Maine Admitted to the Union
Maine, the largest state in New England, was admitted to the United States on March 15, 1820, becoming the 23rd state. The region has a rich history dating back to prehistoric times, with early human inhabitants known as the Red Paint People. European interest in Maine began with Viking exploration, notably by Leif Ericson, and continued through various European expeditions, including those by John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazano. The first significant European settlement occurred in 1604 under French leadership, but it faced challenges, including harsh winters and conflicts with Indigenous peoples.
For over a century, Maine was part of the political turmoil between England and France, with shifting control that included a period under the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Throughout the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Maine's population fluctuated due to Native American wars and resettlement efforts promoted by Massachusetts. The push for statehood gained momentum following the American Revolution, ultimately leading to Maine's admission as a free state through the Missouri Compromise, which aimed to balance the power of free and slave states. Upon statehood, Maine's population was approximately 298,335, and its capital was later moved from Portland to Augusta in 1832.
Maine Admitted to the Union
Maine Admitted to the Union
Maine, the largest of the New England states, was admitted to the Union on March 15, 1820, as the 23rd state. Archaeological evidence indicates that humans inhabited the area as early as prehistoric times. The earliest inhabitants are called the Red Paint People because their graves customarily contained various quantities of a bright red pigment, powdered hematite. Later tribes in Newfoundland and New England used this pigment to color their huts, canoes, weapons, and bodies.
European exploration of the area probably began with Leif Ericson, the Viking son of Eric the Red, in the 10th or 11th century. Five hundred years passed without further exploration, until Columbus discovered the New World in 1492. During the years 1497–1499, the explorer John Cabot made several voyages to the North Atlantic coast of the Americas in the service of England's King Henry VII. England later based its territorial claims on Cabot's voyages, although for many years thereafter it more or less ignored the new land.
Giovanni da Verrazano (or Verrazzano), an Italian navigator in the service of France, sighted Maine in 1524, a year before the Spanish explorer Estevan Gómez. In subsequent years many Europeans came but most of them, seeking a route to the Indies, merely sailed past Maine. In the first decade of the 17th century, the kings of England and France each granted charters for the area of the New World that included Maine. There followed over a century of bitter competition, filled with raids, claims, and counterclaims. Under charter from France's King Henry IV in 1604, Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, accompanied by adventurers such as the famous Samuel de Champlain, established the first Maine colony on St. Croix Island at the mouth of the St. Croix River. After a hard winter, the French colonists left St. Croix and moved across the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal (later Annapolis Royal), Nova Scotia. Champlain, however, continued to explore Maine, discovering many of its rivers, providing the first detailed maps of the islands off the mainland, and mapping the jagged coastline with its many natural harbors. The French, including the many missionaries who later followed the Sieur de Monts to the New World, were more successful in establishing friendly relations with the Native Americans than were the English explorers who arrived later.
The first British newcomer, Captain George Weymouth (or Waymouth), landed at Monhegan Island in 1605. He obtained valuable information that helped future English colonists, but also guaranteed those colonists a hostile reception by kidnapping five natives to take back to England. That infamous act, plus subsequent years of continual incursions by white men and constant breaking of treaties, ensured long years of warfare in Maine.
When he returned to England with his five captives, Weymouth's adventures caught the imagination of many of his countrymen, including Sir Ferdinando Gorges, military governor of Plymouth, England. In 1606, when King James I granted a charter to the Plymouth Company, Sir Ferdinando and Sir John Popham underwrote an expedition to the New World to be led by Sir John's nephew, George Popham. Arriving at Allen's Island, one of the present Georges Islands, on Sunday, August 9, 1607, the colonists gathered for prayers of thanksgiving, the first English religious service on New England soil. The Popham colony was established near the mouth of the Kennebec River on the Sagadahoc Peninsula.
The colonists, however, had not brought sufficient supplies, and more than half of them returned to England in December 1607, promising to send supplies as soon as possible. George Popham stayed, but, like several of the other settlers, he did not survive the harsh winter. In the spring, the ship bringing supplies from England arrived with news of the death of Sir John Popham. Rather than face another Maine winter, the disheartened colonists returned home in September 1608 aboard the first ship to be built in the New World, the Virginia of Sagadahoc.
The name New England was apparently given to the area by Captain John Smith, who in 1614 put in briefly at Monhegan Island and the abandoned Popham colony site and charted the coast from Rhode Island to Nova Scotia. He returned to England with a rich cargo of furs and fish and reported that the land was suitable for settlement. However, the hardships suffered by the Popham colony were not put aside easily. To prove that Europeans could endure the climate, Captain Richard Vines and his 16-man crew spent the winter of 1616–1617 at a site at the mouth of the Saco River. A few years later, Vines returned and established the first successful settlement at Saco, an achievement that was followed by other coastal settlements west of Penobscot Bay.
In 1635 Sir Ferdinando Gorges, appointed governor-general of New England, sent his nephew William Gorges to act as his deputy in the New World. The latter set about organizing the government, and in 1639 Maine's first legislative and judicial court was held at Saco. In 1639 Sir Ferdinando received the charter for “The Province and Countie of Maine” from Charles I of England. The name Maine was probably taken from the region of Maine in northwest France as a salute to Charles's queen consort, Henrietta Maria, daughter of King Henry IV of France.
After Sir Ferdinando's death in 1647, Parliament invalidated his grant, but his heirs, disregarding Parliament's action, sent a deputy governor to Maine. With the confusion of grants and leadership, Maine settlers tried to form their own body politic. Their effort met with no great success, and the province of Maine came under the rule of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1652, despite the protests of the Maine settlers. King Charles II restored the charter for the province of Maine to Ferdinando Gorges, grandson of the earlier Sir Ferdinando, in 1664. Massachusetts judges were ordered out of Maine, and royal commissioners went in to establish an independent government. There followed a long period of political upheaval, squabbling about rights, and native warfare, which reduced the number of Maine settlements to three or four. In 1677, during this period, Gorges sold all rights to Maine to Massachusetts for 1,250 English pounds.
The British sovereigns William and Mary gave Massachusetts its second charter in 1691, and the province of Maine became the district of Maine, governed by Massachusetts. By 1732 the European population of Maine had been either wiped out or driven out by the long years of native wars. To stimulate resettlement, Massachusetts offered free land in Maine. Within a decade Maine's settler population grew to 12,000, but again the settlers were entangled by warfare with the native tribes.
The people of the District of Maine began to agitate for separation from Massachusetts at the close of the American Revolution. They did not succeed until 1820, when Maine was admitted to the Union as a free state through the Missouri Compromise, in which Missouri was also admitted to the Union but as a slave state in order to preserve the political balance between the free states in the North and the slave states in the South. Maine's population at that time was 298,335. Its capital, first at Portland, was moved to Augusta in 1832.