cumstances connected with his life, such as his being governor of Plymouth as early as 1600, I should suppose that he was born prior to 1573. He served under the Earl of Essex in the Spanish expedition when Cadiz was taken in 1596, as sergeant-major, corresponding to colonel. He was afterward appointed gov ernor of Plymouth by Queen Elizabeth. He was removed from this office and committed to prison for complicity in the conspiracy of the Earl of Essex in 1601. But James 1, in 1604, restored him to the office. It is probable that this position, Plymouth being the port of early voyagers, introduced him to persons who were engaged in voyages of discovery to the American coast; and his interest was greatly excited and increased by the return of Weymouth in 1605, with five natives from the Pemaquid country. The glowing descriptions given by the voyagers, who had visited in June the most beautiful part of our coast, and of the savages, gave particular force and direction to the adventurous spirit of this enterprising man, and he engaged with energy, and pursued with perseverance, for forty years, the work of discovery and colonization of the eastern shores of New England. In July, 1637 he was appointed governor-general of New England, but he did not enter upon its practical duties; in 1639, he obtained his ample charter of the "province of Maine;" but the call for his services to aid the king in the great rebellion, diverted his thoughts and his exertions from his new province, to the strife of arms, in the midst of which, after doing valiant deeds for his sovereign, he perished in 1647, at about the age of seventy-five. He had at least two sons. Robert, the eldest, married a daughter of the Earl of Lincoln; received a grant of a portion of Massachusetts in 1622, with the appointment of governor of New England, to which he came and spent about two years. He returned in 1624 and soon after died. The other son was John, who succeeded to the Massachusetts grant, which he sold to Sir William Brereton in 1629.

Gorges had also three nephews, Thomas, William, and Henry, to whom he gave appointments and made grants in his American province. His grandson Ferdinando, inherited this province, which he was only too glad to sell in 1677, at twelve hundred and fifty pounds sterling, in consequence of the constant contention which the authorities of Massachusetts kept up for its title and jurisdiction.

Mr Folsom, in his discourse on Gorges,second Maine Historical Collections, says "The Family of Gorges had an ancient seat at Wraxhall, in Somersetshire, six and a half miles from Bristol. (They resided at Wraxhall as early as 1260.) In the church at that place is a large altar tomb with figures of Sir Edward Gorges, K. B., and Annie, his wife, a daughter of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk. In the same neighborhood, in the parish of Long Ashton, was the manor of Ashton Phillips belonging to Sir Ferdinando. The village of Long Ashton lies on the south-east slope of an eminence, called Ashton Hill, about five miles from Bristol.

In Camden's Britannia, it is stated that from the time of Ralph de Gorges, 1260,

to about 1700, the family had been continued in Wraxhall, "and is lately reduced to an issue-female." The name still exists in Somersetshire, probably by the marriage, in 1350, of one of the Russells of Gloucestershire "with an heiress of the honorable family of Gorges," who assumed the name of Gorges. This Russell was of the family afterward raised to the peerage, and is now a prominent constituent of the aristocracy of England.]-ED.

CHAPTER III.

1640 to 1660.

BOUNDARIES AND NAME OF THE TOWN-INHABITANTS IN 1658, AND PLACES OF RESIDENCE-EARLY CONVEYANCES FIRST MILLS-SETTLERS AT BACK COVE-JORDAN'S CLAIM AND QUARREL WITH CLEEVES.

The limits of Falmouth were described in general terms in the compact with Massachusetts of 1658; they were afterward to be particularly marked out by the inhabitants themselves, or, in case of their neglect, the next county court was to appoint commissioners for that purpose. This duty not having been performed, the general court at their session in May, 1659, appointed "Capt. Nicholas Shapleigh, Mr. Abraham Preble, Mr. Edward Rishworth, and Lt. John Saunders, to run the dividing lines," not only of Falmouth, but of Saco and Scarborough. This committee attended to the service and reported "that the dividing line between Scarborough and Falmouth, shall be the first dividing branches of Spurwink river, from thence to run up into the country upon a due north-west line, until eight miles be extended; and that the easterly bounds of Falmouth shall extend to the Clapboard islands, and from thence shall run upon a west line into the country, till eight miles be expired." These boundaries are the same as at the present time, with the exception of the eastern line, which now runs north-west from the white rock, opposite Clapboard island, referred to in the survey of the eastern line of the province by

1 Return of the Committee.

Massachusetts. A west line corresponded precisely with the exterior line of the province, as then claimed by that government. The two side lines of the tract, are now parallel, both running north forty-five degrees west, a distance of over eight miles from the sea; the rear line is a few rods over ten miles long. The name which was given to this town, was borrowed from that of an ancient town in England, standing at the mouth of the river Fal, in Cornwall, and hence called Falmouth. This river, after passing through a part of Cornwall, discharges itself into the British channel, forming at its mouth a spacious harbor. Several of our early settlers came from that neighborhood, and adopted the name in compliance with a natural and prevailing custom in the first age of our history of applying the names which were familiar to them in the mother country to places which they occupied in this. Previous to this time, the plantation upon the Neck, and indeed all others in the bay, were called by the general name of Casco, or Casco bay, no boundaries were defined; but when a particular spot was intended to be designated, the local terms borrowed principally from the Indians were used, as Machegonne, Purpooduck, Capisic, Westcustogo, Spurwink, etc. These names continued to prevail many years, and some of them remain in familiar use at the present day.

Besides the thirteen persons who subscribed the submission to Massachusetts, the following were inhabitants of the town in 1658: James Andrews, Thomas Greenly or Greensledge, George Ingersoll, John Lewis, Jane Macworth, Joseph Phippen, Sampson Penley, Robert and Thomas Sanford or Stanford, and Nathaniel Wharff.

James Andrews was the son of Jane Macworth, by her former husband, Samuel Andrews, and was born in 1635, probably at Saco. Greensledge, in 1666, is called a servant of George Cleeves, we know nothing more of him than that he

1 Purpooduck was the aboriginal name for Spring Point, but it afterward was extended over the whole northern shore of Cape Elizabeth.

was an inhabitant, June, 1658. We find George Ingersoll here as early as 1657, but are not able to determine the period of his arrival; he was born in 1618, and was probably the son of Richard Ingersoll, a Bedfordshire man, who with his family was sent to Capt. Endicott, in Salem, by the Massachusetts Company in 1629.1 John Lewis was the son of George; he received a grant of 100 acres of land at Back Cove from George Cleeves, June 26, 1657; his father had lived here at that time at least seventeen years, and had several children born previous to that period. Joseph Phippen was an inhabitant of Falmouth as early as 1650; he probably came from Boston, where several of that name were then living; a David Phippen was admitted freeman of Massachusetts in 1636, and one by the name of Joseph in 1644. He purchased one hundred acres at Purpooduck, of Cleeves, September 30, 1650. Sampson Penley was here as early as June, 1658, we do not know where he came from, he lived many years in Falmouth, and raised a family here. We know nothing of the origin of the Stanfords, they were residing at Purpooduck in 1687, when in a petition to Andross, they stated that they had possessed land on the south side of Casco river thirty-five years. Nathaniel Wharff was

1 See the company's letter in Hazard, vol. i. p. 279.

2 George Lewis, who I have supposed was the father of our George, was a clothier. He came from Kent county, England, to Plymouth, before 1630, and moved to Scituate in 1634. He had a brother John, who took the freeman's oath in Scituate in 1637. Our conjecture receives some countenance from the similarity of names.

*[The name of Phippen was originally Fitzpen and still exists in Cornwall, England. Joseph's father, David, was one of the thirty who with Rev. Peter Hobart settled Hingham, Mass. He was admitted an inhabitant of Boston in 1641, and died before 1653. Joseph had a house lot in Hingham granted him 1637; he lived in Boston in 1644. He married Dorcas Wood and had issue, Joseph, 1642, Mary, Sarah, Elizabeth, David, 1647, and Samuel. He died in Salem about 1687. In England, the Jordans intermarried with this family. Robert Jordan, a merchant in Melcomb, is supposed to have married a Fitzpen or Phippen.]-ED.