some maine parcel history (2)

On January 13, 1629, the Kennebeck or Plymouth Patent was granted to new Plymouth by King Charles I under a royal charter. It was conveyed from the old Plymouth colony to William Bradford and his associates as follows;

The said Council further granted and assigned unto the said William Bradford, his Heirs, Associates and Assigns, All that Track of Land or part of New England in America, aforesaid, which lyeth within or between and extendeth itself between the utmost limits of Cobbiseconte, alias Comaseconte, which adjoineth to the river of Kennebeck, alias Kennebekike, towards the western ocean, and a place called the Falls at Neguamkike, in America aforesaid, and the space of fifteen English miles on each side of the said river commonly called the Kennebeck river, and all the said river called Kennebeck, that lies within the said limits."
(Deed. Statement of Kennebec Claim, etc.)

There's another map at the Maine Historical Commission that describes this huge parcel grant. It looks like this (area in the green parallel lines (centered on the Kennebec) on the map's right side), though this version takes the northern line all the way up to Wessarunsett:


A simple overlay version of this 15 mile buffer over a google map is available here.  

some maine parcel history (1)

The complex history of Maine's land records mosaic reaches back more than 400 years. Of course there are no lines on the map - there is no map - before European settlement in the early 1600s, but a lot of interesting stuff happened quickly after that. From Dividing the Land:

Important parts of Maine were covered by a number of early land grants. One of the most comprehensive of these was the royal grant to Ferdinando Gorges in 1639, finally sold by his heirs to the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1677. Maine remained under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts until 1820. Before the Gorges grant, however, the Council for New England had made more than two dozen grants that together embraced the whole coast of Maine as far east as the Penobscot River and extended varying distances inland.

One of these two dozen grants was to the Kennebeck Company in 1629 by King Charles I tothe Plymouth Colony, extending along both sides of the Kennebec River upstream to the falls at Skowhegan. The original strategy of the grant was as a base for trade in furs and other commodities with Indians.  After a century of violence and suppression of the remnant Indigenous populations,  the grant was revived and the proprietors incorporated in 1749.  Active promotion of settlement began shortly thereafter. One hundred acre parcels were offered to settlers as incentive to recruit domestically and in Europe.  Land was broken out in longlots with frontage on the river and extending east or west orthogonal to the rivercourse. By the early 1760s the company had settled at least eleven townships.

An overview of some specifics of this evolving grant area (1719) is available from Maine Memory Network: