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Our Maine Ancestors:
Early Settlement |
The earliest serious settlement attempt in Maine was Champlain’s 1604-5 French colony on an island at the mouth of the St. Croix River. The French colonists gave up after one winter, but the next year established a permanent settlement nearby.
In 1607-8, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Sir George Popham, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, as leaders of the Plymouth Company, attempted to establish the Popham Colony. After a severe winter during which Popham and many of his colonists died, the colony was disbanded and the colonists returned to England. The Popham colonists built the pinnace Virginia, the first ocean-going ship built in North America.
Around the same time, the London Company established Jamestown. In 1609 the London Company gained exclusive rights to previously shared territory on America’s coast.
In 1620, Sir Ferdinando Gorges obtained a land grant extending from the Piscataqua River to the Kennebec. He called it the Province of Maine, and established its capital at Gorgena, now York. Gorges wanted to establish an Anglican, royalist territory extending from present-day Philadelphia to the St. Lawrence River. He granted land to some of his friends in England, hoping to prevent the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from gaining control of Maine. The Proprietors who received these grants founded some of Maine’s earliest towns.
Overlappping and vague land grant boundaries created disputes that lasted for 200 years.
By 1658, the Province of Maine had become a colony of Massachusetts—a colony of a colony.
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