Early Penobscot Bay Chronology

(including present day Waldo County towns)*

 

The following account of the settlement of the Penobscot Bay area was taken from Roger F. Duncan's excellent book,
Coastal Maine, a Maritime History (see citation below).


"During the French and Indian wars there were very few settlements east of Pemaquid except for  those of fishermen on Monhegan and Matinicus. However, after the fall of Quebec in 1759 and the construction of Fort Pownal at Fort Point on the Penobscot River in the same year, settlers moved in rapidly. In 1761 the population of Maine was about 17,500. In 1764 it was 24,000 and in 1790, 96,000. The following chronology, while far from complete, suggests how quickly the Penobscot Bay region was populated.

    In 1759 Fort Pownal was built.

    From 1760 to 1770 workers from Fort Pownal and families from Rhode Island and Connecticut settled Searsport and Frankfort.

    In 1761, the townships of Bucksport, Orland, Penobscot, Sedgwick, Blue Hill, Surry, Trenton, Sullivan, Mount Desert, Steuben, Harrington, and Addison were legally established. These were townships, not established villages, but their promoters agreed to settle sixty Protestant families in each township, saving a lot in each for a parsonage, for the first settled minister, for a school, and for the use of Harvard College.

    In 1762 more than seven families were living on Deer Isle and about ten families on Mount Desert and adjacent islands

    In 1763 five families were living at Naskeag, in Brooklin. In the same year, two families, a millwright and a blacksmith, established Machias; by 1775, eighty families and a hundred single men lived there.

    In 1764 Shubael Williams and his five sons were established on Islesboro.  Jonathan Buck built the first sawmill on the Penobscot River at Bucksport.

    In 1769 Camden was settled.

    In 1770 settlers came to Belfast. (The town was incorporated in 1772.) A settlement was established at Ducktrap (Lincolnville).

    In 1772 there were twelve families at Bangor, and a group from Cape Cod established Hampden.

    New towns were incorporated at Boothbay, Pemaquid, Walpole, Broad Bay (Thomaston), Georgekeag (Warren), Meduncook (Friendship), Bristol, Cape Elizabeth, Belfast, and Waldoboro by 1773."

    *Duncan, Roger F. Coastal Maine, a Maritime History (1992) New York, W. W. Norton & Co., pp190-191.