Mr. John Benjamin, town clerk (1849–1862) compiled the data used by Everett S. Stackpole to write the original history, printed in 1925. The original volume covered 143 of the 253 early families listed in the 1790 Census for Winthrop. This second edition covers all of the 253 early families in the 1790 Census. Prior to 1791, Winthrop included all or part of: Readfield, Hallowell, Augusta (Harrington), Fayette (Sterling & Thirty Mile River), Mt. Vernon (Washington), Manchester (Kennebec Plt.), Wayne (New Sandwich) and Monmouth (Wales). Incorporated in 1771, it missed being the largest population center in Kennebec County, Maine, in 1790 by twenty-seven people. If your ancestors were from Kennebec Valley they probably passed through either Hallowell or Winthrop. The early settlers, who were primarily of English or French/German Huguenot descent, came from Massachusetts and New Hampshire by way of Pownalborough, Maine.
About seventy-five percent of the original book was devoted to detailed genealogies of these early settlers, to which this edition adds 135 pages of new material. The other twenty-five percent of the book is devoted to a narrative history of the town (from Stackpole’s original book). In it you will find: names and plot numbers of original settlers, and in some cases to whom they conveyed their property; original Indian names for the area; the laying out of roads; cemeteries; church histories; a military history up to and including WWI, which incorporates service and biographical data; the division of the town; agriculture; manufactures; tannery privileges; banking; schools; and Winthrop as a summer resort. Three informative maps have been included (two of which are new). There are three new indices: a subject and place name index, a name index for the names in the 1925 edition, and a cross-index for the “buried” names in the new material. Eleven countries and forty-three states are indexed along with over 250 Maine locations, over 150 in Massachusetts, forty-five in New Hampshire, and twenty-two in New York.
David C. Young and Elizabeth Keene Young
(1925, 1994), 2009, 5½x8½, paper, 2 vols., index, 998 pp.
ISBN: 9781556139918
101-Y3991
