Castine: A Bit of History

Castine is one of the oldest towns in New England, predating the Plymouth Colony by seven years. It is near the site of Fort Pentagouet which many consider to be the oldest permanent settlement in New England. Few places in New England can boast a more tumultuous or varied history than Castine -- which proclaims itself the “battle line of four nations.”

Its commanding position at the mouth of the Penobscot River, a rich source of furs and timber and a major transportation route into the interior, made the peninsula now occupied by the town of Castine of particular interest to European powers in the seventeenth century. The area changed hands numerous times with the shifting tides of imperial politics. At one time or another, it was occupied by the French, Dutch, and England's Plymouth Colony.

The Castine peninsula appears on a 1612 chart submitted to King Henry IV of France by Samuel de Champlain, who called it the Pentagoët (sometimes spelled Pentagöet) Peninsula. As part of Henry's program to defend Acadia, Castine was founded in the winter of 1613, when Sieur Claude de Turgis de la Tour established a small trading post to among the Tarrantine Indians. John Smith charted it in 1614. At some point, some sort of crude defences were erected, and it was called "Fort Penagoët".

After the English seized the post in 1628, it was made an administrative outpost of the Plymouth Colony. William Bradford personally traveled there to claim it. In 1635, it was retaken by the French and again incorporated into Acadia; apparently a more substantial fort, with cannon, was built at this time. In 1667, French authorities dispatched the Baron Jean Vincent de St. Castin to take command of Pentagoët. The Baron married Abenaki, the daughter of the Indian sachem Modockawando, who took the French name Mathilde and bore him 10 children. Castine soon became a force in colonial trade and diplomacy.