled beginning in 1729 as Colonel David Dunbar (sent to Pemaquid as surveyor general of the king’s woods in America to mark and protect 300,000 acres of the king’s finest oak and white pine to be used in building ships for the British Royal Navy) brought Scots-Irish settlers to Harrington, Walpole and Pemaquid, where Fort Frederick was constructed. Separately, German settlers immigrated to Bremen under the Samuel Waldo Patent. Neither group found welcoming soils in which to farm, so many turned to fishing, shipbuilding and the timber trade.

With the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, peace came to the coast of Maine, if only for a brief period. Incorporated on June 21, 1765, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Bristol took its name from Bristol, England, then the second most popular port of departure for voyages to the New England coast. Encompassing the entire Pemaquid Peninsula, Bristol covered most of the southern part of Lincoln County, named for former Massachusetts governor Thomas Pownall’s hometown of Lincoln, England.

With Bristol’s formation, the peninsula was divided into three parishes in recognition of the more than sixty square miles that it covered: Broad Cove to the north and east, Walpole on the west and Harrington to the south (both Walpole and Harrington were named for English lords by David Dunbar around 1730). After several years of disputes over funding and the proposed locations of each meetinghouse, frames of three churches were erected in 1772: on Greenland Cove in today’s Bremen, Walpole along the Damariscotta River (on land given by Henry Hunter) and at Bristol Mills. After the annual town meeting on March 9, 1773, however, the frame in Bristol Mills was dismantled and relocated to its present site at Harrington on the eastern bank of the John’s River, where it was completed in 1775. With these three buildings established in the far corners of the peninsula, Pemaquid soon had three distinct centers of religious and social activity. Men and women congregated in the meetinghouses to worship but also to discuss town business before the establishment of the town hall at Bristol Mills in 1800. Although the meetinghouses primarily functioned as churches where baptisms, marriages and funerals were held, their role as social venues cannot be underestimated.

Part I

THE PEMAQUID PENINSULA IN 1815

The Pemaquid Peninsula in 2015 is the same yet extraordinarily different than it was in 1815. Despite man and nature, the region’s topography, geology and climate have scarcely changed over the last two centuries. But where harbors, rivers and the rocky coast may seem timeless, natural resources such as forests and marine life have changed profoundly. In 1815, small communities and local industry were just emerging. While the family, church and town units fostered social interaction, communities truly evolved in villages throughout the peninsula. Farming, fishing, lumbering and shipbuilding were the main industries in Pemaquid, but in the decade leading up to 1815, the embargo and the War of 1812 robbed the peninsula of much of its prosperity. Although the war disrupted the local economy, it also stimulated community development. With the war over, 1815 would become a clear dividing line between a dark and often difficult past and a bright and prosperous future.

Chapter 1

THE PENINSULA

The Pemaquid Peninsula of Maine’s midcoast region is one of several jagged promontories that extend like fingers into the Gulf of Maine between the seaports of Bath and Rockland. Like the rest of coastal Maine, Pemaquid’s shape emerged after rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age created bays from river valleys and turned many hilltops into islands. Given its name, meaning long point, by the native Eastern Abenaki tribe Europeans knew as the Wawenocks (people of the bays), the peninsula extends fifteen miles south from Broad Cove on the east and Damariscotta Mills on the west to its extremity at Pemaquid Point.¹ Eight miles at its widest, the peninsula is bounded by the towns of Damariscotta (incorporated in 1848, partly from land set off from Bristol), Nobleboro (1788) and Waldoboro (1773) to the north; the Medomak River (including the Hockomock Channel), Muscongus (fishing place) Sound and Bay to the east; and the Damariscotta River to the west. This tidal river, place of abundant alewives, runs nineteen miles south from the fifty-two-foot falls at Damariscotta Mills that separate the saltwater river at Great Salt Bay from the freshwater Damariscotta Lake. Along the western bank of this river are the towns of Newcastle (1753), Edgecomb (1774) and Boothbay (1764). Taken alone or as part of the succession of long peninsulas in midcoast Maine, Pemaquid has been described in many ways, but the most apt description may be that of a lobster claw with its large hand (Bristol) and smaller moveable finger (South Bristol).

Thrust into the Gulf of Maine, Pemaquid is blessed with several wellsheltered coves and harbors in which many fishing fleets have found refuge from the pounding surf and relentless winds of the open ocean. Running south along the rocky eastern shore, the most significant are Broad Cove, Greenland Cove, Muscongus Harbor, Round Pond, Long Cove, New Harbor and the adjacent Back Cove. Of these, Muscongus, Round Pond and New Harbor are the best protected and, therefore, the most frequented by maritime traffic. Round Pond, so named for its round shape, is particularly well protected from ocean winds and waves by projecting points of land to the north and south and Louds Island (formerly Muscongus Island), less than a mile to the east, which forms a natural barrier between the mouth of the harbor and Muscongus Bay. Three miles south of New Harbor is the extremity of the peninsula and perhaps its most well-known feature—Pemaquid Point. There, nature offers spectacular views of the Atlantic and Monhegan Island, and during stormy weather, ocean waves punish the rocky point.

Map of the Pemaquid Peninsula. Courtesy of Rhumb Line Maps.

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse and keeper’s house, circa 1903. Courtesy of Craig Elliott.

On the western shore, nearly three miles north of Pemaquid Point is the small, sandy Pemaquid Beach and Pemaquid Harbor. This harbor has been home to fishing fleets throughout its storied history dating back to the early seventeenth century. Opposite Pemaquid Harbor on the western side of John’s Bay lies McFarland’s Cove and, just to the north, Poorhouse Cove, named after the town’s indigent who once lived in a house here. West of John’s Bay, between Pemaquid Point and Linekin (Linakin’s in the nineteenth century) Neck of Boothbay, lies Rutherford Island, named for Reverend Robert Rutherford, who arrived there as chaplain to British colonel David Dunbar in 1729 (surveyor of his majesty’s woods in America). Separating the island from the mainland is another sheltered inlet, known as The Gut. Farther to the south is Christmas Cove, a name often and erroneously attributed to famed English explorer Captain John Smith’s apocryphal Christmas Day visit in 1614 (he was in England at the time). Marking the western boundary of the peninsula is the Damariscotta River with its many sheltered coves, including Jones, Seal, Long, Clark and Huston, running south to north. These inlets, coves and harbors are not only the most prominent features of the peninsula, but they also have been the greatest natural assets for commercial, industrial and communal development throughout Pemaquid’s rich history.

Aside from its coastal features, the peninsula’s geography is also shaped by several streams and ponds. Dissecting the peninsula into nearly equal halves, the slow-moving and meandering Pemaquid River originates at the 1,500-acre Pemaquid Pond² (known as Pemaquid Great Pond in 1815) in Nobleboro. It then flows nineteen miles south through the considerably smaller Biscay Pond (known as Pemaquid Pond in 1815), over several small waterfalls at Bristol Mills, through Boyd Pond and over Pemaquid Falls, where it becomes a tidal saltwater river before emptying into John’s Bay (a name probably derived from St. John’s Towne listed on Captain Smith’s 1614 map along with the saltwater John’s River—Eastern and North Branch—and John’s Island). The other ponds of note are McCurdy Pond, Muddy Pond and Little Pond. Webber Pond (Muscongus Pond in 1815) feeds the short Muscongus stream, which empties into the harbor on the eastern shore. This stream and the Pemaquid River were the primary rivers that carried enough water volume in the nineteenth century to power mills during the wet season.

In addition to its topography, the peninsula’s climate and geology are naturally much the same today as they were in 1815. Winters come early (November) and stay late (April), while the summer growing season is often short and unreliable. Powerful winter nor’easters often bring large snowfalls and blizzard conditions, but the Gulf of Maine waters and winds that cool the region in the summer months often warm the peninsula a few degrees above freezing in winter so that ice, sleet and rain storms occur regularly as well. Rain, wind and waves batter the coastline throughout the fall and winter, especially along the more exposed areas at Pemaquid Point and Rutherford Island. Extended cold spells often freeze the protected harbor waters of Round Pond and Pemaquid, causing disruptions, especially in a time when the sea was the most reliable mode of transportation. Spring rains coupled with melting snow typically make for a muddy spring season. The cool ocean breezes of the short summer season come as a welcome relief to the humidity of June and July. But even in the pleasant days of summer, the weather can cause hardship. Nearly every morning and sometimes for days on end, dense fog rolls in off the Atlantic, limiting visibility to a few hundred feet or less. Dependent on the sea for their livelihood and for transportation, Pemaquid residents often suffered at the hands of Mother Nature. Unlike today, when inclement weather causes temporary delays and postponements, in 1815, Atlantic storms often brought tragedy to the peninsula, while summer fog- and ice-choked harbors prevented much-needed supplies from reaching the peninsula.

Like the rest of midcoast Maine, Pemaquid is relatively hilly for a coastal region. Entirely exposed along the eastern shore and partially covered by soil on the western shore, there is no mistaking the peninsula’s rocky surface, which retreating glaciers left behind. Mostly composed of gneiss and mica-slate with granite veins, the rocky landscape is often exposed, but in places it is buried beneath a light and sandy soil. Cultivated fields, though more numerous in 1815, were limited in their crop production given the protrusion of the underlying rock and the mostly poor farming soil. Aside from the topsoil, clay deposits suitable for brick making can be found along the coast, particularly along the Damariscotta River’s banks.

Unlike the clay deposits, other natural resources such as trees, wildlife and marine life are today mere shadows of what they were in 1815. These resources, once treated as inexhaustible, were depleted throughout the nineteenth century. Dense forests of oak, spruce, pine and fir trees covered the peninsula in 1815, but the growth of the lumber and shipbuilding industries soon led to extensive deforestation, especially near the shores. Although the peninsula has been largely reforested since the nineteenth century, the newgrowth trees that exist today are dwarfs compared to those that towered over the peninsula in 1815. Likewise, deer, beavers and freshwater fish were much more plentiful two hundred years ago than they are today. Alewives and shad can still be found in the Damariscotta and Pemaquid Rivers but not in the same numbers that were taken in 1815. Most dramatic, however, has been the depletion of the fisheries in the waters surrounding the peninsula. In 1815, there was no scarcity of mackerel, cod or any other fish, as there is today. Exploitation of these natural resources would elevate Pemaquid to its industrial peak in the middle of the nineteenth century, but once these precious resources were depleted, the region faced an uncertain future.

Chapter 2

COMMUNITIES

FAMILIES

In the twenty-five years since the first U.S. census recorded a population of 1,625 in 1790, Pemaquid’s population had grown to 2,700 people in more than four hundred households with 160 different surnames by 1815. Despite this growth, Pemaquid remained ethnically homogeneous, with most families consisting of second-, third- and fourth-generation descendants of settlers who came to Pemaquid from England, Scotland, Ireland and Germany via larger ports such as Boston and Portland. Among a population of more than 2,800 in 1820, only 2 people in Pemaquid were born outside the United States and not yet naturalized citizens. The Native Americans who had fished local waters every summer for centuries before the first Europeans arrived in the early seventeenth century had been forced out of the area by this time. African slaves had not been a major part of Pemaquid’s history, though 20 free persons of color lived there in 1815, including the Cuff Miller, Dick Given (whose ancestors were once enslaved to wealthy Pemaquid Falls farmer and mill owners Robert and Jane Given) and Richard McClary families. But these families were exceptions. Most hailed from the British Isles. For example, Henry Hunter came to Boston from Ballygruba, Ireland, and ultimately settled along the Damariscotta River in about 1764, beginning a continuous line of Bristol Hunters, including sons Henry and William, who lived there in 1815. Dying at the age of ninety-seven in 1876, William Hunter arguably witnessed as much change in Bristol as anyone before or since. Similarly, Alexander Arskins (known as Erskine by the mid-nineteenth century) came to Bristol from Ulster via Boston in about 1750, when he purchased one thousand acres along both sides of the Pemaquid River near the mouth of Biscay Pond. Here, in what became Bristol Mills, he and his descendants became prominent members of the village as leading merchants and town selectmen. The only deviation from this Scottish, Scots-Irish, Irish and English ancestry was the group of German settlers who inhabited the northeastern corner of the peninsula where the splinter town of Bremen was formed