[3] As far back as 6,100 years ago the first inhabitants of Deer Isle were Native Americans known as the Abenaki, speaking a language called Etchemin.

[4] Gomez sailed his ship La Anunciada up the Eggemoggin Reach, amongst other places along the Maine coast, looking for gold and the Northwest Passage.

A body buried in full French armor was discovered on nearby Campbell Island (+44° 13' 20.03", −68° 36' 33.24", south of Oak Point).

The first white settler of Deer Isle was one William Eaton (born 1720 Salisbury, Massachusetts, died c. 1790 Seabrook, New Hampshire) and family, arriving on the island prior to August 4, 1762.

By 1765, migration to Deer Isle had begun in earnest and Eaton, along with 16 other families, petitioned the governing state of Massachusetts for legal title to the land.

Settlers continued their southward migration on the island and eventually established the village of Green's Landing (as Stonington was initially known) after 1800.

[6] Hundred-acre "proprietor lots" were granted to those who first settled the island, accelerating the southward migration with the promise of new land.

Within a few decades, the yields of acidic soil of the original proprietor lots began to decline and inhabitants of the island took to the sea.

Europeans, mainly from Italy, immigrated to Green's Landing to implement their old-world skills as stonecutters and masons at the numerous in-town granite quarries.

Stone excavated in the area has been used to build important structures across the country, including the approaches to the Brooklyn Bridge (1880s), Croton Aqueduct (NY, 1880), Holyoke Dam (Holyoke, Massachusetts, 1890s), piers for Manhattan/Brooklyn Bridge (Manhattan, 1905), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, 1907), Rockefeller fountain bowl (Pocantico, New York, 1913), John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame, (Arlington County, Virginia, 1966)[7] and the new Yankee Stadium[8] among many others.

Many of the new immigrants lived in hotels and large boarding houses built for that purpose at Green's Landing, the current Tewksbury Building being one of many still in use.

Prior to building the Deer Isle-Sedwick bridge and causeway in 1939, the settlement's primary link to the outside world was Steamboat Wharf, located west of the main harbor.

This changed with the advent of gasoline or diesel engines, along with new hull designs, which enabled fishermen to make day trips to fishing grounds in Penobscot Bay.

[1] Located on the southern end of Deer Isle, Stonington is situated in Penobscot Bay and the Gulf of Maine, part of the Atlantic Ocean.