Originally, the area was known to the Native Americans as Massabesic and was acquired from Chief Fluellin in 1661 by Major William Phipps. Later a Shaker community settled on a hill overlooking what is now called Shaker Pond. Alfred is the county seat of York County and was the site of a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the 1930’s.
It was the nation’s only war declared by a state and the nation’s only bloodless war. Its roots were planted in the Treaty of Paris of 1783 ending the Revolutionary War. With inaccurate maps and uncertainty about with local river was the French named St. Croix River, the treaty language left the British termed “Disputed…
Dr. Sylvester Gardiner was born in South Kingston, Rhode Island in 1707. He studied eight years in England and France. Returning to Boston he pursued a successful professional career. He established a store for the importation of drugs and acquired a fortune. Gardiner accumulated much real estate in Maine and became proprietor of one-twelfth part…
Historically a collection of small villages, some on islands, the closest to a town center is the town office and the recycling center on the Mountain Road. See photos. Its population doubles in summer as seasonal residents return. Several easy hiking trails and nature preserves are at hand. A historic park is at Harpswell Center.
On May 9, 1775, Captain James Moore sailed the British warship, the Margaretta, into Machias harbor with news of the battles of Lexington and Concord. The vessel had traveled to Maine to insure that a load of lumber was delivered for the British army’s barracks in Boston. In response the people of Machias erected a…
“The Penobscot Expedition during the American Revolution was the worst naval disaster in American history until Pearl Harbor. That a huge force of men, ships and guns failed to take a small British fort in Maine has been largely forgotten.” New England Historical Society. After months of alarm and gathering of resources, on July 19,…
I Caleb Gordon, aged Sixty three years, a citizen of the United States, born in Brentwood in the State of New Hampshire on oath testify & declare (being now resident in Augusta in the District of Maine) that in April 1775 I enlisted as a private soldier for the Continental Service into what was called…
I, James Boaz of Portland in the County of Cumberland, on oath declare and say that I was born in Plymouth in Massachusetts which was my place of residence when I enlisted at Cambridge in the year 1780 or thereabouts and joined Capt Abraham Watson’s Company which belonged to Col Graton’s Regiment and Gen1 Glover’s…
I Jonathan Knox of Berwick in the County of York, and State of Maine, aged Eighty years, do upon Oath declare, in order to obtain the benefit of a Resolve of the Legislature of Maine passed March 17 1835, entitled a “Resolve in favor of certain Officers and Soldiers of the Revolutionary War, and the…
Dubros Times Selected Depositions of Maine Revolutionary War Veterans This is the Introduction to the publication named above and edited by Sylvia J. Sherman of the Maine State Archives. It provides a context for the depositions selected here. More are available in the publication itself, and still more in the holdings of the Maine State…