[HAN-kok] is a town in Hancock County, incorporated on February 21, 1828 from portions of Sullivan, Trenton, and Plantation Number 8.

It set off land to Franklin, Gouldsboro and Lamoine in 1852, 1870, and 1929 respectively.

Settled in 1764, it was named for John Hancock, the bold first signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Served by U.S. Route 1 (where the “Welcome” sign appears) and Maine Route 182, half the town lies inland and north of the junction of the two highways.

Hancock Village (see sign above) lies south of the junction on a peninsular, with Taunton Bay on its northeast and Skillings River on the southwest. Further south are the villages of South Hancock and Hancock Point.

The Point, surrounded by Sullivan Harbor and the Skillings River, has outstanding views of Mount Desert Island across Frenchman Bay. Here is an amateur film of the community at Hancock Point circa 1929,  from Northeast Historic Films archives.

The small village of Egypt lies in the northeast of the town facing Egypt Bay. Frontage on the Bay includes a Wildlife Management Area, overseen by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

It is open to the public for primitive forms of recreation including hunting and trapping. While not large enough to accommodate a large number of users at the same time, there are hunting opportunities with comparatively low use levels.

According to George Varney in 1886,

There is one mill manufacturing staves, shingles and long lumber, and one producing staves and short lumber. Other manufactures are boots and shoes and wagons and sleighs. The inhabitants, especially those of the Neck, are largely engaged in Grand Bank fishing and with profit, not withstanding some heavy losses.

During the same period, the town supported six public schoolhouses with an 1880 population of 1,093.

More recently, Hancock has been home to Sanford Pippen, a Maine author, poet, high school teacher, and alumnus of the University of Maine.

Form of Government: Town Meeting-Select Board-Administrative Assistant.

Additional resources

A Century of Summers [moving image recording]: Hancock, Maine 1886-1986. Bucksport Me. Northeast Historic Film. c1987.

Crabtree, Alfred B. Hancock [Maine] 1828-1928. Augusta, Me. Kennebec Journal. 1928.

Foss, Thomas. A Brief Account of the Early Settlements Along the Shores of Skilling’s River: including West Sullivan, West Gouldsborough, Trenton Point and North Hancock: also reminiscences and anecdotes of old times and old folks. Hancock, Me.? 1870. (N.K. Sawyer, Printer)

*Maine. Historic Preservation Commission. Augusta, Me.   Text and photos from National Register of Historic Places: http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/nrhp/text/xxxxxxxx.PDF and http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/nrhp/photos/xxxxxxxx.PDF

“Region C. Wildlife Management Areas.” http://www.maine.gov/ifw/hunting_trapping/regional_information/regionc.htm

Sesquicentennial Committee of the Town of Hancock, Maine. A History of the Town of Hancock, 1828-1978. Hancock, Me. The Town. c1978.

Varney, George J. A Gazetteer of the State of Maine. 1886. p. 267.

National Register of Historic Places – Listings

Hancock Point School

[644 Point Road] The Hancock Point School is a one-story, one-room schoolhouse located in South Hancock. Set in a rural area along one of the main town roads, the wood frame building occupies a half acre set within a larger house lot. The school was erected in 1870 to serve the students of District #2, one of eight districts in the town of Hancock during the 19th century. Although most of the other neighborhood district schools closed in the early 20th century, this school continued educating local children until the eve of World War II, and now it is the only existing one-room school in the town.

Nazi Spy Landing Site

 

[West shore of Crabtree Neck at Sunset Ledge Cove] The Nazi spy landing site on the west side of Crabtree Neck is where a German U-boat deposited two spies on a mission to relay technical information on American military activities back to Germany. The small, sandy beach on which the two men landed is one of only two locations on which German spies gained entry into the United States during World War II. On the 28th of November, 1944, the German submarine, U-1230, entered the mouth of Frenchman’s Bay, the location of a Naval Station at Winter Harbor. The following evening the submarine moved along the western side of Crabtree Neck, the southernmost projection of Hancock Point, and came to rest about 500 feet to the west of a small beach next to Sunset Ledge, on the western side of the Point.

From here four German sailors entered a rubber raft and rowed ashore. The two spies disembarked on the beach, and after hopping ashore briefly, the remaining sailors returned to the U-boat. Lieutenant Hilbig had been instructed to land the men on a beach near Frenchman Bay because of the bay’s deep water, its desolation, and its access to main road and rail routes. The two spies proceeded across the small beach and immediately picked up an overgrown dirt road that led directly to Center Point Road, the main track down the center of the peninsula. Here they turned north, walked five miles to the junction with Route 1, and miraculously, flagged down a taxicab that was headed to Bangor from a trip down east. From here they took a train to Boston, and later New York City, where they proceeded to make preparations to convey information back to Germany.

The spies were a 26 year old American William Colepaugh, who had volunteered with the German military, and a 34 year old German, Erich Gimpel, whose specialty was radio communication. By the Second World War, Hancock Point had become a fairly exclusive summer community. Seasonal cottages were built all along the point and the number of year round residents were few. As expected, they met no one as they trekked through the woods. Ironically, however, this isolation worked against Gimpel and Colepaugh. It was snowing the night of their landing, and after turning onto Center Point Road sometime after 11:00 p.m. they were passed by two local cars. The occupants of both of the cars noticed the two men walking through the snow, hatless, and carrying suitcases and brief cases. Harvard Hodgkins, a high school student and son of the Deputy Sheriff, noted that the men were dressed in city clothes. The next morning, Hodgkin’s traced the tracks to the water, then alerted his father. The FBI in Bangor were notified and descended on Hancock Point. Due to the capture of one of the spies on the U-Boat that was sunk nearby, United States Military Intelligence was not surprised to learn that another set of spies had landed on American soil. The mission that Gimpel and Colepaugh had been sent to undertake was formed at the highest level of the German SS. Technical data was needed on shipbuilding, airplanes, rockets, and any other information that would be of value to Germany. The spies were to exploit the openness of American society, picking up what they needed from newspapers, technical magazines, radio, and books.

Some of this material was already reaching Germany, but only after intolerable delays.The mission was to last for two years, after which the pair would be withdrawn. Gimpel and Colepaugh, operating under the aliases Edward Green and William Caldwell respectively, were expected to send radio transmission directly to Berlin to report on American news, or to photograph information and send it via microdots. Over the next month, the two spies set about securing an apartment in New York, procuring pieces for their radio, and trying to acclimate themselves to the city. However, on December 21, 1944, the young American traitor was having second thoughts, and deserted his companion, eventually turning himself into the F.B.I, on December 26th, 1944. Four days later, Gimpel was located and arrested. The pair had been in the country for only one month, and the amount of information they relayed back to Germany can only be guessed at. Short lived as it was, had the spies remained undetected the mission had the potential to alter the details of the remaining five months of War against Germany. At the very least, this event can be seen as one of Germany’s last ditch efforts to effect change, using one the few remaining tools it had left. [Christi A. Mitchell photos]