BATH.    103

the heirs and assigns of Mr. Gutch ; but when judgment was affirmed
against them the wealthy proprietors found means to carry the case
to the King’s Privy Council. Their case was found to be weak, and
they never gained so much authority as warranted them in further
disturbing the settlers.

In 1753 the territory of Bath and West Bath—derisively called by
opponents the “Twenty-Cow Parish”— in answer to a petition, was
set off under the name of the Second Parish of Georgetown. They
had heretofore attended on the worship of the Kirk of Scotland in the
old meeting-house at the head of Phippsburg ; but in 1762 they finished
a house of their own. Merriman, Parker, Page, Adams and Wyeth,
were the the earliest temporary supplies, and Rev. Francis Winter,
settled in 1757, the first permanent minister. Rev. Hugh Wallis, Asa
Lyman, and Rev. John W. Ellingwood—the latter in 1812—were his
successors. Just at the time when Greene was campaigning against
Cornwallis in the Carolinas, the Second Parish petitioned to be made a
town. It was, therefore, in 1781, incorporated as Bath. For this name,
commemorating the famous watering-place of English Avon, the city is
indebted to Dummer Sewall, Esq., at that time representing this region
in the General Court. Bath was the first town incorporated after the
new constitution of Massachusetts was adopted. Between the day of the
incorporation and the date when the inhabitants assumed their rights
the confederation of the thirteen States became a Union of States.

The warlike incidents in Bath and its vicinity were a skirmish of a
force under Major Church with the Indians near Swan Island (now
town of Perkins) in 1692, in which the Indians were routed ; the cap-
ture of the King’s Dock and its commandant by the citizens at the
breaking out of the Revolution ; and the repulse of two armed vessels
of the British in 1780 by a small battery on a bluff nearly opposite the
head of Arrowsic Island.

In 1844 the south-western portion was set off as West Bath; in
1847 Bath received a city charter ; and on the establishment of Saga-
dahoc county in 1854, it became the county seat.

The pioneer in the ship building industry of Bath was Captain
William Swanton, who had been a soldier in the French wars, serving
in the reduction of Louisburg in 1758. He took up his residence in
Bath in 1762, and from this time the population and business of the
place steadily increased ; and on the acknowledgement of American
independence by Great Britan the inhabitants became extensively and
profitably engaged in lumbering and ship building. An eminent citizen
who was engaged in the same industry, and also was a great promoter of
commerce, was William King, who became the first governor of Maine.
Of a later day were E. K. Harding, James Drummond, David Owen,
Geo. F., John, J. F. and J. T. Patten, David C. Magoun, Freeman H.
Morse, Bernard C. Bailey. Dr. Israel Putnam, Johnson Rideout,William
Torrey, Ammi R. Mitchell, William M. Rogers, JohnT. Gilman, Galen
Clapp, J. D. Robinson, Otis Kimball, William M. Reed, William V.
Moses, Jeremiah Ellsworth, William Drummond, William Rice, John
Hayden, Edwin Reed, John G. Richardson, Thomas D. Hyde, and
many others highly esteemed. The latter names of these have been
mayors of the city.

Rev. Samuel F. Dike, Levi P. Lemont and Joshua Philbrook have
written historical accounts of Bath. The address of Rev. II. O. Thayer