When was maine settled

For Maine, he is chiefly known for his voyage, in which he wintered at St Croix and made the first accurate maps of the New England coast. Croix River. The French colonists gave up after one winter, but the next year established a permanent settlement nearby. Wealthy British nobleman and governor of Plymouth, a main sponsor of a number of exploring expeditions and colonization attempts in New England, having been granted major lands. Read more. George Popham was in command and president of the Popham Colony; his death in February, was a major factor in the colonists' decision to abandon Fort St.

English nobleman and explorer who annexed Newfoundland to Britain in He was lost at sea on his return voyage. He had been active in promoting English North American colonization. Queen Elizabeth reissued Gilbert's exploration and colonization patent to Walter Raleigh, Gilbert's brother in law, who used it to plant a colony at Roanoke. The colonists returned to England in After a severe winter during which Popham and many of his colonists died, the colony was disbanded and the colonists returned to England.

The Popham colonists built the pinnace Virginia, the first ocean-going ship built in North America. There was little enthusiasm for another colonizing effort, but Virginia 's Captain John Smith tried in , looking for whales, copper, and gold. He found none of those, but created an amazingly accurate map of the country he named New England.

Expeditions in and failed as well. Still, Smith managed to encourage settlement with his Description of New-England, published in , which included a plan for settlement that combined the quest for empire with the individual colonist's interest in land and self-improvement. Smith's imperial vision, brilliant in many respects, brought with it the persistent English weakness in viewing native inhabitants as one more commodity to be plucked from the land.

Like the English after Sagadahoc, French merchants turned away from the region after the St. Croix disappointment. British Captain Samuel Argall of Jamestown destroyed the colony a few weeks later. The region shifted from French to English control several times over the next century, but keeping the French from establishing a fortified outpost in northern New England allowed the Pilgrims to settle safely in Plymouth seven years later.

The years following Smith's voyage brought a halting movement toward English settlement in Maine. The earliest colonies were semi-permanent fishing stations under the nominal authority of Ferdinando Gorges, who had been granted a monopoly over the region by the Council for New England.

By some vessels plied the banks between Cape Ann and Monhegan, working mostly out of year-round fishing stations on the islands and peninsulas of the central coast. In Gorges and his partner John Mason divided northern New England, with Gorges taking the land east of the Piscataqua, and for more than 40 years Gorges directed the colony's development as "Lord Palatinate" of Maine.

Fishing and trading colonies appeared at Damariscove in , Piscataqua, Cape Newagen, and Monhegan in ; Pejepscot in , and Richmond Island in By the s Pemaquid was the center of commercial activity on the New England coast. English, Abenaki, and French traders rubbed elbows on its cobblestone streets, and its merchants sent fur, fish, grains, corn, timber, and livestock to other provincial ports or England.

Markets changed abruptly and the fishing stations frequently disappeared when a scarcity of bait or timber undercut the operation. Still, the little hamlets gradually acquired the fundamentals of stable communities, holding informal "combinations" to elect local leaders, enforce moral codes, and settle land disputes.

Gorges prescribed an elaborate system of government, set the local church on an even keel, and adjudicated several disputed land titles. When the Puritans won the English civil war of , they encouraged Massachusetts's expansionist tendency, annexing most of southern Maine. A dispute over the ownership of the Casco Bay region, claimed by settler George Cleeve, who persuaded English merchant Edward Rigby to purchase the area, and by Gorges, eventually allowed Massachusetts to lay claim in , winning some local support by offering secure land titles, local rules, freedom of worship, and protection from rival French claims.

By this time, the province was engulfed in war with the Wabanaki, and the Commonwealth received Maine at bargain prices. After several other English political upheavals, William and Mary granted Massachusetts Bay a new charter in that included all of Maine.

Massachusetts rule brought some political stability to Maine, and its economy matured under the influence of the fur trade, which expanded after due to a demand for luxury furs. In , merchants from the Plymouth colony built a trading post at Cushnoc in present-day Augusta, and by they were operating several stations between Rhode Island and Machias.

At its peak, the Plymouth traders found the Kennebec trade profitable, but business declined as the competition increased. Companies clashed over territorial claims, dragging Indians into the fray. They sold contraband muskets, shot, and liquor and cheated their Indian clients to boost profits. Attempts to regulate this far-flung frontier were all but futile.

Despite the economic chaos, fur trading sped the process of settlement as hard-pressed merchants diversified into other sources of income. Boston merchants Thomas Clarke and Thomas Lake established a post on Arrowsic Island near the mouth of the Kennebec River, and when rival posts eroded their profits, they began raising cattle and exporting livestock, meat, hides, and hay to Boston, which was becoming an important economic center.

Settlers cut timber, built a sawmill, grew crops for food and export, processed fish, and manufactured implements. These strategies — diversification and agricultural self-sufficiency — encouraged others to clear farms and build gristmills, blacksmith and cooper shops, and boatyards, much of this activity financed by Clarke and Lake.

The company also sold land along the river, often at a loss, on the principle that more settlers meant cheaper labor for their various enterprises and more customers for their merchandise. By the s, the small settler society between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec was beginning to develop a distinctive culture, more diverse, more secular, and more democratic than the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay to the south.

Maine's government remained weak, partly because of the continuing disputes over land, and partly because occupations like lumbering, fishing, and trading encouraged mobility and rootlessness.

Communities — sometimes mere scatterings of farms — sprawled along the coast or rivers in long ribbons, with no town centers and little purchase for those who hoped to control this growing society. Coastal settlers exported, in addition to fish, furs, and produce, a variety of products like clapboards, pipe-staves, ship timbers, planks, pitch, and turpentine.

Their markets were other colonies, the West Indies, and Europe. Small shipyards appeared in the coves, and water-powered mills on the rivers. Farmers took advantage of coastal salt marshes to expand their herds, and they worked in seasonal trades like fishing, lumbering, milling, seafaring, and trapping. Women stayed closer to home in the kitchen, garden, barnyard, orchard, and milk-house. 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 One of the original 13 colonies and one of the six New England states, Massachusetts officially called a commonwealth is known for being the landing place of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims.

English explorer and colonist John Smith named the state for the Massachuset tribe. Boston, the largest city in New England, is located on a hilly peninsula in Massachusetts Bay. The region had been inhabited since at least B.

Captain John Smith in explored the One of the 13 original colonies, Virginia was the first part of the country permanently settled by the English, who established Jamestown on the banks of the James River in The home state of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers, Virginia played an Granted statehood in , Washington was named in honor of George Washington; it is the only U. At Four Corners, in the southeast, Utah meets Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona at right angles, the only such meeting of states in the country.