Plantation (Maine)
In the U.S. state of Maine, a plantation is a type of small civil division between an unincorporated area and a town. The word in modern times is usually only used in Maine. Plantations are commonly found in not populated places.
History
[change | change source]No other state has a division equal to a plantation. Massachusetts used the term "plantation" in colonial times (1700s) for a community in a before-town stage of development. It is thought that Maine got the term from Massachusetts, as Maine was once called The District of Maine when it was part of Massachusetts. However, the term has not been used in Massachusetts since the 18th century. The term was also used in colonial Rhode Island, and a trace of it stayed in the official State name until 2020, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
Richard Walden Hale wrote in The Story of Bar Harbor, describing the making of a plantation:
First came the survey, without which no settlement was legal. Land so surveyed was divided into 'townships,' which in New England means areas planned for development into full-fledged towns. Then certain proprietors--who might be a religious congregation, a group of speculators, or a group of would-be settlers--bought the 'township,' 'planted it' with settlers, and saw to it that land was reserved for a church and school. When enough settlers had been planted, limited self government was granted, and the township was raised in status to a 'plantation.' When the population of the 'plantation' should have grown large enough, another step forward was taken, the area received full civil rights, the full town organization came into force, and in those days one representative in the legislature or 'General Court' was automatically allotted to the new town. ... Such a system still holds good in Maine. ... To this day one can go thirty miles northeast of Bar Harbor and find, still unsettled, Township Number Seven, just back of Gouldsboro and Sullivan, and then go twenty miles southeast--in each case as the crow flies--and find Swan's Island Plantation, where to this day there is not enough population for the full complement of town officials.[1]
Despite a decreasing number of people, with a permanent number of people of 468 in 1950 and only 331 in 2012, Swan’s Island was later made a town, possibly helped by regular state ferry service which began in 1960. Today the town is a popular summer colony, with a summer population of over 1,000.
More information
[change | change source]- James J. Haag, "A Study of Plantation Government in Maine." Orono, ME: Bureau of Public Administration, University of Maine, 1973.
References
[change | change source]- ↑ Hale, Jr., Richard Walden (1949). The Story of Bar Harbor. New York: Ives Washburn, Inc. pp. 72–73.