Stewart's Names On the Land, Houghton-Mifflin, , the name was fixed in , when the King's Commissioners ordered that "Province of Maine" be entered from then on in official records. Twelve years later the Gorges patents were purchased by Massachusetts, but the name remained intact.
Chadbourne, Ava Harriet. Portland, ME: Bond Wheelwright, c Fisher, Carol B. Rockland, ME: Courier-Gazette, Matthews, Albert. Origin of the Name of Maine. Cambridge: J. The District of Maine was the governmental designation for what is now the U. The district was a part of the state of Massachusetts which prior to the American Revolution was the British province of Massachusetts Bay. Originally settled in by the Plymouth Company, the coastal area between the Merrimack and Kennebec rivers, as well as an irregular parcel of land between the headwaters of the two rivers, became the province of Maine in a land grant.
In , the land was split, creating an area between the Piscataqua and Merrimack rivers which became the province of New Hampshire. It existed through a series of land patents made by the kings of England during this era, and included New Somersetshire, Lygonia, and Falmouth. The province was incorporated into the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the s, beginning with the formation of York County, Massachusetts, which extend from the Piscataqua River to just east of the mouth of the Presumpscot River in Casco Bay.
Eventually, its territory grew to encompass nearly all of present-day Maine. The large size of the county led to its division in through the creation of Cumberland and Lincoln counties. The northeastern portion of present-day Maine was first sparsely occupied by Maliseet Indians and French settlers from Acadia.
The lands between the Kennebec and Saint Croix rivers were granted to the Duke of York in , who had them administered as Cornwall County, part of his proprietary Province of New York. English and French claims in western Maine would be contested, at times violently, until the British conquest of New France in the French and Indian War. With the creation of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in , the entirety of what is now Maine became part of that province.
When Massachusetts adopted its state constitution in , it created the District of Maine to manage its northernmost counties, bounded on the west by the Piscataqua River and on the east by the Saint Croix River. By , the district had been further subdivided with the creation of Hancock, Kennebec, Oxford, Penobscot, Somerset, and Washington counties.
A movement for Maine statehood began as early as , and in the following years, several conventions were held to effect this. Starting in five popular votes were taken but all failed to reach the necessary majorities. During the War of , British and Canadian forces occupied a large portion of Maine including everything from the Penobscot River east to the New Brunswick border.
A weak response by Massachusetts to this occupation contributed to increased calls in the district for statehood. The Massachusetts General Court passed enabling legislation on June 19, , separating the District of Maine from the rest of the Commonwealth. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Located on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, the state was an important hub of transportation and commerce in early America, and the Gateway Arch in St.
Louis is a One of the original 13 colonies, Maryland lies at the center of the Eastern Seaboard, amid the great commercial and population complex that stretches from Maine to Virginia. Its small size belies the great diversity of its landscapes and ways of life that they foster, from the Michigan, the Wolverine State, joined the union in Located in the center of the Great Lakes, Michigan is divided into two land masses known as the Upper and Lower Peninsulas.
One of the original 13 colonies, North Carolina was the first state to instruct its delegates to vote for independence from the British crown during the Continental Congress. Following the Revolutionary War, North Carolina developed an extensive slave plantation system and But they did not.
There were an equal number of slave and free states, and abolitionists were fiercely opposed to any more slave states entering the Union. To prevent the spread of slavery, they found themselves calling for the defeat of the very bill that would have granted them long-sought statehood. Maine's application offered the possibility of a compromise. To maintain the balance, the two requests for statehood would be packaged together — one new slave and one new free state. Maine suddenly found itself in the midst of a heated controversy.
Abolitionists all over the Union were dead set against the admission of any new slave states. Many Mainers, themselves ardent abolitionists, were deeply ambivalent. While the battle raged in Congress and across the nation, the March 4 th deadline was fast approaching. At the last minute, the bill for Maine statehood passed Congress; on March 3, it was signed into law. Maine was admitted as a free state less than two weeks later; Missouri joined the Union as a slave state in In spite of what many had hoped, this solution, called the Missouri Compromise, did not resolve the issue of slavery.
The larger question would persist for another 40 years until it was finally, and tragically, decided by war. On this day in , news reached Boston that the War of was over. The U. But when the British March 15, Share this story. Comments 0.
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