As a student of our town’s history, one of the first things I wanted to know was “how old is this place?” A very Eurocentric question, for I was really asking “when did people who look like me come here?” Every school child knows native people were in North America first, themselves emigrating from Asia many millennia ago. That history, however, is for another day.

Most towns have their discovery and settlement story, as does Lincolnville. The U.S. Centennial address, delivered on July 4, 1876 by Judge Joseph Miller at the town’s celebration of the country’s 100th birthday, recapped our story:

The first permanent settlement in the plantation was made by Nathan Knight in the year 1770. He came from Squam Island, and settled on the farms now occupied by his grandsons, Rufus and Sampson Knight. [Near the corner of the Joy and Belfast Roads; see the sign erected there by the Lincolnville Historical Society] Nathan Knight Jr., father of Rufus and Sampson, was the first male child born in the plantation. He was born Nov. 24, 1776.

Mr. Knight had made considerable progress in cleaning and cultivating his land prior to the Revolutionary War. He was soon enabled to keep considerable stock by cutting hay in the large meadows on his premises. After the war commenced and the British had take possession of Bagaduce  [Castine], he was much annoyed by raiding scouts of soldiers from the British forces stationed [there]. At one time a party came in the night and took seven cattle out of his yard and drove them off. When he discovered in the morning what had been done, he took his double-barreled gun and pursued them. There were no open roads then, but he followed their trail through the woods for considerable distance, but did not overtake them. He said if he had overtaken them, he would have fired upon them if there had been a dozen. No on acquainted with the man would doubt his word.”

[Read the rest of Judge Miller’s address in Jackie Watts’ Lincolnville Early Days, available in the Library, Western Auto, or from the Schoolhouse Museum]

You’ll notice that in the Judge’s telling of the story he leaves out a fairly important person, that is, the mother of the first white male child born in our town. Her name was Lydia Chamberlain Knight, and she undoubtedly accompanied Nathan, helped him in building the log cabin they lived in, helped with the marsh hay harvest, and nearly every other chore in the backbreaking work of settling in a “howling wilderness.” I don’t, however, imagine her trekking along with Nathan after those stolen cows. By that time she’d have had little Nathan Jr. to look after.

Gilbert Knight, their direct descendent, once showed me where the cabin stood, below his house at the corner of Joy and Belfast roads. If you’ve ever walked in the Norton Cemetery (sometimes called the First or Old Settlers Cemetery, its entrance is on Belfast Road, heading to Belfast, just past Joy Road on the right), look out over the brook below, and that’s about where Lydia and Nathan’s log cabin was.

There are no engraved tombstones in this cemetery, only field stones indicating the head and foot of each grave. There's no better place in Lincolnville to experience the age of the town, and to get a sense of how hard and basic life was for those 18th-Century folks who'd come here.

But there’s a little problem with our founding story. How did Nathan and Lydia find this perfect spot, described elsewhere as being fortuitously located on the marsh that forms the heart of our town, a marsh where in the first year they could harvest hay for their stock? Why not settle down by the shore, since most travel was by sail; after all, there were no roads into the interior in 1770. Or were there?

Harbour Mitchell, an archaeologist who’s long been interested in Lincolnville’s history, is working with Randy Harvey to decipher the questions raised by Randy’s discovery of a granite quarry and bog iron tools on his Slab City Road property. Harbour recently circulated three English maps from the Midcoast’s Colonial era that may explain how Nathan and Lydia got to the heart of our town. These maps, dated 1759, 1761, and 1764, depict the area from Fort St. George to Fort Pownall [Stockton Springs], and were evidently made to show the route scouts and later surveyors took between these military outposts.           

Bagaduce was occupied by the French, England’s enemy in the French and Indian Wars. The 1764 map shows the road that was cut along the shore to transport 230 some soldiers and military equipment to the Fort Pownal outpost, just across the water from Bagaduce/Castine. Notice how the road paralleled the shore until it abruptly turned inland and then went overland to the Passagassawakeag River in Belfast. The inland turn is, Harbour surmises, today’s Beach Road.

By placing the old map next to today’s topographic map, it seems obvious. Notice how Islesboro (Long Island in 1764) and the whole shoreline are quite accurately rendered.

Harbour’s guess is that the company of men, gear, and equipment were following the shore at the foot of the Camden Hills until they came to what in 1764 was an extensive marsh — Lincolnville Beach; beyond lay the Ducktrap, another body of water to cross.

Or perhaps they wanted to get out of sight of any French ships patrolling the Bay. At any rate, the road clearly takes a left and a bit later, a right, to continue several miles from the shore up to the Passy, and then another right to Fort Pownal.

Naturally, this is an exciting revelation to those of us who live on Beach Road; on one side is Frohock Mountain, a rocky, inhospitable place where it slopes down to Frohock Brook at the bottom of a steep ravine. Cutting a trail about where the road is today, then continuing inland a bit before turning northeast again, possibly near the Slab City intersection (more swamp would impede them if they went much further) puts a company of English soldiers making their way right through our town, felling trees, maybe building bridges for the cannons and carts — it’s an intriguing thought.

The archeaologist in Harbour Mitchell dreams about all the military buckles, buttons, and shot carried by soldiers, and lost by them, on their road building trek through the wilderness. That many men, he says, would make quite an impact on the land wherever they stopped. Now, all he has to do is find one of those campsites! And for those of us who were skeptical of our town’s founding story, we have to admit that Nathan and Lydia may well have found their way inland to their marsh side homestead on the English soldiers’ road.

By 1790 when the first U.S. Census was taken, 278 people lived in the plantations of Ducktrap and New Canaan, which, in 1802, would be incorporated together to form the new town of Lincolnville. Finally, in 1807 at a May 4th town meeting, a plan was proposed and accepted to construct a road from Hezekiah French’s on the south side of today’s Beach to Adam Roger’s on the north side.

“...that the road ought to be twenty-five feet wide across the marsh the center raised three feet six inches and the outsides two feet above the surface of the marsh the foundation thereof laid with logs, slabs, poles or brush close together, the length and breadth thereof that the road be made of marsh mud dug from each side with a sufficient quantity of brush mixed therewith leaving a margin six feet wide between the trench and road, each side of the road defended from washing or caving away by logs well secured by cross tyes pinning . . . together. That a bridge be built across the stream sixteen feet wide and eighteen inches above the road, so as not to obstruct the water course or contract the banks thereof that piers be drove as abutments built on the margin and string pieces, laid across supported by a frame above that the bridge be planked with three inch plank well treenailed down.” From Lincolnville’s handwritten town records, transcribed by the Historical Society.

The next time you’re strolling along the sidewalk at the Beach, or driving through from here to there, think about the logs, slabs, brush, and marsh mud that make up the ground under your feet.

  Now a look forward. John Williams sent me a story about another part of the Antarctic ice shelf melting, saying that sea levels could rise as much as 40 meters (time frame uncertain!) John took a Googlemap and drew a plane elevated the 40 meters (130 feet) above the current sea level. Looks like we’d have beachfront property with Frohock forming a neat inlet between us and our Ducktrap Road neighbors.

 United Christian Church holds a Maundy Thursday Supper and Service, 6 p.m. and two services on Good Friday, at noon and at 6 p.m. A Holy Vigil in the church from 7 p.m. Friday until 6 a.m. Sunday is open to any all who wish to attend and sit, alone or with others. Sunday, a Sunrise Service will be held in the Parish Hall at 6:30 a.m., followed by worship at 9:30.

Last week’s school play, “Blather, Blarney and Balderdash”, was delightful with some 40 kids in grades 2-8 acting out Irish folk tales in credible dialect! Lots of fun for them and for the full house, two nights in a row. Special thanks goes to director and music teacher Emily Widdoes; this was the third program she’s presented in about two weeks, and she certainly seems to enjoy doing it.

Tuesday, March 31st is the registration deadline for the 13th Annual Festival of Art sponsored by Senior College at Belfast. Contact Juliane Dow  if you want to enter. This is a non-juried art exhibition held at the Hutchinson Center in Belfast every May. 

Nance Brown, of Windsor Chairmakers, will present a free program on Wednesday, April 1, at 7 p.m. at the Lincolnville Community Library. Nance will tell about the history of the company and what led her husband, Jim Brown, to Lincolnville to open it 28 years ago. She will also talk about Jim’s background in furniture design and the principles that have been the foundation of the successful business. The talk will be illustrated with many photos of Windsor Chairmakers’ fine furniture, which is delivered around the world.   For more information, call 763-4343 or email.

Emilia Carbone and Jed Beach, establishing their new 3 Bug Farm on Hope Road, have seedlings for sale this spring. You can order them online and pick them up in May.

Last week a possible earthquake on Tanglewood Road was reported on the Lincolnville Bulletin Board. Apparently, there were no other reports, but in the interest of future occurrences, Barbara Hatch posted an earthquake reporting site, Did you feel it? Barbara explains that with Maine’s low incidence of earthquakes there aren’t many instruments in place here. Scientists rely on people reporting them in order to track them.

Email me or call, 789-5987, with news for this column. I write and post it Monday mornings.

Lincolnville Resources

Town Office: 493 Hope Road, 763-3555

Lincolnville Fire Department: 470 Camden Road, non-emergency 542-8585, 763-3898, 763-3320

Fire Permits: 763-4001 or 789-5999 

Lincolnville Community Library: 208 Main Street, 763-4343

Lincolnville Historical Society: LHS, 33 Beach Road, 789-5445 

Lincolnville Central School: LCS, 523 Hope Road, 763-3366 

Lincolnville Boat Club, 207 Main Street, 975-4916

Bayshore Baptist Church, 2636 Atlantic Highway, 789-5859, 9:30 Sunday School, 11 Worship 

Crossroads Community Baptist Church, meets at LCS, 763-3551, 11:00 Worship

United Christian Church, 763-4526, 18 Searsmont Road, 9:30 Worship

Contact person to rent for private occasions:

Community Building: 18 Searsmont Road, Diane O’Brien, 789-5987 

Lincolnville Improvement Association: LIA, 33 Beach Road, Bob Plausse, 789-5811

Tranquility Grange: 2171 Belfast Road, Rosemary Winslow, 763-3343