wild lands
On May 3rd, 1762 the first settlers stepped ashore on the west bank of the Kennebec River, onto the wild lands that would become Hallowell, Maine. Deacon Pease Clark, his wife Abigail, their son Peter, with his wife Zeruah with their young daughter Pheobe, had traveled from Attleborough, Massachusetts, by boat, sailing up the Kennebec River until they came to our familiar bend in the river.
Local legend tells of the Clark’s first night where they had no shelter. The intrepid settlers passed the night under a rough cart they had brought with them, and turned upside-down for their first night’s roof.
The first efforts of the Clarks were devoted to making a small clearing and to the creation of a temporary dwelling. They planted corn and rye upon the burnt land. Before the snows of the following winter fell, these energetic first settlers had hewn timber, procured boards and planks from the mill at Cobbossee, and built a comfortable frame house of two stories in front and one at the rear, according to the fashion of the times; and ever after that, the hospitable doors of the Clark house stood open to welcome all newcomers to this locality.
excerpt from: Emma Huntington Nason, Old Hallowell on the Kennebec., 1909
Their riverfront lot measuring 50 rods wide (about 275 yards), encompassed the land around the current old Cotton Mill in Hallowell. The first woods they cleared for their home and farm is where the old Hallowell Fire department building is, at the corner of Second Street and Perley’s Lane—and incidentally, also where the artist created the mural prior to its installation.
Benjamin Hallowell
The Clarks acquired land from Benjamin Hallowell, from whom the city gets its name. Benjamin Hallowell was one of four wealthy Boston merchants, the Kennebec Proprietors, who purchased large tracks along the Kennebec from the Plymouth Colony.
In 1629 the Plymouth Colony had been granted land originally claimed by the British monarchy.
earlier history
Since 1628 Europeans of the Plymouth Colony had operated a small trading post about 2 miles further up river, (near Fort Western). They traded with the local Abenaki peoples until the late 1670’s.
At that point what became known as the “Indian Wars” dissuaded any serious settlement by Europeans or colonists in the Kennebec Valley for almost a century. The New England colonies fought the native people of the Wabanaki Confederacy (the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Penobscot, and Abenaki) who were allied with the French of New France over the rights to the lands.
The various land wars resulted in the the killing of so many native peoples that by the final treaty of the King George’s war in 1748 the battles were solely about French or English colonial rule in the area, with the New England colonies prevailing over the French.
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