History of Maine

[8] A new theory put forward by Carol B. Smith Fisher in 2002 postulated that Sir Ferdinando Gorges chose the name in 1622 to honor the village where his ancestors first lived in England, rather than the province in France.

[8][13] The view generally held among British place name scholars is that Mayne in Dorset is Brythonic, corresponding to modern Welsh "maen", plural "main" or "meini".

[citation needed] By the time of European discovery, the inhabitants of Maine were the Algonquian-speaking Wabanaki peoples, including the Abenaki, Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscots.

The two split the territory along the Piscataqua River in a 1629 pact that resulted in the Province of New Hampshire being formed by Mason in the south and New Somersetshire being created by Gorges to the north, in what is now southwestern Maine.

[23] After the parliamentary victory in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and installation of the Puritan Oliver Cromwell, a 1652 survey by the Massachusetts reported the source of the Merrimack as Lake Winnipesaukee, and set the boundary at three miles north of 43°40′12″N (which would put it at 43°43′12″N).

[citation needed] In 1669, the Territory of Sagadahock, between the Kennebec and St. Croix rivers (what is now eastern Maine) was granted by Charles II to his brother James, Duke of York.

Under the terms of this grant, all the territory from the Saint Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean was constituted as Cornwall County, and was governed as part of the duke's proprietary Province of New York.

This became effective in 1692 when the territory between the Piscataqua and the St. Croix (all of modern Maine) became part of the new Province of Massachusetts Bay as Yorkshire, a name which survives in present-day York County.

[35] In July 1779, British general Francis McLean captured Castine and built Fort George on the Bagaduce Peninsula on the eastern side of Penobscot Bay.

[38] The 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War ceded western Sunbury County (west of the St. Croix River) from Nova Scotia to Massachusetts, which had an overlapping claim.

[49] The passion of the Aroostook War signaled the increasing role lumbering and logging were playing in the Maine economy, particularly in the central and eastern sections of the state.

The Maine merchant marine was huge in proportion to the state's population, and ships and crews from communities such as Bath, Brewer, and Belfast could be found all over the world.

With short growing seasons, rocky soil, and relative remoteness from markets, Maine agriculture was never as prosperous as in other states; the populations of most farming communities peaked in the 1850s, declining steadily thereafter.

[citation needed] Portland in particular prospered as the terminus of the Grand Trunk railroad from Montreal, essentially becoming Canada's winter port because of efforts by investors like John A.

Despite the aspirational name its 33 miles of standard gauge tracks connected the port of Belfast to Burnham Junction where they joined with the newly created Maine Central Railroad Company.

In 1925 Maine Central declined to renew their lease, citing losses, and the City of Belfast began operating the B&MLR as the only publicly owned freight and passenger rail line in the US.

[58] As the American frontier continued to expand westward, Mainers were particularly attracted to the forested states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and large numbers brought their lumbering skills and knowledge there.

[66] Maine became the first state to pass a Prohibition statute, signed into law by Governor Hugh J. Anderson in 1846 after 20 years of advocacy by various native Temperance societies.

The leading saloon-buster and future Portland mayor, Neal Dow, would later serve in the Maine legislature, as well become a brigadier general for the Union in the Civil War.

[68][70] After the 1604 settlement at Saint Croix Island and the 1607 Popham Colony experiment French and English settlers established communities up and down the coast of Maine and inland via the rivers.

By the early 20th century, some French Canadian women even began to see migration to the United States to work as a rite of passage and a time of self-discovery and self-reliance.

In the 2000s, Somalis began a secondary migration to Maine from other states on account of the area's low crime rate, good schools and cheap housing.

This demographic and its resulting social and political ramifications led to a backlash in the 1920s, as the Ku Klux Klan formed cells in a number of Maine towns.

[89] The immigrant population was largely responsible for the steady growth of the Democratic Party, however, which gave Maine a true two-party system in the years after World War II.

Maine's natural beauty, cool summers and proximity to the large East Coast cities made it a major tourist destination as early as the 1850s.

The visitors enjoyed the local handicrafts; the most successful was carving out a mythical image of Maine as a bucolic rustic haven from modern urban woes.

[90] Summer resorts such as Bar Harbor, Sorrento, and Islesboro sprung up along the coast, and soon urbanites were building houses—ranging from mansions to shacks, but all called "cottages"—in what had formerly been shipbuilding and fishing villages.

Horn spent the next two days maintaining a low profile and watching the extremely-busy Canadian Pacific Railway main line to determine the schedule of trains.

He apparently changed into a German army uniform to avoid being convicted of being a spy (and potentially executed) before proceeding to the railway bridge over the St. Croix River sometime after midnight.

In recent years, however, even Maine's most traditional industries have been threatened; forest conservation efforts have diminished logging, and restrictions on fisheries have likewise exerted considerable pressure along the coast.