Bangor was a frontier town on the cusp of greatness when word spread, in March 1820, that Congress had finally granted statehood to the District of Maine. The river port’s 1,200 souls, a fraction of whom were abolitionists, learned of a compromise that let Maine enter the union as a free state, the nation’s 23rd, while allowing Missouri, the 24th, to keep its slaves.
Statehood worked miracles for Maine, which now had its own economy, free of Massachusetts’ control. Farm families continued to flood Maine’s huge interior. From 1791 to 1820, the province grew from 91,000 inhabitants to 300,000. Towns like Bangor, the head of navigation on the Penobscot River, boasted acres of farmland and the lovely Kenduskeag Stream.
Bangor rose to the status of Penobscot River County’s shiretown in 1820, and began attracting talents such as Dr. D.H. Fairbanks, a root and herb doctor and the town’s first Jacksonian Democrat. The town had escaped burning by the British Army’s 30-hour occupation in 1814, had hotels, homes near downtown, and a courthouse and town hall on Columbia Street.
But beyond the rosy stories of growth and prosperity lies another history, one of hardscrabble living, pollution, disease, prostitution and harsh winters. To live in Bangor in 1820 was to realize that life in paradise was no bed of roses. One need only pass by the town’s graveyards once located on Hammond and Oak streets to read the inscriptions of children who never passed the age of 1.
Sanitation was a constant menace. Horse droppings fouled the town’s dirt streets. Open burning and dumping of waste — including animal and human — into once-potable water sources forced many residents to turn to alcohol to quench their thirsts. The smuggling-rich river town had no shortage of hooch, and stories abound of early settlers three sheets to the wind.
Two of the more infamous yarns involve Jacob Buswell, Conduskeag Plantation’s first white settler, who arrived in 1769, beating his wife in drunken rages; and Parson Seth Noble, chosen to accept the town’s charter in Boston in 1791. As the story goes, Noble was imbibing just as the magistrate asked him what name to inscribe on the document. “Bangor,” he supposedly murmured, thinking he had been asked to name the Welsh hymn he was humming.
Like many canards, Buswell and Noble deserve better. Or, maybe they would be flattered that people in 2020 still know their names when most others have been lost to time. Many characters from Bangor’s past seem to be folks from away who dropped by to hold a touchstone to our lives. In his 1604 journal, explorer Samuel de Champlain mentioned the stately oaks that lined the riverfront. Only Indians, who once owned the land, would have paid him any notice. And in 1848, author Henry David Thoreau memorably compared the by-then lumber capital of the world to being “ a star on the edge of night.”
One type of pollution that didn’t exist in 1820 was from shopping centers and other sprawling commercial development. When the sun set, nature’s light show began. It was not uncommon for families to stand on the riverfront and name every star in the heavens. Try that today!
In many respects, Bangor never really separated from Massachusetts. In 1835, our fascination with Boston continued with century-long service by a fleet of passenger vessels named the Boston Boats. Today, Bay State tourists visit the Queen City, and Boston Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins logos are splashed across clothing. The local symphony even calls itself the BSO, a not-so-subtle homage to the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
On this bicentennial of Maine statehood, the town’s real stories, including from 1820, when Revolutionary War veterans rubbed shoulders with future timber tycoons and Native Americans, can be found in the public library, historical society and the Bangor Register, an early Maine newspaper founded in 1815. They also live in “The Strange Woman,” Ben Ames Williams’ racy novel; in Ardeana Hamlin’s “Pink Chimneys”; and in “An Irish Immigrant Story” by Jack Cashman.
Happy birthday, Bangor. Happy birthday, Maine. Independence will always be worth celebrating.
Richard Shaw is an author and historian who grew up in Bangor.