[2] Starting in 1870, a Swedish-immigrant colony was established by the State of Maine in Aroostook County.

Early hardships were overcome and the colony prospered and grew into the neighboring townships of Westmanland (1879), Stockholm (1881) and the surrounding areas.

[3] New Sweden has maintained many Swedish traditions since its founding, including the celebrations of St. Lucia Day and "Midsommar."

New Sweden was the home of Einar Gustafson, who was the archetype of the child for whom the Jimmy Fund was named.

Sites and buildings located in New Sweden which are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places include the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church was organized August 1871.

[8] Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church [along with Faith, Caribou and Trinity (formerly Oscar Frederick) Lutheran churches]was served by a native Swedish pastor as recently as 1979–1985 when The Rev.

The town made national news headlines in 2003 when a man poisoned the coffee urn at the local Lutheran church, sickening 15 parishioners and killing one.

On April 27, 2003, 78-year-old Walter Reid Morrill, known to the town by his middle name, died of arsenic poisoning after drinking coffee at the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church in New Sweden, and 15 other, mostly elderly churchgoers became ill, three of them seriously.

Five days later, church member Daniel Bondeson, 53, was found after apparently shooting himself in the lower-chest with a rifle, and left a suicide note in which he confessed to committing with the poisoning stating that it was caused by a dispute that the church did not use an altar-table he donated weeks before the poisoning.

The note also that he intended to sicken the parishioners rather than kill them, but the first death from a poisoning to a friend of his drove him to suicide.

[9][10][11] The crime was chronicled in Christine Young's 2005 true crime book A Bitter Brew: Faith, Power, and Poison in a Small New England Town[12] and on the show, Mystery ER, which aired an episode on this incident from the point of view of the youngest victim, then 30 years old.