Local city information for Arrowsic, ME

Arrowsic is a town in Sagadahoc County, Maine, United States. The population was 477 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Portland–South Portland–Biddeford, Maine Metropolitan Statistical Area. During the French and Indian Wars, Arrowsic was site of a succession of important and embattled colonial settlements. It is a favorite with artists and birdwatchers.

Abenaki Indians called the island Arrowseag, meaning "place of obstruction," a reference to Upper Hell Gate on the Sasanoa River. Until it was widened by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1898 and 1908, the stretch was choked with boulders and ledges. Indian canoe passage would have been risky in the swift current between Merrymeeting Bay and Sheepscot Bay.

In 1649, John Richards purchased Arrowsic from the sachem Mowhotiwormet, commonly known as Chief Robinhood. Richards then sold it in 1654 to Major Thomas Clarke and Roger Spencer, the latter selling his share in 1657 to Captain Thomas Lake. Clarke and Lake were Boston merchants, who built at Spring Cove on the island's northeast corner a stockaded trading post and blockhouse protected by at least two great guns. In 1658-1659, land was cleared for pasturage, streets, a warehouse, sawmill, gristmill, bake house, blacksmith shop, cooperage and shipyard. Several large dwellings were erected, one called the Mansion House. Families and stocks of cattle were imported. The village became the local court of law, headquarters of the general council, and place of protection for settlers in the region.

But on August 14, 1676 during King Philip's War, the settlement was destroyed. The evening before, an Indian woman appeared at the door of the Clarke and Lake fort seeking shelter. She was admitted, and in the dead of night quietly opened the gate. In rushed warriors, and in the massacre which followed, 30 colonists were either killed and scalped or taken into captivity. Captain Thomas Lake, Sylvanus Davis and two others seized a canoe and paddled to Parker's Island (now Georgetown), where all but Lake escaped alive from their pursuers. As the warehouse was looted and village burned to ashes, a brave sported the captain's hat.

In 1679, returning settlers established a temporary settlement known as Sagadahoc on Stage Island, and petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for a permanent settlement on the southern end of Arrowsic Island. Governor Edmund Andros complied, granting 20 families Newtown. It was laid out with a common and, by order of the governor in 1688, a small, square palisaded fort on the ridge at the southern end of the island. But King William's War broke out in May of 1689, and by July, Newtown was destroyed and its garrison abandoned.

Signed in 1713, the Treaty of Portsmouth brought a truce between the Eastern (Abenaki) Indians and English settlements. Newtown was reestablished in 1714, then incorporated in 1716 as Georgetown-on-Arrowsic, named after King George I. Eventually, the town's boundaries were extended to include Parker's Island, Stage Island and the Plantation of Nequasset (present-day Georgetown, Phippsburg, Bath, West Bath and Woolwich).

Beginning on August 9, 1717, Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute conducted a two day conference on Arrowsic with delegates of various tribes, who arrived in a flotilla of canoes and encamped on Lee Island opposite the town. They objected to so many English forts in their territory, and Shute responded that he would build them wherever he thought necessary. Incidentally, the governor's boat Squirrel ran aground on what has been known since as Squirrel Point. All the Indians helped him get free.

In the summer of 1723 during Dummer's War, Arrowsic was attacked by the Norridgewocks and their 250 Indian allies from Canada. Incited by French missionary Sebastien Rale, they burned 37 dwellings and killed 300 cattle. The 40 inhabitants fled to the garrison, with only a child lost. When the fort could not be taken, the Indians disappeared upriver. On June 9, 1758, marauding Indians shot Ebenezer Preble and a workman as they tended his farm on the northern end of the island. They then attacked his garrison, killing his wife and carrying away their 5 children to be sold as servants in Canada. It would be the last Indian massacre on the Kennebec River; next year brought the Fall of Quebec. On February 17, 1841, Arrowsic Island was set off from Georgetown and incorporated as the town of Arrowsic.

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