Maine History - Four Key Dates

(part of a continuing series on the USA state of Maine)

13,000 to 11,000 BCE – Nomadic Paleoindians (ancestors of the Wabanaki peoples) arrive in Maine at the end of the Ice Age.

http://iceagetrail.umaine.edu/content/iceageinmaine/iceageinmaine.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabanaki

1604 AD – first European settlement by a French team led by Sieur de Monts, a French Protestant merchant. The settlement was on an island in the St. Croix River (now the USA-Canada border). De Monts’ party included royal cartographer Samuel de Champlain, a Catholic priest and a Protestant pastor. The winter was harsh, and in the spring the group moved to a more habitable place in Nova Scotia.

1820 AD – Maine becomes a USA state as part of the Missouri Compromise. (Maine would be a free state while Missouri would be a slave-holding state.) Before this date Maine had been part of Massachusetts.

1842 AD – The Webster-Ashburton Treaty establishes the current border between Maine and New Brunswick, ending the unofficial “Aroostook War” (a war of words rather than actual combat). The treaty did not clarify ownership of Machias Seal Island and nearby North Rock, and their ownership is still disputed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster-Ashburton Treaty