To the editor:
As early as 1580, English explorers had discovered North America’s vast treasure of white pine masts. By 1634, New England sent its first cargo of masts to England.
Starting in 1688, mast pines were reserved for the British navy by use of a hack-mark (shaped like a crow’s track) on trees measuring 24 or more inches in diameter. By 1772, the Massachusetts District of Maine was the leading colonial exporter of masts. During the Revolutionary War, exports to England ceased.
On September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War. Article Two of that treaty defined (vaguely) Maine’s northern boundary. In 1784, a Boundary Commission was established. After years of explorations, archaeological excavations, and negotiations, it was formally declared (in 1798) that the boundary was on the northernmost headspring of the Cheputnaticook, now called Monument Brook.
Still, the northeast boundary of Maine was not resolved. Perhaps settling it would draw a dividing line through one of the last important stands of white pine. The first British steam-powered ship (equipped with back-up sails) would not cross the Atlantic until 1838.
Evicted by some of the 30,000 new Loyalist settlers (refugees) on the lower St. John, a group of French Acadians re-settled at the mouth of the Madawaska River on the River St. John in 1785. Although they were beyond Grand Falls (where British ships couldn’t follow), and in the “Disputed Territory,” their land claims were affirmed by the British in 1790.
From 1812 to 1814, the United States and Britain were again at war. Under the Treaty of Ghent, Col. John Johnson, representing the United States, and Col. Joseph Bouchette, representing Great Britain, received instructions (June 11, 1817) to survey the northeast boundary of Maine, as described in the Treaty of 1783.
Col. Bouchette hoped to prove that the international line should extend from Mars Hill across to Mt. Katahdin. The team went by way of the St. John River and the new Military (Houlton) Road to Amity where they erected a monument (July 31, 1817) on the site of a post put up by a survey party in 1797.
From Amity, they extended a line northward all the way to the Great Wagansis, the first branch of the Restigouche River, in the highlands north of the St. John River. A line west and south from the Restigouche to the British claim lines at the western boundary of Maine would become the American boundary claim.
After the erection of the boundary markers between the District of Maine and New Brunswick in 1817-18, some men from the Kennebec Valley planned to move north, keeping west of that line.
In 1818, John Harford, John Baker, and Nathan Baker (all from Saco) settled with their families at the Madawaska Settlement. They tried, in the company of a Massachusetts magistrate, to convince the Acadians they were under the jurisdiction of the United States. This information traveled fast to New Brunswick authorities.
On September 5, 1818, Francis Duperre, a captain of British militia at Grand Falls, reported to his uppers in Fredericton that the American Nathan Baker had cut about ten or twelve hundred tons of timber on the north bank of the River St. John and that “he appeared to be a man who took much upon himself.”
Even before Maine’s official statehood in 1820, seeds of the “bloodless” Aroostook War (1838-39) were being sown. To be continued.
Presque Isle
