A look back at Biddeford

A Bartholomew Gosnold, a British Adventurer, left on March 26th to find a more direct route, and after “only” 7 weeks, reached the shores of the New World. He recorded making land at about 43 degrees North Latitude: It marked the first time that a European had laid eyes on the shores of Maine. 

Part of Gosnold’s report included his assessment of the land’s ability to be fruitful: Farming, after all, was still important in England, and it would be an absolute requirement in any attempt to settle the new lands. “From the Island,” he wrote in one of his reports, “We went over to the mayne (“mainland”, and presumably where Maine got its name from) where we stood a while as ravished at the beautie and delicacy of the sweenesse, besides divers cleare lakes whereof we saw no end, and meadows very large and full of greene grasse. In 14 days grain we sowed by way of experiment sprung up 9 inches.” Among the “spontaneous” productions from the soil came, “Ground nuts, as big as goose eggs, as good as potatoes, and 40 on a string, not two inches under the ground”… the Maine Potato had been discovered.

Gosnold’s descriptions were enticing enough to prompt further voyages of discovery, and a clergyman of Bristol, Richard Hakluyt, organized a party of two ships to further explore “North Virginia”, which was New England’s first name. He set sail from Bristol on April 10, 1603, with John Brierton, hiring a Martin Pring as Captain, and using some of Gosnold’s party as guides. Early in June, they arrived on the coast of Maine, called by the natives “Movoshen”, and harbored among the islands in Penobscot Bay.

They sailed south, and into Casco Bay, and entered some inlets described as follows:

“The most easterly was barred at the mouth, but having passed over the bar we ran up it for 5 miles, and for a certain space found very good depth. Coming out again as we sailed southwest, we lighted on two other inlets, which we found to pierce not far into the land. The fourth, and most westerly, was the best, which we rowed up 10 or 12 miles. In all these places, we found no people, but signs of fires where they had been.” (John Brierton, Smith’s Virgina)

Historians believe that the first inlet was the Saco River. The second and third were the Kennebunk and York Rivers, and the westernmost and “best” was the Pascataqua. The reason they found no people was that they were, at this point in the summer, further upstream, in the falls regions, gathering fish. The remains of camps were where they camped to take fish in the spring.

Thus, the Saco River was discovered in 1603, by Captain Pring, but oddly enough, it was not named. Not long after exploring the inlets, the party returned to England with more information on the region than had been learned in more than 100 years.