Gazetteer of the State of Maine With Numerous Illustrations, by Geo. J. Varney

BOSTON. PUBLISHED BY B. B. RUSSELL, 57 CORNHILL. 1882. Public domain image from

BROOKS VILLE.

branch of the Maine Central Railroad passes through the town, having
a station at Brooks village, a little north of the center of the town.

The territory of Brooks was embraced in the Waldo patent. Its
plantation name was Washington. It was incorporated in 1816, and
named in honor of Governor Brooks, of Massachusetts. Joseph Rob-
erts, from Buckfield, who built the first mills in town, was said to have
been a resident here in 1799. In 1801, be, with his two brothers,
John and Jonathan, were settled in town. Not long after Benjamin
Cilley, with bis sons, Benjamin, Peter and Simon, from the same tojynf
took up their residence here. The first lawyer was Phineas Ashrnun,
who came as agent for Thorndike, Sears and Prescott, proprietors of
most of the land in this and adjoining towns. He was also the first
post-master. Jacob Roberts was the first physician. This town was
awhile the home of Hon. Woodbury Davis, formerly a judge of the
Supreme Court of Maine. It is claimed for Brooks that no town of
its size has done more for the cause of freedom and temperance.

The religious societies in Brooks are the Congregationalist, Baptists,
Methodists and Friends. The town has seven public schoolhouses,
and its total school property is valued at $2,100. The valuation of
estates in 1870, was $200,176. In 1880, it was $229,437. The popu-
lation in 1870, was 868. In 1880 it was 877.

Brooksville, the most south-westerly town of Hancock
County, is bounded on all sides by Penobscot Bay and its connected
waters, except on the south-east where it joins Sedgewick,—being al-
most an island. The next towns to the northward are Castine and
Penobscot, and on the east, Bluehill. The south-western projection
bears the name of Cape Rozier, in honor of James Rozier, the compan-
ion of Weymouth in his voyage to the coast in 1805, and the historian
of that voyage. The Indian name of this cape was Mose-ka-chick, sig-
nifying a moose’s rump. Mr. A. W. Longfellow, of the Coast Survey,
gives this legend respecting the locality. In very early times, as an
Indian was pursuing a moose over the peninsula upon which Castine is
situated, it came to the shore, and leaping in, swam toward the oppo-
site side of the harbor. The dogs were unable to follow the game, but
the hunter himself followed in a canoe, and succeeded in killing it upon
the shore. On his return, he scattered the entrails of the animal upon
the water, where they may be seen even to this day, in the shape of
certain rocks strung along at intervals.

The waters of Castine Harbor and North Bay wash its shores on
the north, and Bagaduce River, running northward from its ponds in
Sedgewick, forms the boundary line on the east. The town is 22 miles
south-west from Ellsworth, and 40 miles south of Bangor. The Deer
Isle and Bucksport stage-line passes through it. The principal eleva-
tions of land are Perkin’s and Kench’s Mountains and Wasson’s and
Clapboard hills. Perkin’s Mountain is said to abound in minerals,
yielding also alum and copperas. It is said that seventy or eighty years
ago some mineral resembling coal tv as taken from its bed near the foot
of the mountain and tested in a blacksmith’s forge. At the foot of
the mountain on the western declivity is a chalybeate spring. The
granite quarry at the foot of Kench’s Mountain affords a fine quality
of stone. In 1875, about $26,000 worth of worked stone were shipped
from this quarry. The “ Devil’s Track,” a peculiar formation in the