Two Families, One Remote Island

Two men immigrated to New England in the Great Migration (1620-1640), 8th GGF Rowland Young in 1636, settling in the York, Maine, area and 9th GGF Thomas Tolman in 1630, settling in the Dorchester, Massachusetts area. Four generations later in the late 1700s, their respective grandsons chose to move their families to Matinicus Isle, 22 miles off Maine, still the most remote inhabited island off the Atlantic seacoast. The island is two miles long and one mile wide with few trees and devoid of mammals other than rats,

In 1950, 188 people lived on the island. These days the Island has 53 residents, mostly fishermen and lobstermen, and a few summer visitors looking for a low-key vacation. Getting there is not easy - a two hour ferry ride across rough water, though there is a small airstrip. The island has no doctor, no police, only a one-room schoolhouse for K-8 (older students have to go to the mainland), a library, and a church. The land used to support some cattle, pigs, geese, potatoes, and family gardens, but has been farmed out by now. The inhabitants are clannish and sometimes territorially violent when it comes to lobstering and fishing.

The 1800 census of remote Matinicus showed 12 heads of household - 5 Youngs, 2 Tolmans, and 3 Halls. Might there be an issue of consanguinity?

I thought about a day trip over to the ancestral island while on a road trip in 2015. A librarian in Rockport wasn’t terribly encouraging. I asked her about the people and after a pause she just said, “they’re different.”

The Penobscot were using the island for fishing and gathering when the first white settler, Ebenezer Hall, brought his family and claimed the island in 1750. He alienated indigenous mainland Native Americans by burning grasslands on Matinicus and nearby Green Island for pasture and farming. Nor did it help that he shot and buried two Indians who came onto the island in 1751. The tribe took their complaints to Royal authorities in Boston who issued an order for Hall to leave. After four years of Hall’s refusal, the tribe laid siege to the house, killed and scalped Hall, and took his wife and children. One son, Ebenezer Jr., was away on a fishing trip. 

The wife was taken to Quebec and eventually made her way back to Maine after a ransom was paid. While at York Harbor on another fishing trip soon after the attack, 22 year old Ebenezer, Jr., met and married Susannah Young, daughter of our 6th GGPs, Joseph Young and Susannah Johnson, and moved back to Matinicus in 1763 to the property inherited from his father. Ebenezer Sr’s 12 year-old stepson, Joseph Green, escaped out a window and hid, left alone with his dead and scalped father until rescued by a passing vessel. He later married Dorcas Young, sister of his stepbrother, Ebenezer, Jr’s. wife, and moved back to Matinicus. Unhappy with the parcel offered him by his step-brother, Joseph moved to nearby Green Island where he raised a large family. 

After a year on the island, Ebenezer, Jr., and wife Susannah (Young) visited family in York and, come time to leave, Susannah refused to return - perhaps from fear or loneliness - unless other family joined them. With this, her sister, Phoebe Young, married to her first cousin, Abraham Young - our 4th GGPs - moved their family to Matinicus in 1764.

Fast forward to 1790, 5th GGF 69 year-old Isaiah Tolman, originally from Stoughton, Massachusetts and a large landholder in the Rockland, Maine, area, moved to Matinicus with his wife and four of his children, including our 4th GGM, Margaret “Peggy” Tolman. A year after moving to Matinicus, Margaret married Joseph Young, son of Abraham and Phebe, who was born on the island in 1769. After 20+ years together on Matinicus, Margaret and Joseph moved the family back to the mainland, including our 3rd GGM 12 year old Harriet Young. Six years later she married Samuel Packard in Lincolnville. Remember him from the last blog post? Is your brain spinning with Halls and Tolmans and Youngs and Packards?