By Jonathan Tucker

The Landscape & the Watershed

The landscape of the part of York, Maine where Micum McIntire and his fellow SPOWs settled was defined by the York River.  Before European settlers arrived, this southernmost tidal river in what is now southern coastal Maine had been called Agamenticus by the Algonkian-speaking Newichawannock (Pennacook) and Saco tribal Native Americans who lived near the river, travelled on it, and seasonally fished and gathered shellfish there.

The area drained by the York River watershed is fairly small as river systems go, and is described in more detail in the “York River Study” (http://www.yorkrivermaine.org/ ):

The York River watershed covers 33 square miles in parts of [the towns of] South Berwick, Eliot, Kittery, and York.  A watershed is the land area from which water flows to form the network of tributaries and brooks that contribute to a river system.  While the York River itself is about 11 miles long, the York River watershed includes 109 miles of streams.  The York River is a tidal river, with small unnavigable freshwater tributaries feeding into a relatively large tidal basin.  Tidal fluctuation can be more than 10 feet.

The York River has its headwaters in South Berwick and flows to the Gulf of Maine.  The following description of the water’s journey is adapted from the Wells Reserve’s York River Watershed Conservation Strategy Report.

The York River begins at the northwest corner of York Pond and quickly flows into the Upper Bartlett Mill Pond in Eliot.  It then travels south to southeast through woodlands and under Brixham Road and Frost Hill Road before entering the town of York and coming under tidal influence.  Here it is met by Cutts Ridge Brook (which originates in Kittery) from the south just before passing under Birch Hill Road.  The River continues its travels, twisting and turning, in an easterly direction where it converges with Rogers Brook and Smelt Brook.  As the River begins to widen, it turns in a more southerly direction where it is crossed by Scotland Bridge Road.  At this point, Bass Cove Creek (which leads in from Boulter Pond) and Cider Hill Creek, both from the north, connect to the River.  Across from the outlet of Cider Hill Creek, Dolly Gordon Brook and Libby Brook converge and empty into the River from the South.  The York River then passes under the Turnpike and Route 1.  It curves around Ramshead Point, continuing in a southeasterly direction, where it is crossed by Sewall’s Bridge and Route 103.  The River passes Bragdon and Harris Islands, turns sharply around Stage Neck and empties into the Gulf of Maine.

Designated a Wild and Scenic River under federal law, the mixed tidal, estuary, and fresh water nature of the York River and its tributaries make it a rich ecological area and a corridor for water borne transportation.  Immediately west and south of the river lies the much larger watershed of the Piscataqua River.  The tributaries feeding the headwaters of the York River at York Pond begin further west within the eastern boundaries of the town of South Berwick, Maine.

Native American Use of the River

Native American archeological sites—places used regularly as fishing/hunting camps or seasonal residences—tend to have several fairly consistent general characteristics.  They are often located on gently south-facing slopes with relatively dry soils.  And they are most often found in association with coastal areas, small rivers, and streams.  This is because, year in and year out, the most consistently reliable sources of food are associated with water—fish, shellfish, invertebrates like crabs and lobsters, amphibians, resident water birds, migratory waterfowl, and mammals.  People need to live where food is available, and living food congregates in and near the water.

{NOTE:  An exception for the York River watershed are the fortified palisaded defensible structures to which Native Americans would retreat during times of warfare and conflict.  These were often sited in the middle of large swamps.  It is worth noting that swampy wetlands, in addition to providing concealment and hidden travel routes during conflict, are also rich ecological areas where food is abundant.  However, no such structures or sites have been identified within the York River watershed.]

Archeological study within the York region reveal the presence of Paleo-Indian groups (in Elliot, about 1.9 miles west of York Pond) from as early as 10,000 years ago.  These were mobile hunter-gatherer groups following the herds of grazing animals on the grasslands that grew up on the bare land as the glaciers receded.  Sites within the York River watershed itself indicate that indigenous peoples were in residence or seasonally used the river and streams for all of the periods that followed:

Paleo-Indian Period           12,000 to 9,000 years B.P. (B.P. = before present)

Archaic Period                    9,000 to 3,000 years B.P.

Ceramic Period                   3,000 to 400 years B.P. (also known as the ‘Woodland Period’)

Contact Period                    From just after 1500 through the early 1600s

Colonial Period                    From 1620 on.

There are several extensive shell middens (piles of discarded shells) in areas where shells were traditionally harvested from the river at low tide along the York River.  The middens indicate millennia of use by Native Americans, beginning as early as the Ceramic period.  The York River basin has always been a good place to live.

As was discussed in Chapter 7, Native American residence in the York area—as opposed to occasional or seasonal visitation, or raids during period of conflict—began to diminish after a series of epidemics from 1611-19 involving European viruses or bacteria wiped out the majority of the regional indigenous population, and most of the survivors withdrew further north and west.  But it probably did not vanish entirely until the 1800s, and perhaps not even then.

Early European Settlement

European settlement of Agamenticus—the community at first took on the Native American name for the river—began 1624-1630, and was initially clustered around York Harbor and close to the coast.  As settlement expanded, by 1642 the harbor had become well established, and settlement had begun to spread away from the village center and the coast, with some of it following the York River upstream.

After the principal proprietor of the settlement, Sir Gorges, died in May 1647, most of what is now southern and western Maine was claimed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony (the French claimed the rest).  Resolution of control of the area took decades.  In 1652, the parish of York was incorporated as a separate community carved out of the larger area of Gorgeana.  When York came into being as a community, Micum McIntire and 20-25 Scottish prisoners of war had been in the region for about a year at Oyster River (Durham, NH).  Another 15-25 Scots were in Newichawannock (South Berwick, Maine), working at the Great Works and Salmon Falls mills.

Scotland District to Scotland Parish

Former Scots prisoners obtained land grants near one another between 1655-1680 and settled around the upper reaches of the wide part of the tidal flow of the York River.  They included:

Micum McIntire

Alexander Maxwell

Alexander Machanere (MacNair)

Robert Junkins

Andrew Rankin

John Carmichael

Daniel Dill

William Gowan.

Of these, Micum McIntire, Robert Junkins, Alexander Maxwell, Alexander MacNair, and Daniel Dill were particularly close neighbors and friends.

Other Dunbar and Worcester Scots settled and lived in other parts of York, as well.  For instance, Dunbar Scot Thomas Holmes was indentured to millwrights Henry and Thomas Sayward, first in Berwick and then York.  In York, Holmes married Joan Freethy/Treathy.  Joan’s father was local fisherman Samuel Treathy, earlier mentioned as having come out decidedly worse (as in, unconscious) in a drunken brawl with Micum.

In the process of settling close together at the upper tidal reaches of the York River, the former prisoners created their own community and small hamlet.  Early on, a bridge was built across the river to provide quick access between properties on both sides, and was then periodically improved over time.  The associated intersection of the Scotland Bridge Road with Cider Hill Road (Rte. 91) became a center for the hamlet.

Initially referred to as the Scotland District, the population of the hamlet grew over the generations and needed its own parish church.  In 1719, construction of a second parish church for York was authorized in the Scotland district, and it was built along Cider Hill Road (Rte. 91) west of the McIntire Garrison, near the intersection with High Pine Road.   The area was thereafter known as Scotland Parish.

Location & Advantage

The upper tidal reach of the York River and its watershed provided the Scots settlers with distinct advantages.

Access to Resources

In Scotland District, the settlers had equal access to the ecological resources of the river, the ocean, and the land.  They could travel downstream by boat to trade in the village center or fish in the harbor or along the coast.  The upper reaches of the tidal flow of the river provided access to the same rich beds of shellfish and other food resources that had fed Native Americans for millennia.  The meandering upper tidal reaches of the river created wide floodplains.  In those regularly inundated soils grew extensive meadows of salt marsh hay (Spartina alterniflora)—a superior, much preferred feed for livestock.

The surrounding land, shaped by the river, consisted of gently sloping treed hills and meadows, reliable sources of freshwater, and soils (once cleared of trees) that were suitable for crops, fruit trees, and grazing livestock.  The river provided ready access to and transport for the produce they grew, the livestock they raised, and lumber from the nearby wooded uplands—lumber was a critically important resource for construction for a growing region, and one that the former Scots prisoners were quite used to harvesting and milling from the time of their indentures.

Social & Economic Advantages

From Scotland District via the river or overland, the Scots settlers had ready access to—but were a comfortable distance away from—the center of York Village where the local English settlers had clustered their own settlement around York Harbor.  Because of the arms-length distance from Puritan authorities, the Scots could exercise more day-to-day control over the conduct of their lives and their own community.  This was also true in an economic sense—clannish Scots stick together not only for familiar cultural company, but to keep their economic lives more securely ‘within the family.’  They sold land, exchanged goods, and intermarried with one another.

Scotland Parish was also relatively close—less than a day’s walk or ride–to the other groups of former Scottish prisoners who had settled in Unity Parish in Newichawannock (South Berwick) or those further west across the Piscataqua River in Cocheco (Dover) and Oyster River (Durham).  Segments of the current Route 91 (Cider Hill Road in York) were doubtless originally part of Native America trail systems that were used, enlarged, and improved on by colonists.  It was not a long or difficult trip on foot or horseback, although it may have been daunting during times of conflict with Native Americans, by virtue of its original narrow, winding, and closely-wooded nature.  From Scotland Parish, Micum McIntire and his fellows could participate in an extended regional network of cultural and economic exchange in a wider Scottish community with a powerful shared history of triumphing over and surviving adversity.

Remoteness Equals Danger

There was one significant drawback to the location of Scotland Parish during the early period of its settlement.  Its more remote location placed the Scots and their families further out on the frontier edge, where they were more vulnerable to attack by displaced Native Americans.  While the Scots preferred the location for the many reasons previously mentioned, the ease with which settlement there was accomplished was to an extent deliberate on the part of the English proprietors approving land grants in York.  From an English perspective, the Scots—an inferior and barbarous race prone to fighting and rebellion—provided a buffer between displaced and hostile Native Americans (and later allied French and Indian forces) and the core of English settlements.

It was almost 4 miles from the Maxwell (later the McIntire) Garrison to the relative security of York Village center and the concentration of other armed settlers who constituted the local York militia.  The distance downriver to the harbor—vulnerable the whole way to attack from the banks–also significantly limited the Scots’ ability to retreat to the ocean, which was a not uncommon response to attack for early English settlers.

But the English proprietors had not been entirely wrong.  These Scots settlers were very much not Englishmen.  They were used to relying first and foremost on themselves and the other members of whoever constituted their clan.  They were used to having to fight to defend their home glens and clan territories (and occasionally invading those of other clans, if only to ‘borrow’ cattle).  Many of them had been battle-hardened soldiers for years before being captured at Dunbar or Worcester.

The prospect of armed conflict on their home grounds was not pleasant, but it did not daunt them in the same way it did many of the English settlers.  And when conflict came—as it did repeatedly beginning in King Philip’s War (1675-76) and throughout the several French and Indian wars that followed—the Scots did not shrink from it.  The potential for injury, death, and loss while defending your home had always been a feature of their lives, and it had been embedded in their culture by centuries of conflict.

~~~~~

The abundant resources of the York River watershed and their own choices provided these pioneer Scots with a chance to establish new and successful lives, filled with opportunities they would never have had access to in Scotland.  Although some (Andrew Machanere, John Carmichael, Andrew Rankin, Daniel Dill, and others) did not survive the challenges of the frontier in Scotland Parish or York, we as the descendants of Micum McIntire and these former Scots prisoners and their children can bear living witness to and celebrate their success.

And when we travel out to visit the McIntire Garrison, drive around Scotland Parish, cross Scotland Bridge, or walk the trails in the McIntire Highland Preserve, we can take the time to stop and be still, to observe and listen to the river and the land.  And we can begin to understand how the York River and its rich resources were the foundation on which the success of our ancestors was built, and made our own existence possible.

[NOTE:  Three hundred of the 416 acre McIntire Highlands Preserve was a gift to the Town of York, Maine from Mary McIntire Davis.  Information about the preserve and other conservation preserves can be accessed through the website of the York Land Trust.]