IT must be borne in mind that this region, when entered by its pioneers, was remote from other settlements; consequently without open roads, or convenient passage by water.  Hence some of their greatest hardships.  The lowlands and swamps were miry, and, as the snow usually fell early, they would not be frozen and passable till deep snow obstructed traveling.  Hence heavy burdens were brought in on horseback, and on rude "cars", the transportation of which sledding would have facilitated.  Hence several of the woman, who were the first, to occupy these wilderness homes, rode with their babes in their arms, on horseback, their husbands tracing out a spotted line, which alone marked a dim and winding way.  Late in winter, when settlers would frequently attempt to move in, the roads would be full of loose snow.  Some heavy articles were boated up the rivers to Brownville and Dover, but stemming the rapids was laborious, and at the steeper falls, they were obliged to unlade their boats, and carry their cargoes around them.
     Most of the early settlers from the central and western parts of Maine, came by way of Skowhegan (then Canaan), thence to Cornville, Athens, Harmony, Ripley and Dexter.  Those from Massachusetts and New Hampshire sometimes took passage by water to Bangor, and found a road to Charleston.  By the autumn of 1803, Capt. Ezekiel Chase moved his family from Carratunk to his opening near the present Sebec and Atkinson bridge, with teams; but Benjamin Sargent brought his on horseback from Bangor, at the

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same time.  The road through Atkinson to Sebec Mills was opened early, and many of the settlers of Brownville came in by this way.  As early as 1804, single horse teams brought families into Amestown; and in 1806 teams came into Guilford in the winter; and in the autumn of that year, Capt. John Bennett reached there with a loaded ox-cart.  In the fall of 1807, Capt. Samuel Chamberlain and Ephraim Baker moved their families, provisions, and household effects from Bangor to Foxcroft, on an ox-wagon.  They were two days in getting from Charleston to Foxcroft, fifteen miles, having to bridge streams and swamps, and often to widen the way before they could pass.  Thus detained, they were under the necessity of camping out over night, - quite a rough experience for the women and children, as they had not expected to do it, and were not prepared for it, - while their team had but a scanty supply of fodder.
     After a few years, a shorter way from Skowhegan to these parts of Harmony, through the present towns of Cambridge and Parkman.  Probably about 1812 this was done, but several years elapsed before it became a good carriage road.  Previous to 1814, a road was cut out from Sangerville to Garland, and this opened a way to Bangor, for the upper settlements of Piscataquis River.

     THE FIRST SETTLERS.   It may be interesting to know who were the first to break into this "howling wilderness;" to brave the hardships incident to introducing civilized life and progress into these boundless forests; which of the towns was first settled; and who was the first permanent settler of this county.  Certainty, in respect to dates, after so long a period, and after all these first pioneers have fallen asleep, is not easily arrived at, on all points, but the more important have been secured by patient research.  The best sustained conclusion may be stated thus:  Abel Blood felled the first opening on Piscataquis River, in Dover township, as early as June, 1799.  It is not certain that any beginnings were made the next year.  But in 1801, Moses and

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Stephen Snow and Benjamin Sargent felled openings in the Milo township; Moses Towne on a part of the Blood purchase; and Col. J. E. Foxcroft hired Samuel Elkins to fell twenty acres on his newly purchased township; and it is said that Jonas Parlin felled a few acres on the Burrill interval, but did not proceed to occupy it.   In 1802, Ezekiel Chase felled an opening in Sebec, Bylie Lyford, in Atkinson, and Phineas Aems, in Sangerville townships, respectively.  In 1804, the first openings were felled in Guilford, by Low and Herring, and the next year, one in Abbott, by Abraham Moor, Esq.
     Abel Blood, with a hired man, spent the summer of 1800 on his clearing, raising and harvesting a crop.  Col. Foxcroft's account of his exploration of Number Five, Seventh Range, confirms this statement.  In the spring of 1810 the Townes, - Thomas Towne, the father of Moses, and probably Eli, his sons, - came to their opening, bringing Moses' wife, who camped with, cooked and washed for, them.  In the fall, Eli and Mrs. Moses Towne returned to Temple, N. H., but Thomas and Moses Towne continued through the winter, hunting, fishing, and a spring came on, making maple sugar.  In the spring of 1803, Eli Towne, with his wife and child one year old, started from Temple, N. H., for the Piscataquis settlement.  They reached it May 8, 1803.  This may be confidently set down as the first family that moved into the county.  In the autumn of 1803, Capt. Ezekiel Chase moved his family into Sebec; Benjamin Sargent, his, into Milo; and Phineas Ames, his, into Sangerville.  In the spring of 1804, Bylie Lyford moved into the Atkinson township, and Lyford Dow and Abel Blood, probably, brought their families into Dover.  These dates accord with the best data that I have been able to collect, and with the best recollections of the survivors of those early families, excepting the Benjamin Sargent family of Milo.  And here the reasons which led to those conclusions shall be given.  That Abel Blood purchased a square mile of land in the Dover township, and located it where East Dover village and its surroundings now are, is unquestioned.  The statement that he felled the first trees on it, in

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June, 1799, was recorded when some of the men employed to do it, Seth and John Spauding, were present.  Col. Foxcroft's statement, that he found Blood there in the autumn of 1800, and that he had raised a crop of corn and other vegetables that year, corroborates that date.  Col. Foxcroft also stated that it was in June, 1801, that Samuel Elkins felled the first opening in his township.  This is confirmed by the statement of two writers, who give the early history of Dexter, to wit: that Samuel Elkins spent the summer of 1801 in building the first mills in Dexter, and that in 1802, his health failed, and his brother Daniel came and finished the mills, and put them into operation.  Messrs. Foxcroft and Johnson, when they came to explore Number Five, left their horses with Samuel Elkins in Cornville; and as he was at Dexter during the summer of 1801, he could quite conveniently repair to the Foxcroft township, and do that job with his workmen, at the proper season.
     Reliable records show that Alvin Towne, the child which Eli Towne and wife brought to their home on horseback, was born in Temple, N. H., Apr. 24, 1802, confirming the date of his incoming to be, as Mr. Towne always gave it when living, May 8, 1803.
     Ezekiel Chase, jr. affirmed that he was five years old when their family moved to Sebec; that it was in the fall of that year; that the Sergent family was at their log-house when they reached it; and that Bylie Lyford's family came the next spring.  He also recollected that his older brother Francis, and Moses Towne made maple sugar together, near Towne's opening, the spring before the Chase family moved in, living upon boiled corn and maple syrup.  If this was the spring of 1803, Moses Towne and his father had been camping there all winter, but not the year before, and had raised a crop of corn the previous summer.  Mr. Ezekiel Chase was born Mar. 6, 1798, and died in Sebec, July 25, 1879, aged eighty-one years and four months, - the last survivor of those families which entered this county in 1803.  His brother,

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Charles V. Chase, was born in Sebec, July 15, 1804, and this affords us another reliable date.
     Bylie Lyford's son, Thomas, was born in Atkinson, Nov. 11, 1804, and the family, it is said, moved there the March previous, making Lyford's removal, March, 1804, and Chase's, in the fall of 1803.  But Mr. Henry B. Sargent, son of Benjamin, and other members of that family, were quite confident that their removal to Milo was in 1802, but they had no early records that established it.  They rested upon the family tradition, that their brother Nathan, the youngest of the family, was then but two years old. If it was in 1802, he would have been two and a half; if in 1803, three and a half; large, to be sure, to be brought in his mother's arms.  But as she came on horseback from Bangor, and the other children walked, that was the only way that he could come, even if three and a half years old.  And Mr. Henry B. Sargent, then five or six years old, recollected that they were at Chase's log-house when the Chase family arrived, as stated by Ezekiel Chase, jr.  So the two families must have come the same year, and the same month.  The balance of proof, then, evidently gravitates to 1803; and Mr. Sargent's first entrance to fell his trees and make a beginning, is known to have been when his son Nathan was about two years old.  In the records written by one of the Sargent family, several years afterward, it is stated, that on the eighth day of May, 1802, snow fell in this region to the depth of eight inches.  Eli Towne and wife were wont to relate that, on their last day's journey to their new home, that same depth of snow fell.  This was assuredly May 8, 1803.  Though this is not certain proof, it verily looks as if the Sargents antedated their record one year, and that they, like many others, were honestly mistaken.
     Phineas Ames had a child born in Harmony, in March, 1803; so he had not removed to Sangerville then; and as the tradition runs that his wife did not see a white woman for more than a year after her removal, and as Weymouth and

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Brockway moved in by sledding, early in the winter of 1804-5, Ames evidently came in the same autumn as Chase and Sargent, to wit, 1803.  And their family tradition was, that Mrs. Ames rode in on horseback, with a babe in her arms, her husband leading the horse from the Dexter settlement, guided by a spotted line only.
     A descriptive and historical sketch of the towns constituting this county will now be given, arranged according to the dates of their settlement.  The situation and boundaries of each can be learned from the accompanying map.