If you’ve been following my Red Barn, you know about the 400th anniversary celebrations of Dover, New Hampshire, as the third oldest permanent European settlement in New England and the seventh oldest in the continental USA.
That history does underpin my book Quaking Dover, after all.
As I point out, that “permanent” adjective can become a real ringer, in contrast to “earliest.” “Oldest,” for both the town and its Quaker Meeting, can also be defined as “continuous.”
Don’t be surprised to hear me admit that I keep learning a lot more after researching and writing the book. Some of my newer findings will be posted here at the blog later this year. I’ve already shared the experience of visiting the Pemaquid village site in Bristol, Maine, a settlement that interacted with Dover’s early years.
The Castine development at hand arose while killing time between the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine, and my setting sail a day later. Or, more accurately, boarding ship with a buddy from Vermont for our first overnight in the vessel before casting off and hoisting the sails the next morning. Literally. Peter joined up with us for a night at the Airbnb before he and I ventured off together. That left us with a day to fill. On a whim, I suggested a land excursion as an alternative to the Farnsworth American art gallery or the transportation museum down the coast. Peter was game, and besides, he knew the town and accompanying waters.
Our destination was the town of Castine, which I had heard of as the home of the respected Maine Maritime Academy and as one of the eastern Maine towns that surrendered without a shot during the War of 1812, along with Eastport and Machias.
He drove, freeing me to observe the winding scenery on the eastern side of Penobscot Bay. It was less upscale and less developed than the U.S. 1 corridor linking Searsport, Belfast, Camden, Rockland, and Rockport – more “real” Maine, if you will.
Coming into Castine, however, a sign jolted me: Founded 1613.
What I read soon after that pointed out that Castine was settled before the Plymouth Bay colonists we know as Pilgrims started building in 1620. (Remember, they never called themselves that, but rather Separatists and the like.)
The claims made it sound like Castine was the oldest European settlement in New England.
Still, it didn’t show up on the lists I examined nor on those that Dover’s celebration committee referenced. The problem is just how many, if any, settlers remained in Castine between the many invasions and changing of flags from French and British to Dutch and American over the years.
Still, looking at the murky history prompted me to revise some of my thinking about Maine’s past.
For one, Castine was occupied by the French during the years of fighting when English settlement was erased all the way down the state to a toehold at Wells and York and on to New Hampshire.
That also had me looking at the French and Indian wars through Canadian lenses. That point of view presented the village of Norridgewock along the Kennebeck River as a French settlement, the headquarters of Jesuit priest Sebastien Rale, including a church he erected in 1698. The English, on the other hand, considered it a Native encampment.
Rale worked to ensure French control of the region, with events escalating into what is known as Father Rale’s War, at least in English versions where he is sometimes presented as the commanding officer in the attacks. Native accounts take more credit for their own leadership and skill.
The conflict culminated in the destruction of Norridgewock in 1724, including the death of Rale, a chief, and nearly two dozen women and children. French control of much of Maine faded in the aftermath, much earlier than I had believed. English settlement did, in fact, resume much earlier than the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the final French and Indian War.
At that point, Castine – named for Baron Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin, a 1667 arrival – was turned over to the British. And how!
An influx of Massachusetts colonists of Puritan and Pilgrim cast gave the town a distinctly Yankee character that remains, perhaps more than anywhere else in Maine.
I love the town
with its Yankee Puritan flavor unspoiled
contrary to old-money haven Bar Harbor
Jnana's Red Barn 