of the Popham colony, which after coming to three islands with a ledge of rocks to the southward (Matinicus Rock), thence stopping at George's Islands, and on Sunday, Aug. 9th, 1607, going ashore where Weymouth had planted his cross, and hearing from Mr. Seymour their chaplain the first christian sermon ever preached in this region,* passed on to the Sagadahoc, mention is made of three mountains "in on the land, the land called Segohquet, near about the river of Penobscot," which land, if Mt. Pleasant be one of the mountains, must have been Thomaston, Warren, and vicinity. Capt. John Smith of heroic and romantic memory, who in 1614 made a voyage hitherward, and, after building seven boats at Monhegan for whaling and fishing, with eight of his men ranged the coast in his ship from Penobscot to Cape Cod, also speaks of the places along the shore, and, after describing Penobscot Bay and mountains, says "Segocket is the next; then Nuscongus, Pemaquid," &c.; and, in a map which he prepared, marked our river as the site of an Indian village, to which Prince Charles of England gave the name of Norwich at the same time that he changed the name of what had been known as North Virginia to New England. Later authorities and traditions, confining the name Segocket to the river rather than the country, as perhaps Smith intended, have made it Segochet; which name in either of its forms evidently belonged to the Wawenock dialect, as the present Penobscots, the remnant of the ancient Tarratines, do not use it nor understand its meaning. Of other Wawenock names, though understood, the Penobscots express the same sense in words of their own,calling Matinicus, Menasquesicook or a collection of grassy islands, and Monhegan, Kt'nagook or grand island. For George's River they seem to have no other name than Joiges; and some have conjectured that this name was borrowed by the English and by a slight change of sound converted into George's or St. George's. Instead of this, however, I am inclined to suspect that the name George's may have been adopted by the Tarratines from the name left to the river and islands by Weymouth, and from their pronunciation, Joiges, associated with the word joy, suggesting the kindred definition which when questioned they attach to it, viz.:-joyful, delightsome. It is not always easy to ascertain to which language a word originally be

*The earliest in any part of the State, except perhaps one at a religious service held in a chapel built on Neutral Island in the St. Croix or Schoodic River by French Huguenots in 1604. Will. Hist. of Maine, &c.

*

longed; as we find abannock is given as the Indian name for bread, and acowanabool as the Feejee of neat cattle,each of which was probably bequeathed them by the European donors of the first specimens of those articles. The great resort of the tribe to the place in later times, after a patent was granted and a trading-house established here, might naturally cause the English name to come into use among them and supplant any other ancient one of their own, as well as the "Segochet" of their Indian foes. The river having thus got the name of Joiges, the land, at least that part of it between Mill River and Oyster River, of course received that of Joigeekeag, or Georgeekeag,- the termination keag being their usual term to signify land, or a point of land formed by the junction of two rivers. So that with them the name of the western portion of our territory, or the present town of Thomaston, was nearly equivalent to pleasant point; that of the southern portion, now South Thomaston, particularly at the junction of the two branches of its river, the Wessaweskeag, signified land of sights, visions, wizard point;† and the eastern portion adjoining Owl's Head Bay, or the present Rockland Harbor, was called Catawamteak or Katawamteag, signifying great-landing-place, from which they took the trail across to Mill River. Of these Indian trails, three principal. ones in the territory of Old Thomaston were much used and frequently spoken of in early times. That above named, was used in passing to St. George's River for the purpose of fishing at the falls or proceeding to the ocean on their way westward. Another was that from the head of Owl's Head Bay directly across to the bay in George's River, the high intervening land of which they early called Quisquamego, and, in later times, Quisquitcumegek, or highcarrying-place. A third was that from the same Head of the Bay to the head waters of the Wessaweskeag, by which they avoided the tedious and exposed passage around Owl's Head. These were well known to the early settlers and hunters, as the Upper, Middle, and Lower trails.

The country having thus, by the discoveries of Weymouth, Pring, Smith, and others, become well known, was annually visited by private adventurers for fishing, hunting, and trading; some of whom erected temporary huts on shore, but none except the Sagadahoc colony had as yet intended to

* Me. Hist. Coll. Vol. V.-bannock, we believe, is a Scottish word. + Mansfield, in his History and Description of New England, says the Indian name Wessaweskeag signifies river of many points; but does not state his authority.

become permanent residents. Monhegan was the principal landmark, and was at times thronged with these adventurers. Smith found there in 1614 a ship belonging to "Sir Francis Popham which for many years had visited the waters of St. George's River only." Conflicts between the natives and treacherous Europeans, as well as between the Europeans themselves, frequently took place at Monhegan; in one of which several of Smith's men were killed in the neighboring waters, and in others, cases of mutiny of ship crews, and cruel kidnapping of natives occurred. Abraham Jennins, a fish merchant of Plymouth, concerned in trade with Abner Jennins of London, employing a large tonnage in the cod-fisheries. and trade on the coast, acquired the original ownership of this island. The French, Spaniards, and Dutch also came to this region for traffic and fishing, and may have attempted more permanent establishments on the islands or coast. Domestic utensils and the foundations of chimneys now many feet under ground have been discovered on Monhegan as well as on Carver's Island in George's River, where, it is matter of history, there were formerly found the remains of a stone house. No doubt these islands, that form the threshold of our river, were the scene of many a wild foray or romantic adventure, which for want of a contemporary historian must be allowed to slumber in the dim haze of the unrecorded past.

* Ancient Dominions of Maine, by Rufus K. Sewall, p. 98, who quotes Prince's New England Chronology, p. 15.

CHAPTER III.

GRANT OF THE PATENT, AND ATTEMPTS TO SETTLE FRUS

TRATED BY INDIAN WARS.

1630. THE Council of Plymouth in England, which had been established for settling and governing New England, being now in danger of dissolution by royal authority, made various and hasty grants to different adventurers of nearly the whole territory between the Piscataqua and Penobscot, in the expectation that its acts already past would be respected after the Council itself should cease to exist. One of these was the grant made of the lands on the river St. George's, March 13th, 1629, O. S. March 23d, 1630, new style, to Beauchamp and Leverett, called "the LINCOLNSHIRE, MUSCONGUS PATENT," or grant. Its extent was from the seaboard, between the rivers Penobscot and Muscongus, to an unsurveyed line running east and west and so far north as would, without interfering with any other patent, embrace a territory equal to 30 miles square. This grant contained a reservation to the King and his successors of "one-fifth part of all such Oar of Gold and Silver as should be gotten and obtained in or upon the Premises." It was procured expressly for the purposes of an exclusive trade with the natives, and contained no powers of civil government. It seems to have owed its existence to the rapacity of certain merchant adventurers in England who had formed a copartnership with the puritan exiles when in Holland, and agreed to transport them to America; but who, dissatisfied with the slow returns caused by the conscientious adherence of these pilgrims after their arrival at New Plymouth, to the regulation prohibiting the sale of gunpowder and ardent spirits to the Indians, were perpetually undermining their trade by sending out other less scrupulous agents and companies to compete with them, their own partners, in that infant settlement. The most active of these merchants were James Shirley and Timothy Hatherly of Bristol, Eng. When in later years the greater part of this Muscongus grant passed into the hands of Gen. Samuel Waldo, it, or at least his portion of it, was called the WALDO PATENT, and is the origin of all or most of the land titles in this vicinity. The grant was made "to Thomas Leverett of Boston in the county of Lincoln (England,) gentleman, and John Beauchamp of London, gentleman," or "salter," as styled in Bradford's History of the Plymouth settlement,

which lay so long hidden and unknown in manuscript, and which was first published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1856. By that work it appears that Beauchamp never came to this country, but was merely one of the company that sent over the Mayflower; though rather a sleeping partner, who had little to do with its management, and, like the pilgrims of Plymouth, complained that he never could obtain any settlement with Shirley and Hatherly for the rich cargoes of furs sent them from that struggling colony. Leverett, an alderman in the city of his residence in old England and a member of Mr. Cotton's church there, came over with that clergyman and others, including his own wife and two daughters, to Boston in New England, in the ship Griffin, Sept. 4th, 1633.* These two, Beauchamp and Leverett, seem to have been selected as men of substance and probity sufficient to bear the dignity of patentees and give a plausible character to the grant, and at the same time not likely to greatly trouble themselves or the rapacious Bristol merchants who were to be associated with them, in the traffic to be carried on. The company thus formed, having persuaded the reluctant Plymouth pilgrims and their faithless agent, Isaac Allerton, then in England, to join in the enterprise, immediately appointed Edward Ashley their agent, and Capt. Wm. Pierce an assistant. These were sent over in the spring of the same year, 1630, in a small new-made vessel, named the Lyon," of which the said Pierce was master, with five laborers, one of them a carpenter, and well furnished with provisions and articles of trade, which moreover were increased in the autumn by a supply of corn and wampum from Plymouth colony. They arrived here safely, in June, and established a truck-house on the eastern bank of St. George's River, five miles below the head of tide-waters. This must have been in Thomaston, probably on or near the site of Wm. Vose's house, at the foot of Wadsworth street. sion and traffic were continued down to the first Indian war, in 1675; and Waldo's petition of 1731 affirms that "considerable settlements and improvements were made here. Ashley's agency, however, was of short continuance; for, being an unprincipled young man, he was disrelished and distrusted by the good people of Plymouth colony, and, having confirmed their opinion by conspiring with Allerton to defraud

66

Here posses

* Communication of Rev. J. L. Sibley, Librarian of Harvard College. Mr. Palfrey, in his elaborate history of New England, seems to intimate that he came "later" than Cotton; but this could hardly be, as he was, Oct. 10th, 1633, chosen ruling elder of Boston in New England.