Lewiston, Maine - A History

February 18th marks a happy birthday to Lewiston, Maine! As a burgeoning astrologist born and raised in Maine, I like to find opportunities to practice applying what I study to the world around me. With astrology, one can look into the history of locations and compare them with planetary placements based on known dates of important events, extrapolating context and meaning for movements throughout history from the stars. Not only can one pull birth charts for states or towns and analyze key elements of the establishments' journeys, but they may look ahead to themes of years they have yet to come to. I figured writing articles for all three would be a fun way to immerse myself in the history of the land I live on now.

In order to draw up a birth chart of a city, place, or town, one has to know an exact time, place, and date to associate with some start of its instatement. This brought me to the question, which day do we associate with the official start of Lewiston? I went on a three-week historical research journey to look into this and the history of the Lewiston area to determine what date would be best to use. What follows is a summation of the historical journey towards the creation of the city of Lewiston, Maine.

Although Lewiston is not the oldest town in the area, it is close to some of the oldest European history in Maine and the entire United States. It’s said that in the year 1607, nearby on the Androscoggin River, English settlers made contact with about 50 Androscoggin tribesmen with bows and arrows in canoes; 163 years before Lewiston was settled by English colonizers and 188 years before it was granted its official town charter. In that early settling of coastal Wabanaki lands, Androscoggin peoples were subjected to smallpox by European settlers, a sickness for which they had no immunities, and consequently suffered what is referred to as the Great Dying, from 1616 to 1619. After this pandemic decimated 75-90% of the estimated 25,000 of the coastal Wabanaki peoples, many of the smaller tribes had to consolidate together for survival.

The remaining Androscoggin peoples are said to have joined the Pequawket (or Pigwacket) tribe and migrated from the area in the 1650s when English merchants, timbermen, and tradespeople had taken over the hunting and fishing territories of the southwestern Maine area, forcing natives further north and inland, away from their ancestral lands and towards French and tribal allies; all while dealing with the spiritual toll of the swift and near-whole devastation of their peoples and ways of life. With the lack of native care for the lands, the forests could no longer support the same quantities of game and wildlife that allowed the population beforehand and the once semi-agriculturalized lands became pockmarked with settler farms in order to support the growing populations of colonists.

In 1684, a group of six Wabanaki sagamores, leaders of the remaining local tribes, met with Richard Wharton, an English-born slave trader who had come to the coastal shores of New England to make a name for himself by marrying well-connected young women and getting into business settling land among other things, namely assisting the transport of "refuse fish" to send to slavers in the Caribbean who used the wasted food to feed enslaved peoples there. At this meeting, the Wabanaki leaders and Richard Wharton signed what colonists considered a deed for land around the Androscoggin and Kennebec rivers as well as Merrymeeting Bay, yet outlined specific rights the Wabanaki wished to hold towards their lands. The occupying colonists continued to construct social customs and systems which allowed them to "righteously" persist in the de-population, de-organization, and deterrance of the native peoples to their own "un-Christian" lands, as decreed by Catholic popes for a near millennium. The locals had been widely seen as friendly and helpful, traits undoubtedly exploited by cultural differences of individually-minded colonial societies. 

30 years later, Richard Wharton’s land claims ended up with 8 men from Boston who formed the Pejepscot Proprietors and initiated the settlement of communities in the Pejepscot region, modern-day Brunswick, Lewiston, Topsham, and Harpswell. The area of Lewiston was first settled by British-American colonists in the fall of 1770 by Paul Hildreth, and his wife Hannah Merrill, who built a cabin near the falls between what we now call the twin cities of Lewiston/Auburn. It took about 20 years for the population of the settlement to reach over 500 persons, and another 5 for the official town charter to be granted by the proprietors of the settlement on this day in history, February 18th, 1795.

This date is the one I am utilizing to create an official astrological chart for the city of Lewiston, Maine. Estimating the arrival time of a mail carrier from Falmouth, now Portland, to Lewiston, and cross-referencing with the available information on schedules for town councils of the period as well as the generally understood reputation of Lewiston, Maine throughout the years, I chose an arrival time of 3:44 in the afternoon, making Lewiston a Leo rising, Pisces Sun, and Aquarius Moon. Tune in this weekend for the first official birth chart reading of Lewiston, Maine compiled and interpreted by yours truly.

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References Listed Below

“Wabanaki Deed to Richard Wharton, 1684.” Maine Memory Network, https://www.mainememory.net/record/20270. Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.

“Battle of Pequawket.” Wikipedia, 7 Feb. 2025. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Pequawket&oldid=1274389977.

Beyond Borders - Mapping Maine and the Northeast Boundary - Who Were the Kennebec and Pejepscot Proprietors? http://beyondborders.mainememory.net/page/5070/print.html. Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.

“Begin Again Pejepscot Proprietors.” Maine Memory Network, https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/3101/slideshow/1889/display?format=slideshow&prev_object_id=4902&prev_object=page&slide_num=6. Accessed 13 Feb. 2025.

Cara, Scozzafava. Wabanaki Sovereignty in Context - A Timeline. Maine Center for Economic Policy, 8 Nov. 2023, https://www.mecep.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Wabanaki-Sovereignty-Timeline.pdf. Accessed 15 Feb. 2025.

History of Lewiston | Lewiston, ME - Official Website. https://www.lewistonmaine.gov/421/History-of-Lewiston. Accessed 8 Feb. 2025.

Prehistoric Archaeology | Maine Historic Preservation Commission. https://www.maine.gov/mhpc/programs/education/prehistoric-archaeology. Accessed 14 Feb. 2025.

Historical Timeline of Wabanaki-Maine Relations. Wabanaki Reach, 2021, https://assets.nationbuilder.com/mainewabanakireach/pages/1311/attachments/original/1647458495/Historical_Timeline_of_Wabanaki-Maine_Relations_%281%29.pdf?1647458495.

“Wabanaki Confederacy.” Wikipedia, 4 Feb. 2025. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wabanaki_Confederacy&oldid=1273811317.

“Richard Wharton Slave Trade Contract, 1671 May 20 - Archives & Manuscripts at Duke University Libraries.” David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/whartonrichard. Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.

“Thomas Purchase.” Wikipedia, 13 Jan. 2025. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Purchase&oldid=1269169573.

FamilySearch.Org. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/LCD4-GKH/paul-hildreth-1746-1820. Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.

“Androscoggin People.” Wikipedia, 6 Feb. 2025. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Androscoggin_people&oldid=1274212337.

“The Two Rofiles Lewiston Falls. Indian Head and Old Man of the Falls.” CardCow.Com, https://www.cardcow.com/72103/two-rofiles-lewiston-falls-indian-head-old-man-maine/. Accessed 17 Feb. 2025.