I might mention a volume of Sketches of the Ecclesiastical History of Maine from the Earliest Period, by the Rev. Jonathan Greenleaf of Wells, published at Portsmouth, 1821.
In 1831-33 William Willis published his History of Portland, in two parts. The work embraced also sketches of several other towns, and it was prefaced by an account of the early patents and settlements in Maine; while the second edition, issued in 1865, is yet more full on the general history of the province.
There are other valuable town histories, and I cannot do better than refer the reader to Mr. William Willis’s “Descriptive Catalogue of Books relating to Maine,” in Norton’s Literary Letter, No. 4, for 1859, and as enlarged in Historical Magazine, March, 1870.[636]
The Collections of the Maine Historical Society,[637] in eight volumes, contain a large amount of material which illustrates this early period. The first volume was issued in 1831, and in fact forms the first part of Willis’s History of Portland. The Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and especially vol. vii. of the fourth series, should be cited as of special interest here.
The Relation of the Council for New England, the narratives in Purchas, Winthrop’s Journal, Hubbard’s Indian Wars, and that author’s History of New England and the Two Voyages of Josselyn, have already been referred to, and they should be again noted in this place, as should Dr. Palfrey’s History of New England especially. Gorges’ Briefe Narration, 1658, is most valuable as coming from the original proprietor himself. Its value is seriously impaired by its want of chronological order and of dates, and by its errors in date. In what condition the manuscript was left by its author, and to what extent the blemishes of the work are attributable to the editor or the printer, can never be known. Sir Ferdinando died in May, 1647. The work was written not long before his death, and was published some twelve years afterward, with two compilations by his grandson and the sheets of Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence.[638] Notwithstanding its blemishes, the tract has great value; but it should be read in connection with other works which furnish unquestionable historical data.
The Memorial Volume of the Popham Celebration, Aug. 20, 1862 (Portland, 1862), contains a good deal of historical material; but a large part of it was, unfortunately, prepared under a strong theological and partisan bias. In its connection with the settlement at Sabino, it has been mentioned in an earlier chapter.
A valuable historical address was delivered at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, Nov. 4, 1876, by Joshua L. Chamberlain, President of Bowdoin College, entitled Maine, Her Place in History, and was published in Augusta in 1877.
New Hampshire.—New Hampshire was probably first settled by David Thomson, in the spring of 1623. The original sources of information concerning him are the Records of the Council for New England; a contemporaneous indenture, 1622, recently found among the Winthrop Papers, and since published; Winslow’s Good News, London, 1624, p. 50; Bradford’s Plymouth Plantation, p. 154; Hubbard’s New England, pp. 89, 105, 214, 215; Levett’s Voyage[639] to New England in 1623/24; Pratt’s Narrative, in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., iv. 486, and Gorges’ Briefe Narration, p. 37. All these authorities are summarized by the present writer in a note, on page 362 of Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., May, 1876, to a paper on “David Thomson and the Settlement of New Hampshire.”
For the settlement of the Hiltons on Dover Neck, and for the later history of the town, see Records of the Council; Hubbard; a Paper on David Thomson in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., as above; 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 63; Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, i. 118, and the authorities (A. H. Quint and others) there cited; cf. Mr. Hassam’s paper in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., January, 1882, p. 40; Winthrop’s Journal, i. 276.
For the doings of the Laconia Company, and the settlement of Portsmouth, see Belknap’s New Hampshire, who errs respecting the Laconia patent and the date of the operations of the Company; Hubbard as above; Provincial Papers, where the extant Laconia documents are printed at length; Jenness’s Isles of Shoals, 2d ed., New York, 1875, and his privately printed (1878) Notes on the First Planting of New Hampshire; the paper on David Thomson, as above; Adams’s Annals of Portsmouth; N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., ii. 37.