The Other States of America: History Podcast

The English Civil War manifests itself in New England where Royalist Maine is reduced by the creation of Parliamentarian Lygonia, both of which will have to stave off the northern advance of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A three way conflict for legitimacy in a chaotic world.

For most the history of Maine begins with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, however another Maine existed long before. This Maine would be split in two, one half becoming New Hampshire, the other becoming its' forgotten sister colony of New Somersetshire. All the while, the owners of these Colonies, and members of the Council for New England were bent on the destruction of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Captain Wollaston creates a small settlement in New England, seemingly to use as a way-station and storage facility for Indentured Servants. Thomas Morton, one of his minor investors, had another plan in mind. Morton's neighbors in the Plymouth Colony will come to know him as, "The Lord of Misrule."

Plymouth castaways, fishermen and farmers, find refuge to the North of the Plymouth Colony, creating small autonomous settlements along the coast. Unknowingly, their assistance to the Dorchester Company would redraw the maps for the Natives and the Old Planters as they laid the foundation for a "City upon a Hill."

Plymouth and the scattered fishing camps to the north owe their tenuous legal existence in the English world to The Council for New England. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, President of the Council, has a grand vision for New England: of feudal estates, worked by sturdy pheasants, worshiping in proper Anglican fashion under a single governor. His Council for New England reserved the right to govern, as granted to them by King James, having only given the Plymouth settlers the right to settle and purchase land from the Natives. Now Gorges intended to install a proper government and the man for the job would be his son Robert.

Thomas Weston, the man who financed the Separatists and legitimized their settlement at Plymouth, plans a colony of his own. Without the distractions of family units and religious fanaticism, Weston hopes his colony will return greater profits than the fledging Pilgrims were providing. Success will depend on forging a trade relationship with the Native Massachusetts Tribe, and is counting on the riff-raff he hires off the streets of London to settle his colony. What could go wrong? In the meantime, Weston himself runs afoul with the law, has dealings with Turkish pirates, assumes a new identity, and is captured by Native Americans in an attempt to reach Wessagusset. 

Ousamequin, Paramount Chief of the Wampanoag, leads his people through a period of near desolation, only to live to see the enemy Narragansett threaten to absorb the remainder of his once great confederacy. In 1621 he decides to make allies with strange bedfellows in a gambit to take back control of his world. 

The Popham Colony is abandoned and now the Virginia Company of Plymouth is without a settlement to defend their claims. During this shadowy period of time the English still maintain a presence in Northern Virginia, as they call it, soon to be reimagined as New England by an unsuspecting character you may know from Jamestown fame. Unknowingly, the groundwork is laid by Sir Ferdinando Gorges for a a strange group of Separatists who recently returned from the Netherlands. 

The Popham Colony or Sagadahoc Colony, rather than a historical footnote, was the vanguard of a new colonization model for the English, the result of rights stripped from noble conspirators, and redistributed to new corporate entities. After years of sailors kidnapping natives off the coast of modern day Maine to train as interpreters, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Sir John Popham return them hoping the fair treatment given to their captives, will foster good will with their native communities. The Popham Colony, undertaken by the Virginia Company of Plymouth, initially seems a more promising prospect, to the Jamestown Colony, undertaken by the Virginia Company of London. However, things change...

Check out:

https://thehistoryoftheamericans.com/interview-eric-yanis-of-the-other-states-of-america-history-podcast/

and

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-popham-sagadahoc-colony-and-other-adventures-on/id1547078697?i=1000545933281

18 years before the Mayflower carried its' famous passengers, Bartholomew Gosnold plans to start a small fishing colony on a small island off the coast of Southern New England. Little known to history, Gosnold's colony surprisingly had a lasting impact on the place names of New England and the foundation of a later colony you may have heard of...