Possible Right Whale Wintering Ground Found

North Atlantic right whales appear to be wintering off the coast of Maine.

A large number of North Atlantic right whales have been seen in the Gulf of Maine in recent days, leading right whale researchers at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) to believe they have identified a wintering ground and potentially a breeding ground for this endangered species.

The NEFSC’s aerial survey team saw 44 individual right whales on December 3 in the Jordan Basin area, located about 70 miles south of Bar Harbor, Maine.

With a population estimated to be about 325 whales, knowing where the whales are at any time is critical to protect them. [Link]

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Southern Maine Veterans' Memorial Cemetery

Work began in October on a new 88-acre veterans' cemetery in Springvale. The work should be completed by spring, 2010, with burials starting next fall. The Master Plan renderings may be viewed here.

The state currently operates two veterans' cemeteries in Augusta, and a third in Caribou.

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How Some Towns Got Their Names

1. Milbridge
The name is thought to have been suggested by John Gardner of Boston, who built the first bridge across the Narraguagus River.

The spelling of Milbridge has been a subject of much discussion. Some say that two "ls" should be used because the name is a blending of the two words, "mill and bridge." They further assert that the early incorporators meant it to be such. The one "l" supporters affirm that their spelling should prevail for if the town's namers did not mean it to be such, they would not have used the spelling with one "l" in the Act of Incorporation. They affirm that a mistake could not have been made, there, for the word was spelled too many times.

[The Milbridge register, 1905]

2. Norway
Petitioners in 1795 requested that their proposed town be named "Norage." Charles F. Whitman, in his History of Norway, suggests two explanations for this suggestion: Either it was an alternate spelling of "Norwich," the name of an English city; or it was an alternate spelling of "Norridge," a Native American word for waterfalls. Whatever the petitioners' intentions, the General Court interpreted "Norage" as an alternate spelling of "Norge," the Norwegian name for Norway.

3. Dixfield
Legend has it that Dixfield was named for Dr. Elijah Dix as a quid pro quo.

The good doctor had promised to build a library for the town if the citizens voted to change its name from Holmantown to Dixfield. The citizens voted to do just that, but the library never materialized. Dr. Dix in the meantime had moved, and mailed the citizens dusty, old boxes of medical books - printed in German, no less with which to found a library. [Link]

The town would not have a proper library until 1935.

4. Presque Isle
Presqu'île is French for "peninsula." The town center was located on a peninsula formed by the Aroostook River and Presque Isle Stream.

5. Damariscotta
Said to derive from an Abenaki term for "place where alewives are plentiful."

6. Embden
Named for Emden in what is now Germany. Town clerk Benjamin Colby, Jr., is credited with changing the spelling by adding a "b" a year after the town was incorporated.

7. Mars Hill
Named for the town's prominent mountain, which was named for the Areopagus in Athens.

8. Stoneham
Stoneham was incorporated and named for the Massachusetts town in 1834. A proprietor named Ellis B. Usher succeeded in having the name changed to "Usher" in 1841. The townsfolk protested, and had the change reversed two years later.

9. Orland
First settler Joseph Gross is supposed to have found an oar on the shore of the river when he arrived in 1764. By the time of incorporation in 1800, "Oarland" had become "Orland."

10. Roque Bluffs
Nearby Roque Island (in Jonesport) is said to have been named for Saint Roch by Champlain.

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Rejected Town Names

Some proposed and rejected names for Maine towns:

• Sunbury (Bangor)
• Reach (Bath)
• North Wood (Corinna)
• Sharon (Durham)
• Sumner (Ellsworth)
• Russia (Greenwood)
• Fluvanna (Guilford)
• Columbia (Hebron)
• Winchester (Islesboro)
• China (Rumford)
• Independence (South Thomaston)
• Sparta (Woodstock)
• "Hertford, Woodstock or Lisbon," or Williamston (Hartford)
• New Hancock, or Gilman (Sumner)
  
• Knoxbury, or Knoxburgh (Prospect)

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Three Junks of Pork

There are at least three places in Maine called "Junk of Pork." One lies a few miles beyond Peaks Island, and was described by Samuel Drake Adams in 1891 as "a tough morsel even for old salts." A photograph taken last year confirms the following description from 1892:

The rock is called the Junk of Pork, and is one of the most dangerous on the Maine coast. It rises precipitously to a height of nearly fifty feet from the surface of the sea, and is encompassed with countless bowlders and jagged reefs. [Link]

A second Junk of Pork lies in Flanders Bay, in the town of Sorrento. It was described by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey as "a small dirt cone of unusual appearance."

An even smaller Junk of Pork, shown here, is located in Beech Hill Pond, in the town of Otis.

The Maineism "junk"—meaning "a fairish-sized piece; a hunk"—made it into the Dictionary of American Regional English in 1985.

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Pronouncing "Mount Desert"

A debate over the proper pronunciation of "Mount Desert" pitted 19th-century scholars against year-round residents of the island.

The accentuation should not fall on the last, but on the first syllable of Desert, although the name is almost universally mispronounced in Maine, and notably so on the island itself. Usually it is Mount Desart, toned into Desert by the casual population, who thus give it a curious significance.

[Nooks and corners of the New England coast (1875)]

It would hardly seem necessary after quoting Champlain's statement with regard to the name of this Island and his reasons for so naming it, to call attention to the proper accentuation of the word "Desert," but there are still many who place the accent on the last syllable, a practice which has a tendency to obscure its meaning. We have seen that Champlain called the place the "Isle of the Desert Mountains," and from this, doubtless, it came to be called Mount Desert. The French words for this name are Mont Desert the last word pronounced as though written "dezer." Now, since we have substituted Mount for the French "Mont," why should we not give the word Desert, which is written alike in French and English, the English accent? It is true Champlain did not call the Island a desert, only its mountains, but the words "Mount Desert" or "Desert Mount," convey the meaning intended by him, and the word Desert with the accent on the first syllable used in its ordinary sense of solitary, unfilled, uninhabited, is part of the name. The fact that many of the natives of the Island accent the word differently and give a different significance to the terms employed by Champlain, proves nothing. We have Champlain's own statement that the name was intended to describe an island filled with solitary, uninhabited mountain wastes, and no words better described such a place than those used by him.

[William Berry Lapham, Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island (1886)]

Lapham's argument was picked up in 1886 by the New York Times, by way of the Lewiston Journal.

How shall Mount Desert be pronounced? is a question asked many times. Shall it be Mount De-sert or Mount Des-ert? Dr. Lapham, who is an authority on such matters, is in favor of the latter pronunciation. The Maine Historical Society has adopted it—made it an English name. Dr. Lapham's suggestion that as we have given it the English orthography it should have English pronunciation is sensible. Let it be Mount Des-ert, then.

And yet, the "corrected" pronunciation didn't catch on.

"Everybody now seems to say Mount Desert (de-zert')."—Boston Globe.

[Seven Thousand Words Often Mispronounced (1895)]

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Maine Railroad Accident Reports

I've posted several hundred railroad accident reports from 1870-1889 on my Maine Genealogy website. Warning: some (including the one below) are quite gruesome.

Sarah Ann Cunningham, a child eighteen months old, a daughter of Mr. Thomas Cunningham of Milford, was killed on the 25th of November, by the 5:15 down freight train, at the railroad crossing in Milford, near the bridge. The parents live within a few rods of the track; but the child had never before, as its mother says, strayed on to the road that she was aware of. It was a very dark evening, and the place of the disaster was upon a down grade, and upon a curve. The engine had no head-light, and the employés upon the train were not aware of the casualty until the next day. The remains were found by a little sister, sent to search for her after she was missed in the evening, on the track where the railway crosses the county road, the head severed from the body, and lying some feet from it.

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Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary

A Passamaquoddy-Maliseet dictionary was released this week.

The dictionary is being presented to the First Nations communities after three decades of work. The project began in the 1970s when organizers of an education program in Maine decided a dictionary was needed to keep the Maliseet language alive.

Members of the First Nations communities on both side of the international border contributed words and definitions. [Link]

You can get a taste of the language here, and pick up the print version at local bookstores.

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Google Launches Street View in Maine

I just received this press release from Google:

Today Google Maps has expanded the coverage of its popular Street View feature to include imagery from across Maine. Street View is a free feature of Google Maps that lets internet users view and navigate 360-degree street-level imagery of cities, towns, and regions across the United States and internationally. Street View is integrated with driving directions on Google Maps to make it easier to see the view of the streets that accompany directions.

Using Street View, people can check if a restaurant has parking out front, make travel plans, arrange meeting points, save time at open houses on Saturday morning, and explore both well-known and more isolated parts of the state. Street View also now puts Maine's most historic and iconic landmarks and attractions on display, including Acadia National Park and the Nubble Lighthouse at Cape Neddick in York.

Stephen Chau, Product Manager at Google, commented: "We're thrilled to bring Street View to so much of Maine -- places like Portland, Auburn, Lewiston, Bangor, Bar Harbor, the view from drives along the Atlantic coastline, Acadia National Park. Since launching Street View, we have heard great feedback about how Street View has helped its users in their lives and how it has enabled them to discover many remarkable new places. Now residents and visitors alike can explore all Maine has to offer."

"Google Maps has been very popular and is used by organizations, businesses, and individuals far and wide as an essential and informative tool every day of the week. Street View provides an added experience by enabling users to see street-level panoramas of Maine's public roads."

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