Many times in my years of manning the historical society, visitors have told me that there is an existing "king's grant" for their Boothbay region land. The term "king's grant" conjures up a setting in some people's minds of a king, quill pen in hand, sitting in an ornate chair or even on a throne in his regalia. He is signing a deed from him to a particular person. When I've asked to see the document, it can never be found. Somebody else has it, or it was burnt, or it disappeared, or it was appropriated by disaffected relatives, and so on. I often wondered about this phenomena. So many people are so sure that such a thing exists, yet it can never be produced, like a ghost.

Real Kings’ Grants

Kings' grants that have a very remote connection to Boothbay land do exist. There were vague and often conflicting grants of American land by kings to groups and distinguished individuals such as Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the Council of Plymouth, and so on. Many grants were written in the first half of the 1600s and included such areas as all of North America between the 40th and 48th parallel. Those grants were of a different nature--they were development rights to proprietors for large tracts, some of which covered Boothbay. This is not the class of land grants in question here.

The grants derived from the Plymouth Colony pilgrims who were given RIGHTS to fish and fowl, etc. in certain locations, not to own the land they claimed. They simply landed at the wrong place. But those who settled, including Puritans too, either ignored the true nature of things or didn’t understand.

Lincoln County Deeds

Because people routinely destroy practically all personal records involving themselves and their ancestors, I have to look at probate, deeds, and court cases in public record repositories to discover aspects of Boothbay's history. I was fortunate that retired lawyer Asa Tupper, born 1898, offered to help me learn to do deed/title research in the early 1990s. Consequently I spend a lot of time at the Lincoln County courthouse looking at deeds, I suppose thousands of deeds in tracking local properties and people. I also started a personal project of methodically reading and taking notes on all early Boothbay deeds at the courthouse. Before 1760, when Lincoln County was created, it was part of York County. So I also looked for pre-1760 local deeds at York County Courthouse and found only one. I started the deed project about 1997 and stopped in 2002—I didn’t know I was stopping, but I did. I only got to Lincoln County's deed book 22 which took me from 1760 to mid-1788. I continued going two or three times a week but that was for my own research for articles or for people who wanted help. Believe it or not, such detailed bookwork is my idea of a good time.

Human Pride

No Maine land deed imparts legal ownership unless it is recorded at a county courthouse. In reading all the local deeds while we were subjects of the king of England and in my 36 years of studying local history, principally through deeds, I have never seen a king's grant to a Boothbay individual; they just don't exist. Not only do they not exist; I've had people tell me they have deeds that are downright impossible—a king's grant for land that was acquired after we won the Revolution and the king was kaput. Right there is a broad hint that a claim about a king's grant is wishful thinking, a way to aggrandize one's ancestors, which is a strong wish.

People normally want to take pride in themselves, their families, and their remote history; and some of us are not above a little embellishing. Along that line, I've had a great number of out-of-towners stop at the museum while tracing their roots; many were told that their forebears were wealthy landholders with huge estates here. I remember in particular one family, descendants of modest fishermen, who came in and said, "Our great-grandfather lived in a mansion here, and we've driven all over and can't find the mansions anywhere." When I've explained to such families that Boothbay was a comparatively poor town, they usually get quiet as it dawns on them that: 1) the accomplishments of their ancestors were exaggerated or: 2) I don't know what I'm talking about.

Next time: More on Kings’ Grants