Statewide County ME Archives History - Books .....PREFACE. - Maine In The Northeastern Boundary Controversy 1919
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Book Title: Maine In The Northeastern Boundary Controversy

PREFACE.

In this volume I bring together the results of studies long
continued with reference to the northeastern boundary of Maine
and our controversy concerning it. My interest in this
controversy was awakened in 1878, when Governor Washburn read
in Portland, at a meeting of the Maine Historical Society, a
paper entitled The Northeastern Boundary, published later in
the eighth volume of the first series of that society's
collections. In 1894, the late Honorable George L. Rives, of
New York, assistant secretary of state in President
Cleaveland's first administration, published Selections from
the Correspondence of Thomas Barclay, his great-grandfather,
who was the British commissioner on the St. Croix Commission
(1796-1798) for the settlement of differences that had arisen
between the United States and Great Britain as to the true St.
Croix River of the treaty of 1783. Later the Maine Historical
Society received from Mr. Rives[1] (page 43, note) the
valuable collection of boundary letters and documents once
belonging to Colonel Barclay, and which he had used in the
preparation of his Selections. Mr. Rives volume, and the
manuscripts mentioned as the gift of Mr. Rives to the Maine
Historical Society, I carefully examined at the time, and from
them derived material for a paper entitled The St. Croix
Commission, which I read at a meeting of the Maine Historical
Society, February 6, 1895, and which was published in the
sixth volume of the second series of the Collections of that
society. The preparation of another paper, The Attitude of
Maine in the Northeastern Boundary Controversy, read by the
writer at a meeting of the Maine Historical Society January 2,
1903, and published in the first volume of the third series of
the society's Collections, was suggested by an added study of
boundary matters as considered in Professor William F.
Ganong's valuable monograph, Evolution of the Boundaries of
the Province of New Brunswick, published in 1902 in the
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Canada. Another collection
of valuable manuscript boundary material, known as the Ward
Chipman papers, came into the possession of the Maine
Historical Society in 1894, the gift of a member of the
society, Mr. William H. Kilby, of Eastport. Ward Chipman was
the British agent connected with the St. Croix Commission, and
these papers which came into Mr. Kilby's possession by a
noteworthy chance (page 49, note), comprised important
correspondence and other manuscript material relating to the
northeastern boundary. My examination of these papers from
time to time, as opportunity offered, still further quickened
my interest in boundary concerns. 

Accordingly in 1914, when the state had published my
Beginnings of Colonial Maine (a work relating to a period in
Maine history that had an earlier claim upon my attention), I
found the way open for an added and more thorough examination
of this large and valuable boundary material. I also directed
attention to the volumes of manuscript boundary correspondence
and documents in the State Library in Augusta, of the great
value of which I had long been aware. Unfortunately the
important correspondence of the governors of Maine with the
state department in Washington closes abruptly with the year
1839. Inquiry and search at the State House in Augusta have
not brought to light the manuscript correspondence of 1840-
1842.

Two comparatively recent books I have found especially helpful
in matters relating to the boundary and the controversy
concerning it. One of these is Professor John Bassett Moore's
History and Digest of International Arbitrations, the first
volume of which opens with a scholarly presentation of the
prominent facts connected with the successive attempts of the
government of the United States to settle the boundary
controversy; and besides the footnotes, here and there on the
following pages, I desire, in these added words, to give
expression to the aid I have received from Dr. Moore's
monumental work. The other book of which I wish to make
special mention is Professor Ganong's Evolution of the
Boundaries of the Province of New Brunswick, already referred
to in this preface. Although written from another point of
view than my own, Professor Ganong's work, the fruit of a long
and thorough examination and study of the same boundary
problems, has been of very great assistance.

A large part of the winter of 1915-1916, I spent in the
Library of Congress, availing myself of the facilities for
historical research afforded by its very large collections of
books, manuscripts and maps. My thanks are due to the
librarian, Dr. Herbert Putnam, and also to his assistants, for
helpfulness generously rendered. For prompt answer to many
calls, my thanks are also due to the librarian of the Maine
State Library in Augusta, Rev. H. E. Dunnack, and his
assistant, Rev. W. F. Livingston; also to Miss Alice C.
Furbish, librarian of the Public Library in Portland with its
large collection of congressional publications and of bound
files of Maine newspapers; also and especially to Miss Evelyn
Gilmore, librarian of the Maine Historical Society in
Portland, and her assistant, Miss Ethel P. Hall, who, with
unwearied diligence, have been of great help in bringing to
my aid the manuscript and other information in the Historical
Society's large accumulations relating to the northeastern
boundary controversy. To them, also, I am indebted for
valuable assistance in securing photographic and other
likenesses of early Maine governors and persons prominent in
Maine's contention with reference to the boundary. For added
illustrative material my thanks are due to the Honorable Seth
S. Thornton and Mr. Thomas P. Packard, superintendent of
schools, both of Houlton; also, to Mr. E. M. Blanding, of
Bangor; Mrs. Katharine K. Estes, of Fort Fairfield; Mr. L.
Percy Waddington, of Mars Hill; Mr. Edward D. Noyes, of
Portland; and Mrs. Susan Grant Smith, of Wiscasset. In my
search for the portraits in this volume I made much effort to
include one of John G. Deane, who was so prominent in the
boundary controversy after Maine became a state; and I greatly
regret that the effort was unsuccessful.

While these pages have been passing through the press, Mr. S.
H. Brown, manager of the Marks Printing House in Portland, has
assisted me in many ways. I am also indebted to Miss Flora M.
Mitchell, of the same establishment, for excellent work in
overcoming the illegibilities in my manuscript and also in
proof suggestions.

In connection with the celebration of Maine's first centennial
in 1920, the publication of this volume is certainly fitting.
During the past one hundred years the state has had a very
honorable part in many affairs of national interest and
importance; but in the boundary controversy it was very
largely left to Maine alone to meet and resist the pretensions
of British diplomacy. That service was most creditable from
first to last; and in any review of it we certainly cannot
forget that it was because of Maine's strong and unwearied
efforts that a large and valuable part of our state territory
was held within the national domain. 

Kennebunkport, September 16, 1919.


[1] Maine Historical Society Coll., Second Series, VI, 249,
250.

Additional Comments:
Burrage, Henry S., D. D., State Historian. Maine in the
Northeastern Boundary Controversy. Portland, Maine: Marks
Printing House, 1919. 

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