Many scenes and dramas have passed within the purview of Georgetown Island, situated at the mouth of the Kennebec River. In pre-history, Native Americans of the Abenaki Confederacy were the first identifiable tribes to use the island, coming down from Norridgewock and the Penobscot region to gourmandize on oysters, fish and clams, and to hunt in winter for ducks and beaver...
It is established that Viking ships visited the shores in the 10th century, perhaps landing, and it may be surmised that the Phoenicians could have appeared even a thousand years earlier. Word of the teeming fishing grounds passed from one culture to another and, before the days of Columbus, French, English, Italian, and Portuguese ships made forays into the area...
As far as is known, there were no permanent European communities in the “New World” until the Spaniards founded St. Augustine in Florida in 1565. This was followed by the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, coincidentally the same year as the Popham Colony was established in Phippsburg at the mouth of the Kennebec...
This article will be published in forthcoming issues of The Georgetown Tide
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