"First Settlement of Garland" | Maine Farmer, 1867

First Settlement of Garland

From the Maine Farmer, Nov., 1867

(COMMUNICATED BY JOSEPH WILLIAMSON)

The town was granted by the State of Massachusettts to Williams College. In 1799 the College sold it to Levi Lincoln and others. It was called Lincolnville. The first selection of a lot was made at the time by Isaac Wheeler, which he afterwards settled. In 1801, David A. Gove, a resident of Nottingham, N. H. , purchased a lot and felled ten acres of trees that year. Josiah Bartlett came from the same town the next year. During 1802, openings were made by sixteen or more individuals from the western part of Maine and New Hampshire.

On the 22d of June, Joseph Garland came from New Hampshire with his wife and three children to Bangor, which was then a village with but two stores, and placing his wife on a horse with one child before and another behind, he drove his stock by spotted trees to Garland. From this circumstance, when the town was incorporated, it took the name of Garlnad. During this year a saw-mill was built by the proprietors, and in 1803 several frame buildings were erected. In 1805, there were twelve families within the limits of the town. In 1806, the first school was opened by William Mitchell, in the house of Joseph Garland. In 1810, a Congregational church was organized, which was one of the first of the kind in Penobscot County. In 1811, the town was organized, when there were about fifty legal voters. The Freewill Baptists organized a church in 1813.

Bangor Historical Magazine, Porter, Joseph W., ed., Volume IV, June 1888 - June 1889, Bangor: Benjamin A. Burr, 1888-1889.

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