Acadia’s Early Settlements

St. Sauveur site, 1613

Acadia was named “Isle des Monts-deserts” by Samuel de Champlain in 1604, and the region was known as “La Cadie”. The first settlement was in June of 1613 at the mouth of Somes Sound on a hillside called called Fernald’s Point, at a narrow passage between what is now Southwest Harbor and Northeast Harbor. Four Jesuit priests, thirty colonists and a crew of fifteen set up tents and began their work of converting Abnaki Indians. Their settlement, called St. Sauveur, lasted only a few weeks before disaster struck. A British ship from Jamestown, the Treasurer, appeared and seized the Jesuit ship and destroyed the camp, under orders to seek out and destroy all attempts at French colonization.

For the next 150 years the area was unsafe for settlement by French or English. It was administered by the French long enough for Antoine Laumet in 1688 to name the island’s tallest mountain after himself, or rather his grandiose invented name, Antoine La Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac. It was not until the end of the French and Indian War in 1759 that the British forces finally were able to establish security enough for settlement.

In 1761 Massachusetts governor Sir Francis Bernard encouraged his friend, cooper Abraham Somes to settle the Sound which now bears his name.  Soon more settlers arrived from Somes’s native Gloucester, and Somes’s barrel stave business became the island’s primary industry. Sir Francis Bernard had big plans for the island, hoping to make a killing on selling off five acre plots to land hungry settlers. Sadly for him, his pro-crown policies as governor necessitated a hasty retreat to England when the Revolutionary War started. The Somes Sound settlements however remained and prospered.

Madame de Gregoire's stone in Hulls Cove Hillside cemetery

The war resulted in a honeymoon of sorts between the new American nation and the French. Taking advantage of this was none other than the granddaughter of Antoine Laumet,  Maria Therese de la Mothe Cadillac de Gregoire. She was given the eastern half of Mt Desert Island and settled in what is now Hulls Cove in recognition for France’s help in the war.  She carried on in the tradition of Bernard, selling land to make her living. Wealthy refugees from the French Revolution helped this enterprise, and many landowners today find their property descriptions traced back to the French crown; only Louisiana can also make this claim.

Meanwhile, a similar claim on the western half of the island resulted in it being awarded to John Bernard, son of Francis. John possessed the foresight to fight for the right side in the War and thus inherited his father’s title. By 1790 the island boasted a population of 786 people and had entered an era of permanence. Farms, sawmills, smokehouses, ice harvesting and boatyards dotted the landscape; the biggest industry on Mount Desert Island however, was yet to come.

References: Maine Paradise by Russell Butcher and Marie Menzietti, Islands of Maine by Bill Caldwell, Mt. Desert Island and Acadia National Park by Sargent F. Collier.

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