"Jonathan Alias"
by
Patricia Junkin
as posted 19 Feb 2004 on Internet Discussion List
DUNHAM-DONHAM@rootsquest
and reposted with permission from Patricia.
Hyperlinks to various websites concerning "Popham's Colony" at Pemaquid Beach have been added to Patricia's story by Audrey (Shields) Hancock.
With the settlement of Popham�s Colony at Pemaquid Beach [Maine] on August 8, 1607, the history of the earliest settlement of Maine actually predates that of Plymouth. In J. Henry Cartland�s Twenty Years at Pemaquid, Sketches of Its History and Its Remains, Ancient and Modern is this reference, �...among the archives of Spain, of Point Popham, at the mouth of the Kennebec, showing a plan of Fort George, which was built there by the Popham Colony 1607-1608. Spain watched with a jealous eye the early English settlements here, on what they claimed as their territory. Zuniga, ambassador of King Phillip III of Spain, to England, reported in 1606, the project of Chief Justice [Sir John] Popham, whom he designates as a �great Puritan.� On the 5th of March 1610, Zuniga reports: �I am told vessels are loading at Plymouth (Eng.) with men to people the country they have taken, and that colonies from Exeter and Plymouth are on two large rivers�.�
The English were aggressive in establishing themselves along the rivers and coast of Maine and a struggle ensued over the title rights ensued. By 1620, a charter �was granted by James the first to forty �noblemen, knights and gentlemen,� creating them a body politic and corporate by the name of: �The council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for planting, ruling and governing New England in America�.� The 1620 Plymouth Company charter enlarged their "powers and giving them wider jurisdiction. The vast territory extending from the 40th to the 48th degree of north latitude, and from sea to sea, was placed at the disposal and under the government of the company, now styled the Council of Plymouth."
On 27th May 1622, "commissioners from Massachusetts appeared at Wells, and it was finally agreed that a county court should be held at York on the first Tuesday in July by Messrs. Jocelyn and Shapleigh of Maine and Captains Waldron and Pike of Massachusetts."
Edward Winslow had taken a ship loaded with corn for trade up the Kennebec River in 1625, and by January of the following year �William Bradford and his associates obtained a grant from the Council of Plymouth, in the County of Devon, of the soil where they were settled in Massachusetts called New Plymouth. At the same time Bradford and others who were of the colony obtained a grant of land upon the Kennebec river...� Bradford and his asociates held this later grant until 1640 �when they surrendered it to �all the freemen of Plymouth�.� This area was known as the County of York under Massachusetts authority.
Pat Junkin 1997
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