The Bibliography of the Local History of Massachusetts, by Jeremiah Colburn, Boston, 1871, a volume of 119 pages, deserves a place in every New England library,[625] and it may be supplemented by the brief titles included in Mr. F. B. Perkins’s Check List of American History.[626] There is a good list of local histories in the Brinley Catalogue, no. 1,558, etc. The Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts, by the late Emory Washburn, is a most important book for that phase of the subject.
Maine.[627]—The documentary history of Maine properly begins with the grant to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The previous operations under the Laconia Company were partly, as we have seen, on the territory of Maine, while in part also their history is preserved in the archives of New Hampshire.[628]
The patent issued to Gorges at the general division, in 1635, of the territory which he named “New Somersetshire,” is not extant. An organization, as we have already said, took place under this grant, and a few records are extant in manuscript.[629]
The royal charter of Maine, dated April 3, 1639, was transcribed into a book of records of the Court of Common Pleas and Sessions for the county of York, and, with the commissions to the officers, has been printed by Sullivan in his History of Maine, Boston, 1795, Appendix No. 1.
The first government organized under the charter[630] was in 1640, and the manuscript records are also at Alfred with the commissions to the officers. Extracts from the records were made by Folsom, as above, pp. 53-57. After the submission of Maine to Massachusetts in 1653, courts were held at York under the authority of the latter. Afterward, when the royal commissioners came over and went into Maine, a portion of the inhabitants were encouraged to rebel against the authority of Massachusetts, and courts were temporarily set up under a commission from Sir Robert Carr. Some records of their doings exist.[631]
AUTOGRAPHS.
[Mason was the proprietor of New Hampshire. Mr. C. W. Tuttle was engaged at his death on a memoir of Mason, upon whom he delivered addresses, reported in the Boston Advertiser, June 22, 1871, and Boston Globe, April 4, 1872. Garde was the mayor of Gorgeana. Thomas Gorges was the deputy-governor of Maine.—Ed.]
The Records of Massachusetts for the years 1652-53 show the official relations which existed between the two colonies. The State-paper offices of England contain a large quantity of manuscripts illustrating the claims of Ferdinando Gorges, the grandson of the original proprietor; and the principal part of these may be seen either in abstracts, or at full length in Folsom’s Catalogue of Original Documents[632] relating to Maine (New York, 1858), prepared by the late H. G. Somerby.[633] Many of these papers may also be found in Chalmers’ Annals, 1780, who had great facilities for consulting the public offices in England.[634]
Of general histories of Maine, the earliest was that of James Sullivan, entitled The History of the District of Maine, Boston, 1795, the territory having been made a Federal district in 1779. Judge Sullivan was too busy a man to write so complicated a history as that of Maine; and he fell into some errors, and came short of what would be expected of a writer at the present day. He was one of the founders and at that time president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and doubtless felt the obligation to do some such work. The next important History of Maine is that of Judge William D. Williamson, published at Hallowell, 1832, in two volumes. This contains a vast amount of material indispensable to the student; but there are serious errors in the work, made known by the discovery of new matter since its publication. In 1830 there was published at Saco, Maine, a small 12º volume, by George Folsom,[635] called History of Saco and Biddeford, with Notices of other Early Settlements, etc. Although a history of two comparatively small towns, now cities, yet they were early settlements; and the author, who had a faculty for history, made his work the occasion of writing a brief but authentic sketch of the history of Maine under all her multiform governments and varying fortunes. It was the best town history then written in New England, as it was also the best history of the Province of Maine..