Origin Story: A Return to Presque Isle

In June we returned to what is really the origin of my family, the state of Maine. The occasion was the burial of my father, and while my parents are both from Aroostook County, we have rarely been since I left home almost 50 years ago. The burial of my three grandparents who died in my lifetime, and the 50th wedding anniversary of one of my great aunt and uncles is the sum total of my trips to what was once my family homeland. Maine is a product of the Ice Age. The last glacier was responsible for cutting what had been a relatively straight coastline into the hundreds of bays, inlets and picturesque harbors we know today. The receding ice sheet formed the 2,000 or so islands found off the Maine coast. The region's earliest inhabitants were descendants of Ice Age hunters. Little is known of these "Red Paint" people - so named because of the red clay with which they lined the graves of their dead - except that they flourished and hunted in Maine long before the coming of the Micmac and Abnaki Indian nations. Burial grounds for these earliest Maine dwellers are thought to date back to 3000 B.C. Huge oyster shell heaps on the Damariscotta estuary testify to the capacious appetites of Maine's aborigines. Colonization came to Maine as it did to much of North America in the 17th century--A number of English settlements were established along the Maine coast in the 1620s, although the rugged climate, deprivations and Indian attacks wiped out many of them over the years. As Maine entered the 18th century, Massachusetts had bought up most of the land claims in this wilderness territory, an arrangement which lasted until 1820 when Maine separated from Massachusetts to become a separate state. At that point in time that my folks relatives were there--and maybe that is a bit of where the French in my gene pool came from, with England and France jockeying for control of the region. So while I rarely return, it feels comfortable when I do.