Editing Falmouth, Maine (section)

=== New Casco (1630–1765) ===

Falmouth's original bounds encompassed the present day cities of Portland, South Portland, Westbrook and Cape Elizabeth. Today’s town was known as New Casco, and was only a neighborhood within the larger collection of communities around Casco Bay centered in what is downtown Portland. Falmouth’s early years were marked by extreme violence as it lay on a borderland zone between Europeans and Native Americans. Casco Bay represented the northernmost point of British colonial settlement on the east coast until 1713. Numerous wars between 1675–1763 among the British, French, and Native Americans rarely left Falmouth unscathed from the violence. English colonists twice abandoned Casco Bay altogether under pressure from French and Indian attacks in 1676 and 1690.

[[File:Fort New Casco.jpg|rendering of Fort Casco in 1705|thumb|left|250px]]

The first European resident was Arthur Mackworth, who lived on the east bank of the Presumpscot River as early as 1630. When the [[Massachusetts Bay Colony]] took political control of Maine in 1658 from the heirs of [[Ferdinando Gorges|Sir Ferdinando Gorges]], they renamed the area Falmouth after an important [[Pendennis Castle|Parliamentarian victory]] in the [[English Civil War]]. Colloquially known as "Falmouth in Casco Bay" to distinguish it from [[Falmouth, MA|Falmouth, Massachusetts]] on Cape Cod, it was the 7th town in the recently formed [[Province of Maine]], later being formally incorporated on November 12, 1718.<ref name=Coolidge>{{Cite book  | last = Coolidge  | first = Austin J.|author2=John B. Mansfield  | title = A History and Description of New England| publisher = A.J. Coolidge  | year = 1859| location = Boston, Massachusetts| pages = [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_OcoMAAAAYAAJ/page/n157 123]–124| url = https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_OcoMAAAAYAAJ| quote = coolidge mansfield history description new england 1859.  }} [https://books.google.com/books?id=4WjGkuhZyaoC&dq=portland+maine+pendennis&pg=PA10 Joseph Conforti, "Creating Portland: History and Place in Northern New England;" Lebanon, New Hampshire 2005, 9-12].</ref>

One of the earliest structures in the town of Falmouth was a [[palisade]]d fort and [[trading post]] named [[Fort Casco]] built in 1698 at the conclusion of [[King William's War]]. The location of the fort can be found today opposite Pine Grove Cemetery on Route 88. Massachusetts built the fort at the behest of local Abenaki desiring a convenient place to trade and repair tools and weapons. A 1701 meeting between the Wabanaki leaders and Massachusetts officials cemented an alliance between the two. A pair of stone cairns were then erected to symbolize the new partnership. The nearby Two Brothers Islands later received their name from this now long-forgotten monument.<ref>Emerson W. Baker, “Formerly Machegonne, Dartmouth, York, Stogummor, Casco, and Falmouth: Portland as a Contested Frontier in the Seventeenth Century,” in Creating Portland: History and Place in Northern New England, ed. Joseph A. Conforti (Lebanon, NH, 2005), 1–19; "Memorial of Propositions made with the Eastern Indians," Documentary History of the State of Maine (1907), 10:87–95.</ref>

Unfortunately, this peace would last less than three years, with the inauguration of [[Queen Anne's War]] in 1702. Governor [[Joseph Dudley]] held a [[Treaty of Casco (1703)|conference]] at New Casco with representatives of the [[Abenaki]] tribes on June 20, 1703, trying to convince them not to ally with the French. His efforts were unsuccessful, as the fort was besieged only two months later by Abenaki Sagamores Moxus, Wanungonet, [[Nescambious|Assacombuit]] and their [[Kingdom of France|French]] Allies during the [[Northeast Coast Campaign (1703)|Northeast Coast Campaign]].  The arrival of the Massachusetts ship ''Province Galley'' relieved the fort by dispersing the Wabanaki and the some 500 French with its guns. Peace returned in 1713 with the [[Treaty of Portsmouth (1713)|Treaty of Portsmouth]]. When the resettlement of present-day Portland began in 1716, the [[Province of Massachusetts Bay|Province of Massachusetts]] ordered that the fort at New Casco be demolished rather than maintain it.<ref>John G. Reid, “Notes and Comments: Unorthodox Warfare in the Northeast, 1703,” Canadian Historical Review 74, no. 3 (1992): 211–20.; Baker, “Formerly Machegonne," 1–19.</ref>

New Casco was not permanently settled by British colonists until the [[Battle of the Plains of Abraham|fall of Quebec]] in 1759 permanently removed the threat of French and Indian attacks. Living so far away from Portland was dangerous: only one family lived in the town in 1725. An Indian raid in 1745 and the murder of Job Burnal in 1751 represented the risks colonists undertook to live in the area.  The majority of the first permanent European inhabitants to the town came after 1740, quickly growing to "62 families" and forming their own parish in 1753 (currently the Falmouth Congregational Church). The population of Falmouth would hover between 1,000 and 2,000 residents for the next two centuries.  These residents engaged in farming, fishing, and harvesting [[Mast (sailing)|masts]]. Mills on the Presumpscot River, [[Piscataqua River (Presumpscot River)|Piscataqua River]] in West Falmouth, and Mussel Cove powered sawmills, processed agricultural products, and manufactured finished goods by the 1800s.<ref>W. M. Willis, Journals of the Rev. Thomas Smith and the Rev. Samuel Deane (Portland, ME: 1849),54, 59–60; http://falmouthcongregationalchurch.org/history/ {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150211185523/http://falmouthcongregationalchurch.org/history/ |date=February 11, 2015 }}; Charlotte Donald Wallace, E Pluribus Unum: a Story of Falmouth, Maine (Falmouth, ME: Falmouth Historical Society, 1976), 19.</ref>