Reflections of the origins of ‘Raymondtown’

By Ernest H. Knight

Going all the way back to the pre-history of our town, Raymondtown was one of the dozen local “Canada Towns” that had its origins in the 1690 expedition to Canada under the leadership of Sir William Phips.

The man for who the Town of Raymond is named, Capt.
William Raymond, led a group of American soldiers in 1690
to Canada where they attempted unsuccessfully to take the
city of Quebec and prevent raids originating there of towns 
and outposts across New England. COURTESY PHOTO

He was a poor boy from Harpswell who rose to the heights of power to free the coastal towns from the ravages of bands of French and Indian raiders originating from their stronghold at Quebec.

The men making up the expedition were raised in the many settled towns in eastern Massachusetts under their local leaders to serve without pay for the safety and welfare of all. In those days a company of militia, the basic security organization of the day, consisted of 60 men and while nominally a town matter one of more adjacent towns could supply the men as necessitated by population and circumstances.

Thus, our Captain William Raymond led his 60 men from Beverly and Salem in the venture.

Over 2,000 men departed Boston Harbor in a fleet of small vessels in the summer of 1690, but it was late fall before they arrived at Quebec via the St. Lawrence River, a poor time in view of their primitive equipment and approaching winter.

The citadel was attacked and enjoyed brief success in breaching the outer defenses but was soon devastated by an epidemic in the personnel of ships frozen in the ice. Abandoning the campaign, they started for home but many of the ships were wrecked in storms in the Gulf of St, Lawrence and Atlantic Ocean with great loss of lives.

About half the men survived to reach home and the raids from Quebec continued unabated.

Though the colonial government was insensitive to the safety of the settlements, expansion continued through the French & Indian Wars under difficult and deadly conditions. In the 1730s a solution appeared for the colonial government, short of cash but abundantly endowed with wilderness land, to make grants of townships to any groups to whom they were indebted.

There were, besides the “Canada” veterans, others who had served in the Narragansett War, Monadnock conflicts and other actions that qualified for grants as Defense Towns which spread outward in a 50- to 100-mile radius from Boston to act as buffers to the encroachment of the raiders from Quebec via the Connecticut River or Lake Champlain and over cross-country trails to their vulnerable destinations.

Captain Raymond’s company of volunteers, reduced to a few living survivors but under the leadership of younger heirs, was an early claimant of a township based on the 1690 effort although equally entitled to a grant based on the conflict of 1675 and was granted permission to select a site as Canada #1 or Beverly-Canada.

A location was found on the Piscataquog River, now in the town of Weare, New Hampshire, in 1735 and roads, bridges and buildings started but soon were aborted when a boundary dispute discovered that Massachusetts had given away land belonging to revived New Hampshire claims. A large number of other settlements were also negated and these pioneers had to return home and bide their time for a better opportunity, which did not come until 1765.

In 1766 a second grant, in lieu of that lost in 1741, was obtained in other lands governed by Massachusetts along with many others of those evicted 25 years earlier. After looking at and rejecting a site on the Royal River above North Yarmouth, the choice was made of the present homeland, encompassing what is presently the towns of Casco, Raymond, and part of Naples, the largest township in Maine due to deducting the large percentage if the area in lakes and ponds as being useless for cultivation.

So here we are, but not without a little hardship and determination here and there along the way more than 300 years later. <

This article was written by the late Ernest H. Knight, one of the founders of the Raymond-Casco Historical Society and contained in his book “Historical Gems of Raymond and Casco.” It was submitted by the Raymond-Casco Historical Society and articles about Raymond history from the historical society will appear regularly in The Windham Eagle newspaper. To find out more about the Raymond-Casco Historical Society, call Frank McDermott at 207-655-4646.