Tom Thumb driven ashore at Boon Island 1836

The first wood-fired steamboat known to have visited Maine waters was the diminutive side-wheeler, Tom Thumb. Some 18 years later the little steamer also concluded her career on our coast.

The Tom Thumb was only about 30 feet long but upon her arrival in Bath, Maine in 1818 she made a huge impression. After arriving in tow from New York via Boston, she shocked the gathered spectators by steaming up the Kennebec River against the tide. Her newfangled machinery was all open to the elements and in plain view as she chugged along between Bath and Augusta.

She continued that route for several years, providing passenger excursions on the Kennebec River but in 1824 Tom Thumb was towed Down East and began operating between Calais, Eastport, and St. Andrews. Her comings and goings were chronicled in the Eastport Sentinel until Captain Seward Porter of Portland, ME purchased her with the intention of running trips between Boston, MA and Portsmouth, NH. His plans were foiled when the little steamer didn’t perform at sea as he had hoped. She was relegated to harbor and river work in Dover, Portsmouth, Newmarket, Hampton, Newburyport, Gloucester, Chelsea and Boston.

According to Daniel Remich in his History of Kennebunk, the Tom Thumb was also the first steamer to travel up and down the Kennebunk River. September 30, 1827 Captain Porter invited  Kennebunk and Kennebunkport citizens aboard and “made an excursion to the islands of Cape Porpoise, where the party partook of an excellent chowder and other refreshments.”

Charles W. Childs paid $4,000 for the Tom Thumb and spent another $1,000 rebuilding her and replacing her boiler during the spring of 1836. He established the tiny steamer as a regular packet on the Piscataqua River for the conveyance of passengers, transportation of freight and towing of vessels between Portsmouth and Dover, NH. Childs sank his last dime into the enterprise. He chose not to purchase insurance as he could not justify the extra investment considering the relative safety of river work.

For all his calculated risk, the young Childs was disappointed in business that summer. He had hoped to keep very busy with freight conveyance up and down the river but merchants were leery of change. Steamers were still regarded as unproven, novel technology. When the Portsmouth Iron Foundry Company offered to hire his steamboat to take a new 2 ton iron tank to Boon Island a deal was quickly struck even though the Tom Thumb had never been a reliable sea vessel.

Childs had planned to get an early start on the morning of October 28, 1836 but there was some delay at the foundry and he didn’t arrive at Boon Island until 4 p.m. The island is surrounded by rocks and should only be approached at high water. By the time the Tom Thumb reached the island the tide was about half ebb. The tank was landed with great difficulty as darkness fell upon the scene.

The events that followed were described by Charles W. Childs in a petition for financial relief to the United States Government. “Captain W. Neal, who had assisted as pilot, went on shore to assist in landing the tank and when he was thus on shore a sudden gust of wind prevented his return to the boat, the cable parted and the crew, nine in number, endeavored to reach Portsmouth Harbor.”

It was reported in the Portsmouth Gazette that the gale increased and blew with great violence. “She continued on her course to Portsmouth about five hours against the wind making in that time only 9 or 10 miles when finding that she made water fast, by which her fuel had become wet, rendering it impossible to keep up the steam, she again bore away before the wind to Boon Island and at about 2 o’clock a.m. went pell mell on the rocks.”

Maine’s first documented steamer, the Tom Thumb was a total loss at Boon Island. Young Charles W. Childs, who must have deeply regretted his decision to forgo insurance, was rendered penniless. Though the iron tank had been commissioned by the Customs District the contract for its conveyance was between the Portsmouth Foundry and Mr. Childs. The petitioner was not entitled to relief from the United States Government.

A startling find along the York River

Henry Chapman Mercer, recipient of numerous accolades for his work studying Native American pre-history, identified evidence that cannibalism was practiced by Indians on the banks of the York River.

Perhaps best known for his influence on the Art & Crafts Movement as the founder of Monrovian Tile Works, Mercer was a man of wide-ranging interests. He graduated from Harvard in 1879 and then went on to study law, but never practiced. The well-to-do Pennsylvanian was driven by a fascination with the antiquity of Native Americans, indeed the antiquity of man. He became a member of the newly formed Archaeological Association of the University of Pennsylvania in 1890 and was appointed curator of American and Pre-historic Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, in 1891.

American archaeology was still in its adolescence when Mercer examined stone artifacts in the Delaware Valley, explored the hill caves on the Yucatan Peninsula, and scientifically excavated, interpreted and cataloged the contents of shell middens near the mouth of the York River.

A midden is a pile of domestic refuse consisting mostly of shells left by Indian populations along the shore. They offer unique glimpses of daily life because the alkalinity of the shells helps to deter decomposition.

Some 38 clam shell heaps were identified by Mercer at York during the summer of 1891. Most notable was heap No. 6, upstream at the future site of the York Country Club. There he found, besides the usual shells and charcoal, fabric-marked pieces of aboriginal pottery, some bone implements and deer bones that had been cracked in such a way that bone marrow might easily be extracted.

In the same vicinity were found a number of isolated human arm, leg and foot bones. They too were broken and split with a tool in such a way that the marrow could be extracted. No animal tooth markings were found on any of the bones. Mercer collected the specimens and delivered them to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia for analysis.

Professor Edward D. Cope judged the bones to be from a small or perhaps female Native American. He could tell the ankle bones were Indian by the distinctive hollows he found, commonly referred to as Thompson’s Facets. These facets were the result of habitual squatting and were not characteristic of European anatomy.

Artifacts found by landowners in the vicinity of the York shell heaps around the time of excavation were also cataloged in Henry Mercer’s 1897 report of his findings titled, “An Exploration of Aboriginal Shell Heaps revealing Traces of Cannibalism on York, River Maine.”

Mercer wrote, “On Mrs. Bullard’s property, workmen in grading (1890?) found a stone celt, or ‘plummet,’ so called. (Information received from Mrs. Bullard, September, 1891.) At L (J. E. Davis’ property), laborers in digging (spring of 1891) found a so-called tomahawk of iron. (Information received from Mr. Davis, September, 1891.) Mr. F. Woodward, of Chase’s Pond, reported the discovery of a broken stone pestle and three grooved stone axes, found in the course of many years in the neighborhood of the eastern end of the pond. A grooved stone axe was found on the Norwood farm by the father of the present (1896) Mr. Norwood. A broken celt was found by Mr. Walker on one of the shell heaps at G.”

Shocking as it still is, the concept of Indian cannibalism was not new to Mercer or to other students of Native American history. Henry W. Haynes presented evidence to the same effect found in shell heaps at Mt. Desert Island. Mr. Manly Hardy had found human bones in a shell heap on the south end of Great Deer Island, Penobscot Bay. Henry Mercer himself also found more evidence of cannibalism in the hill caves of the Yucatan Peninsula in 1895. The disturbing truth is that all peoples of the world probably engaged in at least ritual cannibalism at some point in their tribal history. American Indians were no different.

According to a report presented on the subject by Harvard’s Peabody Museum, eye-witness accounts of North American Indian cannibal feasts in the 17th century are plentiful. Early travelers to the coast and Jesuit priests who lived among the Indians attribute the practice to many tribes in the Americas.

There were no layers of accumulation in the York heaps to indicate a succession of aboriginal visitors. The size of the piles and their apparent continuous use led Mercer to estimate that they could have taken several centuries to create. Indian feasting near the mouth of the York River had to have ended by 1652, by which time settlers had built a coast road and established a ferry across the river.

Based on the middens’ contents and continuity of use, Mercer drew the conclusion that they were formed within a few hundred years of European contact.

Evidence of the York middens has likely been graded away for cottage lots or fairways by now, but thanks to the copious notes and photographs of Henry Chapman Mercer, some of the history they contained lives on.

Mercer retired from archaeology soon after the York dig to document more recent history by collecting workmen’s hand tools for his Pennsylvania museum. He believed that implements used every day by the common man were far more historically illustrative than opulent trapping of wealthy households.