Province of Maine

The Province of Maine was a group of English colonial grants established in the seventeenth century along the northeastern coast of North America, in parts of the modern states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick. The first patent was issued on 10 August 1622 by the Plymouth Council for New England to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason, covering the coast between the Merrimack and Kennebec rivers. In 1629 the partners divided their grant at the Piscataqua River, and Mason took the southern portion as the Province of New Hampshire. Gorges renamed his share New Somersetshire and sought to build a neo-feudal Anglican community, but money and settlers were scarce. A renewed royal charter followed in 1639. After Gorges died in 1647 the colony survived briefly, yet Massachusetts Bay steadily extended its jurisdiction northward. By 1658 it had absorbed the whole of Gorges's territory, which later became the District of Maine and, in 1820, an American state.