is gone." "They often," he adds, "have to run in debt for their necessaries on account of their lavish expense for drink, and are constrained to mortgage their plantations if they have any, and the merchant when the time is expired is sure to turn them out of house and home, seising their plantations and cattle, poor crcatures, to look out for a new habitation in some remote place, where they begin the world again." Such is the description which this voyager gives of the early settlers of our State, and it accounts for the fact which would otherwise seem extraordinary, of the shipment of so large a quantity of wine, as is above mentioned, to plantations then in their infancy.

The merchandise sent to the proprictor in England, consisted principally of pipe staves, beaver, fish, and oil. In 1639, Winter2 sent in the bark Richmond, six thousand pipe staves, which were valued here at eight pounds eight shillings a thousand. Some shipments were made directly from the plantation to Spain: and a profitable intercourse seems to have been carried on for the proprietors a number of years, until it was suspended by the death of Trelawny. After that time the want of capital, probably prevented Winter from employing ships on his own account, and Trelawny's heir was but a child of six or seven years old. The commercial character of the plantation declined from that time, and the trade gradually sought other channels, until the mouth of the Spurwink and Richmond's island became entirely deserted. Their mercantile prosperity are now only to be found among the perishable 1 Jocelyn, p. 212.

2 Below we present the autograph of this prominent pioneer, John Winter.

and almost perished memorials of a by-gone age. In 1648, after Winter's death, the plantation and all its appurtenances were awarded to Robert Jordan, by a decree of the general assembly of Ligonia, to secure the payment of a claim which Winter's estate had upon the proprietors. Jordan married Winter's only daughter, and administered upon the estate. He presented his claims to the court of Ligonia, in Sept. 1648, by whom a committee was appointed to examine the accounts and make report of the state of them. This committee went into a minute investigation, and reported in detail; upon which an order was passed, authorizing Jordan to retain "all the goods, lands, cattle, and chattels, belonging to Robert Trelawny, deceased, within this province from this day forward and forever, unless the executors of said Robert Trelawny, shall redeem and release them by the consent and allowance of the said Robert Jordan, his heirs," &c.

Winter died in 1645, leaving a daughter Sarah, the wife of Robert Jordan. Jocelyn says of Winter that he was "a grave and discreet man ;" 2 and his management of the plantation proves him to have been an enterprising and intelligent one. He had much difficulty with George Cleeves respecting the right to the soil both on the Spurwink and on the north side of Casco river, which, although suspended during the latter part of Winter's life, was revived by his successor. Jordan came over about the year 1640, at least we do not meet with his name before that year, as successor to Richard Gibson, the minister of this and the neighboring plantations. The precise time of Gibson's arrival cannot be ascertained. We find him here as early as April, 1637; he went to Portsmouth in 1640, and was chosen pastor of the episcopal church there; in 1642, he was preaching on the Isles of Shoals, and probably the same

1 See Appendix No. 2, for Jordan's petition and the proceedings thereon. 2 Jocelyn, p. 25.

year returned home.' Gibson is called a scholar, by Winthrop.* He made himself obnoxious to the government of Massachusetts by the zeal with which he maintained his religious tenets, and was in some danger of being punished for it; but on making a suitable submission, and "being about to leave the country" he is excused.

Having mentioned some of the most interesting particulars relating to the early settlement of Richmond's island and Spurwink, the spots first occupied within the territory of Falmouth, we return to follow the fortunes of George Cleeves and Richard Tucker.

Driven from the place which they had selected as the most favorable for their purposes, and where they had made improvements and prepared accommodations, their next care was to provide another convenient situation in the wilderness,' where they might hope to enjoy without interruption the common bounties of nature. They selected the Neck, called Machigonne by the natives, now Portland,2 for their habitation, and erected there in 1632 the first house, and probably cut the first tree that was ever felled upon it, by an European hand.*

1 York Records, Annals of Portsmouth, p. 27. Winthrop, vol. ii, p. 66. In 1640, Gibson brought an action in Gorges' Court against John Bonighton, of Saco, for slander, in saying of him that he was a base priest, a base knave, a base fellow," and also for a gross slander upon his wife, and recovered a verdict for "six pounds, six shillings, and eight pence, and costs, twelve shillings and six pence, for the use of the court." York Records.

*[Gibson was educated at Magdalen College, Cambridge, from which he took his degree of A. B., 1636.]

2 This was first called Cleeves' Neck, afterward Munjoy's Neck, by which name it was long known.

*[I have long endeavored to ascertain the meaning of the Indian term Machigonne, without success. The Rev. E. Ballard, of Brunswick, who has paid much attention to Indian dialects, thinks the name was given to the whole Neck, beginning with or near Clay Cove, and that the word means bad clay. He says that in the dialects of New England Matche means bad; it appears, he says, to

We are induced to fix upon this year as the one in which the first settlement was made upon the Neck, from a number of circumstances which will be briefly adverted to. In Winter's answer to Cleeves's action, before noticed, he says that after possession was given to him of the land granted to Trelawny, in July 1632, he warned Cleeves to leave the premises; and on his refusing to do it, he repaired to Capt. Walter Neale, who required him to yield up the possession; he then adds, "and soone after, the plaintiff left his said possession to the defendant." It is very reasonable to suppose that this application to Neale was the immediate consequence of Cleeves and Tucker's refusal to give up the possession, and that the removal which followed "soon after," was not protracted beyond the year; at any rate it must have been done before midsummer of the next year, for Neale then returned to Europe.

Again, Cleeves in another action against Winter in 1640, for disturbing his possession on the Neck, has the following declaration: "The plaintiff declareth that he now is and hath been for these seven years and upwards, possessed of a tract of land in Casco bay, known first by the name of Machigonne, being a neck of land which was in no man's possession or occupation, and therefore the plaintiff seised on it as his own inheritance by virtue of a royal proclamation of our late sove

be formed from Mat, no, not. The syllable gon is given by Schoolcraft as a primary Algonquin term denoting clay land. He considers the name descriptive of the soil upon and around Clay Cove and other parts of the Neck.

On the contrary, Mr. Porter Bliss, who is conversant with Indian languages, says that Mr. Ballard's interpretation is not correct: that in the Micmac or Algonquin dialect, Mach means great, and Cheyun, knee or elbow, and its application is to the promontory on which the Neck or Portland is situated, as a great curve or elbow, sweeping round from the Fore river to Back Cove. He compared it to the name Michigan, which in the Chippewa language, a branch of the Algonquin from the same original, means the great bend or curve which the lake Michigan takes from Huron. When such learned pundits disagree, we do not feel competent to pronounce judgment.]

reign lord King James, of blessed memory, by which he freely gave unto every subject of his, which should transport himself over into this country, upon his own charge, for himself and for every person that he should so transport, one hundred and fifty acres of land; which proclamation standeth still in force to this day, by which right the plaintiff held and enjoyed it for the space of four years together, without molestation, interruption, or demand of any; and at the end of the said first four years, the plaintiff, desirous to enlarge his limits in a lawful way, addressed himself to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the proprietor of this Province, and obtained for a sum of money and other considerations a warrantable lease of enlargement, bounded as by relation thereunto had, doth and may appear." The lease from Gorges, referred to by Cleeves, was dated January 27, 1637, at which time he says he had been in possession of the Neck four years; this in connection with the possession upward of seven years previous to the trial, will carry us back to the latter part of 1632, or the very first of the year following, and leaves no room to doubt that Cleeves and Tucker entered upon the Neck, immediately on being dispossessed of the land on the Spurwink.

1

That they were the first that settled here, there can be no doubt; Henry Jocelyn a cotemporary of Cleeves, has left his testimony of that fact in the following deposition given before Henry Watts, commissioner: "August 18th, 1659. Henry Jocelyn examined, sweareth, that upwards of twenty years, Mr. George Cleeves have been possessed of that tract of land he now liveth on in Casco Bay, and was the first that planted there, and for the said lands had a grant from Sir Ferdinando Gorges, as Sir Ferdinando acknowledged by his letters, which was in controversy afterwards between Mr. Winter, agent for 1 York Records, Appendix No. 3.