Why did our fathers emigrate to this barren region where frost and snow hold uninterrupted sway for one half of the year, and the reluctant soil yields its inhabitants scanty support as the reward of resolute and unremitting toil? Why did they not seek a more productive soil under summer skies? These questions are often asked by the dwellers of eastern Maine.

The early settlers of Lincoln township were mainly from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and the western section of the Province of Maine. These settlers had been settled many years and the best lands had been appropriated. As a rule the farmers were large in those days, and the old homes had become like overstocked hives. The grown-up children must seek new homes as their fathers and mothers had done in years gone by. The industrial occupations outside of agriculture were limited in range.

The manufacturing industries that now allure young men and women in large numbers from agriculture pursuits, had no existence then. The Lewistons, Lowells and Manchesters, and the hundreds of villages where factories line the borders of their streams and rivers, and the hum of whose machinery is as incessant as the roar of their waterfalls, are creations of a later date. Commercial employments, house carpenters, ship building and other mechanical industries, all on a limited scale, with the addition of navigation and fishing, gave employment to a limited number of people, but the great mass of New England laborers were obliged to draw their subsistence from the heart of Mother Earth. It was therefore natural for young men to choose the employment that had given their fathers the means of support, and not infrequently, had made them independent. To this class of men, lands that were cheap, productive and accessible were the desideratum. All these conditions could be found in the easterly sections of the Province of Maine.

Land could be purchased at low prices, and of its productiveness, there was abundant evidence. The appearance of the surface indicated fertility. One enthusiastic prospector from New Hampshire filled his tobacco box with dark rich earth looking loam which, on his return home, he exhibited to his friends, declaring that it would make good pudding. What disposition he made of his tobacco in the meantime tradition does not inform us. The character of the forest growth indicated strength of soil. More conclusive evidence was found in the large crops of wheat, rye and corn that had been raised in near at hand townships which had been raised in near at hand townships which had been settled at an earlier date.

Inducements of another character were presented to allure settlers. The best statesmanship of Massachusetts had been employed to promote the settlement of the eastern lands of that state by the adoption of a liberal policy. Reservations of land had been made in each township by the general court of Massachusetts to aid in the support of the institutions, so dear to New England people--the school and the church; a policy which attracted a good class of emigrants. Other influences attracted other classes of emigrants.

Then, as now, there were men who, being repelled by the conventionalities and restraints of society, were carried on the current of emigration to the outer limits of civilization. There were also men who sought border life to gratify their propensity for hunting and fishing.