Twenty-eleven marks the 250th anniversary of the start of Abraham Somes and James Richardson’s settlement in what is now Somesville on Mount Desert Island. But there was a lot of activity before Somes dug his root cellar, put up a log cabin, and brought his family from Gloucester, Massachusetts to populate the island.
Early Life on “The Sloping Land”
Archaeologists have unearthed Native American artifacts on MDI dating back to 4,000 B.C. The People of the Dawn—Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac, and Maliseet tribes—are the most recent Native Americans to make the island home. They called it “Pemetic”, which means “the sloping land.”
Some sources state that the Wabanaki from the Bangor and Old Town area spent their summers on Pemetic. More recent findings have shown the opposite—that the Wabanaki wintered there in order to avoid the harsh winters inland and to take advantage of the salmon runs upstream. Others claim that tribes lived on Pemetic year-round.
The Wabanaki would position their tents near mud flats, where the rivers met the sea and where the clams were plentiful. This location also ensured they would have fresh water. They travelled by birch bark canoes and ate what they could fish, hunt, and gather. When the Europeans started to come to the island, trading became a way of life for the natives.
The first European to sail the waters around MDI was Estevan Gomez, a Portuguese sailor in the Spanish service. He was sent by Spain to find a route to the Pacific. In 1525, he sailed up the Penobscot and landed in Bangor instead.
The next adventurer to set foot in the area was Samuel de Champlain. He came to MDI in 1604 as the right hand man to Sieur de Monts. De Monts had a grant from King Henry IV to claim the land for France.
De Monts sent Champlain in a small boat to explore the coast of L’Acadie—what the French were calling MDI at the time. Champlain and de Monts, like many European explorers, were looking for the mythical city of Norumbega, where it was believed inhabitants wore gold and fur and worshiped the sun.
The river that led to Norumbega, on many European maps, was in New England. But since the area was largely unmapped and not heavily explored, no one knew what river it was, though many believed it was the Penobscot and that Norumbega was where Bangor is now.
On his scouting trip, Champlain came ashore in Bar Harbor. This is an excerpt from his journal:
The island is high and notched in places so that from the sea it gives the appearance of a range of seven or eight mountains. The summits are all bare and rocky. The slopes are covered with pines, fir, and birches. I named it Isle des Monts Desert.
The next day he writes:
We sailed two leagues and saw smoke in a cave at the foot of the mountains. Two canoes with savages in them came within musket range to observe us. I sent out our two savages in a boat to assure them of our good will, but their fear of us made them turn back. On the morning of the next day they came alongside and talked with our savages. I ordered biscuit, tobacco, and other trifles to be given them. These savages had come (to the island) to hung beavers and catch fish. We made our alliance with them and they agreed to guide us to their river of Pentagoet [Penobscot].
Champlain, who was 17 or 18 years old at the time, was the first explorer to discover that MDI was, in fact, an island. He named it l’Isle des Monts-Deserts, the island of bare mountains. The mountain that bears his name, Champlain Mountain, fittingly sits in the entrance to Frenchman’s Bay, also named in honor of Champlain.
The first attempt to make a permanent settlement on MDI by Europeans was made by France in 1613. It was financed by Madame de Guercheville and her Jesuit friends. Their goal was to look for Norumbega and, more importantly, convert the Native Americans to Christianity. The Jonas set out from France carrying 48 sailors and colonists, including two Jesuits, along with horses, some goats, and years’ worth of food. The group had four tents donated to them by the King of France for their first homes in their new land.
The group was actually headed to present-day Bangor but got lost in a thick fog, and after sailing aimlessly overnight, they found themselves on the eastern shore of MDI. They were so grateful that they hadn’t been hurt, or worse, in the fog, that they named where they landed “Saint Sauvier”, meaning “holy savior.” This name lasted only a few days, as they relocated to the western shore, thanks to a clever group of Wabanakis, a few days later.
The Kenduskean tribe wanted the group of Europeans to settle not in Bangor, but on Pemetic, where their supplies would be of use to them for trading purposes. The tribe lured the Frenchmen to their own settlement in Northeast Harbor with a tall tale. Their leader, Chief Asticou, they told the Jesuits, was on his deathbed, and his dying wish was to be baptized so he could have a Christian burial and go to heaven. How could the eager Jesuits resist? What the Frenchmen found was an Indian Chief with a bad head cold—but the ploy worked. When the new settlers saw beautiful Fernald’s Point across from Somes Sound, they decided to give up on their mission to find Norumbega and settle where they were.
Their time there was short: the settlement was soon destroyed by the English under command of Samuel Argall (most well-known in history books for the kidnapping of Pocahontas). This was the first of many acts of warfare between France and England over control of North America.
It would be 84 years before another French explorer would lay claim to MDI. That Frenchman was a middle-class adventurer named Antoine Laumet. This man changed his name to the more distinguished-sounding La Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac (a town near his hometown in France) and even fabricated his own coat of arms.
In 1688, La Mothe obtained a land grant, which included MDI. He didn’t live on the island long, because he was afraid of an attack by the English. But the highest peak in Acadia National Park is named after him—Cadillac Mountain.
The next granter of MDI was Francis Bernard, the royal governor of the province of Massachusetts. In anticipation of receiving the grant in 1761, Bernard convinced two Gloucester men, Abraham Somes and James Richardson, to start a settlement. Somes and Richardson took the bait and set out to relocate their families north. Somes writes: I was requested...to procure as many settlers as I could go with me to settle the land.
Settled on Mount Desert Island
What made Abraham Somes and James Richardson leave their hometown and settle in relatively uncharted territory? Tim Garrity, head of the MDI Historical Society explains that the best fishing and farmland in Gloucester was disappearing due to increased population. Families that had upwards of 10 children didn’t have enough land to parcel out to all of their sons. Left with little to nothing to build a life on, many young men with families were looking for a new place where they could carve out a living.
Thus began the first permanent white settlement on MDI.
These early settlers were hardworking and had well-kept houses. Their many children helped them with their farms—they grew vegetables, like potatoes and corn, as well as barley. Many families also had a boat for fishing. They would eat, trade, or sell the fish to buy flour, oil, soap, and other necessities from merchants. Families also kept chickens and cows. Most of these early settlers were from southern Maine and Gloucester, Cape Ann, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
By the time Maine separated from Massachusetts to form its own state in 1820, farming, fishing, lumbering, quarrying granite, and shipbuilding were mainstays on MDI. By 1870, almost the entire first growth of timber had been cut on the island, and the most prosperous fishing ports were Bass Harbor, Southwest Harbor, and the harbors on the Cranberry Islands.
There wasn’t much for women to do to make money outside of the home during these days. Some made clothing, stockings, and mittens to sell as well as fishing nets. While the men were plowing the fields, felling trees, and catching fish, women were mostly keeping house—more than a full-time job without the modern conveniences we now take for granted.
It was common for a man to come to MDI, build a log house, and then head home to fetch his family, just as Abraham Somes did. Most homes were modestly furnished, and the heat and cooking were done in the fireplace. The first house for a family was small and was replaced a few years later by a bigger and better one. Cooking stoves came into use in the home in the 1850s and made life much easier for the matriarch. Before the first wheelwright came to town, wheels for carts and such were circular cuts of trees with a hole bored in the middle.
In an illustrated guidebook dated 1877, published by Loring, Short and Harmon, Clara Barnes Martin writes:
The harvest of the sea…draws the men away from their homes, and blinds them to any advantage to be gained by [farming]…the worn faces of the women—all trace of beauty so early lost—told a sad tale of discomforts, of ill-cooked food, and needless exposure storm and cold.
Still, families were very neighborly and readily helped when needed. The men of the community helped with barn raisings, while the women welcomed strangers, took care of the sick, and even raised children from mothers who had died in childbirth.
The first doctor on the island was Dr. Kittredge, who settled in Somesville in 1799. He had a large practice that included MDI, Trenton, Blue Hill, and Surry. To get to his patients, he walked, rode a horse, or went by boat. If you needed the good doctor but lived on the other side of the island, you would light a bonfire at a specified point where it could be seen by the western side of the island. It was the duty of the western residents to get word to Dr. Kittredge that his assistance was needed.
Dr. Kittredge also served as the clerk of the Congregational Church and worked a large farm. It has been said that no matter how dire his patient, on arrival at their house, he’d ask for lunch and sit down to eat it and smoke a pipe before seeing the suffering.
Many women on the island were versed in medicinal herbs and wild plants that could be found in the area. Families used pennyroyal tea to cure headaches, spearmint for an upset stomach, and peppermint for colic.
The economy was built around laborers, until artists and rusticators who came to Mount Desert Island in the mid- to late-1800s brought different jobs—mainly around providing for the early American adventurers. Painters from the Hudson River School of American Painters, most notably Thomas Cole, ventured to MDI to take advantage of the scenery.
Adventurous men, called rusticators, were taken by the beauty of their paintings and wanted to experience the outdoors of this largely uninhabited island. One of Cole’s students, Frederick Church, brought his friends along with him on his painting excursions on MDI. Growing demand for guided trips to MDI launched an 1855 trip of 20 people, with Church as their guide, on a steamboat out of New York City harbor as the first formal outing to the Isle of Bare Mountains.
In those early days, it was terribly difficult to get to MDI, and the Civil War made it nearly impossible, as all the steamboats were diverted to government use. At the start of the Civil War in 1861, there were over 4,000 people living on MDI. About 50,000 Maine men went to fight the war—350 of them from the island. One in five of all Maine infantry died. From 1860 to 1870, the population of the island fell 8%.
The Birth of a Vacation Mecca
Once the war was over, the adventurists returned, looking for that pioneering experience. Fine food and luxurious accommodations were a distant second to fresh air, hiking, and exploration. But these men needed a place to stay, and many homes opened up their doors as hostels. By 1887, there were 17 hotels on MDI, catering to the burgeoning tourist industry.
Most of the steamships at this time landed in Southwest Harbor, where there were six hotels. From there, visitors would board primitive carriages, called buckboards, to take them to other parts of the island. MDI’s roads at the time offered little comfort, and the trip from Southwest Harbor to Eden (which changed it’s name to Bar Harbor in 1917) took well over three hours.
Summer colonies of rusticators and wealthy residents started gaining momentum in the late 1800s, and vacationers were coming faster than hotels could be built.
It was during this time that tensions between the summer residents and the Native American population developed. The Wabanaki’s way of life had changed drastically, as the population of residents on MDI rose. In fact, over 75% of the Indian population had been wiped out by diseases the early European explorers and settlers had brought to the island.
In 1883, 250 Native Americans were settled in camps around Eden in about 40 tents. They sold their handmade baskets and birch bark canoes to visitors and taught them how to row. Nevertheless, many residents (especially the wealthy summer ones) thought the Indian tents on the shore of this still-exclusive town were unsightly. The town residents built a small community for the Indians away from the shore, dubbed “Squaw Hollow”, on the land across from where the YWCA is today.
The first hotel in Eden was built in 1855. Called the Agamont House, it was enlarged in 1883. The Rodick, a fine hotel built on Eden’s new Main Street in 1866 by David Rodick, Jr. and his wife, Betsey Brewer, was added to in 1873. At its height, the Rodick could hold 350 guests.
By 1885, Eden was the place for the prominent from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and these hotels were popular meeting places for the socialites. The town was growing rapidly with houses, cottages for the summer people, shops, churches, and mills. Most of these were clustered around Main, Mount Desert, and Cottage Streets. During this time, Eden’s population soared by almost 300% to 4,379 people.
Many wealthy city folk built cottages in lieu of staying in hotels. By the 1890’s, these “cottages” had grown in scale and formality and were, for all intent and purpose, summer mansions.
Growth was rampant throughout the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th—a gilded time for the islands. With the influx of more wealthy summer vacationers, locals were hired to serve them, do their laundry, and take care of their children.
The 1919 inception of Acadia National Park (which was called Lafayette National Park until 1929) brought a different breed of tourists to the area. Middle-class folk who lived close enough to drive took vacations to MDI to check out the newly-minted national park. But the island remained a hot spot for the well-to-do through the Great Depression.
But what would become known as Bar Harbor’s gilded age did not last forever. Around the time of WWI, some wealthy summer residents found Bar Harbor’s growth too social and extravagant, and they moved to other towns, like Northeast Harbor and Seal Harbor. The introduction of the income tax in 1913 and wage increases for household workers made it more expensive to spend long periods of time on the island for summer residents. Many islanders went off to fight in WWI, and gasoline and tire rationing went into effect. Women who hadn’t worked before started pitching in, reducing the island’s domestic work force.
The Pulitzers and other notable families at this time began tearing down their cottage mansions with the intention of building smaller ones. Some mansions, too expensive to run, were abandoned or rented out.
In 1912, there were about 200 cottages in MDI. That number was halved, thanks to the Great Fire of 1947.
On October 17, 1947, a small dump fire got out of control. In seven days, it burned over 18,000 acres of land. As people evacuated, Bar Harbor burned around them. One hundred and seventy year-round houses, five hotels, and 67 summer cottages burned to the ground. President Truman proclaimed MDI a disaster area.
But while the fire was obviously devastating, it also had a positive impact on the town. The Jackson Laboratory, Kebo Valley Golf Club, and Acadia National Park all started rebuilding. New trees were planted all over the burnt earth. The fire gave the Bar Harbor Planning Commission the opportunity to finally put the plans they had been working on for years into action. They bought the wharf and created a terminal for the ferry to Canada.
Not willing to rebuild, the wealthy cottage industry inevitably “died” after the fire, which opened the doors to the everyday tourist. No longer the playground of the elite, Mount Desert Island is everyone’s playground, just as it should be.
