Franklin County was the home of the
Norridgewock tribe of the Abnaki nation of Indians. Their
principal village was near where Sandy River enters the
Kennebec. There was a village of these people at Farmington
Falls; another was at Chesterville Centre,
on the Little Norridgewock. Though the tribe removed to Canada
before settlements were made in the county by white people, yet
a few straggling families seem to have made different points in
Franklin their homes for many years later, having some
intercourse with the hunters, trappers and early settlers. The
first of these found on Sandy River the camp of one of these
secluded aborigines named Pierpole. He assisted them with
valuable information in regard to their new borne; but not
receiving the sympathy that was desirable from his new
neighbors, and being Roman Catholic in religion, he migrated to
Canada with his family, carrying with him the dead body of his
child.
By the reports of hunters, the
existence of the "Great Interval" on Sandy River became known in
certain quarters, creating a large degree of interest. In 1776,
therefore, five enterprising young men from Topsham explored the
region with a view to settlement. Their names were Stephen
Titconib, Robert Gower, James Henry, Robert Alexander and James
MacDonnel. They selected lots in the centre of the "Great
Interval," measuring them off with strings of basswood bark. No
family, however, moved into the place till 1781. Mr. Titcomb,
intending to become the first settler with a family in the
place, started with them and his household goods in the autumn
of 1780, but was blocked up by snow at the last house on the
route, situated in Readfield. When spring opened be went to his
clearing and put in his crop; then, returning for his family, he
met Joseph Brown and Nathaniel Davis on
the way with their families. Settlers soon followed from each
state of New England, excepting, perhaps, Vermont. The first
mill in the county was on Davis's Mill Stream, now called Temple
Mill Stream, near the centre of Farmington.
Many Revolutionary soldiers were
among the early settlers. Enoch Craig was one of these, and
became the founder of one of the families of Franklin County. In
1789, he married Dorothy Sterling, of one of the leading pioneer
families, they being obliged to make a journey to Hallowell in
order to be legally united. Within ten years of the wintering of
the first families in Farmington, the Sandy River Valley,
through most of its extent had become the seat of a flourishing
community; and this town alone contained 85 families.
