South Berwick is a town in York County, Maine, United States.
The primary village in the town is the South Berwick census-designated place.
[4] In 1634, William Chadbourne, James Wall, and John Goddard arrived from England aboard the ship Pied Cow to build a sawmill and gristmill at Assabumbadoc Falls.
Chadbourne's house was in the northwesterly angle of Brattle Street and Dow Highway (Rt.
It was run by 25 Scottish prisoners of war captured by Oliver Cromwell's forces at the 1650 Battle of Dunbar and transported aboard the Unity to North America.
[4] The village was attacked in 1675 during King Philip's War, then raided again in 1690–1691 during King William's War by Indians under the command of officers from New France, who burned the Parish of Unity to the ground.
The Massachusetts General Court incorporated it in 1713 as Berwick, the 9th oldest town in Maine.
Established in 1831, the cotton textile mill had 7000 spindles and 216 looms, which by 1868 produced 2 million yards of sheeting per year.
[8] The mill closed in 1893, and most of its brick buildings were razed about 1917, but the Greek Revival counting house is now the Old Berwick Historical Society Museum.
South Berwick also made woolens, shoes, plows, and cultivators, as well as sawn and planed lumber.
Some inhabitants worked across the bridge in Rollinsford, New Hampshire at the Salmon Falls Manufacturing Company, which closed in 1927.
In 1901, local author Sarah Orne Jewett set her historical romance The Tory Lover at the Hamilton House in South Berwick.
Welch Hill, elevation 370 feet (112.8 m) above sea level, is the town's highest point.
The lowest elevation, which is sea level, is located along the Salmon Falls River, from the small hydroelectric dam next to the New Hampshire Route 4 bridge, south to the town's border with Eliot.