Though he is believed to have been a slave from the West Indies, DNA of his ancestors has been traced to the Senegal / Gambia region of Africa.
Benjamin Darling and his wife, Sara Proverbs (who was supposedly a white woman),[2] settled on the island and began their family there.
In 1912, descendants of Ben and Sara and others who had settled on Malaga Island were evicted by the state.
Others moved to the mainland of Phippsburg primarily into the fishing villages of West Point and Sebasco and to Cundy's Harbor.
Harbor Island is called "Horse Island" by the locals as the horses used at Corneleus Ice Pond, also known as Watuh Lake, for the ice trade industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s were kept there during the summer.